“I assumed Republicans would be for this: business, deregulation”
When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)
The problem with Republicans is that the core public platform is pure identity nonsense. The people voting for them are voting for that stuff and usually don’t understand their own interests.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the country. GOP policy blew up farming in the 80s, but doubling down on stupid culture war shit in the 90s flipped the farmers. The democratic parties concluded the juice of a contested small voter base wasnt worth the squeeze.
The same rug pull is in play here. Lots of Catholics are on the MAGA train because of their supposed deep convictions. The anti-immigrant Cuban and Mexicans will be the first to hit the “find out” phase.
After I saw over 50% of latino men and close to that of latino women voting for Trump suddenly the idea of English becoming the national language is very attractive to me. You want assimilation with our neo-con hellhole? Earn it.
Agreed, the only calculation that makes sense is if they try to dismantle elections to stay in power. It’s the only way it makes sense.
I don’t think they were counting on so much hate that ICE agents were quitting long before getting their bonuses, or being so reviled; in their fantasy they were lauded as saviors, not mocked so badly that ICE agents quit.
I increasingly notice people say they were “never MAGA, I was always independent”. It’s been a noticeable shift.
It seems like a pretty obvious tactic to put ICE agents outside of every polling booth, checking papers and intimidating anyone with slightly brown skin from voting. "Best" case (for them) is if riots break out. Then they can call martial law and just call off the elections.
I'm willing to bet at least 1000 USD that a sufficiently trumpian republican in 2028 will be able to get near or even more latino votes than trump did.
They LOVE the cruelty. The people who hate immigrants most are other immigrants. Brazil didn't end slavery until 1888 and it continued de-facto far longer than it did in the USA. Spain/Portugal were far more cruel/racist than the English and especially french were. Their history is one of extreme, virulent racism.
Even today, they make huge distinctions between the "European" white mexicans who are "untainted" by indigenous blood.
Latinos also are extremely anti-LGBT, and used to be catholic but are having their own evangelization sweeping through their communities (I am personally witnessing it right now). That evangelization is primary in reaction to the precieved liberalism of the current and previous pope.
I’m going to ignore the racism at first, and point out that your argument can be disproven by the facts already stated: Trump is underwater with Latinos.
If you were right and Latinos just loved cruelty, why would this current push make Trump unpopular?
Second off: this is wildly racist. “Latinos” is clearly a massive brush, and then you make some point about how they “distinguish” whiteness, but again that wasn’t what you were trying to prove.
Your understanding of colonial oppression as being “better” under the French wouldn’t go down well in Haiti, or the English in India (or Ireland, etc, etc). Is Belgian Congo and King Leopold II in our class trading, or not?
It’s like you tried for three separate thoughts by shooting from the hip, but started off without basic reasoning and a massive dose of easily dispelled racism?
Trump was surging with Latinos precisely because of the hardline messaging on borders, crime, and "cruelty" (i.e., enforcement) that you dismiss and call Racist to call out. The post election dip in approval (which you haven't substantiated and I literally don't buy) after a year of governing is irrelevant to the 2028 bet!
On the "if they loved cruelty, why unpopular now?" bit: Popularity ebbs and flows. The surge came from voters who prioritized border security, gang crackdowns (MS-13 rhetoric landed hard in Central American communities), and anti "woke" vibes over abstract kindness. Many Latinos (especially newer immigrants or their kids) resent unchecked new arrivals competing for jobs/housing in their neighborhoods. This is classic intragroup competition. Polls and studies have long shown native born or earlier generation Latinos often hold hugely more restrictionist views on immigration than native born whites do on certain dimensions.
Now, the racism card: Calling the observation "wildly racist" while ignoring the actual sociology is lazy. Latin America has deep, enduring colorism and caste systems rooted in colonial hierarchies! Spain/Portugal's systems were explicitly racialized with categories like peninsulares > criollos > mestizos > indígenas > africanos and they are alive and strong today! "Limpieza de sangre" (blood purity) was and is a thing. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888 (last in the Americas), with de facto continuations via labor exploitation en mass. That's the historical record. Modern manifestations: In Mexico, lighter skinned people dominate media/politics/business! Skin bleaching products are huge! Job ads sometimes specify "buena presencia" (code for white passing). Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, same patterns but even stronger. Look at El Salvador especially! I'm acknowledging intra Latino hierarchies that make blanket anti-racism narratives from the U.S. left ring hollow when applied uniformly.
You bring up Haiti and India/Ireland/Belgian Congo. SOME French colonialism was brutal, i.e. Haiti, English in India/Ireland genocidal at times, Leopold's Congo a horror show (note I didn't bring up Belgium at all and will never defend their record given the scale). But the original point was comparative severity in the Americas' slave systems and indigenous treatment. Iberian systems often involved more explicit racial mixing at much larger scales (mestizaje as ideology) but also more rigid caste enforcement and FAR slower abolition. British systems in North America leaned toward segregation/expulsion over integration, but slavery ended earlier (British in 1808 in abolising trans atlantic trade, full emancipation by 1835, U.S. 1865, French colonies phased out even earlier). Spain didn't fully abolish slavery in Cuba until 1886!
French colonialism outside Haiti, in New France (Canada, Great Lakes fur trade regions), was downright cordial by colonial standards! The fur trade economy required deep alliances with Indigenous groups (Hurons, Algonquins, Montagnais, etc.). French traders lived in Native villages, learned languages, intermarried (creating Métis communities), respected customs to secure trade networks, and prioritized diplomacy over mass settlement or expulsion. They armed allies militarily but avoided the large scale land grabs and forced labor systems elsewhere. Historians note the French depended on these partnerships for survival against British numbers, leading to mutual respect and integration rather than domination. Contrast that with Spanish encomienda (forced tribute labor) or British settler colonialism (displacement, reservations).
Yes, "Latinos" is a broad category, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Venezuelan, etc., have different politics. But the trends hold: Trump overperformed with men (Latino men went +33 points margin shift in some data), working class, evangelical leaning segments (rapidly raising right now because catholocism is too liberal). The ongoing evangelical wave among U.S. Latinos (fastest growing evangelical subgroup, with projections of major shifts by 2030) is real and reacts against perceived Catholic "liberalism" (Francis era stuff). Anti LGBT attitudes remain stronger in many Latino communities than in the broader U.S. Your statistics claiming the opposite are from a decade and a half ago.
Anglo French (Protestant/Enlightenment-influenced) traditions produced the intellectual forefathers of modern liberalism. Locke (natural rights, limited government), Montesquieu (separation of powers), Voltaire/Rousseau (individual liberty, secularism), Smith (free markets), Mill (utilitarianism/liberty). These ideas fueled abolitionism, constitutionalism, and eventual democratic expansions. Iberian colonialism, tied to absolutist Spain/Portugal and the Inquisition's legacy, leaned toward hierarchical, corporatist, Catholic monarchical structures. This is literally the opposite of liberalism's emphasis on individual rights and equality before law. Mestizaje ideology mixed races but preserved sharp color/class distinctions. liberalism's universalist ideals (however imperfectly applied) came from the Anglo-French orbit. My disdain for Iberian influenced cultures is rooted in history.
> When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)
Because they're still schizophrenic about that. It's not an either/or thing. Trump likes tariffs, and a protectionist strain has appeared in the Republican party, but the pro big-business/small government stuff is there, just not so monolithically dominant.
There is a difference between neoconservatives and neoliberals. You probably meant the latter, but Republican party was never neoliberal only, it also is, as you write, neoconservative.
It's not really surprising as conservativism and liberalism are both main pillars of capitalism, because the idea of property is based both on authority (like authority, you get the property ostensibly based on your past performance and you keep it indefinitely) and liberty (you can do what you want with it).
I used to joke about how I used LinkedIn as a dating site, but in the current year this just isn't that funny anymore. The professional managerial class I was mocking is quickly losing its grasp on power, so it's unclear if I'm still punching up.
How many of the messages here even come from real people anymore? How many of those people have pronouns in their bio? Are they GPT/GPT?
We have a big task ahead of us to define what the "new business" looks like. Comparatively, the revolution is the easy part.
It really is a good database. Give it lots of room. If you can distribute your workload on multiple machines though, you can't beat Postgres' licencing terms vs SQL Server.
Why is it a good database? Integration with Entra? I've heard arguments in favor of Oracle DB, but I've never heard anything good about MSSQL besides integration with the MS ecosystem.
The SQL Server query planner is head and shoulders above what Postgres offers in the types of optimizations it will apply to your queries. It also properly caches query plans.
It offers heap tables, as well as index organized tables depending on what you need.
The protocol supports running multiple queries and getting multiple resultsets back at once saving some round-trips and resources.
Also supports things like global temp tables, and in memory tables, which are helpful for some use cases.
The parallelism story for a single query is still stronger with SQL Server.
I'm sure I could think of more, but it's been a few years since I've used it myself and I've forgotten a bit.
It is a good database. I just wouldn't use it for my startup. I could never justify that license cost, and how it restricts how you design your infrastructure due to the cost and license terms.
I love Postgres and use it for _everything_. I've also used SQL Server for a couple of years.
I've lost count the number of times I'll read about some new postgres or MySQL thing where you find out that Oracle or SQL server implemented it 20 years ago. Yes they always have it behind expensive SKUs. But they're hardly slouches in the technical competence departments.
I found Oracle to just be a lot more unwieldy from a tooling perspective than SQL Server (which IMO had excellent tools like SSMS and the query planner/profiler to do all your DB management).
But overall, these paid databases have been very technically sound and have been solving some of these problems many, many years ago. It's still nice to see the rest of us benefit from these features in free databases nowadays.
As others have said, the query planners I used 25 years ago with Oracle (cost based, rule based, etc) were amazing. The oracle one wasn't visual but the MSSQL one was totally visual that actually gave you a whole graph of how the query was assembled. And I last used the MSSQL one 15 years ago.
Maybe pgAdmin does that now (I haven't used pgAdmin), but I miss the polished tools that came with SQL Server.
My sentiments exactly. Anyone at the low side of scale thinking about MS SQL, should seriously do a current survey of things in the dbms space.. there is absolutely no NEED to pay for dbms in 2026. Those old dinosours only still exist, because of the data hijacking nature of past db designs and coding. Everybody and their grandmother were obfuscating code and designs in order to bake in customer loyalty and repetitive patronage. Those old projects are keeping the lights on at proprietary DB Inc. AT the high end of things, you're gonna need db engineers, and if you get yourself Microsoftie hammersharks disguised as professional engineers, they gonna see everything as a nail.
That’s kind of my point. They’re not really in competition. I bet they’d have an easier time with this scale if they were on SQL Server, but obviously that migration isn’t happening and startups don’t reach for it for many reasons.
As someone who doesn’t code in C and does more analytics work (SQL), is the code generated here “production grade?” One of the major criticisms I hear about llms is they tend to generate code that you wouldn’t want to maintain, is that the case here?
Those statements are mostly out of date and symptomatic of pre-agent-optimized LLMs. Opus 4.5 with clarifying rules in the CLAUDE.md does a good job at following idiomatic best practices in my experience.
That said, I'm mixed on agentic performance for data science work but it does a good job if you clearly give it the information it needs to solve the problem (e.g. for SQL, table schema and example data)
Not my experience. All frontier models I constantly test, agentic or not, produce code less maintainable than my (very good) peers and myself (on a decent day).
Plus they continue to introduce performance blunders.
Crying wolves, on day maybe there will be a wolf and I may be the last of us to check whether that's true.
When are we going to stop talking about Republicans like they are still neocons? Republicans haven’t been the pro big-business party in 10 years (did we forget about the tariffs, trade wars, etc that have happened in the last year alone?)
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