It's a bit of circular logic. Big names are where big populations are. By that criteria San Francisco city has more "nowhereness" than San Jose.
New York metro area is much more nowhere than Tokyo metro if you want to go buy sheer population in a continuous urban conglomeration.
And to me, personally, NYC is just as nowhere as Boise, Idaho. Just a bunch of people living in groups doing things they find interesting, or can't leave due to financial/family/personal reasons. You can do lots of stuff in and around Boise that the same people can't do in NYC and visa versa, depending on individual preferences.
Many folks I know get bored quickly in NYC and SF. I do. I still love NYC and SF, though. I suffer from a bit of Stockholm Syndrome ;)
> NYC is just as nowhere as Boise, Idaho. Just a bunch of people living in groups doing things they find interesting, or can't leave due to financial/family/personal reasons
I am having difficulty thinking of any group of humans living anywhere that doesn't meet this definition. The same could be said for a mining town in Siberia, or an uncontacted tribe living in the Amazon, or prisoners in a prison.
> You can do lots of stuff in and around Boise that the same people can't do in NYC and [vice] versa, depending on individual preferences.
The list of things you can do in Boise that you can't do in NYC is effectively zero if you exclude "the outdoors" as a category. For people who don't prioritize the outdoors as highly as other things in life, this makes Boise effectively nowhere by comparison.
I'd add it's not just HN, but most social sites are far into self-censorship territory. I agree though, HN is much more hostile these days.
WRT dang, even today he shut down a thread regarding the deepening SEC inquiry into Musk (which had new news as of this afternoon), and said that this was something along the lines of "Musk hysteria" or some such thing.
I was kind of shocked at the removal of that thread as it was covering a new development, and was not, as dang put it, a dupe or hysteric.
We've done a pretty bad job at bringing back jobs. Labor force participation rate has fallen, while people are retiring later. Retirement/aging doesn't even help explain the drop. Especially since the younger generation has more than replaced the older one, and the older one isn't retiring at the same historic rate.
>Labor force participation rate has fallen, while people are retiring later. Retirement/aging doesn't even help explain the drop
Retirement/aging explains the largest component of the drop.
Much of the drop was predicted decades ago by Census based solely on demographics. The single largest factor in the current drop is exactly demographics. Here [1,2,3] are FRED papers on the topic with more references.
Almost everyone who wants a job has one. And real wages have been rising for a decade.
That’s pretty good shape.
Labour force participation is a complicated question deeply intertwined with the opioid crisis, increased rates of college attendance, the mis-use of federal disability insurance and other factors. Quoting labour participation without reference to demographic shifts creating more retirees, moreover, mischaracterises the statistic. Demographically, there is no world in which 2018 LFP would have been higher than 2008.
> Does your analysis account for quality of jobs available?
I was responding to a claim that the government should have focussed on "creating jobs". In that context, the employment-unemployment line seemed most significant.
Real wages have been rising for a decade, so the central tendency for employed persons is better than it used to be (or than it was pre-crisis). There is still unemployment, particularly among the undereducated [1]. But from an average worker's perspective, it's one of the best economies we've seen in years.
That's not what they're saying. They don't want Google specifically, for reasons they detail in-depth on their website. Being welcoming to everyone doesn't really work, or otherwise we wouldn't have prisons.
I don't know if you live in the area (I only work there), but this is a recurring pattern that has happened quite a few times over the last years, not only to Google. Everything that is a. wealthy and b. from abroad will receive instant hatred. I talked to a few of these people and unfortunately it's only a very short way to conspiracy theories and open antisemitism surfacing.
If you show up being German and wealthy, treatment will be way different unfortunately.
These patterns are likely to happen in times of extreme wealth inequality. Many people point the finger at Google and the like, and they may have a good case.
They might hate you for the money, but you won't be dragged into the depths of paranoid conspiracy theories about "wall street" taking over. Which, to me, makes a huge difference.
Alchemists were experts on alchemy, but now we know their insights weren't all that useful for what they intended. (Although they were some of the smartest minds in their day.)
Same might be true for many economists. We like to think we've got the right experts, but it turns out we really don't know if the so-called experts have the most useful perspective on matters.
The doomsday clock is a human institution of scientists, though hardly scientific. They see it as their duty to raise alarms. But ask yourself- are we really closer to civilization ending Doomsday than at the height of the Cold War?
There's a strong correlation there. Fed funds rate seems to lead a bit.
I agree with you about the all the bad writing. It's pernicious.