I have concerns about the authoritarian tendencies of the current admin, but I think the word "fascism" should be avoided in these types of discussions, as it's such a loaded term that it's hard to know exactly what's implied. The main risks I see are the erosion of democratic norms (weakening of core institutions) and a reduced access to due process, particularly for non-citizens. You see this in ICE deportations to offshore prisons without any clear indication of what happens next. Threats to invade territories for which the U.S. has no basis for occupation (i.e., Greenland and Panama) further raise concerns. As well as use of federal force against protesters, targeting dissent and media pressure (threats to revoke broadcast licenses), surveillance and visa revocations used for political gains, and purges and restructuring of law enforcement. The list could go on, but the threats are real.
It is no more historically loaded them any other name for a movement or a political philosophy. The debate collapses because people refuse to name things what they actually are. Not just with refusal to engage with the word fascism. There is this persistent tendency to euphemism away everything going on the right, to sane wash, to make it sounds nicer.
> Speaking in absolutes makes it harder to have productive conversations.
We lack productive conversations due to pressure to not call things what they are. The problem is not that fascism is loaded word. The problem is that when we use it, it becomes harder to pretend and equally blame imaginary both sides.
I guess it depends on your objectives when engaging with others on these topics. If you're just trying to foment unhappiness in an echo chamber, then you can use whatever vocabulary feels accurate, but people tend to shutdown when they hear trigger words like fascism. If you actually want to talk to someone that may not have the same viewpoint as you and have a chance of a productive conversation, it's better to use less loaded language.
I think that you are not listening to what they say, it is as simple as that. You want to be their friend, to dont want to take them seriously.
> people tend to shutdown when they hear trigger words like fascism
Also, it is objectively not true they shutdown. There is nothing shutdown about current conservatives and republicans. They are loudly and actively working on their project. They are not shy afraid to talk ... instead people like you are unwilling to listen to what they are saying again and again.
Either that or pretending to not listen and focusing on trying to make their opposition shut up.
> productive conversation, it's better to use less loaded language.
Do you want productive conversation or you simply want the rest of us help them and pretend they are actually not fascists? Productive conversation and middle ground between democracy and fascism is authoritarian dictatorship and a lot of victims.
Given the difficulties in defining fascism I very much doubt anyone matches "any definition". Fascism is not a coherent ideology, and there are no common beliefs that can be used to define fascism that do not also apply to people who are definitely not fascists - e.g. dictatorship,cult of personality, etc. also apply to lots of communist movements.
So, America is great at consuming, but if ratio of debt to GDP continues to grow, it's unsustainable for the U.S. Sure, China needs the U.S. to be a major customer, but it doesn't seem like things can continue as they're going now, especially as the willingness to ignore the extremity of the debt is largely based on good faith and credibility.
The America First agenda is predicated by isolationism. You have a demagogue with whom nobody is willing to say "no" and an army of self serving sycophants lined up to try and win favors. The political messaging is all built around zero sum language and arguments, and toughness is demonstrated by punitive measures taken against any allies deemed "weaker" than the U.S. (basically everyone). Those who know where this will lead are unwilling to speak up and the rest follow. Everyone involved seems to be in it for short-term transactional benefits, and nobody seems to acknowledge or care about what the long term outcomes will be for the country.
> Those who know where this will lead are unwilling to speak up and the rest follow.
They did speak up. And they lost the popular vote. Democracy is only as good as its voters. A country is only as good as its people. Replace good with productive/sane/not corrupt, etc.
I don’t know if that’s meaningfully true. When a candidate lies and the information distribution industries are by and large just repeating the lies, on top of decades of voter suppression measures, can we say that the popular vote really represents what people want? I don’t think so. So yeah one candidate will win by a razor-thin margin but I don’t think that actually gives legitimacy to what is happening.
If you do not get votes, it’s not the voters who failed, it is you.
If politicians got that through their heads, and started trying to convince voters on their own merit, instead of simply trash-talking their opponents and telling people they voted “wrong”, they would start to get things done again, and we could actually solve real problems.
I think it is fair to say everyone has failed on every level and every side to some extent. This is classic tragedy of the commons, where the commons is the seemingly unlimited power and wealth of America that everyone wanted to cash in on and externalize the costs.
> started trying to convince voters on their own merit
A selfish voter will throw the world under the bus if it means they win something. An uneducated voter won't understand the full implications of their vote. A hateful voter will go down with the ship if this takes their enemies down too. What "merit"?
Look around, look at the last US presidential elections, those politicians were elected "on their own merit". Hate, bigotry, populism, treason, corruption. That "merit".
When voters vote for the person who baseless attacked an election (counts as treason in my book), and campaigned on aiding and abetting those who perpetrated treason against the country, it is the voters (and non voters) who failed.
Why? If you look at history you will quickly realize that voters vote pretty much like shareholders do. While not excluding every last other factor, democratic voters vote largely in their own short term economic interest. Trump convinced them that was where he was superior and was rewarded with the election.
If you like democracy ... then what's wrong with that?
You fell into the same trap: You only provided an argument for WHY NOT to vote for Trump. Instead, provide an argument for why to vote for somebody else.
> started trying to convince voters on their own merit
I'm not sure this is true anymore given the splitting of media and news sources. When everyone watched the same 3 news programs it was easier to speak to those people. It is very hard to penetrate the "other sides" messaging platforms.
> instead of simply trash-talking their opponents
This was the President's entire election platform (twice).
> we could actually solve real problems
If voters wanted the solve real problems, they would vote for people who present solutions to real problems. Instead, we vote for people who provide easy scapegoats and fake solutions, which ends up making things worse. Trump has the slimmest policy stance of any President ever elected.
Trump has a far-reaching policy stance. His thesis is that American success is due to Americans and what is distinctive about them, and our engagement with foreigners on the present terms is not good for America. That has implications for everything from immigration policy, to trade policy, military positions, to how to teach kids in schools. Closing the border, deporting all illegal immigrants, screening legal immigrants, abandoning unfounded foreign policy commitments, using tariffs as a tool of trade policy, shutting down USAID, pushing patriotic education, etc., are all concrete policies consistent with that thesis.
If you buy into liberal universalism, sure you don’t agree with the policy. If you think the only difference between an Iowan and a Bangladeshi is the need for sunscreen and external factors outside people’s control—you don’t see how the policy is a good one. But to say that there’s no policy there is absurd.
> Trump has a far-reaching policy stance. His thesis is that American success is due to Americans and what is distinctive about them, and our engagement with foreigners on the present terms is not good for America.
When he says success or about “you gonna be so rich you’re not gonna believe it” - he talks about himself and his billionaire buddies not you. His only policy stance is to surround himself with yes-men and enrich himself through blatant open corruption. Anything is for sale: crimes, pardons, citizenships, you name it - directly contradicting your thesis.
Also I truly believe he hates half of Americans because of wrong-think. But he will deal with them after he deals with brown people.
> Closing the border, deporting all illegal immigrants
Lets deport farmers, construction employers and business owners who “import” such workforce to essentially slave for them.
How such employers are not deeply scrutinised by public and politicians - I will never understand.
> abandoning unfounded foreign policy commitments
Abandon Ukraine, but financing Israel, Argentina, attempt truly unfounded war against Venezuela (reasons change every other day and contradict other policies like pardoning Hernandez on drug trafficking but threatening Maduro with war for same reason in the same week).
> using tariffs as a tool of trade policy
Sure if it’s deliberate, calculated and strategic. China laughs at your soy bean farmers. Coffee exporters give zero damns about your tarrifs. Canadians laugh at you when you’ll wait 30 years to grow your lumber. And on top of all of it - policy is so chaotic (who said men are not emotional?) - no actual long term commitment from industries will happen.
> His thesis is that American success is due to Americans and what is distinctive about them
Can you please link to when and where he said this? Because it raises a question of when someone becomes "American." Trump's grandfather was born in Germany, so when did the Trumps become American?
> all concrete policies consistent with that thesis
Those were concrete policies from Project 2025, which Trump directly said was not related to his campaign or administration. We know he was clearly and directly lying, but with someone so willing to lie about everything, I'm not sure how you can prescribe some type of unifying thesis about his policy stances or actions. It feels like you are trying to paste your ideas onto his actions.
Thanks for pointing out the irony that these folks refuse to engage with: that they (we) are all here as the result of immigration. It's about as plainly hypocritical that they get. Their immigrants were fine, of course..
I wish the folks who are trying to cut off all immigration (and open channels to de-naturalize American citizens) could appreciate this more. Because it exposes their thesis at its core: some Americans are better than others, and these people know which are which. Where do I as an American fall into these categories of theirs?
Of course some immigrants are more American than other immigrants! You can tell who those are by whose ancient legal documents are incorporated into the U.S. constitution and laws and whose aren't.
If you think those principles have worked pretty well, then the question is how to maintain the culture that produced this successful society. This is something Silicon Valley folks should easily understand! You guys screen people endlessly for "fit." Would you want a large number of folks who grew up in IBM's corporate culture to come work at your startup?
Were my ancient legal texts incorporated? Were yours? If you are born here, what does it matter?
But more importantly, I said Americans. Are some Americans more American to you?
America is not a startup. It is not even a company. It’s a country who was built inherently by immigration. And it was wrong to single out the Irish and Italians, and it’s wrong to single out the ___ now.
> Were my ancient legal texts incorporated? Were yours?
If you are British American, then yes. Otherwise, no.
> If you are born here, what does it matter?
Empirically, yes it does! https://www.rorotoko.com/11/20230913-jones-garett-on-book-cu... (“The Culture Transplant debunks the view that immigrants fully assimilate in a generation or two. This is something my fellow economists know—we have vast empirical literatures showing that, for instance, you can partly predict people’s savings behavior just by knowing which country their parents or grandparents came from.”).
You can look at the data and see that about 50% of the difference in levels of social trust between people in Italy and Scandinavia are reflected in the descendants of immigrants from those countries to the U.S., even after generations. You can then use your eyes to look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see more social trust and less corruption in the former than the latter. You can even tie cultural background back to concrete social indicators! Parts of the midwest settled by Dutch settlers perform better on versus metrics than parts settled by Germans. Parts of the country settled by Puritans outperform nearly everywhere else in terms of good governance and low corruption.
> America is not a startup. It is not even a company.
Culture matters even more in a country than a startup! Startups hire high-IQ people that focus on discrete problems that are amenable to scientific analysis. Voters in democracies must confront a wide range of issues that are not amenable to scientific analysis, and consist of average people who are not capable of such analysis anyway. That means the person’s gut reactions, arising from their culture and socialization, matters even more. For example, most people simply can’t understand numbers on the scale of the federal debt, but cultures differ significantly in their attitudes towards debt and savings. It’s imperative to have a body politic that has pro-adaptive cultural attitudes.
>,It’s a country who was built inherently by immigration.
That’s like saying the country was built by people who drink water. Immigrants from where? The country that exists reflects that it was built by British settlers, with greenfield development by Germans and Scandinavians in the Midwest. If the country had been built by my ancestors in Bangladesh, I assure you, it would look very different than it does today.
> You can look at the data and see that about 50% of the difference in levels of social trust between people in Italy and Scandinavia [...] You can then use your eyes to look at Minnesota versus New Jersey and see more social trust and less corruption in the former than the latter. You can even tie cultural background back to concrete social indicators!
For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nakedly corrupt administration in our lifetimes. (Let's skip the part where we have to talk specific examples of his corruption - you know it, and I know it.) And now you are spouting ignorant anti-Italian stereotypes and acting like you care about corruption. Your inconsistency of values is utterly unpersuasive so far.
> The country that exists reflects that it was built by British settlers, with greenfield development by Germans and Scandinavians in the Midwest.
That does not include me, so if I were an immigrant today you would not let me in. If you were an immigrant today, would you let yourself in?
Surely you see the hypocrisy in that, especially if you consider yourself a valuable member of society. Maybe, just maybe, it's possible to be a great American if you're not British, German, or Scandinavian. And that's been true for millions and millions of non-British/German/Scandinavians through all of American history.
> For months on here you have defended and cheer-led the most nakedly corrupt administration in our lifetimes.
The fact that I think Trump is the lesser of two evils doesn't change the fact that New Jersey has higher corruption levels than Minnesota. Is it really your contention that communities settled by Italian immigrants are as well governed as those that were settled by Scandinavian immigrants?
Ironically, Trump himself reflects the third-worldization of the American body politic. Our first-past-the-post system guarantees two parties, but cultural change alters what platforms can win a majority. Immigration has killed small-government conservatism--a concept that exists almost nowhere outside the Anglosphere--but a third-world strongman populist can still win the popular vote: https://data.blueroseresearch.org/hubfs/2024%20Blue%20Rose%2... ("Our best estimate is that immigrant voters swung from a Biden+27 voting bloc in 2020 to a Trump+1 group in 2024."). Little Bangladesh swung a net 50+ points to Trump in 2024.
> That does not include me, so if I were an immigrant today you would not let me in. If you were an immigrant today, would you let yourself in?
I made an argument based on evidence, so why are you responding with personal feelings? Whether any particular immigration policy would have allowed me or you to immigrate is totally irrelevant. Immigration is about the mass movement of people, who bring their culture with them and reshape the parts of America where they move. It's stupid to talk about it in terms of individuals.
I guess I just fundamentally disagree that Trump’s the lesser of two evils, if you truly care about American values and culture. How could you want our children behaving like the example he sets? Can you justify his Rob Reiner tweet (for an immediately recent example) to me in a way that persuades me it’s how Americans should behave culturally?
I would love for you to answer the question about whether you’d let us in today, but I suspect you won’t because you’d have to also admit that your stance is hypocritical.
People get their culture from how their families raise them, not how the President behaves. I don’t think one guy acting corruptly makes regularly people act corruptly. My dad didn’t leave Bangladesh because the President was corrupt. He left because everyone from the president on down was socialized into a culture that breeds corruption.
So I think mass immigration is a much bigger risk. Look at the history of Chicago, and the immigration-fueled political machines that gave rise to dysfunctional and corrupt government that persists to this day. Why are American cities so dysfunctional in their governance compared to western european ones? This is not some inevitable consequence of cities. In the south it’s because southern culture is just tolerant of corruption, often tracing back to power structures that arose during the era of slavery and segregation. But in the north it’s mostly the lasting effects of mass immigration of impoverished groups with strong cultural identities. We are seeing the same problem take root in Minneapolis—which until now has been one of the few well-governed cities in the north—in real time.
As to your question about whether I should have been allowed in—I’ll humor you. My dad should have been allowed in, who is a cultural outlier among Bangladeshis. He proudly tells this story about a birthday lunch in Dhaka in the 1970s, where he and a Danish expatriate were the only ones to show up on time. The Danish guy remarked that my dad must find it difficult to get along in a country where people have such a relaxed view of time. My dad loves this story, and that’s why he self-exiled himself from his homeland.
But your argument is illogical. Immigration policy doesn’t screen individuals for fit. It’s a system of mass migration. And when you’re talking about millions of Bangladeshis, not just one, you have to take culture into account. I am acquainted with a bunch of folks from Massachusetts, who grew up among descendants of Puritan settlers. They were socialized with ideas like “food is for fuel, not enjoyment” and a visceral aversion to wealth signaling. They have such an aversion to waste they cut their donuts in half and consider it a good thing if they run out of food at a picnic. They’re exceptionally orderly and temperate people, very much unlike my extended Bangladeshi family. I think America would be much better governed if more of the population was like them rather than like me and my extended family.
Everybody grew up among, and got their culture from, lots of different kinds of people. You are right about the culture of Massachusetts, where I live. It’s a special place, but it’s a counterexample to your point. MA has one of the highest rates of foreign-born population in the country, and it has been that way for a long time. When I was growing up, there was a big influx of people from China. Today it’s India. A couple of generations ago, Italy/Ireland/Poland. “Eat to live, don’t live to eat” my mother told me, but her mom was born in Germany and her dad was Irish. Massachusetts — by the way also consistently one of the most Catholic states — shows you can have the Puritan culture without the Puritans.
> I don’t think one guy acting corruptly makes regularly people act corruptly.
Calling the President of the United States “one guy” I think is a bit reductive. He has spent a decade traveling the nation, rallying, and propagandizing. Surely that has impacted American culture? And we (I think) agree that the way he talks and behaves is not what we want our children to model. To me, I’d be much more averse to them acting like that than I’d be worried about them acting like random New Jerseyans.
I also think the president and his administration corrupting the government absolutely will impact regular people’s behavior and I’m surprised to hear you claim otherwise. In the same message that you are concerned with cities being corrupt as a bad thing, you are accepting and endorsing Trump doing that at a much larger and impactful federal level. Corruption is bad and we should want less of it - I don’t see how that happens under Trump.
Just a heads up that I’ll be heading out for a while so I think we have to agree to disagree at this point. Feel free to take the last word.
A thesis doesn't have to be published in some academic paper. It's just a basic set of ideas or assumptions underlying a worldview. Trump has a very distinctive set of beliefs underlying his policies, and he talks about them at length if you listen to his speeches, his interviews, etc. Just because he expresses them at a 6th grade level doesn't mean that there aren't ideas.
> Those were concrete policies from Project 2025, which Trump directly said was not related to his campaign or administration.
This is such a weird angle. Democrats focused on Project 2025 because of the abortion stuff. Trump stated that Project 2025 wasn't related to his campaign because it wasn't. Heritage doesn't speak for Trump--especially about abortion. That is not inconsistent with the fact that Trump and Heritage agree on 80% of everything else.
> Trump has a very distinctive set of beliefs underlying his policies
Trump has things that he says—many things that he says. How many of them are beliefs, and how many of them are his normal verbal diarrhea, and how many of them are just the words of the last person who spoke to him?
> Trump stated that Project 2025 wasn't related to his campaign because it wasn't.
But it is related to the list of "Trump's Policies" that you created out of thin air, which bare a striking resemblance to many of the policies in Project 2025. This especially true with regard to military, foreign policy, and education. That's the point, he has almost no policies that he truly believes in (maybe immigration and tariffs?).
> Heritage doesn't speak for Trump--especially about abortion.
You cannot claim to know Trump's stance on abortion because he has taken literally every position on this topic. There are news articles spelling it all out [0]. Your comment is actually a perfect example what I am trying to explain:
Trump has no discernible policy on abortion, as laid out in the article below. In order to ascribe him one, you seem to have taken the one that you align with most and applied it to him.
> started trying to convince voters on their own merit, instead of simply trash-talking their opponents
That’s hard to claim to make right after a Trump victory—trashing their opponents has been the Republicans playbook my entire life, and it’s currently working quite well for them.
Propaganda is a hell of a drug. Many people's views are shaped by algorithms and established without any grounding in actual facts. The last election was largely decided based on affordability with a healthy dose of nostalgia for an economy that no longer exists. The democrats made a huge mistake running Harris without a real primary. Biden should have stepped down long before the election, yadda yadda yadda.
> Many people's views are shaped by algorithms and established without any grounding in actual facts
The facts are there, easily accessible for people to read or see. That they choose to ignore them is evidence of the problem with democracy. Whatever mistakes were made by the party that lost, their candidate was not the one with a (comparatively) long track record of fraud, treason, and overall lack of decorum.
Not only did they lose the popular vote, they lost it repeatedly. Although it was only a matter of degree at each step, Clinton was more isolationist than Bush and Dole. Bush was more isolationist than Gore and Kerry. Obama was more isolationist than McCain and Romney.
Trump was more isolationist than Clinton, Biden was more isolationist than first-term Trump and Trump beat Biden last year partially on the basis of becoming much more isolationist than his first term version, surpassing Biden.
Especially in larger systems, how does one solve the issue of reaching the max value of an integer in their database? Sure for unsigned bigint thats hard to achieve but regular ints? Apps quickly outgrow that.
OK... but that concern seems a bit artificial.. if bigints are appropriate: use them. If the table won't get to bigint sizes: don't. I've even used smallint for some tables I knew were going to be very limited in size. But I wouldn't worry about smallint's very limited number of values for those tables that required a larger size for more records: I'd just use int or bigint for those other tables as appropriate. The reality is that, unless I'm doing something very specific where being worried about the number of bytes will matter... I just use bigint. Yes, I'm probably being wasteful, but in the cases where those several extra bytes per record are going to really add up.... I probably need bigint anyway and in cases where bigint isn't going to matter the extra bytes are relatively small in aggregate. The consistency of simply using one type itself has value.
And for those using ints as keys... you'd be surprised how many databases in the wild won't come close to consuming that many IDs or are for workloads where that sort of volume isn't even aspirational.
Now, to be fair, I'm usually in the UUID camp and am using UUIDv7 in my current designs. I think the parent article makes good points, but I'm after a different set of trade-offs where UUIDs are worth their overhead. Your mileage and use-cases may vary.
Idk I use whatever scales best and that would be an close to infinite scaling key. The performance compromise is probably zeroed out once you have to adapt ur database to a different one supporting the current scale of the product. Thats for software that has to scale. Whole different story for stuff that doesnt have to grow obviously. I am in the UUID camp too but I dont care whether its v4 or v7.
It's not like there are dozens of options and you constantly have to switch. You just have to estimate if at maximum growth your table will have 32 thousand, 2 billion or 9 quintillion entries. And even if you go with 9 quintillion for all cases you still use half the space of a UUID
UUIDv4 are great for when you add sharding, and UUIDs in general prevent issues with mixing ids from different tables. But if you reach the kind of scale where you have 2 billion of anything UUIDs are probably not the best choice either
There are plenty of ways to deal with that. You can shard by some other identifier (though I then question your table design), you can assign ranges to each shard, etc.
Because then you run into an issue when you 'n' changes. Plus, where are you increasing it on? This will require a single fault-tolerant ticker (some do that btw).
Once you encode shard number into ID, you got:
- instantly* know which shard to query
- each shard has its own ticker
* programatically, maybe visually as well depending on implementation
I had IDs that encode: entity type (IIRC 4 bit?), timestamp, shard, sequence per shard. We even had a admin page wher you can paste ID and it will decode it.
id % n is fine for cache because you can just throw whole thing away and repopulate or when 'n' never changes, but it usually does.
Yes, but if you do need to, it's much simpler if you were using UUID since the beginning. I'm personally not convinced that any of the tradeoffs that comes with a more traditional key are worth the headache that could come in a scenario where you do need to shard. I started a company last year, and the DB has grown wildly beyond our expectations. I did not expect this, and it continues to grow (good problem to have). It happens!
I built a language app when it first became viable with GPT and also went the avatar as UI route. It presents a unique set of challenges nd constraints, but I spent the most time just trying to get the mouth to sync with the audio. Fun experience for sure. Regarding learning languages, I have stopped building and relying on apps, as I spend too much time mucking with the app and not enough time on the language. The highest potency practice I have found is transcribing podcasts. It’s a major headache, but it really pushes you forward regarding listening, writing, and spelling.
Quality is indistinguishable from the first playback. Tapes have a bad reputation because most people used them in the cars, which is the equivalent of storing them in an oven on a daily basis. A lot of car stereos were very cheap, and that lead to a lot of cassettes being damaged when they would have been fine otherwise.
Regarding the quality argument. Again, it's going to depend on the media and the equipment. I have a very nice Marantz tape deck, and I use chrome tapes with it. When recorded and played back with dolby noise reduction, it sounds pretty damn good!
I say this as someone that also owns a very nice turntable and has a digital FLAC media collection, so I'm not married to tapes in any way. They're just something fun to goof around with (and mostly to give my kid a more tangible experience with playing music at home).
Regarding convenience, I can't argue that they're the least convenient media. That said, I'm an album guy, so I like to listen to recordings in their entirety most of the time.
Isn’t regenerative braking reclaiming otherwise wasted energy from necessary deceleration? Running the propeller in reverse would result in having to apply equal or greater energy to regain the current speed, so it’s a net loss of energy if I’m understanding the suggestion properly.
I'm an amateur photographer. Lately, I've taken to making curated collections from my "slush feeds". Meaning, going through a particular trip, time period, moment and grabbing the best photos, and parceling them out to a dedicated album. Makes for a much better experience and fun to share with friends/family.
This is why I collect vinyl records, make my own cassette tapes and have a fairly huge DAS drive with all my media (movies, music, photos, etc). Ironically, I use Plex (non free), but I can pivot very easily if needed.
I understand the issues related to LLM leaking and re-distributing "private" information, but I'm curious which category of concerns you're referring to. Would you mind giving some context (genuinely curious) ?
You can look at the vulnerabilities found graph of github. It stays about the same for years and then skyrockets up at around the time LLMs were invented.
And they are all pretty simple vulnerabilities, exploitable even to people knowing nothing about how to get root access from a binary that has an out of bounds condition somewhere in randomly shuffled memory layout in a specific version if a C program.
reply