In my experience as an European who went to live there for over a decade, there are a ton of very subtle elements which we can't really spot from the outside, not knowing the details of how that country works and its culture, especially because they're culturally extremelly big on image management (which I talk about below), which extends to managing the image that the country projects abroad (both via things like the Media they produce - for example their series and movies about Britain in the Victorian era vastly beautify the reality and almost like clockwork ever couple of years out comes a "Britain won WWII" movie - and their politicians practices both internally and on the international stage of grand symbolic announcements of objectives with in practice either no concrete action ever or even actions which do the very opposite). Britain is has long been setup to preserve the power of the old wealth and always had Fascist tendencies (for example, there are pictures of the old queen when she was young being taught by her uncle, the then King, to do a Nazi salute) and British elites always sided with Fascists and White Colonialists, such as Pinochet in Chile, the Afrikaaner Apartheid government in South Africa and the Genocidal Zionists in Israel, plus they themselves commited several Genocides in their Empire and historically even relentlessly exploited the local lower classes (with things like Indentured Servitude - which replaced Chatel Slavery but you'll only ever hear from the British that they were the first to "end" Slavery and nobody mentions Indentured Servitude - and Workhouses). At the same time this is a country with an extreme cultural tendency to put managing appearances above all else (upside: they have the best Theatre in the World) which is worse the higher the social class one is from, so for example the children of the wealthy are taught to tell people what they want to hear and always show a positive image (not positive cheerful, but rather "flawless" and "impeccable") and are shunned and emotionally attacked by their peers if they display any kind of weakness (can't let others see that they're sad or even sick) and even attend private schools (curiously called "Public schools" over there because supposedly "anybody who can afford the [very high] fees can send their children there" though even that is de facto false for many such schools) which amongst other things teach them discourse techniques (basically how to deceive without outright lying), so most of them as adults have only one mode of relating with other human beings - an unemotional, highly managed posh façade were empathy, in both diretions, is suppressed and they were they manage what others think of them through subtle deceit that avoids direct lying. To preserve this Power structure whilst avoiding rebelions by the masses their "Democracy" is more Theatre than a system for the masses to control how the country is run, set up from the very start to be "managed" via multiple "backdoors", such as the Monarchy having real power (the King can bring down Laws, but traditionally does not use that power directly but rather quietly threatens to use it to get concessions), the voting system is First Past The Post to guaranteed that only two parties can ever govern (hence capturing the top politicians in those parties guarantees control of government), the country has an unelected 2nd chamber of Parliament which has seats which are literally inherited and it has no written constitution so it works entirelly on Laws passed in Parliament by a simple majority (and given their FPTP votting system, a mere 30% of the vote is enought to get a simple parliamentary majority) and legal precedent as established by higher courts (and almost 100% of High Court Judges in Britain are people who attended the previously described, expensive "Public" Schools that only the children of the elites attend). In such a system, control of whatever little Power is left in the hands of the "lower" classes is done in two ways: Constant, relentless but subtle Propaganda backed by direct and indirect control of the whole Press by the elites (for example, the board of the supposedly independent BBC is entirelly made up of people who attended "Public" Schools). You can see this in action in how, for example, the BBC will give over 30 times more attention to Israeli deaths than Palestinians deaths or how certain words, such as "brutish" are only ever used for Israeli deaths and various other very negative words are used hundreds of times more often for Israeli deaths than Palestinian deaths - the British Press was Manufacturing Consent long before the American Press started doing it. Surveillance to detect and stop any civil society movement that might become an independent Power based on the power of large numbers, together with incredibly ill-defined and of broad interpretation laws, and biased Judges (who as I pointed out, pretty much all hail from the elites as shown by them having attended exclusive expensive schools as children) that are used to, using State Violence, crack down on and stop those movements under the cover of "Justice". This is how for example Environmentalists who were planning to do a demonstration which would block the main London ring road were given 10 year prision sentences and how the leadership of the Green Party (a small party which is maybe the only left-of-center party over there) has been under surveillance since at least the 80s. There was a period when the UK wasn't as bad in this sense following WWII, since in the post-War period millions of the "plebes" had military training and managed to claw a lot of power from the elites to the masses (creating things like the National Health Service and Social Security, and even causing a golden age of the Arts in Britain as working class children such as Michael Cain and David Bowie actually had real opportunities to go into things like Music and Theatre) but that has been progressivelly reversed since Thatcher went into power hence why nowadays elements of the Surveilance state have become so extreme that even the highly managed British Media is starting to discretly question it (though they would never, ever, ever treat it a a structural problem in how Power is approportioned in Britain and will always portray it as a single instance of mismanagement in the Police, which is mainly a middle and working class institution)

What are you on about with this? Last news post 2013?

There is a huge difference between an algorithm using real world data to produce a score a panel of experts use to make a determination and using a LLM to screen candidates. One has verifiable reproducible results that can be checked and debated the other does not. The final call does not matter if a computer program using an unknown and unreproducible algorithm screens you out before this. This is what we are facing. Pre-determined decisions that human beings are not being held accountable to. Is this happening right now? Yes it is, without a doubt. People are no longer making a lot of healthcare decisions determining insurance coverage. Computers that are not accountable are. You may have some ability to disagree but for how long? Soon there will be no way to reach a human about an insurance decision. This is already happening. People should be very anxious. Hearing United Healthcare has been forging DNRs and has been denying things like treatment for stroke for elders is disgusting. We have major issues that are not going away and we are blatantly ignoring them.

Can you replace politicians I feel like that would actually be an improvement. Hell it'd probably be an improvement if the current system's replaced politicians. To be honest though I've never seen any evidence that AGI is inevitable, it's perpetually 6 months away except in 6 months it'll still be 6 months away.

Turns out dry sarcasm doesn't come across well in text form, if only there was a way to indicate it

'member Aug 6 2024: https://www.ft.com/content/31919b4e-4a5a-4eba-ada7-88d3fec455f8 ;D UK faces resistance from X over taking down disinformation during riots Social media site owner Elon Musk has also been posting jibes at UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer Waiting to see those jibes at Modi... And who could forget in April 11, 2024: https://apnews.com/article/brazil-musk-x-twitter-moraes-bef06c0dbbb8ed87495b1afbb0edf211 What to know about Elon Musk’s ‘free speech’ feud with a Brazilian judge gotta see that feud with Indian judges, nobody asked him to block 8000 accounts, including western media outlets, whatever is he gonna do?

Yeah, I don't prefer that. But with some things I feel like it's barely a downside, and I'd put Boxes into that category. It's useful and well-designed enough in terms of functionality that I'm willing to overlook the Gnominess.