EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
16hr ago
Yes but I think it's also pretty compelling to say that having a child has a larger overall impact on your life than going to war (assuming you survive). The unlucky, if you'll forgive me for being blunt, get lifelong PTSD, but the median soldier is able to readjust and have a normal life, whatever that means. Vets aren't usually defined by being veterans, but parents often are. Having a child is a fundamental and ongoing reshuffling of priorities, has a major and durable impact on finances and lifestyle, sense of self-identity, and more. This point is obviously abused by pro-choice people, but they aren't wrong exactly, assuming no adoption option.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
16hr ago
Obviously the classic liberal case for existential threats is pretty cogent - if elections in a democracy stop working then definitionally the democracy is under existential threat, this works out pretty cleanly. Let's set aside the accuracy of this claim for a second and just say that the claim itself makes total sense. What I'm having a bit of trouble fully articulating and maybe then you can help is what is the model for which Woke is existential in the other direction?
My understanding is something along the lines of "the Government Machinery will grind us into extinction via a thousand cuts if it remains subject to liberal institutional capture" but that's a bit of a vague claim with unclear mechanics, at least to me.
I mean yes, I agree and that's my point, I was just invoking the contemporary association of communes with purely left-wing establishments. A strong association as another commenter very clearly demonstrated. Obviously I made my point poorly or else you wouldn't be making this comment and I wouldn't be downvoted. Although I'm pretty sure most of the downvotes are a knee-jerk reaction because they read my comment on a surface level and went "he's booing me! downvote!!"
To be clear what I find hilarious is that many conservatives for many years mocked hippie communes as delusional and bad qua communes, not due to their inherent hippie-ness; thus the current crop of conservatives "inventing" the exact same thing and defending it as "totally not a commune, because communes are dirty liberal inventions". This is called hypocrisy.
More broadly this is because conservatives, if you'll permit me to speak broadly (especially Christian conservatives), wanted to dominate society entirely. Thus from a position of power, local enclaves are a threat or aberration. They now realize they can't (or rather, that they failed, or lost control, or however it's framed), and thus have conveniently changed the goal back to "let's dominate local communities instead" and local enclaves are back on the menu as something praiseworthy.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17hr ago
I specifically invoked the rich American history of pre-60s communes on purpose, so it's a bit entertaining to me that you seized on hippie nudist communes anyways. These communes don't always follow a neat left-right divide on that longer timescale. For example, I'm Mormon - early Mormon communities went through at least two separate phases of highly communitarian living in the 1830s and 1860s and also didn't neatly fall into a nice grouping (and obviously religion itself if not consistently right vs left coded historically). Again not all of them are going to be explicitly "we have common property" but developing a tight-knit smaller community that rejects popular standards in various ways inherently requires a high degree of local coordination that is often extremely similar. "Communitarianism" doesn't actually require common property.
For example right now there are a few strains of various types of this "commune" type thought:
-
You have eco-crazies, who try and find carbon neutral or negative ways to live in harmony with the land and sustainability
-
You have a strain of modern liberals who want to set up the kinds of super-walkable, livable utopic urban centers, some of which promote "cohousing" and might pool childcare, meals, tools, greenspace, etc.
-
You have a few offshoots of various Christian hospitality houses, halfway houses, charities, etc. which can in some cases form loose communitarian associations
-
You have deliberately "trad" Christian and other non-religious conservative communities that pool homeschooling, might generate a local mini-economy, and emphasize physical closeness, homogeneity, or even exclusiveness
-
You have associated prepper types who gather together for the obvious practical benefits of living off-grid but with a little bit of community redundancy
-
You have a few libertarian projects that are technically diametrically opposed to collectivism but for practical reasons find it helpful to cluster together in order to consistently enforce (or decline to enforce, lol) norms friendly to libertarianism
-
You have the liberal-ish (OK I think this is mostly libertarian but I think it draws from the slightly left-leaning crowd within them) aligned "startup cities" like Prospera in Honduras
-
Some more extreme versions of "polycules" start to look awfully familiar to a longer more historical kind of "free love" society, even if they are inherently smaller-scale
Donald Trump himself suggested selling private land to "Freedom Cities" that aren't necessarily communistic but fit the vibe of "designed community/society" which isn't far off, during the 2024 election.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17hr ago
It's an interesting parallel that Republicans might fall victim to very similar forces that have caused historical trouble for the Democrats, where excessive local party control hurts quality and responsiveness
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17hr ago
Interesting catch there with the turnout. I'll be very interested to see if the GOP essentially "wastes" its window of appeal to the youth which was much discussed in the last few years.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
17hr ago
A quick google was the source for the draft of 1863 yes, which was 3 years or the end of the war (whichever was first), which is obviously the right comparison because we're talking about a draft in the context of forcing men to do things against their will.
If you were a soldier in the North who signed up prior to the draft, it was highly dependent on when. Famously the first wave of volunteers only signed up for 90 days. And yes, many of them went home right after Bull Run when that expired and it became clear this might be bloody (which was a big issue). Pretty soon you could enlist for 3 years, standardized - which meant yes, you were stuck for 3 years (unless discharged) unless you were an officer who could technically resign a commission since you were not "enlisted" in the traditional sense. Still, this was a voluntary enlistment, not a draft, and "you can't leave the military once you join, at least for a while" is pretty normal historically, so I'm not ignoring them, they just aren't relevant to the point being made. Even then, it's notable that the enlistment duration was identical to the draft. If you signed up in 1861 and survived, you could go home in 1864, full stop (although of course, the army offered bounties and bonuses if you voluntarily re-enlisted). Sharp observers might notice that the draft was a thing right as the war was clearly ongoing for a while more and when the initial wave of 3-year enlistments running out would begin to be a concern - thus, a need for more men and obviously volunteers were largely tapped out by then.
The simple fact remains that the only post-WW2 era draft lasted 13 months which is orders of magnitude different from 18 years. Both are arguably full-time jobs.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I know this is a bit more off-topic, but it's been extremely hilarious to see various right-wing communities essentially suggest or re-invent the American left-wing commune (that actually has a very rich and deep history that doesn't even have much to do with communism exactly) from first principles. It's uncanny. Understandable, but still uncanny. I guess in some sense communitarian counterculture homesteading has intrinsic human appeal, but in another sense they don't spring up out of nowhere and so their presence I think usually says something about moral and socio-political climates, beyond just "horseshoe theory is correct".
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
But why now, when during Trump I and even the Biden Interregnum he was dealt quite a few defeats? I mean I'm well aware of what Trump means to the GOP and how he's exerted sustained pressure over the last decade but typically you'd at least expect recent events to provide more of a counterbalance, right?
Take Massie. His most notable stances are anti-Israel and holding administration feet to the fire about budgets and Epstein stuff. These are all issues where Republicans are, theoretically, quintessentially sympathetic (small government, anti-secret liberal cabals, non-interventionism). All of which are basically more popular now than any time in the past 10 years, right? Well, maybe not small-government spending priorities, but you get the idea.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I mean, generally speaking a child is an 18 year commitment (and socially this is not usually passed on to fathers); the most we asked from any drafted Vietnam soldier was what, a 13 month tour? Sure, WW2 if you were unlucky it was maybe 4 years at most, WWI was only like a year, and the Civil War was a 3 year commitment (which ended early). This is not a fair comparison at all and I cannot really get past that so I don't understand what use the rest of the conversation is. They also all involved a pretty serious national or international emergency.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
Can anyone explain to me this chain of Trump primary victories? Normally I find myself pretty in the loop and things make sense, but I'm having trouble here. Trump as we all know has approval ratings in the doldrums and that extends even to a decent amount of historical loyalist, electorally - recent surveys show his endorsement is a drag in general elections in battlefield states. He also has a mixed at best record of picking primary winners. Yet he's scored several notable wins recently.
He has endorsed former Texas AG Paxton (and dogged by significant simmering corruption allegations), endangering the Texas Senate seat and going against sitting incumbent Sen. Cornyn. His pick for Kentucky Senate seat won the primary despite opposition from both Rep. Massie and retiring incumbent Sen. McConnell (notably, opposite wings of the party despite being somewhat anti-Trump). Rep Massie himself, they are reporting, has lost a primary as well (the most expensive House primary in history, in fact, drawing both Trump and AIPAC opposition) despite drawing support from other somewhat Trump-skeptic but influential right-wingers such as Tucker Carlson, MTG, and Boebert. Trump-opposed incumbent Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy finished third and didn't even make the runoff. In Georgia, perennial enemy (of 2020 election fame) Brad Raffensperger lost the primary for governor. Trump even took out five state senators in Indiana merely over their refusal to jump in the redistricting fight!
So why amid generalized disaster is Trump scoring so many primary victories?
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I'll go a step further and confess what I likely never will overtly say IRL: I don't like dogs. I don't hate dogs, I tolerate them to some extent, but I think they are smelly and gross, generally parasitical on the finances of most owners, annoying to be around due to barking/leaping at you/bothering guests, enormously disruptive for personal travel and to a lesser extent daily routine that I think I would resent, their QoL is often quite poor, and although somewhat useful for generalized companionship/mindless adoration and they empirically seem to fill child-sized emotional holes in people with decent efficiency, I don't really think the comparison is fundamentally sound.
I have yet to find the right balance of bringing this up when dating as sadly all too many women my age are dog-crazy and frankly it is actually a deal-breaker to me. Call me selfish but I don't want to be eternally second fiddle.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
People are not in fact OK with the current method of "bribes" but more to the point I've literally never had a conversation about modern bribery in US politics that didn't end with someone conceding "oh yeah well actually those rules on the books actually make at least a half decent amount of sense". People's perception of how bribery works (even a good chunk of otherwise smart and informed people) almost always involves a pretty inaccurate mental model that doesn't represent the facts as we know them.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
everyone to the left of Le Pen considers themselves interchangeable
It's incredible to me that you can write this with (presumably) a straight face. Really? Really? The infamously prone to squabble center, left, and far left? Consider themselves interchangeable? What? I presume you're talking about the assassination attempt but I not only don't see what specifically you'd be referring to but also fail to see how this translates to "there is only pro- and anti-migration" as if the two things are directly linked.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
I mean, the Trump crypto scandal and conflict of interest web related to it alone dwarfs literally each and every similar corruption scandal of the Biden administration put together, just on the basis of plain facts of the people and timing involved...
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
It doesn’t seem like the security was bad but I did see reporting done that the security level for the event was not proportionate to the number of high level leaders there (President and VP and a number of Cabinet members) and so the claim that security wasn’t of the appropriate quality is almost certainly true (and admittedly so, according to the government’s own rules and policies for this sort of thing). So it’s hard to judge the execution itself other than to say that there’s clearly a planning weakness that we can clearly see across all three assassination attempts.
Not to take away from what are probably legitimate complaints about the modern day, but:
More realistically they were just inherently stupid to begin with, which is why they never got around to agriculture or more advanced social organization.
Historically this is pretty much straightforwardly false. Like almost as flagrantly false as you can get. A study of early human history is painfully clear that there is an immensely strong causal arrow from “excess food production” to advanced social organization and accelerated technological development.
Virtually every single modern scholar that I’m aware of seems to think that Australia is pretty much impossible for early human society to do any better. The soil quality is not good partially because of the geological history (no volcanoes or glaciers, bad phosphate content, etc), so you need artificial phosphate imports to boost food production (not a thing until like 1900ish). No domesticable beasts of burden, for plowing, or even for food. Native grains are shit. Rainfall patterns are laughably inconsistent.
Opinions can be debated about more broad topics but the quote in question is not an opinion, it is simply a false claim. There’s room for other HBD type arguments I suppose but even the anti-woke scholars will tell you that the Aborigines had hit pretty much a hard ceiling in civilizational development and it wasn’t their fault. You can correct me if I’m wrong but I’m pretty sure even the early settlers who brought all sorts of stuff with them had a shitty time at agriculture until they could mass import fertilizers and stuff of that nature.
Now, can culture be maladaptive still? Sure. Just because the Aborigines did all right optimizing for their shitty environment doesn’t mean that the society they formed was logical, just, or fair or anything like that. Cultural selection pressures are mostly survival-based.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
23d ago
Eh, partially but not entirely. For one, these Named technically have allegiance to the “Gods Above or Below”. So there’s a bit of divine pressure. In that sense Good is more “do what you are told” and Evil is more “spit in the eye of the heavens” (also tolerate dirty tricks and blackmail and stuff in combat for example) and so there’s technically a hard divide there and in terms of the Roles that arise (narratively self reinforcing too which is part of the point/problem). So evil and capital-E Evil in this setting are overlapping but distinct.
Also the Dread Empire still will do stuff like assassinations, collateral damage, even massacres, that kind of stuff, and to some extent the main character participates in that too; part of the broader setting, kind of cleverly, is that the Empire doesn’t have good farmland or rather, much of their land is ruined, so they turn to massive blood and sacrifice rituals to magically sustain crop output and avoid starvation (and invasions of course for food plunder). There’s some plot threads that try to connect the macroeconomics to the political conflicts IIRC. The predominant human ethnic group in the Empire (there are several) have a culture of backstabbing and poisoning and such. Did I also mention that despite having many more mages, they deal in necromancy and diabolism as very prominent magical disciplines?
With that said yes, the whole overall arc of the series is an attempt towards pragmatism on the side of Evil but also seeing if Good can work together with them sometimes or even come to a kind of accord rather than be a constant kill on sight cycle of violence. And a central tension is in order to get that, you have to gain raw power first, but not so much that a better future becomes impossible. But it’s a series with several books so we see some variety and detail come out over time.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
I don't really see what you describe seeing. I see some jokes about Patel, some commentary about increasing apathy around assassination attempts on Trump, a few threads related to today's news cycle that insult Trump or call him a pedophile, a few left-wing conspiracy theories (par for the course for assassinations + people ignorant of Halon's Razor), a bit of "if so many people want to kill him there must be a reason", a fair amount of criticism about Trump using it to promote his WH ballroom project, none of which I would characterize as "celebration".
Especially given that it's hard to take the assassination attempt seriously qua assassination attempt given how obviously idiotic the attempt was.
I think all the discussion about an identity-based lens downthread is extremely misguided. This is more neutral life crisis, I would argue. So the guy, clearly fairly smart, graduates CalTech in 2017 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Seems like he works for a bit over a year, then I assume is laid off or maybe he absolutely hated it, in the two months after he tries to work on an indie game, publishes one crappy Flash-era looking game that got probably double-digit sales at most (2 reviews on Steam in 6 years before the shooting led to a handful more sales), goes quiet and probably lives on savings for a bit, at some point I think moves home, eventually after a year or two picks up tutoring as a part-time gig for a few years. Highly likely here, reading between the lines, he gets some FOMO and feels in a dead end career-wise, goes back to school for a CS master's degree, then doesn't get a job in the big slump right as he graduates. He's Christian, probably somewhat typical left-leaning politics, by all accounts fairly mild-mannered, and like many Californians including Christians really dislikes Trump and his movement on a moral basis. Weirdly, he seems to like Kash Patel as the one exception (didn't include on list of targets). Moral enough to not target bystanders, but morally misguided enough to still commit murder despite Christianity being pretty clear about how that's bad.
This describes a fair amount of people, including actually myself to a loose extent biographically/politically speaking (if you squint a bit, but not too too hard). More specifically to him, smart enough to realize that political assassinations do have some kind of national political impact, not smart enough to realize these impacts are almost impossible to predict and often are counterproductive, smart enough to get guns and go cross-country without getting caught, but not smart enough to actually plan almost anything meaningful (though to be fair this at least partially checks out, since as we know being too detailed in your planning raises the chances of getting caught before you go, so it's not 100% stupid). If you wanna kill administration officials, usually you would have to limit yourself to 1 official at a smaller event to have a decent chance, so I assume this is an overambitious plan here. Clearly he didn't expect to live. I assume poor tactical awareness.
To circle back briefly and reiterate, it's not that political assassinations "don't work" it's that they don't consistently work in the ways shooters want them to. Often a stupid idea.
This doesn't tell us much other than the memetic influence of copycat shootings is starting to spread to more 'normie' people who aren't extremely mentally ill ('only' depression or similar here doesn't count). If history is any guide we'll see a few more assassination attempts of various types for the next 5-8 ish years and then it will slowly fade again, again purely based on the epidemiological-like traits the spread of acts like these are well documented to have (think for example certain modes of domestic terrorism over the years). I think this also slightly re-contextualizes a few of the incidents of violence like the Kirk shooter or Luigi Mangione as potentially less identity-based than initially suspected, when viewed in context, although the sequential nature of the memetic spread of this kind of political violence makes it hard to be super sure about that. I think it's a mistake to view these through primarily identity-based lenses, because memetic spread of this kind of thing naturally travels in subgroups but doesn't inherently correspond to groups themselves. Frankly I think nearly any loose political grouping is susceptible to this kind of thing, so the recurring "the lefties do this more" or "the righties do this more" that both left and right are constantly obsessed with in the last decade in particular is just a stupid argument.
If there IS a culture war angle to this? It's more about how fulfilling men in modern society seem to find life. That is, not very fulfilling, especially when you encounter job, social, or severe mental difficulties in the 15-35 age range or so. If this guy had more to live for, this kind of thing doesn't happen. At least that's my take.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
Nike is much better at marketing than Adidas, that's pretty much it. Also I think most people don't actually care about the nitpicky rules and so the barrier was already broken, does breaking it a second time "but actually" really say anything new? However, marketing can only get you so far and Nike should be worried overall about losing such a large part of the running market, there's a reason the stock price is in the dumpster. Arguably, however, this isn't really a technology problem so much as an execution problem; Nike's loss in market share isn't really because rivals invented something Nike didn't, but rather Nike's shoes haven't had the right mix of quality control, durability, and comfort that hobby-runners and semi-pros want.
Somewhat recently I finished the series A Practical Guide to Evil. Pretty fun. I wish I had time to put it into better detail, but the world and setup is interesting. It's a sort of fantasy-with-superpowers type world? I don't know if I've really seen a book do it quite this way, however. The core concept is that "character archetypes" called "Named" periodically form in the world and with powers to match. For example, there's a Black Knight that shows up every few decades in the Evil-aligned nations, and a Paladin or whatnot who will show up in a Good-aligned nation. Roles can and do evolve if you survive long enough and are successful (e.g. you might start as a Squire and later evolve to e.g. a Mirror Knight). They have 3 limited-use (recharging) powers that are partly personal partly role-based. Fights between them tend to loosely follow some meta-narrative type rules, like starting a 'Rule of Three' set of conflicts between two rivals, or how Parties of Five tend to naturally form and are more powerful. It's a typical fantasy world (magic, nonhuman races, vaguely medieval) but with better than average worldbuilding IMO. The Evil-aligned empire on the continent exploits Orcs and Goblins to fight in their armies. You get periodic crusades against them, and periodic bouts of world-conquering too.
The context for the books however is that the main character is born and orphan in a middle, traditionally Good-aligned kingdom that usually gets the worst end of the stick when the Good nation of city-states to their West and the Empire to their East rampage all over their land. She is recruited as an Evil Squire, at first, to the Black Knight. However, said Black Knight and the Empress have conspired to "break" the typical cycle of Good vs Evil. They carefully try to avoid narrative traps in their fighting, stamp out Good heroes before they can get enough experience to start winning, treat the conquered middle Good nation abnormally well with expanded autonomy and economic prosperity, and develop the Empire's army into a more egalitarian and deadly fighting force, with expanded rights for nonhumans. This means that the MC's home nation is slowly turning... Evil! Mostly. But "Evil" in a, well, "practical" way as the title suggests. The idea is to be juuuust not-Evil and competent enough to prevent Fate spawning too many Good heroes from ruining everything. In their eyes, Good are jerks who are overly rigid in their thinking, while Evil has the potential to be pragmatic and level-headed about the greater good, paired with a resentment that narrative usually blindly favors the Good. Throughout the series the main character slowly adopts more and more of this attitude, but also tries to look out for her home nation and eventually grows quite powerful both personally and politically.
There is some character stuff of course, starting a bit tropey but gaining depth as you go on, some inventive fights (the main character often has to resort to tricks and cunning to win against the often narratively stronger Good heroes), and a surprising amount of politics and political maneuvering. And yes, the meta-narrative impact on fights is pretty interesting to see, especially among the more-experienced Named. You might get a hero who deliberately sets up a noble sacrifice as a giant fake-out, or deliberately as part of their fight strategy sending someone to wander around and thus rely on divine providence to guide them to the exact right spot, or a villain who tries to avoid their monologuing tendencies which inevitable backfire, but sometimes leaning into As the series expands you do eventually visit most parts of the continent, other nations' politics and alliances often become highly relevant. You've got a surprisingly deep and fleshed-out history of the nations involved. Which I've always really appreciated in series, like for example Wheel of Time was great in part because you ended up actually using the map over the course of the series with a nice sense of scale. A fair amount of the series is mostly war-stuff, though, which you either love or hate.
And you've got some comedy too. There's a city-state to the south that is an exaggerated democracy, where everything is put to a vote and the bureaucracy is intense and they almost never agree to do anything, but also has secret police who are constantly trying to guard against Tyranny. We get periodic epigraphs from some of the Named former Emperors, from Emperor Irritant, the Oddly Successful (the best unexpected quotes), Emperor Traitorous (infamous for several quadruple-crosses and such), etc. that occasionally give Hitchhiker's Guide vibes. Anyways, it's originally a web serial and that shows at times but nonetheless was a very fun read if pulp fantasy is your jam.
As an aside, in the original serialization, this world does apparently have a reason that the world is stuck at a certain technological level. Apparently there is a race of "gnomes" which are implied to be super-advanced, flying or space-faring or something, that will deliver a warning if an invention happens or line of research is pursued they don't want. If the warning is ignored they basically nuke the city from orbit. Is this elaborated on anywhere else in the novel aside from a few random mentions? No. They in no way affect the plot. I guess that's one way to set up a fantasy world's tech level... (IIRC in the published, edited novelization which is in progress, the second of ~6 currently about to come out, which I do recommend as an improvement over the original, this idea was dropped in favor of some kind of Fate hand-wavy thing, but IMO the gnomes are more funny)
Haven't really tried the other two much myself, high costs kinda scare me off where I find it hard to believe the value is there for my use case, but I'm looking quite closely at Deepseek V4 Flash specifically, because the cost-to-performance seems to be pretty insane.
I mean, the official API price is $0.0028 per million input (cached), $0.14 (cache miss), $0.28 per million output. Has a 1M context window, and per OpenRouter, because their stats have above a 90% cache hit rate, this means the effective weighted price per million input is only $0.015 per million. That's really crazy. I need to test a bit more to figure out where I'd place the intelligence exactly, but...
NONE of the current frontier 'cost-efficient' models come even remotely close to that. For comparison Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is 0.25/1.50 input/output per 1M, Gemini 3 Flash is 0.50/3.00, GPT 5.4 Nano is 0.20/1.25, GPT 5.4 Mini is 0.75/1=4.50, Claude Haiku 4.5 is 1.00/5.00. Sure, it's not as good at coding as Gemini Flash, allegedly, but also allegedly it's better at agentic workflows. Those are some pretty significant gaps, approaching an order of magnitude in some cases.
So yeah, Pro is also very cheap and that might make some waves, but contextually Flash is SUPER cheap. Like, obscenely so.
This to me is a big deal because part of what makes AI so compelling is the cost/benefit ratio. With a model like V4 Flash, especially input-heavy workflows, there are plenty of scenarios where it's literally cheaper to throw 5 different approaches at the wall and pick the best than to make a single attempt with a model that's just a hair smarter. We'll see how well it does when encountering actual codebases and such, but I find that it might potentially enable a slightly different type and set of workflows than we're used to.
It's hard to say for sure these days because especially with agentic coding the harnesses are so important (and often what works for certain setups doesn't transfer that well, including across generations of models). I'm curious if someone will figure out a good way to leverage this new cost-benefit balance, because it potentially changes e.g. how you might spin up subagents quite a bit. Although possibly as I mentioned the model is just a bit too stupid to do a large enough range of useful work. We'll see, gotta figure out how much is benchmaxxing vs inherent quality.
At the same time, the Claude shift in tokenizer probably long-term helps efficiency and intelligence, but short term you're looking at a 10-30% flat increase in costs on higher token costs alone, before you get into the token efficiency of the models themselves, at least per the numbers I was looking at initially.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
24d ago
It seems to me that internships with placement opportunities not only signal "I'm aiming for a higher job" but are also harder to get relative to full-time IT support type positions. So not only is the opportunity cost higher if you were to not go with the internship, but the signals align with what you likely want for your career. I'd go with the internship unless the finances don't allow it. Sure, it sucks to then go around and job-hunt a second time, but there's nothing stopping you from job-hunting a bit again especially towards the end of the internship (plus if you find another opportunity, it also inflates your value a bit if they want to bid to keep you).
Although where exactly you are education/career-wise might matter a bit. The one caveat here is how good the reputation of the internship company is. 17 seems pretty low, so I'd wonder if that stinginess extends to the rest of their org.
Just my 2 cents, gut reaction
As someone with mild technocratic leanings, I think there's a pretty good case to be made that establishment figures do "do things", but the timescales of these actions don't fit with what the populace idealizes them to be. Trump is in this sense accurately depicted as a monkey who wants what he wants right now, and commits stupid mistakes due to this impatience, which is not a virtue but a weakness. And catnip to GOP voters, I think, that they will regret. Most politicians aren't willing to make stupid decisions for temporary electoral success and that's a good thing.
As an example, inflation and housing costs which you brought up. These things very patently cannot be driven down by quick actions, try as you might. One of the most effective tools according to many is zoning policy, and zoning policy has a very strong inbuilt "lag" in how it affects things. For example, a bureaucrat in Florida where I used to live made a law that any apartment building over 3 stories must have an elevator. Notably, any apartment building two stories or less also doesn't require fancy fire-suppression systems. Small rules! Not one that the electorate notice! But fast-forward a decade or two and there is a very characteristic and specific mix and ratio of designs and setups for 2- and 3-story apartment buildings that anyone will notice and has a massive impact you cannot possibly understate on housing affordability and living patterns.
As a trivial and overdone example but one that is nonetheless true, Trump has probably singlehandedly and directly contributed to inflation I suspect on a similar order as the first Covid bailout bill simply due to rising gas prices and their knock-on effects attributable to his Iran adventure. If this is "doing things" I don't want it and I suspect the general populace won't either. I absolutely hate the popular idea of "low-information voters" (I think people are way smarter than they are given credit for even if some of this processing is subconscious and shows up in aggregate only) but in this limited sense I kind of do think it applies to GOP primary voters who are temporarily and aberrantly distracted by shiny "does things" that they might not (yet) realize the backside of it.
Maybe I'm provably wrong here but the upshot of the comments here seems to me to be something along those lines. I guess a somewhat testable point is maybe the next cycle of primaries in 2 years, if not the current generals, but we'll see.
More options
Context Copy link