I’m learning the opposite lesson. The US is surprisingly fragile and a single president with no morals or ethics can do far more damage than anyone could have imagined.
It's a lot more than "a single president". It's the two thirds of American voters who either voted for him or couldn't be bothered to vote against him, even after having seen how he behaved in his first term.
That's why he's not the biggest problem. He's more of a symptom than a cause. He won't be around for ever, but even after he's gone, most of those same people will still be around.
no i believe we were taught correctly that the powers of the presidency are limited. the issue is that he is the leader of a group that is embedded into every branch of government at multiple levels. it is not hte case of a random crazy president abusing presidential power and everyone is just at the mercy of a lunatic. It is the case that every wild thing he does is upheld and supported by a large network of people who otherwise would have the power to absorb and dismiss his attempted actions.
Or if decision makers start using the gambling markets to drive their decisions, the value of these things will go extremely negative.
The headline bet in Polymarket right now is on when US troops will invade Iran. If some unscrupulous official can pull some strings to get boots in the ground in the next few days, they stand to win a significant amount of money.
If a person writes 100 lines of code there’s a (valid) assumption that someone thinks this 100 lines of code is worth writing. With AI it takes no effort to write 10,000 loc. Asking someone else to figure out if that code is worth merging just offloads the effort to someone else who didn’t ask for it.
> It’s pretty clear from the text that they have debunked the idea that modern synthetic materials have outstripped older materials in performance... That single coat is also effective over a much larger temperature range than the older clothes.
It feels like these two statements are in contradiction.
FWIW, I do a lot of hiking / backpacking / snowboarding in various conditions and "effective over a much larger temperature" is the #1 thing I shop for. If I can have 1 jacket that I wear from the time I get up in the morning until lunch, that's worth more than any other feature. I hate having to stop a hike to strip off a layer and I hate having to find a way to carry my jacket while snowboarding.
As measured in mass needed for a given amount of insulation. They expected the modern materials to achieve the same protection from cold while being lighter. That’s not what they found.
> If I can have 1 jacket that I wear from the time I get up in the morning until lunch, that's worth more than any other feature.
Yes, I suspect that many people think adaptability is even better than raw performance. After all, most of us don’t have a sherpa who can carry our jacket while we snowboard.
I've seen it, but I think it's got some places that it would benefit from more clarity. Can we put together a committee to improve and protect our processes from it? We could call it a task force if that's easier to sell to management.
I did not know the existence of this manual. It was a very interesting read! Especially after page 28 (General Interference with Organizations and Production).
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