caroline mccarthy 🦝

Tech optimist ✌🏻 | Xoogler, TED Resident | Infuriating centrist Abundance YIMBY, pro-nuclear, pro-🍄, pro-resurrecting saber tooth cats 🐈‍⬛

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

Why aren't we better educated on the policy issues that govern the technology we use every day of our lives? Here's my argument from @tedxboulder for why you should care as a citizen (and how to get started). https://t.co/xlXBt5vIlE

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

I just regret that I never said hi to @HunterBiden or offered him a high-five or fist bump when I was briefly his neighbor in Venice Beach.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@moseskagan I completely tune people out and think less of them if they refer to normie U.S. political candidates as "commies." It signals to me that they are not serious people and that social media and its need for hyperbole has broken their brains.

[Bay Area New Liberals 🌐 @BayAreaNewLibs]

Some of us really tried to warn them, but tech guys are not good at politics.

[Pedro L. Gonzalez @emeriticus]

I think the normalization of vulgarity and barbarism in politics is bad, but Trump and the new right mainstreamed it. When Rob Reiner and his wife were brutally murdered, Trump danced on their graves, and the right thought it was hilarious. When he mocks widowers, the right thinks it's hilarious. When JD Vance was asked if he would apologize for slandering Alex Pretti as an assassin after the feds killed him in cold blood, Vance smirked to show just how much he does not care about Americans being murdered by his administration, and the right loved that too. You can't break all the rules of decorum, say "Fuck your feelings," which the right has, and then cry like a baby when people treat you the way you treat them.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

My family is from Augusta and I cannot underscore just how much Collins' last opponent sucked. She moved to Maine from Rhode Island and immediately ran for office. She repped Freeport, aka Maine Disneyland. She wore white jeans and boat shoes to campaign in Bangor. BANGOR.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

Six years ago I went against the grain and shared the unpopular take that Susan Collins' opponent who was allegedly ahead by 10 points in the polls was probably going to lose. I was right.

In case anyone cares about what I think this time around: Platner is legitimately ahead.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

*cracks knuckles loudly*

GOOD MORNING, TWITTER

https://t.co/FUKRnrpxeS

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

Startup life: "I'm trying to dig up the conversation about post-launch push notification strategy but everyone in that channel on Discord just started talking about subway rats and so I have to go through all the subway rat messages to find it."

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@IamTheSherm Pretty much

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

So I got to have the best morning of my life today

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@mvanhorn @willium @kevinrose @shawnfanning @davemorin OMG DAVE

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@mvanhorn @willium @kevinrose TBH, the Path launch story I wrote remains one of my faves of all time https://t.co/5I1kUyn4No

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@willium @mvanhorn @kevinrose OMFG throwback. Also, Path was such a vibe

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

A signal that @Tesla sees its Robotaxis as a real business: It's raised prices. My client @obiriders just released new data that shows the average fare is up by 41% in San Francisco in just three months. https://t.co/LH1jPG5l3F

[Congressman Jared Moskowitz @RepMoskowitz]

Nearly 65 years after John F. Kennedy challenged America to go to the Moon, we’re on our way back.

Godspeed to the incredible astronauts aboard Artemis II as they embark on their historic journey to the final frontier.

As America’s Space Coast, Florida couldn’t be more proud.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@icebeanie Thank you! ❤️

[reason @reason]

Despite their general ignorance of constitutional law, bears pose a much less grave threat to your civil liberties than humans do.
https://t.co/FaDz68rbIY

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

Absolutely devastating. This guy is the rare elected official who made this site a more enjoyable rather than an abysmally worse place to be, and the even rarer elected official who showed clear respect for his constituents whether they agreed with him or not.

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@simoj_ Can’t have this conversation without bringing up the elephant in the room: insurance companies

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

I cannot stress this enough: childfree weddings are almost always for financial reasons. Either you’re paying $$$ for extra headcount or venues will jack up the costs if anyone under 18 (or even 21) is present. People really think society hates kids more than it actually does.

[K. Rose @berrysweetmum]

Honestly, the child-free wedding issue IS the temperature check on how people view children in today’s society. Plenty of people go child-free for financial reasons or venue restrictions, but once you drift outside of that, you start to see what people really think about kids.

[caroline mccarthy 🦝 @caro]

@wfenza Which is reasonable when you’re on a budget. I know people who had a very firm ceiling for a headcount that they could afford and if they’d allowed guests to bring small children they would’ve had to cut people they were genuinely close to.

[Ashley Schapitl @AshleySchapitl]

Tonight I learned there are political staffers too young to remember the Appalachian Trail. 😭