Driverless cars and AI in general. AI is capable in the very near future of kicking off a revolution to rival the industrial one we all learned about. Huge increase in productivity and a reduction in expenditure for large corporations that currently rely on human labour. And AI that can fix and monitor the robot workers.

Which also means unemployment without a new job to go for. But if 50% of people don't have an income, who is going to buy the stuff the robots produce? That's where universal basic income comes in. Tax AI to fund UBI which would allow people to pursue their own goals in life. Fully automated luxury communism ala star trek! Credit to Aaron Bastani for that idea.

I await someone mocking the idea of UBI, calling me a lazy idiot, saying people will turn to drugs and crime, without providing a single alternative solution to the certainty of automation and what it will do to the economy. If boardroom jockeys find out that they can get robots to do the work of 1/2 of their staff for 1/100th of the cost, 1/100th of the errors, none of the stress, illness, holiday or sleep time, do you honestly think they won't? This IS going to happen.

Meanwhile RE: housing prices - if roast chickens had increased in price at the same rate houses have, each would be £50 - it would be unacceptable. Having a place to live is equally necessary for life, so why is it acceptable and even encouraged, celebrated by some?

Just remember... while there is a Congress that *might* temper some of his proposals... there's no Congress between him and the button (and the fact that he has said he would not rule out a first strike nuclear attack against somebody in the Middle East and Europe... and he also might not protect our European allies if attacked if they haven't paid). There's no Congress between him and him launching an initial retaliatory strike for making jestures... No matter how bad Hillary is, she isn't ready to destroy the world and start a nuclear holicast the way Trump is more than willing to do. Also, the lone wolf attacks we've seen the last year or so will only greatly increase under Trump as he and his ideals, implemented or not, incite futher self radicalization, by people who won't need contacts, they'll just be upset that the US is targeting Islam as a whole specifically, not just the jehadist... and remember, it looks like he'll win as he is winning in states like Florida and Ohio... When those nuclear missles rain into the United States, remember, those voiting for him, you specifically knew that would happen and you chose to destroy the world by voting for an egomaniac that has no clue how to be diplomatic, who has no clue how the real world works... who thinks the world opperates just like a boardroom... or one of his appartments where he kept black people out...

I wouldn't get your hopes up, if you find yourself in an EA boardroom you're probably surrounded by assholes.

This kind of attitude is depressing. It's none of your business what someone does in their spare time when no one else is affected by it. There are functioning alcoholics turning up for work pissed, flying planes, driving buses, teaching children. But no, let's go after the guy who sits in his bedroom playing music with a joint. Let's prevent him from having a life, even if he is self medicating a mental illness. It serves him right - if he's got an illness, he shouldn't be using naturally occurring medicine like our ancestors have for thousands upon thousands of years, no! He should be paying hundreds of pounds to a big pharma company for a pill that they invented a few years ago.

The premise behind drugs testing people is based on many things i disagree with:
1) the spectacular failure of the war of drugs - not only has drug use increased in the timeframe, but it has ruined probably millions of lives, needlessly turning ordinary, hard working people into criminals for no good reason other than "we like this plant, but we don't like this plant, and now neither may you"
2) the origin of the war on drugs - which iirc from a well sourced and produced video on here recently was instigated by a vindictive racist who wanted to go criminalise things that were seen as "black people" pastimes
3) the bias of the war on drugs - where drugs associated with the poor and underprivileged are relentlessly pursued to the detriment of functioning happy families across the world, but drugs associated with rich white folk such as those boardroom jockeys who snort coke in the office bathroom, nah, give them an easy time
4) the american prison business - which demands a steady supply of low cost, low maintenance, low rights workers who have no choice in the matter
5) the spreading of disinformation through formal education/popular media, and lack of actual knowledge or experience of drugs - which has led to a generation of people who now firmly believe that the moment you inhale a particle of THC (or "inject 1 marijuana" to the uninitiated), your brain turns into a fried egg, and you immediately begin stealing, cheating, and peddling dangerous items to children

Some of the brightest and best humans were influenced and inspired by drugs. If i wrote a list of people that i had the greatest respect for and who i considered to have made a positive influence on the world, half of them would almost certainly be drugs users; and i mean scientists, writers and artists. Your philosophy is a detriment to society, but thankfully as the decades pass, there are less and less with that philosophy. I loathe being blunt, but there is nothing worse than someone who feels the need to dictate to others what they should and shouldn't do on the basis of what they personally do or don't approve of.

We might get about 90 years on this planet with a bit of luck - why the hell do the minority spend so much time trying to dictate to the majority what they do with that time? And why do the majority let them? What sort of control fetish is it that inclines people to want to do that?

This guy's life has been fucking ruined by your adopted philosophy towards drugs, and you offer to help him as long as he bends to your will? How magnanimous of you to stoop to gutter level to help a mere drug-addled cretin... I think he'd tell you to stick your job, he's overqualified to work under you.

You remind me of David Mitchell on "Would I Lie to You?" when he pointed out that often people will think that something sounds so out-of-place and rehearsed that it inevitably has to be true.

Do you perhaps think that might be something you're doing? Would this shit really be satisfactory, based on your logic, to a grieving family? He wasn't a saint, neither are you, neither am i... but no one deserves to die for that, especially at such a young age... none of us know who we are by that age.. he had not made the decisions that would shape his life yet. Who does it benefit to have the rehearsed official police story relayed to us by the only man who could explain what really happened? It's more of a slap in the face to the family, is my point.

I tell you what i'd want if i was American - not to have to fear the American police. Because at this point it doesn't even matter if Darren was "rightfully killed" - because the arse-covering propaganda had already started; which is an admission to racism by way of feeling guilty.

And that SHOULD be enough for Americans to demand change - i.e. not every cop should be carrying a gun, because quite clearly not everyone is capable of knowing when to use it. But if it isn't enough, there's Trayvon Martin too. And another, and another, and another.

This isn't a one-off thing, so don't try to suggest that people should judge the video independently of the track history of American police which is to kill young black men, hurting the communities and individuals that they are designed to protect.

At the very least, the protection system is not working for the black community and needs fixing. At the most, there is a tendency towards racism and wild-west-justice in the American police, and that's not just a problem for black people.

P.S. American prison statistics for black people is a serious indictment of how black people are not treated equally in the eyes of the law. Who is really going to try and argue that black people are naturally, statistically more likely to be criminals to the tune of the prison imbalance? There is absolutely no way i am buying into that. The prison statistics remind me of this John Oliver video, perhaps police are being "fair" and stop/searching black people exactly as much as they do white people.. but that is an imbalance because they are not exactly 50% of the population.

(For the record: 60% of all prisoners are black but only 25% of total population. Incarceration at six times that of white people. 12% of the drug-using population are black, but account for 40% arrested for drugs and 60% in prison for drugs. Taken from the NAACP website, i've got to assume they're right. Don't get me started on antiquated drugs policies, or the history of slavery's affect on money/power in the modern world - meaning crimes committed in boardrooms and government go unpunished - let's not forget white leaders have led this world to the brink of complete collapse and we're not out of the woods - but let's stick to the issue.)

Nice spoilers in the boardroom, but then it is obvious.

"Stop flashing those boardroom eyes at me", that kills me. We have their 5-year TV run on DVD, never get tired of it. Saw them on their 2000 and 2002 tours but I think their work after that has gotten pretty crude and stale. But they were brilliant back then, I'm glad Lorne Michaels picked up on them when he did.

Wow! Soon maybe there will just be one commercial that feeds into another commercial that feeds into another with all of the mega corporations out there. I wondering if this was decided in a boardroom. Ok, well we need to appeal to male audiences as well as female audiences what do we do?

Sure, Barack and I chat all the time about things.

I guess my working model for predicting what Obama does is based on two hypotheses:

1. Obama is really telling us what he wants to see happen in his speeches. He wants to do what he can to address the progressive agenda because he sees it as his moral duty.

2. Obama is, contrary to his speeches, an uber-pragmatist.

It's the second part that gets activist lefties mad at him. He's not interested in waging war on the oligarchs who run the government from their boardrooms, he wants to try to reach out and show them that the progressive agenda is good for both the 99% and the 1%.

Similarly, he's not interested in picking a fights he can't win, just to make an ideological point. He unfortunately doesn't think it's his job to try to shift the Overton window with his words and deeds.

I think people who imagine him to have been some sort of anti-progressive infiltrator or turncoat are just being melodramatic, and I really wish they'd stop issuing all these pronouncements about whether Obama is "with us" or "against us."

He's clearly "with us", he's just not a hardline ideologue who makes everything into some showdown of unwavering and conflicting principles.

He prefers to use the inflexibility of others as his argument to the public for supporting him -- he's being more reasonable, after all. It seems to work out okay for him in the polls, but I think he'd be a much more effective President if he made being firmly on the side of doing what's right a higher priority than being reasonable.

In reply to this comment by Truckchase:
Good talk NR. I'm not convinced.... there are cabinet appointments, etc. he's made that make me not trust him, but I am listening. Ob's speech a couple days ago has me wondering you've got a direct line to him or something.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
I wish we had more people like these. we could create a whole new paradigm for human interaction. I would radically change our senseless consumerism into pursuit of higher standing. Maybe we could start giving back all the shit that we don't need to whoever wants it, free of charge
We have powerful enemies, and they have powerful enemies. If we could create a battle for the powerbrokers to go at it neck and neck, it won't make any difference who wins. We will fill in the gaps with our resources and skills, once the battle is over. We'll fix things the way they've always needing fixing, with no one to stand in our way.
I know it sounds crazy, but the Founding Fathers of this land all drank prodigiously while debating and writing out the Constitution, so it's happened before.
There's some crazy shit brewing in the country right now. Almost nothing would surprise me with the various outcomes being played out in the streets, the courts, the corporate boardrooms, reclusive militias, and a government dead set on keeping it all together. Interesting time to be an American


I only go to work unshaven and high on mushrooms. On lunch I skateboard with several other like-minded corporate sillies and generally act like I own the place.

"Do you work here or are we gonna have to deport you to Santa Ana?"
"Sir, I have a badge and it says STFU."

It's a grand time to be a technocratic hooligan. I'm in love and out of control and everyone who thought I was some hopeless crazy summbitch are wide-eyed silly poops-on-sticks. Oh man, oh man, oh man, OH LORD IT WORKS!!! You know? You don't gotta fit the status quo to fit in and go down and around -- fear when I settle down and raise a family, because FUCK YOU's our slogan, but it's a slogan of love. Since when has "FUCK YOU" been a slogan of love? I know, it's really weird. Honk if you love Cthulhu.

Dee dee dah dee dah

I wish we had more people like these. we could create a whole new paradigm for human interaction. I would radically change our senseless consumerism into pursuit of higher standing. Maybe we could start giving back all the shit that we don't need to whoever wants it, free of charge

We have powerful enemies, and they have powerful enemies. If we could create a battle for the powerbrokers to go at it neck and neck, it won't make any difference who wins. We will fill in the gaps with our resources and skills, once the battle is over. We'll fix things the way they've always needing fixing, with no one to stand in our way.

I know it sounds crazy, but the Founding Fathers of this land all drank prodigiously while debating and writing out the Constitution, so it's happened before.

There's some crazy shit brewing in the country right now. Almost nothing would surprise me with the various outcomes being played out in the streets, the courts, the corporate boardrooms, reclusive militias, and a government dead set on keeping it all together. Interesting time to be an American

I don't want to rag on you, Campion, because you make some good points, but the "average American" had nothing to do with this mess.

These were boardroom swindles. They knew Bush and the SEC would look the other way and they took all that they could while the getting was good.

This crisis is not about Americans living beyond their means: it's about the bankers, the sellers, and the speculators robbing us blind because they knew that the fox was guarding the henhouse.

>> ^dag:
I've had daydreams about doing something like that in the middle of a meeting. Actually today- I was in a stuffy boardroom meeting, and I imagined climbing on top of the table and doing a #2.



That's pretty tame. Usually I imagine growing so angry and strong as the hulk, that I pick up the entire building and throw it at the moon.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I've had daydreams about doing something like that in the middle of a meeting. Actually today- I was in a stuffy boardroom meeting, and I imagined climbing on top of the table and doing a #2.

The boardroom guy at t-15 reminds me of people who would say that without even having a swear jar to use for beer.