I also suspect there is a vortex of temptation as you become an increasingly interesting person. Rich, famous, powerful, well-connected, beautiful etc are all interesting characteristics to nefarious people since those characteristics can advance their own nefarious interests. I suspect that, as you become an increasingly interesting person, you must actively defend your peace. It's not like they actively undermine their own peace, at least not always.
This vortex of temptation appears to have many points of origin, such as cults like Scientology, or particular persons such as the casually described "gold diggers", or... whatever organization Epstein is a part of, etc.
Is it particularly wild? There are many possible interpretations of your statement. Do you expect the people on this site to be particularly different from the voters who almost put Trump into office 2016 and actually voted him into office 2024? Or did you mean to express shock that anyone at all would vote for Trump compared to voting for someone like Biden?
(As a US citizen self-identified moderate) I think I understand some of the intentions of de-dollarization. Being the reserve currency is an exorbitant privilege of forcing the world to allow the US to essentially print money that the world ends up using. It is not a privilege that "the average American" gets to enjoy for many, many reasons. It might be telling that no other nation is trying to fill that role of reserve currency with their own currency; perhaps it's not as much of a privilege as we might think. Given the political climate, both domestic and foreign, I think de-dollarization has large potential upside for the well-being of humans.
I see the US trying to position itself so that it is no longer the world power/world police, or at least significantly reduce the magnitude of the role it plays as the world police. This will bring about a new world order and upend existing diplomatic relationships which will bring about chaos and uncertainty.
I disagree with kidnapping Maduro and posturing to annex Greenland on the grounds of national sovereignty; I actually like the rules-based world order (even if I am not so attached to the USD being the reserve currency).
The actions of the Trump administration clearly and perhaps even intentionally puts the US hegemony at great risk and thus also invites much chaos. This, I still humbly see the possible upside. The Trump administration is also accelerating the deterioration of the rules-based world order. This, I do not particularly support, though I see the possible counterargument that this is only accelerating what was game-theoretically inevitable anyways.
The thing is, either some country is going to be the world's referee, or we're going to descend into a lot of regional conflicts with a million dead here, ten million dead there, forever, or we will see rampant nuclear proliferation.
My money is on the last possibility. Honestly that might be the best outcome, even if it's the riskiest. A nuclear-armed Ukraine never would've been invaded. A nuclear-armed Taiwan will never be invaded. A nuclear-armed Canada will never be invaded. At this point, honestly I'd heartily endorse giving Denmark a nuclear triad of their own.
It's nice to see someone else (unsurprisingly) reached identical conclusions as me! I would like to try adding a 3rd reason: dumb subordinates don't upset the apple cart because they don't really have the capacity to do so, and people in power hate upsetting the apple cart as they love the status quo that puts them in power.
Smart, moral people have practically a compulsion to improve things, or at least call out idiocy.
I would also add the need for an actual reason to promote the PHB, and I would argue that one quantifiable way upper management can try to argue for a promotion of the PHB is how "hard they work" (regardless if they achieve results or not). Putting in many, many hours also help promote PHBs who will defer to authority.
It also helps explain the phenomenon where the manager class becomes soulless. Institutions that focus on preserving their own power rather than creating value will promote people (at least to middle management) who are willing to put their nose to the grindstone, sacrifice their health and relationship, producing nothing of value, all to walk on some concept of a career treadmill faster.
Money has limited impact and has all sorts of drawbacks.
A more impactful change from firms might be to celebrate and reward community contributions of their own employees. This can establish a more productive culture than just money. If an engineering company is willing to donate money (yay!), perhaps consider making sure that employees are celebrated for contributions they make in a manner that is similar to how we currently celebrate monetary transactions.
As a Google engineer, I believe it is largely accurate to say that we "don't care", or at least "not caring" is the emergent behavior at Google. There are many things we don't care about at Google that I think would shock many engineers who have a healthy amount of pride in craftsmanship. It's hard for me to precisely describe why we "don't care", but I will try anyways.
As the parent commenter has pointed out, pulling in client code can be very large. If the backend team owns the client code, they may not be properly incentivized to improve the product of the clients, sadly. And calling it the backend "team" might be overly simplistic. There may be additional layers to the the client code owned by other teams, such as different protocol implementation and definitions of those protocols, etc. Pushing for change can be viewed negatively, since it could leave a poor impression. E.g. if you improve someone else's code, that could make them look bad, and that would have negative consequences for you as you have violated (a variation of) Greene's first law of power: never outshine the master.
Since the code and the organization are so convoluted and complicated, it's a lose-lose proposition. If you mess up your optimization, you will get blamed. Even if you succeed, you may have reduced someone's reputation of someone you can't even identify in the bureaucracy, and thus have made an enemy of someone you can't even identify.
The Google of 2026 is a very different Google of 2006. In 2006, everyone who left Google had only praises to sing about the employer they were leaving! It is very telling when the Google of 2026 has had years of highly reputable engineers voluntarily leaving (even before the layoffs) who are so bold as to openly criticize Google in the social environment that we're in. Openly criticizing Google requires great personal fortitude, since being a critic only burns bridges and reduces your career opportunities. That is to say nothing about the criticisms that never get published outside of Google.
All large organizations are political. Some employees choose to ignore the office politics, but that choice might find their management not ensuring they survive the next round of layoffs.
So long as you have a steady stream of cardboard (whether from packages shipped to your home or it ends up in your friendly neighbors' recycling), I anticipate that you could always make things, solo or with friends.
I've heard that one can use wheat paste as cardboard glue.
My hope is to have the combination of a cardboard "saw" and cardboard glue is to result in something like (nail-free) carpentry that kids can perform nearly entirely unsupervised.
Even making simple shapes that can go into dioramas and be props for roleplaying would already be great, I hope!
Brookline was rated Best Places to Live for Quality of Life in the U.S. in 2025-2026 by US News which "measures how satisfied residents are with their daily lives, and takes into account factors like crime, quality and availability of health care, quality of education and average commute time"
I suspect most engineers at most companies, working behind the scenes to see the sausage being made, grow reservations about recommending it afterwards.
I wonder if Rainbolt (or other GeoGuessrs) gets regular requests for consultation, or maybe he should if he is not already: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Rainbolt
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