It used to be that reading books made you an intellectual. In the age of TikTok and shorts being able to watch a movie for 2 hours makes you an intellectual.
I’d posit that we just puritanically glorify anything perceived as difficult, regardless of the correlation with “intellect.” I’m fine not having the same attention span as people who had to less stuff to do hundreds of years ago.
People with long attention spans can still focus on things that take very little focus, like short-form videos. But people with short attention spans have a hard time focusing on things like books, or even movies. So having a long attention span opens up more intellectual avenues for you, without restricting any.
Yes, there's always some puritan attitudes involved in how we talk about this. But I do feel that people who can't read a book because of attention issues are missing out on something.
This is vibe psychology. I owe my entire career to a short attention span that drives me to constantly learn about new ideas, technologies, and hobbies.
> This is vibe psychology. I owe my entire career to a short attention span that drives me to constantly learn about new ideas, technologies, and hobbies.
This is a narrow minded view. Just because something works for you doesn't mean it is something we should optimize for.
All great intellects we study today were the polar opposite of this.
Watching a 2 hour movie is perceived as difficult?
> I'm fine not having the same attention span as people who had to less stuff to do hundreds of years ago.
Maybe, if we're really generous, there's a reasonable version of this argument that you've failed to adequately communicate here... But it really seems like you're trying to say that a short attention span is a good sign of progress, or something?
I know HN and SV in general has a culty addiction to contrarianism, and it rarely elicits more than an eye roll from me. Framing a short attention span as anything other than a bad thing is wild to me, and I honestly don't know how to respond to something like that (or if my sarcasm detector is off). Do we need scientific studies to show that goldfish brain == bad?
I was being glib because “attention span” is a poorly defined concept that people are more interested in deriding than understanding, as you demonstrate with your comment that we don’t need science to know that it’s bad. I’m specifically criticizing the tendency to ascribe virtue to tediousness while passing it off as psychology.
After a lifetime of having to prove that my ADHD doesn’t make me a drag on society, call me skeptical of people who insist they know what makes a brain objectively worse than another based on vibes. It’s one thing to discuss the impact of tuning an algorithm to be addictive, it’s another to make a claim that a preference for one form of media over another is a Problem.
Ironically, I’m a pretty heavy reader and find it funny that people treat reading like some paragon of mental discipline when it’s just the media that I find stimulating. I absolutely have a much shorter “attention span” than most people who primarily consume short form video.
It has it risks too. I've used chatGPT for a feature I am working on. It works, I have already resolved some bugs the it didn't pick up. However, the code quality is odd, I've had some hardcoded types as it is unlikely they will ever change. For some of them chatGPT created enums but only for some.
I also realized that review generated code sucks, I can generate a whole app quickly, but I have no understanding of small decisions. It is extremely difficult to wrap your hand around hundreds of lines of code written by someone else.
If you mean chatgpt.com, try with a real “agent” harness. The exact same model on chatgpt.com frequently performs much worse than it does with a proper harness, not to mention that the chatgpt.com frontend itself is quite bad.
codex-rs, popularly known as Codex or maybe the Codex CLI, is a fine choice.
Looks like it's still a more-or-less-open-source product called Codex CLI.
FWIW, there have been issues with various versions of ChatGPT not knowing what Codex is -- at least in the (IIRC) GPT-5.3 timeframe, there were serious issues with the knowledge cutoff.
They did it about a month ago for the desktop Codex app. It is actually really confusing and there are many discussions on reddit.
First, the app was called Codex, then they combined them and now the app is called chatGPT, but recently inside the app you can switch between ChatGPT and Codex. lol.
I open my editor, I need to implement a feature, I tell chatGPT what I need, it reviews my code and provides suggestions. I then tell it to implement it. I then tell it to write tests. I review the code.
I test it. I have another AI do code review. I push it to test, then after tests to production.
For some common tasks, that I don't find interesting it is great. I do a lot of CRUD, I honestly cannot imagine writing these apps without AI.
It made curious and freed my brain to think about other things. I am now playing with hardware and plan on launching a niche product. This would not be possible if I 100% committed to programming without AI.
I've studied criminal justice before CS, and after getting to know cops I decided it isn't for me. The culture is awful. It is like high school, a lot of drama, sleeping around, many divorces, abuse of power and just screwed up mentality.
What makes this story worse is this for me:
"The detective investigating Roman told the man “you’ll get past this bro” during his arrest, and later told the victim that he was "remorseful" and urged her not to post about the incident on social media, according to body camera footage obtained by 404 Media."
The detective urged the victim not post about it.....both should be stripped of badges immediately and never get certified again.
You’re focusing on the bad behavior of a couple individuals but the bigger story is the license plate cameras going up all over the country may be used just as easily to stalk ex girlfriends as they are to solve crimes.
Like the guns they carry, may be used just as easily to shoot random people as they are to stop mass shooter. Or there are other information systems available to the police for decades where you can check employment, place of residence, phone number, owned cars, criminal history etc. that can be misused as well.
The US has a problem with zero accountability for cops. Literally zero.
They should be thrown into jail for serious misuse of restricted tools and should not be able to work in any enforcement job ever again. This would solve the problem really fast. We are going to have discussions about how flock is bad, like we had with stingray devices, yet nothing is going to change as nothing can be done about the root issue.
Yep. I don't understand how departments even allow wearing the punisher logo. It is unprofessional imo. Also, a good indicator of a total toddler of a cop.
Look into what "defund" means in this context. It's a slogan that leaked from more formal and academic discussion into general usage and is misinterpreted as "let's not do law enforcement." That's not what anyone well-meaning means when they use it. They mean that the police are ineffective as a law enforcement institution, and the money spent on them would be better used on other safety projects. Giving a poorly designed institution more money does not improve safety. Maybe an effective public safety institution needs more money than the police get currently (though I doubt that) but no matter how much you give to these guys they'll spend it on retired military gear, warrior training, and building a panopticon of always-on public cameras via private partnerships.
I say this as a self-labeled leftist, but the left absolutely sucks at coming up with slogans.
"Defund the Police" is a motte-and-bailey. It's misinterpreted because the slogan itself is designed to mislead. Once challenged on the idea of eliminating law enforcement, they retreat to the more defensible claims of wanting reform.
"Black Lives Matter" should have been "Black Lives Matter Too" so that "All Lives Matter" didn't become the easy retort.
"White privilege" should have been "minority disadvantage" or something, because people respond in ways that imply it means having the world handed to you because you're white, when the reality is closer to the world being taken away because you're not white.
"There's no such thing as unskilled labor". I worked retail and fast food for 13 years before I got a degree and became a tech worker. I actually find this slogan insulting because it diminishes the work it took to get the education needed to do what I do. It's another motte-and-bailey, since the actual message they want to send is that unskilled labor still deserves a living wage, but that's not what they're saying.
I do not believe that careful slogan construction would change a thing. The people who say "All Lives Matter" are not genuinely upset at the phrasing. They are upset at the goals of the movement. No matter what slogan you choose you won't fix that part, so they will still be motivated to find some reason to complain about the slogan.
The people who complain that "feminism" should be called "egalitarianism" or whatever still showed up to resist the Equal Rights Amendment.
It isn't the fault of the left that people who never had any intention of taking their words in good faith intentionally distort their meaning and message.
Defund the Police meant Defund the Police until it was co-opted and corrupted by the establishment.
Everyone who wasn't a racist understood what "Black Lives Matter" actually meant. The misinterpretation there was entirely a white supremacist propaganda campaign to undermine BLM's message.
White privilege and minority disadvantage are the same thing. Couching the term in indirection so white people don't have to confront the fact that systemic white supremacy exists even if they don't recognize it does nothing to dismantle it.
And I mean, it takes effort to misinterpret "There's no such thing as unskilled labor" since you're literally agreeing with the definition of the term even as you disagree with it. You're actually in violent agreement with it.
The last thing we need to do is avoid confrontational language, since confrontation is so often the point of leftist activism. If BLM had come out and said "we need to reform the police somewhat" no one outside of the black community would even be listening to them. If they had said "every life matters" no one would get the message, because the entire message of "Black Lives Matter" is that black lives specifically don't actually currently matter. "minority disadvantage?" Disadvantage relative to what if we can't say the word "white" because it offends white people?
They get to call us all killers and psychopaths and traitors, openly call for violence against us, for us all to be put into camps as mental degenerates and deviants, they get to to erase black, female and gay people from the historical record, police art and science to purge it of "wokeness" and they get to shoot us in the streets but we have to police our tone?
No. To paraphrase Seymour Skinner, it is the fascists who are wrong.
>Look into what "defund" means in this context. It's a slogan that leaked from more formal and academic discussion into general usage and is misinterpreted as "let's not do law enforcement."
No it didn't. It came from black activist movements and got popularized by BLM and the Black Visions Collective during the George Floyd protests, and abolition was very much an intended part of the message.
It then leaked into more formal and academic discussion as it was adopted by the white liberal mainstream because the original message was too radical to be acceptable. Which is understandable. No one wants to admit that their complicity in a white supremacist system is the problem.
I'm reading Careless People, and it discusses parents in high positions at Fb. They are not parents. They hire people to do most of the work. The author was "talked to" about sharing a story about her child.
My father worked 2 jobs in my teenage years. While I appreciate that he supported me to the best of his ability, I regret not having a connection with him. No trips, no plans together. Now, our relationship is need based.
Mine is 6 now.....and man it is by far the most difficult stage for me.
Begging and thinking of ideas to get him to brush his TEETH DAILY. Meltdowns, even in public places. Conflicts which need resolutions. Dealing with teachers, who sometimes I agree but other times disagree with. Working with them on homework. Constant need to watch them not to get hurt.
I've saved 2 children from drowning, and one of them was my child, who randomly thought it would be a great idea to jump into a deep pool without a life vest.
I would have a child again as I do finding rewarding but my career has taken a back seat and my energy levels are always on low. I dread mornings.
I used to think, wow progressing is so easy, why doesn't everyone just read a technical book, documentation or take a course after work.
I then had a child. The time is just gone. Having children is extremely time consuming. I have my own health issues, but now I am responsible for one more person. Morning routine takes 1 - 1.5 hours by the time my kid is dropped off at school. He hates getting up, so by the time I'm done I would love to crawl back into bed.
After school it is dinner time, we try to cook and eat healthy. After dinner it is bed time. If I have time to watch a show or just talk to my wife for an hour without being interrupted, I'm happy.
Having a child is great, but if you are committed and involved parent, there isn't much time or energy left to do anything but work and child.
I feel the same about the apple watch. All I use it for is literally tracking steps. I do not care about any other feature. If my watch fails I will just get a casio watch.
