socrates137

I don’t know. I know the news is often flooded with companies reversing their remote work policies, but I’ve had no issue staying remote since 2020. Maybe my anecdotal experience is unique, but I happily moved “to the sticks” in 2022. I’ve never been the only one at work, either. One guy I work with even has his own farm in rural upstate NY.

Still, I recognize it’s a gamble and I recognize some would prefer not to risk it. But I think more people are willing to do it than you might initially think.

I think your question at the end is a good one for discussion. But let’s be honest, even “conservatives” in the U.S. aren’t fighting for small government. It’s barely given lip service, and only when they’re trying to justify gutting government funding. They’re often the ones pushing for authoritarian measures and flirting with outright Nazis at this rate.

I say this as someone who misses the principled “small government” conservative. I didn’t agree with them in a great many ways, but at least I respected them.

These policies are antithetical to everything the current GOP stands for. Voting for them will not address your issues. Just about everything you’ve said is considered opinions of “the left”. So, pushing the Democratic Party more to the left seems like the logical choice.

I’m quite intrigued by the number of SWEs you’ve trained through an apprenticeship. I think there’s often this tension between those who have been trained at some university and now have a CS degree and those who have “learned on the job” or by some other means. I think that tension also exists elsewhere in other careers - it is not unique to software. I’d like to think the reality is more nuanced and complicated. Everyone has their preferences for learning. But I wish apprenticeships weren’t so undervalued and under appreciated. This is how we often trained specialized experts for thousands of years. I don’t mean to suggest it doesn’t have its own problems, but I think if it became more normalized it would be an overall positive change.

100%.

I’m actually extremely impressed. I want one. I haven’t worked in a data center in years, but I’d be tempted to do it again just to get my hands on one.

I think it’s hard to describe any country in foreign affairs “good”. Typically, we expect nations to pursue their best interests. Still, we (the U.S.) we’re probably as close to being the “good” guys as a nation could be during WW2. I’m not really convinced we continued to be afterwards.

But we have been the “law and order” and “free trade” guys. That doesn’t necessarily mean “good”, and I question whether our commitment to free trade was anything other than a way to put pressure on the USSR’s economy. Still, “law and order” can at least guarantee a measure of peace.

But I think with Iraq we burned that reputation away - it’s gone. Now we’re just some bitter friendless policeman with too many guns who’s really just riding out of what’s left of the momentum produced by our past global position.

If you’re a fan of Chrome-based browsers, you could also just use Vivaldi. They have a built-in email and calendar client. There you go, email and calendar integration into your web-browsing experience. If you’re going to do it, go all the way.

In one sense I agree with you. I don’t usually like to claim something is self-evident, but nonetheless, I think it’s clear to most that there is a great deal of variety in skill, intelligence, and virtue across the average human population. I think it’s also true that we should strive to have those who are the most knowledgeable and the most virtuous to lead. That would include a degree of humility, so that those in charge may also listen to the advice of more knowledgeable experts in certain fields.

On the other hand, I’m not really sure I’d place the blame same as you do. In fact, a focus on equity is meant to eliminate the factors that get in the way of meritocratic hierarchies (such as inherited wealth, for instance). I’ll admit, I would rather we pursue justice to eliminate the source of these factors, but the powerful are not interested.

Either way, I’m not sure what the answer is. Democracy in all its forms is imperfect, and even terrible at times. But there aren’t really any good alternatives in the real and imperfect world of imperfect human beings. Philosopher kings are great on paper and on paper only. So that always brings me back to better education, less corruption, democracy, and a culture of respect towards those more virtuous and to experts in their respective fields.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this. I learned some disturbing things about HOAs while living in one. Some people think I’m strange or dramatic, but I refuse to ever live in one again. I realize not everyone has that luxury - the article mentioned the “sun belt” states, but it was exceedingly difficult to find a home outside of an HOA in the Midwest, too.

If you don’t pay my taxes or my mortgage, you get no say on what color I can paint my shudders. And the only ones who can kick me out are the bank (until I’m done paying) or Uncle Sam, not the bored authoritarian neighbor down the road who doesn’t like that I don’t have an immaculate yard or doesn’t approve of my mailbox.

So many of us Americans pretend to care about property and liberty until suddenly it possibly puts a small dent in own your property’s value.

I’d never heard this about Warren Buffet and so looked it up out of curiosity. I’m going to be honest, I hesitate to call it “smallish” for the average American (around 6500 sq ft). But I’ll admit it’s smaller and more modest than most homes owned by billionaires. At least according to my brief search, it’s the only house he owns, too.

Right. Because media outlets and journalists in bed with Republicans definitely don’t engage in lies and propaganda (/s). Or just maybe it has more to do with how they’re now almost entirely owned by large corporations that have their own interests in mind.

This is my first time reading this and I loved every second. Great read - got a few snickers out of me. Thanks for sharing.

I suspect if the loss of these delivery drivers had such an impact on this hypothetical special place, they would hire their own delivery drivers to compensate. Worst case, you have to a call a number or use a mobile-friendly website instead of using an app.

> Setting aside the large numbers of angry people who don't really understand how open source licenses work, our impression is that the core issue here is that there are an awful lot of people who feel that simply because this is Linux, they have some kind of right to get it for free. Unfortunately, they don't. That is not what the "free" in Free Software means, and it never was.

Something about this irks me. I realize there are some differences between FOSS, FLOSS, and open source. And I realize sometimes there’s some ambiguity there. But I’m still not sure I agree.