Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

I think that's really an app for personal injury lawyers

oof

I keep seeing ads for this service called Block Renovation, which claims it is the "Amazon Prime of renovation" but seems more like, idk, the grubhub of renovation or something? I.e. it sort of pointlessly inserts itself between you and contractors to take advantage of the growing tendency of people to arbitrarily trust things more if there is some kind of tech intermediary.

Like they claim to also provide "design services" but AFICT all that means is you get a more generic bathroom by limiting your options to theirs, yet still pay a premium over what you would just pay a contractor. And then they work with contractor "partners" to do the renovation.

The audio chat had spiraled wildly out of control from a broader conversation earlier in the call about the state of journalism and what VCs should do to receive better coverage. Srinivasan, formerly a general partner at Andreesen Horowitz, claimed that "the entire tech press was complicit in covering up the threat of COVID-19," and claimed that relying on the press is "outsourcing your information supply chain to folks who are disaligned with you," comparable to the United States having outsourced its medical supply chain. He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models for journalism than "the East Coast model of 'Respect my authori-tay.'"

according to a friend of mine, his creepy behavior toward women online extends to offline as well

i wonder if he would refer to white supremacy as "racial disalignment"?

The app was valued at $100 million after a reported $12 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz, and requires an invite to join.

That's a lot of money for "Zoom with no video"

$12M at $100M valuation is like a Friday afternoon scratch ticket for AH, barely merits an all-staff email probably.

Ba1aji S. 5rinivasan attended Stanford where he was awarded a BS, MS, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, Chemical Engin33ring, and Bioinformatics. He has taught statistics, data mining, and computational biology at Stanford University.

...

He proposed that the approaches to truth and accountability offered by GitHub, venture capital funding, and cryptocurrency all offer better models for journalism

apparently he's seen South Park, tho

wah wah I’m a big baby who can’t take it when people cover my company critically

this all reminds me of the villainizing of john carreyrou at theranos because he dared to write about how their company was a sham, when their company was, in fact, a sham

the endgame is in sight: https://jalopnik.com/this-blowjob-machine-designed-for-teslas-on-autopilot-i-1844296987

"The San Francisco-based startup aims to upgrade the American trailer park, making it a network of intentional communities for the remote-working, previously urban professionals."https://t.co/JBjPczTK3n

— Cory Weinberg (@coryweinberg) July 21, 2020

love that tech is literally gentrifying poverty now

I have to admit that aside from the cringey techno-utopianness of that, I find the concept sort of fascinating. Burning Man meets We Work meets Mad Max meets Gummo

spaghetti in the bath tub, but it's a really good sauce

i live in an actual trailer park and your fascination can go fuck itself :) xp

not having a home. so sexy

tbc not in a "that sounds romantic and fun" sort of way, more like "Is this really something that young people are going to do/is this the marketing scheme for our new dark future" sort of way.

alright fair, i'm just totally repulsed by same

1000 a month, cool cool

rv parks are literally one of the last places poor people can live especially in the western us, where the hell are they supposed to go.

Does this displace other RV parks?

I live in an RV park. And guess what, I used to live in a van. And I am also horrified by this development.

https://media.giphy.com/media/nS7pUeMQq7urm/giphy.gif

I kinda wanna look up what "communal space in San Francisco" this dude lives in ...

lolllll he lives at ******, owned by ******** who made a bunch of tech money and bought a huge old Victorian

is this the place that got called out by SF Planning for code violations because it was group housing and not a single family residence?

feel free to dm via ilx

just sent to u

lol -- the place i was thinking of was in Hayes Valley but had a similar name

one thing that's "interesting" about these types of tech things is the unintended consequences as far as legal regulations that end up affecting the less privileged whose "lifestyles" the tech startups want to re-invent. So, not only do you get the gentrification (which is the direct consequence), you end up with government agencies, like planning departments and building departments and so forth making rules in reaction to the tech things that end up screwing other people. And there's also an arrogance on the part of the tech people that somehow don't see how what they are doing is something that formally / structurally already exists ... just not for people like them.

You'll never have to make your bed again pic.twitter.com/qTQjUnjvjE

— Mashable (@mashable) July 22, 2020

otm xp

like earlier this year, pre-covid, i got asked for tax advice about structuring a non-profit RV park -- as in a charitable org was planning on taking vacant land and developing an RV park for actual poor people and what the tax issues would be .. and I thought, that's actually an interesting model for non-profit affordable housing.

xp how bout you watch this dick suck itself instead, OH!

so part of me is like -- yeah, start up bro, you should do this, but you should also be required to have a % allocated for low-income people who have access to the same dope wi-fi and snacks as yr techpals

this is good

https://pycnocline.substack.com/p/tech-brain

Desperately searching for guidance, on TWITTER, is where this guy went wrong. Everything in that article is about Twitter.

There seems to be a whole ecosystem of journalism around how shitty the discourse is on Twitter. Cancel culture, decontextualizing, dunking, phony aphorisms and vapid bits of received wisdom. Then don't read Twitter, Stephanie, like the other 78% of Americans who don't use it. I'm pretty sure you'll feel better, even if you miss out on some hilarious dunks.

it's by a woman.

Figured that out by my second post 😜

ime it's definitely too twitter-focused but I think she is decribing a real thing

In the 17th century version of twitter (c'est-à-dire, Les pensées), Pascal put it like this:

The difference between the mathematical mind [esprit de géométrie] and the perceptive mind [esprit de finesse]: the reason that mathematicians are not perceptive is that they do not see what is before them, and that, accustomed to the exact and plain principles of mathematics, and not reasoning till they have well inspected and arranged their principles, they are lost in matters of perception where the principles do not allow for such arrangement.... These principles are so fine and so numerous that a very delicate and very clear sense is needed to perceive them, and to judge rightly and justly when they are perceived, without for the most part being able to demonstrate them in order as in mathematics; because the principles are not known to us in the same way, and because it would be an endless matter to undertake it. We must see the matter at once, at one glance, and not by a process of reasoning, at least to a certain degree.... Mathematicians wish to treat matters of perception mathematically, and make themselves ridiculous...the mind...does it tacitly, naturally, and without technical rules.

hueg if treu/booming post. Pascal OTMFM

ha. it really is Pascal, I was gonna write Bob Marley but I don't feel like fucking around with this

she's right tho i remember that tweet and it's irritating af

That specific tweet reminds me more of Willy Loman than anything else.

The worst thing about that tweet, and the reason she’s right to talk about two things, one of which is more benign and facile, is that the author is actually one of the smarter and more interesting Silicon Valley billionaires. He’s a major character in uncanny valley. But that flattening broetry voice is so contagious.

idk if this is exactly the right thread but

sincerely the worst thing ive ever seen pic.twitter.com/O1HRvfVFSK

— jack wagner (@jackdwagner) September 6, 2020