ShittyBeatlesFCPres @ ShittyBeatlesFCPres @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

In general, there’s the sunk cost fallacy. But I think there’s an additional, related component in politics. Trump in particular but many politicians (and whatever Elon Musk is) are conmen and not particularly smart. They’re just charismatic — I don’t personally get Trump or Musk’s charisma but apparently a lot of people do. (And their tweets alone are evidence enough to prove they aren’t clever.)

And so any time Trump or Musk or whomever does something completely idiotic, supporters compensate by telling themselves it’s all 12 dimensional chess and they’re actually brilliant. It’s just too embarrassing for them to admit they were conned by a fool. So, they double down to compensate. But ultimately, most conmen aren’t smart. That’s why they’re conmen.

If I was in Congress, I’d get censored every day. Roberts Rules of Order my ass. You’re getting cussed at.

They’re going to be disappointed when they find out the education department is basically just student loans and doesn’t set education policy for K-12 education. They distribute grants to K-12 schools but actual policy is mostly a state and local thing.

Also, they run a continuing education system in DC. I took a course in Mandarin before a trip to China once. I didn’t work for the government but there were classmates learning Mandarin for national security reasons who wouldn’t even tell me which agency they worked for.

TL/DR: The Department of Education isn’t setting policy for elementary or middle or high schools.

Alphabet/Google needs to fire their CEO. He’s an obvious idiot, not good with employees, not good with investors, and not good at lobbying. That’s like 99% of a CEO’s job. Just get rid of him and Google’s stock price will probably jump 20%.

I disapprove of JD Vance’s pants so there’s multiple explanations.

Why? Did he do the stupidest things imaginable to hurt his own voters?

Amy Coney Barrett Is from an inner suburb of New Orleans and went to high school in the city. She might be Catholic to a creepy degree but she’s definitely going to vote differently than Alito or Thomas. New Orleanians are delightfully ungovernable. Sometimes for the worse but we don’t even have common law here. She’ll have a broader perspective than someone who grew up indoctrinated.

She’s from Old Metairie and went to Dominican, for anyone who knows the city. She’s super conservative and I dislike her but she’s going to end up a swing vote when a Bible Belt conservative might not.

Release it anyway. Most Americans support that. Just say some bullshit like it wasn’t labeled correctly and got sent to a different warehouse and Trump will forget the next time a shiny thing catches his attention.

I feel like we should have more fear of 50,000 Greenlanders. I don’t know why — we have nukes and a zillion well-trained soldiers — but it’s the same instinct that I feel about fighting someone who is really good at pool or has a face tattoo. They will retreat to the ice and we’ll have a bunch of troops from Florida slipping and sliding while a Greenlander pops out of an ice crevice and harvests their livers for winter.

Don’t fuck with people who live in extreme environments is like History of War 101. I wouldn’t even sass a penguin, much less get in a gun brawl with someone who voluntarily lives in Siberia. I saw Planet Ice. They melt their gas with blow torches just to get to work.

I endorse this as an American (well, New Orleanian so like 30% American, 70% Caribbean). Who gives a shit what Trump says? His diktats aren’t laws here, much less in other countries. You can just ignore him.

Basic human decency. I did my time in the corporate world and will only work for non-profits now. The pay is always less but competitive enough (and the benefits are often better) but the people you work with are so much smarter and committed. You can sleep well at night.

Everyone who got laid off from a tech company should try out working for non-profits. (The good kind. Not the weird political kind.) It sucks to take a pay cut and there’s fewer career advancement opportunities but sometimes, your soul matters. And I don’t mean “soul” in a religious way. I’ll wake up at 3am to fix a bug for a non-profit with a mission and not even mind. I wouldn’t do that for a defense contractor (which many tech companies are now). Fuck ‘em. Hire people in Australia if you need 24h coverage.

To me, Russia fell into the “natural resources trap” where a country can sell oil, gold, diamonds, whatever and the citizens are fine with low taxes and jobs but it ultimately can doom you to misrule. A country that doesn’t have oil or whatever has to do things the hard way. Like educate everyone and be a knowledge economy. That’s harder than finding oil.

Sochi seems lovely and I’d like to visit St Petersburg once relations normalize but no one associates Russia with tourism like they do Italy or France or Thailand or Bali or wherever your nearest tourism hotspot is.

So, long term, I’d like to see Russia embrace its strengths outside of energy and arms. We’d all be happier. But I’m not in charge so we’ll see what Trump and Putin do instead.

Natural resources. Oil & LNG (which America exports but much of Europe, China, and India import). They have Uranium fit for nuclear plants (so does Mali, which is why it’s a point of contention between France and Russia). Kind of crappy but still explosive weapons sales. The U.S., France, and China will sell you previous generation weapons that are better than Russia’s best stuff.

I mean, to vastly oversimplify, it’s a gas station with nuclear weapons and rocket scientists from the Soviet era. It’s not a diversified economy for a country so large. They export grain and shit like that but it’s a whole continent wide and they aren’t efficient about it.

Delaware and the Cayman Islands have sort of morphed over time from tax havens to places that have professional, efficient, and fair courts for corporation v corporation situations.

Not saying that’s good. I think it’s trash, actually. But there’s now legitimate reasons two equal corporations doing something without any tax implications whatsoever write contracts with each other agreeing the contracts will fall under one of those two jurisdictions. Every corporate lawyer can probably back me up. They went from shameful tax havens to just efficient places with expertise.

It’s not a conventional career path but what is in these times of change?

Thank you. I have a masters in headassery from the Advanced School of Clowning at Bologna. And I interned at the Milan Dick Sucking Factory, which is where I met your parents.

Make one if you want that. I doubt many adults are going to make a 4chan clone and deal with all that comes with it.

No offense. I’m just saying 4chan is toxic and bad and and there’s not a lot of experienced developers hoping to recreate it when we can just take a shit on the sidewalk and accomplish more in less time.

In my experience, Fedora tends to be what a lot of developers settle on after distro hopping. This is by no way universal and RedHat has issues. But at some point, the OS and desktop environment become background noise compared to your own code and IDE. Younger people probably have different preferences — and they should — but you get more experienced and you have your setup. If my laptop dies, I can get back to coding quicker with Fedora than any other distro and it’s almost always stable.

In the end, a computer is a tool and being skilled with an old tool can be better than being new to a more modern tool. I still use the same brand/type power drill that I used in high school/college when I worked construction in the summers. (Dewalt and I’d rather the old 18v but they switched to 20v. I have an adapter to charge either battery, though, so it’s fine.)

Fentanyl is a technology.

Russia doesn’t really produce anything except things U.S. companies export or can easily source elsewhere. And like half of their next generation emigrated or died trying to take 20 more meters of Eastern Ukrainian villages. I don’t expect any great scientific advancements coming anytime soon.

I’m not sure how that trade relationship would even work. Trade deals only work if the private sector is involved and the U.S. private sector doesn’t want Russian products or to investment in a place where there’s no rule of law.