> 1) the average American is heavily dependent on equities in their 401k for retirement,
> 2) so the stock market has to go up
This is why I've come to despise 401k's replacing old-school pensions. Yes, pensions had their problems but with 401k's workers must fleece themselves to have any sort of retirement opportunity.
Want a shot at retirement? Now we all have to run ourselves into the ground to make number go up. It's insane.
Makes me think of notices around adult clubs I've seen such as:
"CONSENT: A clear and unambiguous agreement, expressed outwardly through mutually understandable words or actions, to engage in a particular activity. Consent can be withdrawn by either party at any point."
and
"No means No"
What I'm about to say is strongly worded and I understand not a _perfect_ analogy by any means. However, it does sum up my feelings on this issue.
If Person A makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B, we have words to describe that. But if Person A, a company, makes repeated unwanted advances towards Person B we call that business.
> I think I’m past being curious about the kind of person that makes claims like it’s dangerous for a person with right-leaning political alignment to walk through Portland
Please, please continue to be curious. I feel you. Every day I find myself throwing in the towel on "those people". I use "us vs. them" language far more than I should. My instincts say to give up.
It's a fight that maybe I'm losing, but if we stop trying to understand then the remaining options on the table are considerably worse.
Just look at Daryl Davis'[0] success in convincing Klansmen to denounce the KKK. The man is an absolute hero and had major cojones for what he did. I truly can't fathom the guts it took for him to do that. I'm white and it would scare me.
Few people are beyond being reached. MAGA is fueled by fear (and anger). We need to dismantle the fear and redirect the anger. Fear leads to brain-rot. Anger can sometimes be justified and a powerful ally when pointed in the right direction. I have no implementation ideas that are worth discussing though.
That being said. Despite the above ramblings, I have given up on some people. And it feels bad. Disconnecting from each other can only escalate further.
All to say, I feel you and I feel your position. But please do your best to not throw in the towel, even though it is so appealing in our current climate.
Have you ever been to Portland or do you just believe Trump? There were few (not many) Trump flags in Portland during the election and I don’t recall a single person being hurt for it.
It’s a bizarre tactic. The DNC plays very dirty with their own members. On the outward public stage they “take the high road” and seem to constantly neuter themselves to prove how much they care.
Democrat voters didn’t turn out this past election cycle. Even in the face of Trump. They’ve truly made their base apathetic. “Hold your nose” is a tough strategy to sell long term.
I will never forget what they did to Sanders. Maybe he would’ve lost anyways. It’s likely. But that whole take the high road thing is only messaging. Internally they function nothing like a democracy.
This pains me so. Every time I have to hear "individual contributor", "leadership", or "the brand" I die a little inside.
Please just call me an employee or engineer. As for "leadership", I am somewhat convinced that the word "management" would lead to a mid-life crisis. Such inflated egos. As for "the brand", they are my employer.
This Newspeak has benefits though. Mainly that it hides in plain sight the top-down hierarchy of power that exists. Despite that fact that some employees are on food stamps while others make millions, it _sounds_ like everyone is on on somewhat equal footing.
We already have solutions for this called trains, buses, subways, etc. Public transportation. Yes, America is huge but look at China building out high-speed rail at an incredible pace. The amount of money dumped into self-driving could have built out an impressive amount of infrastructure for public transportation.
Not to say this isn’t a worthy problem to solve or that cars have no use. They’re great for rural life. But maybe 80% of the use-case for self-driving cars is pretty much solved by trains. They’re fast, generate no traffic, are very safe, and reduce pollution in urban areas. Even electric cars produce noxious break dust.
Addendum
The “America is too big” argument drives me nuts. (1) Again, look at China. (2) The EU is decently large and connected very well by rail. (3) We’re America. We went to the frickin moon. Defeated the Nazis. Etc. We can build trains. Not to mention what a boost it would be to the economy with all the jobs a project like that would create. Sure, we wouldn’t have an Elon but that’s fine by me.
> Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Matthew 24:34–35
Of course when the prediction doesn't fit, the Cirque du Soleil level mental gymnastics come out to explain how "this generation" didn't actually mean that.
Meanwhile, scientists predict solar eclipses with 100% accuracy. Among many other physical phenomena. Much of that knowledge was ascertained despite religion relentlessly persecuting those seeking out answers about our universe.
> Unlike other religions, it said a lot of things that have come true...
I can promise you that followers of every religion have made this same claim and also have a list of "proof". They don't look at each other and go "darn, that Christianity keeps getting it right somehow!".
I highly recommend checking out The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan [0]. It is a great way to improve anyone's baloney-detector kit. We all want to understand our world, but some "answers" are pure Grade-A baloney.
> Meanwhile, the left out there pointing at Obama's extrajudicial killings, Bush's whole post 9/11 fiasco, Clinton's "Superpredators" nonsense, etc. etc. and making tons of noise about how this was all going to end.
I had a whole comment written up but, meh. The noisy people are made out to be conspiracy theorists, even when someone like Chomsky brings all the receipts. People want to believe the person they voted for is the "good guy" in a superhero sort of way.
Trump is partly able to do what he does because of these extreme expansion of powers from previous presidents. This is why "but my guy good!!" is among the worst forms of reasoning for justify $bad_thing.
Sunscreen is, overall, a terrible experience. Five or six years ago I started getting into sun-protective clothing after running into issues with vitiligo. Clothing is vastly superior from every angle.
1. It’s easy to apply. Slip a sun hoodie over the head - protected.
2. Because it’s so easy to apply it always goes on when needed.
3. It’s impossible to miss spots or under-apply in certain areas. If fabric covers the skin, you’re solid.
4. This is subjective but it’s more comfortable. On a sunny 90F day with a high UV, direct sun on skin feels like sticking your hand on a hot skillet.
My fun fact for all this is that the Bedouins wear black robes in the desert heat. Not white. It’s counterintuitively cooler for the wearer [0]. Sunscreen is a great modern invention with its use cases, but humans have been wearing clothing for eons to ward off the sun for a reason. The only real downside is that you may look a bit silly when everyone else is lathered in sunscreen wearing very little clothing.
Recently I gave up on Apple Music. The clients had gotten so bad from a UX perspective that I found it frustrating to use. Especially on desktop. There is also no easy way to cache your _entire_ library to disk. Other services+clients are heaps of Electron that I'd rather avoid.
It took some effort and pain but I have a pretty solid self-hosted system now that requires no futzing around:
0. epoupon's Lightweight Music Server (LMS) [0] is an awesome, barebones Subsonic client written in C. It's really good and deserves to be more well-known.
1. wrtag [1] is a less-fully-featured beets written in Go that handles tagging.
2. amperfy [2] is an excellent Subsonic client that runs on iOS. It's configured to automatically cache anything and everything on LMS.
3. Syncthing [3] syncs music files. Needs no introduction. Rock solid.
4. Swinsian [4] a macOS music player that is very reminiscent of old iTunes, but much better. The information density is so incredibly refreshing after using Apple Music.
5. Everything talks to each other seamlessly over Tailscale [5].
All together, an entire open-source stack maintained by volunteers that easily outdoes Apple's own UX in the music department.
> 2) so the stock market has to go up
This is why I've come to despise 401k's replacing old-school pensions. Yes, pensions had their problems but with 401k's workers must fleece themselves to have any sort of retirement opportunity.
Want a shot at retirement? Now we all have to run ourselves into the ground to make number go up. It's insane.