dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

This was studying Facebook circa 2004-2006. That version of Facebook was laughably basic at that point. If I remember right it was a chronological list of posts on your wall. There was no algorithmic feed. Hell, the news feed at all was only launched in late 2006. There was no video. There were no ads. Nobody made content hoping to get rich and outrage didn’t sell. If only we could go back to such an innocent time.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

You might want to dig into what ResearchHub is up to https://www.researchhub.com/

If you ignore the web3/crypto aspect, they’ve got a decent start on what seems like a reasonably similar platform. They do all their dev and community building out in the open, so you can join their Discord and listen in on their community calls, etc. Might at least give you some ideas on what to target or avoid.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals."). I wouldn't call it an "anarchist house" but it sure as hell was a lot of fun to live there. I painted some of those murals that are now apparently gone. We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would disassemble for a day every year when the fire inspection happened). We did some stupid and illegal shit, sure. But the sense of community was unparalleled. The alumni association owned the house, so we had to deal with all the maintenance. We came back to campus a week before everyone else every year to work on the house. We cooked and cleaned for ourselves. I've never since experienced anything close to that same feeling of communal pride. It was a mess, but it was our beautiful mess.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

I recently got my first Apple Watch with a cellular plan specifically so I can leave my phone at home and still be reachable via phone and text message. Mostly it’s great. The watch barely works well enough as a phone, I can play Spotify, Apple Maps kind of works for directions (not nearly as well as Google maps on the phone IMO), and that’s basically all that’s usable, which is nice.

However, when dropping off my kid at school they require a Covid screening app (phone only) that you have to show every morning. I got half way to Whole Foods before turning back realizing I needed my phone to scan the Amazon Prime code to get better prices.

I expect more and more everyday activities will require smartphones sadly.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

I know folks are disagreeing with you a bit in this thread, but I just wanted to say that I 100% agree with you. 17 year-old me could have written the same words after the loss of my mom. I know loss. I will never know your loss. To me, that acknowledgment is a show of respect.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

Agree. And we haven’t even mentioned the new normal of the yearly smoke-filled skies from the increasingly severe wildfires.

All I was trying to do was push back on the bleak vision of boarded up commerce-less, restaurant-less, people-less streets being roamed by criminals, addicts, and the mentally ill. Yes, we have all sorts of issues, but the scene outside is much more like pre-pandemic life than the Walking Dead.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

Homelessness has definitely increased in the last 2 years, as it has throughout all of California. The high cost of housing and income inequality are absolutely massive problems that have gotten significantly worse since the onset of the pandemic. We certainly have problems, and housing costs and drug overdoses are absolutely serious issues that are trending the wrong way. But to claim that Berkeley is a ghost town with almost no retail and half of restaurants shuttered is just pure fiction. I drove through campus the other day and a group of kids was playing beer pong on their front lawn. People are everywhere. The commercial areas are back with foot traffic. It’s not anything like the original commenter described. It’s like they went out once in March 2020 and then never left the house again.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

This is so far from reality I have a hard time even knowing how to respond. Just in case people who don’t live here think the Bay Area cities have become this dystopian hell hole as described, no, they absolutely have not. Life is honestly nearly back to normal. I’m going out to dinner with a friend in Berkeley tonight. The streets will not be empty or filled with drug addicts.

dougmccune

4 anni fadiscuss

This is probably just grass is greener stuff, but I've seen the opposite. Now, that said, this was post acquisition, but my anecdote is that in our case the ICs were shielded from all the office politics shenanigans and were able to just focus on delivering work. Meanwhile, those in management positions were repeatedly pulled into agenda-less meetings, were "voluntold" for tasks unrelated to their jobs, and were generally unhappy. Obviously it all depends on the culture within an organization. But in our case we worked really hard to shield the ICs from the BS, but those in management bore the brunt, and the burn out and resignations reflected that.

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