>> The visual arts are now having their Ikea moment.

> Ikea didn't kill woodworking/carpentry/joinery.

Ikea made build-it-at-home a thing. Ikea is the "first marriage" and the "recently divorced" furniture shop. Before people can afford better. While it's still helpful for the furniture store to have child care and meatballs. Great place to shop for recently-divorced folks! Would recommend. Five Stars!

Material design is the Ikea of design. Without the humanity. Without even a hint of a desire for fluid exchange.

> The US needs to make laws governing how copyright applies to generative AI

Ho hum. By the time that happens most AIs will be running in China, most likely. The more restrictive the US laws, the more likely.

China is very old, but geopolitically where the US was over a century ago.

Snowcrash maybe wasn't so wrong . . .

In software, we promote good engineers to management, effectively accelerating the Peter Principle.

It doesn't have to be that way. Management skills are not an outgrowth of the skills of the managed, but orthogonal to them. This is similar to the lesson many PhD candidates I've known learn: expertise in their field is not pedagogical expertise. Companies who promoted from within used to provide training for new managers.

> In software, we promote good engineers to management

i've not seen this. Infact its the opposite.

You've seen good managers promoted to engineers? ;) I have seen this happening, usually the engineers with the best technical AND people skills are first made lead developer, and eventually "team lead". After team lead they can climb the corporate ladder with titles like "junior vice president" or "senior director".

Getting a seat in a symphony involves skill. Brian Eno didn't just do rock.

Ever seen a photoshop expert at work? Every human endeavor has a skill distribution. Hammering in a nail takes skill.

I'm just arguing that there has been no qualitative shift. The skills you need to produce pop music today are different than the skills that you needed before. Now you need to be able to operate a MIDI sequencer or a program like Ableton, which is not necessarily easier in and off itself, than for instance learning how to play a guitar. I think it's the same with AI tools and programming. We're just talking about a different set of skills that you need in order to be competitive. I don't think there has been any real shift from "skill needed" to "judgement needed". I think this relationship remains the same, both for pop music and programming, but also for the example of playing an instrument in a symphony orchestra.

Because good dating apps attract Match.

And it started as simply rebranded Romneycare (the 2006 MA state plan), so Rs should have found it palatable. And for the first half of Obama's first term, Ds could vote in anything they wanted but we still got a terrible version of a R health care plan.

FWIW, Nixoncare, totally blocked by Ted Kennedy because the dems didn't want Nixon's name on anything else that was nice (the Clean Air Act President kept claiming he'd end Johnson's war in Vietnam and then he had the gall to open relations with China!), was more like the single-payer health care Obama ran on but could not produce.

Also: Disclaimer, I'm absolutely not a conservative. I just don't like the liberal rewrites of actual history.

Despite having a super majority on paper, Obama never effectively had one with various R challenges and D health issues in Congress.

It's funny how Nixon definitely was a crook, and a loon, and should have gone to prison, and his paranoia and shenanigans set the pattern for and gave license to things to come, up to and including the current crisis... but he's still probably the best postwar Republican president, in terms of good things done or attempted.

MA state run health care is still a great program. Hoping we go to fully socialized - ie: basic duty of care is "free" (my taxes)

> If one can be selective about who is “in” and who is “out”, then it’s a social club

If one can be selective about who is "in" and who is "out", then one is a leader of the social club. There can be plenty of animosity between members.

Community and selfishness don't mix well.

And with more than 2 co-parents, a quorum might form that excludes you.

The nuclear family is also relatively new.

It probably just seemed normal to you if you grew up in it.

It was almost certainly not how families worked when your parents or grandparents were kids.

My dad was born in 1925. He lived with his parents and sisters and didn't share a household with grandparents aunts or uncles. My mom was born in a small town in Italy on the eve of WWII and orphaned when she was ten. Again, there were no grandparents aunts or uncles, or friends or neighbors living in the same household, and none were in the picture to care for her. She was went to boarding schools until she could emigrate to America, where her uncles lived. During school breaks she lived with neighbors in her home town.

I don't know enough about my grandparents to be able to answer, but I think it's likely that small three-generation households were common somewhat common, i.e. a grandparent and one of their children, that child's spouse and that set of grand children. But I think multi-family households and intentional household relationships not bound by marriage or parent/child bonds were rare in their day as well, at least in the US and western Europe.