Mark McBride

Lmao any time this administration puts together an "oversight" committee, or "brings together executives and government officials" you can tell they just figured out how to shake down the thing being overseen.

re: that bell curve post. A good chunk of adulthood has been trying to unwind my conservative/protestant/success-theology-adjacent upbringing.

And I think there are two ways to internalize that if you spend more time in the tech casino. 1. You realize the world isn't just, we're all humans, we should treat each other as such. 2. You spend all of your time and energy trying to construct a narrative in which you are the deserving hero.

re: that bell curve post. A good chunk of adulthood has been trying to unwind my conservative/protestant/success-theology-adjacent upbringing.

And if you step back from the religious aspects of it, there's this deep need to believe that the things I have, I obtained fairly, in a world that, if not just, at least has logical rules you can point to and explain, with no malice, "this is why I have, and this is why they don't"

re: that bell curve post. A good chunk of adulthood has been trying to unwind my conservative/protestant/success-theology-adjacent upbringing.

Gonna bump this again with some commentary. This is the same robotics organization (www.firstinspires.org) my kids are in. It has been an unbelievably positive experience for them. It offers the best aspects of team sports, in a structure that promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Worlds is an amazing event. Over 600 teams from around the world. We went last year, and the global representation was really inspiring. Teams packing up their robot in suitcases to haul them from Australia. Super high energy teams from Mexico. And throughout all of this, everybody happy to share.

Gonna bump this again with some commentary. This is the same robotics organization (www.firstinspires.org) my kids are in. It has been an unbelievably positive experience for them. It offers the best aspects of team sports, in a structure that promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Competitions are largely about seeing how your robot stacks up against others. But it's also about meeting other teams, sharing notes and getting advice from people from other places. California is a bubble for sure, but talking to kids from Madera when you're from Palo Alto expands your horizons.

I grew up working in small orchard country (mostly, also rice). Most places were family owned, "small business". But they hired armies of seasonal labor to actually do the harvesting, and the fact that the management class is a "family" doesn't change the fact that they're capital exploiting labor.

People (especially Californians in SF) don't think of it as an agricultural state. You think Illinois or whatever. But California produces half the nation's good shit (not corn or soy), and the geography of the Central Valley is globally unique. Every new housing development on that soil hurts.

I grew up working in small orchard country (mostly, also rice). Most places were family owned, "small business". But they hired armies of seasonal labor to actually do the harvesting, and the fact that the management class is a "family" doesn't change the fact that they're capital exploiting labor.

The more I hear about the Block layoffs, the more gross it all is. Not just a gross action, but managed gortesquely. Having dealt with Jack at Twitter, he has been playing dress up trying to ape visionaries for 20 years, with a strong dash of Chance the Gardner.