FeloniousHam

I've never met anyone who was sorry they had children, but I've met a lot of people who missed the opportunity (to be fair, I've never met the parents of a violent criminal).

Kids can be hard, especially if you're not a natural, and especially when they're young, but-- it's impossible to describe the fulsome love I have for my kids. I'm not a sentimental person, and probably wouldn't have had them without my wife (which is a funny thing to say). Even when they're a pain and a disappointment, even with the ever present guilt, my kids give me some baseline purpose for free. And the wins are great--"all joy and no fun" as I heard once. The conversations as they become real people. It's impossible to describe and totally worth it.

> And it is a pretty common position that all people should have access to art and culture.

Access to _all_ art and "culture"? For free?

Why aren't we storming the Library of Congress? They are the real villains here.

The only distinction in this discussion that matters: public funds are "teh people's money". If an "old boys club" giant Fat Cats Inc. wants to spend their shareholder's money on hookers and blow, that's the shareholders problem. It was the shareholder's _choice_ to invest with company, _they took the risk_.

Municipal, state, and federal taxes are mandatory: you do not have a choice.

I loved it at the time, it was one of those shows everyone would be talking about the next day. Having to wait a week to find out what happened next was a delightful frustration.

Sadly, did not hold up on a recent rewatch with my wife.

> it collapsed into being a mediocre bubble like Twitter, but without the scale.

I liked Josh Barro's take: https://www.joshbarro.com/p/bluesky-isnt-a-bubble-its-a-cont...

Totally agree. I'll add as an aging "woke up sore" guy, side-sleeping with a knee pillow (just a regular pillow to prevent your knees from aching from pressure) was an enormous improvement.

> They are also "hotshot cowboy coders" whatever that means.

Popular public libraries are exactly the place for Hotshot Cowboy Coders. Boring bespoke software is not.

A specific: generic machines taking in untyped data, executing unspecified functions at runtime. Thrilling to write, awful to maintain.

Okay: the car "fully" drives itself, everyday on my 35 minute commute through busy traffic on different routes depending on conditions.

Obviously, our disagreement is with Tesla branding. I don't care what they call it (I liked Autopilot), it's incredibly useful.

As I mention below, it's Trump news overwhelming everything. If WaPo was publishing 100% more climate news, no one would notice, because... no one would click those articles!

It's not even news! MAGAs I bet are resigned to a warmer climate, just arguing over cause and mitigation.

I guess was drives me nuts is "mysterious Greedy Fatcats are controlling the world" when much simpler explanations satisfy. (I'll allow that I'm sympathetic CCP steering of TikTok).

Fox News' influence is greater than its (pathetic by historical standards) geriatric audience share, but it far far less influential than its opponents imagine. What changes if they were gone? Another right-leaning organization would rise a la MSNBC to fill that demand.

I would love to think that http://thedispatch.com would become the standard bearer of thoughtful conservation of liberal values, but it would probably be ONN or some shit.

The reason your favorite issue is not the cause celebre: Trump has flooded the zone with shit.

He holds the microphone, all day, everyday. The World Cup provides a moment's respite, until... Trump grabs the microphone.

If the lurch to the left succeeds, the leftist agenda will dominate the headlines (modulo Trump's extraordinary ability to dominate all conversations, national to dinner table).

> Another factor is that rich oil and gas people figured out they could just buy the media.

Who is this "media"? Is this the same "media" that Trump and his dullards claim is so corrupt and contrary to The Truth? Are you influenced by this "media"? I don't read The Guardian or Jacobin, but I'm occasionally exposed to their headlines and they are certainly reporting on climate change. Are they part of the "media"?

There is no monoculture "media" and to the extent there is, it is (in the US at least) overwhelmingly left-leaning. And ironically, when there were fewer outlets for information, those outlets (because they served such a large and diverse audience) hewed to a common sense/conventional wisdom understanding of the facts.

No is one controlling media. Maybe the CCP through TikTok steering.

> Of course they don't literally buy votes, but statistically they very much do.

Counterpoint: Haley Stevens Brad Daigle Jon Tester Sherrod Brown Tom Steyer Hillary Clinton Michael Bloomberg (the list is long)

You need "some amount of money" to compete in elections, but the "money correlates to votes" is canard.

I can vouch for board games. I play DCC (D&D for grognards) and board games with a group I met through a guy at work. It was a little awkward at first, but we've been doing it every few weeks for years now.

Since we're into semantics and definitions, "FULL Self Driving" does not appear as a formal, defined standard. It is a brand. What's more, it is not a lie. The vehicle "fully" self drives (for me about 95% of the time).

Whether it's "true" self-driving, it is unquestionably useful. Everyday, _every_ day, FSD drives me on my commute (down different paths depending on traffic) with the only intervention being a nudge on an unprotected left turn across a wide highway.

Recent updates broke parking in my specific parking spot, but I'm confident this regression will be fixed.

Counterpoint: I'm currently employed building many apps for an enterprise you'll never visit. React+Typescript rewrite of our legacy "lean" Javascript has measurably improved the productivity of the team and the maintainability of code.

I can't imagine going back to learning bespoke libraries written by (especially!) hotshot cowboy coders. React makes everybody on the team better, and literally no customer has ever complained about the extra 200ms load time.

Dig deeper into the expansive definition that led to that "2/3rds".

from teh AI sources: https://www.kff.org/uninsured/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-... https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/releases/20250624.html

And whatever can be said about the US, at least with democracy you get a chance to fire the leadership every four years (or even sooner the closer you to the place you live!).

I read comments like this, they’re all written in broad language I assume to people already nodding in agreement.

The world today is not perfect: the smartphone and social media have rapidly and I think negatively changed society, empowering fringey issues, elevatiing the angriest personalities and inflaming passions. But materially, apart from housing and healthcare (which is hardly the greatest present concern of most people short of middle age), *we live in an age of wonders*.

To your complaint about bot reviews and product quality, it has never been easier to return unsatisfactory products through Amazon. And thanks to its massive market power, the seller eats a lot of the cost of that return. As for longevity, I just don’t see it. I buy a lot of cheap little Chinese tools and supplies from AliExpress (which does not have Amazon’s generous return policy), and I’ve never been disappointed.

Healthcare is expensive because it doesn’t scale, and Americans use a lot of it and demand that it be the absolute best. 92% of Americans have health insurance, ~55% through work.

I’m sure you’re aware of these facts, but boring realities would diffuse the angry attention you enjoy. Well, enjoy it!

My Y has the stalk, but the touchscreen gear selection is no issue. (Ignoring the fact that I rarely manually drive the car) I only touch the screen to put it in gear once, maybe twice on a drive, and I'm stopped in any case.

Add in the fact that car will automatically put the car in the right "gear" 80% of the time based on environment (curbs, walls, etc.), it's even less important how the gear selected. Getting into other cars, I'm struck by how much space in the center console is wasted by this vestige of an actual manual gear shifter. Also the silly paddles on the steering wheel.

Capitalism also spent the last 10 years burning billions to create affordable electric cars, reliable regular spaceflight, efficient delivery of everything everywhere, and the (well, probably) greatest technological invention in human history. This is not a complete list.

But yeah. Ugh, capitalism.

> It's nowhere near the quality of hand-crafted expert human code

As of June 25th, 2026. Read your comment in four years, and tell me you believe what you've posted.

Maybe one year? Four months?

If it makes you feel any better, efforts to "disenfranchise" eg. by requiring ID or "enfranchise" by making it easier to vote with same-day registration/voting, mail-in ballots, early voting, etc. have minimal effect on the outcome, independent of the majority party or location.

I just not that hard to (register to) vote. People who want to cast a vote will. The ones don't, won't.

Approval voting is the only workable RCV.

I read the Isaacson biography a few months ago. Quit reading before he buys Twitter.

I don't disagree, and most of what I know about Tesla early history comes from the Isaacson biography, but: it seems pretty clear the "actual" founders would never have been able to clear the hurdle of scale production without him. It wasn't just the funding (which would have been hard to come by), it's really hard to build a large, real-things-in-the-world industrial company from scratch, doubly so for something as complex as a car with all the complexities supply chains, regulations, literal factory construction require.

All glory to the guys who started the company (I love my Tesla Y), but I don't believe it would have gone anywhere without Musk.

(I was add something about Stacy Munro and the auto industry, but I'll just link to his first teardown of the Model 3[1].)

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpCrkO1x-Qo

What astonishes me about singularity skepticism: every argument was, from when it was released, "but it can't do X", "it's impossible/too expensive". The benefits AI -> AGI are staggering, the competition is intense (both intra-industry and internationally), and the gains self-reinforcing.

I have fears of dystopian worst-case scenarios, and dread the rapid pace of change and what it will do to real lives lived in the world, but it's only clanker cope/wishcasting that believes that (AI+human ingenuity) won't produce real AI ingenuity.

Re-read your comment in four years, I'll take the bet you'll find it very naive.