Some Red State/Blue State Indicia
- Thread starter nsacpi
- Start date
acesfull86
Well-known member
“Yeah well how would you respond to chipflation? Derp derp derp”
sturg33
I
nsacpi
Expects Yuge Games
https://www.wsj.com/tech/san-francisco-ai-boom-silicon-valley-307816b2?mod=hp_lead_pos2
In 2020, venture capitalist Keith Rabois urged startup founders to join him in ditching San Francisco for Miami, praising the city’s safety, lower taxes and tech-friendly mayor.
The self-proclaimed contrarian investor, who made a fortune backing companies such as Airbnb and DoorDash, once tweeted that San Francisco was “miserable on every dimension.”
The hard pivot to Miami has faltered. Several of the startups that Rabois backed are relocating or opening offices elsewhere to better attract engineering talent. Late last year, he was pushed out of his old venture firm, Founders Fund, after falling out with some colleagues. Now, he plans to spend one week a month in San Francisco for a new employer, Khosla Ventures, and is busy renovating a house there.
During the pandemic, scores of Silicon Valley investors and executives such as Rabois decamped to sunnier American cities, criticizing San Francisco’s dysfunctional governance and high cost of living. Tech-firm founders touted their success at raising money outside the Bay Area and encouraged their employees to embrace remote work.
Four years later, that bet hasn’t really worked out. San Francisco is once again experiencing a tech revival. Entrepreneurs and investors are flocking back to the city, which is undergoing a boom in artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley leaders are getting involved in local politics, flooding city ballot measures and campaigns with tech money to make the city safer for families and businesses. Investors are also pushing startups to return to the Bay Area and bring their employees back into the office.
San Francisco has largely weathered the broader crunch in startup funding. Investment in Bay Area startups dropped 12% to $63.4 billion last year. By contrast, funding volumes for Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles, two smaller tech hubs, dropped 27% and 42%, respectively. In Miami, venture investment plunged 70% to just $2 billion last year.
“An ecosystem such as SF’s that has been built over the last 50-plus years doesn’t just die because of a pandemic for a few years,” said Mo Koyfman, founder of venture firm Shine Capital. He pointed to the proximity of universities such as Stanford as reasons why top-tier venture firms need to maintain a presence in the Bay Area.
Shine Capital, which is based in New York City, opened an office in San Francisco in January.
Rabois, considered one of Silicon Valley’s best startup pickers, is still singing Miami’s praises, calling the city America’s “best and most influential.” He said he has discovered three companies in Miami funded by Khosla that he didn’t know about previously. As for his San Francisco house, he says he has been trying to renovate it for nine years. “Since it is based in SF, it will likely take a decade to complete,” he said, citing the city’s cumbersome bureaucracy.
Across the tech industry, founders large and small are making the trek back to San Francisco despite the city’s cloudier weather and its longstanding struggles with homelessness and drug overdoses.
Late last year, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, co-founders of fintech startup Brex, returned to San Francisco after facing pressure from investors to do so. The pair had moved to Los Angeles, New York City and then Miami during the pandemic, when the company’s valuation soared to $12 billion. The company laid off 20% of its workforce earlier this year.
Howie Liu, chief executive of enterprise startup Airtable, has been spending more time in San Francisco to meet with sales customers after decamping to Los Angeles for much of the pandemic. Erik Torenberg, an investor in the startups Scale AI and Figma, recently moved from Miami to San Francisco, where he is working on a new media company.
“The reality is that the brainpower is here” in San Francisco, said Max Gazor, a general partner at the venture firm CRV and board member at Airtable. “It’s especially true for AI, given the light speed at which these companies have innovated.”
In 2020, venture capitalist Keith Rabois urged startup founders to join him in ditching San Francisco for Miami, praising the city’s safety, lower taxes and tech-friendly mayor.
The self-proclaimed contrarian investor, who made a fortune backing companies such as Airbnb and DoorDash, once tweeted that San Francisco was “miserable on every dimension.”
The hard pivot to Miami has faltered. Several of the startups that Rabois backed are relocating or opening offices elsewhere to better attract engineering talent. Late last year, he was pushed out of his old venture firm, Founders Fund, after falling out with some colleagues. Now, he plans to spend one week a month in San Francisco for a new employer, Khosla Ventures, and is busy renovating a house there.
During the pandemic, scores of Silicon Valley investors and executives such as Rabois decamped to sunnier American cities, criticizing San Francisco’s dysfunctional governance and high cost of living. Tech-firm founders touted their success at raising money outside the Bay Area and encouraged their employees to embrace remote work.
Four years later, that bet hasn’t really worked out. San Francisco is once again experiencing a tech revival. Entrepreneurs and investors are flocking back to the city, which is undergoing a boom in artificial intelligence. Silicon Valley leaders are getting involved in local politics, flooding city ballot measures and campaigns with tech money to make the city safer for families and businesses. Investors are also pushing startups to return to the Bay Area and bring their employees back into the office.
San Francisco has largely weathered the broader crunch in startup funding. Investment in Bay Area startups dropped 12% to $63.4 billion last year. By contrast, funding volumes for Austin, Texas, and Los Angeles, two smaller tech hubs, dropped 27% and 42%, respectively. In Miami, venture investment plunged 70% to just $2 billion last year.
“An ecosystem such as SF’s that has been built over the last 50-plus years doesn’t just die because of a pandemic for a few years,” said Mo Koyfman, founder of venture firm Shine Capital. He pointed to the proximity of universities such as Stanford as reasons why top-tier venture firms need to maintain a presence in the Bay Area.
Shine Capital, which is based in New York City, opened an office in San Francisco in January.
Rabois, considered one of Silicon Valley’s best startup pickers, is still singing Miami’s praises, calling the city America’s “best and most influential.” He said he has discovered three companies in Miami funded by Khosla that he didn’t know about previously. As for his San Francisco house, he says he has been trying to renovate it for nine years. “Since it is based in SF, it will likely take a decade to complete,” he said, citing the city’s cumbersome bureaucracy.
Across the tech industry, founders large and small are making the trek back to San Francisco despite the city’s cloudier weather and its longstanding struggles with homelessness and drug overdoses.
Late last year, Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi, co-founders of fintech startup Brex, returned to San Francisco after facing pressure from investors to do so. The pair had moved to Los Angeles, New York City and then Miami during the pandemic, when the company’s valuation soared to $12 billion. The company laid off 20% of its workforce earlier this year.
Howie Liu, chief executive of enterprise startup Airtable, has been spending more time in San Francisco to meet with sales customers after decamping to Los Angeles for much of the pandemic. Erik Torenberg, an investor in the startups Scale AI and Figma, recently moved from Miami to San Francisco, where he is working on a new media company.
“The reality is that the brainpower is here” in San Francisco, said Max Gazor, a general partner at the venture firm CRV and board member at Airtable. “It’s especially true for AI, given the light speed at which these companies have innovated.”
57Brave
Well-known member
Jess Piper
@piper4missouri
·
6h
They will call an embryo a child and protect it, but turn away federal dollars meant
to feed hungry kids. They will ban abortion and kick kids off Medicaid.
They will force children to bear children, but defund schools and
roll back child labor laws.
Not pro-life. Forced birth.
@piper4missouri
·
6h
They will call an embryo a child and protect it, but turn away federal dollars meant
to feed hungry kids. They will ban abortion and kick kids off Medicaid.
They will force children to bear children, but defund schools and
roll back child labor laws.
Not pro-life. Forced birth.
57Brave
Well-known member
"But the Civil War marked a change. As early as the 1830s, southern white enslavers
relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested
on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement
and women for marriage, and society must recognize those facts."
February 22, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 23
The Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, 2024, decided that cells awaiting implantation for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Chief Justice Tom Parker declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
Payton Armstrong of media watchdog Media Matters for America reported today that on the same day the Alabama decision came down, an interview Parker did on the program of a self-proclaimed “prophet” and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist appeared. In it, Parker claimed that “God created government” and called it “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”
Parker referred to the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theory that appeared in 1975, which claims that Christians must take over the “seven mountains” of U.S. life: religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business…and government. He told his interviewer that “we’ve abandoned those Seven Mountains and they’ve been occupied by the other side.” God “is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now,” he said.
While Republicans are split on the decision about embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies.”
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) identifies himself as a Christian, has argued that the United States is a Christian nation, and has called for “biblically sanctioned government.” At a retreat of Republican leaders this weekend, as the country is grappling with both the need to support Ukraine and the need to fund the government, he tried to rally the attendees with what some called a “sermon” arguing that the Republican Party needed to save the country from its lack of morality.
As Charles Blow of the New York Times put it: “If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.”
In the United States, theocracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand.
The framers of the Constitution quite deliberately excluded religion from the U.S. Constitution. As a young man, James Madison, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had seen his home state of Virginia arrest itinerant preachers for undermining the established church in the state. He came to believe that men had a right to the free exercise of religion.
In 1785, in a “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.
In order to make sure men had the right of conscience, the framers added the First Amendment to the Constitution. It read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”
Madison was right to link religion and representative government. In the early years of the nation, Americans zealously guarded the wall between the two. They strictly limited the power of the federal government to reflect religion, refusing even to permit the government to stop delivery of the U.S. mails on Sunday out of concern that Jews and Christians did not share the same Sabbath, and the government could not choose one over the other. The Constitution, a congressional report noted, gave Congress no authority “to inquire and determine what part of time, or whether any has been set apart by the Almighty for religious exercises.”
But the Civil War marked a change. As early as the 1830s, southern white enslavers relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement and women for marriage, and society must recognize those facts.
A character in an 1836 novel written by a Virginia gentleman explained to a younger man that God had given everyone a place in society. Women and Black people were at the bottom, “subordinate” to white men by design. “All women live by marriage,” he said. “It is their only duty.” Trying to make them equal was a cruelty. “For my part,” the older man said, “I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.”
The Confederacy rejected the idea of popular government, maintaining instead that a few Americans should make the rules for the majority. As historian Gaines Foster explained in his 2002 book Moral Reconstruction, which explores the nineteenth-century relationship between government and morality, it was the Confederacy, not the U.S. government, that sought to align the state with God. A nation was more than the “aggregation of individuals,” one Presbyterian minister preached, it was “a sort of person before God,” and the government must purge that nation of sins.
Confederates not only invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God” in their Constitution, they established as their motto “Deo vindice,” or “God will vindicate.”
The United States, in contrast, was recentering democracy during the war, and it rejected the alignment of the federal government with a religious vision. When reformers in the United States tried to change the preamble of the U.S. Constitution to read, “We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the sources of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Ruler among nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union,” the House Committee on the Judiciary concluded that “the Constitution of the United States does not recognize a Supreme Being.”
That defense of democracy—the will of the majority—continued to hold religious extremists at bay.
Reformers continued to try to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution, Foster explains, and in March 1896 once again got so far as the House Committee on the Judiciary. One reformer stressed that turning the Constitution into a Christian document would provide a source of authority for the government that, he implied, it lacked when it simply relied on a voting majority. A religious amendment “asks the Bible to decide moral issues in political life; not all moral questions, but simply those that have become political questions.”
Opponents recognized this attempt as a revolutionary attack that would dissolve the separation of church and state, and hand power to a religious minority. One reformer said that Congress had no right to enact laws that were not in “harmony with the justice of God” and that the voice of the people should prevail only when it was “right.” Congressmen then asked who would decide what was right, and what would happen if the majority was wrong. Would the Supreme Court turn into an interpreter of the Bible?
The committee set the proposal aside.
Now, once again, we are watching a minority trying to impose its will on the majority, with leaders like House speaker Johnson noting that “I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction enough to stand [up] to your own people….”
relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested
on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement
and women for marriage, and society must recognize those facts."
February 22, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Feb 23
The Alabama Supreme Court on February 16, 2024, decided that cells awaiting implantation for in vitro fertilization are children and that the accidental destruction of such an embryo falls under the state’s Wrongful Death of a Minor Act. In an opinion concurring with the ruling, Chief Justice Tom Parker declared that the people of Alabama have adopted the “theologically based view of the sanctity of life” and said that “human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God.”
Payton Armstrong of media watchdog Media Matters for America reported today that on the same day the Alabama decision came down, an interview Parker did on the program of a self-proclaimed “prophet” and Q-Anon conspiracy theorist appeared. In it, Parker claimed that “God created government” and called it “heartbreaking” that “we have let it go into the possession of others.”
Parker referred to the “Seven Mountain Mandate,” a theory that appeared in 1975, which claims that Christians must take over the “seven mountains” of U.S. life: religion, family, education, media, entertainment, business…and government. He told his interviewer that “we’ve abandoned those Seven Mountains and they’ve been occupied by the other side.” God “is calling and equipping people to step back into these mountains right now,” he said.
While Republicans are split on the decision about embryos after a number of hospitals have ended their popular IVF programs out of fear of prosecution, others, like Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley agreed that “embryos, to me, are babies.”
House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) identifies himself as a Christian, has argued that the United States is a Christian nation, and has called for “biblically sanctioned government.” At a retreat of Republican leaders this weekend, as the country is grappling with both the need to support Ukraine and the need to fund the government, he tried to rally the attendees with what some called a “sermon” arguing that the Republican Party needed to save the country from its lack of morality.
As Charles Blow of the New York Times put it: “If you don’t think this country is sliding toward theocracy, you’re not paying attention.”
In the United States, theocracy and authoritarianism go hand in hand.
The framers of the Constitution quite deliberately excluded religion from the U.S. Constitution. As a young man, James Madison, the key thinker behind the Constitution, had seen his home state of Virginia arrest itinerant preachers for undermining the established church in the state. He came to believe that men had a right to the free exercise of religion.
In 1785, in a “Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments,” he explained that what was at stake was not just religion, but also representative government itself. The establishment of one religion over others attacked a fundamental human right—an unalienable right—of conscience. If lawmakers could destroy the right of freedom of conscience, they could destroy all other unalienable rights. Those in charge of government could throw representative government out the window and make themselves tyrants.
In order to make sure men had the right of conscience, the framers added the First Amendment to the Constitution. It read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”
Madison was right to link religion and representative government. In the early years of the nation, Americans zealously guarded the wall between the two. They strictly limited the power of the federal government to reflect religion, refusing even to permit the government to stop delivery of the U.S. mails on Sunday out of concern that Jews and Christians did not share the same Sabbath, and the government could not choose one over the other. The Constitution, a congressional report noted, gave Congress no authority “to inquire and determine what part of time, or whether any has been set apart by the Almighty for religious exercises.”
But the Civil War marked a change. As early as the 1830s, southern white enslavers relied on religious justification for their hierarchical system that rested on white supremacy. God, they argued, had made Black Americans for enslavement and women for marriage, and society must recognize those facts.
A character in an 1836 novel written by a Virginia gentleman explained to a younger man that God had given everyone a place in society. Women and Black people were at the bottom, “subordinate” to white men by design. “All women live by marriage,” he said. “It is their only duty.” Trying to make them equal was a cruelty. “For my part,” the older man said, “I am well pleased with the established order of the universe. I see…subordination everywhere. And when I find the subordinate content…and recognizing his place…as that to which he properly belongs, I am content to leave him there.”
The Confederacy rejected the idea of popular government, maintaining instead that a few Americans should make the rules for the majority. As historian Gaines Foster explained in his 2002 book Moral Reconstruction, which explores the nineteenth-century relationship between government and morality, it was the Confederacy, not the U.S. government, that sought to align the state with God. A nation was more than the “aggregation of individuals,” one Presbyterian minister preached, it was “a sort of person before God,” and the government must purge that nation of sins.
Confederates not only invoked “the favor and guidance of Almighty God” in their Constitution, they established as their motto “Deo vindice,” or “God will vindicate.”
The United States, in contrast, was recentering democracy during the war, and it rejected the alignment of the federal government with a religious vision. When reformers in the United States tried to change the preamble of the U.S. Constitution to read, “We, the people of the United States, humbly acknowledging Almighty God as the sources of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ, as the Ruler among nations, and His revealed will as of supreme authority, in order to constitute a Christian government, and in order to form a more perfect union,” the House Committee on the Judiciary concluded that “the Constitution of the United States does not recognize a Supreme Being.”
That defense of democracy—the will of the majority—continued to hold religious extremists at bay.
Reformers continued to try to add a Christian amendment to the Constitution, Foster explains, and in March 1896 once again got so far as the House Committee on the Judiciary. One reformer stressed that turning the Constitution into a Christian document would provide a source of authority for the government that, he implied, it lacked when it simply relied on a voting majority. A religious amendment “asks the Bible to decide moral issues in political life; not all moral questions, but simply those that have become political questions.”
Opponents recognized this attempt as a revolutionary attack that would dissolve the separation of church and state, and hand power to a religious minority. One reformer said that Congress had no right to enact laws that were not in “harmony with the justice of God” and that the voice of the people should prevail only when it was “right.” Congressmen then asked who would decide what was right, and what would happen if the majority was wrong. Would the Supreme Court turn into an interpreter of the Bible?
The committee set the proposal aside.
Now, once again, we are watching a minority trying to impose its will on the majority, with leaders like House speaker Johnson noting that “I try to do every day what my constituents want. But sometimes what your constituents want does not line up with the principles God gave us for government. And you have to have conviction enough to stand [up] to your own people….”
Jaw
It's OVER 5,000!
Unfortunately this will result in many unproductives moving to those places. I've seen it here, where out little exurb county went from mostly perfect to well on it's way to College Park in a decade. The California model is better for long term success in this case. Better to stuff the Dolist crowd into cities so productive members of society can escape them.
cajunrevenge
Well-known member
This is why I will always defend the right to fail. People want to act like its heartless to not give a safety net to people but there has to be that threat of failing to prevent mass abuse of what safety net we do have. If I can get everything I need without working then why even have a job? I am fine with having a safety net but it should come at the sacrifice of some rights. If you need help with food, thats fine, but then you should be spending 100$ a week on beer and lottery tickets. Even to the point where someone should forfeit the right to vote. You need short term assistance for 6 months. Cool. If you are in continual need of assistance then I think the government has the right to restrict your non-essential spending and taking away the right to vote because no one is required to take assistance. The truly physically disabled would be exempt. People "disabled" because they smoke cigarettes or other BS like that would not be.