Marcos Boyington 🧢

Building & #Gardener #exGoogle

#BikeToWork rain & snow

#UBI #TermLimits #RCV #GMO sensible health care

🖖🇺🇸🇧🇷

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

I am but a faint signal in the noise

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@innov8tor3 @habibislop Yeah that's the real issue

People blame Google, but it really isn't their fault - they're optimizing profits & frankly they're not even that unscrupulous

The real issue is WTH these districts are doing! Not blocking instagram, seriously? Just mind-blowing incompetence

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

Google Search deeply woven into the fabric of education? 😬

Seems to me that removing Google Search from education would be a net 𝐰𝐢𝐧

Curated apps & sites on a Chromebook is the way to go, or removing tech from schools completely

Google Search is, like AI, a Pandora's box - just a smaller one

https://t.co/LLzqECObis

[Jonathan Haidt @JonHaidt]

Google heard the outcry from parents, teachers, and the US Senate, who don’t want Gemini pushed into classrooms. AI causes cognitive offloading, encourages cheating on homework, and enables the possibility of forming human-like relationships with a chatbot. So Google responded: They are going to make Gemini an “opt-in” choice for each school district. Great!

But then they attached a condition: if a school district does NOT turn on Gemini, then the students lose Google search, which is deeply woven into the fabric of education. This is coercion, not choice. Google can and should just restore what we all had before: Google search with no AI chatbot interaction or AI overviews.

https://t.co/sD19WpTudK

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@JonHaidt @angeladuckw 💯 - but Google Search is kind of at the center of this, the factory

Which is why I don't agree with your statement that "Google Search is deeply woven into the fabric of education"

I would say K-12 is better off without Google Search & without Gemini

And I'm ex-Google!

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

Google is definitely the best one out there, honestly - they are the worst, except for all the others 🤣

Honestly I just don't get why people are freaking out - no Google Search for K-12 seems like a good thing 😅

Whatever benefit school-age kids get from Google search is far outweighed by the detriment

Not so different from AI

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

They really don't lose any money in it, because it's just the standard Google Workspace Domain

They sell this to big orgs, and that's where they make their money

They're able to offer this to schools without really having to put any resources into it - near-free

And long-term it probably has some hard-to-measure kick-back when everyone leaves school, goes to work somewhere & says "hey, we should use Google Workspace!"

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

Oh no no no

The chromebooks cost a shit ton of money! I'm sure HP is making bank 🤣 Probably even overcharging the schools 🤣

EDU domain is free - I think this is, genuinely, out of goodwill, but obviously getting students to use & be familiar with Drive/Docs/Gmail has long-term benefits

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

On chromebooks, it really isn't as easy as "typing google dot com"

Chrome + school district domain policy really do make it to where, when they flip off that Gemini app (& it flips of Search), students just can't load/access https://t.co/OShezOq0ZN - period

Incognito is disabled, search is completely inaccessible

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

The funny part is there aren't "cut deals with Google"

Google does chromebooks & free EDU because it's a nice hook

If you disable YouTube, Search, and Gemini, they genuinely don't care - the school isn't beholden to turning those on

Many school districts allow Meta - instagram, facebook. Ours did until this August!

Which is like, what the actual fuck? Why? Google would obviously be more than happy if these were disabled - they can't do it by default because it's anti-competitive

So the issue here isn't Google (for once, and you know much smack I talk about them!)

It's the school district & IT admins which have their own agendas

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@foster_ious @mcuban Precisely what I was going to say

Corporations use the ideology as a distraction

But the $$ behind the politicians is the problem

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

Wise, unhateful, honest advice

And yet, it won't happen - each team will remain ideological, convinced that the reason they won is their ideology

Then, in 2 years, everyone will once again vote with their hate, voting out the team that just let them down and returning to the team that previously jaded them

No real change, no real progress - the cycle continues.

How do we break it?

https://t.co/doUugdoggY

[Former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 @FmrRepMTG]

Dear Democrats,

You won your historic victory on Tuesday with the help of our America First coalition on 4 key basic issues.

1. End foreign wars, war in Iran, and funding for Israel.
2. Reduce cost of living and gas/diesel (economy)
3. End corruption in Gov
4. Reduce cost of healthcare/health insurance

Which were also key components of the mandate delivered to Trump and Republicans, which they betrayed and failed to deliver.

Your party has two factions, older establishment Dems and younger populists Dems.

If the New Democrat majority returns to issues that lost your majority and presidency in 2024 and doesn’t stay focused on those 4 main issues, then the American populists movement that swung it big for you this cycle will not vote for you in 2028.

For example, bringing back 2020-2024 issues like woke, identity politics, forcing trans issues, gun control, Covid vaccine mandates, and open borders are not the issues that drove this massive blue tsunami.

Allowing the older establishment Democrats to run back to those issues that were defeated in the 2024 election would be a very grave mistake, tone deaf, and would completely undermine the opportunity you have before you.

The country didn’t suddenly join the Democrat Party with a sworn allegiance to always vote Democrat.

The country voted to end Trump and to refocus back to the main kitchen table issues that are hurting their lives.

And most of the younger generations of voters could care less about team party politics and just beating the other side.

The future is all about, “deliver results for Americans” and whoever can get it done.

To be very clear, I’m conservative and have voted Republican my entire life, but went into open rebellion and war against Trump and Republicans, the man I worked tirelessly to put in office because he betrayed his promises and the Republican Party turned back to it’s repulsive neocon elite donor focused ways and refused to deliver for the American people.

Our entire coalition did, we ended the Trump era and burned our party down, but we didn’t turn into Democrats.

For both parties need to realize that most Americans want the same basic things and the future belongs to an independent minded left/right powerful coalition that will force our elected and tax payer funded government to deliver for Americans or face punishment at the polls.

Focus on the issues that won on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, not issues the American people defeated in the past.

The ball is in your court.

Good luck!

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@DSiPaint "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

They are like the people electing them - representation works, I guess

Always thinking of the short-term gains, never the long

[Daniel Gump ☕️ @DSiPaint]

A major issue with elections is that the typical voter doesn’t think long-term. It’s almost always about immediate gratification to a concern within a few-months timeframe.

Candidates know this, so they almost never speak of long-term expectations and solutions. This causes the pendulum to swing between parties with nothing ever solved, leading to a Hegelian dialectic that progressively devolves nearly every industry.

If voters actually became informed of the long-term fallout for the short-term promises, the state of the U.S. would be considerably different.

Some possibilities:
* 100% energy independence, expanded nuclear, modernized power grid
* No reliance on foreign oil, expansion as a net exporter
* Social security stabilized
* Healthcare costs considerably lower
* National debt balanced or nearly balanced
* Markets and monetary policy more stable

Now, there would definitely be disagreements on how to reach these (e.g. less/more regulation, privatization, public works, patent reform, etc.), however enough agreement could be reached on many aspects of them to at least rein in on the root causes for current problems that aren’t seeing any long-term solutions at all and to incrementally work toward the areas of agreement.

Alas, I doubt this will ever happen, as it’s voter nature to seek immediate gratification and of lobbyists to seek immediate kickbacks and of politicians to seek immediate election results.

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

The most interesting lesson of my layoff has been the realization that the most technically competent people I have worked with are also the kindest.

Notice that I said kindest, not nicest. These people know their stuff, and they're not known for being nice about it. They'll call out bad ideas, ripping them apart. They'll be direct about bad decisions that were made, and be forceful when they see the right path forward.

But as I've seen firsthand, they'll also be the first ones to stick their neck out for you. They care, genuinely, and actively try to do everything in their power to help you. Not with empty platitudes, but by messaging you asking if you need help, actively submitting referrals, helping you find a position, and doing their best to get you on their team.

It turns out that psychology actually backs this up through the HEXACO model. People who score high on honesty-humility are less concerned with social pretense, which means they often come across as blunt - but they are deeply altruistic. People who score low, on the other hand, are often conflict-avoidant - not out of true kindness, but to protect themselves from social stress and to project an image of being "good."

https://t.co/gfsxISBLeQ

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@fivestarmichael @Sir_Digby_CS @DuerksenKen Fair 🤣

Well except for OpenAI & Anthropic, but they were flukes - who knows what's going to happen there

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@fivestarmichael @Sir_Digby_CS @DuerksenKen What makes it especially tricky is there are still remnants of capitalism

People do start businesses, and much like winning the lottery, they are sometimes successful

But there are so many mega corporations now, and they are most certainly running world governments

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@ClickDopamine It wasn't too bad!

https://t.co/SAadivPFrW

[Marcos Boyington 🧢 @iBringBalance]

@ClickDopamine Good to know, thanks for the heads-up