131–140 of 347 posts
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I think it does matter and this quote is always flaunted like it's some deep insight but it intentionally ignored nuance. An amount you can comfortably retire on is way different than $5. We love to pretend humans have unflinching morals but they don't
On the other hand, immoral people would try to convince you that anybody would kill their own mother for the right price.
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> A lot of things that people call "bribery" is really just ensuring that your preferred candidate gets in office. Having a preferred candidate you give money to is already bribery - whatever the law says. You fund your favorite pony to get the power. They then scratch your back or lend a sympathetic ear.
Simply spending money to get someone you like elected isn’t bribery. To the degree great inequality leads to this being decisive in elections, it is a corrupting influence, but the term for it is still not “bribery”. But when a presidential candidate tells oil companies they should donate because he is going to help them, that’s solid bribery. When companies pay to “settle” ridiculous accusations, or “donate” to a pr…
Say, a single donor can contribute a maximum of €6,000 per parliament candidate per election.
Yes, that's a real limit.
PS: If openly bribing a crony gov to cancel your competitor is now the de-facto standard of making business in the US, I don't see how any rational investor could still see US companies as a secure investment. When the rule of law degrades into pay-to-play politics, the inevitable result is a mass exodus of both capital and top-tier talent.
And they are the majority. Thats what Sam Altman understands
There is a cabal of extremists steering technology contracts in this administration and among their donors. The names are familiar - Peter Thiel, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk, David Sacks, Palmer Luckey, etc. A future administration will need to purge all their companies from our government and investigate them for corruption and treason.
25M isn’t even that much money. Not only are they whores, they’re cheap whores.
While the specifics may differ, this is neither their first time doing a deal like this nor will it be their last.
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> To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me. Everyone says this kind of stuff, but honestly I don't think I agree. Everyone says that you have to be nice to these people to attract them, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for people like Trump or any of the other demagogues that have popped up in the last decade or so. These peop…
It cuts deep when it becomes so personal. What the heck do you say to grandma when that happens? I can’t imagine what I would do. In the end I think to preserve democracy one has to become involved. Standing on the sideline at this point doesn’t cut it.
My parents are pretty decent people so I still talk to them a lot, but I can't deal with my grandmother anymore. If she thinks my wife (who was evidently on a Green Card at the time she said that) doesn't deserve to be here, she's allowed to think that, but she's not entitled to me being nice to her. I weighed my options and it came down these three choices: a) swallow my pride and roll my eyes and let her continue to be a racist sack of shit towards my wife, b) push back on the stuff and constantly argue, greatly upsetting my mother, or c) cut off contact to avoid this.
For someone like me option A really isn't a viable option, and and of the remaining two C seemed like the best.
Sometimes I wish I didn't have principles; that grandmother is ridiculously rich, and I likely could have wormed my way into the inheritance pretty easily. If anyone doubts that I believe in my principles just remember I turned down being a potential millionaire because I refused to yield on what I think is right.
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Anywhere offering opportunity. I'm in Europe, I'd like to see it come here. The news I see suggests China's ahead of us in this race, but I don't know if that's for all talent, or if it was just an artefact of a lot of Chinese people in the US on work visas returning home. Or indeed whether the news about China doing well here was real or hallucinated by an LLM.
If engineers in the US (i.e. me) want to find work in Europe, what can we do? I know that’s a googleable question but honestly I can’t help but think that there cannot be any European country that would want me and my family. Immigration is hard.
Without a job offer, yeah not gonna happen easily unless you e.g. show an ancestral connection to the specific country.
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> To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me. Everyone says this kind of stuff, but honestly I don't think I agree. Everyone says that you have to be nice to these people to attract them, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for people like Trump or any of the other demagogues that have popped up in the last decade or so. These peop…
One fictional character that I think is helpful to bring is Luke Skywalker. It’s not about politeness, but about genuinely knowing why people behave the way they are and then offering them alternative other than QAnon. Listening to QAnon is a desperate attempt to understand the world after every other mainstream figure of authority failed that person. What I am talking about is not politeness. Politeness is tone mana…
I am exceedingly impatient with this kind of stuff, from people that I think should know better. I try to avoid these arguments now entirely and live in my happy progressive NYC bubble.
No doubt that diplomacy with this stuff is necessary but I don't think that that's something anyone should want me specifically for.