The good old days with Bob and Van

From marco.org via a Daring Fireball post :

And I can’t help but feel that maybe we were better off before we knew everyone’s hot takes on everything.

The town coffee shop was just a coffee shop. We weren’t publicly shamed for going there because one of the owners was an ass. It was just a place to hang out with our friends.

I’m not sure what brought this on. It might just be a random reflection on life. It might be a subtle comment about the reaction to MacStories going back to Twitter. Some people took it as a comment on the 1Password funding Omarchy. I guess part of the problem when you might want to comment on a situation and not risk a backlash on yourself is that you end up ambiguous. Not cleverly ambiguous where, if you know, you know. Just ambiguous.

I suppose my issue with at least the DF quoted portion is it comes from someone who seems to want to be able to fire off strong opinions while seemingly being unwilling to accept it from people out of their circle.

That and maybe because we never get a defense of people with strong views on the left. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard anyone in tech even acknowledge Mamdami exists other Daring Fireball alluding to his views being unrealistic for the nation as a whole. Which runs counter to an interview on NPR (which I can’t find unfortunately because I can’t remember the show - it was a log cabin republican from the 1st week of September 2026 if anyone can find it) with someone on the ‘classic’ republican side which says the Democrat’s problem is being stuck in the past, relying on big media, soundbites, etc and basically the things that tech’s centrists think Democrats need to stick with.

I guess it is easy want to stick with the middle or want to offer an olive branch to people with more right-wing views if you are wealthy, own multiple businesses and homes because in the end, you might dislike Trump but you’ll be okay financially. When it comes down to the absolute basics, if all you care about is maximizing your finances then it would only stand to reason that this would be the case.

I would suggest that many people in the tech blogging / podcasting space might benefit from reading “We Have Never Been Woke” by Musa al-Gharbi.

Back to that NPR show I cannot remember, yes there are things that more extreme left-wing views fail at. I.E. wanting open borders. It is wrong, because it gives off a vibe that some people get to break the law and some do not. The solution presented was not to kick the immigrants out but to enforce the law while offering paths to being in the country legally. Most people do like equality and don’t care about immigration. It’s the skirting of the law but also if everyone feels under attack (growing inequality) then they tend to hold harsher views towards others. Playing nice with people who are thought to have been instrumental in stoking riots or people who are talking about removing an ethic demographic from their country in similar ways to some methods during the Roma Holocaust are things that are not likely to improve society.

We should be open to different opinions. Being able to hear opposing ideas (without muting them forever like some podcasters) is a sign that you feel confident in your beliefs. However, like all things, it is not black and white. My neighbor being selfish and thinking he shouldn’t pay taxes is different from my neighbor thinking, certain people should not be in his country. How I’d react to that will also be different and to me that is how it should be.