ineffable

Thanks. While I was hooked, I had a feeling most people wouldn't commit to such a long article

My favourite quote:

Aside: I swear to god, if your answer here is “get a MacBook Air, they’re only $600,” I beg you — I plead with you — to speak with people outside of your income bracket at a time when an entire election was decided in part because everything’s more expensive.

I think the article is a bit thin. Sure the total dollar value is going up, but that is not due to a policy change (mainly explained by inflation)

It then goes off on a tangent about when tax is collected, while acknowledging that it is hard to compare systems and at least at a headline level it is pretty much the same

Finally we get to the meat, high earners get more benefit, but it doesn't really explain why that shouldn't be so i.e. intuitively people would expect they get more total $ benefit because they contribute more

It would be really easy to show that the tax benefit increases as you earn more, just bung up a chart with marginal tax rates, then add a line 15pp (percentage points) below it to show that you get more and more benefit as you earn more. Then graph the benefit against balance with some income assumptions - get people wondering why someone with $2m+ in super earning normal returns needs a $30k+ tax concession in super each year

Where is the discussion on potential solutions? Why couldn't we tax super contributions at marginal tax rate minus 15pp rather than flat rate? Should we give blanket concessions on earnings? What would it mean to tax withdrawals?

A summary (no AI, I actually read things then summarise them):

The digital world is the real world - It's where most people in Western society spend most of their personal social time, and a lot of other time (e.g. work)

But it's shit. It wasn't always shit, but it is. Platforms don't do what you want them to do, or even what they used to do. Cory Doctorow's enshitiffication describes one mechanism, but really the problem is the rot economy - a mindset that causes technology providers to consider only growth and profit over anything that might be important to real people

This has made technology (and by extension much of everyday life) traumatic. As a tech savvy person you may be aware of some or all of this, including the effects and motivations, and may even be able to avoid some - but by being in the readership of this article, you have to acknowledge you are in a privileged minority

Take the example of someone buying one of the most sold laptops from a big retailer - a common and necessary way for large numbers of people to access the digital world. By the time you fight the kludge of Windows with its integrations and bloatware and updates, then try and use a browser on this underpowered machine, you've already been bludgeoned into accepting that everything digital is just terrible, with no way of knowing or understanding that this is not your fault

This is not a trap you can easily escape, and any suggestion that these users are to blame because they bought cheap technology is just another example of the lack of economic awareness and empathy that lead to recent US election results. Similarly, blaming users for a lack of digital literacy when the technology is actively thwarting them would be inappropriate

So what's the answer? I don't know. At the very least we need to be empathetic, be aware, and raise awareness that this is happening. Why is this important? Because the digital world is the real world, and it's being stolen from us

A summary (no AI, I actually read things then summarise them):

The digital world is the real world - It's where most people in Western society spend most of their personal social time, and a lot of other time (e.g. work)

But it's shit. It wasn't always shit, but it is. Platforms don't do what you want them to do, or even what they used to do. Cory Doctorow's enshitiffication describes one mechanism, but really the problem is the rot economy - a mindset that causes technology providers to consider only growth and profit over anything that might be important to real people

This has made technology (and by extension much of everyday life) traumatic. As a tech savvy person you may be aware of some or all of this, including the effects and motivations, and may even be able to avoid some - but by being in the readership of this article, you have to acknowledge you are in a privileged minority

Take the example of someone buying one of the most sold laptops from a big retailer - a common and necessary way for large numbers of people to access the digital world. By the time you fight the kludge of Windows with its integrations and bloatware and updates, then try and use a browser on this underpowered machine, you've already been bludgeoned into accepting that everything digital is just terrible, with no way of knowing or understanding that this is not your fault

This is not a trap you can easily escape, and any suggestion that these users are to blame because they bought cheap technology is just another example of the lack of economic awareness and empathy that lead to recent US election results. Similarly, blaming users for a lack of digital literacy when the technology is actively thwarting them would be inappropriate

So what's the answer? I don't know. At the very least we need to be empathetic, be aware, and raise awareness that this is happening. Why is this important? Because the digital world is the real world, and it's being stolen from us

A summary (no AI, I actually read things then summarise them):

The digital world is the real world - It's where most people in Western society spend most of their personal social time, and a lot of other time (e.g. work)

But it's shit. It wasn't always shit, but it is. Platforms don't do what you want them to do, or even what they used to do. Cory Doctorow's enshitiffication describes one mechanism, but really the problem is the rot economy - a mindset that causes technology providers to consider only growth and profit over anything that might be important to real people

This has made technology (and by extension much of everyday life) traumatic. As a tech savvy person you may be aware of some or all of this, including the effects and motivations, and may even be able to avoid some - but by being in the readership of this article, you have to acknowledge you are in a privileged minority

Take the example of someone buying one of the most sold laptops from a big retailer - a common and necessary way for large numbers of people to access the digital world. By the time you fight the kludge of Windows with its integrations and bloatware and updates, then try and use a browser on this underpowered machine, you've already been bludgeoned into accepting that everything digital is just terrible, with no way of knowing or understanding that this is not your fault

This is not a trap you can easily escape, and any suggestion that these users are to blame because they bought cheap technology is just another example of the lack of economic awareness and empathy that lead to recent US election results. Similarly, blaming users for a lack of digital literacy when the technology is actively thwarting them would be inappropriate

So what's the answer? I don't know. At the very least we need to be empathetic, be aware, and raise awareness that this is happening. Why is this important? Because the digital world is the real world, and it's being stolen from us

A summary (no AI, I actually read things then summarise them):

The digital world is the real world - It's where most people in Western society spend most of their personal social time, and a lot of other time (e.g. work)

But it's shit. It wasn't always shit, but it is. Platforms don't do what you want them to do, or even what they used to do. Cory Doctorow's enshitiffication describes one mechanism, but really the problem is the rot economy - a mindset that causes technology providers to consider only growth and profit over anything that might be important to real people

This has made technology (and by extension much of everyday life) traumatic. As a tech savvy person you may be aware of some or all of this, including the effects and motivations, and may even be able to avoid some - but by being in the readership of this article, you have to acknowledge you are in a privileged minority

Take the example of someone buying one of the most sold laptops from a big retailer - a common and necessary way for large numbers of people to access the digital world. By the time you fight the kludge of Windows with its integrations and bloatware and updates, then try and use a browser on this underpowered machine, you've already been bludgeoned into accepting that everything digital is just terrible, with no way of knowing or understanding that this is not your fault

This is not a trap you can easily escape, and any suggestion that these users are to blame because they bought cheap technology is just another example of the lack of economic awareness and empathy that lead to recent US election results. Similarly, blaming users for a lack of digital literacy when the technology is actively thwarting them would be inappropriate

So what's the answer? I don't know. At the very least we need to be empathetic, be aware, and raise awareness that this is happening. Why is this important? Because the digital world is the real world, and it's being stolen from us

A summary (no AI, I actually read things then summarise them):

The digital world is the real world - It's where most people in Western society spend most of their personal social time, and a lot of other time (e.g. work)

But it's shit. It wasn't always shit, but it is. Platforms don't do what you want them to do, or even what they used to do. Cory Doctorow's enshitiffication describes one mechanism, but really the problem is the rot economy - a mindset that causes technology providers to consider only growth and profit over anything that might be important to real people

This has made technology (and by extension much of everyday life) traumatic. As a tech savvy person you may be aware of some or all of this, including the effects and motivations, and may even be able to avoid some - but by being in the readership of this article, you have to acknowledge you are in a privileged minority

Take the example of someone buying one of the most sold laptops from a big retailer - a common and necessary way for large numbers of people to access the digital world. By the time you fight the kludge of Windows with its integrations and bloatware and updates, then try and use a browser on this underpowered machine, you've already been bludgeoned into accepting that everything digital is just terrible, with no way of knowing or understanding that this is not your fault

This is not a trap you can easily escape, and any suggestion that these users are to blame because they bought cheap technology is just another example of the lack of economic awareness and empathy that lead to recent US election results. Similarly, blaming users for a lack of digital literacy when the technology is actively thwarting them would be inappropriate

So what's the answer? I don't know. At the very least we need to be empathetic, be aware, and raise awareness that this is happening. Why is this important? Because the digital world is the real world, and it's being stolen from us

Please!

May I see you house my moose

The deaths are confirmed, the cause is likely

'Red panda deaths in UK zoo likely caused by firework fright'

Your hippos now have an eating disorder. Medical treatment costs twice your previous food bill

https://www.localsearch.com.au/guides/landscape-supplies/what-is-blue-metal

"It's called blue metal since it has a blue colour."

That explains the blue, but not the metal...