GeneralMacArthur 10,000 posts AMA

[GeneralMacArthur]

1,569 days after joining the Atlas webblog, with this thread I have finally reached 10,000 posts with an average of 6.377 per day.

Happy to finally graduate from Junior Chimp to Senior Chimp!

[Meclazine for Israel]

Do you consider your expose on the Joe Biden sexual assault allegations to be your crowning achievement thus far on Atlas forums?

[Filing False Crumpets]

If you were to change your username to a general (or any military figure) from your lifetime, who would you choose?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Do you consider your expose on the Joe Biden sexual assault allegations to be your crowning achievement thus far on Atlas forums?

My crowning achievement is getting 10,000 posts.

But serious, I suppose so?  I had two really good high-effort threads about student loan forgiveness as well:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=492477.msg8586522#msg8586522
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=494179.msg8606057#msg8606057

Also pretty happy with my rank-the-presidents series
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=411693.msg7751392#msg7751392

[GeneralMacArthur]

If you were to change your username to a general (or any military figure) from your lifetime, who would you choose?

I dunno, maybe Schwarzkopf?  Nobody really jumps out as larger-than-life.

[darklordoftech]

Who would you have voted for in the 2016 Presidential election if the candidates were John Kasich (R) and Bernie Sanders (D)?

What’s the first Presidential election in which you would have voted Democratic/Democratic-Republican and what’s the last Presidential election in which you would have voted Republican/Whig/National Republican/Federalist?

[MR DARK BRANDON]

Do you consider your expose on the Joe Biden sexual assault allegations to be your crowning achievement thus far on Atlas forums?

My crowning achievement is getting 10,000 posts.

But serious, I suppose so?  I had two really good high-effort threads about student loan forgiveness as well:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=492477.msg8586522#msg8586522
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=494179.msg8606057#msg8606057

Also pretty happy with my rank-the-presidents series
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=411693.msg7751392#msg7751392

Where would you rank Biden?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Who would you have voted for in the 2016 Presidential election if the candidates were John Kasich (R) and Bernie Sanders (D)?

Bernie Sanders

What’s the first Presidential election in which you would have voted Democratic/Democratic-Republican and what’s the last Presidential election in which you would have voted Republican/Whig/National Republican/Federalist?

The last presidential election where I would have voted Republican would probably be 1972, I don't think I would have been a McGovern voter.  I would probably have voted for Sargent Shriver over Nixon had he been the presidential nominee rather than VP.

First one where I would have voted D?  IDK, 1796?  lol

[GeneralMacArthur]

Do you consider your expose on the Joe Biden sexual assault allegations to be your crowning achievement thus far on Atlas forums?

My crowning achievement is getting 10,000 posts.

But serious, I suppose so?  I had two really good high-effort threads about student loan forgiveness as well:
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=492477.msg8586522#msg8586522
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=494179.msg8606057#msg8606057

Also pretty happy with my rank-the-presidents series
https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=411693.msg7751392#msg7751392

Where would you rank Biden?

These aren't my personal rankings but I would probably insert him between Clinton and JFK.

[darklordoftech]

Who do you prefer between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Who do you prefer between Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden?

Biden

[TML]

Do you think democracy in the U.S. today is secure or threatened?

[GoTfan]

What's your philosophy when it comes to liberalism/progressivism? You and I have had our fights, but I think we are mostly on the same side, so where do progressives stand with you?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Do you think democracy in the U.S. today is secure or threatened?

Heavily, heavily threatened by the Republican Party and its normalizers and defenders.

[GeneralMacArthur]

What's your philosophy when it comes to liberalism/progressivism? You and I have had our fights, but I think we are mostly on the same side, so where do progressives stand with you?

Over the last five years or so "progressive" has just become some meaningless term that everyone in the party wants to glom onto.  I'd be surprised if you can find a Democratic politician these days who doesn't label themselves "progressive."

So what does it mean?  Does it mean you support the Bernie Sanders slate or ideas?  Even Bernie doesn't seem to care that much anymore.  I haven't even had a conversation about M4A in like two years.  These ideas had salience when we were out of power and people were busy purity-testing each other on the merits of their respective fantasy worlds.  And the central divide, it seemed to me, was one where those who called themselves "progressives" advocated for simplistic, magical solutions that were totally unachievable, while those who called themselves "liberals" advocated for practical solutions that squared with the realities of the 21st century political balance.  Now that we're actually in power there's much more tangible and achievable things to be done, and we find ourselves on the same side much more frequently.

However there is another definition of "progressive" which would basically be Bernie's inner circle of friendly politicians and acolytes, and their offshoots.  This is much more restrictive and now you're just talking about DSA types as far as actual politicians, and far-left YouTubers, podcasters, twitch streamers and social media personalities like Hasan Piker or Chapo Trap House.  These people are extreme, extreme HP and have only become more deranged and sickening as time goes on -- that is, those who haven't just become unabashed right-wingers (such as Jackson Hinkle or Jimmy Dore).  Fortunately it seems like even many progressives are souring on the whole movement and turning away from these people towards the light of Bidenism.

Still, I am fanatically of the belief that none of this would have happened without Bernie creating a splinter movement within the party, platforming and emboldening these wretched people as a vehicle for his movement, and then weaponizing that movement against the party to achieve his own selfish aims at tremendous cost for the American liberal movement as a whole.

[RGM2609]

Not sure if we have ever interacted, as I am more of a lurker in US threads, but I did read (and greatly appreciated) many of your posts on the Israel-Palestine War. It was great to see someone say things as they were and cut through the "historical amnesia" which seems to have affected many.

My question would be, what were "the tremendous costs" inflicted by the Sanders movement on American liberalism? I somewhat agree with you on your views about the movement itself, but American liberalism seems to be doing fine by me. It just had three tremendously successful election cycles.

[ShadowRocket]

Who is your early choice for the 2028 Democratic nominee?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Not sure if we have ever interacted, as I am more of a lurker in US threads, but I did read (and greatly appreciated) many of your posts on the Israel-Palestine War. It was great to see someone say things as they were and cut through the "historical amnesia" which seems to have affected many.

My question would be, what were "the tremendous costs" inflicted by the Sanders movement on American liberalism? I somewhat agree with you on your views about the movement itself, but American liberalism seems to be doing fine by me. It just had three tremendously successful election cycles.

A couple contentions, and I really hate to seem like I'm once again going back to the well of Bernie hate since the man is mostly irrelevant these days, but since you asked:

1) Bernie basically created this whole ideology that's centered around a bunch of totally unattainable "socialist" policies, made them as simple and hand-wavy as possible, and then demonstrated a complete lack of intellectual curiosity or integrity when asked very basic questions about his policies or to defend them against even basic attacks.  M4A is of course, the most famous of his policies to completely fail to survive scrutiny.  Bernie steadfastly refused to ever get in the weeds on it.  Elizabeth Warren, however, did, and the resulting abomination tanked her campaign and destroyed her reputation as a serious policy thinker.  But most of his policies are like this -- little more than bumper stickers that promise utopia while demanding you not think about them very hard.

now, that's his right, and it would be ok except...

2) Bernie basically made his movement into an industrial-strength us-vs-them purity-testingmachine.  Instead of trying to boost the party and help us win, he did the opposite, intensely focusing on trying to force everyone to adopt these policies and condemning anyone who didn't in the harshest possible terms.  He did not allow for even one second the possibility that someone might have genuine disagreements with him.  He didn't even allow for the possibility that someone might agree with him, but think it wasn't possible to pass these policies in a Manchin-swing-vote senate (his political strategy offerings demonstrated an even more laughable lack of depth than his policy offerings).  Instead he would accuse them of corruption, or say they were bought out by corporations, or say they must just not care about poor people, just the classic "why do you want babies to die Senator SuchAndSuch?" and in doing so he successfully endeavored to turn his whole movement against the Democratic Party, while filling their head with the notion that these simplistic bumper sticker policies they had horse blinders for were the sole moral high ground and anyone who didn't support them was a corrupt, treacherous, amoral atrocity.

but it was once the us-vs-them battle was pitched that things got truly damaging...

3) Bernie invented or signed on to a number of conspiracy theories and episodes of conspiratorial thinking, stoking this kind of worldview and allowing it to flourish in his movement.  I could give plenty of examples but I'm sure we're all familiar.  It was much worse in 2016 than in 2020 and we all remember the consequences.  The sheer magnitude of delusion that Bernie's acolytes operated under was mind-boggling, and extremely extremely frustrating to run up against as we were trying to defeat Donald Trump but had to deal with this fifth column of people who were totally deluded, by Bernie Sanders, and dedicated themselves to undermining the anti-Trump effort.  These delusions led to completely irrational and destructive acts and, on occasion, even acts of violence, which Bernie would either ignore or defend.

which brings me to...

4) In service of this effort, Bernie elevated and promoted the absolute worst scumbags, grifters, liars and cheats the left half of America has to offer.  As many on this forum know I could reach the 25,000 character post limit just listing the names of all the deplorable people who had little or no power or prominence until Bernie plucked them from the void and gave them his stamp of approval, bestowing upon them giant megaphones to reach the ears of millions of young people with their vile lies, hateful rhetoric, conspiratorial delusions and toxic pessimism.  Again I feel like I am one of the only people who has followed this consistently since 2015/16 and can chart the full course of how assholes Bernie dignified in 2016 became leaders of the alt-right and hateful-left movements online.  But you can just look at Team Bernie 2020 and consider how his former ring of friends, employees and supporters have contributed to the political environment over the last three years.  It's a tremendous negative impact, especially among the 18-35 age group.

And it's (4) that's really the legacy of his movement.  It lives on without him in this industrial-strength BS machine that's ensnared millions of young people in its web and f--ked up their brains with disinformation and hate, all in service of turning them against the Democratic Party and, lately, against America itself (primarily as a means of making people hate Biden's foreign policy, but also in general in tandem with the Code Pink / Democracy Now / RussiaToday amerikkka suxx worldview).  It's very effective and it's a constant enemy that Democrats have to fend off.

I contend that this would not exist were it not for Bernie Sanders.  And I make that contention based primarily on the fact that it didn't exist in 2015, and I watched it grow in close alliance with his campaign, I watched him elevate and promote its key figures, and key figures from his campaign move on to becoming leaders in this BS machine.  I watched the two continue to grow together and elevate each other over the course of 2016-2020.  I watched this BS machine appeal to young people by offering the same us-vs-them anti-Democratic conspiratorial rhetoric, paired with simplistic bumper-sticker no-thought-allowed solutions to all the world's problems, with which Bernie had indoctrinated his base.  Now it exists independently of him and has even, in many cases, turned on him.  But this is his legacy.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Who is your early choice for the 2028 Democratic nominee?

Haven't thought about it much.  I used to think Pete Buttigieg would be a good nominee, but then I learned that his favorite book is Ulysses, which is just absolutely unreadable trash.  So I no longer trust him.

God only knows how many young road-rulin' era-winners were lured by this intellectual predator into wasting dozens of hours of their life trying to read what is essentially a random jumble of clauses arranged into run-on sentences with a paragraph break inserted once every five pages or so.

[GeneralMacArthur]

Anyone who voluntarily reads this is unfit to be president.

[darklordoftech]

Who would you have voted for in the 2006 Connecticut Senate election?

[The Op]

I recall you saying that you work in a big tech company? As someone who is thinking of majoring in CS in college/learning to code, what would your advice be?

[GeneralMacArthur]

Who would you have voted for in the 2006 Connecticut Senate election?

Ned Lamont

[GeneralMacArthur]

I recall you saying that you work in a big tech company? As someone who is thinking of majoring in CS in college/learning to code, what would your advice be?

Learn data structures and algorithms as soon as possible and dig deep.  I'd recommend memorizing most of The Algorithm Design Manual by the end of sophomore year at the latest.

Get really really good at one scripting language, one object-oriented language, and one web framework.  I'd recommend Python, Java and Node.  The scripting language mastery is so you can feel super confident coding in interviews and translating things quickly from brain to code without getting bogged down in boilerplate and language details.  The web framework will let you quickly experiment with things you can publish online and share... plus get you experience building on the internet which is the entirety of the tech industry now.  Object oriented language is what you'll actually use for work.

Also read K+R C early.  Like super early.  Before you even declare the major.  To form your brain properly you need to start with C and build up from there.  You can learn the basic data structures immediately after this and try to implement them all by hand in C.  This is going to be grueling and tedious, but it's excellent for drilling these basic patterns into your brain.

Buy a MacBook, you want a Unix system and you don't want to have to fiddle around with Linux all day (complete waste of time).  Plus the MacBook will last you for life and eliminate frustration.  You don't want to half-ass anything or impose unnecessary frustration on yourself.

Do everything in your terminal or SublimeText if possible.  Don't get reliant on your IDE.  Do everything manually.  When you use scaffolding, look at everything it's doing and make sure you understand what you've "written." You want your skillset to be portable and you want to understand all the details and never have any questions about what you've built.

Don't get obsessed with learning a bunch of different languages or frameworks.  The above are enough.  Don't trend-chase.  Don't become a silicon valley ycombinator douchebag.  That said you should follow this stuff so you can socialize with other engineers and empathize with what they're passionate about.

AI is what's really hot now and if you can get some machine learning research or internships under your belt you'll be the golden boy.  You gotta get all your calc classes out of the way early... consider summer coursework... and then probability and statistics and linear algebra as soon as you're done with calc II.  Ideally freshman year.  If you can't understand what you're reading in The Elements of Statistical Learning, keep learning, you're not ready yet.  You can immediately start learning basic AI stuff after that and building stuff for yourself to practice and resume-build.  You could also try to figure out what the next big thing will be... but AI is a massive field that will maintain its relevance and has an astronomically high skill ceiling.

Internships internships internships have to be your focus.  You need to have at least one prestigious internship on your resume before you apply for your FTE after graduation.  And it'll be hard for you to get a prestigious internship without something less prestigious first.  I did HP -> Apple -> Facebook.  Microsoft used to be the easiest.  Don't know what things are like these days.  We almost entirely shut down the intern program this year because of the bubble bursting.  Start schmoozing your career placement office as soon as you have something to offer.  Like early sophomore year at the latest.

[Dr. MB]

Do you think a better world is possible? If so, what would you define it as?