The NRA is frantically running the numbers to see what will increase public fear, and thus sales figures for the gun companies, the most.

I mean… a good chunk of the US (and apparently also at least Western Europe) can’t read or write. That is a sadly normal problem at this point. And the rest? We actively teach kids to pattern match and “guess” what the other words are from the ones they recognize. Think about that the next time it is painfully obvious that someone replying to you didn’t read what you actually said.

A friend who teaches middle school has come to accept that a good chunk of why their students (and presumably the adult populace) flock to “AI Assistants” is that it is literally giving them text to speech and putting things into a format they understand. Which… combined with the tendency towards hallucination and overly praising the user is fucking horrifying.

And said multibillion dollar company doesn’t give a shit. It is just the local store that has to deal with shrinkage. Which mostly just equates to profit numbers, likelihood to get their share of hot items, and so forth. Which, medium term, leads to even more shit going behind the locked doors and said store shutting down because nobody wants to find a sales associate so that they can buy toothpaste.

Like almost all things, the “I am morally righteous because I target this” just ignores that you are still fucking with individuals. Which is one of the biggest “strengths” of capitalism: The people taking the abuse aren’t the oligarchs. It is your neighbors. And they are also the face of inconvenience when they actually try to advocate for their own rights.

So… how about you drop the “Doing X to A is righteous but doing it to B is bad” and consider growing up a bit and understanding that you are fucking people over either way. And decide how you feel about that. And, to be clear, nobody cares: You do you. Just understand what you are doing rather than focusing your energy on mental gymnastics because you can’t stand to think you might do a bad/“bad”.