The article title is click bait here is the full article:
Wondering what your career looks like in our increasingly uncertain, AI-powered future? According to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, it’s going to involve less of the comfortable office work to which most people aspire, a more old fashioned grunt work with your hands.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity.
In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.
“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”
Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)
The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.
“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company… now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp insisted. “I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.
It seems that the AI revolution never seems to threaten those who stand to profit the most from it — just the 99.9 percent of us building their batteries.
I don’t understand why we don’t revolt against the billionaires.
Does building a guillotine count as working with your hands?
checks notes yes
See guillotines are very romantic. Old-timey. Classically French. That’s all well and good for their historical record, but we’re living in 2026 in America.
I think woodchippers are much more emblematic of our working class.
And CEOs will be working with their heads, as intended.
Much would be solved if we were to eat one of them. I mean, it works for the chimpanzees…
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Good job condoning terrorism.
I wasn’t condoning.
If that’s the path they want then they should know what it entails.
“Saying the quiet part out loud” moment, because they don’t feel like they need to be quiet. They’re untouchable.
I’m tired of these techbro cultists without any humanity being in power at all.
This guy seems particularly and consistently bad. Or he just doesn’t have the same filter as the others.
There’s nothing billionaire oligarchs fear more than people who are capable of thinking for themselves. Of course they want to destroy the humanities…
Yes. It’s this, exactly. They don’t hate art, they hate how art unites us. And they hate how poignantly art can express how utterly thoroughly we outnumber them.
Hating on the humanities has been a talking point of the right wing for a long time, specifically because the empathy it nurtures leads to solidarity instead of survival of the fittest mentality. They say that these studies are useless to society, while capitalists are the only class that truly sits on top of society and leeches off of it
TL;DR: Tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.
They see us as livestock.
I studied poetry, painting, and music so that my sons could study mathematics and commerce, and their sons could work long hours on the assembly - without having ever studied anything - so that they can consume slop generated by AI that was pushed on everyone by people who studied commerce, created by people who studied mathematics, and trained on the works of those who studied poetry, painting, and music.
He is lying about its capabilities to protect the stock price
Yeah, they aspire to neo-feudalism, but that’s a political rather than technology position.
I don’t like where it’s going, and I dislike Palantir, but I also strongly disagree with calling manual work “peasant” labour. There’s nothing wrong with working with your hands.
There is everything wrong with having to work like a peasant because wealth hoarders want to hoard even more wealth
Let’s try not to fight over the false dichotomy a headline is designed to produce.
It’s bad if we have no choice but to work like peasants to survive.
It’s good if you enjoy working with your hands and probably most people would benefit from doing that more, even if you don’t want to do so full time.
The important takeaway from the article is “Fuck that guy”
And many of those jobs still require an understanding of higher math/physics. An uneducated electrician is a dead one.
He is such a self-centered, megalomaniac cunt.
Nothing that cannot be solved by politically motivated violence.
Why do we tolerate these people?
Because most Americans with slack jaws hunch over their smartphone gawking at tiktok videos of people they hope to one day be but never will.
Really feeling the victim blaming here when they made the devices into virtual heroine
There’s probably a good analogy out there about addiction but I saw something flashy on my smartphone and got distracted.
You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals so we’re easy to distract and get fucken enamored
Well done! I remember that song fondly.
Okay, so that helps no one.
Anyone else have any input?
read this webcomic, and then consider the reality that we’re living in both of those worlds.
it’s easy to dismiss politics, corruption, fraud, rape, pedophelia, and all the other atrocious things people are dismissing, when you have infinite scroll on your instafacetwitsnaptoktube feed, and you’re fishing for those likes and subscribes, baby!
Thanks for the link, I just read through the foreward to Amusing Ourselves to Death and am looking forward to the full book.
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virtual heroine
Bro, come on. People are glued to their phones the same reason you’re glued to your computer.
The outside world fucking sucks unless you’re a scammer or rich enough to be scammed without noticing it.
It’s free to be on our devices, which is why most people are doing it. Everything else costs money that people straight up do not have.
*heroin
No, no, they made devices into strong female protagonists!
/s
“mOsT aMeRiCaNs…”
Blah, blah, blah. If you can tell me how to un-fuck this nation in a way that will actually wake people up, I’m all ears. But the way I see it, these things were insidiously marketed to the whole country slowly and incrementally, like frog in a slowly warming pot of water. Those of us who jumped out of the pot are watching in horror as the rest get boiled alive.
The problem is, frogs don’t have opposable thumbs and we can’t turn the gas off - so the pot keeps boiling.
The best you and I can do is to look out for each other, our friends and family and help anyone else that manages to escape the pot as quickly as possible so they don’t get back in…
My thoughts are that people are animals and they’ll follow where the majority go, so keep helping others escape the pot and eventually, more will notice there is an exit option and jump as well.
At the moment, I see this as the only real answer. Until there’s proper organization and resistance, everything is lip service.
Mobilization is easy - the protests and marches get people together in solidarity. But organization takes effort: it takes talking to people, getting numbers/contact info, making plans and deciding what’s next…
If you can tell me how to un-fuck this nation in a way that will actually wake people up
People are already Woke Up. They’re still powerless.
Agreed. We’re partially awake.
Yeah right. Almost half the people I talk to are not happy but are burning their heads in the sand and waiting/hoping for this to blow over. It can’t happen here and all that.
burning their heads in the sand
Ouch, sounds painful.
Powerless?
Or is it learned helplessness?
It’s exactly that.
We’re still in the pot, dude. It’s a double-boiler, we only jumped out of the inner chamber where even the metal on the bottom doesn’t go above boiling temperature…
This doesn’t happen in a bubble though. We need those people too. We need each other.
Look, I hate the Americans with a seething passion as well, but they’re getting fucked over even more than we are right now.
Evil doesn’t suddenly become okay when you dislike the victims…
In other words, a slave wants to have their own slaves, instead of being free.
That’s an ugly feature of human nature, as well as some victims thinking the solution to their victimization is to have someone they can victimize too.
I know you don’t necessarily mean it this way, but there’s a very interesting (and infuriating) history to why the US reveres the wealthy. The short version is that the ultra wealthy were pissed about the New Deal, so they used fundamentalist Christianity to tie the idea of wealth to holy favor from Yahweh.
We will have to overcome that idea if we hope to gain real class consciousness.
so they used fundamentalist Christianity to tie the idea of wealth to holy favor from Yahweh
It’s much older. That bullshit goes back to John Calvin (16th century Christo-Taliban idiot), and there are even precedents for it in the Torah, though balanced by other provisions about behaving like a decent human.
Yes, I know. I’m not looking back at the entire timeline of history. I’m looking at the most recent example, because while the idea is not new, it is not an idea that lasts on its own; people wise up over time, which is why the idea gets rehashed by different figures at different points in history.
The short version is that the ultra wealthy were pissed about the New Deal, so they used fundamentalist Christianity to tie the idea of wealth to holy favor from Yahweh.
That concept existed WAY before the United State did.
The old idea was kings were rich because they were ordained to be kings by god. Questioning why the king was rich was questioning the word of god and punishable by death.
Sure, but why it exists today in the US is a direct result of the robber barons’ influence in the early 1900s. The core idea isn’t new, but this instance is.
Early colonized America used slave labor by racist christians. Those racist christians said they were supposed to be rich because god made them that way. That predates the robber barons of the early 1900s.
after decimating the indigenous americans that have been here more than 10k years.
after decimating the indigenous americans that have been here more than 10k years.
No argument on the truthfulness of your statement, but I’m not sure what that has to do with the premise of society enforcing the thought that the rich are rich because of god.
Great, congrats. You are today’s biggest pedant. Here’s your prize.
I’m not looking for pedantry. I’m looking for clarity. You eluded to a specific action by robber barons in the 1900s. I’m looking for what that is because I’m seeing that idea predate them.
It does predate them. They didn’t invent it, and I never said they did. I said their actions are the reason the US reveres wealth today, as in it’s the most contemporary set of events that have reinvigorated that well-practiced strategy.
If you’re looking for specific historical knowledge, as in citations, here you go:
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Makes sense for the overdrive push on the Christianity angle. It’s just obnoxious to someone who’s going pretty damn secular.
Yeah. Let’s show them how good we are with our hands.
I mean… what do you actually suggest? We take a vote on Lemmy about who to execute?
No vote is necessary, we have multiple complete lists and even data aggregators showing their relations to each other.
Pray tell, how do you stop them?
I don’t want to get banned for answering this.
Wait, I got banned on Reddit for suggesting armed resistance to billionaires. It’s why I came here. Does the fediverse also ban people for suggesting we shoot the bastards?
How ironic
Mario has a brother, who I’ve heard of recently.
What is it that supplies these oligarchs with power? what feeds their mass surveilance and data aggregation networks? It seems to me only a few moves are needed to place them on the same grid as us.
And behind what you’re suggesting is an even deeper root cause: money.
nice try, uncle sam.
Because we’re stupid.
People with the message and reach to call for mass general strikes and national scale marches on DC still think they can stop fascism with elections. Maybe I’m just too cynical in that regard to see the true situation but it seems after continued release of evidences of impeachable and heinous crimes Congress and the SC are firmly on the side of the fascist, pedophile political cult.
This is what we call “cooked”
But theres still one super secret recipe that can save this dish
The system has evolved and is designed to make people obey the ruling class.
And systems have been overthrown in the past when they become intolerable.
Whatcha gonna do about them?
It’s not like I invite any of them over to smoke a joint. They exist and I can’t do much about it
These dudes do crack and ket not weed. You’re offerinf the wrong poison.
Of course he craps on philosophers. What good is it philosophy for somebody without ethics?
These morons really think AI is going to allow them to replace the technical folks. The same technical folks they severely loathe because they’re the ones with the skills to build the bullshit they dream up, and as such demand a higher salary. They’re so fucking greedy that they are just DYING to cut these people out in order to make more profits. They have such inflated egos and so little understanding of the actual technology they really think they’re just going to be able to use AI to replace technical minds going forward. We’re on the precipice of a very funny “find out” moment for some of these morons.
These morons really think AI is going to allow them to replace the technical folks.
This specific moron was actually talking about people with a humanities degree.
Even less plausible. There was a paper published recently arguing that by design LLMs are quite literally incapable of creativity. These predictive statistical models represent averages. They always and only generate the most banal outputs. That’s what makes them useful.
The degree of randomness in generative models is not necessarily fixed, it can at least potentially be tunable. I’ve built special-purpose generative models that work that way (not LLMs, another application). More entropy in the model can increase the likelihood of excursions from the mean and surprising outcomes, though at greater risk of overall error.
There’s a broader debate to be had about how much that has to do with creativity, but if you think divergence from the mean is part of it, that’s within LLM capabilities.
Well, every academic field needs creativity. But it’s nothing new that people from economic or tech bubbles have a disdain for humanities.
A healthy chuck of CEOs have a humanities degree. It’s a common undergrad before moving to B and J-School.
I think these guys forget that ai is just a program written by drumroll please HUMANS. Sure we could shitcan every programmer and replace them with “vibe coders” and skate by for a year or two but when bugs crop up and backend issues pile up AI is not gonna unfuck the mess they created and it will require human intervention. If these pricks do away with the technical folk well get to that point and suffer a technological collapse because everybody that knew how to code fled or changed careers so they could pay rent.
The FOSS ecosystem will be fine, because it’s maintained by people who do it for the love of the craft.
The scary part is how it already somewhat is.
My friend is currently(or at least considering) job hunting because they added AI to their flow and it does everything past the initial issue report.
the flow is now: issue logged -> AI formats and tags the issue -> AI makes the patch -> AI tests the patch and throws it back if it doesn’t work -> AI lints the final product once working -> AI submits the patch as pull.
Their job has been downscaled from being the one to organize, assign and work on code to an over-glorified code auditor who looks at pull requests and says “yes this is good” or “no send this back in”
I feel like so much LLM-generated code is bound to deteriorate code quality and blow out of the context size to such an extent that the LLM is eventually gonna become paralyzed
I do agree, LLM generated code is inaccurate, which is why they have to have the throw it back in stage and a human eye looking at it.
They told me their main concern is that they aren’t sure they are going to properly understand the code the AI is spitting out to be able to properly audit it (which is fair), then of course any issue with the code will fall on them since it’s their job to give final say of “yes this is good”
At that point they’re just the responsibility circuit breaker, put there to get the blame if things go wrong.
It would be interesting to know where your friend works and what kind of application it’s on, because your comment is the first time I’ve ever heard of this level of automation. Not saying it can’t be done, just skeptical of how well it would work in practice.
That was my general thought process prior to them telling me how the system worked as well. I had seen claude workflows which does similar, but to that level I had not seen before. It was an eye opener.
There’s absolutely no way this can be effective for anything other than simple changes in each PR.
I should ask them at some point how it is now that its been deployed for a bit. I wouldn’t expect so either based off how I’ve seen open sourced projects using stuff like that, but they also haven’t been complaining about it screwing up at all.
They don’t even dream it up any more. They hire brains, sift through their ideas, and say “I like that. Do that.”
After that, they are experts in manipulating finances to makes their companies rich, and themselves richer, by paying the people who actually do the work, make the money, and create the shareholder value, as little as possible.
That’s called “appropriating the surplus value of labor”
I like that, explains the situation succinctly.
At this point, I question whether they’re even experts in that kind of finance, or if they’re just connected to each other well enough, and have a few willing experts in hand, to maintain their position.
I honestly think the only thing most of them have going for them is that it’s their name on the accounts.
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The rich fully intend to replace workers with slaves one way or another.
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AI robots can be utter shit and they will still be leaps and bounds more efficient than the task specific automation that has been replacing human workers for decades.
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As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
AI robots can be utter shit and they will still be leaps and bounds more efficient than the task specific automation that has been replacing human workers for decades.
I disagree with this, and we already have live examples today that are good analogs. Youtube is being flooded with AI generated slop. AI generated scripts, read by AI generated voices, over top of AI generated images.
I never seek these out, and actively avoid them when I can tell what they are before clicking on them. In that first 2 seconds of AI generated voice, I can tell this is slop and stop watching it seeking a human generated video instead.
As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
It can’t. At some point the quality of the product drops to a level it is no longer a product. Lets say we’re in your theoretical dystopian future where the monopoly exists for cookies. There is no other place to buy cookies except from the monopoly. You posit that quality can drop indefinitely as there is zero alternative sources for cookies. So lets say the monopoly cookie brand was deciding to substitute some of the wheat flower with sawdust as a cost saving measure with the consequence being yet lower quality cookies. At a tiny fraction of sawdust you may notice it, but the sawdust cookie may still be better than no cookie. The monopoly continues to increase the sawdust content until the cookie contains zero wheat flour and is entirely substituted with sawdust. I believe even you would concede you would no longer buy the sawdust cookies at this point. Further, you would have stopped buying them earlier when the sawdust content became so high that the cookie was inedible to you even though it contained some wheat flour at that point.
This same thing will apply to Youtube. If the only thing left to watch on youtube is AI slop because no human creators exist, then there is no point in watching youtube anymore.
The point here, is that even with a monopoly on a product, as soon as the quality drops below a certain threshold (and this point is different for every consumer), the product stops being a product to them.
In that first 2 seconds of AI generated voice, I can tell this is slop and stop watching it seeking a human generated video instead.
Report that crap, every time. I’s a plague.
And yet youtube is still the dominant video host.
You’re missing the point entirely. If instead of luxuries you look through the lens of necessities perhaps you’ll see.
Like replace cookies with bread and try tell me people will choose to starve first. Like obviously not.
You’re just too priveledged to realize what I’m describing has been going on in developing countries for decades.
Ask a ford employee 30 years ago about robot automation. Like this is not a new thing in the 2020s. The rich have a playbook for this.
And yet youtube is still the dominant video host.
Youtube hasn’t descended to being unusable yet.
You’re missing the point entirely. If instead of luxuries you look through the lens of necessities perhaps you’ll see. Like replace cookies with bread and try tell me people will choose to starve first. Like obviously not.
I think you’re missing the point. If we substitute bread in the example I gave and they’re putting sawdust in it, then yes people will not buy bread made with zero flour, but instead made with sawdust. Yes, people will stop buying bread in that situation because they would die anyway because the bread doesn’t produce nutritional value.
Ask a ford employee 30 years ago about robot automation. Like this is not a new thing in the 2020s. The rich have a playbook for this.
Now you’re speaking against your original point. Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle. If anything it has increased it. A robot can have assembly tolerances much tighter than a human. Where is the lowering of quality from a robot making the vehicle that your original thesis demands?
Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle
I never said that and the quality of a ford truck is irrelevant to the assembly worker who lost their job due to automation.
You need to back up because you have gone down a tangent alone.
The notion that people won’t eat sawdust bread is demonstrably false with many historical examples proving you wrong. Your stipulation about zero flour is a moving goalpost and a strawman fyi
Robot automation has not lowered the quality of a Ford vehicle
I never said that and the quality of a ford truck is irrelevant to the assembly worker who lost their job due to automation.
You need to back up because you have gone down a tangent alone.
I agree we’re down a tangent, but I’m following the logic of your responses. This is a response to your original thesis: “AI robots can be utter shit”. Then you introduced the ford example for automation, which isn’t shit for assembly.
Which point to you want to back up to that would change our conversation path?
The notion that people won’t eat sawdust bread is demonstrably false with many historical examples proving you wrong.
I’m glad you saw those. I specifically chose sawdust in my example because of those events in history. Those support what I’m talking about. When the adulteration of the food became bad enough, people stopped eating it.
Your stipulation about zero flour is a moving goalpost and a strawman fyi
My “zero flour” comment is a response to your original thesis where you said: “quality of service can drop indefinitely.”
It can’t be indefinitely. There’s a point where people will stop consuming it when it gets bad enough.
you said: “quality of service can drop indefinitely.”
What I actually said was…
As long as the rich maintain their monopolies quality of service can drop indefinitely. Doesn’t matter if AI robots suck ass when no human employed company can compete and every other option is just as ass.
So yes you have completely missed my point and are arguing with yourself, not me.
It can’t be indefinitely. There’s a point where people will stop consuming it when it gets bad enough.
Yes but I’m not talking about that. You need to go back and reread what I actually said and stop putting words in my mouth and trying to have a discussion with me that doesn’t exist.
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Just … please.
I beg ANYONE … if you see billionaires getting lynched in the streets, FILM IT!
I wanna put some funny Benny HIll music on a video of people chasing Elon around with pitchforks and torches and eventually getting him.
Imagine seeing Larry Fink from Blackrock with horses tied to his arms and legs and run in four different directions and having The Final Countdown play, and watch him turn into red mist when the beat drops hard.
Or Dontard Dump dropped into a large woodchipper with “you spin me right round baby” playing as the razor-sharp teeth spin.
Actually woodchipper teeth aren’t sharp at all. They’re just big and dull chucks of steel that thrash the wood into pieces
Not just the high payed software folks, but the data centers are also maintained by highly skilled and hard working techs. And this technology is only possible with constant pristine maintenance if the servers to train their models. They loathe these people just as much and can’t wait to get humans out of the process
Go ahead, arsehole. Keep pushing people who have less to lose each day.
They’ll craft tools all right.
Even your guards turn on you eventually.
I think that’s the main reason they’re trying to build robots. I once read a post by a security expert who said a group of very wealthy people paid him for advice on how to prevent their guards and servants from killing them in their bunkers after the end of civilization. His advice was to become family by marrying their children to the guards’ children, but I suppose using robots instead is much easier.
Someone has to manage the robots…
Yeah I think about this with drone swarms a lot. One asshole with even a moderately sophisticated video-game like interface to control a fleet of drones. It unlocks a whole new ratio of haves:have-nots as potentially sustainable in the long run. Horrifying. I’ve thought before it would be nice to write a short story about it but seems like a Torment Nexus moment
Idk we’ve learned that American citizens don’t do shit all even when the boots on their neck.
All those folks out protesting and getting in ICE’s face is nothing right?
I know you think the snark is cute or funny, but resistance is happening. Courts are ruling on things, people are protesting massively, and Minneapolis is actively resisting. Peacefully. Read your history. Peaceful protest does work.
Read your history. Peaceful protest does work.
I’ve read a lot of history. Peaceful protest works sometimes, and when it does, it requires a level of solidarity and organization we haven’t yet seen in the US. It also depends on how psyhopathic those in power are. There was peaceful protest against the Nazis, and those involved were murdered. Resistance against Stalinism went the same way. There’s no sign so far that Trump and senior MAGA leadership are in any way constrained by morality or human decency, so it’s really a question of how far civil society and institutional resistance can deter them.
Still, peaceful protest is definitely a less horrible option than violent direct action, though it’s possible to have both in parallel. Consider ML King and the more radical groups who didn’t practice non-violence such as the Panthers, or Gandhi and Chandra Bose.
It’s taking time, but the wheels are already in motion.
Each day people feel like they have less to lose and nothing to live for. Crime will go up, productivity will go down.
China is going to lead the world because America is run by people who went to business school.
It isn’t on their neck to be brutally frank. Going after illegal immigrants and terrorizing Minnesota isn’t hitting the vast majority of Americans. History shows when the middle/lower classes become desperate and food becomes an issue that is when the knives come out.
“food becomes an issue”
Literally the first thing any Romanians mention to me about the late 80s, right before the revolution. Stores were empty and everyone was lining up for rations.
That is what I read about Weimar Germany. When the middle class found itself on a precipice that is when everyone became agitated.
To be fair it’s not on most people’s necks yet. 80% of people are free to ignore what’s happening so far. And most of them have. But the ratchet will click. Likely as not the world will get the bloody spectacle they apparently are craving.
They’re beginning to stir. The only thing they can do is passively resist and they’re becoming more aware of that each day.
Idk we’ve learned that American citizens don’t do shit all even when the boots on their neck.
Not true, there’s been lots of big talk, and some actual organization and resistance.
we need more progressive taxing, ultra-rich people shouldn’t exist, let them be rich, just not ultra-rich.
No billionaires until poverty is eradicated globally. And maybe not even then.
Nobody should have more wealth or income than a doctor.
Seems fair.
Yes. It’s so dumb that even the ultra rich have let it get this far.
I don’t think Thompson got up every morning thinking, “It’ll be neat when my kids cannot admit in public that they grieve for me, because my stupid needless death will be such a balm to the public for all of the other stupid needless death I am causing daily.”
Everyone can be a winner while we turn this mess around.
That said, I would still pay $20.00 for a chance to piss on Thompson’s grave. He chose his path.
People are not hungry enough for any kind of radical change. Media and the narrative is controlled by the ultra rich. That’s why for “regular” people socialism is a bad thing.
