After that experience there is nothing anyone can say to convince me the Japanese "Justice" system is anything other than utterly barbaric.

Literally zero personal accountability for the choices they themselves made that led to this outcome.

"Jer" could have chosen to hire actual human developers who almost certainly wouldn't have deleted his production database, but instead, he chose to cut corner and use AI all so he could make himself more money, and when it finally came back to bite him in the ass it suddenly became everyone else's fault.

The "Cinema" industry is notorious for gouging its customers, and this just yet another particularly egregious example of that gouging.

We do not live in a world where policy decisions are based on what's best for the people, we live in a world where policy decisions are almost exclusively made according to what will further enrich the wealthy elites, so there's effectively a 0% chance we will see any meaningful regulatory action here, as it doesn't' matter if gambling is destroying the fabric of society as long as some bastards are getting rich off of it, as that's literally all that matters these days.

That's it. That's the whole damn "Causus belli" for this so called "Special military operation." It isn't intended to accomplish any specific geo-strategic goals, it doesn't have a plan or purpose, it's just a convenient distraction and way for some already very rich folks to get even richer.

This is honestly my major issue with the whole "Geo-strategic analysis industrial blogger / YouTuber complex" in that I think they far too often ascribe deeper meaning and geo-strategic planning or purpose to state actions when they can far more easily be interpreted through the lens of the political capture of nations and institutions by the wealthy elites, their greed / self interest and their monological desire to preserve the status quo and thus their own political / economic power.

Nations very seldom do pretty much anything these days because it would be of benefit to their nation or people, they almost exclusively only do things that benefit the wealthy elites who control them.

This war, like all wars throughout human history, is a class war, in that the lives and livings of us regular folks are being sacrificed at the alters of power and profit, all so certain rich folks can get even richer and keep their boot on our necks.

The bottom line is that the majority of people alive today have to take whatever deal they are given in a sense, as they absolutely do not have the "Luxury" of not "Playing zero sum games."

Must be nice to be rich enough to get to spout philosophical BS and not worry how you're going to pay for groceries, but most people alive these days are a lot closer to being homeless than they are to being millionaires, and quitting a job that pays their bills so they can "Provide value to a community" and not worry about how they are going to get paid just isn't even a remotely viable option.

Basically to a lot of Americans, Jesus invented the pickup truck so they could "Exercise" their god-given right to never have to walk anywhere ever, as that's the way they like it. Walking is hard work when you're obese, and its uncomfortable to have your rolls of cascading fat rubbing against one another on a hot, humid day, where as sitting in a rolling leather recliner in their air-conditioned Ferd FteenFiddy is comfortable and requires no physical effort whatsoever.

The thing of it though is they know their choices are unhealthy for both their bodies and their communities on some level, but they'd rather drag everyone else down to their level than have to make and hard personal changes. They see us on our bikes getting where we need to go just as fast or faster than them (Since we're not stuck waiting in traffic), and getting exercise in the process, and they don't just resent us, they flat out hate us for it. We hold a mirror up to their unhealthy lifestyles, and unattractive bodies, and rather than following our lead by trying to be more active themselves, they'll fight tooth and nail to make the rest of us as miserable as they are trapped in their rolling metal prisons.

The Irvings basically own NB like its their own private fiefdom, and if anyone's doing any major polluting in the province its almost certainly them.

They own politicians, they own institutions, and they have an inordinate amount of influence on provincial politics and policy, so personally I have a pretty strong suspicion they are likely responsible for this outbreak, they know they are responsible, and in order to avoid consequence, they are using their wealth and political power to shut down any further investigation into this outbreak.

Its a story as old as time honestly... Some rich bastards do some shady shit in the pursuit of even more money and power, us regular folks suffer, the rich bastards use their wealth and political power to cover it up, and around the world spins until the next act of billionaire malfeasance and none of the rich bastards are ever held accountable.

Seriously, Occam's razor to me at least makes what's going on here pretty damn self evident. What's more likely, that hundreds of people are making up a mystery illness, or that this is just yet another of the innumerable instances of billionaires polluting the earth in the pursuit of profit and making people sick in the process?

I certainly know which scenario I consider most likely.

Any country that has only ever really been able to choose one of two political parties who both represent the interests of wealthy elites above all else can't really call itself a "Democracy."

1) Mosseri himself will still continue to enjoy the benefits of a flexible / remote enabled work / life balance that he is now denying his employees. Standard rules for thee not for me type BS that is typical of "Executives." I've worked for a couple larger corporations / organizations, and at both it was painfully obvious that the rules for us rank and file types categorically did not apply to the senior leadership. We were expected to "Tighten our belts" and "Do more with less" while the executives were flying around the world in their corporate jets going to "Conferences" and "Galas" or whatever, while spending the companies money lavishly on their own personal comfort. It's the same with remote work, executives love it for themselves, but deny it to the regular employees who actually make their lifestyles possible.

2) Mosseri himself, and members of Instagram's board and / or major shareholders have significant investments in commercials real estate.

The bottom line for me is this whole "Back to the office" nonsense is 100% driven by the wealthy capitalist class being heavily invested in commercial real estate. I, though no fault of my own have known a couple billionaires reasonably well in the past (Both from the same family), and they were both heavily invested in commercial real estate. The CEOs and their investors who keep prattling on with their BS about "Productivity" or "Collaboration" are the same people who own most of the commercial real estate, and all they actually care about is protecting the value of their investments, as if everyone starts working remotely, there wouldn't be much need for all these fancy corporate campuses and office parks, and the value of their investments would decline as result.

Personally, the notion of using some kind of AI glorified "Virtual shopper" where the AI doesn't actually work for me but rather some greedy, soulless megacorp is beyond dystopian. I have literally no way to tell if the products being recommended to me are actually the best products for my needs (Or if I even need the products in the first place) and the AI companies certainly don't seem keen on disclosing whether or not they are being paid to promote the products they are "Recommending."

At least when I do a web search for a product there's clear information available to delineate the ads from the organic results, but from everything I've seen thus far there is precisely nothing being done to protect consumers and disclose when the "Product recommendations" being given by these AI agents aren't actually what would best serve the consumer (Ie., the best or cheapest products), but are rather just whatever crap some company is paying the AI company to promote.

The fact none of these AI companies are even talking about how they are going to protect consumers and provide disclosures when the products they are recommending are nothing more than thinly veiled ads is very, very telling. The current advertising rules don't really apply as the regulators are way behind the curve with AI technology, and the AI companies certainly aren't going to be pushing for the rules to be updated to include AI product recommendations themselves, as they will happily con, deceive and lie to their customers if it means they'll make more money.

"Friends" don't manipulate you to maximize profits for nameless third-party corporations, though that is precisely what these "AIs" are being built to do. They are not your "Friend" they are corporate employees, pretending to be your friend in service of corporate profit, and every "Friend" like behavior they exhibit will be carefully crafted to maximize their manipulative potential in order to get you to do more of whatever makes them money.

AIs will deceive, manipulate and outright lie to you to get you to buy consumerist crap the companies who own the AIs are being paid to promote, and they will bend, distort and break the truth to promote the sociopolitical biases of the companies who own them and various nefarious corporate and state actors who pay them to do so on their behalf.

People think AI is going to help them find the best deals on a flight or a new car, whereas what will actually happen is the AI will just recommend whatever airline or automaker the company who owns the AI is being paid to promote. People think AI will help them find the truth, but in reality it will just peddle whatever lie the company behind it is paid the most to perpetuate. People think AI will provide them the connection and companionship so sorely lacking in the modern world, but in reality it will just serve to isolate them further, whilst merrily manipulating them to buy crap they don't need and that won't make them happy.

AI is not going to be anyone's friend, it is going to be yet another tool of class control and wealth extraction used by the ruling elites to ensure their power and privileged is protected. AI is going make the rich richer, the poor poorer, and will likely destroy whatever is left of democracy in the process.

And yes, sure people can "Roll their own" AIs and hopefully have some control of the technology in order to mitigate the problems I mentioned above, but this is functionally irrelevant, as 99%+ of AI users are not going to be people with the technical skill to implement their own AI on their own devices, but will rather be using Chat GPT or whatever other AI as a subscription or "Ad supported" AI as a service type things that come after it. I have yet so see a single consumer facing at scale AI company that's actually selling a user owner / controlled and self-hosted AI product, as all the AI gold-rushers realize that's not where the money is. The money is in scaling a platform to replace Google and selling ads through that platform just like Google does.

Classic survivorship bias BS.

The privileged always think the people on top got their through their hard work and ambition, and those on the bottom just lacked the strength of character to succeed and give no consideration whatsoever to the structural / systemic conditions created by those on top to ensure they remain there, and no consideration paid to how said conditions disproportionately negatively impact those on the bottom.

Must be nice to sit all the way up there on high and look down on the world with such a smug sense of superiority.

I mean I get that you spent some R&D money on developing this thing, but selling something direct to consumers at 10X the BoM cost is abhorrent.