Ian Welsh

The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

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On August 16, 2025

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  1. NR

    A little something I saw on social media:

    We had layoffs at my multinational Fortune 500 tech company recently and one team was split in San Francisco and France.

    The engineers in SF called into their morning meeting and less than an hour later got a call from HR with a return shipping label for their hardware, no notice and a week of severance.

    The team in France? Legally they had to be placed on ‘Garden Leave’ for a month paid and the company had to prove they weren’t replacing them in the near future and it was a legitimate downsizing in which the employees couldn’t be reassigned and keep their jobs. If the company is found fraudulent at any point in the process they have to pay the dismissed worker a year of salary.

    But hey, American exceptionalism, am I right?

  2. NR

    Oh, and another article that might be of interest. The AI race may be over before it begins, because China’s power grid is so superior to the United States’.

    https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/data-centers-china-grid-us-infrastructure/

    Gee, who knew that prioritizing tax breaks for the rich over building infrastructure would have consequences? Absolutely no one could have predicted this I’m sure.

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