shartshooter

I re-started using meetup just a couple of weeks ago after feeling the same way. And, honestly, my interactions were great. Meetup was scheduled, people showed up, we had a good time. I live in a smaller city and found two to go to in one night(ping pong and board games)

‘The executive order does not give ranchers immediate license to shoot wolves preying on livestock, but instead gives Interior Secretary Doug Burgum 90 days to determine whether the grey and Mexican wolf populations had recovered enough to warrant being taken off the endangered species list’

I sold my business to a PE firm as the “platform,” meaning they’d acquire other companies in the future and “bolt-on” to ours.

We ended up selling to the most founder-friendly, culture-is-important PE firm we could find and, to their credit, they gave us every chance to keep running the business our way, while giving resources we wouldn’t have access to.

As soon as we missed a target the screws were tightened, they began injecting “experts” to run portions of the business, and pushed out our most experienced folks throughout all levels of the business.

From there, performance fell, and the screws were tightened further.

What I’ve been impressed by: everyone at the PE firm and the people they introduce are very experienced and very smart

What’s been disappointing: no one is trying to innovate. Everyone is trying to follow a framework of what has been done before, copied ad nauseum.

The idea of doing things even remotely different from the “big players” in the space is shut down, and we essentially try to emulate them instead of leaning into what made us successful, and attractive to PE firms in the first place.

The conditions of the deal were fair, we sold >60% of the company, with a majority of the proceeds being paid in cash up front l, some tied to near term performance, some tied to longer term.

PE is very much a mixed bag. If you play their game, they’ll love you. If you’re contrarian or challenge their thinking, they don’t love it.

Except they raised $65 billion dollars, not $1.

Ai is overstated in my opinion but to hand wave the reality of them having created something that investors were happy to value at $1T is pretty unfair

Will goblins be the “bugs” of ai? In 10 years will goblins be the term the general public uses for any nagging issues with ai?

When I joined the army as an infantryman back in the early 2000s there were kids who couldn’t start basic training because they weren’t capable of doing 6 pushups. 6.

I believe at the time they were allowing 38 year olds to join for the first time which seemed crazy to me. Now that I’m in my early 40s I can’t imagine going back in

One of my friends was an elite athlete a couple of decades back(eg. won a national champion in a solo track and field event as well as a gold medal in the world championships)

He’s mentioned before how he’s always had bad teeth. He chalks it up to growing up around bad water, I assumed it was because he eats bagels and other carbohydrates almost exclusively, but maybe this is why!

I spent my childhood in a rural town but learning Spanish from various teachers from 4th grade through high school. I always did well but focused too much on the process of Spanish such as getting very good at conjugating verbs without knowing what the meant

After several years away from Spanish I picked it back up in college and began traveling and living off and on in Latin America

I remember the first times I started dreaming in Spanish, or the first time I had a screaming match with someone trying to steal money from me. I would unconsciously think of a phrase in English and constantly be trying to convert it to Spanish all day long. It was the most fluent I’ve ever felt

A few months ago I went on a trip to Central America and was worried my Spanish would have been lost after over a decade away. Turns out that quite a bit is still there

Folks regularly compliment me on my pronunciation(which is hugely important and shows that you’re trying, folks give you so much grace if you don’t know the words but are trying)

I also find that I can speak far better than I can listen. I regularly have to ask people to repeat themselves or slow down, which is frustrating to me but what can you expect after not staying sharp?

Last thing: I’ll echo another commenter who said to listen to music. My high school Spanish teacher had us listening and singing shakira. She’d print off the lyrics and we’d sing along. This was hugely valuable for pronunciation and flow. Also, old Shakira stuff is great

Nothing beats the pressure of using a language all day in a place where they don’t speak your language.

I remember meeting a backpacker from another country who spoke English but would only speak Spanish to when we traveled and would pull out her dictionary regularly and make notes in her notebook. I learned that Germans are crazy disciplined and that that discipline pays off. Her Spanish was amazing after only a few months in the country

I wish this article shared more about how this tomb was discovered. Was it buried under mountain of dirt? Under a jungle canopy no one explored? Has it been there all along at an existing ruins site but was hidden in some way? Give us details man!

I’d be open to a version of social media that is not banned and the version looks like this: - a straight linear feed with three tabs, 1) people close to me(default), 2) brands and influencers I choose follow and 3) everything else the algorithm wants me to see(this could be curated and not a linear feed)

My ex and I have an agreement in our separation agreement that our children can’t have social media until they’re 16. This is the version of it I’d want for them, if they choose(or feel pressured) to use it

I really love this concept for an app. Downloading and getting going was a breeze.

That said, I’m finding some latency issues when I respond. I’ll say something in Spanish, hit the red button, and none of the text I sent appears.

Then I’ll hit the red button again to start talking but before I do the assistant responds to my response and the words I spoke show up

Some of the back and forth is showing up out of order.

Also, error messages are in Spanish, and my Spanish isn’t good enough to read them so I’m not sure what to do

Again, love this concept and would love to have an ai assistant I can have daily conversations with to start sharp

Would possibly be nice to prime the ai before the convo saying “I’d like to talk about x” in English

Keep going! I’ll keep playing with it

This summer I went camping and at the campground next to me was a middle manager at Amazon. I’ve been out of the workforce for about a year, so I asked him how much of an impact AI was having in his role.

He told me that he had worked to develop a tool that would replace effectively all of the middle management function that he was responsible for: gathering information from folks below him, distilling it down and reporting that to people above him.

His hope was that he would be retained to maintain the system that he built, knowing that every other manager at his level was going to be terminated.

It felt like watching someone who is about to be executed be responsible for building the gallows. He should’ve been so aware that his job was going to be the first one cut, and he was responsible for building a tool to cut his own job. But he was optimistic that the cuts wouldn’t come for him

Makes me wonder how he’s doing today

Damn. There are some things here that resonated with me and some that don’t. I had a time of my life where I just felt like I didn’t vibe with my ex’s friends. We’d go to parties and these people would feel so shallow. Having grown up poor around a bunch of perpetually rich people made me feel different.

You also said that the world is burning, and it is to some defree. But it’s also filled with so many kind and amazing people making an impact where they are. Sure, maybe the gal serving coffee isn’t fixing climate change but she’s making the person she’s talking to that day feel special. That’s important too. Same goes down the soccer coach who’s helping kids find passion in something.

The world is full of contradictions and imperfections. It’s also full of kindness and generosity everywhere you go, if you’re looking for it. If you’re looking for ways to validate that the world is burning, your gonna find those too

Social media blows, I hate it too. I’m not entirely sure society is moving in the right direction, but I’m just an atom in the ocean. I can affect those around me and hopefully those people affect more. My hope is that my joy spreads through other people, and if it doesn’t, that’s ok too.

I’m bummed you’re hurting, and with a job and a million responsibilities it can be hard to lift your gaze to see the forest for the trees

It’s easy to find reasons to talk yourself out of action. Maybe you’ll get burned out, maybe you won’t. But if you never try you’ll never know. And you’ll definitely miss out on something special

People are willing value art with their attention more so than their wallet

So while it seems we have more arists/creators than ever, the work seems more hollow and less inspired than ever because the artistic expression is tailored for a digital audience(often) and that digital consumption art feels shallower

For example, I was watching a stand up act on Netflix last night with my family. We were rolling in laughter but today we won’t talk about the show at all. Had we gone and seen the act live it would have been a “family moment” that we carried with us

This easy come/easy go commodification of our art and entertainment means that so little lasts with us. Same goes for music(I’ll discover a new song to fall in love with tomorrow)

I’m obviously not the first to notice this, but I think there’s a bit of an inevitability around this. Barring some large societal change, the tide is pulling more and more this trend