Hacker News with Generative AI: Social Commentary

"The American Dream 2025" Elderly Walmart employee on a COPD machine and crying (reddit.com)
"The American Dream 2025" Elderly Walmart employee on a COPD machine and crying.
From Philosophy to Power: The Misuse of René Girard by Peter Thiel, J.D. Vance (salmagundi.skidmore.edu)
This past summer, I was surprised to encounter a face I knew in two most unexpected places.
Is America headed for an age of dumb phones? (businessinsider.com)
Why so many tech lovers are embracing the "appstinence" movement
It’s So Over, We’re So Back: Doomer Techno-Optimism (2024) (americanaffairsjournal.org)
Tyler Cowen caused quite a stir when he published *The Great Stagnation* in 2011, claiming America achieved success by eating “all the low-hanging fruit of modern history” and was in for a period of stagnation.
The Inequality Myth – Western Societies Are Growing More Equal, Not Less (foreignaffairs.com)
Spend a few minutes browsing political commentary or scrolling social media and you will discover a seemingly settled truth: inequality in the West is soaring, the middle class is being hollowed out, and democracies stand on the brink of oligarchy.
"You Will Own Nothing" [video] (youtube.com)
Europe Built Trains. America Built Highways and Regret. (nytimes.com)
How civilized to catch a train, enjoy a meal on board and then go to bed in a cozy cabin while the moonlit world zips past.
Rutger Bregman Wants to Save Elites from Their Wasted Lives (nytimes.com)
The world is full of highly intelligent, impressively accomplished and status-aware people whose greatest ambitions seem to start and stop with themselves. For Rutger Bregman, those people represent an irresistible opportunity.
Rutger Bregman Wants to Save Elites from Their Wasted Lives (nytimes.com)
The world is full of highly intelligent, impressively accomplished and status-aware people whose greatest ambitions seem to start and stop with themselves. For Rutger Bregman, those people represent an irresistible opportunity.
Yarvin's blueprint of a CEO-led American monarchy (theconversation.com)
The plan was simple. It started by retiring all government employees by offering them incentives to leave and never return. To avoid anarchy and keep authority, the police and military would be retained.
Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy (theguardian.com)
It’s tempting to believe that tech billionaires’ embrace of Donald Trump and the far right is a sudden rupture with the usual political ideology of Silicon Valley.
Tech oligarchs are gambling our future on a fantasy (theguardian.com)
It’s tempting to believe that tech billionaires’ embrace of Donald Trump and the far right is a sudden rupture with the usual political ideology of Silicon Valley.
First 100 Days of Corruption (youtube.com)
Mississippi Can't Possibly Have Good Schools (educationdaly.us)
Painting the Deep South as an embarrassing cultural backwater is one of the last socially acceptable forms of prejudice among elites. It’s not just tolerated - it’s venerated.
Umarell (wikipedia.org)
Umarell (Italian spelling of the Bolognese Emilian word umarèl, Emilian pronunciation: [umaˈrɛːl]; plural umarî) are men of retirement age who spend their time watching construction sites, especially roadworks – stereotypically with hands clasped behind their back and offering unwanted advice to the workers.[1] Its literal meaning is "little man" (also umaréin).[2] The term is employed as lighthearted mockery or self-deprecation.
The New Control Society (thenewatlantis.com)
The gatekeepers are dying. Why is everything so mid?
MAGA's War on Science (paulkrugman.substack.com)
Why do these people believe that ignorance is strength?
The Anti-Capitalist Case for Standards (mitpress.mit.edu)
“It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism,” the saying goes. Indeed, as climate disasters intensify, liberal democracies crumble, and economic instability deepens, visions of collapse seem far more tangible than those of a post-capitalist future.
The Fantasy of a Nonprofit Dating App (theatlantic.com)
Imagine if digital matchmakers had no financial incentives.
Ted Kaczynski's brother wrote him for decades to explain why he turned him in (nytimes.com)
Ted Kaczynski, whose anti-tech rants are finding a new generation of readers, shunned the brother who called the F.B.I. in an effort to halt his campaign of violence.
The Enshittification of Tech Jobs (pluralistic.net)
Tech workers are a weird choice for "princes of labor," but for decades they've enjoyed unparalleled labor power, expressed in high wages, lavish stock grants, and whimsical campuses with free laundry and dry-cleaning, gourmet cafeterias, and kombucha on tap:
The Enshittification of Tech Jobs (pluralistic.net)
Tech workers are a weird choice for "princes of labor," but for decades they've enjoyed unparalleled labor power, expressed in high wages, lavish stock grants, and whimsical campuses with free laundry and dry-cleaning, gourmet cafeterias, and kombucha on tap:
YC founder points out that jobs exist outside of working for police state (bird.makeup)
It's a very exciting time in tech right now. If you're a first-rate programmer, there are a huge number of other places you can go work rather than at the company building the infrastructure of the police state.
Old Nerds, New Nerds (retconnedone.substack.com)
Paul Graham writes a lot about nerds. In “Why Nerds are Unpopular,” he ranks the lunch tables. There were the popular kids, the nerds, and everyone else in between. He writes about the persecution of nerds, of junior high bullying, and a time when the category of “nerd“ was meaningful. I thought nerds were a movie trope. Who acts like this anymore?
Reading RSS content is a skilled activity (doliver.org)
Shit's gotten weird out there. The internet has devolved from something that was mostly quirky and altruistic to something that, in many ways, is straight-up evil.
I made a college punching bag for rejected highschoolers (plor.ing)
Careless People (pluralistic.net)
The Dangerous Ideas of "Longtermism" and "Existential Risk" (currentaffairs.org)
So-called rationalists have created a disturbing secular religion that looks like it addresses humanity’s deepest problems, but actually justifies pursuing the social preferences of elites.
Bad trip coming for AI hype as humanity tools up to fight back (theregister.com)
Opinion 6:56 PM. April 11, 2025. Write it down. That's the precise moment the tech-bro-niverse imploded due to the gravitational force of irony at its core. That was the moment Jack Dorsey posted "Delete all IP law" on X. A little later, Elon Musk added his approval with "I agree."
PaulG on building the infrastructure of the police state (twitter.com)
Something went wrong, but don’t fret — let’s give it another shot.