Eleven years ago, I was in a horrific car accident and messed my back up. The ortho said it wasn't debilitating - I just had the spine of a 50 yo in the body of a 30 yo. He said I could try to work my back out so the muscles could provide the support my spine couldn't.
I've been on and off with being consistent with that over the years and was dealing with lots of back pain. Having a desk job doesn't help.
But when COVID hit, I dedicated myself to Olympic weightlifting and pilates by paying (quite a lot) to have coaches and trainers. Since then I've had zero back pain. I recently quit both to get into long distance running because I was getting to be pre-diabetic, despite eating decently well and doing the aforementioned exercise. (Probably genetic - my dad's mom and my mom's dad were both diabetic.)
After all that - my one anecdata point is that pilates is the absolute best and most sustainable for life. My increased flexibility and core strength have totally changed my life. I couldn't even tie my shoelaces before but now I can squat almost to the ground to pick up my son. I'd put running second because I genuinely think the human body is designed to run and your body will figure itself out once you get into running shape. I love Olympic but you'd really need a good coach and be committed to do it well and not injure yourself.
All the above took me years of consistency and commitment, but now I'm on pace for a 3:10-3:15 marathon next month and I'm in the best shape of my life with zero back pain. I think losing a ton of weight from running has also lifted the stress from my back.
That's my experience, fwiw. Good luck man, hope whatever you end up doing will improve yourself.
My impression is that lots of companies that deal exclusively with the US govt are doing fine, but it doesn't seem like they'd draw the best talent or become the biggest companies. If that's OpenAI's fate, I'm okay with it.
I canceled my sub a while back and figured hey - worst case, I saved some money (since I subscribe to multiple AI services). Regardless, casting your one vote with your money is important.
I guess what frustrates me is how much people seem to have amnesia with anything involving tech. In a week or two this will fade from the collective consciousness, and OpenAI will be unaffected and they'll release new features and people will start subscribing again.
I mean, look at all the reputational damage that has happened with Microsoft and Google throughout the years; it's so common that it's basically ignored now.
"You are what you won't do for money." is a quote that seems apt here. Anthropic might not be a perfect company (none are, really), but I respect the stance being taken here.
For what it's worth, I don't know a single person that thinks this is a good idea. However, I'm a software developer living in NYC, so the context of my socioeconomic/cultural bubble isn't representative of the average American's.
A few folks have already posted good points. This is a classic Trump/asshole negotiation tactic. This distracts from the clamor to release the Epstein files.
But what I think is pretty depressing to me is that, as someone else posted, lots of people (even the ones I personally know who don't like Trump) are just so sick of politics and inured against all this madness that they prefer to think about other things. There's also a feeling of helplessness, as it's true that there's not much that an individual can do to affect immediate, meaningful change. My best friend and I went door knocking in PA in 2024 to try to turn out votes for Kamala Harris. He was super passionate about politics. Since then he's shrugged and has literally said to me, "Well, we tried. Let's just focus on our own individual lives." When I try to bring this topic up with other folks, including my best friend, I often get a - "Well they voted for this. Our live are still good. Let them suffer." And when tariffs and other international relations, such as Greenland come up, most people I know tend to just shrug and don't have much to say.
It's a really strange and interesting phenomenon I've observed. Since I strongly believe that smart phone and social media addiction have deranged most individuals, I of course have a bias to think that most people are a mixture of easily distracted by this very distressful situation and psychologically uncomfortable with the aforementioned feeling of not being able to do anything with an immediate result, i.e. no instant gratification that we've been conditioned to expect. But then I read books about history, and it seems like this behavioral pattern isn't unique to this smart phone era, so maybe it's just human nature. Most people probably don't believe in an abstract principle strongly enough to really sacrifice or even be that uncomfortable about it. I'd like to think this isn't the case, so I've tried to modulate my conversations to pleading with people I know (again, most of whom are against Trump and all this), to at least have a conversation where we can agree this sucks. But then, it's another maddening thing, where a lot of folks have told me - That's obvious, why do we need to talk about it.
Regardless - I can only speak for myself when I say that I am wholly, 100%, and passionately against this. I'm just guessing, but I suspect that your confusion on why there's no strong movement against this stems from a large-scale prisoner's dilemma (most individuals here are optimizing for their own local maxima, which leads to our collective minima), and the distressing phenomenon that most humans probably don't like to just be assholes, they try to follow the rules and norms of society, but we have here an asshole who doesn't, so it's difficult to combat him and this administration.
Sigh. Sorry for the long post. Maybe it helps. I don't know, it's a strange time. Even taking the time to at least explain what I've personally witnessed is only my attempt to try to put out the right karma in the universe against this anti-intellectual, indecent behavior.
No need to apologize, quite the opposite. This is exactly the kind of insight I was hoping for. I read the NYT and other U.S. papers and get the editorial perspective, but I still feel, and many here in Scandinavia feel the same, that we can’t fully understand what’s going on at the level of everyday experience in the U.S. That’s why your ‘street‑level analysis’ is valuable and much appreciated.
Thank you for taking the time to write this. I feel for you and understand (though disagree with) the nihilism of your friends. As an outsider, it saddens me to bear witness to the beginning of the sunset of the American epoch. What a bold, noble experiment the USA was!
I think the feeling of helplessness is reasonable.. Maybe they see how much more they have to sacrifice a lot more to fight this tyranny of stupidity. Only when the population has lost a lot more will they get mad enough to say "well we've lost too much" (if you see how protests go big in other oppressive regimes - the famous quote is "civilization is 3 missed meals away from riots").
Maybe it's all the Nazi thuggery of ICE scaring them, that keeping quiet feels much more safer.
Dilbert was great, and one of my favorite comics for a long long time. But yeah. Adams turned out to be kinda a jerk, at best. Of late, I've kinda concluded that no single piece of art or single artist is so great that I can't live a full life without it, regardless of how much I love said work or artist. I think individuals should have the right to read and enjoy Dilbert, but I also think if you don't like him and can't let that go, don't give your limited time and attention to the comic. There are lots of other great comics out there!
I think he literally said white people should stay away from black people.
I forget which video it is and don't want to re-watch it anyways. I Googled the specific quote and it sounds about right with my memory (which admittedly could be faulty):
"I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people."
"Just get the f— away. Wherever you have to go, just get away".
I guess we could discuss whether this is straight up racist, but it sounds pretty bad to me.
FWIW - I don't 100% agree with you, but I did want to say thanks for at least posting your thoughts, and qualifying them.
(Adding my comment since there's a good amount of pushback, most of which I roughly agree with, but I think it's important to say thanks for maintaining a civil dialogue and discussion where we don't see 100% eye-to-eye. This also goes for all those who are replying to you as well. It's great to have civil discourse.)
It hasn't 100% worked for me, but it's been progress for me to:
- turn on grayscale
- don't use any social media
- turn off all recommendations for the two indulgences I do have (YouTube, Reddit)
The no recommendations has been especially helpful because I only have my subscription feed, and I can curate that.
As far as news goes - Economist is a good one imo. Weekly news is a fast enough cadence that also filters out noise and nonsense from the knee-jerk, instant reaction news cycles. I've also found the New Yorker to be pretty great, since their pieces are so long that they're usually about events that happened weeks to months ago.
But +1 to others' comments: maybe you don't need to know everything, either. Reading books about history, even recent history, has been a great way for me to fulfill my need to understand our society.
Despite all that I've typed above, if you really want to get regular news consumption, I highly highly recommend Heather Cox Richardson. She distills the daily news and often adds historical context.
I can't speak for firmretention, but I'm guessing it's the idea of a billionaire who's rightly lauded for his investment skill getting a little greenwashed with "donations" that aren't really no-strings-attached donations. It's also a little dystopian to have a dorm described as:
> “Munger Hall, in comparison, is a single block housing 4,500 students with two entrances,” McFadden said, and would qualify as the eighth densest neighborhood on the planet, falling just short of Dhaka, Bangladesh.
It is a good idea, but I am curious whether it's a fire hazard to have only two entrances for such a big and dense building? Maybe this is misreported, I don't know.
In general, though, I personally do think that donating money and micromanaging how that money is spent does come off weird and disingenuous. You have every right to do it, but it's not really in the spirit of a pure donation to me at that point.
Again, I can't speak for firmretention. Their comment just tickled this own natural reaction I had in myself to the linked article.
I've been on and off with being consistent with that over the years and was dealing with lots of back pain. Having a desk job doesn't help.
But when COVID hit, I dedicated myself to Olympic weightlifting and pilates by paying (quite a lot) to have coaches and trainers. Since then I've had zero back pain. I recently quit both to get into long distance running because I was getting to be pre-diabetic, despite eating decently well and doing the aforementioned exercise. (Probably genetic - my dad's mom and my mom's dad were both diabetic.)
After all that - my one anecdata point is that pilates is the absolute best and most sustainable for life. My increased flexibility and core strength have totally changed my life. I couldn't even tie my shoelaces before but now I can squat almost to the ground to pick up my son. I'd put running second because I genuinely think the human body is designed to run and your body will figure itself out once you get into running shape. I love Olympic but you'd really need a good coach and be committed to do it well and not injure yourself.
All the above took me years of consistency and commitment, but now I'm on pace for a 3:10-3:15 marathon next month and I'm in the best shape of my life with zero back pain. I think losing a ton of weight from running has also lifted the stress from my back.
That's my experience, fwiw. Good luck man, hope whatever you end up doing will improve yourself.
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