brianpbeau

No one actually believed that Iraq would set all of Kuwait on fire in the 90s until they did.

It's called disaster capitalism, and it's intended. The tech overlords realized they could make money on things if they helped the world collapse. Why? Because they know they would be immune to the nightmare they would create. Plus they need another yacht for their yacht.

I much prefer this headline: The high speed pursuit of greed causes technology to do questionable thing because a bunch of CEOs need new yachts.

The only thing the LLMs did was recognize patterns. There is no intelligence there. None. Zero. Zilch.

Oh good, white knighting for bad and potentially irresponsible tech.

Imagine being the nerd that is still using Chrome in the YOL 2026.

Even before that we had "sweeps week" in broadcasting. This was the period of time where the big networks pushed out their biggest shows, miniseries and end of season episodes. This would lead into the nightly news which would also put together an extended expose on a headline-grabbing story. These stories would be heavily advertised during the prime time shows and would often be told over a period of nights. All of this was in service for high ratings that could be used to increase advertising rates.

So yes, all of this has happened before and will continue to happen as long as we live in a capitalist society.

The Nature vs Nurture discussion is everywhere.

Enshitification for everyone by everyone. Remember when tech was fun, disruptive and mostly beneficial to the end user?

Yes. What's wrong with that? There are large portions of the population that already do that for other health related issues.

It's also a matter of making foods more addictive to increase sales. And creating marketing to do the same thing. And then creating food deserts, etc.

Ah yes, the ever popular "they are just lazy or weak willed" rhetoric. Obesity is a disease just like addictions are. But I'm sure another round of "just try harder" pep talks and motivation posters will solve everything. Maybe stop for a moment and realize your perspective is narrow.

It's not just processed foods, there is also a genetic struggle as well. Looking at my family living in the US and in the EU, being overweight is a thing for a large portion of us. Even in my grandparents generation of family had issues as well, and they were all blue collar manual workers that lived before processed foods.

This is not to say you are wrong. The food supply in the US is not healthy. The bad news is that the same greed that destroyed our food will find ways to get around the ways GLP-1s work.