No maybes about it.

I would contend that the use of state violence is exactly what has hardened their solidarity. To quote Princess Leia, "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin (Miller), the more star systems (states) will slip through your fingers"

Some of the best people I have worked with have been others with non tech backgrounds. I think people often don’t understand how to leverage the core skills that a Liberal Arts degree gives them, and how they can use them to build other skills. In the case of History, the primary skill is research.

I take the opposite position. I think everyone should receive a Liberal Arts education as part of any other education. I have a BA in history, and was a couple credits shy of minors in Latin, Anthropology, and Religious Studies, and have had a decently successful career in tech. Anecdotally… 1/

Iirc there are some scholars who think Machiavelli was intentionally giving bad advice, as he had previously been on the opposite side of a war with his target audience.

Didn’t see the 1st one in 2009. I was young and broke, but remember the hype. 13 years for the second one to come out. I have no recollection of any of my film buff friends saying much about it. I feel like the time for sequels came and went a decade ago, but I also have no stake in this.

At this point I’ve lived through 4 or 5 recessions I remember, and nothing comes close to 2008. As bad as the beginning of COVID was things bounced back quickly, and as bad as the tech job market is now, it’s got nothing on the sheer devastation of people losing their homes and jobs in 2008.

The dotcom crash didn’t really affect me because I was in high school, but I remember it. In 2008 I was working as a painter and carpenter. My work dried up over night. The actual crash happened a month or two later. I did a bunch of rough nasty jobs before going back to college and getting into IT

I’m in my 40’s and grew up with a parent in the trades, and having also worked in the trades myself, I distinctly remember the early 90’s recession because my father’s work dried up. I remember him seriously considering closing his business and applying for non-construction work.

I think you are largely right. The question is how do we fix it? I haven’t come up with a solution that isn’t bring back the old gate keepers and shut down at minimum social media if not the entire internet. Needless to say I don’t like my own answer.

I recently watched a documentary on the Great Smog of London of 1952. I was vaguely aware of it because of The Crown, but it was so much worse than I realized. Something like 10-12K deaths by modern estimates.

Newton MA vs Boston. Boston averaged home price $800K, Newton $1.4-$1.5M.

Make them ride circuit by horse.

I’ve been saying since at least 2015, probably longer, that the internet was a mistake, and for the sake of our species we need to shut it down. It’s only made things worse in the intervening decade plus. I say this as someone whose entire livelihood depends on the internet.

Came here to say Gabriel Bell would like a word with them about their idea, but you beat me to it.

Granted, I no longer live in ME, but I lived there most of my life. Mills would not be my first choice of candidate, and I would love to see some younger people in ME politics, but she probably does stand the best chance of beating SC if anyone can.

Maine has the oldest population of any state. Young people tend to leave for better opportunities elsewhere. There is no deep bench of local politicians. Of the people in the D primary I have heard of Mills and Platner. I only heard of Platner very recently.

Trump vs. George III: A No Kings Comparison Our own mad king is repeating many of his predecessors' greatest hits

Yep

juliansanchez.substack.com/p/trump-vs-g...

Conversely, that’s also the problem with calling it “No Kings”, as much like the Romans, we may not want rex, but we are moving towards the principate if not speed running straight through to the dominate.

I see a lot of people saying that a person charged with a crime deserves the chance to prove their innocence.

Please stop doing this because you have it backwards and this is really important.

It is ALWAYS the government's burden to prove a person guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

I feel like the same could be said of almost any topic. The last 45 years has been Republicans claiming that government doesn’t work, and then sabotaging the government to make sure it doesn’t work.

What about Cataline? Maybe we’re in this boat because we’re lacking a Cicero.

I’ve been saying for years, maybe decades now, that the Republican concept of freedom is the same as a child’s concept of freedom. I get to do whatever I want without accepting any responsibility for anything I do.

I liken it to smoking. I made tons of friends over the years because of smoking, and was able to manage my anxiety. In many ways smoking was a really positive thing for me, but it also left me addicted to nicotine, and was slowly killing me. Social media is doing the same thing to culturally to us.

I’ve been of the opinion, since at least 2015-2016, that social media if not the internet itself was a mistake, and as a species we would be better off to shut it down entirely. It’s not that I don’t see the benefits, I make my living in IT, but I think the harms far outweigh the benefits.

Then again most of my problems are either well documented and a quick trip to the Hashicorp website gives me what I need to know, or are so poorly documented that an LLM wouldn’t know either. That being said Claude Code has worked very well so far.

I’ve been required to use several different LLMs at work, an most of the time I spend more time explaining what I want then sorting out what is real and what is hallucination than it would have taken me to just do it myself the first time.

I’ve always been a fan of Rubber Duck Debugging. That’s where you explain the problem to a rubber duck or other inanimate object. I find articulating the problem out loud often leads me to the solution.

That last line might be the sickest burn I’ve ever read.

Is the press actually in the Oval Office with him? If not it wouldn’t be too hard to deepfake I expect. I can’t bring myself to actually watch the guy speak.