It's about how the taxes are spent too. If the government cuts welfare and gives handouts and subsidies to special interests, that is not an effective redistribution.
I'm a European living in the US and my sense is that perceptions towards AI are generally more positive here than in Europe if anything (I do work in tech though which skews things a good bit).
This article almost feels like some kind of psychological manipulation: "Jeez Americans, can't you just get on board like the rest of the world?"
Same, specifically boat-building for me because it just draws me in.
But more generally, I would like to commit my time to making the built world more beautiful and sustainable. I despise the obsolescent plastic slop that we all are forced to use, wear, live in, and just see and be around all the time. I find it such a degradation in our society -- the shift in taste and values away from an appreciation of well-made, durable, and well-designed physical objects.
Neat, I really want to try building a boat! That does seem like it would be really fun. I started on a kayak once but didn't finish it and ended up cannabilizing many of the pieces for another project after a long-time kayaker friend of mine explained some of the big flaws in my design (I have a strong tendency to get creative with designs, for better or worse), and when I realized that my wood selection was highly suboptimal for something that would get heavily exposed to water. I really need to try again.
What type of wood would you recommend? Do you have any favorite designs you would recommend using as a starting point?
Check out forum.woodenboat.com to read from a lot of amateurs taking on the project, just be warned that the rabbit hole is alluring and very deep.
It's typically not recommended to self-design, the physics gets technical and there are a lot of free working plans out there including by famous naval architects.
Most people start out with simpler designs using plywood and fiberglass but, due to my aforementioned disdain for a lot of modern approaches, I personally went with a traditional oak frame, cedar plank, copper rivet construction. It is very time consuming but I'm enjoying the journey. I chose a flat-bottomed sail boat design (dory) to make it a little easier on myself.
There are endless variations on the concept of a "wooden vessel that can be propelled through water" idea so it really depends on your interests and tastes. It's a "form follows function" situation too, so you also need to consider your use case -- engine, oar, sail; ocean, river, lake; etc.
Taxes used to be based only on property rather than labour, maybe we should go back to that. Of course this won't happen as it is a force of wealth-deconcentration.
Most left wing movements and organisations in the West drew strength from the existence of strong socialist states, both materially and ideologically. These kinds of groups were a balancing force against the right wing/capitalist direction, which is inherently undemocratic, having as its logical endpoint the concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.
I think the true decline begun earlier though, around the Thatcher-Reagan era, with the erosion of all kinds of state ownership and control of our economy and broad attacks on organised labour.
Is quite an assumption to make left wing movements and organizations in the West the defender of democracy. And another assumption to make the right movements the enemy of democracy. Also, take it from me who lived 15 years in communist Romania - the socialist states were very weak relative to the West.
Concentration of wealth and power was (and is) the highest in communist dictatorships - literally a handful (i.e. less than 5) people control pretty much everything in Cuba. North Korea is ruled with an iron fist by 1 guy - that is some concentration of power, right? In Communist Romania / East Germany power was concentrated in 2 people (a couple). In USSR power was concentrated in the 7 members of PolitBuro. In China power used to be concentrated in the hands of Mao Zhedong, now it seems it is concentrated in the hands of Xi Ping (but I could be wrong about Xi Ping. Maybe he shares some power with other people). I could go on forever, baby!!!
Capitalism has its problems but capitalism is quite fine all kinds of political systems - see German capitalism before, during, and following Hitler's rule.
Wouldn't really be to my taste either but this whole story just reminded me of how much more interestingly the wealthy used to spend their money.
What legacies of high craftsmanship will be left by Musk and Bezos and their ilk? The rich seem to have collectively decided to no longer value good taste.
And I believe this has downstream effects on the aesthetics of everyday things for the average person too. It seems the average person will never again enjoy public works projects that are aesthetically beautiful, like say the Brooklyn Bridge or New York Public Library. All the craftsmen required to build such things no longer exist because the wealthy do not employ them.
I mean Musk is a somewhat bad example as the rocket engines SpaceX developed are high craftsmanship to the point their competitors said the engines were impossible.
Location: NYC
Remote: Yes
Willing to relocate: perhaps but unlikely
Technologies: open to any, have lots of experience in ML with python/pytorch, some C/C++ and Julia, on the edge and in the cloud
Résumé/CV: https://github.com/kilianbreathnach/resume/blob/gh-pages/Wal...
Email: kiliantics@gmail.com
The right time would have been when the going was good some years back. Tech workers could have put together an unparalleled strike fund and commanded unprecedented political power. We could have truly changed the world.
But, as already mentioned, if you think sentiment is unfriendly to unions now, it's nothing compared to how it was back then. The typical tech worker somehow thought they were already changing the world, doing some VC's bidding for nickels on the dollar, adding sparkly features to another B2B SaaS product...
reply