Every Bond villain worthy of the title should have a diabolical plot worthy of respect.

In Die Another Day, Gustav Graves ingratiates himself with the West, constructing a satellite named Icarus without the authorities realising that he is actually developing a space-based superweapon. Ostensibly, Graves has developed the satellite as a means of ensuring that crops can be grown year-round, bringing an end to starvation, but the truth is far more sinister: the purpose of the satellite is to provide North Korea with the clout to become a superpower, if not to actually dominate the world.

Source

In other words: Now that he’s no longer getting any money from Google, he’s suddenly upset that no one is visiting his site anymore, because most of his former visitors now find the answers to their questions directly on Google—the very company to which he sold all of his website’s content.

Well, he could have figured that out sooner. What a moron—but hey, he’s already pocketed the money for all the content he stole from his own users.

It’s a good thing Aaron Swartz doesn’t have to witness all this, especially since the greediest of all corporations are now raking in money with complete impunity for the very thing he was supposed to go to prison for years—even though he had no intention of enriching himself at all.

There isn’t much luxury in a car that annoys you with ads, is there?

But hey, maybe there’s an extra-super-luxury subscription that lets you turn off the ads. You know, like YouTube Premium or something, except that the free version already costs several tens of thousands of dollars.

It’s a win-win: insecure rich guys can feel superior again and BMW gets $.

Only until they have brought all institutions under their control and can thus violently suppress any resistance that might threaten their reign of terror. That’s when things will really take a turn for the worse.

Source: Germany from 1933 onward, when the Nazis began systematically eliminating all opposition, until the end of World War II. By about 1936, resistance was virtually impossible, and critics of the regime were mercilessly eliminated.

So the U.S. Nazis are right on schedule, especially considering that they now have entirely different surveillance capabilities that have been in place for quite some time—so it’s to be expected that things will move faster for them.

Toto - Africa (metal cover by Leo Moracchioli feat. Rabea & Hannah)

This cover should meet just about all of your criteria, but it’s already a few years old.

That is simply wrong. Public pressure can certainly be effective. In any case, it’s definitely better than doing nothing at all.

That makes it pretty clear that most executives are the worst possible people to run a company. Well, that’s just how it is when ruthlessness and greed are the only criteria used to select top executives.

But hey, even if they were to lose their jobs because they’re burning through so much money, things will go on as usual: Anyone who’s ever held a top management position will always be hired for the same role somewhere else, because competence is definitely not the deciding factor here. Never was, never will be.

Your skepticism is understandable and justified, but unfortunately it is precisely this skepticism that Israel knows how to exploit.

Not only does this criminal state invest billions in influencing public opinion—specifically targeting legacy media outlets believed to be reputable—but it also systematically kills journalists who attempt to provide independent reporting not controlled by Israel.

They are evidently pursuing a strategy so unscrupulous that it is absolutely unprecedented in recent human history. For obvious reasons, there are few reliable sources on this, but these older, scientifically collected data should give an impression of the sheer scale of the problem.

I’ll just copy a comment here that I posted more than a year ago—not the slightest thing has changed in the meantime; quite the contrary, since the U.S. continues to shield the criminal regime of Israel and thereby actively supports the genocide of the Palestinians:

Israel deliberately kills journalists, as evidenced by the fact that more journalists have been killed in Gaza in the last two years “than in the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined”.

Source: Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs - News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World (full paper here)

Edit: Fixed the link to the full paper as the url changed since my original comment.

You’re the best! Unfortunately, the Rhineland isn’t in reach for me, but I’ll look around (nothing listed for my zip there atm). I had no idea that they were actually looking for volunteers here, too.

Thank you so much for the info. I’ll check those links regularly now and get involved if something pops up that’s even somewhat close to where I am. If I come across any other sites during my research that might be interesting, I’ll let you know.

I’m already thinking about anything more I could do. Those little creatures are so majestic and useful, and some species could use some help in my home country, too. It’s truly commendable that you’re standing up for them and raise awareness. We need a lot more people like you—then the world would be a much better place. But hey, you’re showing us how we can all do our part.

Here in Germany, there are various professionals who are employed and mainly funded by the government, but if I ever have to deal with owls myself I’ll get in touch with you right away.

I joined my local nature conservation a year ago, and you definitely played a part in that. I only provide a little financial support, but maybe I can do even more—besides following their very helpful recommendations for protecting nature (which is why I now only grow wildflowers on my balcony for example).

Aww, I’m so happy to hear that! I wish you all the very best, and thank you so much once again for letting us all be a part of this—even if it’s just in a very small way.

That’s what a true hero would say! Thank you so, so much!

I just mentioned you again since I made a typo at first and wasn’t sure if the mention would still work after I edited it. But it worked out—hey, better safe than sorry: credit where credit is due!

A huuuuge thank you also to @anon6789@lemmy.world for all these superbowls! Your posts are a true blessing!

For me, ever since I’ve been here, all those adorable owls have always been a symbol of what’s wonderful about Lemmy.

Uh, oh, don’t forget @anon6789@lemmy.world with all the superbowls

Indeed!

“The bubble doesn’t want cheap useful things,” Doctorow said. “It wants expensive ‘disruptive’ things: big foundational models that lose billions of dollars every year. When the AI investment mania halts, most of the models are going to disappear, because it just won’t be economical to keep the data centers running. The collapse of the AI bubble is going to be ugly. Seven AI companies currently account for more than a third of the stock market, and they endlessly pass around the same $100 billion IOU. AI is the asbestos in the walls of our technological society, stuffed with wild abandon by a finance sector and tech monopolists run amok. We will be excavating it for a generation or more.”

I think that pretty much sums it up.

The problem seems to be that it takes competent employees to get anything useful out of an LLM in the first place. However, it is these very employees whom the greedy CEOs want to replace. So the result is that an incredible amount of money is being spent on absolutely nothing.

The logical conclusion, then, should be that it would make more sense to replace these useless CEOs with AI. Since they’re just making idiotic decisions for a lot of money anyway, there could be lots of savings.

Unfortunately, however, that will never happen, because contrary to all that talk of KPIs and such, what really matters in the upper echelons of management is never efficiency, but rather ruthlessness and brown-nosing.

Well, if they were to start doing this on a large scale, everything would probably collapse pretty quickly.

If, for example, BlackRock were to pull its billions out of AI companies, “the market” would be terrified and smaller investors would start asking about the business model—then they’d quickly realize that it doesn’t add up at all, and they’d want to sell their shares as well, because even this giant player has lost their trust.

The result would likely be the collapse of the global economic system, since such absurd amounts of money are at stake here that a crash would make the 2003 banking crisis look like a minor slip-up.

The bitter truth is that this will almost certainly happen sooner or later—and this time, governments will no longer be able to step in to bail out the “systemically important” megacorporations, because the sums involved are so vast that even the richest countries in the world can no longer foot the bill.

If even the goddamn BusinessInsider comes to this conclusion, I wonder why they don’t also realize that all stock market transactions work this way today. None of this has the slightest connection to the real world anymore. Stock prices are determined purely by how many billionaires—or rather, their concentrated capital—are betting on which companies. And here’s the key: They always win, because even with the most absurd business ideas, they can drive up the price, which only crashes after the super-rich have sold their shares.

This makes it very easy to understand why the dumbest people in the world never lose money, as long as they’re rich enough.

Humanity is footing the bill for this, and it’s now becoming very clear just how high that bill is.

I know that, given all this, it may sound more frustrating than helpful, but don’t let it get you down, and don’t lose hope!

Throughout history, even in the face of massive and violent oppression, people have repeatedly broken free from the powerful - even through nonviolent resistance against horrific atrocities. India’s independence from British colonial rule is a good example.

Either way, all the best!

The latest attempt at chatcontroll was rejected as recently as April 3 mainly due to massive public opposition. They will try again, and someday they will succeed if too many people succumb to defeatism.

So it’s pretty counterproductive to say that it wouldn’t make any sense anyway, because that’s not the case.