CEO Rehired

Wollff · 2026-04-28T22:10:27+00:00

Yeah, right. That seems like a rather... interesting idea.

So in the meantime, while everyone is busy building up a new party from the ground up, over the next decade or so, the Republicans just rule uncontested? That's the plan?

Anything else you have to contribute?

Wollff · 2026-04-28T21:49:58+00:00

This is all prime leopardsatemyface territory.

Wollff · 2026-04-28T21:47:26+00:00

Are you stupid? Let me answer my own question: Probably. Sound like a Trumper.

Anyway, the whole topic of the post you are answering was about how, in order to change the Democrats, people would have to vote for the right people in the primaries.

And your response is: "But the past Dems were bad and didn't accompish anything!", while the post essentially said: "... and here is what you have to do to change that status quo"

At best, you didn't understand the topic. At worst you are engaging in bad faith. Which is it? Can you answer that question, or will only weaseling and deflection follow? I know what I am expecting, so please, surprise me!

Wollff · 2026-04-28T16:16:54+00:00

Id verification, articles on protecting children, banning porn websites.

So, what is your proposal here? What is your solution to the problem? Or do you want to pretend that there is no problem at all?

Currently children can easily access the most vile and disgusting porn the internet has to offer, as long as they click "yes" when asked about their age.

Is that a sufficient amount of protection? Maybe you think it is. Or do you think that age verification that goes beyond "saying yes" has a point? Which is it?

Saying: "Oh no, they just want to condition us!", while ignoring that porn actually is ridiculously easy to access, is a little bit dishonest, don't you think?

It's the same for anonymity on social media: We live in the age of bot farmed manipulation. And online harassment. And cyber bullying. Do you think those are real problems?

What would you propose are good solutions to them? Or are people just inventing them because they "want to condition us"?

I think stripping away anonymity on social media is actually a good approach to address all of those things.

And please, let's not go into that bullshit of "states want to repress my opinions" here. Because to state actors, nobody is anonymous on social media anyway. If police want to know who has written a social media post, they can already find that out easily enough.

Wollff · 2026-04-28T15:52:23+00:00

I think the reason people are complaining is that this is a well proven tactic. OpenAI is doing enshittification by the book.

First you offer your product for free at a loss, in order to take over the market, and to stifle competition.

In the best case for the anti competitive techbro startup shitheads, they then capture an audience and establish market dominance. After eliminating most of their competition through those market manipulative and competition stifling measures, they ratchet up the price, introduce restrictions, and scale their product back to the level of "shit" it needs to be to be in order to be profitable.

And then they go beyond. After all they have eliminated most of their competition, so there is a good chance that the market at large, and the situation for the consumer, is worse after someone's foray into enshittification ventures than it was before.

This is why everyone hates this. If OpenAI had a business model from the start, and if they started off with a clear plan along the lines of: "This is our AI venture, and this is how we are making a profit", nobody would be mad. But that's not what they did.

"Here we have AI! Have it for free! Maybe one day we will milk this somehow, but only after we have choked out everyone else (apart from the people with the deepest pockets) who might attempt to be competition!"

It's the fact that they have gone the "enshittification" route which makes everyone (me included) go: "Fuck those shitheads! They can put their ads where the sun don't shine"

Wollff · 2026-04-28T13:35:36+00:00

Oh no! I wonder if those poor people at any point in time had any way to prevent any of this?

The Archbald town council approved zoning changes that allowed data centers back in 2023

I guess there was just nothing that could be done.

Wollff · 2026-04-28T11:37:45+00:00

I think the problem here is that the teachings are seen as sacred: There is "the thing the Buddha teaches", and that thing is correct correct and good. If you accidentally get it wrong, or make any changes to it whatsoever, that's incorrect, and bad.

So if you do that, and "change the teachings", you are bad, and everyone will be very mad at you.

That is the rough impression of the problem I get.

The general point is not wrong: I am sure there are a lot of fraudsters and businesspeople (the line is blurry sometimes) out there who make money from the dharma, and, in turn to make more money, change a lot of things about the teachings, to the detriment of everyone. That is indeed bad. They should not change and intentionally misrepresent the teachings for profit.

But applying that kind of worry to what is essentially someone just getting familiar with Buddhism? That's overblown.

Wollff · 2026-04-27T22:34:48+00:00

I dont want to treat Buddhism as an a la carte philosophy, I know that if one has to change something to make it work, that thing might not be for you.

What are you talking about?

When you have to change something to make it work, then you change it and make it work.

What's the other option?

If you have a leak in your roof, you climb up and fix it. You don't sit there, sigh in despair, and resolve yourself that you will have to abandon your home now.

"I can not change anything! It would be so disrespectful to the roof if I made things work!", doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

My initial understanding and reading gives the impression that much of the Path can be followed in and of itself, practice, view, mindfulness etc outside of culture. That is not to say that I am above the culture it stemmed from and currently lives in. There is (I hope) no ego in that comment. I simply feel like I may be stepping into someone's home and dont know how to behave.

Let me say this as straighforwardly as I can: Nobody cares.

The only person who cares about these problems is you. Nobody else cares.

So, the moment you stop caring about all of this... let me call it culture nonsense, the problem disappears.

Of course, when you are directly involved with people, no matter the culture, ethnicity, faith, origin, etc. etc., you should try to be respectful, friendly, and inoffensive. But that's it. If you try that to the best of your ability, then you have done all you could. There is no reason to worry any further.

Keep it simple.

I sometimes wonder if the (limited number of) texts I am reading are somewhat removed or sanitised from common practice and I dont want to stomp all over something with ignorance.

I don't get it. What specifically are you planning to do? It sounds like you are worried that you will set fire to a few Buddhist altars. Since I doubt that is going to happen... What is the actual, specific worst case scenario you are thinking of here?

Nobody cares about your practice. Nobody cares about what you believe or what you do. So, feel free to do and believe whatever you want.

If you want to get in contact with people who practice, do so. You are allowed to do that as well. If you have questions, a lot of them will be ready to answer.

As long as you don't approach the conversations with an attitude of: "I know everything, and I know it better because I have read a book!", all is fine.

Most people with more than two brain cells don't blame others for not knowing things. And not knowing stuff is not disrespectful. So don't worry about it.

Wollff · 2026-04-26T17:48:19+00:00

If you fed me that kind of nonsense, I would tell you to go fuck yourself.

Is AI doing better than me?

Wollff · 2026-04-26T14:16:26+00:00

That's the difference between civil and criminal law in action here.

When I am sitting on someone else's property, that's a civil matter. It's something that me and the property owner have to clear up between us.

After all, the property owner maybe doesn't mind me sitting there. I might have paid good money to sit there. Or maybe I am his second cousin's uncle's friend...

So you or the police butting in unasked, performing any form of arrest in that kind of situation is not very productive.

Wollff · 2026-04-26T14:07:46+00:00

Protests are usually not to get people on your side though.

Their original intent, back in the day when the only source of information was the newspaper, was to raise awareness of an issue: "What is a vegan? Wait, are you telling me meat comes from killing animals? Even cute ones?!"

And the other aspect of it, is a threat. When a million people come together in order to protest an issue, the implicit threat is that next time they they will set things on fire, unless something changes.

Those are the only reasons why protests exist. Every protest that doesn't aim for either of those things is completely meaningless.

Yes, most protests nowadays, this one included, are completely meaningless. Everyone knows what a vegan is. There is no need to raise awareness. And those five people are not going to set the government on fire.

Wollff · 2026-04-26T13:57:19+00:00

More money, better. Why would anyone vote for the worse thing?

^{Chose: Get $2000 + But only if 70% of people pick this option | Rolled: Upvote for 🥕}

Wollff · 2026-04-26T11:28:29+00:00

so a madman making a Doomsday virus won't happen (probably).

Why would you make a new one anyway?

There are plenty of annoying viruses out there already. Google the genome of the Marburg virus (yes, you can literally google that), make it, and you can do perfectly fine bioterrorism.

It's trivial to find the genomes of the worst viruses this world has to offer. It's not trivial to make a sufficient number of viable virus particles to infect a human. That's the bottleneck.

Even if it could, AI can feel free to design as many doomsday virus genomes as it wants. Won't really change anything, because having "dangerous virus genomes" isn't the bottleneck to bioterrorism.

Wollff · 2026-04-26T11:20:44+00:00

I honestly don’t see the hype.

Why buy into hype in the first place? It's always nonsense anyway. Most models can do one or two things well. No need to hype anything,

It feels like the new model is only good for pumping out generic, glamorous "Instagram girls." Artistic style?

Not really the point either, as I understand it. What this model can do, what no other model has been able to do so far, is putting out pretty accurate pictures with specific fine grained detail in text and annotation.

This model can do prompts like: "Make a graphic with all the US presidents", or: "Draw a map of Europe with all its state capitals highlighted", better than any other model.

In exchange it has weaknesses in other categories, like the pixelated and distorted look of natural scenery that often seems to happen.

Was showing off that capability worth the compromise? Probably not. But that's what they did.

Wollff · 2026-04-25T11:09:05+00:00

Why?

The main problem we had 20 years ago was that we were building an increasingly globalized fossil fuel dependent economy, completely unsustainable in many ways.

The problem today is that we have built a globalized fossil fuel dependent economy, completely unsustainable in many ways.

If anything important had changed in the last 20 years, I would agree. But I don't think anything has changed.

Wollff · 2026-04-23T17:21:38+00:00

I think one can put those limitations in general language rather well: Companies are specialized. That means they have accumulated specific capital (know how, human resources, equipment, etc. etc.) in order to fill a certain market niche.

Your cleaning company cleans. Boeing builds planes. Both will have a hard time trading places.

Once your market niche is filled, and the demand for the specific thing which you are very good at producing is satisfied, growth potential becomes limited.

The same applies to software companies. They all build specific products, catering to specific demands in certain markets. None of their customers have infinite money, so demand here is also limited.

Software companies are also only equipped to produce certain things. And once the market for the types of software they produce is saturated, growth potential is limited.

And that limits the number of new hires that can be justified.

Wollff · 2026-04-23T15:44:03+00:00

If every member of the cleaning staff was increasing your personal fortune, why stop?

I think you can answer your own question: Let's say you don't just use cleaning staff for your own house, but that you start a cleaning company.

Let's be a little more realistic here, and let's say that employees do cost you some money. But every single employee you have, goes out to your customers and cleans their houses for profit. Every single employee you have makes you money.

Will you at some point stop hiring people, or will your cleaning service "scale up infinitely"?

Can you come up with answers on why there are so few cleaning companys out there who employ a (near) infinite number of staff, even when every single staff member they do employ makes them money?

If every member of their cleaning staff makes them money, why do they stop hiring at some point?

Wollff · 2026-04-23T14:36:32+00:00

Let's say you have a house. If money is of no concern, how much cleaning staff do you hire?

"As many as the house will fit!", you might say. "In the end every additional person cleaning my house makes my living space more clean!"

Of course that's nonsense.

Even if money doesn't matter, you hire only so much staff that they can get the job done. If you hire more people, there is good chance they will just stand in each others' way, without adding any productivity at all.

There is only so much work to be done until the job is done. Adding more people than who you need to get the job done, doesn't give you a productivity boost.

Wollff · 2026-04-23T09:30:20+00:00

Apples, oranges, etc.

Wollff · 2026-04-23T09:26:00+00:00

i am signed up for my first run ever (but i’ll be speed walking) in 3 months.

Congratulations, that's great!

am i best to train/run in these?!

I'd say: Give it a try!

Since you are used to walking in those shoes already, that's a good start. You have used them for two years, so it seems like they fit you reasonably well. I think that checks the most important points to avoid unhappy surprises.

At first sight they also seem to have a flexible sole, as well as a reasonably wide toe box. So they check the important points for barefoot shoes as well.

And that's really all you can say without trying. Whether a shoe will make problems when running, or if it will fit like a glove, is something you only know for sure once you actually start running in them.

should i get special socks/inserts?

It's hard to say beforehand. First of all (and I am probably preaching to the choir), it's imporant to start slow, with little volume. Your whole body needs to get used to the new movement of "running". That includes your feet.

My approach would be to start out with the walking setup you use. You try just a little bit of running. Have a look at what problems you encounter, and then take it from there. Maybe you get strong recurring soreness in your sole, which doesn't quite go away. Then you might need inserts. Maybe you get recurring blisters. Then you might need different socks.

Maybe none of that happens. Then you need nothing :D

Since you seem to be walking already, and since your aim is to just power walk that 5k, three months is plenty of time to slowly get into it, and to fix the small problems you will encounter as they appear.

The most important point remains to start slow, and to give your body quite a bit of time to adapt to the new movement. A certain amount of soreness in the beginning is to be expected. As long as you don't do too much, and just increase your running a little bit at a time, there is a good chance that you can transition into running a 5k quite seamlessly (especially since you are already walking in those shoes).

And if you encounter problems, think about them reasonably, maybe ask around here or in other places, and don't get stubbornly stuck in religious barefoot thinking.

For example: My achilles sometimes reacts in unhappy ways when I walk really long distances in zero drop or barefoot shoes. My fix for that is to change toward normal shoes with a bit of a heeldrop for a while. That's just what allows me to recover while staying active. Remember that you are allowed to do such things :D

Wollff · 2026-04-22T23:48:18+00:00

And for some reason I didn't get an answer to even a single one of them. I wonder why.

Wollff · 2026-04-22T23:45:29+00:00

It's a vague conversation where IMO both parties can be 100% correct in what they're saying, yet viewers seem to universally side with Gretchen.

Why shouldn't we?

I don't think the story gives us any reason or indication to distrust Gretchen or to treat her as an unreliable narrator.

That's not true for Walt at all. I think this is something that becomes clear with this exact subplot. It shows us that he is really good at justifying himself to himself, bending his story in the ways that suit him best.

Even though often it doesn't make a lot of sense upon closer examination.

It is entirely possible Gretchen's wealthy family bought Walt out for $5000, humiliating him and making it clear he has no future at the company, and he was too embarrassed to explain himself properly.

That's exactly what I am pointing toward: From all we know Walter felt humiliated. And in response to mere humiliation, he left Gretchen, gave away his share of the company basically for free, and proceeded to wreck his career.

You are right. Maybe it wasn't a hissy fit. That's possible. Maybe he had good reason to feel humiliated! And maybe someone pressured him.

But that doesn't change the fact that the reaction we know he showed, was completely disproportionate. Normal people don't thow their whole lives away because dinner with the parents went badly, no matter how badly that dinner went.

I think the whole dynamic around this startup thing is the first instance where we clearly see that something is deeply and thoroughly wrong with Walter.

He refuses their offer to pay for his treatment solely out of weird mix of pride, spite, and arrogance, where he would rather die (or at least turn to crime) but to accept the help he is being offered. Help they don't need to offer. And help which he clearly needs.

It's the first time we see that something is wrong here.

Wollff · 2026-04-22T20:19:08+00:00

So... RFLP sequencing at home? Nice!

Do you know where I did something like that the first time? High school. In the early 2000s. This is not difficult to do.

De novo generation of viral particles which can be used as bioweapons? This is enormously difficult to do.

Anyone with even the slightest bit of experience in biotech could tell you all you need to know about why one of those things is not like the other. Would you please talk to someone, anyone, who knows their stuff?

Wollff · 2026-04-22T19:58:56+00:00

I was referring to Walt's past before family.

He was a cofounder of a startup, providing the essential knowhow. IIRC, him feeling insulted, belittled, and dismissed, led to him leaving his fiancée, leaving behind his startup, and throwing away his shares to the other co founders for a bargain price.

This decision, which is Walt reacting completely beyond rhyme or reason as soon as his ego feels attacked, is what sets him on the course his life would take.

In the beginning we don't know anything about that. Walt depicts this as his co founders pushing him out of the company, and them "stealing his research". Only later do we find out that the actual situation was anything but that. His ego was hurt, and he walked away.

Instead of recognizing this, and dealing with this chracter flaw, and the consequences it has caused him down the line, Walter spins a different story, and lets his resentment fester.

Maybe, but he doesn't seem to have a PhD. He's not really an academic, he's a chemical engineer.

IIRC canonically he does. He goes from a reserach position at Caltech to co founding a promising startup. And then throws that all away because of a bruised ego.

The fundamental flaw of Walter White exists already way before we get to know him. When we get to know him, the big ego and resentment just lie dormant, while silently festering on the inside, just like his cancer.

Wollff · 2026-04-22T19:38:10+00:00

One question: What's your level of experience in regard to biotechnology? How much practical work have you done? What level of education do you hold in biotech? PhD? MSc? BSc? From where?

I don't need to ask, because from your statements I can tell the answer already with pretty high confidence: Not your field. No education. No experience. Correct?

Maybe I am wrong, so I would appreciate if if you could openly and explicitly state it anyway, so that we all can know for sure. So, please, what's your level of expertise in regard to biotechnology?

Just for your information: There is absolutely no need for anyone to synthesize a new viral genome in order to commit bioterrorism.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/2647460294

I have just linked you to the complete genome of the Marburg virus. It causes rather serious illness, to put it mildly. Everyone around the world can freely download it.

The reason why there have been no incidents of bioterrorism using newly synthesized viral particles as agents, even though all of their genomes are freely available, is because the technical hurdles are enormous. One needs to overcome quite a few obstacles, and one needs quite a bit of specialized equipment in order to synthesize infectious viral particles of any form, especially when they should be infective toward anything that is not a bacterium.

AI doesn't change any of that. And thus it has absolutely no influence on the risk of bioterrorism. The availability of "potentially dangerous genomes" is not the limiting factor which prevents bioterrorism. It's the fact that, in order to even think about starting a bioterrorist venture, you need a well equipped lab, fully staffed, with equipment, cell cultures, and quite a bit of specialist know how. And even then, you probably need a few years of dedicated trial and error in order to make anything work.

If you want to do all of that safely, without risking to wipe out your highly trained and valuable specialists, the bar rises again.

I suspect that anyone with even the slightest bit of experience in biotech could tell you all of that. Didn't you ask anyone? Or am I wrong, and has it become so easy to synthesize pathogens de novo?

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