HamsterHookah

Probably.

Great post and I'll just add two things to the discussion: 1) to the bold, as mentioned Apple will announce it's first negative growth period in a while, Microsoft today reported it's weakest growth in 6 years (2% YoY), Salesforce, Google, everyone is citing a slowing economy and growth for tech. I think it's too soon to know and this summer will tell the tale, but for now I don't think you can assume hypergrowth in tech. 2) there is an interesting, if a bit out there, theory that tech is just playing a game of mimicking each other and enjoying the 5% stock bump (short term). The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson doesn’t rule it out, writing that one explanation for the layoffs could be tech CEOs mimicking each other to get a brief high from the market. https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/01/what-the-tech-and-media-layoffs-are-really-telling-us-about-the-economy/672791/

It feels like a failure when the cornerstone of our entire economic and social strategy is dependent on population growth and scaling human beings. It would be like if a business never actually had a plan to be profitable and responsible but instead just projected out unlimited user-growth to sustain their spend and investments and market share. It's not sustainable, in both the general and ESG use of the term.

Getting back on track, I actually think a lay-out change could improve the site and here is what I'm thinking: 6th Street and Daily Texan feel redundant to me. I think if we had one "Business & Markets" thread, that would be better for the focus and engagement. I find even the best of the posters on those pages sometimes don't know on which to post and there doesn't seem to be consistency. I think that would help some of the quasi-CR stuff that get posted on DT to also naturally be funneled to CR as DT becomes more codified as a business and finance and corporate markets and general business channel. The Hobbies / Sub-Channels (Books, Video Games, Nerdz) design is suboptimal. I think there would be a lot more engagement if these were dedicated channels that were easier to navigate and be engaged with. I think some threads that by design should go to these subchannels are sometimes posted elsewhere because of the lack of visibility. Even just collapsing all those (Books, Video Games, Nerdz, Philosophy like the old Quackenbush) into "Hobbies" would probably not hurt, instead of adding additional click throughs, because I can't imagine the volume is too high as is. I just think about the aforementioned Quackenbush and Philosophical threads that the old site had and that engagement and it's missing here. Those safe spaces to have divergent conversations about philosophy and beliefs and worldviews that were interesting and educational, those same attempts at discussions and conversations for a lack of a better option have been shoe-horned into some of the CR threads which are inherently intolerant in their politicism (on both sides), especially since you have some of the more limited and less capable thinkers on this site who count the CR as a regular watering hole, who have an outsized influence and shaping of the culture and tone. Just some feedback, I don't know how big a lift any of these suggestions would be.

Here is why your crying is funny to me: My username syntax [animal + tobacco product] is reiterated on purpose. It's a very simple and easy identifier and it's obvious I'm not trying to hide myself, right? This is because the only reason I've been banned with other names is because there are the same 4 or 5 posters who have gotten and remained so supremely butthurt about a calm, cool and collected expression of differences of opinions, that their only mental health recourse is to go on a neg spam spree to try and make me cease to exist, instead of just ignoring. It's literally the .01% of posters on this site banning me and then turning around with a "well, c'mon mods-- the entire community banned this guy! we've spoken!". This illegitimate gaming of the communal moderation is why I not only keep a very easily identifying handle to mark my reincarnation, but also take my next form based on a crowdsourced suggestion. Do you have a new name suggestion you'd like me to go ahead and register now ahead of what I assume will be your spastic response(s) to this post? I'll go ahead and park it, if so. The best part, however, is I have an active handle that has thousands of green rep points and you yourself have pos rep me many times, solely because the content and not your emotional liabilities that make it hard for you to exist on a platform where you know I am here. But to your point, I've learned to just not share opinions or point of views or even really wade into any political discussions because no matter who above board, there are tiny people like you who can't seem to coexist with a difference in mindsets, and have focused most of my value to the community in Daily Texan business threads and Hobbies threads with a smattering of Movies & TV. If you stay out of Cloak Room, you generally stay away from people with mental health issues (on both sides).

He's winning over drag queens by beating a drag queen in a clapback fight on twitter, if the internet is correct. That's kind of funny. This whole thing is hilarious and I agree with atom who said that if he just owned who he was and was a democrat he could have probably done just as well.

Have both an Escalade and F-150 and can confirm. In my experience there is no practical implication, however.

Did this with a sod last spring, just had the forklift put it in the bed and off you go.

Heck of a band name you got there Horn Spanker.

From WSJ: And then this is a further interesting read which is grounded in Apple to date NOT having layoffs (though Apple is widely "expected to next month to report its first quarterly sales decline in more than three years." -WSJ) and I've highlighted the pertinent Google piece. "The popular narrative right now about these layoffs is that tech companies dramatically over-hired during the pandemic, but while that seems to have happened with Amazon — and for arguably very good reasons given the way that e-commerce shot up during lockdowns in particular — the reality is that the rest of the tech companies largely increased at the same rate they always had. Sure, the number of employees they added was large, but that was a function of keeping the same hiring rate off of an ever increasing base. The one exception is 2022, but I think I already put my finger on the reason for that increase while talking about Google’s Q3 2022 earnings: That leaves headcount growth: despite the fact that Google promised a slowdown in hiring, the company still managed to add 10,165 new employees last quarter (excluding the Mandiant acquisition). That’s actually an acceleration from Q2’s 10,108 new employees. Indeed, one wonders if Google overestimated how many employees would leave during the quarter: at this point Google would certainly seem to be a safe harbor, at least until/unless the company starts active layoffs. I don’t think it’s necessary — the business is doing better than these results suggest at first glance — but one wonders if management may see an opportunity to trim when few will blame them for it. In short, no one was giving up a job at one of the big five tech companies this year as fear spread about a broad-based slowdown in hiring; I have certainly heard this anecdotally. These companies, though, adjusted more slowly to the slower rate of attrition, which means they accidentally increased their headcount — that’s the theory anyways. And, to the extent that theory is right, the relatively limited size of the layoffs to date actually reflects that: these companies are not returning to their pre-pandemic levels of employees, but rather to where they would be had they kept up roughly the same rates of hiring this year that they have over the last ten. In short, I don’t see any real indication that this spat of layoffs, at least amongst the big five, is anything other than an opportunistic cull of headcount that (1) gives investors what they want while (2) keeping the exact same sort of strategic priorities and planned employee count the exact same it was a year ago. That may be imprudent: Meta in particular should have probably cut more given the impact on their business of ATT in particular, but for now there simply isn’t much evidence that these companies over-hired or that they are truly changing anything about their employee strategy. That noted, Apple does deserve credit for whatever combination of discipline and employee retention that led them to avoid the 2022 employee glut that affected their competitors. Indeed, what makes the company’s China dependency so maddening is how phenomenally well-managed every other aspect of their operation is."

The only thing that is truly bipartisan these days is LiveNation/Ticketmaster sucks and let's burn them them to the ground (I think the congressional hearing with them is today) because both sides are Swifties.

Who is everyone dunking on with the brain worms memes? I think I missed an inside joke.

How does the movie "The Road" compare to the book a la NCFOM as a book and a movie? I'd probably argue that the movie was better than the book.

I need to re-read this, thanks for sharing.

Guggenheim loves Kandinsky for some reason. I had a family friend who went for the 50th as well and bought a bunch of prints.

As someone who is/has raised children in the hierarchical power structure, I think you can be and raise kids to be creative and curious and keep a beginner's mindset within the framework of an inviolable set of ethical principles (whatever those principles mean to you, as we have the freedom to define our belief systems and worldviews which is awesome). That's the beauty of the freedom of your family being your own and being free to not out-source your children's development to the government program that everyone seems to agree is broken and inadequate: public education.

I wonder how much of that was getting into the rhythm of interviewing and selling herself again, considering she'd been way out of practice. In my experience it takes a few interviews to get back into a groove and the first few are really choppy. But once you have your talk track down and your assets codified and you can speak to this, that and the other in a confident way because you've done it a half dozen times, you naturally come off as competent and valuable. I've actually heard of folks taking a job interview cycle they don't particularly want when they first start looking, just to knock the rust off for the next job that you do really want.

I think the bolded is the crux of the issue: yes you theoretically can. I can theoretically do a lot of things I don't do now, but I only have so many hours in the day unless I re-prioritize. The reality is that we live in a world and society of intense scarcity and we have to be judicious in what we undertake (spend our limited time and budget and attention and energy on) because most of our resources are extremely limited (yes, even you surly 1%ers). In my opinion, at least. And I agree with you about public education being a sub-optimal institution for our youth, which I guess then gets to the real answer for how to fight misinformation and teach critical thinking-- it starts and stops at home as a family. Which means that the underprivileged will continue to suffer-- those with broken homes and/or parents without the time due to the urgency of paying bills and surviving or just ignorant to these skills themselves.

Great post, and last page my posting of the "This is Water" Kenyon College commencement speech was not just to make fun of neon moon for being a dead-eyed, cow-like human with no independent and critical thinking ability (though some of it was that), but it was more to highlight the conversation around how do you teach "how to think". The commencement makes the argument that a liberal arts education, as the cliché goes, teaches you how to think so that when you enter the real world you are equipped to deal with it. It being, misinformation, other people, etc. So then you have this tension between what is higher education then? Is it a liberal arts education teaching you how to think while you explore the higher order crafts that make us creative and intelligent human beings (i.e. the humanities), which costs a ton of money (therefore skewed towards the privileged class) and has no direct application to getting a job with a great value and ROI post-college? or Is it a place to learn a discipline, to learn the technical how-to's and rote mechanization of a rules-based job (accounting, computer science, engineering, etc.) that is in demand and valuable in society that you can theoretically build a life upon?

Saw that earlier. Doesn't mean Wharton sucks, though.

God bless man. Keep fighting, one day at a time.

Imagine the narrative if Dak gets sacked in the end zone on whatever insanity he was doing when Armstrong had the safety but somehow didn't tackle him. And he still screwed it up.

This is Water:

I went and listened to Liberation and it's just not me for, I guess, but I can't see how this a top 1000 song much less top 1. That is why art is art, I guess.

I agree with everyone; Dak sucks. Okay. But why are we so convinced the story is over? Can't people get better? Can't Dak put in more work to study the offense and the reads and defenses? Can't he work out and get in better shape for his athleticism? Can't he do drills and work tirelessly on his accuracy?