Do you think a plumber dreams about being a plumber?

Amazon is an absolute scumbag company, they don't pay taxes and they shit all over their workers, and fight unions tooth and nail. I have no idea how people can buy at Amazon, that stands for everything Trump and Musk stands for. Just fucking stop using Amazon if you value democracy. Pay an extra dollar and buy somewhere else.

I want to read his "Meaning of the City" because I just like City theory, but I keep postponing in case it's just Christian morality lessons. The anarchist Christian angle makes this sound more interesting.

Italy, and all of Europe, have always had a greater respect for personal and a lesser respect for business' profits than the U.S.

Oh sorry, my mind must have been a bit foggy when I read that. We agree 100%

TD Cowen (which is basically the US arm of one of the largest Canadian investment banks) did an extensive report on the state of AI investment. What they found was that despite all their big claims about the future of AI, Microsoft were quietly allowing letters of intent for billions of dollars worth of new compute capacity to expire. Basically, scrapping future plans for expansion, but in a way that's not showy and doesn't require any kind of big announcement. The equivalent of promising to be at the party and then just not showing up. Not long after this reporting came out, it got confirmed by Microsoft, and not long after it came out that Amazon was doing the same thing. Ed Zitron has a really good write up on it; https://www.wheresyoured.at/power-cut/ Amazon isn't the big surprise, they've always been the most cautious of the big players on the whole AI thing. Microsoft on the other hand are very much trying to play things both ways. They know AI is fucked, which is why they're scaling back, but they've also invested a lot of money into their OpenAI partnership so now they have to justify that expenditure which means convincing investors that consumers absolutely love their AI products and are desparate for more. As always, follow the money. Stuff like the three mile island thing is mostly just applying for permits and so on at this point. Relatively small investments. As soon as it comes to big money hitting the table, they're pulling back. That's how you know how they really feel.