I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with managers or management. Such a function is required if larger and larger teams are to work together effectively. Coordination, strategy, and planning are all valuable and sometimes cannot be effectively undertaken by individual contributors.

Probably plenty of managers are petty hitlers, etc. and plenty of managerial roles are set up to pit manager against worker by setting managers up as slave drivers, but it doesn’t have to be this way imo.

Lolll it’s the guardian, yes, there’s probably literally that rule written down at their office.

Im really enjoying your blog–thanks for the analysis and sharing.

Just curious, how did you read and digest a 700 page pdf?

In the back of my mind I’m thinking about how my retirement contributions are probably headed into oblivion. The likelihood of The Economy™ not taking its final shit before I’m at retirement age seems to be decreasing rapidly. At some point the people who liquidated their retirement accounts will turn out to be the smart ones.

I don’t know about the vegas shooting as it relates to rich people doing crazy evil shit and suppressing it from the news. Can you say more and/or point me to resources pls? Thanks

Tj Maxx suburbanite word art aesthetic.

Your reply here mostly describes my thoughts on the Sachs/Mearscheimer debate vis a vis “spheres of security”. Neither party seemed to me to be engaged in systemic analysis. Sachs’ thesis is normative and idealist and fails to take into account why the u.s.’ belligerence is increasingly unrestrained (decohering economic base). Mearscheimer kind of trots out his standard realist analysis which imo is mechanistic and can’t accommodate factors which don’t fit into the behavior of imperialist powers, i.e. also idealist.

That whole thing was kind of hard to listen to for me. Both of those two are useful in different ways but I thought that discussion simultaneously highlighted their limitations.

For ref https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9465503?scrollToComments=true

Vietnam and snd the people there are wonderful. In another life I would move there. I wish you well!

Excellent read, thanks! Relevant as hell. I just experienced some awe at Marxist analysis: 150 year old philosophy applied to the age of AI and explaining why tech bros toil at dreary ass shit.

I despair seeing my most talented tech colleagues in the west on LinkedIn taking jobs at crypto, fintech, ai slop shops. I have the vague sense that nerds yearn to solve real, important problems, but in the west the money and jobs seem only to materialize for bullshit endeavors.

Meanwhile, in China…

I’m amazed a reasonable china take appears in the NYT, even more amazed that the comments are mostly not racist/ignorant.

The AI American pipe dream will fail if for no other reason that the u.s. doesn’t have, and can’t add, sufficient power generation capacity. With that in mind, stuff like this, to me, illustrates that the people in charge are ideologues–theyre not working toward coherent material outcomes.

relevant from the china business guy https://youtu.be/KQ3vsHTJf1M

I too once had a glorious bike commute and now wfh. If you already have a bike, buy a stationary trainer stand. Then get a bike mountable phone holder and you can then multitask while you exercise, multiplying your time. I learn Chinese while riding and organize my life.

Trainers are a few hundred USD, but the amortized cost is pennies per hour in the long run, way cheaper than a gym.

Good for you! I tried speaking Chinese with the staff at a restaurant in chinatown and the sweet old Chinese lady laughed at me for being bad at it, but in an amused and friendly way. Gave me confidence that ppl will probably be gracious when I attempt to use language with them.

Such a dope track. Never seen the video before tho, thanks comrade. Wholesome.

Anyone learning Chinese with Toddlers? I’m roughly at HSK2 myself I went looking for Chinese Ms Rachel and found Super Baby JoJo which seems like a decent start. Will probably pick up some board books too.

Kind of surprising to see even the guardian starting to come to terms

You likely mean getting the federal reserve under control. The Treasury is already under executive control and is intended to be so.

Godspeed. I get nervous contemplating just a weekend of solo parenting. But it pretty much always ends up fun and special ❤️