Reflections on Palantir

I worked there in the weird era. A couple things.

1. As per usual, the things that make palantir well known not even close to being the most dubious things.

2. I agree that the rank and file of palantir is no different from typical sv talent.

3. The services -> product transition was cool, I didn't weigh it as much as should've, but I did purchase fomo insurance after they ipo'd

4. The shadow hierarchy was so bad, it's impossible to figure out who you actually needed to talk to.

It would also be interesting to hear thoughts on the company of somebody like Cory Doctorow.

Edit: aha, found. https://doctorow.medium.com/how-palantir-will-steal-the-nhs-...

"Palantir is one of the most sinister companies on the global stage, a company whose pitch is to sell humans rights abuses as a service. The customers for this turnkey service include America’s most corrupt police departments, who use Palantir’s products to monitor protest movements.

Palantir’s clients also include the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency who rely on Palantir’s products for their ethnic cleansing..."

Basically because everyone here is an immigrant of some sort just maybe not first generation. Also because the vast majority of people who show up at the Mexican border are fleeing horrific violence and when you are fleeing horrific violence it is difficult to always do things by the book. And also it is a reaction to just how poorly these people that otherwise would be classified as refugees get treated. Under Trump in particular family separation became the norm and courts who oversaw immigration cases had kids as young as 4 brought before a judge without family or legal representation.

A week ago Alejandro Arcos was decapitated right after he took office as mayor of the city of Chilpancingo, a city of around 280,000 people.

Some approximate stats:

Mexico has 45,000~ murders a year. The United States has about 25k a year.

The population of Mexico is 130m. The population of the US is 350m.

One can't derive the distribution of motivations that bring immigrants from these statistics. That said, I'd call that an alarming about of horrific violence. It's safe to say it's not evenly distributed over the whole of Mexico. It's easy to imagine being motivated to move by those statistics/events.

Like everything, it's probably a spectrum of motivations. More opportunities, better schools, fewer decapitations?

People get murdered in the US too. We had a presidential candidate who had two attempts on his life this election cycle. Dems glaze over that.

Should kids in Chicago get a pass to move to buenos Aires because Chicago is so violent? That’s our problem to solve. Mexicans have their own problems to solve. Of course electing a socialist probably won’t help. They need their own Milei.

Early in our history we had a violent Wild West. We fixed it ourselves. They can fix their own things too. They’re not incapable.