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The big news today is the US Federal Reserve’s big FOMC meeting. The expectation is that the Fed will announce a big rate hike, on of the biggest in decades. The previous rate hike amounted to 0.5%, and the expectation for today is 0.75%. While it’s entertaining watching Jim Cramer and his ilk share their opinions on various matters which–I think–they likely have no clue about, it’s even more interesting learning about how institutions like the Fed really have no clue what they’re doing.

I watched yesterday’s budget committee meeting at the US senate (which you can find here). It was mildly interesting, and it left me with the impression that politicians plan on continuing to change nothing while we march toward extinction. Humans did this

Something I’ve noticed in recent times, and it may or may not be a trend–I’m not sure–is the idea that someone somewhere in a position of authority knows what’s going on, how to fix it, and they’re coming to save us. Probably a good example of this at a mass level was the 2020 Biden election, where scores of people were convinced that the world would go back to normal and evil would be defeated if Biden won.

One truth we all eventually have to face as we become fully formed adults (“grown-ups”) is that being right doesn’t matter. The only thing that really matters is appearances, being in the right place at the right time, and your connections. This is an idea that has been floating around in my head for a while, and I’ve been trying to figure out how to describe it. To do so, I can only think in terms of storytelling so that’s what I’ll do.

Yesterday an interesting thing happened, where disenfranchised folks walked right up into the US capitol after Donald Trump told them to do so. They weren’t welcome there, and a few people ended up dead in the scuffles, and a lot of people were mad for a variety of reasons. Where the people who run the USA world meet

One important (and mostly non-mainstream) concept is the idea of manufactured consent. The idea was originally described in a book authored by Noam Chomsky and some other guy in in the 1980s. For a quick summary, check out this video on YouTube which provides a great summary (use youtube-dl to completely avoid the ads).

I was recently trolling someone on Reddit, and in a brief (and regrettable) fit of passion I made a remark only I could love about “transcending the bullshit”. I have often repeated that I intend to one day publish a book titled “Everything is Bullshit”, in honour of the late David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, but extending to pretty much all facets of society.

Over the last 5 years of my career I’ve shifted my priorities in life. When I was younger, I was willing to deal with a lot of bullshit at work so long as they kept paying me a salary. Nowadays, I care more about my own happiness, and I’m not willing to work with people who are jerks.

I was reading Hacker News comments and someone was complaining about how they weren’t able to find a job in computers anymore due to ageism in tech. Reading this, something occurred to me which I thought was worth writing about, which is the idea of malleability. First of all, I agree that ageism in tech is a thing and it’s a problem for experienced people trying to find a new job. In a capitalist society you want to hire the cheapest employees who can “get the job done”, and experience is often grossly under weighted. My hypothesis for why it occurs has to do with the fact that some people perceive more experienced technologists as more expensive and less malleable.

I saw a discussion on Reddit about entrepreneurship recently that got me thinking. What’s the point of being an entrepreneur when the odds of success are incredibly low? This is especially true if you’re low on resources or clout. For me, the reason I want to be an entrepreneur is simple: I have valuable skills and I want to work on things that I care about. I don’t care that much about getting rich, but I do want to earn enough to live comfortably and not have anxiety about paying the bills.