I wonder if this decline means the public health campaigning and lessons about drinking/smoking/drugs prevention made a difference?
As 1 data point, I have a cousin who is 17, and I am 35.
As a 17 year old, she's been taught the dangers of cigarettes, that drinking is bad, and to avoid drugs for a number of years already.
I'm not saying this is bad... it just feels like previous generations (Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, etc) did not really go into the informational side about the risks of drug use from a personal level, and moreso approached don't do drugs like an episode of COPS, which focused more on the risk as a scare tactic.
I'm one of those people that growing up, was bombarded with negative talk about drink, drugs etc.
So I took more.
And will continue to do so.
Guess my age?
I give my kids my* advice. One had a 6 month period of getting fucked up, and now doesn't touch anything. Another, 'doesn't inhale', and has never touched alcohol.
They have also learned to shut the fuck up when being lectured by some teacher that is parrotting (sp?) the party line, and they howl at the 'touch drugs snd you'll become an addict' government bullshit.
My conclusion?
1/100: Scientists need to be young now to understand,
At a personal level, it feels better to have something of your own to hold on to instead of someone else’s, so I think beaucrats will also respond accordingly.
In a way, we’ll probably see more cloud fragmentation in the future, especially as other countries develop their IT sectors more and feel like they want more control over their own infrastructure, and whatever tertiary benefits can be extracted from that.
Relationships don’t even have to turn sour, there just has to be enough protectionism and popular appeal to support it. Just like saying “build it here”.
Let‘s not call it „cloud fragmentation“ please. It’s cloud competition. Cloud is an utility and probably should resemble energy market regarding the choice of suppliers and simplicity of the switch.
IMO, I'd expect to see more international D2C start eating the lunch of US retailers as the D2C companies see they can make more money and still offer lower price points.
If the main value proposition of retailers is importing goods they don't produce and marking them up to sell to Americans, that's a shaky business model, especially in the age of ecommerce.
Mass shippers like Aliexpress already stopped using ePacket.
Ali has their own Cainiao. The big companies realized if they do the Amazon model and build their own logistics network for cross-Pacific sea/air freight, the long-term savings are huge.
Even within the US, Amazon already has planes, trains, and automobiles. Why pay USPS and be at the mercy of government bureaucracy when you own your own integrated logistics stack.
The dust still hasn’t settled yet, but from following the discussions and learning more about the board of OpenAI… just… wow.
What stood out:
1. The whole non-profit vs for-profit is like a recipe for problems. Taking billions in investor money, hyper scaling to hundred-millions of users, and partnering with a $1T tech company… you’re already too late to reverse course and say “I changed my mind”.
2. Seeing who runs the OpenAI board is more shocking than the man behind the curtain in the Wizard of Oz. That was really never an issue to partners or investors before? Wow…
3. If OpenAI continues down the “we’re a business / startup” path, their board just shot all their leadership credibility with investors and other potential cloud partners. The one thing people with money and corporate finance offices hate is surprises.
4. You don’t pull a corporate “Pearl Harbor” like this and just blissfully move along without consequences. With such a polarizing move, there’s going to be a fight.
