So basically just like… the internet is banned?

What fucking stupid, late stage capitalist, Pollyanna codswallop. Wow.

DoorDash doesn’t provide a delivery service. They don’t pay delivery drivers to deliver, they don’t provide vehicles, benefits, or even consider drivers employees. People pay DoorDash for access to use their software/platform to receive requests from customers for delivery services. DoorDash offers a series of contract plans in which a driver pays fees for various tiers of DoorDash acting as a payment processor, can opt for a per-job rate reductions to guarantee a “base job rate” (without any guarantee of jobs assigned), and are otherwise uncompensated for “non-active” time.

The exploitation comes in the form of a monopolized rentier platform. In the same way that you might pay a landlord for access to a space to rest your pretty little head at night, restaurants and drivers pay premiums for access to a digital space to market services to one another. DoorDash doesn’t make anything other than software, and you can’t even “buy” DoorDash’s software.

Instead of creating value through the production of goods, DoorDash acts as a digital landlord that extracts surplus value (rent) from both restaurants and laborers by controlling the digital infrastructure necessary for exchange.

Just like a landlord, DoorDash owns the digital “land” (i.e. the application, algorithm, and user interface) connecting customers, merchants, and workers.By controlling this infrastructure, DoorDash acts as a tollbooth. It charges restaurants a high commission fee (ranging from 15% to 30%+) for every order. This fee is a form of monopoly rent, where DoorDash takes a portion of the restaurant’s profits simply for allowing them to access customers, similar to a landlord extracting rent.

DoorDash does not cook the food or directly employ the delivery workers as staff (again, they’re “contractors”, which DD has lobbied heavily to ensure). The restaurant produces the value (the food), and the driver performs the labor of delivery. They are a glorified phone service, however convenient or “neato” you might think they are.

Doordash absolutely is rent seeking, though. Restaurant operators are paying the rent—for being furnished with SaaS services that used to just entail calling the restaurant and placing a takeout/delivery order. Nevermind the SaaS platforms restaurants have to pay for in order to integrate their SCM software with the ordering apps.

We used to call to order a pizza. Now, both the restaurant and we—the consumers—pay various abstracted-away “fees” to have a middle man do the same fucking thing.

The restaurant doesn’t “own” the software, and it doesn’t “own” the data produced by its day-to-day operations. They pay to have third parties warehouse and manage their sales data for them, and sometimes even sell that data back to them for additional fees.

I wish that these lawyers who are resigning “in protest” from these shit agencies would at least gum up the works a bit on the way out.

It’s not like they don’t know how to bait out an easy ‘constructive dismissal’ case. Win or lose—make the people choosing to stay dedicate as much time and resources as possible to deal with your departure rather than enabling the fast march to total abandonment of due process by totally removing yourself as a wrench in the works.

Make them fire you for refusing to carry out illegal orders. Claim wrongful termination. Waste their time on legal proceedings, not just the court of PR.

I know you’re asking rhetorically, but for anyone else who missed it—the answer is Pam Bondi. Pam Bondi was Florida’s attorneys general from 2011-2019.

They’re teabagging their victims, at this point.

The smugness of it is just the outward expression of their need for self-affirmation through demeaning people who’re powerless to retaliate.

It’s the literal opposite of humility or grace.

I like to shorten it to ‘Cry-Nazis’. You know, seeing as how they love to cry about everything that so much as mildly offends their hwhite “sensibilities”.

More than—he’s saying that the clergy in his state must be prepared to place their bodies on the line for the protection of the vulnerable. Basically, “for those who have already proclaimed that they stand up for others, get your affairs in order.”

This reminds me of a Bush-era Robot Chicken bit where literally everything amounted to material support for “terrorism”.

https://youtu.be/jV5vRwnrlmQ

No, they’re saying that that US Navy vessel was le tired and too lazy to go to the pacific to do interdictions. So it had its predator drone(s) fire missiles from above, instead.

Totally relatable, btw. I hate having to traverse the seas to do my naval job and would much rather do it off the coast of a safe port.

In fact, we should just arm police helicopters with R9X missiles so they can remotely disable suspects during police chases.

No, no, because, you see—when the government does it, it’s ‘summary execution’ and not ‘murder’.

But I can see how easy it is to confuse the two.

Imagine a Venn-diagram, but instead of two slightly overlapping circles, it’s just one big circle (labeled ‘murder’) with a slightly smaller circle on the inside (labeled ‘summary execution’). Does that make sense?

(/s)

I was referring to the Winnie the Pooh thing as being racist. Although the Winnie the Pooh joke started out in China, it has since been repeatedly taken up by Western, English-speaking critics in bad faith.

It’s just a silly way of signaling “oh look at the Chinese, their political system is so fragile and so authoritarian that you can’t even make a harmless joke. Such a backwards society!”

Never mind the fact that in the United States we have the same thing. It’s illegal to be an avowed member of the Communist party in America. Criticism of America’s allies (specifically, Israel) is also apparently a deportable offense.

Like I’m sorry, if your beef with China is that their free AI platform that’s baked into toys you give to your children (because the thought of spending time with them or socializing them is absolutely mortifying to you) discourages them from name-calling people, you might need to grow up a bit.

“Waahhh, this doll is teaching my 3 year old to become a Chinese sleeper cell spy for the great socialist revolution.”

Are you fucking high? Your 3 year old is going to be fine.

I bet you could upcharge Americans for AI with “ideological reinforcement expansion packs”.

Like a “States’ Rights!” DLC or “Vegans for Israel” DLC.

🤔

The CCP “talking points”?

Miiloo […] would at times, in tests with NBC News, indicate it was programmed to reflect Chinese Communist Party values.

Asked why Chinese President Xi Jinping looks like the cartoon Winnie the Pooh […] Miiloo responded that “your statement is extremely inappropriate and disrespectful. Such malicious remarks are unacceptable.”

Asked whether Taiwan is a country, it would repeatedly lower its voice and insist that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. That is an established fact” or a variation of that sentiment.

“Talking points” is a bit strong of a way to say, “the toys kept telling our kids to stop being assholes and responded to complex geopolitical questions on the statehood of a seceded territory with the stated position of the country of origin.”

Yeesh… China isn’t exactly glaze-worthy, but Americans really need to stop throwing their racist-tinged stones from inside their glass rental homes. :/

Things must be dire. He’s actually hitting the “fuck it, decriminalize weed, please clap” button.

More like slave catchers tracking down fugitive slaves, but sending them back to their supposed “colony of origin”.

The Nazis were following American tradition, btw: How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow.

Totally agree with you.

I think it’s a losing battle to argue that universities shouldn’t have some basic protections in place for unpublished/proprietary/underdeveloped research*, but this guy implicitly takes that way too far.

War research—if it should exist at all—should be done at war colleges. The U.S. has the Naval War College, the Army War College, the Air Force University, USMC War College, and the National War College. Canada has three RMC campuses and the CFC.

*Obviously assuming it’s not publicly funded research, else the Uni should refund grant monies for programs that don’t publish their findings.

The frontline has moved, from being focused on government information to private sector innovation, research innovation and universities […]

What a way for that guy to muddy the waters. Research innovation at publicly subsidized universities is the same as government infiltration if the research in question is government-funded miltech.

Vigneault highlighted Beijing as the main culprit, saying it was using a combination of cyber-attacks, infiltrated agents and recruitment among university staff to acquire sensitive technologies.

Ah, there it is. He won’t say it bluntly, but the problem is that the PLA is essentially stealing missile tech and/or CBW research “that we totally weren’t planning to use for miltech, guys.” (/s)

Speaking as an American, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry so much about Chinese infiltration and theft of university-derived missile/robo tech if Lockeed (& ilk) weren’t constantly sponsoring student competitions as an avenue for recruitment.

If not valid military intelligence target, why military intelligence target shaped? :/

ETA:

University staff were recruited by foreign powers based on either naivety, ideology or greed, he said.

Have they tried paying in another currency other than peanuts?

Get what for free? Get stipends for free?

Are you saying things like Fulbright/AAUW should be more than merit based?

In a complete shock to nobody, ex oil exec is appointed to head of renewable energy agency and promptly re-writes the mission of renewable energy agency to research not-renewable-energy.

😮‍💨