That's just your experience, though.
It reflects mine, before I went to elite companies, where it is quite normal for people to live-and-breath software, at almost all hours.
I've worked at FAANG, yes, as well as one of the top two frontier AI labs, quant, and now, in a similar role doing very technical research.
Do you not think it's considered "elite" to e.g. work at such companies in highly technical roles in the same way that a PhD at Stanford is considered "elite"? As a holder of the latter, I do. If not, what would you consider an "elite" team?
Maybe you think the statement was pretentious, but your response: "I hope you don’t call your average FAANG and adjacent “elite” - that's sad" is, truly, the most pretentious thing I've ever read on this site. So I'll ask: what do you consider elite?
>before I went to elite companies, where it is quite normal for people to live-and-breath software, at almost all hours.
Honest question: Do they actually _want_ to live-and-breathe software, or do they work in a highly competitive and highly compensated environment where doing that is implicitly required?
Defintely a mix, though I agree with you that the majority fall under, "they work in a highly competitive and highly compensated environment where doing that is implicitly required."
They rebranded to the department of war but its not a war. We definitely don't want war, but we want all soldiers to be warriors. Still not warmongering.
It's the only thing he knows. Declare victory, never admit losing anything, ever.
"Dobias later said that young Trump “always had to be number one, in everything. He was a conniver, even then. A real pain in the ass. He would do
anything to win” (D’Antonio, Never Enough, 43)."
They're referencing Trump's constant insistence that we won or are currently winning. He never, ever admits defeat or concedes any ground, everything is a victory, nothing is a loss. Trump also famously said (paraphrasing) "We're gonna win so much, we'll be tired of winning".
Yes, they are flooding the zone with many alternative explanations so that they're both all deniable, and all accessible to anyone who finds just one of them convincing. This is a strategy.
The Iranians chant Death To Israel because Israel is a Middle Eastern ally of the United States, who propped up the Shah. This is why the US is the Big Satan, and Israel is the Little Satan. This was all spelled out clearly by Khomeini.
You have the cause and the effect backwards. I suggest reading more about Khomeini, you might like his viewpoints. He decreed that the unmarried female protesters must be raped before being executed, so that they would not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
It’s bold to get presumptuously snooty about people’s understanding of history, and even mention the closeness of the Shah with the US, without acknowledging how the Shah came to power…! To say nothing of the US’s more recent interventions in other Muslim-majority countries. Do you not think that might go further to explain the discontent, especially considering Khomeini’s comments that you refer to, than some nebulous idea of “values”?
Fine, the US propped up the Shah. I didn't see it as relevant but there you go. Khomeini himself didn't see it as too relevant either, as he barely mentioned it after the revolution. He did state that the US was the source of all Muslims' problems, many times, but he did not mention the US support of the Shah as part of his regular rallies.
I stated that the United States is based on Christian values. Not that the United States is a Christian state.
Do you value separation of state and religious authority? Women's rights? Minority rights? Human dignity? Equality before the law? Sanctity of life? Individual moral responsibility? Monogamous marriage? The objective study of history? Fair trial? Witnesses at trial? Tolerance of alternative viewpoints?
Those are all Christian values. For what it's worth, I'm not Christian.
They were trying to gain energy independence, not develop nuclear weapons. This has been confirmed by plenty of independent auditors. Drunk Hegseth is a literal white nationalist Christian with a crusades tattoo.
You really want to be on the side of a white nationalist who openly says all Muslims are the enemy and openly advocates for christian prophecies that require the US to submit to Israel? These aren't conspiracies. Hegseth openly believes all this stuff.
Would you qualify complaining about starting an unnecessary war as "whining"? Why? What about ICE agents killing American citizens? Adding unprecedented numbers to the federal deficit, etc.?
How nice it must be to be able to just dismiss these things.
> How nice it must be to be able to just dismiss these things.
I don't know anyone in the US in real life who is happy with the current situation, including people who voted for Trump. The cheer leaders are only visible online.
The people who voted for Harris are saying "we told you so," and the others are saying "he conned us."
I'm not sure where you live, but try going to some of the super-small towns in the Midwest. I unfortunately still see people openly wearing MAGA hats and have MAGA flags on the flag poles in their yards.
Trust me, as sad as it is, those people still exist.
Not in the US, just reporting what I'm seeing on signal/WA groups consisting of mostly former classmates and colleagues. A sample size in the low hundreds. These are CA, OR and WA centric with exactly one guy in TN.
For the people I know, it's mostly just been quiet silence, they don't really want to talk about it (and I don't force it). I know this is uncomfortable for them.
Outside that, what I've noticed in my area is a whole lot less trucks driving around with cartoonishly large American flags and pro-trump bumper stickers. Even homes that proudly flew the "Trump 2024" flags and flew the 2020 flags for a long time have taken those down.
Republicans here (Idaho) have been gleefully touching every 3rd rail (Medicaid, public school funding, public lands). I don't really have hope that the electorate will do anything about it, but who knows. I've never really seen such bold actions against the citizenry.
There are petty peevish folks too, to quote myself lately
October 2025
"I believe Trumps gutting of institutions of learning, culture, democracy, law is punishment for the Branch Covidians. I believe this punishment must continue for some time until the lesson is learned about abuse of power"
Should we reconcile this great nation, not balkanize, not be in an antebellum period, not be a Weimar republic, and walk back the rubicon and cross into more quiet waters, we must turn our attention to what made this country great.
What has made it unique? That our constitution is explicit about what freedoms and rights are reserved for the people and are not to be trampled, touched, or looked at by the government. State, Local, or Federal.
Our founding fathers and great men who preceded us recognized government as a necessary evil, one that must be kept at bay, not used as a violent tool to achieve outcomes.
All of these institutions must walk back their power, give the rights back to the people, to be truly afraid of the populace. Each tax collector must shiver when he goes to work, and each police officer be fully aware that a single parking ticket is an act of violence.
All said, I am afraid, we have lost that. And now we must face the future hoping that someday, another group of smart men can realize something so unique, so right, so innately just and moral was achieved by the signing of the constitution that it must be tried again.
"Branch Covidians" is just buying into more Trumpist reality-rejecting nonsense. A president is supposed to lead us all through a crisis, not turn it into a needlessly divisive issue as if he doesn't know how to do anything but campaign.
Less than half the states had stay at home orders with the force of law ("lockdowns"). The states with the most authoritarian overreactions were red states full of social-media-addled nutters rebelling against reality - when citizens actively work to help spread a pandemic, is it any wonder that the bureaucrats respond even stronger in the only way they know how?
What reconciliation actually requires is for the maggots to take some responsibility and realize this is exactly where reactionary media has been leading them by the nose for the past four decades - destruction of the Constitutionally-limited government in favor of rule by unaccountable corporations. Signed, a libertarian who actually believes in those lofty ideals you're fallaciously invoking.
I don't understand the "he conned us" stance. He was literally saying all these things before getting elected. He wasn't being coy about it, we all knew it would be terrible, and here we are. What was the con exactly?
If there's one thing you can't accuse Trump of, it's ever masking how utterly nonsensical he is.
Grump said all of these things before getting elected, but he also said their exact opposites as well. That he can say blatant lies while having a "charisma" such that people hear what they want to hear is exactly how a con man operates. Hence, they were conned.
However, the responsibility still arises as half of their fellow citizens were telling them that they were being conned. But rather than listening to the critics they actively remained ignorant while gloating about "liberal tears" and so on.
He was never anti-war. There are videos of him ranting about Kharg Island dating back to the 1980s. (I wonder if he had friends/relatives in the hostage crisis.)
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I believe the con was the "no wars" line. He was supposed to stop the Ukraine war in 24 hours, remember but he seemed to just lose interest in it.
It's everywhere on YouTube, usually as a 'hidden' ad in the alt-right manosphere (e.g. the recent Nick Shirley video he wears a sweatshirt for a gambling site throughout, with constant name drops of it that aren't over ads).
Disgusting behavior, especially coming from those who often claim their content is to improve things. Hypocrites across the board.
If these are the people making the decisions (and don't even get me started on the 'technical' folks at a16z...), the cluely-esque enshittification of VC over the last few years makes A LOT of sense.
The guidelines don’t get disregarded just because the topic is important to you. People have been trying that trick since the beginning. The guidelines are only worth having if they enable us to discuss difficult topics without burning this place to the ground. If you’re not able to discuss a topic without making swipes about someone’s “brain cells”, you need to find a different discussion forum. This site is only here for you to post that kind of trash because other people make the effort to raise the standards rather than drag them down.
You think, charitably, that this is an astroturf, really? What's the distribution of upvotes look like for front-page posts, binned in 20 minute intervals?
Reviewing your post history, it's overwhelmingly in non-tech related threads. This seems like a standard post for your tastes, semantically. Why then the sudden distaste?
reply