And all of that (along with the serious problems in how WMF/Wikipedia operate) is why I no longer donate to WMF.
Clearly, they don't need my money. But if they ever want to bring me back into the fold, they need to adopt Larry Sanger's prescriptions. This unionization seems likely to push WMF (IMO) further in the wrong direction.
I think all employees should work for a union. My local art museum has a union. My local school system has a union. The non-profit university I graduated from has a union. Why shouldn't WMF have a union?
I really don't understand the bitterness toward them. If you look at their data, their donations are growing faster than their expenses.
The people who donate to Wikipedia/WMF want more money to go into the organization. That's the whole point of the donation. What else do you want them to do with the money exactly?
I can't think of a single unionized organization that is run as well as or better than union-free organizations. Unionized companies all seem to be crippled by bureaucracy and unable to improve performance and output.
Professional sports is probably a good counter example. Major League Baseball, for example, treats the players better than any other baseball league around the world and most of the gains were achieved through collective bargaining.
Or how about Hollywood writers? The Writers Guild of America writers are responsible for most of the most successful movies and TV of the past decade or two (maybe longer). WGA writers are treated better than just about any other screenwriters around the world.
The daycare my parent friends go to can’t retain a teacher for longer than a year or two. I hear stories all the time about the disruption and emotional distress abruptly losing a teacher with a 1-2 weeks notice causes.
The PreK teacher at the local public school has been there over 10 years at the same school and has a masters degree. Union, of course.
I’m sure the public school system is more expensive overall. You get what you pay for.
My experience is that unions very often make things stupider and less efficient.
I've been forced to give to two of them that were basically just political cosplay by children (well really the $ was taken without consent before it was even in my hands, so it was stolen)
And I've had the displeasure of working in a factory environment that was unionized. Perhaps there was a time when this made sense, but I think those instances are rare now.
I would submit the idea that a lot of union reforms that have been made to laws in the US have been specifically designed to make unions less attractive and less incentivized toward positive outcomes.
Thanks for the reference. I am interested in your specific perspective as opposed to someone else's (much less else the received opinions from The Experts).
It is truly amazing how hostile some of these "free thinkers" are to ideas and speech that are in conflict with their own. Kind of makes you wonder who is actually fascist.
Why are these books "rare"? Because no one wants them. Why then are we up in arms over their destruction? These sensational headlines make it seem as though a copy of the Codex Sassoon 1053 is being destroyed, when in fact these are just obscure books that no one cares about.
The rhetoric on this topic is reminiscent of the rhetoric regarding data centers: some noxious combination of misinformation, misunderstanding, and sensationalism, wielded against technological progress.
I worked with a woman who, in 1-on-1 meetings no less, would stop mid-sentence when she received text messages and reply via her Apple Watch. It was maddening. I finally had to kindly ask her to be present and stop playing with her watch.
My uninformed hypothesis: Demis was gently pushed out. Gemini, while having made major strides over the last year, continues to lag behind Anthropic and OpenAI.
> Despite the July losses, Situational Awareness remains up about 80% on the year and holds a portfolio of investments in private companies including Anthropic.
80% return (YTD) is the type of performance for which many hedge fund managers would sacrifice their first born.
What is your theory of how the dominoes fall and why?
My understanding of this situation (ahem) is that SI was highly leveraged and where tech (ai and adjacent) stock prices fell, they got margin called ABs were forced to liquidate. Why would this lead to cascading events beyond SI? It appears to have been a very orderly liquidation. No counterparties are reported to have been blown up. Nothing systemic.
My theory is simple, margin debt is pushing up stock prices on the back of growth, the high stock prices allow datacenter companies to fund their debt that fuels the growth. Two types of debt are cycling and reinforcing each other. If datacenter company stock prices fall then it will be harder for them to borrow, which will slow down growth, which will cause the stock to fall more. Situational Awareness was one of the largest buyers of these stocks using margin. One leg of the cycle is demonstrably failing.
Clearly, they don't need my money. But if they ever want to bring me back into the fold, they need to adopt Larry Sanger's prescriptions. This unionization seems likely to push WMF (IMO) further in the wrong direction.
reply