Premium 357: We Are Remembering
Added 2025-05-05 20:42:48 +0000 UTCOn this week's premium episode we discuss the recent John Fetterman profile in New York Magazine, the newly announced Trump tariffs on the movie industry, and how ChatGPT is making some people go literally manic psychotic insane
Comments
Something I want to point out that yall didn't mention re: AI was that people were also primed to think that AI could be mystical/spiritual by the tech hype cycle and press releases and all kinds of fluff piece articles that came out a year or so ago. Hell, I remember that one google employee that got fired because he claimed that the AI chatbot he was talking to at work was alive. I'm just saying that although people may be feeling spiritually adrift and trying to cling to anything, they were set up to fall for this bullshit by the same people who are pushing it.
ava fox
2025-05-23 01:15:50 +0000 UTC...this is my shocked face at Trump immediately caving on tariffs against China as soon as any real data comes trickling in. I guess it's "good", depending on how you want to look at it (consuming a bunch of redundant stuff is bad, but so are riots and stochastic violence that inevitably would have happened). In any case, it's a real clown-show to immediately capitulate when the obvious actually happens. It rightfully makes people wonder what the point was in the first place, when just about every economist could tell you how this would play out. It's like making a big deal about how you're going to walk in a straight line, despite everyone seeing that there's a wall a few feet in front of you. And - boink - you walked into the wall. Well done? The US is basically - once again - going to be saved by its established role as a globally important trading partner. If this was just about any other rando country most people who are in the business of manufacturing goods (and who need to plan a few quarters, at least, in advance) would obviously establish new partnerships, with leaders who don't behave like a moody pre-teen. I feel very reluctant about going "oh, this is really bad for the US" because I'm not invested in the current state "of business" (with regards to the current system of completely unsustainable capitalism), but sure - it's bad for the US in the sense that it makes the US seem unreliable when you take into account that there's no meaningful opposition to "trumpism" to be seen; right now or in the forseeable future. So, even if he dies tomorrow, it seems logical that this type of pig-headed "nuh-uh!" is here to stay with whoever comes after him, and who'll obviously capitalize on the in-road he has paved way for. It's certainly possible that this all falls apart the second he's gone, but that's one of those "make sure you don't confuse the lay of the land with what you wish things were like". If you're doing cold calculations here, there's plenty of signs that whatever constitutes trumpism is popular and "works" in the US, and that other visions of how things could be are either toothless and out-dated (democratic party) or functionally absent (a politically meaningful left, ie, in a position of making demands that others have to take seriously). If you're in the trade-business, you don't give a fuck about "how nice the world could be, if things were different". You care about cold calculations.
Jesper Ohlsson
2025-05-12 15:19:30 +0000 UTC
