I never watch shorts. I don't want to watch shorts. Every time YoutTube offers me shorts I tell it I don't want to see them. A week later it recommends shorts again.

That's what the second group is. The first group is trying to do work. The second group is trying to amass power for personal benefit.

There's a corollary argument he would later make that as an organization grows, the second group will outnumber the first group. It's not a polemic against government. It's a warning against any organization getting too large.

I think it fits here:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Taken from: https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.jerrypournelle.com...

Media decoder ring time:

"Lashed out" = Filed a lawsuit with the European court
"Attacked" = Issued a press release detailing their court case.

Coming soon:

"Murdered" = Made a compelling argument in open court
"Nuked from orbit" = Motion for continuance "Slaughtered" = Won a court motion
"Destroyed" = Favorable court ruling
"Strangled" = Disagreed with loosing a motion

Aren't writing skills useful? In my experience, writing, reading and speaking ability are usually tied together.

Houston has the most stable housing prices of any city in the US. Houston does not have any zoning restrictions. If housing prices go up, developers tear down strip malls and build apartments. If commercial prices go up, they tear down low density housing or commercial property and build high-density commercial property. That is a functioning market.

People like to rag on Houston as not a nice place to live, but you can, at least, afford to live there.

Copilot doesn't produce good code all the time. But it does often enough that it's worth trying it out first.

There's those weird 3" floppies that dedicated word processors used, as well as other gadgets like early digital cameras, in the late 1980's through to the mid 1990s. It's probably the most widespread oddball floppy format.

I need to buy some commodity item. A cable. A weird light bulb. Replacement air filters for the furnace. The workflow is simple:

1. Look the item up on Google, check prices at the local places (Home Depot, Target, Micro Center, Wal-Mart, Lowes, etc...)
2. Look the item up on Amazon.

If I must have it immediately, I buy it locally.
If it's a lot cheaper on Amazon and I don't need it right away, I buy it on Amazon.
If Amazon isn't that much cheaper than buying local, I'll buy local.

It's not hard. It takes about two minutes to research this stuff. Shopping around used to involve calling or driving to multiple stores. Now I can do it from my couch.

I'm not sure what's getting worse here.

Reading books has been largely de-emphasized in schools. My son is a senior and has only had two full books assigned as reading. No summer reading. Most reading assignments involve "texts," like news articles, blog posts, social media posts, and short stories. Fortunately, he likes reading and reads quite a bit independently. His classmates, if not doing the same, are going to run into problems when going to college.

I saw that movie. The PR lady falls in love with the robot that looks like John Malkovich. I'm not sure what's wrong with that.

Know what makes people age fast and causes cancer? Smoking. Know what 14% of millennials do? Vape.

Copyright on Youtube is hopelessly broken. A couple of legal channels I watch have had their content copied wholesale into new channels, with new AI generated intros and outros. The lawyers, some of whom specialize in IP law, and some of whom have some fairly large channels, had tremendous difficulties getting the cloned channels taken down. Subscribed viewers said that the clone channels were being recommended over their own channels by Youtube. It's a mess.

I'd agree with you 100% if these people were criticizing Klein. For the videos he is suing for, they were not. They were sniping his stream. Meaning, they were rebroadcasting his stream with no commentary or communication of any kind, so they would get the views instead of him. I've seen the videos of the people he is suing. They said, basically, "Here's his stream! This guy is an idiot." And that was the extent of the criticism. Some walked away from the camera and ate dinner while rebroadcasting his stream.

The mods he is suing were organizing and promoting the snipe streams. They also didn't offer criticism beyond "Let's snipe Ethan he's a jerk."

I don't like anybody involved here. I'm not a fan of Ethan Klein either. But the people who make nothing new and snipe content are bottom feeders and need to be kicked off the internet. I'm fine with criticism and commentary channels. The sniping, though, needs to stop.

The point isn't that Saudia runs 380-800s. The point is the royal family has the money to buy anything they want. Planes, apartment buildings, yachts, skyscrapers, cities, airlines, football clubs, hotels, restaurants, software companies, etc... If they wanted an Airbus 380-800, they'd buy it. To that point Riyadh air, also owned by PIF, is planning on buying a few dozen Boeing Dreamliners.