Google’s delusional fantasy has always been you want to buy a guitar, you go on Google, their ad algorithm shows you a perfectly targeted ad for the guitar you want, and you love and trust Google so you click the ad and buy it. They think LLMs will make that actually work, they want to give you a Grima Wormtongue that can simper and manipulate until you do love and trust it, and once you’re a rotting husk it whispers the ad algorithm into your ear so you think it was your idea.

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/02/10/boston-man-found-not-guilty-of-being-a-chinese-agent/ that’s the first “Chinese spy” in that Hill article

During COVID China let people do government paperwork in an app instead of the embassy, and let local businesses sign up to help old or poor people with the app. The FBI decided to call that “police stations” and went after guys who owned a restaurant and set up an iPad for people to use and scared the shit out of them. They hadn’t done anything yet, but if the FBI scared them enough to lie or delete the app, now there’s a process crime and they’re fucked. There was nothing actually happening, like all the teenage autistic terrorists the FBI makes up and pretends to catch. Same with the other countries the panic spread to:

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4nv0p6047go

https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/article/chinese-police-stations-montreal-groups-demand-answers-apology-after-police-investigation/

People are saying puritans or religion, but the US was even more religious and puritain 150 years ago, when nudity in public bathhouses was common. What changed was the US got rich enough to buy millions of tiny single person bathtubs and make installing more of them than you need an investment asset that you sell to pay for retirement.

Japan has onsens and it also has people sleeping in a bush on the street. Both of those disgust Americans because you look poor. Even if you’re a sleepy business man in a suit it’s offensive that you’re not embarrassed that somebody might think you’re poor for a second. American onsens were for the poor, then for the very poor, then they were effectively illegal because we hate the idea that somebody too poor to buy a personal bathtub is allowed to live.