I have a lot of deep ambivalence here. On one hand, I would rather Americans be safe. I don't want anyone in harm's way; if I absolutely had to choose, I'd rather we have superiority.
On the other hand, the "the ends justifies the means" justification of the near constant erosion of civil liberties and due process is really, really concerning. And I do not trust, at all, the Rand-lite tech bro sociopaths or anyone in the Trump administration to do the right thing.
Our country is less safe because the people behind these technology companies have brought us to a place where NATO allies do not trust us, and we are implicated in war crimes facilitated by these technology companies.
Interesting claims in this article that direcly conflict with Palantir publicly calling for universal conscription. If AI and robotics are going to keep people off the front lines, why would we need the draft?
> On one hand, I would rather Americans be safe. I don't want anyone in harm's way; if I absolutely had to choose, I'd rather we have superiority.
To what extent does waging war contribute to increasing the safety of Americans? Every war the United States has started since WWII against another country has not been a defensive war, but an invasion by the U.S. itself. The United States has enjoyed global military dominance for decades. It has also become clear that even the world’s best military is no match for a large-scale psychological operation.
Be careful with dreams of superiority, those tend to make the other guy convinced you'll attack as soon as the gap gets wide enough and make them spend even more to "catch up".
A few rounds of this and eventually both sides have worked themselves into a frenzy to motivate buying excessive amounts of weapons, and then finally something trivial makes someone important "that's it, that was the thing we got the guns for" and a few billion dollars in weapons go up in smoke along with some hundreds of human lives (if everything goes well).
The question on is whether what’s happening right now is actually keeping Americans safe. I feel we are moving more and more towards accepting normalizing using military power by powerful nations. I am sure China is watching closely what’s going on and may feel encouraged to move on Taiwan. Once that happens, things will get really interesting.
Do you think there is an acceptable third option between "the globalists winning" and "it is OK for a single media outlet to wage a war on the grieving parents of the victims of a mass murder"?
My comment was just a silly joke, reusing some of Jones phrasing. I never fully grasped who "the globalists" were in his mind, and why they were seemingly behind everything he dislikes, but I always found if funny. I'm just happy he lost his platform, and I find the Onion's piece rather amusing.
I thought I could add to it with this dumb joke but I forgot about the fact that Jones still has a sizeable following, and it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is just kidding or an insane lunatic. I'm in the former camp (I hope).
I agree with this, but it's also true that Tesler was a difficult, argumentative blocker and dinosaur at Yahoo! in the mid-2000s. The upper management there blew such massive opportunities, over and over and over again.
Simple, functional design. Obviously not...quite the intended use of the HTML table elements, but ah well, that era was fun. Tables and image maps and transparent GIFs!
No, no, no. Having to navigate back to look at the next section of relatively short text (i.e. browsing through the MIR modules) was a painful gimmick. It broke your flow and was generally annoying.
An image map at the top with paragraphs for each section below, and an in-line text link back to the image map would have sufficed. People were still figuring this stuff out at the time.
There was a great Money Stuff blurb about that w/r/t Adam Neumann. I can't find it to quote it directly, but the gist was that if you disabuse yourself of the notion that Neumann was playing a game of entrepreneurship and good-faith empire building, and instead conclude that the game he was playing was shameless capital extraction, every step and action he took suddenly makes sense.
The truly amazing thing, especially the second time around, are the supposedly sophisticated investors who fall for it. "Oh, he's learned his lesson -- he won't do it again!".
Some of those sophisticated investors are also engaged in shameless capital extraction. Their investment thesis is based on the "Greater Fool Theory": they're gambling that they can dump the inflated assets on another bag holder before it blows up.
> ...if you disabuse yourself of the notion that Neumann was playing a game of entrepreneurship and good-faith empire building, and instead conclude that the game he was playing was shameless capital extraction, every step and action he took suddenly makes sense.
Sort of. I get the capital extraction part, but you also need to be a good steward of capital and make a profitable business out of it. He failed badly at the later part, and his reputation is an obstacle for the former.
Not saying you are wrong, but if I am a "capital allocator" at a16z, he would be no-go.
IMO you're being unfair; he talked his way into getting paid half a billion dollars for wework, and he's now a billionaire. That's a massive success at capital extraction.
This is too cynical for even a turbo cynic like me.
Basically, you’re saying he mislead investors and got a bunch of money, so those investors see themselves being ripped off as a valuable skill, so they invest in him again. Wut?
I say again — why would investors trust him if his only track record is losing investor money?
I misinterpreted you; I was arguing that he's already succeeded completely, so it doesn't matter if anyone gives him more money.
But, IMO the reason they're still giving him more money is that they're stupid and greedy. They know WeWork was a disaster, but it was a huge disaster. That shows them he's good at running a con, and they want to get in on the next one.
Class solidarity doesn't hurt either. Being a billionaire makes him an actual person in the eyes of other rich people.
EDIT: Also, it's funny you used a16z as an example:
> Not saying you are wrong, but if I am a "capital allocator" at a16z, he would be no-go.
because Andreesen Horowitz are the ones investing in his new WeWork 2.0 startup Flow.
If you know he is good at duping investors then you know he is good at gaining investors, and if you think you will be able to well time your exit you will make a shit ton of money off the other investor's investment. Many investors are just straight up gamblers and risk is just part of the game.
Its like people who invest into a ponzi scheme knowing full well it is a ponzi scheme, just thinking they are smart enough to leave before it all comes crashing down. And once you get enough critical mass, other people will invest based entirely on the fact that there is a lot of other investors and a rising price.
Yeah, two easy fixes here: don't make the sidebar jump back to the top after loading a message, and sort by date. Otherwise I appreciate the view into this heartless sociopath's mind.
>Otherwise I appreciate the view into this heartless sociopath's mind.
I really don't think it's fair to characterize someone that way.
>>I've decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster. We typically manage out people who aren't meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we're going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle. This is going to be an intense year.
