Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.
> Reputation guides your behavior toward that person. But they're no longer around. There is no behavior toward them. They're gone. Their reputation is no longer relevant.
It also culturally informs someone's perceived suitability as a role model. It doesn't matter to the dead person if they are held in high or low esteem, but it may matter to people in their formative stages deciding whose influence they follow and whose they shun.
Yeah, that's not how things work. Senate can't pass anything unless the House agrees and the House is representative of the population. Also, footnote, we've been structuring governments this way for thousands of years. Rome, etc.
The Senate heavily favors rural voters. The House is supposed to be representative, but favors rural voters thanks to gerrymandering and the cap on congressional representatives (Nebraska should have less than 1 rep in a truly representative institution, for example). Then you’ve got the presidency itself, where the electoral college favors rural voters. And the courts, which reflect the will of the president in cooperation with the senate, so also heavily biased toward rural voters.
There’s a reason the U.S. is the only modern democracy with a system like this. Almost any other country you’re likely to want to live in has a parliamentary system.
If you go that route Nebraska will lag ever more behind other states given they don't get to have any political power.
Look, I'm just someone from the other side of the pond. This is what happens: when you have no substantial representation for the country side your political system rewards centralisation, rural areas will stagnate, leading to less people there. A cycle that fuels itself.
As someone that has had to live through this I can assure you that those feeding the country should be given proper representation. Not doing so favours huge metropolies, rises urban house prices, prevents proper traffic flow, increases crime rate, etc...
Of course no system is perfect but a middle ground is preferable in my view.
With all due respect, being "from the other side of the pond", I don't think you understand the U.S. well enough to be commenting. For example, California is both the largest producer of food in the U.S., and the state being most significantly under-represented in all three branches of government.
The U.S. is also, easily, the most volatile (extreme partisanship) country of comparable rich, democratic nations. The system we have is pretty unique in its attempts to bend-over backwards to boost rural voters' importance, and we're worse off in virtually every "bad thing" you mention than countries that don't do this.
Centralization? Our president is independently murdering people in the carribbean, demolishing an entire wing of Whitehouse to build himself a new ballroom, independently changing funding (i.e. has hijacked the power of the purse from Congress), is independently sending in the U.S. military into states run by his political opponents against their will, pardoning violent criminals who supported him (one of whom was caught plotting to murder the House Minority Leader, Hakeem Jeffries), etc.
Rural areas will stagnate / people will move away? Dawg. That's already been happening despite the political concessions they've been given. That ain't the problem.
Urban house prices skyrocketing? Happening. NYC is among the least affordable major cities on the planet.
Crime rate? Generally highest in the places where we give disproportionate political sway to.
Are you suggesting the 66x more representation Wyomingers get over Californians in the Senate isn't enough? Is the ~3.5x more voting power they get in presidential elections not enough? What is a fair "middle ground" in your estimation? Because it feels extraordinarily unfair in the exact opposite direction, to me.
(Editing to add): It's also worth pointing out that this delta in voting power is much more extreme today than it was when this system was designed. In the 1800 census, the most populous state, Virginia, had 885,000 people, around 15x more than Delaware, the least populous state. Today, California has 67x the population of Wyoming.
I am but stating the dark side of equal voting power when you elect representatives per "region" dictated by the population they have. It is meant to be a warning, something to bear in mind when you do attempt to change the system you have.
I am not arguing in favour of what you have right now, hence the middle ground point at the end.
Regardless, my understanding of the US is not important. What is important in my comment is my understanding of what you don't do, and potential footguns.
A good middle ground would be to still have it entirely dictated by population (I understand this seems contradictory but hang on). But, in order to prevent votes from low population regions from being useless, your system uses "preferential voting". Most other countries do not do this, hence my previous comment. The key here is that at a national level, politicians still need to value less populated regions, because at least a percentage of their votes came from someone who voted in an order that still got them a seat (even though they weren't the top pick). Given rural regions have less seats to vote for, this vote would likely come from someone from the country side.
This solution however is only important when you do have more than 2 parties. If you don't do this, having more than 2 parties would be moot in these regions, because they need to vote strategically if they want representation. And 90% of the time that means your vote is limited to only one of the top 2 parties (as perceived by national polls before voting day). This is yet another dark side of the system my country does have, it incentivizes the status quo to prevail, even when your current leaders are a bunch of corrupt fellas.
The House is not as skewed as the Senate. But it still has a "rural" bias through two mechanisms: 1. gerrymandering, and 2. the 435 cap on the number of representatives.
Both parties do gerrymander. But there are more "red" states than blue, so it systemically favors one party.
The cap on reps also skews things. Nebraska, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont all have less than 1/435th of the U.S. population, so they're over-represented in the House. That over-representation comes at the expense of big states like California being under-represented.
You can see this effect by looking at the popular vote vs the representation in The House.
In the 2016 election, Trump won the election with just 46.1% of the popular vote. Republicans maintained control of The House with 55.4% control. In the 2020 election, Joe Biden won 51.3% of the popular vote. And Democrats gained control with slightly less than that, 51.03% of The House. In the 2024 election, Trump won 49.81% of the popular vote, Republicans won 50.8% of seats in The House.
The point of engineering is to make something that’s economically viable, not to slap together something that works. Making something that works is easy, making something that works and can be sold at scale is hard.
That's simply not true. Engineering can exist outside industry. "Stuff costs money" is not a governing aspect of these kinds of things.
FOSS is the obvious counterexample to your absurdly firm stance, but so are many artistic pursuits that use engineering techniques and principles, etc.
Industry includes FOSS and artistic endeavors, anything that’s done professionally.
My intent was to exclude research efforts, which is fundamentally different from engineering, which is a practical concern and not a “get it to just work” concern.
That's an interesting question, the question of whether engineering per se is strictly pragmatic. I personally think drawing a hard line between research and engineering is a misstep and relies too heavily on a bureaucratic kind of metaphysics.
There is no market for such a thing. At that price point, you get a personal chauffeur. That’s what rich people do and he can do stuff that a self driving system never can.
And the rich people who don't want a chauffeur like driving the car. They will buy a $10M car no problem, but they want driving that car to be fun because that's what they were paying for. They don't want you to make the driving more automatic and less interesting.
Slate is ugly and not nearly as functional. Predicting who is doomed at this point is silly. But there will be a small electric truck soon, which is nice.
You can self host something like https://big-agi.com/ and grab your own keys from various providers. You end up with the above, but without the pitfalls you mentioned.
BIG-AI does look cool, and supports a different use case. ABACUS.AI takes your $10/month and gives you credits that go towards their costs of using OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, etc. Use of smaller open models use very few credits.
The also support an application development framework that looks interesting but I have never used it.
No, what if the tariffs go away before you are done building your widget factory. Now you have widgets that are too expensive to sell to anyone.
If they want anyone to believe that the tariffs will remain in effect long enough to make a profit, they will need to pass a bill. Ideally, a bill that ratchets tariffs up over a long enough period of time to actually build the capacity in the US of the thing you want to tariff.
Still not sure a bill will give you that stability, since Trump has used loopholes to sidestep ratified trade agreements that he himself negotiated. Anything signed by this President isn't worth the paper it's printed on.
A bill wouldn't provide any security. It'd just be repealed as soon as the economic stagnation set in. If you wanted to build a factory through socialist policy, the only way to do it would be to cover the capital costs with direct investment by the treasury.
The tariffs hit domestic manufacturers harder than imports, so no?
If manufacturers move overseas, they (so far) get to compete for US business on a level playing field, and (in some alternate countries) can make planning decisions that assume due process exists and the law will be upheld. In the worst case, they can sell everywhere but the US.
If they move to the US, the cost of their inputs varies 100% week over week, and 2/3rds of their highly skilled factory workers are subject to random imprisonment.
Also, the president will use market manipulation and insider trading schemes to raid their capital reserves, then brag about it on video.
But then you risk tariff policy changing, and suddenly you're undercut by foreign factories again, and you lose all your investment in the American factory. It still needs certainty that the tariffs are staying.
The uncertainty only works to return manufacturing where America is cost-competitive without tariffs, and that's a tiny slice of manufacturing.
Manufacturing is extremely capital-intensive with a lead time of years. That's a huge gamble to make when policy will probably change by the time you're done and leave you manufacturing at a big loss.
No, because all your precursor components are also fluctuating massively every few days. How do you produce and price widgets when widget grease is $1 on Monday and $10 on Tuesday?
Manufacturing doesn't just happen magically. You need factories and a trained workforce, and various infrastructure. The point is that you may not be keen to invest now in building a factory that'll be usable in a couple of years if everything is constantly changing every week.
> Remember how she wasn't locked up? That set the precedent.
Locking her up would have set a far worse precedent, and I think that the other norm-breaking behavior of the current administration does not support the idea that prior punishment of past administration members for insecure data management would have led this administration to more secure data practices.
No better time than the present to establish a better precedent. Though more realistically, nobody needs to be going to jail in either case - but if there are zero consequences for anyone involved well, that's telling for a leader who frequently criticizes his opponents for not firing people when they do poorly.
Stop driving Lyft/Uber. It's for those who don't have any skills beyond driving a car.
Sit down and determine what are the skills that you currently possess that are the most valuable on the market right now. Then sell those to the highest bidder.
My two cents, that isn't a job.
> I know I can earn 3-4x more doing freelance tech, but I can’t do that from a car.
Yes, you can. That's a limiting belief; it's just holding you back. All you need is a laptop. Need to make a meeting? Go to a local cafe. Nobody will even notice. More importantly, if you're doing remote contract work, perfectly acceptable to ask a percentage of the total upfront. That will go a long way to get you out of a car and into an apartment quickly.
> What would YOU do in my situation to break the cycle?
1. Stop driving Uber, stop renting motels, stop paying any bills, bring my costs down to near zero.
2. Start taking on as much contract work doing "freelance tech" that I can find, with as much paid upfront as possible.
3. Once I have 10k in the bank, rent an apartment and start cleaning up whatever mess is left.
4. Start making quality of life decisions. Maybe you don't want contract, but want a job? Maybe a nicer laptop? Closer to your kids? Live your life.
#1 is the hardest, because you're risking everything on your ability to deliver. You have to believe in yourself.
I only have a desktop. I thought about getting office space from the chamber of commerce for 250 per month... and I can use their fridge to save money on food (Greek yogurt, Jimmy Dean sandwiches, and string cheese is all I need)...
Don’t rent an office space. You dont have the runway to make that work given the current tech market. Focus on getting a solid enough job to get you actual housing. Temp agency, county jobs program, take anything that will pay you a living wage and provide stability.
Sell it. It's a paperweight for you right now. You can find a really nice open-box/used laptop for $300-400 that will allow you to work from anywhere. You can charge the laptop at a cafe or a library. $5 for coffee and you have a working space to take calls and work.
Chamber of Commerce is swimming with other hungry sharks. You'd be better off finding a coworking space (NOT a chain one like WeWork). Talk to the owner and explain your situation, ask for a month or two discount while you get your bearings and attend every meetup they have. Meet everyone, tell your story, share your skills. A small community will help take care of you in ways a CoC will not.
Kiln just opened in St George, I have a dedicated desk, but they have non dedicated desks for I think $150 or so, and has more amenities (and free snacks/coffee to save a little on food costs)
He asked what would you do. That's what I would do. And that's what I did. I'm sorry to hear you can't find work, but that's not a problem everyone shares.
