All of that AI slop money could have gone to installing equipment for safe air in schools, hospitals, and public transit, powered by renewable energy with minerals mined by people receiving fair wages in a much safer workplace.

@Netraven @akareilly to support this point; Biden and congress sent money to cops, money meant to upgrade schools' ventilation and filtration. Cities happily received that money. It always comes down to culture and power.

And I do believe we can change the culture and take the power.

(Edited to change my mis-remembering of the fund distribution)

@akareilly As someone who has spent a lifetime working inside the system, genuinely trying to do good, and being consistently punished for it, I can tell you this: if it weren’t AI, it would be something else. The problem isn’t the technology. It’s that there is never real investment in what’s actually needed. Even when requirements are written into law, or when problems are merely complex rather than impossible, the system learns how to route around them. Compliance becomes performative. Safety becomes fictional.

Industry, capitalism, and the people who steer them are optimizing very effectively, but in the wrong regime. A system oriented toward sustainability and durability would prioritize clean air in schools, hospitals, and public transit; renewable energy; and supply chains built on fair wages and genuinely safe working conditions. The fact that we don’t see this isn’t an accident or a failure of execution. It’s evidence of what the system is truly optimizing for: end-of-horizon exit optionality, not long-term human well-being.

@Netraven @akareilly

The joke's on them, though: there *is* no end-of-horizon exit optionality in global ecological collapses, and 2 sq mile bunkers don't work if nobody will work for you.

@johnzajac @akareilly

well yes, of course. We know this because we're still in contact with reality. The people we're talking about have replaced contact with reality with symbols that become load-bearing instead. If you want to test which symbols are load bearing, just test which one shuts down conversation when mentioned.

@Netraven @akareilly

Fascism is all about symbols and aesthetics replacing substance, and the real trick is realizing we've been living under fascism and borrowing from previous eras of substance for most of the last 50 years.

All of that AI slop money could have gone to installing equipment for safe air in schools, hospitals, and public transit, powered by renewable energy with minerals mined by people receiving fair wages in a much safer workplace.

We could have avoided the high death toll of COVID and prepared for the next pandemic.

Instead we get even shittier code, abuse images, far-right bots, dodgy tech in healthcare, and even more precarious state of things for artists.

All of that AI slop money could have gone to installing equipment for safe air in schools, hospitals, and public transit, powered by renewable energy with minerals mined by people receiving fair wages in a much safer workplace.

We could have avoided the high death toll of COVID and prepared for the next pandemic.

Instead we get even shittier code, abuse images, far-right bots, dodgy tech in healthcare, and even more precarious state of things for artists.

@kzodasnowman @akareilly

Without getting into specifics, I’m responsible for ensuring life-safety compliance in one narrow area of school operations. Last year in California, Governor Newsom approved a $13 billion bond for school upgrades. I can tell you this much: I’ve been to nearly every school from Los Angeles to the Mexican border, and they desperately need the funding.

So did that money actually reach schools? And how would anyone really know?

Schools don’t plan for maintenance. There is effectively no maintenance budget. When money does get spent, it’s usually on major capital upgrades that have been in motion for years. Those projects are designed with the assumption that bond funding will be available, because that’s how the system has always worked. Voters assume their money is going somewhere, or they may not realize that a school bond is really a 30-year property tax levy. It’s not “government funding.” It’s the public paying directly.

By the time projects go out to bid, a bond holder ultimately decides whether major upgrades happen at all. Since it’s cheaper to omit proper life-safety systems, those elements are often quietly removed at the last minute. Responsibility is pushed downhill until it lands with a subcontractor, who is expected to do the work without objection... or not get paid. Even the state DSA is either complicit or completely disconnected from reality. Either way, they’re ineffective.

In the end, there are no real checks or balances. No one is truly watching. This is why it keeps happening. Schools have effectively become glorified real-estate managers who also happen to oversee children.

@Netraven @akareilly I believe you 100%. Oakland Unified School District was lead poisoning children! The article maps the lead crisis perfectly onto your structure. It reminds me of the phrase "maintenance is civilization" https://oaklandside.org/2025/08/01/oakland-unified-schools-haphazard-response-lead-water-crisis/

@akareilly Median age for covid deaths is over 80 years old, so there is not much to be done here.

What could have been avoided are the dire economical and social consequences of covid craziness.

@Netraven @akareilly

The joke's on them, though: there *is* no end-of-horizon exit optionality in global ecological collapses, and 2 sq mile bunkers don't work if nobody will work for you.

@Netraven @akareilly @johnzajac haha, joke's on you! They don't mean real end-of-horizon, they just mean their own exit horizon. They plan to sell before it all hits the fan!

Then somehow all that currency will protect them when the climate collapses. Maybe they will eat it, I don't know.

All of that AI slop money could have gone to installing equipment for safe air in schools, hospitals, and public transit, powered by renewable energy with minerals mined by people receiving fair wages in a much safer workplace.

We could have avoided the high death toll of COVID and prepared for the next pandemic.

Instead we get even shittier code, abuse images, far-right bots, dodgy tech in healthcare, and even more precarious state of things for artists.