Much in line with other commenters statements about socioeconomic factors, I submit this hyper-local diss: “Crimedotte”

But the titanium-colored bags are so much less bulky!

What if you have anxiety?

Oh, and as evidenced by the government losing control of the backdoors they implanted into telco companies, this data will be hacked. And having all of it in one place will make it a big target.

So it’s not just the U.S. government that will know about your business, but so will the U.S.’s foreign rivals.
Great fucking strategy. Let’s make sure all our health data is accessible, not improve the health system, and just hope that none of the people whose information you can freely and easily buy online due to lax privacy laws have expensive medical bills and a sensitive job.

Way improve national security. Dumbasses.

What an unexpectedly deep bit of research this threw me into.

In 2005 a company called Fortress Credit loaned the Trump Organization $130 million dollars for the construction of trump tower that it later ‘forgave.’ Fortress Credit is owned by Fortress Investment Group, which is owned by SoftBank. Additionally, SoftBank tried to engage with Trump in 2017 under a similar scheme, where they offered to invest in the U.S.’ IT infrastructure as part of some deal they were cooking up with Trump.
Incidentally, in 2019, New Fortress Energy, also part of the constellation of companies, was granted a peculiar permit to transport LNG over rail lines within populated areas - something that is generally not done due to the danger involved.
So that’s just, you know, the corruption cherry on top of this shit cake.

So now, we have SoftBank, OpenAI, and Oracle - companies whose CEO’s ‘bent the knee’ announcing a half a trillion dollar investment into an all knowing AI medical black box that the government (and its corporate sponsors) intend to use to track all your medical information.
Yes. Centralized government tracking of your periods, ladies. If this system ever works, the government will know if you’ve ever told a medical professional that you use illicit drugs, even drugs that may be legal at the state level, but illegal federally. The government will know if you’re on antidepressants - something that JFK Jr. wants to send people to re-education/labor camps for being on. They will know if you’ve ever told a doctor that you’re not CIS or straight.

And we know that SoftBank can’t afford to invest that much. They took out a $4 billion loan 2 years ago, and then asked for another 1.1 billion shortly after. Even Elon Musk is saying they don’t have the money.
So they’re going to invest some money in something, get very overpriced government contracts for the operation of it, and use a fraction of the overages from that to ‘invest’ further until their obligation is fulfilled or forgiven – in much the same way that telcos fleeced the government to build out broadband and never did.

It’s a bad deal for all of us, and the very best outcome for anyone is that it will never work.
Because if it does work, we will lose our medical privacy, and we lose control of any data we’ve ever shared with medical professionals - one of the few areas in U.S. citizen’s lives where there are privacy laws to keep them safe.

Yeah… I have a bad habit of blurring my references and hoping folks get it.
It’s like a pop culture blender in there (my brain) and I have no idea what’s gonna come out sometimes.

I’m not calling it a conspiracy of human making. I’m just implying we’re all in the bad place.

Edit: Just in case someone thinks I’m serious - I’m not, but this shit is ridiculous.

Fucking, what?

Okay. I didn’t know who she was until today, but famously racist guy who appointed the judges that killed the Roe decision gets reappointed to president on MLK’s birthday and a former president of Planned Parenthood dies?

We’re trapped in the mirror universe and the plot has been written by jaded Gen X’ers from the 1990’s. I blame the weasel.

Oof. That hurts to hear.

Yeah, I know. And I know there’s way more market demand for mirrorless, as well as simpler mechanicals, so they have less failure points, but do I ever love the sound and that subtle feeling of a mirror slapping up and the shutter flicking out of place.
The feedback that offers when you capture a photo feels like you’re doing something ‘real’ when you take a photo. Everyone knows that you captured that moment. Those photons are yours forever, trapped in your little art-making box.

It’s kind of romantic, in a way. I feel like modern tech is great, but tends to be inscrutable.

I have such fond memories of shooting on my old Canon DSLR.
It’s been 20 years since I bought my last DSLR (life, you know?) and I recently started thinking that maybe I should buy another before they close out the DSLR product line.

A huge disappointment to see this enshitification.

I’m sorry this is going to be such a shit comment, but I worked with a guy that had a fitness watch of some stripe.

He was a heavier guy and well, that plasticy band was pressed tight against his skin. One day he came in with this nasty looking ring of red and peeling skin around his wrist. Said he got a rash from the watch. (It’s very possible it was an allergic reaction to something in the band.)

This is a shit comment because I don’t know the brand, and I’m totally saying “trust me, bro.” But like, trust me, bro, it apparently happens?

I think specifically they are referencing this:

In heavily Arab-American areas of Michigan, where disfavor with Biden’s handling with the war is at its highest, purportedly pro-Israel billboards have for weeks trumpeted Harris’s commitment to Israel and featured her Jewish husband Doug Emhoff; online ads with the same message have also targeted these constituencies. Meanwhile, the same PAC has also funded mailers sent to Jewish households in Pennsylvania declaring that Harris not pro-Israel enough.

Pro-Trump PACs back more misleading ads about Harris and Israel in final bid for swing-state voters - Jewish Telegraphic Agency

The above article also discusses how this was not merely the effort of one PAC, but that multiple PACs were engaged in this sort of disinformation.

However - I think I understand what you mean, and Harris should have immediately broken with Biden on Palestine. Make no mistake, I’m not thinking of this as some sort of dispassionate politics-as-baseball strategy.
The right thing to do was and always will be to stop a genocide.

Ahh. Interesting. I don’t think I’ve seen the HIBP one!

Now it’s going to bug me, trying to remember the one I was thinking of. (Unfortunately, I’m out and about today and can’t really take a moment to hunt down what I’d previously seen.)

There’s one by …. Microsoft, I think?

It actually requests your password (vs email for HaveIBeenPwned) and checks it against rainbow tables. It doesn’t ask for other identifying information, so it’s okay, but feels super sketchy.

My organization seems to have already thrown in the AI towel, or at least are resorting to magical thinking about it

We’re highly integrated with Microsoft - Windows Login, Active Directory, Microsoft 365, and even a managed version of Edge as the org-wide ‘default’ browser that we’re encouraged to sign into with our organizational credentials to sync account information, etc. Our AI policy is basically “You can use any Microsoft AI feature your account can access.”
They can try to block whatever sites they want with the firewall, but once you let a user get comfortable with the idea of allowing systems to exfiltrate data, you aren’t going to also make them more discrete. They’re trusting that by throwing open the floodgates users will actually use Microsoft’s offerings instead of competing offerings — as if folks who sometimes still cannot tell the difference between a web browser and ‘the internet’ will know the difference. And they are also trusting that Microsoft is going to uphold our enterprise license agreement and their own security to keep that data within our own cloud instance.

Boy howdy, this will be interesting.

My tin foil hat theory is that he was planning out another shooting and got interrupted.

Me, when fictionally asked to help out:

Addiction has a medical definition, not a connotation.
As previously shown, SSRI’s do not cause addiction, even if they can cause withdrawal or physical dependence for some people.

I guess I’m wondering if support of this policy has to be riddled with asterisks and accompanied by statements that express hopes of how the programs will be run, then why express any support at all for them?

And finally: There are safe places available for people to go if they feel they are having mental health issues that require more intensive care. Mind you, these are really only available to people with health insurance - Regan largely killed off federal and community mental health care in the 80’s. Care that cannot be replaced with a labor camp.
The only proper replacement for that care is rebuilding that/those system(s), and that is not what RFK is proposing. He’s proposing a labor camp to take advantage of and imprison away vulnerable populations.

There is no such thing as addiction to antidepressants.

This viewpoint is supported by the Mayo Clinic, The Cleveland Clinic, as well as this 2019 study published by the national institutes of health, which draws from decades of research.

The above sources even clarify that withdrawal symptoms are not a sign of addiction.

Many psychiatric conditions are incurable. As a result, these lifelong conditions can only be treated by the lifelong administration of medicine.

Anyone who does not understand that should not have a say in public policy. Full stop.

Think it through to its logical conclusion.
ADHD does not go away. Depression (for many people) does not go away. Schizophrenia does not go away.
What happens to those people if they ‘voluntarily’ agree to go to a labor camp but never wind up ‘cured’?
Hint: They get worked to death.