> One way that Silicon Valley and the Communist Party resemble each other is that both are serious, self-serious, and indeed, completely humorless.
There is a commedy show literally called Silicon Valley making fun of what's going on in the valley and everybody I know in tech loves it and appreciates the humor.
There WAS a comedy called Silicon Valley that wrapped more than 5 years ago ABOUT the valley made in Hollywood by a guy with a science background who grew up in NEW MEXICO and SAN DIEGO, featuring ACTORs, none of them actual techies from the bay area.
Right, but it’s written and produced in Hollywood, not in Silicon Valley. The Valley, so the argument goes, could not produce “Silicon Valley” the show. It provides the topic to be skewered, but it can’t skewer itself.
I think the problem comes when certain topical groups interpret their mission narrowly. Based on your other nearby comment, you mention your experience with a rock climbing group that doesn't so narrowly focus on rock climbing. I think that's the right way to do it.
There was one group I used to attend where I was definitely not as interested in the topic as others. I recall someone at the meetup said to me something along the lines of "If you don't agree with X then why are you here?" Well, I attended because I found a lot of interesting people there, and I know I wasn't the only one. Some organizers made the meetups unstructured conversation, which was great for me. Honestly, I'd just like to meet other people interested in a particular topic. Other organizers preferred meetups with more specific assigned discussion topics. I rarely cared much about the assigned topics and they made the unstructured conversation I wanted to have much more difficult or even impossible (particularly for the online meetups). I don't attend those meetups any longer in part because of the assigned topics.
If you don't mind, could you share a bit about those meetups with unstructured conversation? I would like to attend something like that, some keywords to look for would be helpful.
If the website/Facebook event/email/etc. mentions an assigned topic, then it's not likely going to have much unstructured conversation. Other than that, I can't think of any reliable ahead of time signs to look for. One thing I think I've learned from reading tons of comments today at HN is that I should try more meetups just to see what they're like because you can't really know ahead of time.
Anyhow, the specific group I was referring to was LessWrong meetups in 3 different cities over a period of about a decade. As I said, I'm not quite aligned with their philosophy, but I did find a bunch of interesting people at those meetups.
I can't speak for anyone else, but in trying to pursue groups with relevant interests, I've run into one of three issues:
1. The club/etc follows its core conceit closely, and discussions and such naturally don't branch off far
2. Connected to 1, the folks who actively engage in a club are typically very invested in the subject; when my interest is more casual, it can be difficult to connect with those more passionate
And 3., most critically, the things I am passionate about are too niche to sustain dedicated clubs anywhere but the most dense of population centers, which for a variety of reasons I have no interest in relocating to.
I would appreciate a group where a variety of unique interests is encouraged. I enjoy interacting with people who are passionate in their own ways, even when they don't necessarily line up with my own passions; I realize there are clubs and such out there which likely fit my preferences, but I have yet to find one reasonably nearby.
> If I were doing rock climbing, I still wouldn't enjoy talking about rock climbing the entire day with my rock climbing friends
Um, have you actually tried? I have a "rock climbing" friends group, and it's rare that we talk rock climbing outside an actual climbing outing. Some of them are at the climbing gym 2-3x a week, some of them 1x a week, some join only once every 1-2 months. But what we do a lot is hang out just for dinner, for some hike on the weekend, going to a concert, whatnot. Climbing was really just the initial excuse to meet, by now it's only a detail we all more or less do now and then.
That may all be true, but there are other benefits that could make it worth it. For example it could be, in theory, self-sufficient forever if something else breaks down making it unable to maneuver. Then you can at least sit in the middle of the sea and have your heating and cooking and desalination working until you repair the propulsion.
> At least as long as a substantial percentage of total charge can come from the integrated solar
Yes, but that's highly doubtful. It doesn't work for EVs with panels on the car's roof - you don't get significant charge from it. It's far more practical to put the panels on a larger, fixed structure where the vehicles charges daily.
A failure in containment at a nuclear waste storage site means danger for people on the site itself but it is easily detected by monitoring equipment and can be repaired, the waste is solid and can't spread easily. A failure in containment of a massive quantity of pressurized CO2 would be significantly more dangerous and probably a lot more likely to happen given the frequency of accidents
With ice caps melted off, just removing all the excess CO2 isn't even enough since with that reflective surface gone, more energy from sunlight stays in the atmosphere than previously when more of it was reflected back into space instead of nowadays being absorbed by the ocean.
Absolutely. People seem to think that we just need to recycle more, seal some cracks in the house with foam, install some solar panels, and buy an electric car.
They underestimate the scale of the intervention that will be required to stave off the potential end of human civilization as we know it. If we have any hope of continuing to live at something resembling the quality of life that we've grown up in it will require radical science fiction like developments.
We're going to need things like space based solar shades to regrow glaciers and icepack, advanced breeding and cloning and ecosystem engineering to reconstruct collapsing food webs, and I think the big picture thing is that we're going to need to engineer people to reduce susceptibility to addictive food and manipulative marketing.
Do you have any evidence for that claim or is it a gut feeling?
> in the UK it's what Starmer doesn't want to hear.
In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.
In a figurative sense, that's likely true. As a democratically elected representative of the people, what he wants censored reflects what the people want censored, so is in alignment with a democratic society. If the people change their mind or realize it's not actually what they wanted, they elect somebody else next time. Good luck trying that with Putin or Khamenei.
> In a literal sense that can't be true, since upon change of government, the hate speech definition does not suddenly change. In contrast, Putin and Khamenei are very literally able to personally define the definition.
Well it might if people systematically vote for politicians who promise to change the hate speech definition.
reply