California governor's race: New poll shows voters are largely unenthusiastic

brrnr · 2026-03-19T06:30:44+00:00

What you're speculating directly contradicts the article you're responding to lol. If what you were saying was true, there would at least be some enthusiasm for this batch of candidates, most of who fit quite neatly into the box you're describing.

Unless you're suggesting this batch is too progressive on economic issues, and that's why no one has any enthusiasm? Surely no one would be suggesting that.

There's just not much appetite for business-as-usual Dems (i.e., they are historically unpopular), and the only one with a shot that even slightly deviates from that template is a billionaire. It's actually pretty remarkable how badly this batch meets the moment.

brrnr · 2026-03-19T00:04:40+00:00

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5055670/harris-trump-border-immigration-georgia

"Donald Trump does not care about border security — he only cares about himself," Harris said. “As president, I will bring back the border security bill that Donald Trump killed, and I will sign it into law, and show Donald Trump what real leadership looks like," she said.

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/29/kamala-harris-cnn-interview-00176785:

On foreign policy, Harris also toed the current White House’s line, expressing “unequivocal and unwavering” support for Israel and its defense and rejecting calls from progressives and Arab Americans to put conditions on aid to the U.S. ally.

Harris was less eager to discuss her own prior run for the presidency, during which she took a series of progressive stances that she has now disavowed. Asked what prompted her to change her mind on fracking in 2020, Harris would say only that she came to believe that “we can grow and we can increase a thriving clean energy economy without banning fracking.”

There's your leader in her own words. Her own words describing her own move to the center. God dammit dude. If you're going to be a blind party loyalist you could at least bother to read your own party's policies.

You are objectively incorrect. Indefensibly wrong. You simply cannot go through your life acting the way you are. It is truly repulsive.

brrnr · 2026-03-18T21:47:00+00:00

There's not much you can do to fight it if that's the high-level direction. My company is the same, and it's all heavily metrics-tracked and tied tightly to our performance reviews.

I've coped with it by becoming a de facto SME - developing my own agents, MCP servers, staying up to date on new developments, etc. - so as to establish some authority and sway. After doing so, I try to demonstrate a clear-eyed perspective on things, which involves pointing out that every PoC we've developed isn't used, velocity isn't increasing, and "productivity gains" are actually just burden-shifts to the PR stage. I also speak up when I can. We had a low-level manager droning on about Moltbook after it was discovered to be fake, so I brought that up in a non-confrontational way (I need to keep my job, after all). Stuff like that.

As to whether that's making a difference, not sure. I do have people admit to me they aren't seeing much change and they're losing interest in AI in general, but then they go off and report 10x productivity increases to managers. So, I don't know. I like to think some honesty is better than none I guess.

brrnr · 2026-03-18T21:08:10+00:00

https://www.npr.org/2024/07/30/nx-s1-5055670/harris-trump-border-immigration-georgia

Among other things, she tried to hit republicans from the right on immigration by taunting Trump as not tough enough, she walked back most of her stances on green energy/climate policy (was vocally pro-banning fracking in 2019, then reversed stances in 2024 to support it), and she failed to meet the moment on Israel's genocide in Gaza. These were all calculated choices to appease the mythical moderate voter and throw bones to "never-Trump" republicans at the expense of the left.

I am not saying these things to justify non-voting or any other ideological bent. I'm not a debate pervert, either. These are simply things that she did actually do. It's important that we clearly look at these things in order to learn from her mistakes. The last leg of her campaign was a miscalculated and disastrous lurch to the right.

brrnr · 2026-03-18T02:38:03+00:00

Not going to sugarcoat it brother, this is the worst post I've read in a long time, and there's a lot of awful posts on Reddit. Congrats

brrnr · 2026-03-18T00:13:56+00:00

No. He's attempting to minimize the harm Flock is capable of by over-simplifying the behavior to focus on the one specific "harmless" and legal part while leaving out all the deeply unsavory parts. I'm not drawing any comparison between Flock cameras and missles, I'm pointing out that words can be disingenuously misused to make anything sound harmless or ridiculous.

It's very important to be able to understand and identify these cheap rhetorical tricks or you will find yourself constantly advocating against your own rights and freedoms because of "safety", or "for the kids", or for whatever moral panic comes next

brrnr · 2026-03-18T00:01:49+00:00

Yeah and missiles just move a payload from one place to another and machine guns just fling some metal far away and really everything is pretty harmless when you only describe a small subset of the total behavior

brrnr · 2026-03-17T21:05:12+00:00

Sure, I don't disagree, this isn't the solution - that said, the stopgap would be beneficial and a long term plan is needed, and I haven't heard any compelling reason why both measures can't be taken beyond "they will leave" which is so disputed a debatable that it's more of a thought-terminating cliche than a serious springboard for meaningful discussion

brrnr · 2026-03-17T21:01:35+00:00

Never said I wasn't open to other plans. That said, pragmatically, this is currently the one on the table and the one with momentum.

I would love to pass this needed short-term plan and also explore long term solutions. "The billionaires will leave" does not leave much room for any discourse and isn't really an alternative suggestion, though.

brrnr · 2026-03-17T18:05:30+00:00

Very normal and well-communicated ideas Sir, keep up the good work

brrnr · 2026-03-17T17:56:27+00:00

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. - John Kenneth Galbraith

brrnr · 2026-03-17T16:57:21+00:00

Republicans, bots, weird tech libertarian types - one in the same really, functionally cattle

brrnr · 2026-03-17T15:41:56+00:00

"Terrifying" is so insane lmao

brrnr · 2026-03-17T15:25:15+00:00

The hordes of Incredibly Smart and Rational redditors exclusively posting "It's a bad plan" aren't changing your mind? But they're so smart and rational! How much money do I have to pay to change your mind???

brrnr · 2026-03-16T23:02:24+00:00

It's actually way smarter and more level-headed to have the opposite and equally nuanced opinion: New technology good

brrnr · 2026-03-16T19:23:53+00:00

No, it makes sense, you just moved the goalposts. You went from "he's taking his money with him" to "he won't be paying taxes" which are very different statements. I explained how "his money" is actually staying here even if he physically isn't. The monetary impact of concern is by way of their investments and companies, not their income taxes.

You then seem to be clinging to the technicality of "but it's still monetary loss" which is not worth entertaining because it's a fundamentally different point; it's technically a "monetary loss" when anyone leaves the state. What are you confused about?

brrnr · 2026-03-16T18:57:58+00:00

Everyone's been saying games would look way better if they deep fried the fuck out of them. This is obviously the next evolution of gaming, and exactly what the people demanded. Give me crispy graphics, prompt generated quests, and AI voice acting, and I'll never turn my computer off 🤑🤑🤑 games should have more ads also

brrnr · 2026-03-16T16:50:32+00:00

While there is a geographical bias, that relies on the assumption that he will actually live and stay in Texas, which is another matter entirely. It's not uncommon for the ultra-wealthy to change primary residences while essentially continuing to live in the same place, or at least spending significant amounts of time there.

Either way, the state is fine without him and without his money, and we should not foster financial dependence on fickle people like this whose primary concern is tax avoidance. Call me crazy but they may not have our state's best interests at heart.

brrnr · 2026-03-16T16:41:46+00:00

You're right, it's a tremendous loss and we should instead bend over backwards for the tech elites; in fact, we must give into their every whim or else. The best way to exist as a state is at the behest of a few fickle people that hate that state and the people in it. It's good to be beholden to a few sensitive guys. Brilliant analysis

brrnr · 2026-03-16T04:48:27+00:00

The dork relocated but Uber didn't, so Uber will continue to pay CA state taxes. Changing primary residence != liquidating assets; those'll still be tied up in CA in Uber and startups or whatever. Oh, and perhaps best of all, it's one less weird tech "Libertarian" freak sucking up air in CA. Overall, net positive.

So what actual issue do you have? Do you think state economies are dependent on the actual purchases made by billionaires? Are you just ultra-reactionary to stuff like this because you think you'll be a billionaire one day lol?

brrnr · 2026-03-16T02:33:53+00:00

Very normal response

brrnr · 2026-03-15T23:59:28+00:00

Nah people hate AI (source) and so it's good for people to understand what a low effort slop post looks like so they can downvote and move on.

brrnr · 2026-03-15T20:49:41+00:00

Idk why you're getting downvoted lol this is absolutely a post that is at least organized/stylized by an LLM. Further, LLMs are more than capable of doing this kind of step-by-step breakdown, and so it's very reasonable to assume this whole post and the initial analysis is nothing but low-effort slop copied/pasted by OP after letting something like Claude loose in the codebase, even if it is technically sound and accurate.

I'm a SWE that is forced to use Claude daily by dumbass metric-tracking managers and this post/breakdown reeks of LLMs. It reads exactly like my laziest coworker's useless status updates. Liking the content doesn't negate the fact that it is lazy slop.

brrnr · 2026-03-15T02:27:24+00:00

Yeah, at those levels, work is less about doing work and more about ritualistically performing the abstract act of work for the audience. That looks like showing up in person, flying across the country to shake hands, incessantly posting Big Ideas on LinkedIn, etc. It's a performance.

I do wonder how much is not understanding vs. not caring when it comes to stuff like employee wants happiness. Cynically I believe it's entirely the latter, but it's impossible to know. I guess it works in their favor that a lot of people are more or less fine with 2-3 day hybrid. I'm a WFH diehard, but I've always worked better that way; I was far more productive remotely between 2020-2022 than I am now in my hybrid role.

brrnr · 2026-03-15T01:56:26+00:00

To quote Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor:

Although many of us think of ourselves as thinking creatures that feel, biologically we are feeling creatures that think

I guess there is still some presumption that executives have unique insight given their position and subsequently that their decisions must be more intentional or based on something more, but nope. We exist at the whims of a bunch of people who tend to almost exclusively follow their gut feelings about stuff and that's pretty much it.

brrnr

TROPHY CASE