When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.
Agreed it's crazy, but it's a good political move. Everyone agrees we should ban it, but no one wants the blame because you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it. So if you're the one who isn't in charge of the hard-but-good decision (or in Trump's case, if you don't particularly give much of a shit about it anyway) it's easy to just pick the most politically advantageous side.
Domestically, maybe, and only in the short term. Internationally, not at all. It makes America look very weak and hypocritical, at a time when America can ill afford to look even worse.
> Everyone agrees we should ban it.
No, they don't. The media and political classes agree. That's not the same thing.
In reality less than half agree, last I checked [0].
> you'll have a huge amount of teenagers and young adults who will blindly hate you for it.
Blindly? Young people already hate Biden, and it's not because of TikTok. It's the two-faced support of mass murder, the economy, the inequality, the lies, the inflation, the oil drilling, the union attacks, the failure to deliver on campaign promises, etc. [1]
Blaming TikTok for that is just an easy wedge. There's nothing smart about it; it's cynical, divisive, and extremely stupid in the long term.
Don't know if they ever agreed to sell. IIRC they did partner with Oracle to host their infrastructure, as a way of showing that they were trying to allay US concerns.
> Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.
Which is insane because in 2020, Trump was the one trying to ban tiktok and Biden was defending it. Now the script flipped? In the meantime, all they've done in the past 5 years is give tiktok free advertisement.
Vitalik's audience is primarily people who are deep into blockchains and Ethereum. Plenty of good content is out there for freshman level info, he's more for your senior year.
That's fair, but I wonder if it isn't precisely the figureheads spearheading these technologies that should communicate most clearly and concisely, especially to reach those 'less in the know'.
He does do that from time to time. Most of his stuff is pretty deep in the weeds and decision trees of specific Ethereum implementations (e.g. this article), but occasionally he'll have one that's more legible to a wider audience. I think his essay on blockchain voting is a great example. https://vitalik.ca/general/2021/05/25/voting2.html
He does that all the time, but that's not what the audience of this particular article wants or needs. Technical discussions are ok and are important and assuming a level of competence for those discussions as table stakes to participate is necessary sometimes.
I was expecting something like advice to avoid distraction, but found the author just as distracted as I constantly am. Not only by his own admission, but the piece itself just weaves in and out of his main point, taking as many detours as the characters in the novel he describes do.
His ultimate point seems to be that distraction should be viewed more as play rather than an impediment to work. I can agree with this conceptually, but wish I could get my inner monologue and capitalism to as well.
The essay is self-referential in a sort of Hofstadter GEB way, with individual sections containing allegorical forms of distractions or diligence (the writer being distracted by videos of a skateboarder who therein is relentless and very not distracted).
He is attempting to write an essay (the word "essay" itself coming from the French word meaning "to try") about distraction, while being distracted yet somehow talking about other kinds of distraction or not. It's very good. It's like a fuller, less abstract version of the "This is the title of the story, which is also found several times in the story itself."
Pretty much. Essays are a great medium for this style, I think of them like a curated conversation almost. You've organized your thoughts in a way that you could present them to a friend in polite conversation; you're trying to convey a point without the need to be pretentious or serious in order for it to be respected. Publications like the New Yorker and the Atlantic are a good place to find lots of high quality ones. Many authors also publish their essay collections as books, my favorite being "Consider the Lobster" by DFW.
Thanks for the recommendations, I will check them out.
I appreciate the point about seriousness too. One part of it that I liked kind of feels like travel writing from the last century (e.g. John Muir) that goes in and out of various subjects with respect to the main one. On the other hand, the author shows their 'seriousness' and culture by being able to reference and talk about the subject in the context of many other subjects. If I try to do this it probably feels pretentious, so I admire the skill of being able to pull it off.
As a WVU grad who grew up there: ya, pretty much. Outside of some select towns and cities, WV is poor as shit, and it's only getting worse. Lots of abandoned towns, homelessness, and very few jobs. Even when coal mining was big, it wasn't exactly a thriving area. The movie October Sky is a great rendition of what it was like in the 50s, the coal company owned everything, and was the only source for anyone's income. Now imagine that 70 years later with all the coal companies gone, and tons of painkillers.
Its a very sad state, anyone I knew with half a brain who grew up there wanted nothing but to leave. Even those in good situations were all looking to move far away after college.
This is sad to see as a WVU CS grad. WVU is pretty much the only place to go outside of Marshall and some teeny tiny schools if you're in WV.
I suspect a lot of this has to do with bad management by Gee and admin bloat, but the state is poor as shit. Most talented students go to WVU on scholarship, and get the fuck out of the state ASAP. It can't be easy to keep a state school funded when nearly every graduate of that school's #1 goal is to bail out of the state.
My freshman year at WVU was the year Gee took over as president. That was definitely his thing to ingratiate himself to the students. The whole frost couple weeks he would go up and down frat row, and through all the big house parties and shake hands, pose for pictures, etc. He quickly got this vibe as the "cool dad" with his cute bow ties. This won the student body over easily, so we were confused when our professors were really bummed about it. Apparently word gets around on your management style and spending habits.
The dude ripped through money he didn't have, hired a ton of bloat, and is now cutting staff in nearly all the programs I held dear.
When Biden passes this bill (which he said he would), I can only assume Dems will lose a large part of the younger voting demographic. If jot now, then 4 years from now. Because no chance in hell is China selling this thing, and Trump is already talking about how much he loves TikTok now.