James Timmins

Hard to explain the bloodbath that is happening to LA restaurants right now.

Between the Hollywood strikes, fires, inflation, and ICE raids, huge numbers of popular places shutting down.

Decades of culture disappearing overnight. Really heartbreaking.

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Premium credit card benefit culture is out of control.

Can't wait to take my wife to the delivery room and say "hold on, let me activate the premium hospital bed feature she gets because of the 8 Sleep <> Amex Partnership".

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The $400 dining rebate added to the Amex Platinum is game changer, even if it's dilluted somewhat by the $200 higher annual fee.

I think I'm done with Twitter because of how so many "center right" folks have responded to this, especially the number of purported Christians who uphold him as a man of great faith.

Idk why but somehow, after 15 years there, it's too much for me.

This week feels like an important one to make the point that Christian Nationalism is the worst of both.

It preaches a false Christianity and threatens to tear down any country where it takes root.

As an American Christian, it's what most scares me for the future of our country.

This is also why I thought it was so naive when, years ago, Elon said that if China didn't like the websites that could be accessed via Starlink internet then they could "shake their fists at the sky".

They could also threaten to pull Teslas off the road in one of their biggest markets.

Yeah, although idk what the effective thing is in this case.

She just means LA is "pro people who already own homes".

I question the efficacy of boycotts. But I also think that we live in a consumerist society, and rather than reject that outright, I think it's on us to be responsible consumers, which occasionally means boycotts.

Bob Iger forcing me to delete my Hulu account because apparently "stand up to authoritarianism" is too hard for Disney.

Truly the best card for alcoholics why travel a lot

Every few months I hear about a Steve Jobs negotiation where the lesson is something like "Steve was brilliant and really understood the power of leverage".

But then the anecdote is just him doing something blatantly criminal.

Bluesky has a reputation for being where the worse excesses of left wing Twitter have found a home, but after seeing how a lot of people I thought to be reasonable responded to today's events, I'm very tempted to migrate myself.

Trying out Bluesky again.

Excited to chat with people who love AI and think real estate developers are the solution to our housing problems, not the cause.

Has anyone used AI tools to make ADHD feel like less of a liability?

I don't mean fancier pomodoro techniques, but rather, using AI to handle stuff that ADHD brains are bad at.

Thanks for your response. I got into woodworking bc I wanted to make lots of functional things, but based on your response, it's clear that not everyone is scratching the same itch with these types of hobbies.

Never understood hobbies like ceramics or blacksmithing.

You spend hundreds of hours learning a skill but can only make like two things that you don't really need.

One of the best data platform/kubernetes engineers i know is about to be back on the market.

Trying to convince my boss we need a senior hire; but if I can't make the case, who else is looking?

Ok data people, who has opinions about the best time series database?

Use case is absorbing a feed from a smallish online market tens-hundreds of thousands of trades daily. I want to track trades as well as bid/ask orders.

Asked a handful of people what they'd do if they got $10 million and could retire.

The most common response was "that's not enough to retire".

Bay Area brain is a disease.

Saw a founder's "About Us" page say they worked at Citadel and Bridgewater.

Seemed impressive until I went to their LinkedIn and saw that they were internships.

But she has hands!!

The programmer's version of being a Partner at a16z.

Also a lot of B2B tech is inherently boring, and that's ok. Salesforce is hella boring but it's making everyone rich. Sometimes I wish people were honest that their jobs were just ok and paid the bills, rather than feeling the need to pretend they're "passionate about enabling marketing customers".

On deeper reflection, I think I've also worked places where it felt like sales folks didn't understand our tech or the customer problems deeply (as they were technical), but would say with confidence that the tech we were selling could definitely solve those problems. Rubbed me the wrong way.

So I'm partially joking.

But I think it's also that programmers tend to be be pretty cynical/reserved about technology, and /some/ sales types are very excited about being excited that gives me some pause.

Idk if Twitter or Bluesky are doing doing it for me.

Does anyone know of a social media site where I can find platitudes about getting hired in big tech and how hardships helps understand B2B sales?

One of the best arguments for lack of actual "schemes" is that a powerful, evil conspiracy that's dependent on being secret isn't actually that powerful.

Ergo, if powerful peoples are up to shenanigans, they don't need to keep it secret.

Just saw Gladiator 2.

It's objectively worse that 1, but the political ideas also make it more interesting. I like it that the villain's plan (if he really is a villain) is treated as a valid response and way forward for Rome given its actions.

Price of different Acura Integra sales prices on BringATrailer.com over time

Bring a Trailer has one of my favorite pricing charts on the internet.

I really want to build the same thing for more goods for sale online.

Thinking maybe fashion resale on sites like ebay or Poshmark, but I don't care a ton about that market segment.