Yapping7880

I don't know if "fun" is the right word for me, but since AI coding has taken over nearly all of my individual hand coding (or augmented IDE suggestion coding), I find it much less satisfying to solve difficult problems with creative solutions. That always tickled a part of my programming brain, and I didn't realize how much I enjoyed that until I didn't do it anymore. Now, sure, I've broadened out to more systems-level thinking, but now the hard problems that I have generally aren't engineering problems, they're personnel problems, integration problems, planning/priority problems, and solving those usually means taking a deep breath and having a "conversation" with a senior manager, making an annoying business case, whatever else. There's much less satisfaction in that for me.

Thank god I'm not alone.

They were targeting Medium-users with Gutenberg, which in my opinion was a misread of the growth and direction of WordPress. Even after blogging died, WordPress was still always focused on being a blogging platform. Back in the early proposal/RFA days of Gutenberg, the debate between Mullenweg, the WP Core steering team, and most vocal of the WP development community was really whether there was this "silent majority" of WP users, or whether the software should cater better to developers/power users. Mullenweg, and most of the other core steering members, believed that the silent majority were interested in an easier WYSIWYG visual editor, and they used SquareSpace and Medium as the benchmarks. Even in 2017 this was kind of justifiable, online writing/publishing didn't really seem like it was being hollowed out like it would be just a few years later.

I am glad to see this:

"I do not believe the quality time theory. I firmly believe in maximizing the quantity of time spent with them."

Because I think that among highly motivated workers there's a falsely held belief that you can make up for missed time with your children by planning "exclusive time" with them, either over a nice vacation, or special night in a month, or whatever. And, don't get me wrong, any time is better than no time. But I think that strong relationships might be made best in the down moments, the "bored" time, the random stuff, the drives to school, picking up the house, mealtimes, random crap, that those are the times that you discover the little nuances of your children's personality (and your own personality).

Before kids, I frequently defined myself by my work or my hobbies. Meet someone new and you're chatting with them, and I'd say "Oh, yeah, I'm a software engineer, yeah, I like to fish, I play basketball, I love watching football and drinking beer, I'm from [X] city, I want to this college and studied this subject." And that's how I defined myself. It's pretty normal, I think. Since having kids so much of my identity has changed and how I identify myself has changed. That "I Think You Should Leave" sketch from Season 2 or 3 resonated with me, the "DONT TALK ABOUT YOUR KIDS" sketch because it's so hard not to, especially with other people who have kids, it's like ... what else can I talk about? The hobbies I had before kids seem utterly pointless and valueless in retrospect.

After our second, my wife got sick, she was diagnosed with ALS when he was just over a year old, though she had undiagnosed symptoms going back to before she was pregnant with him. She physically can't care for him, and so I've been my son's sole caretaker, and my daughter's primary/default caretaker though she's 8 years old, so my wife is able to contribute more evenly with parenting for her. As he gets older, depending on the progression of the disease, that can increase with my son as well, but for a newborn, infant, baby, and toddler, there's just so much physical care for those ages that it's hard for someone with a neurological, degenerative disease to contribute in the same way.

Kids truly changed everything with me. Every single way that I define myself. I don't define myself by my work at all anymore, and I sometimes define myself by my hobbies, but I feel entirely defined by my kids. If I was answering some general inquiry about myself, and if I was allowed to be frank, I'd lead with my kids, it's how I see myself.

When I saw the Bob Odenkirk line from Mike Birbiglia's podcast/interview, I legitimately cried, because it hit me right in the throes of parenting hell. I have a wife who I'm taking care of, I had a ~7ish year old who I was trying my best to help through adolesence, and I had a 1.5 year old who I was completely and wholly responsible for keeping alive, keeping healthy, and keeping happy. And this quote just hit me like a ton of bricks.

Birbiglia: "Who are you jealous of?"

Odenkirk: "Anybody who has little kids at home, growing up. ... Yeah, there's no question I knew what I was doing when I had kids growing up, I was being a dad. I mean, that was my job, and I didn't have to ask myself, 'What am I doing here? How can I be a part of this world? How can I be meaningful today?' I didn't have to ask that question, because the fucking answer is 'Pick up everything between here and the door, and make sure they get to school, and have a laugh with them.'

I understood my purpose."

And god, that fucking resonates with me so, so hard. It still makes me cry when I hear that or see the clips of it, because I realized that when I was answering that question every other time trying to describe myself, and when I answered with what I do, and what I studied, and where I'm from, or what my hobbies are, those were all bull shit. And now when I think of who I am, I know who I am, I am dad.

I am a bad software engineer. I'm a mediocre project lead. I think I'm a good colleague. But I know that I'm a great dad.

The 2026 midterm election date is November 3rd, the jobs numbers are released on the first Friday of the month, November 6th. Intentionally trending numbers down in August, with only two more jobs reports before the election, would be risky (and stupid, and extremely unlikely). The Trump Administration just doesn't look ahead like that either, they live in the perpetual now.

Interesting idea that seems FUBAR.

I really appreciate how the author dramatizes hypothyroidism, which I've also had since 25, and in the modern world, it's like the most treatable, easy to live with condition on earth. Taking a tiny pill once daily, with the lone drawback that as soon as you take the pill you have a 5min timer to taking a dump.

I was reading this and didn't understand the point until I got to this:

"I overhauled my medical team earlier this year. It was the rebuild to lay the groundwork for Immortals Care, our $1M a year protocol. With greater capacity, we revisited everything."

And realized this person is speaking the language of scams.

Some of these are valid arguments against Palantir and the weaponization of surveillance.

But too many others are bullshit as the author was getting full of themselves.

"6. We are ruled by a senile gerontocracy. Unlike the generations that fought in the world wars, most of our current rulers are degenerate pedophiles"

This is just wrong. Donald Trump may be a senile pedophile, Howard Lutnik may be a pedophile but is not senile, Joe Biden was too old but wasn't senile or a pedophile, but we are largely not ruled by a cabal of senile pedophiles. The Trump Administration is protecting pedophiles, but most Americans, Europeans, and people throughout the world, are not ruled by pedophiles, either in their day or day or civic life.

"Today, new regional powers directly challenge the United States as its empire dissolves in the face of internal economic stagnation, political corruption, and the inflation of the dollar."

Regional powers don't directly challenge the United States. The United States has lost a war against Iran, but it was one we foolishly started. There isn't yet economic stagnation or inflation of the dollar. Even in the post-COVID period of significany inflation, from about 2022-2023, this was modest by historic measures and largely less severe than most other places in the world. Since Donald Trump has reintroduce inflation through his national sales tax (Tariff) policy and pointless foreign wars, inflation is up to ~4.x%, which is higher than it needs to be, but not remarkable historically. The national rate of inflation in 1980 was 13.5%. China certainly challenges the United States, but it is not a regional power, it is a world power, and the challenge is largely just economic and influence.

"8. In a real war, fantasies of total technological dominance always backfire. When a faceless drone kills a child’s father, that child will one day take revenge regardless of the cost."

This idea, itself, is the stuff of fantasy fiction. Most children whose parents are killed by a missile, drone, bomb, or whatever else, grow up as orphans, in extreme poverty, and rarely emerge from it in any sort of revenge narrative.

"9. Oddly enough, proponents of fully automated warfare support a universal draft."

I don't think that this is true and the author doesn't make the case.

"14. The State will not help us. The state is a dying pre-Internet institution that increasingly resembles nothing but a Ponzi scheme fueled by taxes and debt."

This is techno-libertarian bull shit and simply false. The state remains as our ("big our") best tool to regulate and control technology. There is no other lever.

"17. Digital identity is the next step in their system of control."

This may be true, but it is in conflict with the gerontocracy of senile pedophiles argument. There has been no greater gift to pedophiles than the anonymity of the internet combined with the (relative) untraceability of effective encryption. These two things, liberty and safety, are genuinely in conflict with one another and I don't see the internet or state regulators finding the right solution.

"18. Only when one can be anonymous is one truly free."

This is trite and false, and tritely false.

"20. Culture wars are a psyop."

This is not true, and similarly trite. There are culture wars in every civilization and community on earth, throughout history, and they're not exclusively well organized psyops. I'd encourage the author to read Richard White's The Republic For Which It Stands, which I think the author would find a lot of common ground with White, but one thing that is particularly clarifying is in our current 21st century gilded age, just how much was similar 130 years ago before there was a mass media or national intelligence cabal.

I think that the author should workshop a lot of these arguments and focus on the ones that they're knowledgable about, particularly in terms of code, surveillance, and coding for good against evil. Also it would seem as though he calls himself "The Philosopher CEO," as he wrote this piece and is speaking for himself, and if you are calling yourself a philosopher CEO you are a blowhard.

I feel like, as an industry or social group, we're going through a midlife crisis. There were so many people in tech who I looked up to as a young engineer, and now it feels especially bleak for young people in tech to find role models. But that could just be me being ~40 and despising what so many of these people became at ~60+.

Cleve Moler, the creator of MATLAB, died a few weeks ago. I've had the opportunity to meet him a few times, and despite him being a genuine mathematical genuis, the thing that impressed me so much was how humble he was, how anti-braggadocious. He was like this in person, privately, and also in public. Moler was an early post-WW2 engineer, his cohort is a shrinking class, and I'm worried about those who are taking their place, and then what happens when my generation and the younger replace them.

Photographer/Photo-journalist Kim Raff is the photograher, I doubt that she did that, there's never been any evidence of her doing that in the past. The photos just look like good photos to me.

https://www.nytimes.com/by/kim-raff

https://www.kimraff.com/aboutme

I work on a commonly used piece of software, I also make jokes to my colleagues about the software that I work on, many of us do. If I had infinite time and infinite money and infinite power, and there was no downstream risk to any of my updates, then I'd fix every single thing that I don't like about the software... things that I know other engineers don't like about it. But insofar as I am not god (... yet?), all I have is my good humor and congeniality.

Pretty interesting. There was a study about Clemastine use as a potential treatment/prolonging for ALS, but it did not show any significant benefit at preventing/delaying neuron death. I bring it up ALS because there are certain treatments for MS (like IVIG Infusions) that can also be beneficial for ALS patients.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10568021/

How do people read this drivel and take it seriously? I read the first 5 paragraphs of complete fluff, and then started skimming, and then realized it went on and on, and just closed it. The author had not gotten to any cogent point either within the first 5 paragraphs or the subsequent ones I skimmmed.

I'd challenge the person who submitted this to think about this rule:

"Essentially there are two rules here: don't post or upvote crap links, and don't be rude or dumb in comment threads.

A crap link is one that's only superficially interesting.

What does "deeply interesting" mean? It means stuff that teaches you about the world. A story about a robbery, for example, would probably not be deeply interesting. But if this robbery was a sign of some bigger, underlying trend, perhaps it could be."

Is there a deeper, underlying trend here? Is there something that society is missing here? Are pitbulls a greater existential threat than school shootings? I'd say -- no. Dogs are animals, they typically aren't considered to have an ethical compass. Dog attacks are unfortunate, deaths from dog attacks are usually avoidable and very sad. Many deadly attacks by dogs are the result of poor dog ownership by humans, and a lack of proper regulation by local government.

School shootings are a different problem. Unfettered access to high powered, fast-firing guns, poor mental health, and unfortunately a response from at least half of government that is unsufficient and insulting to those threatened by gun violence, where those people in government value difficult to quantify values like "freedom" over easy to quantify values like the life of a child.

Unfortunately my wife has a terminal illness, and while $10m would be quite a lot, when facing the bills of ALS without proper health insurance, that could run out very quickly. With $10m, I'd work, but do all of the things that I don't have the guts to ask for now: Go fully remote all the time (something that I'll likely have to do within the next few years to be a partial caretaker). When the bad times come, which they will, if I had $10m in the bank I'd walk away from the job and focus entirely on being the most present father that I can be.

Over the last couple years of her illness, I've become the sole caretaker of our young kids, and it's changed me dramatically. Being a parent can be exhausting, and I've always loved it, but I also loved logging into work and doing productive things, contributing to (what I thought were) important software projects, and working with my colleagues. I always loved the camaraderie of the work place and my colleagues. That's shifted entirely in the last 2 years. Other than the paycheck to maintain my kids' quality of life, other than the health insurance that we're now inextricably tethered to (something that I never had an appreciation for as a young, relatively healthy single or married-but-no-kids person), I just don't care about anything at work other than doing what I have to do to maintain those things.