Alabasata
5mo ago
The downside of school choice is more car traffic and less buses.
As a travelling technician, my quality of life is much lower during the school year. Urban planners trying to minimize car traffic hate this trampling of the commons. And a certain striver mentality is going to look down on parents taking shortcuts to go where the good schools are instead of applying "the grass is greenest where you water it" and actually getting involved.
It's all tradeoffs in the end. On the whole, I'm no fan of your solution.
Alabasata
8mo ago
Factorio 2.0 and Space Age dropped on Monday. A new batch of puzzles & logistics to solve & optimize are here. Since I discovered the game back in 2016ish, it's good to see new challenges outside the mod scene.
So far, I've put in enough time to launch a rocket (formerly endgame research, now mid-game) and research bot logistics.
I'll need to make notes of an actual bare-bones build for the new space station mechanics. Other people who can put in more time than I have are already handling exploring other planets. I'll get to that in due time.
Please no strategy spoilers. I haven't had a chance to get it wrong in a while - going from "suboptimal" to "good enough" to "pretty sharp" is going to be the most fulfilling piece of the game.
Alabasata
9mo ago
Survey about parenthood: how do you describe people whose kids have left the nest? I was under the impression that the social role of "parent" took a back seat when the kids move out, but a conversation with grandparents last night has gotten some responses I did not expect.
Some people always want to be referred to as parents once they've had kids...and my gut feeling is that I don't like unspoken implications of that. Haven't put it into words yet why, though.
Alabasata
8mo ago
Saturday night, my partner & I filled out our respective ballots. Sunday morning, we dropped them in the mailbox by our local library.
This morning I got an email from my county. My mail-in ballot was processed & my vote was counted. The voting system in my state is working as intended, from my vantage point.
Hopefully more states can vote in the same manner I am. No theater, no drama, just a couple selections & bada bing bada boom. I just want more people to have my level of privilege, whatever their candidate of choice is.
Alabasata
11mo ago
Counterpoint: it is becoming more common for grocery stores & gas stations to lock their bathrooms. This is a downscaling of trust.
Maybe retail is more accepting to take money from anyone regardless of appearance. But the real trust is if they'll let you take a shit like a civilized person.
Alabasata
22d ago
Working-class neighborhood here. I've heard older people in my neighborhood talk about "neighborhood character". I don't know what they're talking about.
If someone knocks on my door, 95% of the time it's a salesman. If I get mail, 95% of the time it's ads for things that do not increase my quality of life. I've lived in my house for 7 years and I still haven't talked with everyone on my block yet. Not for lack of trying.
I don't see a "neighborhood character" that's worth preserving. How do you describe a "neighborhood character" that's worth defending?
Alabasata
8mo ago
Polymarket is not legal to trade for USAians. Do we follow it for sport, or do we have "other methods" of participating?
Alabasata
9mo ago
This came up in a meeting with whitehairs. I claimed that setting up childcare on site would help attract parents. To which one replied, "Well, I'm a parent, and I don't see how that helps me any!"
My primary impulse is still "No, you were a parent." And there's some background wars of framing that go into this.
Kamala Harris was accepted into Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the Blackest sororities you can find. I trust them to vet & measure Blackness better than Donald Trump (or TheMotte) can.
If she's Black enough for them, she's Black enough to me. Total distraction of an issue, not unlike talking heads asking if Obama was Black enough during his primaries.
ASIDE: Is there a programming term for classes with predefined variables that are declared but not defined? It's the only analogy I can think of that approximates the issue.
Alabasata
3mo ago
ancient hominid fossils
This is news to me. And I'm unable to find a source on the search engines. Is this being reported anywhere?
Alabasata
4mo ago
UBI would be a new inflationary pressure, as it directly increases the money supply. Our Federal Reserve would need to to interpret that as another tool along with interest rates - if they were to employ it effectively.
(I'm not sure how things work across the pond.)
Alabasata
4mo ago
When your personal contributions are greater than your investment gains: total stock market index funds. Doesn't matter which, just pick one.
When your investment gains are greater than your personal contributions: diversify from index funds into a mix following the "efficient frontier". Here's a calculator, though the free version is capped at 10 years of historical records.
Alabasata
5mo ago
The life a neighbor 15 miles away probably isn't even worth saving. That's not the point.
However, the money I have represents enough power to affect an African. It is not enough power to affect a fellow American. When I donate to VLCOL-based charities I am buying an effigy of influence.
Feeling powerful feels good. That is enough.
Alabasata
5mo ago
Who says it has to be unilateral? It's very unlikely you're the only one who wants better conditions. You may just not know your probable allies yet.
Alabasata
5mo ago
There are more. It's the first thing I thought of.
It's also a self-inflicted isolation from one's neighborhood, and that carries knock-on effects where it becomes harder to put down roots. Less chance to see the talents of your neighbors, less chance to share your talents with their families, less Slack in your systems to absorb actual shocks.
Maybe you don't value that as much as I do. That's okay.
Alabasata
6mo ago
Factorio: Space Age progress is going slow. The bare bones of the lava planet factory is automated, and its science is being delivered with few hiccups. The ruins planet factory is now underway & the first science packs are being crafted now.
Rolling for quality this go-round is still a chore. I knew enough to bring blue-quality advanced miners to maximize my rolling chances. Probably should have brought logistics bots with me instead of trying to build them from scraps scratch. Not to mention buildup of higher-quality materials on the lava planet occasionally creating jams & back up.
I wonder when I'll be ready to really start building the Mark II of home planet's base. Kinda thinking I should wait until unlocking some researches from the swamp planet first. But maybe I'll run out of patience first, so hard to say.
Alabasata
7mo ago
First off, /r/Parenting is not the only game in town. I personally prefer /r/Daddit, largely due to earlier members posting actionable advice like the concept of 20 second hugs. There is some reee'ing as the sub has grown (e.g. "Why do people default to moms as the relevant authority?!", relationship troubles above the paygrade of Internet Strangers) but it generally upvotes posts displaying agency so I lurk there more often.
To answer your question, I only have experience with toddlers so my perspective is limited. Right now the majority of the behavior work we do is picking up toys, tantrum mitigation & risk management during playtime. For the latter, partner & I have settled into classic gender roles: mother's "safety first" vs. father's "she'll succeed or she'll learn something".
Generally, daughter isn't doing enough yet to put herself at enough risk (as I perceive it) where I have to intervene much. I'm sure that will change, but I don't know when or how that will be. Maybe drugs, maybe content diet, maybe choosing her friends - hard to say. But I know I'll have to draw lines eventually.
Alabasata
7mo ago
BreadTube would call this "sigma-coded" behavior, and they believe failsons from Red Tribe are more susceptible to it than Blue's failsons. Whether that's true is hard to say. I don't know if anybody has done the work to sort out whether Harris & Klebold were Red or Blue. That's not polisci I personally want to touch.
And then, most mass shootings that make the news & get talked about are also not most mass shootings. So many news consoomers get a slanted view of who's really doing the shooting.
Alabasata
10mo ago
Also note that deliberate race-swapping can still make good art. Both Spike Lee & Mel Brooks made "Where did we go right?" movies where the premise is that terrible stereotypes actually sell great. (Bamboozled & The Producers)
"X But it's a $Demographic Movie" doesn't have to suck. It's still all in the execution.
Alabasata
11mo ago
I misread this at first. I had thought the daughter said "eat me" as a retort. That would have been twisted-sitcom funny.
No, this was a proposition from the father from the start. We do not share the same sense of humor.
Alabasata
11mo ago
I'm a bit hazy on Cerebus, but I seem to recall he had a bit of a brain-break during Church & State II. Where, like, not many of the remaining 200 issues were actually worth reading.
Gorgeous scenery, though.
Alabasata
22d ago
So I live in a Blue-ish neighborhood with a large immigrant population, I can point-for-point compare your predictions with what's actually happened.
We still have more churches than libraries. But our schools are closing due to lack of enrollment. If a church wants to move in, that's where the room is. And when it happens it'll probably be Black-led.
We had a titty bar about five miles west of my house. It got demolished, and a three-over-one apartment complex with wraparound services is in its place. I've never been to either - couldn't tell you what they're like.
We had a lesbian-owned bar across from the library. Mural-sized portraits of Frida Kahlo, Sandra Day O'Connor & other progressive saints were on the walls. They've since picked up and moved to a bigger location ten miles away. It wasn't a great place for me to drink, but others seemed to like it well enough.
We have an immigrant on city council. He's a Republican.
I won't go full Op-Ed and try to create a story about all this. It would create an incomplete map - and we know about the differences between maps & territories here.
None of this answers the original question: what is a "neighborhood character" that's worth defending?
I am very amused by this collection of Transmetropolitan-influenced caricatures.
Please, do go on.
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