sark douls
@fawltarnished.bsky.social
cs postgrad, swe, lib, gamer, pianist.
Pinned
sark douls
@fawltarnished.bsky.social
· Dec 3
VIDEO GAME MUSIC THREAD!
It’s real.
April 2, 2025 at 1:55 PM
It’s real.
Reposted by sark douls
The Department of Government Efficiency, for example
April 1, 2025 at 2:48 PM
The Department of Government Efficiency, for example
Reposted by sark douls
[Boss music shifts from an organ solo to Latin chanting as Pope Francis’ health bar refills]
March 23, 2025 at 2:35 AM
[Boss music shifts from an organ solo to Latin chanting as Pope Francis’ health bar refills]
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i am not sure why this is the only domain where people regularly confuse labor with capital, assume that they are aligned, and call this materialist analysis
How did Silicon Valley go from a hippie-adjacent place where people fostered their creativity turn into a malevolent force of right-wing destruction?
My conversation with Henry Farrell (@himself.bsky.social) about the roots of our current crisis:
paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-did-si...
My conversation with Henry Farrell (@himself.bsky.social) about the roots of our current crisis:
paulwaldman.substack.com/p/how-did-si...
How Did Silicon Valley Break Bad?
A conversation with Henry Farrell about how the land of hippie-technologists turned into a haven for right-wingers with grand and malevolent ambitions.
paulwaldman.substack.com
March 5, 2025 at 1:28 AM
i am not sure why this is the only domain where people regularly confuse labor with capital, assume that they are aligned, and call this materialist analysis
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I think all this shit kinda shows that Gen X is worse than the Boomers. Sorry
March 3, 2025 at 4:58 PM
I think all this shit kinda shows that Gen X is worse than the Boomers. Sorry
Reposted by sark douls
if the united states continues down this path the risk of international sanctions (particularly, secondary sanctions over trade with russia) is underrated
March 4, 2025 at 2:39 AM
if the united states continues down this path the risk of international sanctions (particularly, secondary sanctions over trade with russia) is underrated
Reposted by sark douls
September 7th, 2026, WASHINGTON—Following a breakdown in negotiations, President Vance announce to an anxious nation that he has approved an invasion of North Korea to retrieve hacked funds from the Bitcoin Reserve
December 4, 2024 at 7:23 PM
September 7th, 2026, WASHINGTON—Following a breakdown in negotiations, President Vance announce to an anxious nation that he has approved an invasion of North Korea to retrieve hacked funds from the Bitcoin Reserve
Reposted by sark douls
i think that Silicon Valley believes that it has purchased the United States of America and no longer needs to justify its actions to anyone else. that's certainly how SV companies are run now.
People keep saying "oh it's just theft, it's just a scheme" and like yeah obviously but that's not what's interesting. This is raising a genuinely good question which is how do you justify this to the public i.e. what is the nature of the crisis in which holding a bunch of crypto would be beneficial
Wondering what the public interest is in diluting the US dollar to hold Bitcoin and assorted other cryptos in a "strategic reserve." A reserve for what purpose?
We have a strategic petroleum reserve in case we run out of petroleum. We have dollars and people still like them?
We have a strategic petroleum reserve in case we run out of petroleum. We have dollars and people still like them?
March 3, 2025 at 5:47 AM
i think that Silicon Valley believes that it has purchased the United States of America and no longer needs to justify its actions to anyone else. that's certainly how SV companies are run now.
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Everyone puts things like "Loving husband and father" on their gravestone. What a sad way to sum up an entire life. What about "Hard working employee"
February 26, 2025 at 4:52 PM
Everyone puts things like "Loving husband and father" on their gravestone. What a sad way to sum up an entire life. What about "Hard working employee"
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A DOGE staffer seems to be posting their DOGE work to GitHub x.com/Sollenberger...
March 1, 2025 at 3:10 PM
A DOGE staffer seems to be posting their DOGE work to GitHub x.com/Sollenberger...
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This is the thing that I hate more than anything else about our tech overlords. They owe their entire lives to military Keynesianism and specifically state investments made in the University of California system. The technology, the workforce to develop said technology, everything!
Guy who owes his entire career and vast wealth to Keynesian economics voice: I hate Keynesian economics
this is libertarianism in a nutshell. never let actual economic indicators get in the way of your weird philosophy.
March 1, 2025 at 12:57 AM
This is the thing that I hate more than anything else about our tech overlords. They owe their entire lives to military Keynesianism and specifically state investments made in the University of California system. The technology, the workforce to develop said technology, everything!
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they're promising to drive unemployment into the stratosphere, they want tariffs that are going to push inflation through the roof, they're *still* probably gonna cause a shutdown, they're wrecking social security, and, like, for what? who even benefits from this shit.
February 28, 2025 at 11:14 PM
they're promising to drive unemployment into the stratosphere, they want tariffs that are going to push inflation through the roof, they're *still* probably gonna cause a shutdown, they're wrecking social security, and, like, for what? who even benefits from this shit.
Reposted by sark douls
unironically think this should/could be sillicon valley’s redemption arc a little: actually smart and thoughtful technologists (so none of the current members of team dipshit) will have the potential to build something that wasn’t there before.
it’s true that we won’t be able to rebuild what we lost but it’s also possible that we’ll be able to build something better, because we won’t have the same path dependencies that brought us to now.
People always say: "if libraries didn't already exist, you could never create them today."
Well, lots of the stuff MAGA nihilists are destroying right now is like that. We're not just going to put it all back in place when this if over. It's going to take *generations* to repair this shit.
Well, lots of the stuff MAGA nihilists are destroying right now is like that. We're not just going to put it all back in place when this if over. It's going to take *generations* to repair this shit.
February 28, 2025 at 5:13 AM
unironically think this should/could be sillicon valley’s redemption arc a little: actually smart and thoughtful technologists (so none of the current members of team dipshit) will have the potential to build something that wasn’t there before.
Reposted by sark douls
I remember the post-covid 2020-21 tech hiring season in my company where all of the senior management was livid at how much they had to pay for new employees and had to settle for whoever was available. They absolutely hated a strong labor market.
February 24, 2025 at 7:21 AM
I remember the post-covid 2020-21 tech hiring season in my company where all of the senior management was livid at how much they had to pay for new employees and had to settle for whoever was available. They absolutely hated a strong labor market.
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The society which scorns excellence in bureaucracy as a humble activity & tolerates shoddiness in executive leadership because it is an exalted activity will have neither good bureaucracy nor good executive leadership
'those worthless bureaucrats who don't do anything' is generally a bad political sentiment all round
February 23, 2025 at 10:57 PM
The society which scorns excellence in bureaucracy as a humble activity & tolerates shoddiness in executive leadership because it is an exalted activity will have neither good bureaucracy nor good executive leadership
Reposted by sark douls
My take: the modern fascist movement believes as a foundational principle that there simply **IS** no such thing as goodness, that it doesn’t exist, and so what normies call “evil” is just being in tune with the true nature of the universe
a principled opposition to principles. a movement who's only virtue is lack of virtue.
it is, somehow, a movement that seems to genuinely, explicitly think of *itself* as evil
it is, somehow, a movement that seems to genuinely, explicitly think of *itself* as evil
February 21, 2025 at 8:35 PM
My take: the modern fascist movement believes as a foundational principle that there simply **IS** no such thing as goodness, that it doesn’t exist, and so what normies call “evil” is just being in tune with the true nature of the universe
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i know we all need to just internalise this and move on but i really can't get past the fact that all high-level geopolitics is now "thinking up ways to trick the world's most infantile man into believing that your agenda will make him look like the birthday boy"
February 21, 2025 at 9:12 AM
i know we all need to just internalise this and move on but i really can't get past the fact that all high-level geopolitics is now "thinking up ways to trick the world's most infantile man into believing that your agenda will make him look like the birthday boy"
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The Biden administration after bailing out the SVB uninsured depositors at 100 cents on the dollar:
February 20, 2025 at 2:25 AM
The Biden administration after bailing out the SVB uninsured depositors at 100 cents on the dollar:
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conservatives' plan for Trump's second term was explicitly to push us into a labor market recession. Both for the ideological goal of disciplining workers and to reset interest rates to a lower level.
At this point, it's starting to feel like the goal.
I’m not an economist but the federal govt is the country’s biggest employer so isn’t this going to send us into a depression?
February 18, 2025 at 11:18 PM
conservatives' plan for Trump's second term was explicitly to push us into a labor market recession. Both for the ideological goal of disciplining workers and to reset interest rates to a lower level.
Reposted by sark douls
Also these are people that genuinely have a vivid disdain for education and the humanities and journalism, because it reminds many of them they lucked into their wealth and are often hollow imitations of genuinely remarkable thinkers
February 17, 2025 at 11:11 PM
Also these are people that genuinely have a vivid disdain for education and the humanities and journalism, because it reminds many of them they lucked into their wealth and are often hollow imitations of genuinely remarkable thinkers
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I really do think part of the problem is the old bankers and ceos and plausibly sane media people are straight up too old and offline to see how degenerate and evil and insane the enemy is.
February 15, 2025 at 7:55 AM
I really do think part of the problem is the old bankers and ceos and plausibly sane media people are straight up too old and offline to see how degenerate and evil and insane the enemy is.
Reposted by sark douls
IMO tech CEOs are not only steeped in their weird technofuture religious hot boxes but more simply, they have never had to deal with a true, severe contraction and reconsolidation cycle, a thing that is part of the institutional DNA of every other "traditional" industry
bsky.app/profile/theo...
bsky.app/profile/theo...
the tech industry mania for internal LLMs and job cuts was driven not by revenue fundamdentals or the end of ZIRP but management radicalism against their employees
I think a lot of CEOs are going to do what DOGE is doing on their workforces after years of hiring and competing for workers. Individually their animal spirits are going to be about cutting labor in an effort to maximize earnings, assuming that their firms are inefficient and bloated.
February 14, 2025 at 8:56 PM
IMO tech CEOs are not only steeped in their weird technofuture religious hot boxes but more simply, they have never had to deal with a true, severe contraction and reconsolidation cycle, a thing that is part of the institutional DNA of every other "traditional" industry
bsky.app/profile/theo...
bsky.app/profile/theo...
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Trump's weakness has always been the most perversely strange part of his political life. He is an authoritarian ruler that seeks power......but as a ruler he functions as an increasingly empty shell that others compete to fill.
February 14, 2025 at 1:14 AM
Trump's weakness has always been the most perversely strange part of his political life. He is an authoritarian ruler that seeks power......but as a ruler he functions as an increasingly empty shell that others compete to fill.
Reposted by sark douls
The Partition of India displaced 20 million people, killed almost 2 million & created a refugee crisis whose effects are still in play over 70 years later, if you actually think it's a model for anything but massive catastrophe, you should not only not be employed here you should be in a padded cell
February 13, 2025 at 3:05 PM
The Partition of India displaced 20 million people, killed almost 2 million & created a refugee crisis whose effects are still in play over 70 years later, if you actually think it's a model for anything but massive catastrophe, you should not only not be employed here you should be in a padded cell