Douglas Adams' Electric Monks made real

Down the second path are angry phrenologists who hate women.

And I think there are two ways to internalize that if you spend more time in the tech casino.
1. You realize the world isn't just, we're all humans, we should treat each other as such.
2. You spend all of your time and energy trying to construct a narrative in which you are the deserving hero.

I'd like to say I realized this was all bullshit on my own, but no, working in tech did it. You wonder if you deserve the payday from a moderately successful startup, and... no. The primary determinant there wasn't obtained through morality, or effort or "intelligence" or whatever. It was chance.

And if you step back from the religious aspects of it, there's this deep need to believe that the things I have, I obtained fairly, in a world that, if not just, at least has logical rules you can point to and explain, with no malice, "this is why I have, and this is why they don't"

The overarching thrust of this 1980s middle America ethos is "do what god says and you'll be rewarded". With the corollary that if you don't you won't. And therefore, if you haven't been rewarded, it's a moral failing.

re: that bell curve post. A good chunk of adulthood has been trying to unwind my conservative/protestant/success-theology-adjacent upbringing.

really does feel like we have a bunch of commentators who would like to just say “the bell curve was right”

How it feels to make a joke with the boys about how of course an orange man hates the pope

Anyway. I know there's no shortage of places to donate. This is a combo "this team deserves a look" and also "FIRST robotics is an amazing opportunity for kids". If you have questions, either about mentoring or how to get your kids involved, lmk.

Worlds is an amazing event. Over 600 teams from around the world. We went last year, and the global representation was really inspiring. Teams packing up their robot in suitcases to haul them from Australia. Super high energy teams from Mexico. And throughout all of this, everybody happy to share.

This team qualified for worlds based on the Impact Award (www.firstinspires.org/resources/li...), which is community outreach. So they're going because of their outreach efforts, not (just) because their robot is awesome.

Competitions are largely about seeing how your robot stacks up against others. But it's also about meeting other teams, sharing notes and getting advice from people from other places. California is a bubble for sure, but talking to kids from Madera when you're from Palo Alto expands your horizons.

Gonna bump this again with some commentary. This is the same robotics organization (www.firstinspires.org) my kids are in. It has been an unbelievably positive experience for them. It offers the best aspects of team sports, in a structure that promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Donate to Help The Pioneers Go To Worlds! The Pioneers ask for your support to send a group of our students to compete in Houston for the FIRST Impact Award on a global stage and to experience the highest level of robotics competition.

Hey Bluesky there’s an incredible high school robotics team in Nashville that qualified for the world championships but they can’t afford to get there. Can y’all help me step up for them? $10, $20 … Anything helps! Competition is at the end of the month so we gotta hustle:

* Every new subdevelopment with 3,000 sq foot single family homes, no services, and a 45 minute commute to work hurts

People (especially Californians in SF) don't think of it as an agricultural state. You think Illinois or whatever. But California produces half the nation's good shit (not corn or soy), and the geography of the Central Valley is globally unique. Every new housing development on that soil hurts.

I'm not anti-ag. I think one of the USA's critical strategic advantages, particularly in the face of ongoing climate catastrophe, is food independence. I believe the following
1. California ag, in particular, is woefully underappreciated
2. Farm workers deserve a lot more pay
3. Ag megacorps are bad

I grew up working in small orchard country (mostly, also rice). Most places were family owned, "small business". But they hired armies of seasonal labor to actually do the harvesting, and the fact that the management class is a "family" doesn't change the fact that they're capital exploiting labor.

we have got to stop allowing people to think of farmers as Big Gardeners. they’re not. farms are factories — and i don’t just mean factory-farms but those too — and need to be thought of and regulated as such

If someone repeatedly takes advantage of young women working under him in their first jobs, chances are he’s a rapist.

What people knew is a lot more than just being a cheating sleaze. They knew was repeatedly exploiting a power differential.

"i could probably pilot a ship through the straight of hormuz" -next big thing 80% of men secretly believe about themselves

god this game was good

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t George W. Bush may think that a war against Iraq is the solution to our problems, but the reality is, it will only serve to create far more.

No news organization has gotten more out of a single article than The Onion has with this, from 2003. theonion.com/this-war-wil...

I will say that maximum soothing is the metal lathe. Messy as fuck though.

they've gotten so small in the last few years, even for fully enclosed plausible-to-use-indoors ones. Very soothing to operate.

“if you spend any real time with his thoughts, it becomes pretty clear he also just doesn't understand anything.” yeah

I got five hours last night. You don't need to hear what my kids did

things every single republican president of your lifetime has done

- started a war in the middle east
- completely destroyed the economy

And no knock on playing dress up, but usually thousands of livelihoods aren't part of the costume trunk.