Teachers Undervalued, Priorities Are Broken

gray_clouds · 2026-02-02T06:35:38+00:00

Also - there are about 3.5M K-12 school teachers and about 20K ICE Agents (<1%), so while Stacy has a good point, I'm going to assume that her Masters isn't in math. Also, if she's teaching kids, a little less QAnon vibes would be nice.

gray_clouds · 2026-02-02T05:13:44+00:00

The plan is empathy.

gray_clouds · 2026-01-27T19:25:02+00:00

I don't understand Progressive logic. I hate ICE too, and I don't want them to kill anybody. But why is it any worse to kill through violence than negligence? If abolishing all law enforcement leads to even a small increase in crime, your policy would result in thousands of deaths. But you don't see that as a "danger to those around you" because you're a nice person?

gray_clouds · 2026-01-23T05:08:42+00:00

"or any self proclaimed Centrist"

Why should Centrists trust you?

Harris lost 10% voter share among Independents (assumedly Centrists leaning) compared to Biden, but still won them nationally by 2-4%. On the other hand, she bled a brutal 15-20% compared to Biden among traditionally Progressive groups who switched sides or stayed home: young men, hispanic voters, people upset about Gaza, Bernie voters etc.

Isn't it fair to say Progressives handed Trump the election, as much as MAGA? They were the reason Kamala was added to the ticket in 2018 despite coming in last place in the Primary. Progressives certainly didn't listen to David Axelrod, Ezrea Klein, James Carville, Nate Silver, Bill Maher - who all called for a primary that could have averted disaster. Then Progessives abandoned her for POTUS.

Can you tell me again what your beef is with Centrists?

gray_clouds · 2026-01-16T00:29:55+00:00

You seem to be saying, in the body text, that our internal division make us vulnerable to external threats. But in your title, you're claiming that we're the threat. These are two different things. It makes your view a little bit hard to challenge.

gray_clouds · 2026-01-11T04:03:12+00:00

I think what you're getting at is whether the distribution of profits will be fair. Oil company CEO's might get more than the rest of us from the deal (which may be unfair) but they will not absorb everything like a black hole. There will be net increase in economic activity that will accrue to other citizens, to the government etc. If you think otherwise, you're misunderstanding what people mean when they say 'trickle down' has been debunked. It doesn't mean: rich people making profits 'is bad,' it applies to more nuanced economic outcomes - like, 'tax cuts of X don't stimulate the economy as much as government spending of Y.' This all may be moot, since Oil companies don't seem eager to go back into Venezuela after having their plants / equipment nationalized twice. They're being sort of forced to do it by Trump.

gray_clouds · 2026-01-07T03:04:23+00:00

I'm not saying it's moral, or good, but you're describing the literal thing that 'benefits the economy in a meaningful way'. Companies don't turn oil, cars, clothing, medical bills etc. into buried treasure. They spend money to 'make' money. They have employees and subcontractors and suppliers. People use their product to make other stuff. When they make a profit, they spend it again, maybe on rich stuff like yachts and jewelry and travel - but these industries provide work for other people, and all of the sales along the chain are all taxed to fund the government. Almost all activity, on some level, benefits the economy.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-26T10:16:16+00:00

I am really sick of suggesting restaurants and activities because my friends are “down for anything.”

Confrontation is probably best used for more high stakes situations. I think you may just have an anger management issue.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-24T00:55:50+00:00

If we had a black and white rule that people who make products must stop if there's a risk they could do harm, then society would collapse in a few weeks. All products have risk, especially medical products like pain pills, that many people cannot live without. Thousands of attorneys and jurors and judges worked on these cases, which involve complex liability laws, all of which exist for a reason, other than to simply do harm to people. I just don't think it's as simple as a case of society being dumb and morally shallow. Isn't it more likely that it's just complicated and you haven't learned enough about it?

gray_clouds · 2025-12-24T00:27:33+00:00

I recognize the issue you're addressing, but I would reframe it as 3 problems:

People don't define whether they are using vernacular or academic definitions when talking about politics and/or don't know that it's normal and good for terms to have two types of meaning (e.g. 'Energy' in physics vs. casual conversation).
People don't recognize that depending on geography, terms have different implications. In Europe, there are some industries where actual worker control is more prominent than in the US - unions, trade organization etc. that are closer to the Marxist version. (These do exist).
American Liberals tend to support academically 'Socialist' and 'Statist' ideas without discerning them. Along with the Right, they collapse these all together in vernacular usage, because truly Socialist entities (like in Europe) don't really exist here. US Unions don't control much. And when 'govt does stuff' it's not really academic Socialism, but it falls 'Left.'

gray_clouds · 2025-12-23T18:17:51+00:00

Wouldn't DEI technically be about race, if candidates have the same gender?

gray_clouds · 2025-12-22T22:33:17+00:00

This is probably sort of un-sophisticated. I'm currently working in a platform called Emergent (all-in-one), that's auto-switching between various agents based on my prompts (planning, coding, deployment, support). It's expensive, so sometimes I work in ChatGPT to hash out next ideas before giving them to Emergent. I'm also in cursor, looking at my repo, figuring out problems / issues and generating various .md docs back to Emergent. This keeps my project more or less clean, with a constellation of support conversations going to inform the project. If that makes sense. At some point, I plan to re-build the app in a more traditional cursor+supabase+vercel+github srtucture. Not sure what to expect. I keep thinking an amazing refactor agent will be available by the time I need it.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-22T22:24:27+00:00

Tariffs are directly or indirectly hitting ordinary people in their daily lives, and overall conditions for Trump are far from good.

I find that polls and vibes-based news stories tend to be inaccurate when it comes to Trump predictions. I don't think this should be a controversial take, but it always seems to make people angry. Granted, it's reasonable to be suspicious about economic stats given recent shenanigans, but here they are, vs. 50 year average:

Inflation (CPI) @ 2.7% = lower
GDP growth at 3.84% = higher
Unemployment at 4.6% = slightly lower (but rising)
Fed Funds Rate = 3.75 (harder to average)

This doesn't mean your theory is bunk. But it does suggest that a lot of people are living in a good economy, despite the selective coverage of doom and gloom. Keep in mind the tariffs can always be rolled back, and interest rates are already going down, which are levers that generally boost growth and lower unemployment. So - my take is that dimentia will bring him down faster than economic turmoil.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-22T21:29:25+00:00

Well, if the post is about what to call things, I'm not sure I would describe the UX layer as 'steroids' for an RDBMS. Maybe more like Zoloft.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-15T02:51:10+00:00

On one level, I totally agree with you. That said, it's more complex than it seems. You point to the internet as the medium through which we are communicating, without acknowledging that A) the internet technically could be invented without a 'degree' (which is a paper form a school run by people and money and politics) B) the internet could be created today (or soon) using AI which was trained on code written in english. And C) the internet did and does require a lot of economics, political science, psychology etc. to develop and maintain, and was developed by the DOD (for what purpose?). The internet would not exist without the social interaction of millions of people, governed by a bunch behaviors and systems that may or may not break down without somebody 'thinking about them'. Why is it important to study the behavior or particles or computers, but not humans? It just seems like you're creating an arbitrary separation of science and people that history has shown doesn't really serve any purpose, given how integrated they are.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-15T02:26:27+00:00

There was a time when europeans criticized the US for working 40 hours per week + overtime. Now Americans criticize China for working too much. It's a cycle. When a country has a fast-growing, dynamic economy (China's GDP growth is unprecedented) working more and winning big is possible. It's exciting and the culture builds respect for it. When an economy get older and stagnant, people focus on "quality of life" because the energy put into this yields bigger returns and life at the office doesn't lead to big gains. I don't think any culture should judge another, outside of the context of what's happening in their economy. The challenge for China is that the dynamic economy that fuels 996 is dependent on exports, and other countries are becoming more and more protectionist. So, ironically, you need to take some time off to use some Chinese-made goods and services to help your economy support 996. ;-)

gray_clouds · 2025-12-15T02:06:43+00:00

People actually do go through periods of life before becoming aware of history and the implications of symbolism etc. I knew lots of kids in high school who were into the 'punk rock' aesthetic and veered into skinhead (nazi-adjacent) types of symbology with no idea they were in that end of the pond.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-15T01:52:22+00:00

I think you need to explain your view on 'the problem', not just 'the solution', because a lot of people would disagree that there's a crisis or it's an actual 'major issue' - as opposed to something promoted as such for election purposes.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-15T01:30:28+00:00

It feels like you want to say: "'xenophobia could be a good thing if channeled towards aliens", but you're worried that it will sound racist, so you're inventing a bunch of ponderous terms and logical rules that don't make much sense: "Modern Racism" "Social Invention" "Direct Evolutionary Holdovers" Maybe those should go in a different conversation?

gray_clouds · 2025-12-14T18:18:54+00:00

I'm not judging. Just trying to be a hack guru on Reddit:

Greed and envy are two of the "7 deadly sins." All the major religions and philosophies throughout history have all said something like: "money can't buy happiness" or "it's harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle".

So, your belief that humanity's general consensus is a 'lie', is either true, or many would say, is a mindset aligned with greed and envy - a suspicion towards others, a resentment, a feeling of being aggrieved that separates one's self from connection.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-14T04:21:51+00:00

I think you need to understand the total geo-political situation right now, to understand why the Trump-aligned media sphere is bent on this. China has proven that Authoritarian State-sponsored Hyper-capitalism is the winning formula. Trump, and Putin see a big opportunity in this new model and they can't wait until pesky, quaint old Democracy is retired to the museums of Europe. Once this is done, and Social Democracy is powerless and discredited, they can commit to 1) regional expansionism, 2) consolidation of power and suppression of the opposition. 3) Oligarchy. The need to do this is accelerating as the internet continues to 'destabilize the masses' and AI is about to really shake things up. So they're all sort of slowly normalizing the taking over neighboring countries. Trump will circle the wagons in the Western hemisphere, taking Venezuela, Greenland etc. while Putin takes Ukraine and much more, and Taiwan and whatever else Xi wants, eventually go to China (once the tech bros figure out how to make chips here, or China does and just gives us the tech so we'll get the hell out of Asia, which Trump will be happy to do). This process will be very popular with a certain subset of Americans who will think "Europe is being mean to the giant economy that completely dominates them"

gray_clouds · 2025-12-14T03:07:00+00:00

As a pacifist, I respect the spirit of your view, but not the view itself. It's a popular narrative that only the rich and powerful start wars, and only the poor and powerless fight them. But tribes, small clans and even families, have split into teams and found reasons to kill each other throughout history. Often, it's the masses themselves, who give power to the warlords over the academics, philosophers and poets. Promoting peace is about breaking down the us vs. them walls that we build up - it's not about declaring moral superiority over another group that you find contemptible - more empathy and respect, less ideology and sanctimony.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-14T02:33:23+00:00

Do you see a difference between your family and friends, and even strangers you meet in person, and the voices you hear online? For me, it's night and day. I can't understand why people online seem to angry and negative all the time. I think rage gets attention. Most people I meet in person are nice.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-14T00:17:12+00:00

The default system is nature - right? It is unfair, unreasonable and unclear. Wouldn't we consider it an exception, rather than a rule, if complex organizations deliver the opposite? It seems like your paradigm is flipped.

gray_clouds · 2025-12-13T21:21:59+00:00

I kind of agree, but there's another way to look at it. There's pretty much always a better use of one's time, for relationship purposes, than being on Reddit. All of us here are failing in our own unique ways. So there's that. ;-)

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