astronaut_sloth

Same. At this point, I'm only buying stuff that's local to my community from small businesses. I don't want to help American mega-corps, and I don't want to contribute to any tariffs going to fund the government.

Everyone should have a strong base in STEM and the humanities. It irks me to no end when STEM majors can't write, communicate, or understand a wider historical context just as it irks me when humanities majors claim to not understand basic algebra or scientific concepts. It's fine to have a preference, but an expert engineer should have a passing familiarity with philosophy and ethics, just as a historian should have a passing familiarity with scientific laws and mathematics.

Then there's business majors who have no familiarity with anything at all. If I had my druthers, "business school" wouldn't even be an option at a university.

I worry that poor execution or bad decision making is what will sink the progressive movement. People assume that Johnson’s poor performance is due to inherent issues with democratic socialism, when in fact it he’s just not good at his job.

Exactly! It's why I'm not concerned with Mamdani based on what I've seen. He seems fairly level-headed, and he has a bit more governing experience than Johnson had.

Not all progressives have the right disposition and skills to do great things - and if progressive voters can’t or won’t distinguish between policy and performance, then the movement is likely to fizzle out.

We need to have the ability to self-criticize and be pragmatic. There's room for pragmatism without compromising core beliefs.

Absolutely! Some of it is definitely racism, and it is at the root of some criticism. His issue is that he seems to attribute virtually everything that's negative or even questioning to racism. Honestly, I get why he's defensive because of that, but that doesn't make it any less of an overreaction.

Questioning investing in the south and west sides (to be clear, a good thing) is probably rooted in racism. Questioning why another pastor is being nominated to some position is probably not. He treats both the same.

So, being from Chicago, Johnson's problems are mostly personal and of his own making. Like the article highlights, his staffing and approach has been pretty abysmal. He has a tendency to appoint unqualified pastors to positions (which, to be fair, is classic Chicago graft and not unheard of in the city with other mayors), and he doesn't handle criticism well (that is, everything is "because he's a black man" even if the criticism is justified). Plus, antagonizing the very popular governor from the same party is just a stupid thing to do. Some decisions are taken haphazardly (like trying to house migrants on toxic land). Others are just insanely stupid given the history of Chicago and basic financial literacy, like trying to take out a high interest loan to satisfy the Chicago Teachers' Union or paying over $1M per unit of affordable housing.

The closest thing to an indictment of progressive policies is how Johnson wants to balance our budget, i.e. through taxes, even though Chicago is one of the most highly taxed places in the country already. He seems constitutionally incapable of reviewing for waste in the budget, of which there is plenty thanks to graft built up over decades. In this case, we don't really need more of a tax in the city; we need the money that's already being sent to be used more effectively. Decades of financial mismanagement and straight up corruption (which are, to be clear, not Johnson's fault) led to where we are now. Even that, though, is not really because he's progressive.

In all, Johnson's problems are not because of overarching progressive policies; it's because he personally makes poor decisions and doesn't really have a grasp on how to effectively govern. While I haven't looked too far into Mamdani, if he can simply make sound management decisions and not alienate those who should be allies, he'll have a better time.

I agree, but this does sound cool for a one off--like Picard s3. Ultimately, though, I want new adventures with new characters exploring the vastness of the universe.

Isn’t it an international human rights violation to make somebody stateless?

Yes.

100% agreed. It should not be used as a replacement but rather as an augmentation to get the real benefits.

I study AI, and have developed plenty of software. LLMs are great for using unfamiliar libraries (with the docs open to validate), getting outlines of projects, and bouncing ideas for strategies. They aren't detail oriented enough to write full applications or complicated scripts. In general, I like to think of an LLM as a junior developer to my senior developer. I will give it small, atomized tasks, and I'll give its output a once over to check it with an eye to the details of implementation. It's nice to get the boilerplate out of the way quickly.

Don't get me wrong, LLMs are a huge advancement and unbelievably awesome for what they are. I think that they are one of the most important AI breakthroughs in the past five to ten years. But the AI hype train is misusing them, not understanding their capabilities and limitations, and casting their own wishes and desires onto a pile of linear algebra. Too often a tool (which is one of many) is being conflated with the one and only solution--a silver bullet--and it's not.

This leads to my biggest fear for the AI field of Computer Science: reality won't live up to the hype. When this inevitably happens, companies, CEOs, and normal people will sour on the entire field (which is already happening to some extent among workers). Even good uses of LLMs and other AI/ML use cases will be stopped and real academic research drying up.

Just from a quick look at https://fediverse.observer/, it looks like the Fediverse is mostly steady at 1-1.25 million monthly users (give or take) over the past two years with a slight decreasing trend. I think there are some reasons for this that are not entirely in our control.

There seems to be a global sentiment of disconnecting from social media and the internet in general. So, I wouldn't be surprised if ever platform is seeing a decaying user base. Anecdotally, among the people I see in real life, there is a general sense of exhaustion with online spaces. Whether it's from corporate-own, enshittified platforms to even places on the Fediverse, the people with whom I interact tend to find the entire thing hollow. They've trimmed down to one or two platforms (if that). In fact, I've even started to get that way. In the past, if someone were wrong and arguing against a point I made, I'd engage, especially if it's in something that I have expertise. Now, why bother? There's no use arguing; people have little interest in admitting fault or engaging in good faith (again anecdotally). That said, I'll concede that the Fediverse is a bit better on that front, but not by much.

Then there's the alternative nature of the Fediverse. It's been rehashed over and over about how "difficult" it is to get on and use. It's not actually that hard, but the barrier to entry is an extra step. That small extra step frightens people away from even joining. The only time that barrier gets broken is when a "legacy" social media platform does something anti-user. Then there is a refugee wave that comes in and goes out leading to a modest durable increase in users. Recently, there just hasn't been a major controversy on a major platform that leads people here.

Now, my final thought on this is to ask: Is a small and steady-ish population (despite modest decay) actually bad? In my view, I don't think it is. Being smaller and with a smallish barrier to entry means that we exclude a sizable number of the low-effort population. So, there's less (no zero) slop here. Plus, discussions, when had in good faith, can be much deeper and less filled with stupid low-effort jokes. Overall, I'm not too concerned with the number of people on the Fediverse. Growth isn't necessarily the best thing. Even so, with the way most mainstream platforms are going, it's inevitable that they will do something stupid that drives more people to the Fediverse at least for a time.

TL;DR: The monthly population is mostly steady with a modest decay. Most social media is likely seeing similar trends. I don't think the smaller userbase is that bad of a thing.

Somewhat related but I always half-joked that Clarence Thomas' anti-civil rights rulings were a long con to outlaw interracial marriage so he could divorce Ginny.

I already know the vote will fail, and even if it doesn't the Senate won't convict. But, Jesus, the Democrats need to do something. Even a symbolic gesture is welcome, and it's better if it can gum up the works and make Trump's agenda come to a screeching halt.