My working theory is that Trump is best understood as an epically tragic character.
So desperate to be valued and liked, that he desperately grabs at anything and everything to get the acclaim that, under normal circumstances, would signify that.
His besetting character flaws foreclose any possibility of attaining the actual approval he seeks.
And so, with his misguided approaches to getting praise and love, the harder he tries the further they are from his reach.
Adding to that tragedy is that a 180-degree U-turn is still within his reach. He could do it today, and probably get some of what he most deeply wants. But I think the most likely outcome is that he'll keep his current trajectory for the rest of his life.
> So desperate to be valued and liked, that he desperately grabs at anything and everything to get the acclaim
Like all billionaires, he is an empty void that can never be filled. To borrow a phrase, he is a hungry ghost.
After his first million he needed more, then after a billion he saw that it was not enough, then after becoming president... he is, was, and always will be an empty hole of a person who can never feel satiated and who can consequently never feel genuine happiness.
Earlier I said "all billionaires", and that wasn't fair.
To be clear, there are some who turn Capitalism into a religion (objectivists, and the like), and to them it can be moral. They at least seek to serve a moral good, even if I disagree about the means I can appreciate that their goal is still to make the world a better place.
Trump is not one though. He is utterly devoid of morality and seeks only to fill an endless black need for external validation.
I don’t think he’s interested in general approval. Having a fervent cultish minority support and being detested by others both seem to suit him. Hell, he seems to enjoy being able to paint himself a victimized underdog to his followers.
Interesting reading, but hard to have sympathy when he causes suffering for so many.
I also don't think changing his behavior is within reach. His narcissism prevents him from growth and, like the scorpion in the tale, he can't help but sting.
I don't think it's so clear cut. The problem is that his personality defects have allowed him to be influenced by people who are truly malevolent. Those people lurk more in the shadows and so avoid the condemnation that they deserve. Trump is their obvious useful idiot with the target painted on his head.
The only thing the author of this blog piece has to offer that’s new is his very strong personal intuition that the new design hasn’t been properly validated, without any engineering explanation about why the testing the performed won’t adequately simulate real world performance.
Yes, the original procedures didn’t find the problem, but it says they were eventually able to duplicate it in the lab and the new material has passed that test.
I’m fairly confident NASA doesn’t read Maciej’s blog. However I’m confident that many people there read the Google doc he linked to. I suggest you do too.
Nearly every app that accepts user-generated content includes an agreement that you give them a license to use that content.
It's basically required for those apps to function. No platform would exist very long if users could upload content and then sue the platform for hosting it.
The agreements usually include a clause about allowing them to sub-license it.
So you still retain the copyright to the photos, but you can't sue them for using it.
I had stepped out of the high-rise office into the blinding San Francisco sun, a freshly minted millionaire wrestling with the crushing guilt of sunsetting my own creation. We built a business to be proud of, I tried to tell myself, clutching the signed term sheet. There must be a lot of pride and meaning in this.
So desperate to be valued and liked, that he desperately grabs at anything and everything to get the acclaim that, under normal circumstances, would signify that.
His besetting character flaws foreclose any possibility of attaining the actual approval he seeks.
And so, with his misguided approaches to getting praise and love, the harder he tries the further they are from his reach.
Adding to that tragedy is that a 180-degree U-turn is still within his reach. He could do it today, and probably get some of what he most deeply wants. But I think the most likely outcome is that he'll keep his current trajectory for the rest of his life.