zeruch

They aren't even ready for a truth world. We're optimized for self-delusion on a good day.

The future is going to be a baklava of fast-cut CGI-grade hallucinatory blandishments and threats at scale.

You can take all the exceptions you wish, but the truth is while its a great spot for certain legitimate above board financial vehicles, its also a tax haven. The two can in fact cohabitate, and in the case of the Caymans, do.

Caymans in particular has a decent level of transparency around trusts and the like, but its banking system still records the de-minimus KYC it can get away with (including uneven FATF compliance).

Good.

Reap what you sow.

I've had the benefit of working under several, wither as a direct report, or as an executive presence that modelled positive habits across an org (includes one CEO that I've worked for twice and would do so again if he decided to start a new venture).

I consider them good for a multitude of reasons that don't necessarily have a coherent theme (e.g. "Servant management" or other fun business catch phrases) and my bias is that they set me up to become a manager myself, when I didn't think that was something I was cut out for, but actually found I excel at in the right org.

There are three that I would consider essential to my own career, and they all had different expressions of the following:

1. self-aware: they knew themselves, and could use that to understand how others reacted around them. They could modulate their behavior to find the 'sweet spot' in situations they were involved in.

2. deliberate and thoughtful. They weren't shy about taking ownership of things, coaching individuals towards getting team goals accomplished, but looking into the potentials of folks to see where "unseen" possibilities may be.

3. calm but resolute: they keep it cool under pressure, but don't have qualms about pushing back when they see other forces stepping offsides.

4. they treat their teams as a 'meta' project that can in fact evolve as the abilities and skills of its members expand and change; rather than just settling into managing a fixed pattern of rigid deliverables, they know that nothing in this industry is 'fixed' or 'rigid' and can improvise or adapt such that it minimizes organizational disruptions.

5. They have personalities. Real ones with quirks, and don't sublimate them into the common trope of detached, milquetoast functionary. That doesn't mean they fly their freak flag and make a spectacle of things, just that they don't act so reserved and distant as to be an enigma. That makes them relatable/approachable, even when you have little in common in terms of practical experiences.

Other than the above, where Haswell said in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36390756 is bang on.

Wow, I had to jog the memory about Kidd (she used to be on DeviantArt a lot, and I did a portrait of her some 20 years ago: https://www.deviantart.com/zeruch/art/celeste-in-triplikidd-...) so this was all a very strange trip down the deja vu hole.

All the back and forth about her (and I generally look at Cato/Reason with a bit of scrutiny at this point) the whole thing seems a bit surreal.

I know a decent number of tech, some art, and a handful of others (in Social Sciences/Journalism mostly).

People treat migration as a "exodus" level event, or its a "failure" which misses the point.

I started posting my art online 20 years ago with DeviantArt and my original blogging efforts, but it was predicated on the fact that I had an art practice for my own edification, so the online part just became an adjunct aspect. I was "gonna art" regardless, so why not syndicate what that is, regardless of what it generates.

Keeping that attitude has been healthy in terms of what I produce, but I do find that I would prefer to be using a service that allows for some actual community elements, which DevArt has allowed to go fallow, and other sites never quite had (e.g. Society6) but at least have good artist services (e.g. prints)

"Microsoft can’t be trusted."

Never could be.

I guess its good they arent a startup then?

IG has to allow an export function, if nothing else to help with compliance (e.g. CCPA) and in a digestible format. All PF has done is built a parser for said JSON formatting.

I'd rather grown a small but sincerely interested community around my work, than a large, mostly indifferent one.

When I was still active on DeviantArt regularly, but before I got Gallery Director status (2004-2008 ish) I sold little prints, but consistently. After GD, I overall sold about double, but the interaction was like an EKG, and full of noise and stupid complaints and random stats-whoring from commenters. It felt like too much of a rollercoaster managing whatever turdstorm may or may not arise.

I'm still trying to bootstrap a regular pace with PF, as I'm still a very active IG user, but I may just test out if the Import function can handle JSON file with over 10K posts...

I wish NS worked on Android as a generic domain blocker

I think you're being a bit overblown. If it was just bots, it would have fizzled out sooner; the bot account trash has waxed and waned over time, but I suspect the big reason it worked is that for years it allowed any subcommunity to emerge naturally rather than trying to predicatively shape it.

And there are many worse examples of leadership in tech than Reddit. If anything until recently most of its C-suite historically (post founders) has been uninteresting enough to care. No one on the scale of a Gates, Neuman, Ellison, etc.

The recent turdstorm however, does signal a likely lamentable shift downward.

I actually took a University course in M by one of its maintainers, the late Dick Walters. While I never found any personal utility in the language, it was a curious 3 months of experimentation, and Walters was a great professor and fairly kind and helpful, probably because he realized how eccentric and borderline archaic M was.

For me it was "Out To Lunch" and the live concert in I think 64, with Mingus. He just shone. A few years back I did an exhibition of jazz portraits at the now defunct Cafe Stritch where he was one of the bigger prominent works: https://www.deviantart.com/zeruch/art/eric-dolphy-v5-1936648...

I think its the phrasing that just does it for me.

I think if Dolphy had lived longer, he would have eventually been viewed at the same level as Coltrane or Mingus. His sound was sometimes like Monk playing brass.

This was definitely not one of their best moves.

A considerable amount in terms of how they behave, what they expect, and for how long.

They invest both in amounts and company types, and typically claim different equity amounts (and carry different liabilities)

VCs do not typically debt load companies after investment, they generally dont do things like sale leasebacks on assets or do dividend re-capitalisation. VCs actually look for an exit event where a healthy company is on the other side. PEs dont give a squirt of piss as long as they can cash out, and often are fine selling acquired firms for scrap as long as they can get a cut on either side of the transaction (ideally both).

This is far from The Nation's best ledes...franlkly, while many VCs have become quite amateurish and feckless, the domain is still with some real benefit.

The Private Equity world however, THAT needs some real regulatory handcuffs, ASAP.

I agree with that wholeheartedly, and its pretty sad.

Expose it? It's practically on a parade level broadcast now, and few seem to care.

Its like the system truly needs to meltdown and actual VCs and POEs need to lose their shirts to get a hint.

This is not remotely shocking at all.

We're entering the age of the tech giants losing steam (you can only maintain psychotic growth for so long, then the parasitic phase of firms kick in, as they have no other operating drivers).

I wonder when the Streisand Effect kicks in though?

As others have stated, the enshittification curve is a hockey stick, and the decline will only accelerate until they either have a Nadella/Grove/Jobs moment, or they turn into the new Yahoo (or worse).

They are brutal towards proselytizing ones, certainly.

This looks quite cool.

That's a fair question, but overall, see my answer to the other person here who responded to me. My position is certainly not perfect, but it's also an assertion of ideological/practical preferences, and definitely doesn't cover the whole picture, just the high level intent of "giving all the advantages to only those who require them them least is a stupid idea" for broad systemic health.

There's a lot of variables to unpack and configure in any system, and this is no different.

"I worked my ass off for this."

So did I. But having come up from very poor/working class, I also know that path was painful and I have enough means to live modestly and view that as a way to not be "screw you, I got mine" to the rest of society. And that's not just an empathy overdose. That's knowing even cynically, that if the overall larger number of people in the society around me who get even marginally improved outcomes makes same said society I choose to reside in likely to be more stable, resilient and less interrupt-driven.

That's a system investment instead of just being self-focused to the point of ignoring everything else (the latter eventually leads to 'everything else' imposing its collective will reactively otherwise)

As someone with great credit, I'm fine with this.

It's not "more likely" to make us angry. It's a goddamn certitude.

I'd wager over 90% of people who 'quote' Adam Smith have never actually read more than a choice de-contextualized quote, and understand his actual positions at all.