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The Broligarchs Will Eat You

Posted on September 20, 2025 by barrydahl

**They believe they’re more important than the Presidents, past and current.**

The Tech Bros. The Broligarchy. These are the people bent on destroying everything they touch to make their vision of a dystopian techno-state into our reality.

Computers and software are still capable of being used for productivity and efficiency, but increasingly they are being used to spread misinformation, spy on us commoners, divide us from our friends and neighbors, and addict us to their platforms and devices.

Technology no longer serves the owners of the devices, unless you consider these tech bros to be the real owners of every device that you purchase for personal use. Their goals appear to be to create an endless stream of bullshit designed to trick you into willingly giving up your personal data, your time, your money, and your soul.

Beach blanket bingo with Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg laughing at us, with a blurry Trump behind them with two thumbs up — **They’re laughing at us, not with us. Yes, it’s AI-generated. My apologies.**

Who are the leaders that we are allowing (almost encouraging) to open the drain into which we will spiral to our deaths (at least the death of our humanity)? Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos? Good God, heaven help us all. Peter Thiel, Marc Andreesen, Larry Ellison, Sam Altman, and others are also fueling the increase in public distrust as they invade our privacy by surveilling us at every turn, stealing our digital data for their own desires, and creating biased algorithms intended to misinform us via bias and manipulation.

Why does LinkedIn escape my wrath for now? Two reasons: 1) it’s pretty much a milquetoast platform where virtually nothing happens (which means that very little bad happens as well as very little good), and 2) their CEO hasn’t done anything (that I know of) to be cast in the same lot as the TechBros who have earned our hatred. I do have a very specific rant about LinkedIn, but will save that your another post in the near future.

Being wealthy beyond any inconceivable need is not enough for these people. Instead they feel the need to manipulate the levers of our government and therefore our society as a whole. They have dictatorial persuasions, each and every one of them.

Zuckerberg? I told Facebook to F*ckOff in 2018 and have never looked back. But ignoring FB is not enough. I also avoid all the META products and platforms: Insta, Messenger, WhatsApp, Threads, Quest VR headsets, and Ray-Ban/Meta smart glasses. Zuck sucks, and if you use his products you are giving him the power to continue his suckiness.

Musk? OMG, I really don’t have the finger strength to type out all the reasons he sucks, but chances are good you’re aware of all those without any list from me. I left Twitter when he turned it into a safe place for Nazis. In the early days (pre-Musk) there was great engagement with a network of educators and others who shared useful information. In the later days it became a cesspool of hatred. I’ll never buy a Tesla, I’ll never be an astronaut, I won’t let Neuralink implant anything into my skull, I won’t drive in his Boring tunnels, and Grok can … (expletive deleted). No Musk for me, thank you very little.

Bezos? A little tougher since I have family members who use Amazon and Prime Shipping all too often. I’m working on that, but just because they’re family doesn’t mean that they hold the same convictions about how horrible the Broligarchs are. We’ve stopped using Alexa and Audible. Don’t and won’t subscribe to the Washington Post. Won’t be paying for a seat for a 7-minute ride into “space” on the phallic Blue Origin. We have a video doorbell that is not a Ring. I only shopped at Whole Food Markets a couple of times several years ago, and now have no reason to stop there. There are alternatives out there to GoodReads and IMDb. It’s hard to avoid AWS, but at least I don’t directly pay them for their services. MGM studios is another tough one since I often don’t know who created a certain movie or television show.

I expect very little engagement with this post. One reason is that LinkedIn will limit the impressions by keeping it out of the feed of most of my contacts. Another reason is that those readers who are also on X/Twitter and Facebook/Insta will be loathe to agree with my thoughts about the Broligarchs, since their use of those platforms paints them as supporters of their bullshittery. Or some such crap.

#Broligarchs #TechBros

Filed under: AI & Chatbots, Personal, SoMe | Tagged: ai, elon-musk, politics, social-media, writing | Leave a comment »

My Beer Experiment: What I Learned

Posted on March 13, 2019 by barrydahl

I started 2019 with a personal mission to study my beer drinking habits and effects. I started the year drinking 50 beers in 50 days. Then I dove into the next 50 days without drinking any beers.

After drinking some great beers during the first 50 days, I had zero beers in the next 20 days. Then I quit. Although this was not an actual New Year’s Resolution, this plan was very similar to one. And like most resolutions, I gave up on it. Here’s what I learned.

As much as I like a good craft beer (it’s a lot, trust me), 50 beers in 50 days was actually a significant increase in my normal beer consumption.
Several times I had to force it (by drinking a beer or two) in order to stay on pace. Not a big deal, but those beers were less enjoyable than the times that I really wanted to have one. I guess that makes sense.
I think my sweet spot is about 5 beers a week on average. That usually works out to 2 or 3 beers about twice a week. In other words, 35 beers in 50 days would have been a more normal pace for me. I didn’t realize that until I started down this path.
I’m to the point where I would rather not drink a beer at all than drink a crappy beer.
I gave up the experiment after 20 days because I really missed my beers. I didn’t feel any better or worse (physically) than during the first 50 days, but I felt like I was depriving myself of something I like…for no good reason.
I also noticed that I was drinking more coffee and more soda (pop?); neither of which is probably all that terrific for me.
Besides, I like having beers in social situations, such as when I play poker a couple of times a week. Also when I visit friends; such as my upcoming trips to Tucson, Portland, and elsewhere.

So, there you have it. Call me a beer drinker.

I gave up on Facebook, but I’m still an avid user of Untappd (I’m dahlontap) so I can get a mild social media fix while tracking my beer consumption and learning about new opportunities to make myself hoppy. Cheers!

Filed under: Personal, SoMe | Leave a comment »

What Would Groucho Say?

Posted on March 13, 2012 by barrydahl

Maybe it’s a myth or maybe the truth, but Groucho Marx supposedly once said “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.”

But what about those that WON’T accept you as a member?

This has been stuck in my craw since January, 2011 when I received an email reply from Terry Eberhart. Maybe he’s a great guy. I really don’t know. All I know if that he is (or at least was) the moderator of a LinkedIn group that I was trying to join.

The LinkedIn group is named the International Higher Education Teaching and Learning (HETL) Association. It currently has 13,475 members; including several friends of mine such as John Sener, Chris Duke, Alice Voorhees-Bedard, and John St. Clair to name a few.

Here are the vision, mission, and values statements from that group (copied form their info page):

Vision: the long-term vision of HETL is to improve educational outcomes in higher education by creating new knowledge and advancing the scholarship and practice of teaching and learning.
Mission: to bring that vision to reality, the current mission of HETL is to develop a global community of higher education professionals who come together to share their knowledge and expertise in teaching and learning.
Values: to effectively fulfill that mission, HETL adheres to the values of academic integrity, collegiality, and diversity.

I experienced a mixture of surprise and disgust when I received the email shown below.

I’ve let it sit this long, but now I’m wondering if Mr. Eberhart would care to elaborate on where my values fall short in meeting his standard. If anyone else would like to take a shot at that, I’d like to hear from you as well. Here is a link to my profile at LinkedIn – which is apparently what he reviewed to come to his conclusion that my values don’t measure up.

(NOTE: I did email Mr. Eberhart about three weeks ago, but he didn’t respond.)

CC-BY photo By Mykl Roventine

Filed under: Higher Ed, SoMe | 3 Comments »