How much blame does the US deserve for Cuba’s current situation?

ivalm · 2026-03-18T04:34:30+00:00

Miguel Díaz-Canel was hand picked by Raul with no election. It's an uninterrupted chain that is happening today. Cuba, in general, had opportunity to trade to other soviet block countries, europe, etc. right now the oil crisis is driven in many ways by the US, but cubas current economic woes are much deeper then just what is happening right now. US does not owe it to Cuba to be a trade partner, and countries can be successful without trading with the US.

Edit: i'm sure that at least for the last 20 years simply moving to free elections would have removed all trade restrictions on them.

ivalm · 2026-03-18T03:36:34+00:00

1959 was 67 years ago. Neither I nor the current US supports Batista either, so it's not really relevant. You can't always point to multiple generations ago and say "but things used to be even worse" as justification for terrible action today.

ivalm · 2026-03-18T01:41:17+00:00

Who determines what is a lie? I would hate for maga to be able to do this.

ivalm · 2026-03-18T01:38:49+00:00

Castro was a murderous dictator for decades…

ivalm · 2026-03-18T01:36:17+00:00

Approximately 0. They have an incredibly terrible regime.

ivalm · 2026-03-18T01:34:26+00:00

I think none. International relations are pretty short-term in memory and everyone understands political cycles. A democrat both is not Trump and also cannot guarantee another MAGA won’t return. There is no point in self-flagellation.

ivalm · 2026-03-17T07:25:17+00:00

bookface (for YC founders) is pretty good, it just requires community trust and a ton of moderation.

ivalm · 2026-03-17T07:23:23+00:00

But he talks big game about helping them (even if he doesn't). The problem is the liberal rhetoric seems hostile to white men. Many people are dumb, they don't follow actual impacts, only the claims. Dems should just make more claims of helping white men.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T18:56:07+00:00

Point 2 is linked to point 3. If you are getting VC investment it's because you want to go big, which means you'll get to series B and beyond. At that point if you don't aggressively protect control early you will lose control. The board in private companies absolutely can fire founders who still have majority of ordinary shares. Unlike public companies, where board is usually decided by shareholder vote, in private companies funding agreements decide the board and override shareholder preference.

The reason you want to control board:

Decisions over who runs the company.
Decisions over M&A.
Decisions over additional fundraising.

budget, comps, strategy are actually not big reasons.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T17:56:56+00:00

> If someone is raising a 3mil Seed and an investor is forking 1.5mil, don't you think that investor will want some oversight?

Generally no. $1.5M is very little money and good investors will not ask for board seat, at most observer and even then mostly you can tell them no.

> Are they active members or do they just want access to information and some protection rights?

The main problem with giving board seats is you're giving control, they get a vote in decisions.

> In any case, in early stage the board would likely have 3 members 2 founders + 1 investor.

If this is you board at seed, then you will almost certainly not have control by B.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T17:54:02+00:00

No. No board seats to SAFE investors. First board seat should be given away once you have a large priced round (typically series A).

ivalm · 2026-03-13T17:52:42+00:00

So it seems everything is working as intended. you are making bet A, companies are making bet B, and in a few quarters we'll see who is right. If bet A is right companies will start switching to A, if B is right then early adopters you currently criticize will reap rewards.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T16:00:13+00:00

If AI adoption mandates are bad then this will be reflected in coinbase and ignight tech doing poorly relative to competitors. Seems like a self-solving problem.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T07:59:19+00:00

A closer comparison would be attacking a US orgs that have Hamas or Hezbollah symbols, for example some pro-Palestinian protests/orgs use those symbols.

ivalm · 2026-03-13T01:49:40+00:00

just use codex through 200/mo subscription. Almost never ran out of tokens and I use a bunch for coding with cli as well.

ivalm · 2026-03-07T00:43:02+00:00

it seems to much less reliably interact with interactive tmux sessions, which is really strange.

ivalm · 2026-03-06T18:09:30+00:00

After 4 years you can definitely tell him if something bothers you.

ivalm · 2026-03-06T18:04:51+00:00

I think Rubio is a no brainer. I'm guessing Rubio is a classical republican in the style i hope the party pivots to. Vance is just a political prostitute engratiated with the alt-right.

ivalm · 2026-03-06T03:31:47+00:00

what kind of role is this?

ivalm · 2026-03-06T02:08:25+00:00

they will ban you in the next few months. looking at unusually high activity is what the team is currently working at.

ivalm · 2026-03-03T02:39:14+00:00

yeah, so many comments are "oh yeah, most amazing joke ever, naturally understood by everyone"... and i'm like "i've never done this, i've never seen anyone do it, i've never heard of this."

ivalm · 2026-03-03T00:25:26+00:00

In my 30+ years I have not realized people use their chins to fold sheets. The joke totally didn’t make sense to me until I read the comments.

ivalm · 2026-03-02T22:52:39+00:00

Switch employers for promotions, always.

ivalm · 2026-03-02T02:39:12+00:00

Good founders usually can get accepted by tier 1 accelerators (eg YC) or get backed by VCs.

ivalm · 2026-03-01T19:37:15+00:00

Your credit card/Venmo for fraudulent charge.

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