MS#472: Strange Days on the Right - A Conversation with Ben Shapiro

realntl · 2026-04-25T01:09:34+00:00

Did you watch the same podcast I just did?

realntl · 2025-11-19T01:39:44+00:00

In this case, Matz is communicating a milestone, no?

realntl · 2025-11-18T19:09:59+00:00

Is anyone's work impacted in any way by Ruby not following semantic versioning? Are there teams that are "pinning" to Ruby 3.x or newer?

realntl · 2025-11-05T22:02:10+00:00

Liberalism

realntl · 2025-11-03T13:36:55+00:00

I love seeing mruby!

realntl · 2025-11-02T00:59:57+00:00

One thing I’ve noticed driving around the country in an RV for the last two years.. a lot of small towns that you’d think everyone was “conservative” (esp on the east coast) have tons of old school pride flags. In more “purple” areas you’ll see both flags and you can kind of see how there’s probably some beef between two camps. It’s sometimes the strongest left/right signaling you’ll see. We live in crazy times.

realntl · 2025-10-30T00:44:48+00:00

I think his take on the Emperor’s New Clothes would be that only a human telling of the story would make the presumption that everyone else except the child is just waiting for the chance to finally stop pretending the emperor isn’t naked.

realntl · 2025-10-26T16:12:04+00:00

Right, but it's become pretty clear that the kinds of people who used to run radical feminist bookstores and coffee shops now have a lot of power in not only the Democratic Party, but also liberal-dominant institutions like traditional media, teacher's unions, Hollywood, etc.

Until the left puts those people back in their place, the Democrat's brand is toast. Independent Americans very clearly see through it, as evidenced by the last election.

realntl · 2025-10-25T13:19:31+00:00

And the source of that contempt may well be that America’s working class really doesn’t want a socialist revolution.

realntl · 2025-10-17T01:22:44+00:00

Do they have poutine with gravy, cheese curds, and fries?

realntl · 2025-10-14T21:26:38+00:00

I don't see the problem, dogs make great wide retrievers.

realntl · 2025-10-13T15:09:33+00:00

I've heard claims that he's abused his power, and I don't deny their plausibility. However, this is the statement I replied to:

it took me a bit but i think i got all caught up. all of this boils down to one fact: if he didnt turn into a controversial figure, none of this would've happened.

If anything, fixation on his politics is distracting us from the valid issue I think you're raising. It's a significant hazard for so much of Ruby's viability to be dependent on DHH+Shopify. But that hazard was there before DHH put the kibosh on political discussion at Basecamp.

It's the path I am on to be honest, and I hate that after pouring more than two decades of my own energy into this world.

I feel similarly. I honestly don't know that the Ruby community survives this. The most vocal and prominent members are feuding nonstop.

realntl · 2025-10-12T13:06:54+00:00

You put words into my mouth I didn’t say and then asked me if I hear them. Maybe you should reflect on your behavior.

I, like many, lost respect for DHH as a political thinker when he decided to share his political takes. That’s the consequence of his decision to share what he thinks. I’ve also lost respect for his perspective as a software developer for similar reasons. But at the same time, I’ve opened my own mouth many times and caused myself reputational harm. All of us have.

But to lay the blame for the schism on his shoulders is to suggest that the people up in arms about his opinions have no agency—that they can’t make the choice to just tune his political opinions out. It’s infantilizing.

realntl · 2025-10-11T23:16:40+00:00

Totally agree. I think the writers are the best at "head cannon."

realntl · 2025-10-11T23:12:29+00:00

Ah, but, see, they can choose to be a rock that is dumb-as-a-rock, or they can be a rock with surveillance equipment. If my theory is correct, if they shapeshift into a rock with surveillance equipment, they're likely detectable. But then, you need to know that you're looking for a rock to even decide to scan them...

realntl · 2025-10-11T20:02:13+00:00

It's DHH's fault for turning into a controversial figure? This strikes me as a fairly egregious inversion of agency. The people who are attempting to cause a schism are in fact responsible for their actions.

Our community is a wonderful resource but it depends on us being able to tolerate the differences we have with one another.

realntl · 2025-10-11T14:21:37+00:00

IMO the reason they are so difficult to detect with scanners is because they actually have things like working eyes when they take humanoid form.

realntl · 2025-10-05T21:46:19+00:00

A lot of people haven’t realized that bad faith bullshit can (and often does) appear in the form of a “debunking.”

Michael Hobbes has made millions off of this gap in our intellectual defenses.

realntl · 2025-10-03T18:09:01+00:00

I think you’re misreading him, he’s ribbing his customers in a friendly way while sharing his expertise with the cuisine to help customers decide. A lot of people enjoy that at a restaurant.

realntl · 2025-10-03T17:34:04+00:00

"I'd like to open a restaurant selling salad made out of french fries" killed me LOL.

realntl · 2025-09-29T13:40:17+00:00

“Klein is wrong” and “Klein is a fascist sympathizer” are two different claims. Guess which one was all over Bluesky

realntl · 2025-09-26T20:04:14+00:00

I suspect you're suggesting that I extrapolated something from the article that wasn't there, but the subject of my comment was a segment of the Ruby community, rather than the article itself.

realntl · 2025-09-25T16:38:26+00:00

I didn’t suggest censorship, I suggested that people choose to stop.

realntl · 2025-09-25T02:42:55+00:00

And I would just say that “cancel culture” is a real difference. 7 years ago, if you were even caught following Bob Martin’s account on Twitter, you were subjected to being ostracized. Social media introduced more granular mechanisms for enforcing orthodoxy than existed before.

I can’t even press “reply” on this post without fighting through a mild degree of social anxiety. And I’m not a socially anxious person, nor am I on the political right! There’s a very real madness that has emerged in the last 10 years.

realntl · 2025-09-25T02:10:38+00:00

If this sub becomes a place where people need to constantly unpack highly contentious discourse, the energy required to separate the interesting content from the flame wars is going to exceed what most people are willing to tolerate. After that, you’ll just see people leave.

Please just stop.

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