Me, I'm saying that, and I've skipped going to coffee shops and restaurants because they don't have a website, just a fucking Facebook page. I don't use Meta products and can't see their page if I'm not logged into an account I don't have, so I do what the business owner intended: I go fuck myself and get coffee somewhere else.

The bar I like to use is pretty simple: do you know who represents you in Congress (I am American so this is my bias, but substitute your country's equivalent if there is one)? As in, your state's two Senators and your district's Representative? If not, you probably don't vote or don't pay attention when you do, and you've definitely never called your Congresspeople to complain about their votes, so you probably don't really care that much about whatever it is you say you care about, since you haven't done the easiest thing you can do to make a change.

It's not perfect, and no criteria will be, but there are tons of people who can rattle off "executive, legislative, judiciary" who nevertheless don't know ball.

I think the advice for who to listen to is very bad, though. He calls it being "slightly elitist", but his bar is beneath the ground. The example for discussing politics is knowing what the three branches of government are - I knew that when I was 8 and I don't think I had anything interesting to say about politics back then. I definitely couldn't have given a meaningful critique on the latest policy debate, and neither can anyone possessing merely the most basic knowledge of rudimentary facts on the topic.

Walking to work would be nice and would provide those benefits, but the vast majority of workers don't have that luxury.

Pay me for my commute and I'll gladly work from wherever you like, just recognize that I would get more done if you weren't paying me to travel to and from work. If you don't pay me for the time I spend commuting, you aren't interested in paying the total cost of employing me and you can kindly go fuck off.

I'm sorry but this made me laugh out loud. That isn't true at all, this has been going on for years. This conversation[0] from six years ago has discussion about the outages starting to become much more frequent in December 2019. It has never gotten better in that time, it's just continually degraded.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22935941

If that were true, no one would go to jail for marijuana possession.

It has been argued, even in the before-AI-times, that most professional software is just gluing together open source tools and libraries. Your job isn't to write software, it's to set up redis and postgres and a programming language and a react frontend or whatever in a way that lets them do what they're there to do. Most modern programming is just configuration of pre-existing tools. It doesn't really matter how good your code is as long as it isn't terrible, Real Programmers already did 95% of the necessary work before you decided to build your little app.

I don't follow this one little bit. I frequently read stuff about interests that I don't share (this is a good way to find new interests, btw), and I much prefer when the people who are excited by something express that excitement. I wouldn't even click on a link titled "X is Well Executed" because it sounds like a dry document written by a disinterested engineer analyzing something they don't care about. "X is Amazing" is going to be written by someone who actually gives a shit about X, and therefore is much more likely to be interesting.

Enthusiasm is a good thing and not to be avoided. Clinical language is a turn-off, only to be used when clarity is more important than anything else.

It's not writing for people exactly like you to express enthusiasm and interest in something niche. That's good writing for people not like you.

50 years before the 1980s, during the Great Depression, the narrative was the opposite. The Soviet Union was invincible with a growing economy while every capitalist country on earth had been plunged into a devastating depression. Adopting social programs was the only way capitalism survived that decade at all.

In the 1930s, "socialism" won. In the 1980s, "capitalism" won. Scare quotes because neither was really the thing. Something else is going to win in the 2030s. The story is never over, despite what Francis Fukuyama would have you believe.

Human societies have a strong need for fairness, however. Unfair societies collapse.

> If you like, look up historical US statistics on height.

Yeah, people in the 1700s were, on average, 2 inches shorter. Not the tiny dwarves you're describing.

> BTW, I saw Henry VIII's armor in London. Looked like a boy's armor.

This? [0]

Dimensions: H. 72 1/2 in. (184.2 cm); W. 33 in. (83.8 cm); D. 14 1/2 in. (36.8 cm); Wt. 50 lb. 8 oz. (22.91 kg)

Apparently a six foot tall man is a boy?

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/23936

I don't think that's a correct interpretation, see the explanation here [0]. Not quite the same situation, but likely a similar case. Are you sure the "adult" clothes weren't made for young boys or teens, or women?

[0] https://dyckmanfarmhouse.org/people-were-shorter-back-then-r...

I don't think your statement about short lives in colonial America is correct either, they had a low life expectancy like everyone else, but mostly due to a lot of childbirth deaths and young infant deaths. Surviving childhood gave you a good shot at making it to your 70s, which has been true for a long time pretty much everywhere.