> In the memo, Shah said employees should be prepared to work longer hours and not be afraid to let work impinge on their personal lives.

I wonder what executives should prepare for. Presumably continuing to contribute nothing of discernible value. Probably what comes when you treat humans like fungible work units to their face without even the pretense of viewing them as human.

Oh god they're russian. That means they're evil!

Given that it also functioned as sort of an uncomfortable couch—not really.

Besides, it's way further behind in basically every respect but compute.

If you don't have an HOA, consider not leaf blowing or raking at all. There's not much point and local insect populations probably need them to weather winter.

And if you do have an HOA, consider not having one. :)

Many single-unit family home neighborhoods do not have an HOA—people just get along or take their concerns to the town itself. I mostly associate HOAs with suburbia.

This just straight up doesn't make sense to me—states aren't monolithic entities or rational actors. I think it's easier to say that the modern state exists at the behest of capital, at least in the west.

States are rational actors though

when in the history of anything was that the case? democracies make terrible choices, with voters often voting against their interests all the time.

dictators make dumb-ass calls often, like Erdogan of Turkey making random (randumb) pronouncements about the currency and causing terrible inflation (or Saddam's "let just fight all our neighbors, Suharto's random evil, etc.).

It’s generally accepted in international relations that it’s always the case long term. States can make bad calls in the short term but you’ll often find they are rational decisions regardless of if they don’t turn out well. Erdogan has greatly expanded turkeys influence in the region and been relatively successful in playing the west and russia off each other for instance.

Saddam I’ll give you but that also led to his removal and it can be argued Iraq didn’t have many good options as historically it’s been controlled by one or more of the surrounding nations so it may just not working realistically due to geography and ethnic strife

> States can make bad calls in the short term but you’ll often find they are rational decisions regardless of if they don’t turn out well.

This line of reasoning only makes sense when compared with counterfactuals, which seems like a waste of everyone's time. It's easy enough to justify an arbitrary action as rational if you have no basis of comparison.

Anyway, "rational self-interest of the state" is not the same thing as "rational". There are other ends other than self-interest of the state—for instance, self-interest of the constituents of the state, or self-interest of humanity. All states put their own existence before the welfare of their people. A state is not a natural thing outside the vying of capital to institute economic stability for the ends of its own empowerment.

You're confusing "rational" with "competitive", which is neoliberal sleight of mind.

There is absolutely nothing rational about terraforming your own planet to make it less able to support you.

Your politics are bleeding through here and it’s clearly fogging your mind of reality. I made a statement considered factual by political science/international relations and you’re strawmanning about “neoliberalism” and bringing up climate change. Do better, be less emotional. If you can’t do that you have no business making statements about nations and their relations with one another which are rational.

> I made a statement considered factual by political science/international relations

This is typically termed a "belief".

I have yet to see evidence of this lol

> I wonder if there's a way to prevent the growth at all costs that is demanded by the financial markets.

Growth and private investment are part and parcel.

Ads (along with nazis and pedophiles) are the root of almost all issues on the internet and it looks like a very bleak future if we can't build an alternative form of compensation into our protocols. I don't understand why we can't at least outbid the advertisers for our own attention.... what a waste of time and money and attention and culture all around.

> I don't understand why we can't at least outbid the advertisers for our own attention

Pessimism of whether the content would be worth real money, mostly.

Well, it's impossible to say without the opportunity to experiment. It's certainly difficult to believe nobody would take advantage of this if they could.

> I'm not so keen on forcing successful businesses to ruin themselves

I don't really have a problem with that if they can't play nicely with others. Businesses come and go. But ultimately companies need some incentive to not fuck over the consumer, and "forcing successful businesses to ruin themselves" strikes me as a better option than fines at this point.

> There is a belief, entirely understandable, that more and more frequent symbols of our intent to retaliate will keep the North at bay

How's deterrence working on those other fronts, Uncle Sam? Have you tried diplomacy? Have you tried fixing your own country first?

TBH as an app developer myself I'd far prefer an option to publish and make transactions outside of Apple's purview than any kind of concern about piracy or meddling.