Not saying mod was wrong but… It’s weird how we define politics.

Like, if portals started randomly appearing all over the Earth, spawning little goblins that like to turn human bodies inside-out, that would pretty clearly not be politics — but only for like 2 months.

After a while, the political parties would settle on their positions (probably with one of them calling it a hoax), and from that point forward saying “I can’t believe people are okay with the inside-out goblins” will be labeled “political”.

Which I guess is basically how fascism wins so easily. As long as it’s impolite to acknowledge the horrors of the world, it’s okay for them to continue.

If they were interested in doing favors for humanity, they wouldn’t be working at WSJ

Multiple things can be true at once.

• The election process in the US is horribly constructed in the first place
• It’s executed even more poorly
• Nevertheless, voting does determine who sits in the seat
• It does matter who sits in the seat
• The person who sits in the seat will represent the wealthy and powerful, not you
• It does matter who represents the powerful, because they can be pushed (by the people, and by the powerful) in different ways
• Even if we get the right person in the seat, and do a very good job of pushing them, it won’t be enough
• We need to do it anyway, because that act of organizing isn’t only to influence politicians — it’s also to influence ourselves, and improve our ability to find a path to real victory

Don’t think that voting alone is sufficient. Don’t think that voting and organizing are sufficient. But also don’t think that voting and organizing are not necessary.

They don’t want to save capitalism. They believe capitalism is about to be over, and they want to be in control of whatever it is that comes next.

They’re worried they’re not spending enough on AI.

Classic MLM tactics. “If you’re not seeing a return on Herbalife, it’s cuz you’re not spending enough on it!”

This sounds eerily familiar…

I don’t know if Hearst told him to use a chatbot to generate their “Best of Summer Lists,” but it doesn’t matter. When you give a freelancer an assignment to turn around ten summer lists on a short timescale, everyone understands that his job isn’t to write those lists, it’s to supervise a chatbot.

But his job wasn’t even to supervise the chatbot adequately (single-handedly fact-checking 10 lists of 15 items is a long, labor-intensive pro­cess). Rather, it was to take the blame for the factual inaccuracies in those lists. He was, in the phrasing of Dan Davies, “an accountability sink” (or as Madeleine Clare Elish puts it, a “moral crumple zone”).

https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-reverse-centaurs/

I feel like I’ve been saying this every day since like 2015 (Or maybe 2001. Or maybe 1999. Idk. Anyway…) but: This is a really bad idea.

Well-argued.

Unlearning Economics has a similar analysis of AI through the lens of cybernetics: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Km2bn0HvUwg

AI (through agents, but even completions to an extent) extends your reach and reduces your grasp.

For some sectors, that’s perfectly acceptable. There are plenty of codebases that don’t need to worry about keeping devs accountable.

There are also plenty of business models these days (especially in the Trump era) that face no downside from failing to keep devs accountable even if they should. VC-backed vaporware looking to exit before they drown in tech debt, private equity acquisitions that just need to bleed existing customers dry while disemboweling the productive capacity of the firm, or even publicly-traded brands that are chronically unable to think past next quarter’s P&L. And especially if they’re already a monopoly.

The trouble is really when a CTO misunderstands what kind of business they’re running, and considers the wrong folks to be their “peers”. There’s a big incentive to just copy whatever Amazon/Microsoft/Google says. It’s the new “nobody ever got fired for buying IBM”.

Idk if that’s your situation or not.

I’m guessing they meant “raw milk”?

Is there a perfect building?

Probably not, since they exist in an environment — which is constantly changing — and are used by people — whose needs are constantly changing.

The same is true of software. Yes, programs consist of math which has objective qualities. But in order to execute in the physical world, they have to make certain assumptions which can always be invalidated.

Consider fast inverse sqrt: maybe perfect, for the time, for specific uses, on specific hardware? Probably not perfect for today.

Not my own invention, but I’m glad you appreciated it: https://www.thenerdreich.com/

We had tons of help and the easiest baby ever, and I think I managed to pull off two 15-minute gaming sessions in the 4 weeks I had saved up.

Also: company established 3 months paternity leave about 6 months after I came back to work. I’ve never identified more with the boomers who oppose student loan forgiveness out of jealousy.

vendor whose major investors include Thiel’s Founders Fund

To be fair, most SaaS vendors probably have investors associated with the nerd reich

You can learn to do anything. You’ll have an easier time learning if you like doing it. So what do you like? Or: what would you want to try and see if you like?

Also: why do you want to make a game? What interests you about that?

Why link to falsehoods without context?

Money is fine. Financialization is not.

The references in that video contradict its own content.

There is no evidence, historical or contemporary, of a society in which barter is the main mode of exchange;[27][26] instead, non-monetary societies operated largely along the principles of gift economy and debt.[25][24] When barter did in fact occur, it was usually between either complete strangers or potential enemies.[29]

The documentary “Finding The Money” has a takedown of this exact myth (Link to timestamp)

Not exactly. If you’re interested in the history of money and how it works, you should check out Finding The Money

Slavery