Rob Shearer

Rob Shearer

@r.v.cx

Pretty sure I’m right about: - RFC 3339 dates - ISO 216 paper sizes - Fahrenheit weather temperatures - Dot-grid paper - End-to-end encryption - Software engineering being about collaboration costs Less confident about the rest. https://linktr.ee/rvcx

682 followers 59 following12.7K posts

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If the GOP really wanted to disincentivize mail-in voting they’d relentlessly highlight how you don’t get a sticker.

MAGA fully conflating populism with ignorance is genuinely depressing. The French and Russian revolutions were both populist (admittedly in a pre-modern sense), but they also carried a high-minded intellectual brand MAGA lacks.

Daniel Drezner@dandrezner.bsky.social

Oh, FFS, he's a Yale Law School graduate, he's visited the region multiple times, and he's met with dignitaries from there. Spare me the faux populism.

(It pains me to admit that, because I think both Marxism and the metric system are paragons of intellectualism gone wrong. That’s right: my problem with the French Revolution is the metric system.)

The absolute most depressing aspect of current right wing politics is how many normies hear “the richest man in the world needs *your* money to help him” and open their wallets.

Boo!-per Lund@cooperlund.online

Who do I give to to get this in front of as many Michigan voters as possible?

You know which Americans do win those prizes? Immigrants. You know what institutions enable that? Universities. You're on the side of the barbarians, MAGA.

The Bulwark@thebulwark.com

RFK: "There's five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don't produce science. They don't win the Nobel Prize. They don't win the Fields Prize. They don't win the Wolf Prize. They don't produce literature."

You can argue the distinctions don’t matter, but it seems relevant that Larry Page was an actually-smart grad student who turned real research into a trillion-dollar company, while Musk was a middling student who couldn’t cut grad school and made a career of stealing credit from actual researchers.

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social

Left unmentioned is that this was a philosophical argument they got into at a party, probably on a lot of drugs, in which Page made Musk look dumb and then Musk got all mad about it. These are less serious people than the text would lead you to believe.

Again: the AI space is absolutely dominated by bros deeply insecure about their own intelligence who can achieve no greater validation than putting their intellectual superiors out of work.

Rob Shearer reposted

@davekarpf.bsky.social

Replying to @davekarpf.bsky.social

Left unmentioned is that this was a philosophical argument they got into at a party, probably on a lot of drugs, in which Page made Musk look dumb and then Musk got all mad about it. These are less serious people than the text would lead you to believe.

The “writing is overrated” argument has always struck me as exactly as well-informed as modern homesteading. I get the appeal of the utopian fantasy you’re selling. It is completely out of touch with not just the lives people actually live, but with the lives they *want* to live.

Sonja Drimmer@sonjadrimmer.bsky.social

But to then make the leap to say that now, in the US in 2026, writing in university is overrated is such an ahistorical disavowal of the politics of technology that one just has to think “you made that argument about valuing orality over writing because it seemed clever.”

There certainly are people who would be happiest spending all their waking hours growing a subsistence crop and sewing their own clothes, just as there are those willing to confine their intellectual life to a salon of their neighbors. Those people are deeply, deeply weird.

The entire incel-manosphere-MAGA coalition is motivated primarily by pathological sexual insecurity.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

JD Vance: "We're self-confident men in the Trump/Vance administration. The president has been noticing a lot about the physiques of everybody lately"

It’s notable that WNBA finals games (so far) have gotten roughly the same ratings (1-2 million viewers) as marquee regular-season games. It really seems like the WNBA has a lot of the same dynamics as minor-league baseball: a fun environment full of attendees not terribly invested in who wins.

Alexa Philippou@alexaphilippou.bsky.social

BREAKING: Game 6 of the WNBA Finals will be held Thursday at 12:30pm ET at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, sources told ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne. It will be a double-header with the Atlanta Hawks’ game, which will be moved to 8pm.

(Very open to anyone with more reliable ratings data; I just did a few web searches but for all I know the consistent reports were just because they were copying each others’ bogus data.)

I like this framing, because it also captures the “let’s punish Dems who aren’t sufficiently Left” dynamic. Folks you’re the fucking problem not just until the election, not just until a 2028 trifecta, but until after SCOTUS reform and DC/PR statehood and and and. That sucks, but it’s where we are.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

Yes: everyone was preparing how to manage the aftermath of the war they very much weren’t winning.

That is not at all saying that we can’t do other leftie things between now and then! But “punish Dems in swing districts” is so absurdly counter-productive I have trouble accepting that it’s anything more than (destructive; consequential) social media posturing.

Dave Karpf and I tend to do a lot of the same hate-reads, but I’ve got to say I see no appeal at all to *this* kind of book: second-hand sanewashing by a a non-journalist whose entire career is shameless hyping of society-destroying scams.

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social

Once more unto the breach

I think my distaste is colored by just how much overlap I have with Roose. I admire the cleverness of blockchain and remain obsessed with the question of whether there are any useful applications. (So far: no.) Similarly, what modern AI is good for is the defining question of the century…

…so I am deeply, deeply annoyed by someone who devotes their life to exactly those questions, only to constantly tout obviously-wrong answers to them. And then never reflects on how and why those answers were wrong. He does anti-journalism: obscuring instead of providing clarity.

The biggest tension in Mr Rogers’ “you’re special” message is the gap between “every individual has value” (good) and “you alone have value that others lack” (bad). The trap with “what’s unique about []?” is that it’s mostly about indicting everyone else. You don’t need to be unique to have value.

Rob Shearer@r.v.cx

I agree with all the commentary on this, while also remaining convinced that pretty much nobody can answer “what’s unique about you?” in a non-embarrassing manner. I roll my eyes at any question with “you’re special” as an implicit premise.

To anyone dragging their feet: it’s kind of shocking how much less of a psychic toll the relentless election coverage takes when you’ve already cast your own ballot.

Michael McDonald@electproject.bsky.social

#earlyvote morning update 10/26: at least 29 million people have voted in the 2026 general election 🥳 election.lab.ufl.edu/early-vote/2...

election.lab.ufl.eduUF Election Lab: 2026 General Election Early Vote StatisticsLive national and state-by-state early voting statistics for the 2026 general election.

I’m never going to like Hochul after she needed to be dragged kicking and screaming to the single best NY policy in decades (the congestion charge)…but I wish we had more Dems willing to reject union attempts to make government the stagnant, bloated bureaucracy Republicans claim it is.

Sam@samd.bsky.social

TWU be like “Hochul is MAGA because she doesn’t support our MAGA union” in reality, they’re just mad at Hochul because she refused to expand the union’s expensive handouts and make-work jobs funded with taxpayer $$

This is clearly not as *personally* insulting as “no federal funds for trans-specific treatments”, but within its own hypothetical it does literally kill children. And yet I’m enough of a grownup to know that voting for this guy is better for gun control than voting for his GOP opponent.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social

Getting to Golden's right on guns ... interesting

I’ve been assured by the libs of Bluesky that these people were fools, and electing Flavio would have really taught Lula supporters a lesson. Which is more valuable than winning.

Robert Evans (the Only Robert Evans)@iwriteok.bsky.social

So Lula not only won, he basically doubled his margin of victory from 2022. I'm guessing he won thanks to voters who didn't love him, but were terrified to see Flavio given near-dictatorial power. It's going to be a messy next chapter for Brazil, but at least it'll be a fight, not a curb-stomping.

The 538-ing of election coverage gets a lot of shit, but the pre-538 vibes coverage was worse and the post-538 markets-based coverage is *much* worse. It turns out that if you want to know who will win an election, the mature discipline devoted to that is the best option.

G Elliott Morris@gelliottmorris.com

Brazil elected Lula again tonight. Poll averages appear to have had Lula and Flávio Bolsonaro effectively tied, maybe Bolsonaro up 1 on Lula — so not sure why the markets had this race at 80-20 Bolsonaro. Markets might miss big in the U.S. midterms in 9 days too.

(Of course I’m sure by 2028 half the coverage will be “ChatGPT now predicts Don Jr to win in a landslide…”)

Rob Shearer reposted

Michael Ian Black

@michaelianblack.bsky.social

Jon Husted played for a Division III school.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump is now claiming that Jon Husted is one of the greatest football players ever

Bluesky can make you think that all trans people are incapable of electoral arithmetic. But that’s really just one case of the many, many liberal activist-martyrs who very openly root for noble defeats that won’t force them to change anything about their posturing. Governance would take thought.

Matthew Yglesias @mattyglesias.bsky.social

I haven't studied Kaptur's race closely, but I've been following Iowa and Turek winning seems pretty clearly better for trans rights.

Nobody’s more demeaning to Trump voters than Republicans. “I bet when you think ‘fancy restaurant’ you think of the Cheesecake Factory!” is a dis. It is *fine* for TCF, or TGI Friday’s, or Olive Garden to be your go-to “let’s celebrate” place. Nobody thinks they are the candlelit French place on TV.

James Hell Brooks@kleinman.bsky.social

The important thing to remember about this person is that she's selling a book where she talks about Democrats being out of touch

I’ve always thought that the defining feature of American restaurants, in contrast to their European (and British) counterparts, is that they go out of their way not to intimidate you. What it means to call a restaurant “fancy” is that “not just anyone could eat here” is part of the atmosphere.

Remember when Al Gore was made a pariah and forced to apologize for accurately reminding people that he was the pol who secured the funding that created the Internet?

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump: "My uncle invented radar! Can you believe it?"

Maple syrup is bad for you and (good) sugar-substitute alternatives taste just as good. Fight me.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

“These are the people who have us maple syrup” — Obama mocks Trump picking a fight with Canada

(He says while clutching his oh-so-healthy seasonal maple cookies…)

Not my best for a Saturday #nytxw ...but pretty close. This is pretty much always a sign that the puzzle was easier than usual, not that I'm getting any better at this.

One of my biggest political gripes is that nobody ever wants to make the connection between what pols campaign on and the consensus that is built (by them and others) when they’re not campaigning. ICE being toxic is not a weather event. People make that happen.

Dave Karpf@davekarpf.bsky.social

It strikes me that Yglesias just has no concept of non-electoral politics whatsoever. He has a set of cookie-cutter advice for political candidates in general elections. He applies this advice to literally everyone all the time. This is dumb for obvious reasons that are hard to miss.

@pettersen.house.gov If you’re looking for a tech advisor…

Rob Shearer@r.v.cx

My pitch if I were “tech advisor” to any Dem Congress-critter: create Congressionally-controlled mirrors of all the federal databases, starting with GNIS, so that Apple and Google can simply flip over to them if Trump does any more vandalism. Very cheap and easy to do…but you’ve got to be ready.

I was, and remain, 100% on the side of Google and Apple deferring to the GNIS database for US users. My one caveat is the moral hazard: if Trump takes this as permission to blatantly and pervasively vandalize that database, you have to give up on it.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump on renaming things: "We have a lake, we have a gulf. We need a river, an ocean, and a strait. So I've got the strait. That's the Strait of Hormuz. We're gonna call it the Trump Strait ... I want to change the the name of the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean."

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My pitch if I were “tech advisor” to any Dem Congress-critter: create Congressionally-controlled mirrors of all the federal databases, starting with GNIS, so that Apple and Google can simply flip over to them if Trump does any more vandalism. Very cheap and easy to do…but you’ve got to be ready.

“But Rob, even if that is literally only a few pennies of cloud costs, you still need to appropriate those pennies!” Fuck you. Thinking like that is why Trump wins and you lose. Sure—debate some bill. Great. Pass that. But JUST FUCKING DO IT ANYWAY. First.

I was, and remain, 100% on the side of Google and Apple deferring to the GNIS database for US users. My one caveat is the moral hazard: if Trump takes this as permission to blatantly and pervasively vandalize that database, you have to give up on it.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Trump on renaming things: "We have a lake, we have a gulf. We need a river, an ocean, and a strait. So I've got the strait. That's the Strait of Hormuz. We're gonna call it the Trump Strait ... I want to change the the name of the Atlantic Ocean to the American Ocean."

*Particularly* if there is a Dem Congress, don’t expect any further renaming to sail through as easily.

See if you don’t lie by replacing “change their gender pronouns” with “get genital surgery” it sounds like a ridiculous complaint.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Ashley Hinson: "This one really really ticked me off. Josh Turek thinks it's okay to go school and have the kids be able to change their gender pronouns at school and not tell the parents about it. That is just crazy, right?"

Obviously it’s not the word they meant. But the fact that it’s so close to the right word is a shame, because it *could* be used here a bit poetically…

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You Can See Everything is a terrific film about lying and artifice, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that my single biggest visceral reaction was not to the main themes, but to something that has always pissed me off about Theranos…and SV “innovation” in general…

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This is the idea that makes Theranos a “platform” instead of just a bit of lab equipment. It is, however: 1) A dumb architecture. You can store a library of 100 test protocols locally. 2) Utterly trivial. *Way* below the “nonobvious” threshold that’s supposed to be applied to patents.

This is not just a problem with Thernos. The patent office doesn’t reject patents on this basis—it issues them and lets these complaints get settled by courts. “Process” patents (including software patents) are almost all bullshit.

You Can See Everything is a terrific film about lying and artifice, but I’d be lying if I didn’t confess that my single biggest visceral reaction was not to the main themes, but to something that has always pissed me off about Theranos…and SV “innovation” in general…

Holmes repeatedly refers to her/Theranos’ “invention”, and what she means is not some clever chemistry or blood-analysis tool. It’s the (asinine) “machine gets instructions on what test to run from the cloud” architecture.

You can tell a lot about how people think about movies by comparing their reactions to Blade Runner and 2001. Both contain both brilliance and immersion-shattering flaws, but in totally different ways. And both, of course, are long, ponderous, and self-indulgent. It’s valid to hate both for that.

Will Stancil@whstancil.bsky.social

blade runner not a great movie! it's an exercise in worldbuilding-by-suggestion, and the world it's building is super cool, especially before cyberpunk cliches became cliches, but the movie itself doesn't make a ton of sense or really go anywhere

Curious which (if any) of the current catastrophic ongoing security incidents took www.stardewvalley.net offline…

stardewvalley.netstardewvalley.net

“The world is scarier now than in the 1940s” is just objectively a comment more about modern psychology than about existential risk.

Rob Shearer@r.v.cx

Yeah; the decade that people first grappled with bombs that could destroy all of human civilization, with the notion of “superpowers”, and that saw the start of a war over whether capitalism was viable was very comforting and stable.

A decades-long trend has been acknowledging that feelings (and “trauma” and “mental health”) are real, and I’m really hoping the pendulum is swinging back from the absurd excesses of “my fears matter more than your reality”. Which very much includes the “wars” against Christmas/men/merit.

Jack@kuuga.bsky.social

You can collect quant data on reported sentiment, but that doesn't mean the sentiment data reveals hidden truths about the market. Sometimes people have sentiments that are entirely divorced from reality. See crime. "Crime is worse than ever" is an extremely popular sentiment. It is not true!

Make Reality Relevant Again