Pip From Slitherine 🇺🇦

Private equity rolled up the bowling industry and turned what was functionally a family friendly community center into a shitty, expensive casino. They weren't shy about it either. One of their executives said they wanted to raise the price of EVERYTHING.

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thought-crime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it ... By the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now.” — George Orwell, 1984

It’s illegal to feed wildlife at national parks because they get dependent on handouts and forget how to survive. Kinda sounds familiar doesn’t it?

I don't get greed. If I had Bezos cash, I'd be fixing a problem every week. Homelessness? Not on my watch. Hungry kids in school? No way. Animal shelters full? I'll build 10,000 more.

For 50 years, software engineering ran on code rationing. Writing code was expensive, so we rationed it carefully through roadmaps, RFCs, prioritization meetings, and scope reviews. This created a role: the No Engineer. No, that won't scale. No, we don't have bandwidth. No, that's out of scope. No, we need a design doc first. The No Engineer was valuable for 50 years. Every "no" saved real money. Their judgment was the rationing system. LLMs will be the end of code rationing. Code is cheap now. And while the No Engineer is explaining why something can't be done, the Yes Engineer has already shipped three versions of it. If you're a Yes Engineer, the next decade is yours.

Evangeline Lilly called out Disney after they laid off almost all of Marvel's visual development team. “SHAME ON YOU for turning your back on the people who built the power you are now using to throw them away. Why [does AI] get to steal our brilliance and use it to make executives rich while the artists responsible for feeding their robots go hungry? Disgusting."

NEW: Youth sports is now costing parents as much as $25,000 a year. Private equity and corporations are turning a childhood pastime into something only the wealthy can afford. Youth sports has become a $40 billion industry, and the steep costs are crushing American families.

If you’re speeding over and over again, it’s not a mistake. You’re making our streets dangerous. I’ve got a plan to crack down on super-speeders and make New York City safer. Let’s get it done.

There is a war on beauty. Homebuilders are stripping neighborhoods of trees to save money. National parks are being given over to developers & loggers. Of the billion people who use ChatGPT monthly, many have never read a poem. The cult of efficiency is killing the human spirit.

Fewer than half of US adults read a book last year. Even fewer read an actual novel, and the trend is looking worse still for teenagers. Why is nobody talking about this??

For 50 years, software engineering ran on code rationing. Writing code was expensive, so we rationed it carefully through roadmaps, RFCs, prioritization meetings, and scope reviews. This created a role: the No Engineer. No, that won't scale. No, we don't have bandwidth. No, that's out of scope. No, we need a design doc first. The No Engineer was valuable for 50 years. Every "no" saved real money. Their judgment was the rationing system. LLMs will be the end of code rationing. Code is cheap now. And while the No Engineer is explaining why something can't be done, the Yes Engineer has already shipped three versions of it. If you're a Yes Engineer, the next decade is yours.

After 10 years Mark Zuckerberg is firing all the teachers, displacing the students and closing the "revolutionary", tuition-free primary school he and his wife founded in California. Says Mark, "We discovered that helping people just doesn't work"

Why are the Blue Jays pushing "Diversity Our Strength" propaganda?

Name your favorite character from the Alien universe without saying Ripley mine: