listenallyall

I dont think "society" has failed because older people get lonely. And I also dont think you can truly judge someone's desire for companionship, or even love, until you're in your 60s or 70s and the quantity and quality of social interactions have rapidly diminished.

"differential" should be "deferential"

Most people do all their Windows activity from one single specific location. It's Android and iOS that know you just drove down and made a stop at your city's most popular drug marketplace, or that you and your secretary were in the same hotel at 7pm yesterday.

Regardless of account type, there are many things that could require you to need those Bitlocker keys to get your data. Don't just associate them with an account, have Windows save the keys to a text file, and save that text file somewhere external, on a NAS or Dropbox or email itnto yourself or whatever, and print out 2 or 3 hard copies and keep them close by. I'm 1000x more worried about losing my data to a Windows crash/error than to theft or any other external actor.

Just because this one "investment" (or wager, or gamble, or speculation - whatever term you'd prefer) eventually succeeded* that doesn't set a precedent that we should excuse blatant fraud or encourage even more speculation with other people's money.

*of course, it could still go to zero in the future

critically relied on a VBA macro to handle billions

Why is this surprising (or a secret)? It probably runs entirely bug-free and has done so for a decade or three - it would be hard to imagine still running if it regularly had issues or sent just a small percentage of those billions of dollars to the wrong place. What does your modernization do better?

I think its the exact opposite. One of the best features of art, in any form, is that it offers different perspectives, viewpoints, ideas. Think of how many people changed something major in their life due to a song, a movie, a photograph. Now think of how little would happen if AI just repeated back what "it knows" you already like. Your entire life would just be a derivative of things you liked as a 6-year old. Nothing new, nothing challenging, nothing fresh.

Smoking is typically a bad example, IMO, because it really takes a lot to actually kill you^. Like 50 years, usually (even 30, in your example, is on the low side). Further, there really are no visible downsides among smokers in their first 10 years or so. Meanwhile lots of other bad habits - hard drugs, alcohol, over-eating, even just sloppiness or laziness - often have real, visible, negative effects pretty quickly.

^as in any situation, there is always the <1% of outliers

the internet is anti-ai right now

Just fyi, this is not a temporary phenomenon, not a phase. People dont like spam, robocalls, persistent advertising, even as we use the tools that enable them. They definitely wont like massive job losses, if that actually comes to fruition. Constant surveillance, "slop" news and entertainment, significantly reduced human contact - not popular. Like most technologies, AI benefits a small group - those who control the means of production - but everyone else loses out.

I'd say it is indeed a huge surprise that a struggling company refused to do business with another entity which was trying to purchase tens of millions of dollars of its product.

"smart enough"

AMC is the dumbest company (or more specifically, its CEO Adam Aron is the dumbest executive). MoviePass came in out of nowhere and became the largest purchaser of movie tickets... millions every week. And AMC actively fought against them, refused to even let them buy tickets at full price, and led the charge to drive them out of business. For what alternative? Mostly, nothing but empty seats.

AMC's stock price is $1.59 as I write this vs $50-70 while MoviePass was peaking around 2018. AMC had to do a 10-to-1 reverse stock split to avoid being delisted, they may need to do another one. They even got a brief "meme stock" spike over $250 and managed to do absolutely nothing productive (except pay the CEO more) with this new capital access.

Airlines are popular employers specifically because they offer a clear vision of future pay increases and better, more prestigious, schedules. People, especially pilots, are willing to put up with a lot early on because they are confident that sticking with the plan will eventually allow them to earn double and triple their early-career salaries.

Same thing happens in law, investment banking, etc... the hardest workers are often the youngest and least-paid. They do it because they know big money may come later.

"its fixed for a year"

The problem with this model is that the staff and insurance are essentially fixed costs, so if they sell 500 burgers on Saturday but only 250 on Tuesday, then the insurance cost-per-burger on Tues is double what it is on Sat. Staffing might increase by an extra body or two on the busy days but won't double, so it also has a much higher cost-per-burger on Tues.

I am not a restauranteur, just a customer (and observer) but I dont think many restaurant operators understand this concept either. Many seem to be raising prices to cover higher costs-per-item due to fewer customers to spread the fixed costs over. And then the higher prices turn more people off, now prices need to be raised again. Death spiraling themselves.

Restaurant portion sizes have definitely increased - a lot - since the 1940s-50s. Maybe some minor pullback the last few years but still way larger than back then. A McDonald's Quarter-pounder was considered very large, that was in 1971, many sit-down restaurant burgers today are 5-8 oz.

Supply and demand. Among many other changes, the demographics of the typical Boulder resident changed significantly - originally nature lovers and hippies for whom earning money was not a primary motivation - post-2000 shifted to educated, highly-compensated desk workers who can bid up prices. And lots more people in total seeking to live in a small area, which also lifts prices significantly.

Kind of a weird flex - you're basically saying that you aren't any better than the Indian teams at writing efficient queries or optimizing existing ones, the only talent you've demonstrated is ability to ask Claude Code. It's like you are announcing your own obsolescence.

Lol, your position is, don't watch tv, just watch YouTube. That's not really a radical shift.

Fine if it works for you, but TV has plenty of things going for it... big screens, watch from 10 ft away on a couch, watch with other people, regular schedule (i.e. Jeopardy on the same time every day), live sports, local news, shows with generally high production values. But probably most importantly, passivity - yes that is a feature.

IHOP already has this covered: https://www.ihop.com/en/specials/bottomless-pancakes

C'mon buddy, you joined a near 20-year-old company that has never defined its own raison d'etre (or didn't stick to it), never really found a niche in the marketplace, never been particularly profitable, has been passed around to multiple owners, never had any reputation for any brilliant or highly-innovative engineering (except perhaps overcoming some now-obsolete, 2004-era video limitations), and whose stock price was 70-80% below its IPO price.

Were you actually expecting no technical debt, a clear mission statement, no internal dysfunction, no bored/confused/exhausted/dont-give-a-shit coworkers, no executive carousel, and no further ownership changes?

This story reads a bit like buying an old, beat-up, rusted-out car from a stranger on the side of the road, then being surprised it doesn't run smoothly.

To be fair, if you manage to stay employed for 30 years before people determine your skills are sub-standard, that's a lot better than most.

But I generally agree with your point.

You said: I mentioned the Vimeo thing in a meeting this morning, and the head of Communications immediately said he's going to start looking for alternatives.

And now you're saying he might have a "cronjob" constantly searching for alternatives? Well then your original point is neutered, he's not going to "start" since he's already been looking.

And video is only a small part? Not an "important piece"? Well then why should Vimeo's owners manage their company based upon what low-level users think? Again, you've minimized the point of your original post to irrelevancy.

I'd question why your "head of Communications" isn't already aware of alternative vendors for important pieces of their domain. After all, companies go out of business, get bought out, change pricing all the time. And Vimeo was bought out months ago - this person didn't start researching then, just in case? I'd suggest the CEO start "looking for alternatives" for this employee.

As a reader, can you summarize what Alexander is referencing in the two quoted paragraphs that overcomes his initial doubt and decides "after his death is the best time to disagree"?

The only thing I can possibly see is Adams writing "the reader is supposed to be looking for flaws" but it's also clear that Adams is very interested in hearing people's reactions and responses to his work, which he (obviously) can't do any more.

a) my initial comment was a response to someone who called the essay "brutal." Indeed, there are some tender passages, but it feels like on balance, Alexander was more interested in getting his attacks in than the nicer stuff. In my opinion.

b) yes he tries to make an excuse for "curing his misgivings" and ignoring his initial doubt but it's an awful one. Can you succinctly describe what it is about the quoted paragraphs that would indicate "after his death is the best time to disagree"?

If you're just now hearing about something which is "somewhat widespread" (your words) maybe that's a "you problem"

Were you caught off-guard when Scott Alexander wrote, of his own essay, I previously felt bad for writing this essay after Adams’ death; it seems kind of unsporting to disagree with someone who can’t respond.?

I think it boils down to the idea of "if you have something to say, say it to my face"

Abuse is an outlier, especially within a family, it is accompanied by complex, ongoing issues with trauma and possible retribution and isolation. It is perfectly normal that people would choose not to speak out while their abuser is alive. It's the reason why sexual abuse and DV victims are often granted anonymity as witnesses or accusers in criminal cases, which isn't allowed in normal situations.

Scott Alexander waited. He could have written this post much earlier, when Adams was alive and could respond (if he felt it was worthy of such). Or, he could have said nothing at all about Adams when he died. Even Alexander admits "it seems kind of unsporting to disagree with someone who can’t respond" (but ignores his own gut feeling.)

first critical thing

I disagree, for me, the most objectionable parts were subjective evaluations of Adams' last chapter of life, which come rather late in the article:

The man who had dreamed all his life of being respected for something other than cartooning had finally made it.

Obviously, it destroyed him.

and later, Adams was willing to sacrifice everything for the right to say “It’s Okay To Be White”

Who is Alexander to say he was destroyed, or sacrificed anything? Yes, it is factual that Dilbert was removed from newspapers and Adams' income probably dropped 99%. But Adams was already a senior citizen who had millions of dollars and no children. I doubt he cared about the money any more. Adams probably also lost a huge number of fans. But who cares? Those fans were at arms length at best. He found (or created) a community of people he could interact with daily who deeply, deeply admired him. He "found his tribe." I can't speak for you, or for most celebrities, as I've never been one, but I'd probably feel more satisfied having a few dozen super-close friends who I admire back and with whom I'm engaged in a two-way discourse than millions of anonymous admirers that I've never met and don't know anything about.

Adams was not entirely stupid. He knew that his comic strip would be in jeopardy if he made comments about black people, and he did it anyway. He made a calculation and proceeded. It probably isn't the same decision that most people, including Alexander, would have made, but that doesn't mean it "destroyed him" or even that it was a sacrifice. He shed all the "admirers" and distant "fans" and found out who his true allies were. Far fewer, yes, but now he knew those who stood by him were aligned. Especially later in life when you have less time and patience for fighting, for nonsense, for explaining things over and over, it seems like a win.

Its cowardly because he had plenty of opportunities to write this piece or to criticize Adams in other ways while he was alive and could respond. The bulk of the essay is about books over a decade old, which Alexander had read long ago. The comments make it clear Adams respected Alexander and linked to his work - surely he would have invited him on to his podcast to debate. As Alexander notes, they had plenty in common and were peers in a way.

It's cowardly to go to a restaurant, smile, eat your meal, say nothing, and then decide not to leave a tip because you thought the service sucked - without ever speaking up or allowing the restaurant to fix the problem. Its just as lame to leave a 1-star review because you perecived the food to be awful without mentioning it and giving the kitchen a chance to prepare the food in a manner you'd like.

And to respond to your initial confusion, an obituary is about the dead person. This essay is about Alexander, his interpretation of Adams' work and how Adams' work affected his life.

Is this an obituary? I think we'd both agree it is not. https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1157241415688...

But this wasn't an obituary. It wasnt a recalling of facts about his life. It wasnt written for a news outlet which publishes obits about most notable figures. It was an opinion piece and a discussion of how Adams affected the writer.

Of course Alexander, or anyone, has the right to be critical. It's just cowardly to wait till he's dead when he isn't able to refute any of the points (or even to absorb them and say, yea, he's right about this, I'm going to try doing better).