techostritch

> especially in tech circles, which historically stood for liberal (progressive/inclusive) values.

Seems pretty clear that maybe history wasn’t what we thought, seems more like tech has historically stood for self-interest, which happened to align with liberal values.

This is all based on the idea of the Trump they’ve made up for themselves in their mind, the less he’s actually reported in or vocal, the less there’s a chance for a schism especially among moderate voters voting party line.

I mean, very plainly, he lost the last election.

> Those who like him, love him. Those who don’t despise him. I doubt dosage matters.

This is interesting I have not found this at all. For all the polarization we talk about it seems there’s lots of disagreement in the parties, look at the war for power in the house that deposed two speakers. I think there’s people who love him, people who hate him, and lots of people holding their nose.

One thing about Trump specifically is that he’s a bit too much to take in large doses, I wonder if social media banning Trump actually led to an improvement in his popularity. Definitely another argument in favor of looser restrictions on speech if any.

I’m glad classical music has done this for you. I’ve always heard of people appreciating the an ability of music to tell a story, and I’ve wondered if it would make my music better if I used a story as inspiration, and maybe this is the post modernist in me, but I’ve always appreciated music as a form that expressed something you couldn’t put into words, even as you’ve expressed here, the narrative is fairly simple, isn’t there a much richer je ne sais Quias or spirit behind the music? In which case I’ve never really gotten the richest version of that from classical.

I had to second guess myself because I don’t know if I really know what cultured means, but Apparently the dictionary definition of the word cultured is “produced under artificial conditions” so I would say I agree with you. Can’t argue with refined. Probably won’t reasonably argue with intellectual, but then again I think I don’t know that I think that I get into art for intellectual reasons exactly, I would describe them as spiritual reasons.

I’m curious why it makes you sad? I feel exactly the opposite. Dancing is an old cultural tradition that has meditative and spiritual qualities. What about that is cultural nihilism. Or maybe I just don’t think cultural nihilism is a bad thing?

They didn’t mention whether or not Tesla has made up for the difference in other states.

There’s a few different goals of advertising but with near 100% name recognition, is this going to change anyone’s mind? Do you really want to link Trump’s name, someone famous for seeming like an outsider with big business?

Tesla is an AI company right? Not an electric car company, the 2024 Republican platform explicitly calls out support of AI. Will the MAGA ticket really hurt Tesla electric cars more than Musk already has? If he’s pivoting away from cars, he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to want to do it slowly, so seems relatively logical.

Companies taking very public stands for one political candidate or another is probably not a great evolution in our polarization.

I always feel like this question begs this elitist perspective on progress and art. I don’t hate classical music, but I also don’t deify it. Classical jazz, other forms of “art” music, they’re great, and maybe they do reflect some kind of intellectual pinnacle, but as someone who was a big clubbed in my youth, I don’t see how sitting in a concert hall in a 3 piece suit is a more peak human experience than sweating and grooving in a dance hall.

I would like to see some fusion, I like longer works, concept albums, I’d really like to see more of it in modern aesthetics. I keep meditating on the phrase synthwave symphony for my next project.

This makes me wonder, are there use cases for GenAI that are under threat from regulation? Like is there some useful case that everyone is sitting on (Or maybe it’s coming) because it’s in danger to regulation?

I mean frankly because if you have billions of dollars and want power now / in your lifetime, grassroots efforts to change the political system is not an efficient way.

Also, isn’t. Marc Andreesen one of the Silicon Valley folks in favor of a monarchy? you need something that’s very powerful/big to do that.

There’s this old fivethirtyeight article that says that people love their political parties until they actually do anything, that once you start turning ideas into policy, people have something tangible to evaluate you on, and they do so harshly.

I’ve had this observation/theory lately that the culture moves opposite to the government (in a free society) so I wonder if publicly associating yourself with the potential next administration is good for PR. Will people turn against tech once tech is actually in power? People are already sort of innately distrustful of big tech. And what is bigger than tech so closely aligned with the federal government.

Maybe he is Siri!

A MAGA style government will let MAGA protest more freely for sure.

The mechanics no. I’m like very intentionally trying not to be an extremist about this, yes I did get some value out of school but relatively disproportionate to the effort I put in.

Is there anyone that is pro monarchy/authoritarianism that is also pro-monarchy authoritarianism if someone who doesn’t have the same values as them are in charge? Like is Peter Thiel pro monarchy if AOC is the monarch?

I don’t know, I don’t know what other people think, I do know what I think, and I don’t think I would describe it as uncritical. What makes you assume it’s uncritical?

Yes, I’ve heard the term Christo-fascist thrown around recently, as I said most recently from Joe Rogan, I probably wouldn’t use the term had I not heard it thrown about recently but the point isn’t really the term. There is definitely a contingent of the Republican party who fits that description and that contingent definitely has power, are they the dominant power? I guess that we’ll just have to wait and see.

I dunno? Matt Walsh is an open ChristoFascist and Even Joe Rogan mentioned that he was worried about it harkening back to the George Bush days, part of my point was less that I though an extreme thing would happen and more that of the extreme things that could happen, Christian extremism seems more popular then libertarian extremism.

But also maybe the answer to your question is yes? Separation of church and state and all that silly nonsense.

Also OTA updates? Is this like some weird “I’m a free thinker and everyone else is an NPC thing?”

We’ll see what happens, I don’t think there’s enough unity among Republicans for a coherent libertarian agenda to actually get enacted, more likely a Christo-fascist one, but I lean more libertarian as I get older, so despite my extreme skepticism if it happens beyond my control, I’ll be damn curious to see it.

I’m mixed, I definetly wouldn’t home school my kids and it doesn’t seem scalable and I do think there’s value in a population having a shared identity from education, but, at least from my own experience I suspect my kids will have their most valuable academic opportunities outside of school.

I’m probably anti-big tech but what will pro crypto bring us? Convince me that the deregulation of the Trump/Vance administration won’t bring about the next 2008

I feel really weird about education, the only value I think I’ve ever gotten in education is tangential (social, inspirational) which I think many people say is the primary value, but when it comes to actually work skills Im mostly self taught. I’m not sure if there’s a way to make school better without making it way more expensive. AI would be interesting but so far it’s not reallly there yet, for one I think it needs coaching skills to know when to reach out rather than just respond to prompts. And most self learning is experiential not interactive.

This is circular, how do you propose making school about that? If you’re only goal is to maximize the folks who like to obey authority then great, and maybe that’s all you care to do, and maybe you don’t care about losing the kids who don’t have the academics to make it, but you also lose a whole mess of kids at the top end of the spectrum too.

It all depends on what they do, Republicans want to make big change, big change in an economy this size will be disruptive, there will be winners and losers across the political spectrum, and losers for some groups will mean financial devastation. Elections have consequences.

I think a lot of it is how granular you look? Will millions of people be in camps and dead and 10’s of million unemployed in 4 years? Maybe not, but what is the statistic? 1 percent increase in unemployment leads to a 1% increase in suicides?

This is of course not to mention if your gay or trans or a woman who values the right to an abortion.

The republicans will try and go too far by some measure, even Joe Rogan who I would describe as a pretty classical liberal if not conservative libertarian said the other day “Republicans are not the answer, remember when George Bush was in office and we almost had Christofacism?”

You think that Big Tech is donating big to Republicans because of identity politics?

Admittedly I think it’s really hard to piece apart all of the different conservative coalitions.

There are vocal Republican influencers who talk about ending no fault divorce, ending the department of education banning abortion, ending social security, Medicare and Medicaid, more conservatives on the Supreme Court so certainly it could be bad if certain coalitions got their way.

And yet, I think power is distributed enough in America I don’t think too much of it can be dismantled. I think too many billionaires benefit from big government for the billionaires who benefit from small government to dismantle.

But I do think Republicans will deregulate the economy in a way that will put us on a crash course to another financial crisis. And the people who will really suffer will be the poor not the rich.

The other point I will make about a Republican presidency is that 1: people deify Trump and 2: Trump has made lots of promises to people who fundamentally disagree with each other. So there’s going to be lots of conflict in a Trump presidency, what will the people whose promises were broke do, especially those people who see Trump as a god? Will Trump turn on his working class MAGA base to make the billionaires who donated to him happy? I think he just might.