I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
The Bill Gates reality-distortion field is a persistent one, his PR people are very good at what they do.
I keep getting warm fuzzies about him every now and again. He keeps recreating himself, like a rock-star re-styling.
Then a memory or new fact drops, and I remember he's a greedy, ruthless, devious, self-serving thug.
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@yacc143 I didn’t say he was. We all know what Amazon did and what it became. What I said was that—unlike you, apparently—I’m old enough to remember when that hadn’t happened yet. And didn’t have to happen.
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@lritter @gleick Well, it was more or less inevitable.
The fact that he did ugly things with accounting, like literally making sure for decades to run at zero profits while making sure to grow as fast as possible, is another thing. Strictly speaking, legal, but only possible because he managed to sell it to the investors.
But yes, it killed the competition.
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@gleick
Sorry, as an European he never was a good guy.Amazon was convenient and still is, for buying foreign language books, but convenience does not make it ethical.
And me personal I was always sceptical of concentration benefits. As these bluntly lead to monopoly and that leads to extortion games to the disadvantage of the consumers, that's a given natural law, like apples fall from trees downwards.
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
Well, James, judging from many comments, no one is old enough to remember the more innocent days.
As my Nice Ex, very geeky, remembers when PayPal seemed such a new, sweet initiative. -
The Bill Gates reality-distortion field is a persistent one, his PR people are very good at what they do.
I keep getting warm fuzzies about him every now and again. He keeps recreating himself, like a rock-star re-styling.
Then a memory or new fact drops, and I remember he's a greedy, ruthless, devious, self-serving thug.
@megatronicthronbanks @gleick Back in the last century there was a little documentary comparing him to STeve JObs and ... they were both manipulative greedy thiieves but Steve Jobs was a little crazier with wanting to take over the world.
The damage he's done to education is the part I feel directly. -
I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick I'm so old I remember when Bill Gates... oh, no, he was always a complete and utter c**t, right from the start.
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick Imagine unironically calling an imperialist rag like WaPo one of history's "greatest" newspapers.
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@gleick Imagine unironically calling an imperialist rag like WaPo one of history's "greatest" newspapers.
@blueorchestra It was. I gather that you have a short time horizon and don’t know much about, well, anything really.
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick I remember when Amazon and Chapters launched, and one of the founders (I'm forgetting which) talked openly about how the publishing industry and the system of book store returns ran more or less on an honour system and was ripe for exploitation.
They were never good guys.
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@gleick Imagine unironically calling an imperialist rag like WaPo one of history's "greatest" newspapers.
I mean, it was?
You could make the argument that ALL legacy news media was and is imperialist, but not the WaPo more specifically and individually.
"1973 Pulitzer Prizes:
Journalism - Public Service
The Washington Post
For its investigation of the Watergate case
Woodward and Bernstein" -
I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick Their remembrance don't matter to them. They have gotten rid of any shame, ethics or scruples. Their wealth is poisoning our world. They destroy so much. #TaxBillionaires - their billions are toxic. Let's detox those ugly rich.
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick from the beginning, Bezos seemed to me like a disgusting janitor who secretly watches young girls
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@gleick aye
‘Yes #Bezos,
https://www.yesmagazine.org/opinion/2017/02/21/to-billionaire-doomsday-preppers-your-wealth-wont-save-you #Yes - -To Billionaire Doomsday Preppers: Your Wealth Won’t Save You
#music #TaxTheRich #FeedThePoor #TillThereAreNoRichNoMore #ArtMusic #TenYearsAfterTenYearsAfter
As I always say, eventually we WILL find the air intakes
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick yeah, who knew that was just the Enshittification playbook all along...
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys -
@woozle @gleick My incarnation of a ‘social network’ predated that ‘other one’ by a couple of years. My social life took all my time. And I could not afford to spend money on the infrastructure needed to make it grow.
Or maybe it’s that I did not enjoy the constant requests to ‘find out who posted something’. Moderating is a thankless job. So a big thank you to our moderators!
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I'm so old I remember when Jeff #Bezos seemed like sort of a good guy who chose books as the focus of his clever new internet store.
Now he will always be remembered as the toady who paid tens of millions in tribute to the Trumps while ruthlessly destroying one of history's great newspapers.
@gleick is Bill Gates the only one of the tech billionares who seemingly aged quite well?
