Moving past the humble brag
Hah, sorry. I guess it is a humble brag, but I think I meant it to be more self deprecating, like how could I have done as well as I have given I have no tolerance for or understanding of company politics. There's a lot of politics going on around me, and I mostly ignore it, somehow.
I'd go on for 3 paragraphs if you're interested
Definitely interested, I'd love to understand anything about this more than I do.
but really it's not a mystery why the board doesn't tank the stock on the off chance the principle survives
Doesn't the stock still tank one week later? And doesn't that make every person on the board (or at least the head of the board) unaccountable and stupid, that they said one thing and reversed so quickly? Couldn't they just say nothing in the meantime instead?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
To press on this further, it just seems strange to me. But I am someone who (despite my years and success in big tech) considers himself to be organizationally illiterate. I get by without thinking deeply about organizational politics for the most part.
Some specific questions: Why would a board make such a statement, if they're just going to retract their support in a week? Do individuals lack foresight? Or are they pressured to do it by someone? If so, who? Are there times when boards make these statements and actually mean it?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
“woe to him who has the full backing of the board—he is a dead man walking.”
I'm not sure I really understand this. Can you explain it?
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Thanks!
haroldbkny
5mo ago
One thing here might be whether carpenter and receptionists' lifestyles were borne out of them actually wanting to live that way, or rather borne out of necessity. If you get knocked up at 17 that leads into a life where you have a kid, and more come due to the first one effectively cutting off other choices in your life. And you don't have any choice of how to raise them, you basically have to do it the way you described them doing it. But is she as happy as she'd be be if she didn't get pregnant and lead that life out of necessity? And even if she is happy, would she choose those choices again, if she had the choice? It sounds like a tough life.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
People have roughly alluded to related concepts, but I'm surprised no one explicitly mentioned the Chinese Robber Fallacy. That's what I think it is.
Edit: I see someone posted that 30 minutes ago, between when I loaded the thread and commented.
haroldbkny
5mo ago
Quite frankly, it seems to be such low hanging fruit, I'm really surprised I never saw anyone saying this about Trump, Bush, Cheney, Romney or any other undesirable before now.
haroldbkny
10mo ago
But that's the thing, I don't really see those anymore. I think the median Dem learned a lesson, maybe. But I'm not too hopeful
haroldbkny
10mo ago
Since typical bras accentuate and highlight breasts, rather than minimize them
Hard disagree, here. IME, bras standardize the form of breasts under the shirt, thus drawing attention away from them, by making them more uniform. They also hold them in place and tuck them away, once again drawing attention away.
Note that I'm excluding push-up bras from this category, since those are the case where they unequivocally exist solely to accentuate and highlight breasts. But they're also not the norm.
I have no clue what I'm talking about with this stuff, I've never been attacked or felt particularly unsafe where I live. If I'd been attacked multiple times, I'd probably move away, start carrying mace, find different routes to take, start driving instead of walking, start walking around in groups for safety, idk.
I assume you've spoken with the police about it and they told you they can't do anything? If you want to try to change your neighborhood instead of just changing your habits, maybe I'd start by finding out about existing town halls, and see if anything is already being done about it. Do you sense other people have been impacted like you have? If nothing is already being done, then speak at your town hall and try to show people this is a big problem. Try to make some sort of council through your town hall that can make suggestions to the police about where they should be policing. Or maybe start a neighborhood watch? If none of that works, then find some other people who have been affected as you have and start a viral campaign to showcase the problem and try to humiliate the local police, show everyone they're not doing their jobs and normal people are suffering.
I don't think anyone would actually recommend going Charles Bronson on them.
haroldbkny
4d ago
Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton
How did this case come about to begin with? Is Texas just requiring the same sort of "age verification" that's existed since the 90s (the website says are you 18 and you click yes)? If so, how was it possibly worthwhile for FSC to sue over that?
haroldbkny
16d ago
Not sure I understand what you mean. Or maybe you misunderstood what I meant. I didn't mean, like, the chance of getting laid with a new partner is slim, I haven't had to deal with that for decades either. I just meant that your sense of how hot the sex is (which to me makes a big difference in how pleasurable the sex actually is) is entirely dependent on the other person and potentially conflicting desires or awkward interactions. As opposed to how you can just find porn exactly as you want it at the click of a button.
Oh, I guess that makes sense. Do doctors work their asses off in the UK like they do in the US? Whenever I talk to my doctor friends, their lives sound miserable, almost like they're being hazed by a fraternity for years on end. I don't personally know anyone who became a doctor who wasn't pushed into it by strong family expectations.
haroldbkny
4mo ago
I don't think it's conclusive that nothing has passed the test before, because I don't think the test is necessarily set in stone. There are variations, and I think it's been romanticized enough that people have moved the goalposts for the test as we progress. I mean some people could be fooled while others are not. Eugene Goostman is another one from 2014 that is said to have passed the test.
haroldbkny
8mo ago
Meanwhile, I'm just trying to prepare myself for how much worse things are going to get under the inevitable eight years of Harris
Why do you feel it's inevitable?
haroldbkny
10mo ago
I'd agree with that. But I don't think he seems right wing. He is always talking about how much he loves the Star Trek next gen liberal "positive future" values. There's a lot of progressivism that is kinda baked into that worldview.
haroldbkny
10mo ago
and I'm not convinced they do anything to promote modesty at least for those of us whose nipples scream "fed babies!
Can you elaborate on this more? Why does the state of your nipples have anything to do with whether or not bras are related to modesty? I'm not sure I'm following there.
I'm not a woman, but I have spoken about bras with my woman friends. A common theme I have heard from them is that when they were given a talk by their moms about why they should wear bras, modesty was brought up. I could see this being true. After all, it conceals more of the form, leaves more to the imagination, makes them less "in your face".
Hell, don't take it from me. Seinfeld had a character who's entire schtick was that she didn't wear a bra and as a result ends up stealing Elaine's boyfriend and perpetually attracts attention to herself, bugging the hell out of Elaine.
haroldbkny
11mo ago
Good point. I worry that this incident is going to end up like the Harambee incident, where everyone and their mother suddenly claimed to be experts on gorilla behavior and have very clear understanding of the precise limits of a gorilla's strength within a day of the event happening.
haroldbkny
2mo ago
Who uses the gender of their baby/toddler to decide what bathroom to take their baby/toddler to change in?
I do. Or rather, I don't let there only being a women's room available stop me if need to change my daughter.
Well, maybe. But here's how they might know:
- They could have entered rooms where men use urinals, whether to change their baby boys, or if it's gender neutral, or if there's no other restroom
- They could have a sense of physics, based on knowing how flys work, and envisioning how far men's penises need to stick out of the fly to pee, and picturing the angles you'd need to be at in order to get a glimpse
- They could know that many (most?) men have a certain homophobia, and wouldn't use urinals if they felt like they and other men were mutually exposed
haroldbkny
4mo ago
You know, I've always wanted to learn how hackers do what they do. I don't think I would be able to actually use those skills for material ends, because I consider myself a moral person, but I just love learning about how things are done, and I love amassing "super power" skills. Maybe even save the skill for one day, if I wanted to exact revenge on a company or person that I feel had wronged me or something.
But I don't even know where to go to learn how to do this kind of thing. I'm probably just naive. I have learned all about how to prevent hacking attacks, but I've never found a course or instruction manual that says "here's how you can spy on someone else's email" or "use this program to access files on someone else's machine". I suspect one problem is that a lot of hacking is actually just social engineering, which I find super boring and a non-starter for learning to hack.
So, is it possible that there aren't enough hackers because it's not the sort of thing that you can learn easily, and you have to roll your own everything in order to do it?
The idea that regulation grows to meet state capacity should be taken a lot more seriously than it is here, and so is the idea that bureaucrats aren't all good faith actors.
That might not be incompatible with what Scott says. If read in a certain way (I'm not sure he's actually trying to say this), one could come to the conclusion that adding more bureaucrats will result in more red tape being unnecessarily made, but that once it's there, cutting bureaucrats won't get rid of it easily. The red tape is now in place and can be abused across bureaucracies. Once the legal bureaucracy is in place to sue over various things, then that can be used easily by remaining bureaucrats to be targeted in suing any other bureaucracies that don't have the resources to preemptively protect themselves.
Maybe on some level, we can think of this like the arguments that gun control won't work in the US, because guns are already too ubiquitous here. Trying to remove them all will just result in the people who don't comply having undue power.
haroldbkny
7mo ago
This change is really weird to me, as someone from the heart of “you guys” territory. I had a lot of progressive friends in school who always said “you guys.” They didn’t think of it, it was just what people said, not something anyone needed to police.
Yeah, I don't think it's universally agreed upon. Some left-leaning people are okay with "you guys", and some think it's another example that is masculine-normative, that's excluding women. From what I've seen, I guess I see hardcore leftist-of-the-left radical feminists be most against it in terms of calling people out, followed by the older token progressives who are looking for a way to contribute and/or signal their allegiance and/or keep the eye off Sauron off themselves. Like, advocating against "you guys" is the sort of thing that I've seen corporate boards and their lackeys do and recommend. It's enough to scare me, though, so I end up being a lackey, too, in the interests of not letting anything get between me and my ability to provide for my family.
haroldbkny
8mo ago
Yet is there any doubt that if Hirst had released these paintings as a collection of PNG files, nobody would have been impressed?
I would agree with you except one thing... What about NFTs?
Cool, I've got a few more questions.
I mean, to some extent. There are of course local maxima, and they may be maximizing over the next week. But what about beyond that? The head of that board that releases that statement looks unaccountable and stupid, which should, in theory, reduce others' ability to trust him in future years. Whereas by staying silent, he gets no such potential reputational damage.
If you told me that all boards don't really look beyond 1 week in the future, well, I don't have evidence to contradict you, because in my personal experience, the ones I've worked with have been very short-sighted. However, I would have hoped that there are at least some (hopefully more than just some) organizations that actually think about things on a longer-term scale.
Meanwhile, looking at it the other way, what would happen if a board made no such statement when there's a dead man walking? Does their statement do anything to actually help the situation? By keeping their mouths shut, would they get the best of both worlds, assuming the stock doesn't immediately tank just because they failed to make a statement that they don't actually believe anyway.
Also, talking about Cheatle, I don't think there's any stock involved, so what's at stake for the Secretary of Homeland Security to keep his mouth shut instead of endorsing her?
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