I love Proust, but you need mental space to read his books. It also helps to be a little bored. That's hard to achieve while connected to the Internet.
> How's this any different than say, tractors, or the mechanical loom? After all, agricultural employment went from 90% in the past to 1% today.
Regarding US agricultural labor displacement.
* It happened over a period of 200 years or so in the USA. [0] That's a key difference.
* Starting in the late 1800s manufacturing rose to a peak of 38% in 1944. [1] This absorbed a lot of the available labor, often at better rates of pay than farm work. It's a common pattern in industrializing nations where manufacturing absorbs labor freed up by more productive agriculture. Manufacturing labor is no longer growing, so that cannot help with employment.
That's not to say it was pleasant for all concerned. I would argue, however, that black swan events like the Dust Bowl caused more disruption and trauma than the steady displacement of farm labor by technology.
That’s what a small earthquake with a nearby epicenter feels like. The first time it happened to me it felt like a tree hitting the house. (“Small” is circa 3.0 magnitude.)
A lot of enshittification is driven by market consolidation. I really don't want my economic interactions to be with massive chains in a race to the bottom. The cure is to enable new competitors to offer alternatives. It starts with anti-trust but also includes reducing regulations and barriers to market entry. And maybe not so many billion-dollar, me-too AI investments and more focus on things like building delivering healthcare cheaply.
SFO art shows are well-curated and interesting. There's a causeway in Terminal 3 to reach the F gates. It's now under construction but in years past it used to have outstanding art exhibitions that you could take easily while walking to your gate. I used to go out of my way to see them. The international terminal has a beautiful exhibition of flight attendant uniforms across the West face of the building.
Overall SFO is my favorite large airport. Things just work. The fact they went through the hurdles to get a private contract for TSA now looks like a prescient move. Only about 20 US airports have it. [0]
It's a source of jokes in the UK at least. Most Americans don't know the difference. As the saying goes, "two countries separated by a common language."
> I’m convinced that it’s impossible to write good SQL without peeking into the data.
That's been my experience as well. One question that comes up is how to ensure confidential information does not leak out of the database and into somebody's model or otherwise escape containment. Is that an issue you considered in the design?
There does not seem to be an easy answer for which political system delivers the best benefits.
Direct democracy has defects that have been apparent for thousands of years. I believe Plato was one of the first to argue that democracy turned into mob rule.[0] It seems unlikely that this was entirely original. Similar ideas must have been current in Athens well before his time, since they had abundant experience with demagogues and other problems during the Peloponnesian War. I don't think Plato's solution (Philosopher Kings) was correct, but it's harder to argue against his framing.
It therefore seems like a question of which approach is less bad up front and whether it decays into something worse. Personally I would satisfied with a functioning republic in the US, which is where I live. What we have now is an oligarchy.
That's how it works in California. I had a 3 year non-compete with VMware after we sold a business to them. It was restricted to the specific market and technology our business covered but didn't limit activities in other areas. It seemed completely fair to me.
Besides, competing would have meant doing exactly the same thing over again. What's the fun in that?
The Three Musketeers is my favorite adventure story of all time. The story of how D'Artagnan insults all three musketeers in succession at their first meeting, challenges them to duels one after the other, and ends up fighting on their side in a melee against the royal guards is just one of countless, hilarious adventures. The book just gets better from there.
Unfortunately it seems quite believable. This is the same outfit that fired a bunch of people responsible for overseeing the US Nuclear Arsenal. [0] The combination of arrogance and stupidity was breathtaking.