This is in style now. My tween daughter and her peers all own shoes that look geriatric to my eyes. I see teenagers walking around in New Balance shoes that look like my dad would have owned them 20 years ago.
This is actually not at all style of On shoes. The New Balance / Adidas / Nike 90s "dad shoes" have been cool for almost a decade now (Balenciaga released their "dad" sneaker in 2016).
On shoes look like shoes for retirees right now. Teenagers don't wear On shoes.
The film Crazy Stupid Love features Ryan Gosling telling Steve Carrell he dresses like a stale 40-something divorcee then throwing his New Balance meshy running sneakers off the balcony of the mall. That was 2011.
This model[0] is touted as one of their top three "bestsellers" and is completely unobjectionable, as far as contemporary sneakers go. It's a plain white, leather-looking tennis shoe that doesn't even have their brand's stupid characteristic sole that collects gravel.
Even typically goofy looking Hoka will sell you something appropriate for all-day work wear, anti-slip soles and all.[1] It comes in black, white, and monochrome grey.
Nike doesn't seem capable of making a shoe that looks like a normal person could wear it in real life. Most of them look more appropriate for a space station than planet earth.
Whats surprising to me is that all the brands you mentioned are just so ugly and simply not cool. Nike tries to position itself as Apple of sports but it probably doesn't work that well outside of high tech market because there are still many brands doing the high end at leas as well as them.
Probably because fitness-conscious (i.e. attractive) people started wearing them. And they are expensive enough to show status.
Crazy thick soles have become pretty normalized recently. But I remember when I first bought my Hokas I felt a bit like I was wearing orthopedic shoes like my grandma used to wear. Now I wouldn’t think twice about wearing them out.
I’m not quite sure but Nike really blew up back in the day with a focus on basketball via the Nike Jordan/Air Force One.
More recently I just don’t understand their product line up. If I click on Men’s in the US there are over 700 shoes. How do I even pick? Hello, earth to Nike. Nike is a Greek god. Maybe lean in to that a bit more?
Oh I get it “Inspired by the geometry of modern cities” they’re confused about good design and taking a hint from other dead brands like Hugo Boss or Burberry Outlet or maybe even Armani Exchange!
That’s why richfluencers are buying ON and Hoka and Vuroi and Lululemon still.
That's why it's fashion... I wouldn't say these are comparatively turds at all. I mean some Hoka are OK (except the terrible blue logo) but I don't think you would find single ON shoe thats nicer than the Nikes you linked to.
Which is probably why sales are declining. I wouldn't be caught dead in a shoe that looks like that. What would I wear it with? Jeans? When Nike makes "fashionable" products there's nothing for Nike to sell to me. I guess they can sell it to an NBA player and their entourage. Most people though aren't buying clothes that look like that, just like they're not buying stuff from the runway models.
So you take your customer base from a lot of folks to a small number of folks. It's totally fine and cool to build more niche products (we need more niche products and cottage industries) but if Nike's goal is to stay in the S&P 100 this strategy won't work. Customer base is way too small (and outside of the influencers) and has too few dollars to spend.
I got into Nike shoes in the 2010s because they were really innovative. A sneaker head friend suggested I try a pair of LunarGlides, and they were the most comfortable shoes I ever wore at the time due to their Lunarlon soles. And their FlyKnit uppers that came at bit later revolutionized sneakers. I also really liked their Free Run line (although not actually for running), which had an innovative flexible sole.
I've never been one for fashion, but I thought their tech was awesome. But I can't really think of anything noteworthy since the mid 2010s or so. Their Vaporfly shoes may be a big deal to competitive distance runners, but not really to your average Joe.
So that's my take - they stopped innovating, and other brands caught up and surpassed them.
> all the brands you mentioned are just so ugly and simply not cool
Specific to Hoka: They are a status symbol probably started/hyped by social media. All kinds of people wear them who aren't remotely into running or exercise.
This sounds more like some elitism. Who cares how your coworkers got there, the point is to have good history at the origin. People don't need to see your dirty laundy, there is nothing interesting about it.
> People don't need to see your dirty laundy, there is nothing interesting about it.
We disagree here, thus we prefer different tools. Nothing elitist here.
I have seen git people throwing away repos and start again just to hide mistakes/pivoting and look "pro" and "right from the start". Or worse, I have seen people botching repos to others rewritting history just to make them look clean. I embrace mistakes, and sometimes they become useful later to replay train of thoughs.
Pickled savoury watermelon is something i discovered not that long ago and it really surprised me. It's amazing. I otherwise don't care much about watermelon but pickled it gets so much flavor. I know many people who can't handle it because it "doesn't taste how it looks".
That is actually entirely not what they were saying at the time of the vote and its aftermath. At all.
Go back and read the threads. On this forum, or on mastodon, or on the vote. It was pretty vociferously ... shall we say ... "principled"
It was never stated to be about "low quality" but about use in "large part" or "majority", and when pressed people refused to define what that meant, and in fact got angry and defensive and said things like "you'll know if you've crossed the line" and "stop trying to force consent" and similar pearls of wisdom.
The post-facto rationalization did in fact leave them room to judge "quality" on a purely subjective basis. I didn't stick around to find out how that would shake out.
I assume you are implying that LLM generated projects don't mean bad quality. That's true. At same time we all know what this means. Plausibly looking projects that might even work but have little human oversight. There are so many of them It's really difficult to know. I don't want to depend on such code and I bet neither do most programmers. Why? Because by then you might as well vibe the library yourself and be the one who does the oversight.
I might be wrong but I doubt that people on Codeberg are against use of LLMs that make the projects better. Like finding security leaks. What these rules are aimed at are hosting of endless vibe coded projects that are just copy of each other.
I would encourage you to go back and read what was said at the time. Yes, a significant probably-majority really are against the use of LLMs for anything and the policy was evidently not about a deluge of vibe-slop on the site. Because there was a much simpler answer for that: quotas, specific rules, specific policy, moderation.
Instead a vaguely worded policy was put in around the tools used to write code so that vibe-based judgement could sit and decide without the potential judged having recourse to any appeal. And requests for specificity were not just turned down but mocked. Because the intent was to leave it open so that a process of bullying could be put in place.
Basically, anti-democratic practices masquerading as community/democracy. I used to see this a lot back when I was involved more heavily in left wing activist groups and it was the sign of a declining and degraded community. Sad to see it here.
As for "I assume you are implying that LLM generated projects don't mean bad quality. That's true." I'm specifically saying LLM assisted/generated doesn't mean one way or the other. They're tools.
I love you being heavily involved in left wing activist groups but you are no more because they are anti-democratic. When was that? While you were working at google for 10 years? I think you might be in same situation like atleast third of the people here. Yes Codeberg members did undemocratic poll and they undemocratically voted for this anti LLM policy. I fully agree the left wing of the Codeberg is coopting their project and we should go to support much more democratic Github.
You don't and that's why everyone gets so angry and annoyed when people try to force precise definitions.
There's no team of lawyers verifying the provenance of all code/projects submitted to codeberg. THe policy is just something they can point to as a general guidelines of what kind of shit they want to support.
Everyone knows exactly what kind of projects they're talking about. The people trying to nitpick definitions are those annoying ass people at the board game night that spend half the time combing through the rule book trying to figure out why whatever they didn't like was against the rules.
What the folks involved were actually saying, and what let slip multiple times through all those threads is: Any use of the tool is Wrong(tm). They never meant anything by the "majority" or "vibe-coded" or whatever because they didn't need to or want to; Multiple people let slip in all sorts of forums what the intent was: define a policy ambiguous enough that it could be used for frankly vibe-based exclusion. Defining the terms of exclusion was deliberately avoided because a) if-you-know-you-know b) they wanted to reserve the freedom to sit in judgement.
That's fine for new projects. Their sandbox and they can decide who plays in it. But the people who were using codeberg for months or even years and relying on it, and had to move... deserved better treatment.
Fomr my eyes the questions about what defines "majority" were well-intention-ed queries with the motive of trying to ferret out what the criterion for was in the eyes of the people who proposed the vote. That they refused to answer, and cast aspersions on the people who asked... is both a damning judgement on their personal character but also their community management.
What we have is a community defining an in-group and an out-group. And just like middle school, "you'll just know" if you're in one or the other.,
Good grief. What a bizarre cultish echo chamber. The tools make you dirty. Don't touch the tools.
Why put words in their mouth? They clearly mean a majority. They don't want projects that are majority written by LLMs. If they didn't want projects that an LLM had ever been anywhere near, they would've just said that. They're not under any shareholder pressure to lie.
And now you're literally saying that a "no vibecoded projects" rule is a slippery slope to actual fascism. Good grief! What nonsense!
I think the thinking is that in current system as solo creator you are somewhat protected by copyright but your work still gets mainly bought by your audience even if it can be pirated.
On the other hand copyright has been absolutely abused by big corporations to give them immense powers. Many creators were forced to sign away their rights and don't even make money on their work. You jailbreak your phone or your TV because of it. Generally it blocks so much of the competition. And with LLMs seems to have decided that copyright doesn't matter anyway.
> You can register and use a .eu domain if you are an EU or EEA citizen regardless of where you live, a resident in the European Union or European Economic Area, or a business or organization established within the EU/EEA.
You must have been living under a comfy rock the last few years since there are several communists - real ones, by their own say - in the running for positions in the "democratic" party. The coming elections will show whether they gain traction, if they do there is a real danger of communism forming in the USA.
As to fascism that remains to be seen. If by fascism you mean the actual meaning of the term, i.e. (section headings from Britannica [1]) Opposition to Marxism and socialism, Opposition to parliamentary democracy, Opposition to political and cultural liberalism, Totalitarian ambitions, Conservative economic programs and Corporatism I think there is some chance of this taking hold. Let's take these characteristics one at a time:
Opposition to Marxism and socialism: clearly present in the current US government, in my opinion rightly so since these ideologies have been shown to lead to disaster time and time again.
Opposition to parliamentary democracy: not present in the current US government, somewhat present in the current "democratic" party where DSA members want to radically change the way the country is governed by abolishing the Senate, abolishing the presidency, abolishing the supreme court and replace it with something resembling a politburo [2]
Opposition to political and cultural liberalism: clearly present in the current US government, to be expected given that the US two-party system largely comes down to 'political and cultural conservatism' versus 'political and cultural liberalism'
Totalitarian ambitions: some people in the current and previous US governments think and thought they could rule this way, they were and are held back by the courts and other institutions
Conservative economic programs: partly present in the current US government, to be expected given that it is part and parcel of the Republican program. Partly because a large part of the economic program (around 59% of the budget, data from 2025) consists of mandatory spending on social security (~22%), Medicare (14%), Medicaid (10%) and other mandatory programs (13%)
Corporatism (which according to Britannica means 'the theory and practice of organising society into “corporations” subordinate to the state ... workers and employers organised into industrial and professional corporations serving as organs of political representation and controlling to a large extent the persons and activities within their jurisdiction'): not present in the current US government, partly present in the "democratic" party where the DSA pushes an amalgamation of similar policies
What are your thoughts on this subject now that I made an attempt to put the term 'fascism' in its historical context?
OK, down-voter, be a man and tell me where you think I went wrong in my reasoning about the chances DSA-communists have in gaining a foothold or the danger of fascism gaining ground. Stop knee-jerking that down-vote button, tell us what you think - this is a discussion site after all, not a popularity contest or likes farm.
It's not complicated. The people in power in US are not hiding it. They want to dismatle democracy, take away peoples rights and freedoms. They are openly corrupted. They are laughing in your faces with hailing and nazy propaganda tactics.
While you are here worried about some hypothetical possibility of some socialist getting few seats. You miss that you won't have elections anymore.
reply