• How to Start A Cult
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK5aKOr2Fw

    https://thehustle.co/how-to-start-a-cult-startup

    Don’t you want devoted followers who will leave their families for you? Give their money to you? Give their bodies to you? Give up their lives for you? Consider you God? And will kill for you?

    Don’t you want to become a cult startup leader?

    Since the death of God there’s been a vacancy open. You can fill that void. Here’s how:
    Structure your cult startup like an onion with the most benign and helpful features on the outside and the most controlling cooky and evil parts at the secret inner core.

    Use deception. Don’t tell them who you really are.

    Lie. Don’t tell them who you really are. Leave out important information or distort information.
    Promise to fulfill their dreams.

    Offer them something free and get them obliged to get something in return.

    You can tell them time is running out and that they must make their decision now or it’ll be too late.

    Don’t give them time to think.
    Commence a prolonged period of love bombing.

    Surround them with unconditional love and attention. Your cult startup family should act friendly and interested. Gather information about them and hone their weak spots. Surround them with happy, true believers so when in doubt they will do what everyone else is doing and believe that is normal.
    Then use this information to manipulate them.

    Gradually overtime you’ll begin to shape the recruits’ behavior by granting or withholding this love and attention. After they have bonded with you, slowly start making demands of them. The message being: nothing in this world has value unless it relates to the leader. Or the ultimate purpose.
    Control their behavior.

    “Come live with us. Wear these clothes. Eat this food. All you need is two hours sleep.”
    Prescribe a rigid schedule.

    Keep them active and with as little sleep as possible. If you can, restrict their eating habits to low protein food.
    Control their thoughts and emotions.

    Remove the recruits’ sense of individuality by attacking the self and inducing a mental breakdown disguised as a spiritual awakening.
    Induce guilt and fear

    Make them paranoid about their own bodies or thought processes.
    Control information.

    Prevent them from knowing all the workings of the business. Block any information which is critical for the group. Encourage members to spy and report on one another. When they start to freak out, have side effects, or hallucinate, tell them that they are flushing out the bad stuff on the inside.
    Tell them that there is a part of their mind they must eliminate in order to find happiness.

    Claim authority.

    It can come from a divine source, bogus scientific research, or special knowledge. But don’t be stupid about it, start slowly. A good conman takes a little bit of truth and a lot of lies and pulls the wool over the eyes of the ignorant.
    Make up stories about yourself to boost your importance.

    “She no longer devotes time to novels or friends, doesn’t date, doesn’t own a television, and hasn’t taken a vacation in ten years. Her refrigerator is all but empty, as she eats most of her meals at the office.” Forbes describing Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes.
    Induce trance states and self-hypothesis by thought-stopping rituals and repetitive acts like dancing, spinning, singing, over-breathing, and chanting.

    Stamp out any doubt.
    Revert your followers back to childhood dependence and mindless obedience.

    In these trance states they are more receptive and suggestible. Practice prolonged hours of meditation.
    Encourage separation from their family.

    “Your friends and family probably will not understand. Maybe you should stay away from them, it’s unhealthy to be around unenlightened people, anyway. If you can’t recruit your friends, cut off from them. Stop wasting time with non believers.”
    Encourage dependency and conformity.

    And discourage autonomy and individuality.
    Rewrite the past as terrible even if was great.

    “Do you want to sell sugar water for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?” What Steve Jobs said to Pepsi executive John Sculley to lure him to Apple.
    Tighten your group’s bond by establishing scapegoats and enemies.

    Demonize outsiders as less than human, bias, corrupt, or conspiring against the group. Develop an ‘us vs. them’ mentality. Fight resistance. Tell them their critical thoughts are crimes committed against the group.
    Start investigating others and make up crimes.

    “I think I want to leave.” “You must be insane. We’re doing important work here. You expect saving the world is easy? We’re all called upon to make some sacrifices for the cause. You’re weak. Do you want to move forward toward freedom? What’s more important, our mission or your petty grievances? Our leader is flawless. There must be something wrong with you.”
    Indoctrinate with fear.

    Make it easier for them to die for you by calling their bodies ‘containers that are shed before they evolve into higher life forms’.

    It’s that simple. Now don’t you want to become a cult startup leader? Don’t you want devoted followers who leave their families for you, give their money to you?

    #sectes #disruption

  • Human-guided burrito bots raise questions about the future of robo-delivery
    https://thehustle.co/kiwibots-autonomous-food-delivery

    Kiwibots — rolling robots that deliver burritos and smoothies — have become a fixture on UC Berkeley’s campus thanks to their creepy-cute “faces” and low delivery prices.

    But while the robots appear to be autonomous, the San Francisco Chronicle reports they’re actually operated by remote workers in Colombia who make $2 an hour.

    La reproduction de la force de travail coûte encore trop cher dans les pays où se trouvent les consommateurs aisés de ces merdes (#Uber #Deliveroo, etc.)...

  • Meet the Minnesota family that turned a soda machine company into a surveillance empire
    https://thehustle.co/three-square-market-vending-machine-microchip

    If Westby’s success proves anything, it’s that that digital surveillance technology is now so cheap — and so unregulated — that almost anyone can sell it.
    A ‘get-rich-quick’ scheme for the age of big data

    Westby’s strategy for selling sodas to inmates and selling tracking systems to parents were strikingly similar: Find a niche market and pump it with marked-up wholesale products for a huge profit.

    The market for surveillance technology meets every precondition for a Grade-A get-rich-quick scheme: Cheap inventory, little regulation, and high demand.

    First, surveillance tech is surprisingly cheap. According to the Yale Law Journal, the cost of location tracking dropped from $105/hour to $0.36/hour when the portable GPS was invented, and then fell to to $0.04/hour at most when smartphone GPS became roughly equivalent to professional receivers.

    Westby’s family business may be profit-forward, but it’s not malevolent (anyone who’s heard Patrick McMullan talk about healthcare and snow plows will tell you that). But customers deserve to know who is handling their data goes once it is collected.

    Once an app collects consumer data, nothing prevents it from sharing with subsidiaries, parent companies, or partners.

    When those partners are hidden — for instance, a quiz app that secretly collects data for a Russian political network or a childcare app operated by a for-profit prison company — consumers don’t know when they’re at risk.

    And, when the companies that make and sell surveillance apps aren’t regulated, it’s even harder to ensure that the tech is used responsibly.

    If we’re lucky, the future could have great snow plows. But in this new world, don’t expect control over your data and definitely don’t expect everyone who sells it to be as well-intentioned as Todd, Patrick, and Coach Danna.

    #Surveillance #Traçage #RFID #Prisons

  • Drugmakers increase prices 100x simply by combining generic drugs

    A new exposé from Axios brought to light many drug manufacturers’ practice of combining multiple generic over-the-counter medications and selling them as ‘convenience drugs’ for up to 100x more than their generic counterparts.

    Although these combo meds provide no additional medicinal benefits to patients than their separate OTC counterparts, they bring in billions for the companies that manufacture them by exploiting the power of prescription.
    Markups that would make Martin Shkreli proud

    ‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli made headlines for increasing the cost of lifesaving Daraprim 5,000% overnight. But, while Shkreli later landed in jail (securities fraud), this pharma price-gouging is totally legal.

    In fact, price hikes are common practice at pharma companies. Horizon Pharma sells a drug called Vimovo (which is just Nexium and Aleve combined into 1 pill for convenience) for $2,482 per bottle.

    Nexium and Aleve, however, are just as effective when taken separately — and cost less than $20 when purchased over-the-counter.
    How is this possible?

    Companies like Horizon combine common meds into unnecessarily expensive convenience drugs to increase margins. By striking deals with pharmacy benefit managers, they get their drug on insurance lists.

    Then they hire huge sales and marketing teams to convince doctors (who don’t know the drug’s price) that convenience drugs encourage patients to use drugs ‘as directed.’

    Then, the nail in the coffin: Pharma companies like Horizon subsidize copays, making the drug seem cheaper and more accessible to doctors and patients — and then bill health insurers for thousands.
    Medical misinformation makes money

    The reason drugmakers go to such creative lengths to sell meds is simple — it makes money.

    In less than 5 years, Horizon made $540m by selling Vimovo, and $670m over the same time period selling another convenience drug called Duexis (the company stands by the benefits of both drugs, despite criticism).

    Other drugmakers such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have also sold billions of dollars worth of convenience drugs over the past decade.


    https://thehustle.co/Big-pharma-drug-makers-price-gouge
    #bigpharma

    • Drugmakers increase prices 100x simply by combining generic drugs

      A new exposé from Axios brought to light many drug manufacturers’ practice of combining multiple generic over-the-counter medications and selling them as ‘convenience drugs’ for up to 100x more than their generic counterparts.

      Although these combo meds provide no additional medicinal benefits to patients than their separate OTC counterparts, they bring in billions for the companies that manufacture them by exploiting the power of prescription.
      Markups that would make Martin Shkreli proud

      ‘Pharma bro’ Martin Shkreli made headlines for increasing the cost of lifesaving Daraprim 5,000% overnight. But, while Shkreli later landed in jail (securities fraud), this pharma price-gouging is totally legal.

      In fact, price hikes are common practice at pharma companies. Horizon Pharma sells a drug called Vimovo (which is just Nexium and Aleve combined into 1 pill for convenience) for $2,482 per bottle.

      Nexium and Aleve, however, are just as effective when taken separately — and cost less than $20 when purchased over-the-counter.
      How is this possible?

      Companies like Horizon combine common meds into unnecessarily expensive convenience drugs to increase margins. By striking deals with pharmacy benefit managers, they get their drug on insurance lists.

      Then they hire huge sales and marketing teams to convince doctors (who don’t know the drug’s price) that convenience drugs encourage patients to use drugs ‘as directed.’

      Then, the nail in the coffin: Pharma companies like Horizon subsidize copays, making the drug seem cheaper and more accessible to doctors and patients — and then bill health insurers for thousands.
      Medical misinformation makes money

      The reason drugmakers go to such creative lengths to sell meds is simple — it makes money.

      In less than 5 years, Horizon made $540m by selling Vimovo, and $670m over the same time period selling another convenience drug called Duexis (the company stands by the benefits of both drugs, despite criticism).

      Other drugmakers such as Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline have also sold billions of dollars worth of convenience drugs over the past decade.