nemesisj

I've probably visited Beirut 20+ times over the last 7 years. Last visit was summer of 2019, so haven't been since COVID. My company has an office there.

It's one of my favorite cities in the world. It's also one of the most heartbreaking situations in economic and humanitarian terms. The country has experienced one of the worst currency crises in history, did not wether COVID well, and then had one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history go off right in the city center. Two years later, nobody has been prosecuted.

The country is in complete deadlock politically - all of the warlords from the civil war just became politicians and then systematically looted the country. There isn't much optimism that the situation will turn around, and almost everyone I know who lived there has left, accelerating an already problematic brain drain.

Beirut and Lebanon has to be one of the largest missed opportunities or what-could-have-been situations of the last 100 years.

Comment · 4 years ago

Administrate’s vision is to be the platform for education. We provide an EdTech solution that helps training departments and training companies manage their entire operation and plug into the rest of their corporate tech stack. We’re looking for smart engineers who get things done with Javascript, React, Python, and our GraphQL API.

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies. We work a 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

Comment · 5 years ago

My guess is that fire prevention is only part of the problem. Wouldn't burying the lines mean that their infrastructure is also not destroyed by wild fires? Things just burn above, and everything keeps on working?

Comment · 5 years ago

I am working on a LEGO sorter project, and getting access to labeled data to train my neural network is a real pain. Would love to see if your dataset could be of use!

Comment · 5 years ago

I wish this comment was the top comment.

Not to be too critical, but this blog post is a (in my opinion, poor) rehash of Steve Yegge's infamous Google+ post which he accidentally posted online. It's entertaining and one of the most influential memos I've read in the last twenty years.

His followup memo was great as well.

Comment · 5 years ago

I moved to Europe (Scotland) about 10 years ago, and prior to that lived most of my life in China and the USA. One thing that struck me is that in both China and the USA, the idea of a war close to home is not a thing. Nobody considers it to be a remote possibility, and it isn't. There is simply no entity who can project enough power to mess with either of those countries for a sustained period of time on their home turf.

It's different in Europe - the UK seems to be the least conscious of the possibility of war but the farther east you go, the more it's on people's minds.

I've been to Poland a few times now, and each visit through chatting with randoms in a bar or pub (and through chatting with a number of Polish friends here in the UK) I had a similar experience: there would be a point where someone would casually remark that they're just spending time concentrating on keeping fit (aerobic and weight lifting) because "the next war is coming."

Poland of course has particularly horrible geographical luck and an extremely war-torn past to reckon with, but I was really struck with this idea that anecdotally many folks seemed to be living under the perception that the next war is coming, and we all need to be prepared. I've had similar but less extreme and consistent conversations with folks in Romania, for example.

I'm not really sure what there is to learn here, apart from the fact that the EU has been a phenomenal success in its real purpose - keeping the peace in Europe. Just look at this list of wars in Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_conflicts_in_Europe

Is the world getting safer? I think so. Is the risk of large scale war like France is planning for decreasing? I hope so. But we are on very new footing in terms of this being the new normal, despite what it might feel like, and this perception certainly differs based on how close to perceived threats you might live.

Comment · 5 years ago

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.

We 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

Comment · 5 years ago

We’re one of the UK’s fastest growing B2B SaaS companies.

We 4 Day, 32 hour workweek but you get paid for 5 days. You can read more about that here: https://techcrunch.com/2015/12/21/four-day-week/

Check out our positions here: https://www.getadministrate.com/careers/

nemesisj

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