> The funny thing is that a lot of Altman's reputation has come from other VCs and Valley-types taking about him in a way they consider positive. Every quote about Altman from another VC is like, "Altman, what a great leader. He's absolutely ruthless, he'll do anything to win: lie, cheat, steal, kill. He has what it takes to succeed in this business."

"game recognize game"

that's just capitalism

they're quite capable of lobbying governments to obliterate the free and open internet because they don't want to do age verification

this assumes that 1) you're not learning stuff while scrolling -- which may be true -- and 2) that you're not enjoying it or getting a benefit from it

"if I spent 1 hour a day meditating/working out/playing baseball/walking my dog for 50 years I'd waste 2 years of my life"

ycombinator ain't doing this as a charity, mate.

it's here to increase visibility of the ycombinator brand, it's startups, and the technologies related to what they do. discussions around it were going to happen anyway, so own those and shape.

create an ecosystem, and then mold / skim / ingest / bask in it.

it's the same reason why BigCorps try really, really hard to get ownership / mod control of subreddits, and/or having their marketing assets responding to discussions in their sub or elsewhere.

it was not cool by 200 because there were explicit laws banning marketing campaigns to make it cool -- marketing works.

literally, you can't sell this to kids and ads designed to make it seem cool to kids are verboten.

the laws made the change.

Carnegie Mellon has an entire building dedicated to eradicating the goblin threat. Also eliminating unions.

explain

1) people smoked a lot more in the post WWI econ boom

2) additives or even just paper compound the negative effects of the smoke on the lungs.

like, firefighters - who usually have physical fitness requirements and don't smoke - see rates of lung cancer similar to moderate smokers, simply due to the higher volume of particulate and chems hitting their lungs.

it is dose-dependant, and firefighers who see more fires see more cancer. occasional tobacco pipe smokers in 1850 saw less lung cancer than 2-pack-a-day post-WW2 smokers.

I’m unsure where your firefighters have the same lung cancer risk as moderate smokers information comes from, but it’s wrong.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7063017/

Here’s an meta-analysis of 49 studies that shows no increase in lung cancer.

And of course it’s dose dependent. But newer studies show that years smoking is much more important than intensity when it comes to lung cancer risk. So smoking half a pack a day for 20 years is worse than a pack a day for 10 years.

Dry snuff comes with a 2-8x increase in oral cancer and a 10-12x increase in nasal and sinus cancer.

Tobacco is a carcinogen—even without additives. In addition to epidemiological evidence we have a plausible mechanism of action.

Alkaloids in the leaf convert into carcinogenic TSNAs during curing, aging, or drying. Tobacco plants absorbs heavy metals. And tobacco plants absorb polonium-210.

There’s a lot of misinformation and misleading interpretations out there that come from years of the tobacco industry attempting to create uncertainty. Especially with your firefighter myth, I think you might have got hold of some of it.