pchristensen

There's a huge difference between "definitely won the election" and "a massive mandate for sweeping change".

A stand up audience from the 1950s shouldn't be reacting to jokes the same way a 2020s audience would.

Back when the Internet was America online and some CGI bin perl scripts, there were a lot of very lofty things said about the potential of the Internet in the future. I don’t remember any of them predicting the power of the tech would have over business, politics, media, and hours of every single day for billions of people. Even without AGI, it’s quite possible that were still underestimating. The effects of predictive, probabilistic computing 20 or 50 years from now.

Nobody is right about everything, but tptacek's takes on software security are a good place to start.

Switching between vim <-> emacs <-> IDEs is way harder than swapping a USB (unless you already know how to use them).

I always have to recommend Mother Earth, Mother Board by Neal Stephenson[1] if the thought of undersea cables sounds at all interesting. I'll also second andyjohnson0's recommendation of The Victorian Internet[2] - it blew my mind how much of modern digital culture existed on telegraphs prior to voice.

[1] https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433901

Gamification helps with growth and engagement but not necessarily learning. I have a feeling that a "calm" app would grow more slowly but if the experience and results are good, you could have more durable and satisfied customers, less churn, etc.

This documentary goes into a lot of detail on the causes worldwide: The Birth Gap - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2GeVG0XYTc

Don't forget non-perishable. If you're already having a hard time affording groceries, it really hurts to throw away wilted veggies or moldy fruit.

It demonstrates carelessness in only targeting people whose presence is illegal, with legal residents being collateral damage.

Off the top of my head, Kilmar Abrego Garcia had a judicial stay against exportation and the administration said his deportation was an error, but he spent weeks in an El Salvadoran prison. And there was the Korean battery factory workers in Georgia.

There were also more cases in the district court record that led to the Kavanaugh Stops decision: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/scotus-analysis-...

There have been so many cases documented so thoroughly. All you have to do is believe that it's not impossible and the reporting does the rest.

This took longer to cut and paste than it did to find on Google.

Arresting and detaining citizens based only on race/language: https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/scotus-analysis-...

Rhetoric from Donald Trump: - https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/trump-calls-de... - https://apnews.com/article/trump-executive-order-domestic-ne...

Rhetoric from Stephen Miller: https://en.as.com/latest_news/he-can-dish-it-out-but-he-cant...

I believe it's this one: https://world.hey.com/dhh/as-i-remember-london-e7d38e64

Hardly a boom.

If you’re not certain that these boats are drug muddlers, you shouldn’t be blowing them up.

If you have proof and are certain, you should be willing to share it to demonstrate what you’re doing is just.

Just that "largest manufacturing state in the USA" isn't a very helpful measure, since the largest state in basically every measure of development. This tweet shows the same problem with absolute numbers giving misleading appearances: https://x.com/xkcd/status/1339348000750104576:

  There are more Trump voters in California than Texas, more Biden voters in Texas than NY, more Trump voters in NY than Ohio, more Biden voters in Ohio than Massachusetts, more Trump voters in Massachusetts than Mississippi, and more Biden voters in Mississippi than Vermont.

That's because it's so much more populous. That link shows that CA is 34th in % of workers employed in manufacturing (similar to TX and MA). CA is tops in many, many absolute measures because it has almost 10M more people than the next state, TX.

Having the original founder leading the buyout is not typical. The Dell situation was much more like Steve Jobs returning to Apple than a typical LBO.

> 25s have no idea either!

People cannot afford to move to places where the economies are booming, because their standard of living with higher pay and higher costs is the same as if they stayed where they are. Moving to opportunity used to be worth it, but is less so now outside of specific fields.

This is incredibly enjoyable read!

I fondly remember using a program called MoSlow to slow down older DOS games that were used to using every cycle they could get, and so were unplayable when I got a Pentium computer. I joked about how I wish I could find the corresponding "MoFast" program.

Here’s a write up of an experiment I did, with idea, spec, prompt, and Claude code commits.

http://pchristensen.com/blog/articles/first-impressions-of-v...

If you enjoy the Phantom Menace for any reason, you'll probably enjoy John Carter.

I didn't see that when it came out, heard it was a flop, and disregarded it for years. Then we watched it over winter break a few years ago, and it's basically the same as Phantom Menace - pretty good action, pretty good but dated effects, pretty ok but miscast lead actor, pretty clunky plot. It might have lost a ton of money, but it's like a B- movie at worst.

My favorite terrifying fact about the WW2 Pacific theater: The US expected that invading the Japanese home islands would be so bloody that they manufactured tons of Purple Heart medals, and they’re still giving them out today because they haven’t run out.

My guess is that's a specific example of e.g. novel scientific modeling.

Which is a very safe assumption given advancements in chemistry, textiles, and industrial processes.

If you're interested in this, I recommend reading Casey Handmer's blog. Here is one of several pieces about cost curves and learning rate for solar and batteries: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2024/11/09/solar-and-batt...

For reference, those states cover 4.5x more land but only 20% more population (50M vs 40M) compared to California.