https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cdxvnwkl5kgo Russia have fined them $20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000...
Has the world always been this crazy, or is the bonkersness of it all accelerating towards some metaphorical brick wall?
I dont know. I often think about it. In ancient days they used to sacrifice babies and pregnant women. People threw women into lakes to see if they'd drown, to prove they're not a witch. People died due to a plague where they actually danced themselves to death. Maybe it has always been bonkers but now the information is always a second away at our fingertips...
tell em its a lifetime membership and guarantee European football and there will be a 20,000,000,000,000 excess
That was the way my mind was working too when I read the article. And the fact that the information is only a second away makes it worth people doing bonkers things because they know they'll reach a wide audience very quickly. "It's not so much a vicious circle as a vicious straight line."
Just for comparison, that is more than the annual GDP of the entire world multiplied by the annual GDP of the entire world. And every week it goes up further. Google withdrew all staff from Russia in 2022 and the Russians "liberated" all their assets in the country then.
50p each would do it if they chuck in a full pound that would cover that amount plus leave enough for a transfer budget for an assault on the Champions league for the next twenty years at least!
There's long been a Russian based doctrine of misinformation thats warped into over information in more modern times which makes it more difficult to process and decipher the salient stuff. On top of that we've got western countries doing similar to their own domestic audiences. Without any form of critical thinking or treating things with initial suspicion, incorrect conclusions will be drawn by ever larger numbers. It's only going to get worse as AI evolves and we get beyond the point where fiction is untellable from reality.