DirtyWaterHotDog
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User ID: 625
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Have you been to NYC and gone beyond the "WTC <-> Times Square" region ? NYC is amazing and a lot of your complaints don't seem to apply to the rest of the city. I understand why you'd dislike the "WTC <-> Times Square" region. Even those who live in NYC hate it.
This is what non-expensive middle-class residential neighborhoods look like :
And I didn't even mention the actually amazing residential neighborhoods that are more upper-middle class like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Clinton Hill or the waterside parts of Jersey.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
If you want to drop one kid off at one activity, the other kid off at a different one, get a week's worth of Costco, and then pick them both up, while changing at least one of the activities every six months, you simply can't beat the car.
It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Suburban homes have space. Suburban homes have large cars. Suburban homes find groceries to be detour. Costco only exists because large cars & large houses allow families to do groceries in bulk. It's negatives (inability to provide fresh food, fresh bread, 1 day expiry or non-standard items) are also unnoticeable, because you can't get those things in a suburb anyway. You need to drop off kids to school because walking and biking are either unsafe or impossible on suburban roads. The idea of letting kids go to their activities themselves is so impossible to consider, that the car then becomes a solution to a problem of its own creation.
It's like saying that Pandas & superior to Orcas because because they do well in Chinese captivity. Well, the entire Chinese captivity system was an unnatural system created to facilitate the conservation of Pandas. If you are going to compare to animals, then maybe evaluate them outside of a system hand-crafted to benefit one of them.
Why would someone want to solve suburban problems in a city. A city should not have suburban problems at all, emphasis on 'should'.
American suburbs appear great, because honestly, American cities are forced to suck. Even the best ones : 'NYC and Boston' have to be the unrivalled centers of the world to rise above the quicksand that is the American system. Other cities, are straight up terrible. Cities should have city advantages. If the streets are unsafe despite sufficient density and transit, then nothing is going to convince parents to let their kids be independent. If residential and commercial areas are zoned far away from each other, then you can't ever grab groceries 'fresh on the way back'.
What we really talk about when we talk about suburbs is social climbing. the main factor for where people live is the human environment - family, jobs, schools, crime.
Yes-ish. Suburbs are perceived to be higher status because it allowed people to have big families, better schools & lower crime. But, what about suburbs enables any of those 3 things ?
Safety : There is safety in numbers and it hard to commit to the most common crime (car crashes) if you aren't interacting with cars as much. NYC has a lower homicide rate than the median American suburb. American cities are only unsafe because American city police does not enforce crime the same way suburban police would.
Schools : Wealthy places have better schools. When cities are able to self-select for wealthy people like suburbs (Somerville, Newton, Brookline), they have great schools. If anything, cities have access to the best talent and should have better schools as a result. Boston Latin, Stuy High and Bronx Science are 3 of the best schools in the country and they're all in big cities despite much lower property taxes.
Big families : This one is tricky. In an era when most people won't be having more than 2 kids, I can't see why a house needs to be bigger than a 4 bedroom apartment. If anything, a safe city allows your kids to be independent and therefore allows the parents to have more kids without a proportional increase in required work. It is also much easier to setup babysitting when your kids can hang out in a large apartment lounge area or a neighbors house in the same building.
And those points are precisely why Americans live in suburbs. All of these benefits of cities are badly realized in most American cities. People would rather live in good suburbs than bad cities.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
If only AAQCs came with notifications to submit camera-ready versions :(
a long term strategic strategy
Who writes like that ??
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
I cannot come up with a solution here, and this makes me very sympathetic to people who are trying to do it the right way. There isn't a right way. There's never been a right way. There's just a lot of wrong ways.
reminds me of this now impossible to find Horace and Pete episode by Louis CK.
It runs through Louis CK's obvious discomfort of having fucked a 'likely' trans person. What I love about the exchange is that nothing Louis says is wrong. He is trying, but there is an obvious elephant in the room. There is clearly something off. And no matter how much the 'likely' trans person tries to articulate her side and no matter how accepting and subservient Louis CK shows himself as, the tension never goes away. It's still in the air, the unanswered question.
The 2 lines that I think comes closest to asking the right question is :
A person has the right to assume certain things. -Louis CK
Yes, almost there. (I don't mean this as snark. I can sense a certain proximity to the crux of the argument, but I too haven't been able to phrase it properly)
So, a person who who transitions and becomes a female is only allowed to have sex with someone who specifically gets off on fcking transgender people? But she can't... do the one thing that makes her a woman, she can't fck men. Unless they're freaks who dig chicks that used to have dicks. - The trans person
In that sense, Trans women are very much women in that they feel 'entitled' to things, entitled to sex with a certain type of 'normal hot' man. Life sucks and a random drastic step didn't fix it ? Yeah, get in line.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
I'll rephrase this. Deindustrialization destroyed the ability of middle-class men to set their children up for an equivalent QOL.
Poor individuals can easily raise poor kids, who will go on to be poor adults. Middle class parents are struggling to raise kids in a manner that allows their children to end up middle class.
Observation:
mental framework that the world, along with all of its problems, is simply nature, and so is amoral
Conclusion:
and immutable, which means we should expend no energy trying to change it,
This observation doesn't have to lead to that conclusion.
The world is the world. You likely won't fix it by yourself. But nature, society and civilization are emergent properties of aligned collective effort by sentient individuals. So, yeah, your efforts won't do anything on their own. But, find like minded people, set up systems, and get things moving in a one direction. Over decades and generation you will see it become the next version society, nature and civilization.
The way I frame it, is to focus on actions instead of outcomes. Plan your actions to best achieve the outcomes. Readjust your actions depending on how badly your previous actions have missed the target outcome. But, don't place any importance on the outcome itself. You have agency, but you do not have determinism. If the action was right, given the information you had, then you did will. The world is the world, it is going to throw unforeseen wrenches in the works.
You have agency, but you also have limited time. Identify your circle of concern and put in effort to help those people & initiatives navigate around nature. But repeated navigation around nature leads to desire paths that eventually becomes the roads that facilitate the future of nature itself.
it's all part of nature
An awareness of this helps you stomach losses and failures more easily. A resignation to it leads to Nihilism.
Nothing to see here--it's all part of nature. Understand how it works, make sure you're not the mouse/fly/blueberry, and move on happily with your own life
Sounds a lot like Indic religions and the 'dharmic' way of life. Both tie the concept of 'harmony with nature' to 'ego-death'.
Most Indic religions can be notoriously hard to capture in short quotes. The diversity of philosophical schools and the the prioritization of metaphor over specifics is not conducive to concise expression. But, newer Indic religions that take Abrahamic inspirations do a better job of being concise and grounded in their claims. In that spirit, I quote Guru-nanak of Sikh-fame.
One must walk the path in accordance with the law of nature, which can be realized only through personal experience. This law (hukami) or will (rajā) cannot be found in any book or discourse. It is within ourselves and can be realized only through experience. This law is within every individual. Seeking it outside is meaningless. One can progress only by understanding it through personal experience. This law is universal. When one realizes this law (hukamai) by his own experience, one’s ego is completely destroyed and one no longer says ‘I’ and ‘mine’. Ego is the origin of karma and of birth. Ego is the fetter that causes repeated birth.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
His best ideas have seen massive protests and he had to eventually withdraw them.
- Reduced corporate taxes was reverted
- Some temporary removal of labor laws stayed temporary. (despite there being no thing as permanent as a temporary govt. policy)
- The amazing farm bill got slaughtered in left media around the world and lost him a few states in HUGE numbers
- CAA and NRC saw supposedly the 'biggest protest on planet earth' and were shelved indefinitely.
When Modi is unable to break an issue into Hindu vs Muslim, he struggles to get the whole nation aligned on it. (To be fair to Modi, every leader not name Nehru/Gandhi has has struggled with this. Governing 1+ billion diverse people is hard)
DirtyWaterHotDog
1yr ago
Modi's big picture economic strategy is clear when you see it in 3 parts across 3 terms.
- Govern
- Build
- Open
Govern
The first term was making India governable. Standardizing a national identity system (Aadhar), reducing corruption and keeping bureaucrats accountable to deadlines (I know 3 people close to me in different branches of the govt. None are Modi fans, but they all attested to this) and making payments fully electronic (social welfare, UPI). Even his failures indicated that direction : demonetization.
Build
This one is fairly obvious. The rates of infrastructure building this term has been insane. This also means making building easier. labor laws have been made more lax, FDI has been relaxed and long-nationalized-sectors are now being privatized/made-lean to be open to competition. Note : the removal of cushy/bulk govt. jobs (agneepath) means that Modi is inducing a lot of unemployment on purpose. It might signal optimism towards new 3rd party investment and job creation.
Open
The goal of term 3 seems to be to open the doors. If India is seen as well governed and has the infrastructure to scale, then making India incredibly business friendly should lead to a huge inflow of investment. The focus in the west is on big Indian tech cities like Gurgaon or Bangalore, but it is the hard engineering factories getting setup in tier 2 cities and previously ungovernable regions (UP) that have the greatest potential.
Ofc, the plan is just 1 piece of the puzzle. Modi cares about development, but only as long as it doesn't interfere with electoral politics. India's socialist tendencies mean that whole system hates any change that involves liberalization. This means passing a lot of unpopular laws such as removal of cushy govt. jots, even more lax labor laws and allowing the destruction of much beloved dinosaur Govt. institutions. Also, not giving in to uncomfortable unemployment by giving away handouts or creating fake jobs means that Modi will have to tolerate a strain of unpopularity & discontent before things pick up. This will be his most challenging term, by far.
I can only speak for the plan. The proof will be in the pudding.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
put a time on my calendar for friday. will get to it then.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Autism and passion.
As much as I love my fellow programmers, all of the best programmers have a degree of obsessiveness that allows them to revel in the annoying bits. Env setup is genuinely the worst part of the job, but the type of annoyance never goes away.
Look at the best computer scientists. Even among the stereotypically nerdy STEM fields, mathematicians and physicists are the only 2 groups that appear more 'autistic' at face value. Silicon Valley could not have been made about any other people. And it is a lot closer to a documentary, than feels comfortable to admit.
it's like pulling teeth.
It's a feature not a bug.
meta joke: I am currently on the Motte procrastinating because our envs are currently broken, and I don't feel like being the one to fix it.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
It's not narcissism, it is a cry for help.
These are people who give up on things at the slightest sign of trouble. "I have no spine, and so it is okay for me to give up", is how they justify whatever rut they're stuck in. "I can't quit this job I hate, to start my own company. I can't get in shape. I can't move out. I can't. I can't because I am not like those brave-hearts of WW2 who are dead enough that their superiority over me does not make me feel insecure." It is them allowing themselves to just 'be'. All initiative is for the brave, and in peaceful times like these, they find way to forgive their inaction, as if it isn't a sign of weakness.
Alternatively, it is an attempt at humility. "Yes, I am a highly accomplished person in my field through immense sacrifice, dedication & hard-work. Now, my white-collar elitism naturally lends itself to snark towards blue-collar folk. But hey, the blue-collar workers face real adversity. I could never survive such adversity." It's accomplished people saying, "I have all the social acclaim, so I'll pretend to not have certain traits that blue collar people pride themselves over, so you don't feel intimidated by me." Sometimes it is a real attempt at humility, other times it exists to reinforce your place among the elite.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Wrote a big comment, and then I refreshed like an idiot and lost it all. Why do I never learn. use an offline text editor.
tl;dr: Doomerism is not culture war, it is THE culture. Life is improving for many, but it is in the middle tier of Maslow's pyramid. We've dismantled the social structures that enabled people to seek the top 3 needs on Maslow's pyramid. Doomerism is people saying, "What's the point of getting all these lower-tier Maslow's needs met so much harder, if that means giving up on the top 3 needs on the pyramid."
p.s: I went into a side rant on housing prices/urbanism/density/social-fabric-of-a-build-environment how it all relates directly to this issue. But, I am the definition of a single issue broken record. So, take it as you will.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
There are 2 difference.
The first is that the European male lineage was almost entirely wiped out. If everyone is the child of the winners, then you're a child of the winners. If that genetic breakdown is more of spectrum, then some are more children of winners than the others. Second, Europe kept winning. They do not have an issue of cultural inferiority. The Europeans do not have their own white man to look up to, to borrow from and to integrate into.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
- An intuitive understanding of live, let live and let us live.
- Prioritize celebration of one nationally recognized festival (Diwali, Ganpati, Navratri, Holi, etc) and its associated God with national appeal.
- In parallel, importance is placed on family specific local Gods whose stories are passed down orally. There are both annual and point-of-time-in-life rituals associated with the local tradition. Usually involves a guru coming home and saying something for a few hours while you sit around uncomfortably.
- Some core restrictions as selected by the family - Degree of vegetarianism & alcohol consumption. Fasting on certain days. Periodic rituals without a specific goal in mind.
- When a big event is coming up, it's preceded by rituals for good luck.
- Have a local pandit/guru for recommendations on the small stuff. He might also do some astrology. Might also be the family therapist. Might be extortionate.
- Most rigid = Specific traditions around birth, marriage, weddings and death.
- Having a dev-ghar = small region of the house dedicated to idols
- Have a local temple you visit = community
- Have a remote temple to visit to gain luck for big events or as a life's goal for a pilgrimage.
It's more like being in a Frat than a religion per se. Notice how temples are somewhat distanced from the practice of the religion, and serve more are source of community. The first point undergirds the rest. You intuitively understand that none of your neighbors might practice the same thing as you. You shrug and move on. But if a neighbor ever puts their nose in your practices and tells you what's right or wrong, that's a grave social mistake.
It is easier to say what's not Hindu than what is Hindu. Never claim to know a universal truth, and never make passes on other people's group's membership rituals. That's a good start. No wonder the Jews and Parsis fit right in. They already performed #2 , and ended up performing #1 simply out of fear borne from being a tiny minority.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Wendy Doniger is the kind of person who reads about Zarte Piet and sees that as proof that chattel slavery of black men dates back 1000 years in the Netherlands. Her 'fit my observations onto my own western priors' approach leads to conclusions that would confuse even the most illiterate Indian.
It would be like an Indian studying Abrahamic religion saying that Jesus, Moses and Muhamed were all avatars of the same person, who reincarnated in different space-times to enlighten that space-time of the dharmic way. The Indian would say: "They believe in a similar system Trimurti system as us. The creator is God who is Brahma. The one who interacts with the humans, is the son, who is Vishnu. However, because they do not have the same cyclic system as us, they've replaced the destroyer: Shiva with a Holy Spirit which feels kinda redundant."
Now imagine if this commentary was considered the preeminent scholarship on Abrahamic religions...... that's Wendy Doniger. She isn't malicious, it's simply that she isn't capable.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Don't look at history, look at population genomics. Razib Khan is your best resource for this.
That being said, genomics data on India is an evolving field, so confidence in some findings is not as iron-clad as the stamp of science might suggest. Genomics tells you the 'what', but it doesn't tell you much about the 'how'. This means that you're stuck drawing equivalencies from known events in history from other regions. They might be informed guesses, but that's all they are.
For example: Does the appearance of a new - mostly male genetic branch over a few hundred years guarantee 'invasion, murder & rape', or could it also indicate a large male immigrant population. Note: in the modern era of peaceful immigration, most immigrants are still young men. We don't really know what happened here, and all political/academic groups are happier promoting their own conjecture, than digging in and finding out who got it right.
The verdict on the supposed violence of ancient proto-Hindus will influence political will to demonize colonizing muslim invaders of the last 1000 years. It provides historical backing/debunking for the sharp line that supposedly distinguishes the southern Indian Dravidians from the northern Indian Aryans. It allows inquiry into whether India's central philosophical work (Rigveda) was even composed in South Asia.
Indians have been a defeated people for a whole millennium. Post-socialism India has tried to reclaim a confident image of itself, carved from great ancient kings, who are the supposed ancestors of the modern inhabitants of this land. The Govt. senses a great deal of risk in even allowing research that might imply that the genetic ancestors of a huge portion of Indians have always been a defeated people. To them, there is nothing to gain and a lot to lose. I don't blame them. It's a hard choice.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Marketing for Barbie has been ubiquitous on social media and they seemed to have successfully convinced women to make it an event with people dressing up in pink to go see the movie. Despite both of them opening this weekend which might have had both cannibalize ticket sales, it seems like the attempts to synergize and make the two movies a movie going event, "Barbenheimer" has had some level of positive affect.
Hollywood seems to be learning from the 2 confusing hits of 2022 : Minions and RRR.
As we came out of covid, both movies recognized that going to the movies was more about creating experiences than the movie itself. RRR released their viral dance 1 year in advance, and the movie screening felt more like an interactive experience than a watching experience. Does this look like a movie screening to any of you ?
At least with RRR, people genuinely cared about it being an amazing movie. Minions went the other way, pioneering the "movie as an ingroup meme". It separated the quality of movie from the theater going experience and raked in the big bucks.
Barbie and Oppenheimer have directly stolen from both movies. Going to the theater has always been a special experience. The mistake was thinking that people went to the theaters to watch movies they wanted to see. No, theaters are an experience, and the movie itself is secondary. The advent of the home theater meant that intuitions had been changing for a while. But, the 2010-2020 wisdom was that people went to theaters to see set pieces that home theaters could not do justice to. So 3D, CGI, big explosions and super hero movies dominated the big screen.
As people have tired of 3D explosions, it is now time to leverage another phenomenon that home theaters can't do justice to : "the experience of going to the theater". This paradigm shift means that we will see a flood of mid-budget viral marketting-esque movies soon. Sadly, the new paradigm is yet again divorced from the quality of the movie. Instead of CGI explosions and trailer friendly jibes, directors will pressured to create 'viral and imitable moments'. The king is dead, long live the king!
The "Russo brothers (Avengers) - Rajmouli (RRR)" interview from last year is worth watching. You clearly see the fascination of these Hollywood profit-machines as they struggle to understand how RRR is generating so much enthusiasm for going to the theaters. Looks like Hollywood finally figured it out with Barbie.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Thesis statement : Targetting-based 3 pronged model for conceptualizing negative emotions
Placeholder comment about a rough new (reinventing the wheel, or just bad at a google?) model for handling negative emotions. If this gets any interest, I'll try to make a longer comment on it.
Single-source past derived negative emotions can be divided along 3 separable lines:
-
Grief or a sense of loss - untargetted
- unary negative emotion.
- has magnitude, no vector
- Can be processed without hurting anyone
- you don't gain anything from it
-
Regret - Self-targeted or action targeted negative emotion
- targeted inwards.
- Can be in association to an action, but usually action that 'you' did or did not take
- has magnitude and vector, but no real destination
- wrongly processing it can involve hurting yourself
- can be used productively to plan decisions in the future
-
Resentment - targeted towards someone
- targeted towards another person you feel resentful towards
- is usually in association with an interaction with a person. Either "they did X to me", "they made me do X" or "we did X."
- has magnitude, vector and a destination
- wrongly processing it can involve hurting yourself and another person
- can be used productively to establish boundaries or request change in someone else's behavior
I have recently tried to verbalize the breakdown of grief/regret/resentment that I am feeling when a negative emotion comes up. In my experience, without this model, people can often act out grief by misconstruing it as resentment, and destroying relationships. Similarly, some people will fall into un-identifiable sadness (grief) when in reality they real issue has to do with resentment (and needing to establish boundaries from an individual).
I have found this model to be quite useful for my own issues. Lmk if this sounds useful for you guys too.
If you steal this idea, please give credit. If someone else has done this better, please link.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
that a God who attempts to secure your love through threats of eternal torture is a monster
This has been my general approach too. There are few universal 'goods' across all religions. Those are likely good places to start.
Don't betray, murder, rape, lie, steal or be hypocrite. I try my hardest to do all of them. the not lying and not-betraying (even unintentionally) bits are especially hard to keep up all the time.
It's one of the reasons I don't buy people's crap on religion. I have yet meet anyone who consistently does even just these 5. If it's that difficult to follow the LCM (lowest-common-multiple) of all religions together. No way anyone is able to those and all the extras that come depending on which religion you think wins the jackpot.
people who reject God get exactly what they're expecting: death, and then non-existence.
Perks of being Hindu / Buddhist. Release from the eternal cycle of life/death is exactly what Moksha/Nirvana looks like. So by following an Indian-origin religion and rejecting Christianity, a person gets both the incentive (aim for non-existence) and a guarantee of success (non-existence). Thanks Jesus ?
Win-win if you ask me.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
I was not born in an Abrahmic culture, so forgive my ignorance, but...
At its core, each Abrahmic sect believes that they understand the words of God. I would assume that for a group that claims to understand God's words, surely you would have to be confident before making such a claim. Credit where it is due, Christians are confident. However, they are all confident in their unique truth and just as many of them are confident in the false hood of every other Pagan, Abrahmic and Christian sect.
While there are a few inclusive Christians, most Christians aren't going around saying : "My Christianity has the highest odds of heaven, while it is 50-50 with the others." Most are going around saying : "Join us and go to heaven, everyone else will rot in hell with 100% money-back guarantee." Do note, Most Christians believe that most Christians (not them) are going to hell. (It's esp neat, given that Catholics are almost exactly 50%).
So yes, the entry to heaven is gated by engaging in very localized and specific sub-groups underneath Christianity.
belief and trust in Christ
Another thing that confuses me. How do Christians square off human agency against belief in God and his plan ? If I truly believed in Jesus, why would I ever take my child to a doctor or get treated for a wound. A true believer should allow life to happen to them, because the outcomes are determined by the omni-potent God. So any person who dares to exercise personal agency is not a true believer, and ends up in hell ? (at least from a protestant stand point)
only define the value of something in relation to other things
Yes?
I'm not materialistic, but the hedonistic treadmill, lifestyle creep and trends are real things. Yes, a cute puppey and green mountains do evoke postive-emotions that seem universal and untethered to society. But, life is usually a healthy balance of emotions drawn from either source.
since we believe God literally had to die to get some of humanity out of going to hell.
The increasing lack of omni-potence of the Christian God does not inspire a lot of confidence.
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
historically been perhaps 20-40% of world population
See, here is where ethnicity matters. That number drops to 0-2% when looking at the continent of Asia.
Assuming the soul is somewhat immortal, Heaven is going to look whiter than a Cape Cod frat party.
doesn’t speak to whether the Truth of Christ is true.
It is awfully convenient to have your truth be unfalsiable. "I choose to believe what I choose to believe. I have no proof it works, but all of you are going to hell. I cannot be convinced otherwise."
You do you, but you can see how that is a hard sell right ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
Do individuals relations need to be so strongly hyphenated with the zeitgeist. With individual relations, everything is negotiable.
Just talk to them. Make your boundaries known without having an explosion. Tell them in clear words that this behavior is not acceptable. Be ready to erect boundaries if need be. Talk to your wife before you do anything. Ideally, she will take care of it for you.
get his family into heaven
That being said, I struggle to make sense of people who are logical about everything except religion. Not so much about the existence of God or the social technology that is religion. I mean religion as the arbitrary yet oddly specific rituals that can make or break your entry into heaven.
It is one thing to delude yourself for comfort or to believe in the social value of religion. But, to live in a world of Science in 2023 and to think that the specific sub-set of rules outlined by your pastor will get you into "Christian heaven" is some proper hypocrisy. By definition, if these people believe in the power of these specific rituals to get you into heaven, then don't 99% of all living humans go to not-heaven. (hell?). Even if these in-laws are right, then surely a place where 99% of people go after death, can't be THAT bad.
I know, "2005 called, they want their Christopher Hitchens rants back". But still, do these people never reflect on what they believe in ? Even for a moment ?
DirtyWaterHotDog
2yr ago
yeah, I guess that's my only option.
The whole situation is a big culture war W for the right
I would not start celebrating just yet. War makes a distinction between tactics and strategy. The Republicans have good tactics. Everything from Loudon County, "we're coming for your children", trans sports and now ""MAP""-sympathetic liberals are tactical wins. But strategic wins are nowhere to seen. Hell, it's not clear there even is a strategy.
Supreme court capture was a fortunate strategic win for Republicans. But from a strategic POV, I can't think of anything else that's gone in their favor since 2010-ish. If anything, they've further alienated every institution while refusing to enfranchise new institutions that are favorable or ambivalent towards them.
Every time a tactical win hints towards a long term strategic strategy, the Republicans have shown themselves to be incompetent in pursuing it. Republicans continue to live in the 20th century, as a party of the White-Christians. Now the party of Rural-White-AntiElite-Christians.
Some Hispanics, Asians & Free-Speech-Atheists have landed on their laps, but there have been no real efforts to court them. Each of the conservative arms seem to be fighting on their isolated fronts, with zero communication or attempt at unifying these tactical fights along a single strategic meta-objective. The Tates don't get along with the Petersons. The Rinos don't get along with the Tea Party. The Race Blind don't get along with the White-race essentialists. Yeah, differences exist in all big tents. But, this "Enemy of my enemy" tactical alliance leads to "crabs in a bucket" style strategic failure.
Liberals on the other hand have continued their decades long progress down unified aims of 'destigmatization, equity, removal of individual responsibility and handing over governance to faceless beaurocrats'. It isn't a slippery slope as much as heavy steam roller with immovable momentum in a single direction.
Ironically, Tucker Carlson (despite being exiled from Fox) appears to be the only one who is able to interact with all faces of the American right. In that sense, he does come across as the Republican Jon Stewart. Both of them clearly peddle propaganda, but know how to appear as if they are good faith actors. The know how to keep the public on their side while still getting audience with their party elite. In the long term, Conservatives need to prioritize recovery/reinvention of their institutions. I will start trusting a revival of conservatism when they can reclaim institutions of Prestige.
Towards that goal, I'd look at the success of Israeli and Indian conservatives in institution capture over the decades. Neither have been perfect, and face a ton of criticism in how slow they've been. But, there's stuff to learn. I can speak more for Modi, other's can opine in on the specifics of other successfully executed long term conservative strategies.
First, pick your battles.
Passion of the Christ is not coming back, and no future generation is going to be above 50% white. Gays-Lesbians-and-Bisexuals as a people are here to stay, and blanket bans on abortion will continue to be unpopular.
But that doesn't mean you can't get your wins from elsewhere.
RRR and Kantara were able to successfully outshine Bollywood ( a left liberal stronghold) by heavily inculcating Hindu/Indic themes without calling it as such. The directors of these movies aren't random conservatives. They are just great artists, who happen to draw heavily from Indian myth. Now, South India has developed its entire self-sustaining industry that doesn't depend on kowtowing to Bollywood in order to build an entertainment career. There is a US TV show called Manifest which does something similar. It has a clear Christian undercurrent, but stays vague enough to appeal to large audiences. You can win christian-ish, anti-abortion-ish or even anti-immigration-ish battles..... but you need to pick ones that don't look like dogwhistles. They also need to be a compelling narrative that works in their own right, besides the undercurrents.
Second, pick your alliances.
Modi has stopped trying to win over liberal-arts students at top liberal arts universities. But his strong-man numbers first image appeals more directly to India's vast STEM population. College educated STEM grads are neither religious nor conservative. But, he knows he can make more sense to them than any other group. STEM grads understand the the optimism around boring-but-at-scale policy. STEM grads care about education. So he appeals to NRIs (mostly engineers), obtains favorable foreign Visa deals, talks about hard-infrastructure (toilets, roads) and maintains the support from this group. They might disagree with his religious leanings, but he never talks about those leanings when addressing this group. Of all the institutions that are adversarial towards Modi, STEM universities are the least hostile, and that is an acceptable deal for him.
The Republicans must enfranchise a young group group on the rise. And that means making deals with institutions are 'least-hostile' towards them. Joe Rogan, Tate and Peterson are the obvious faces that appeal to college going future-corporate-leader types. Remember, these people 1 degree of separation from true institutional powers like Huberman and Attia, who call Stanford home. BYU, GMU and similar departments have groups who have agreement with the conservative movement. Contrarian leftists and Enlightened centrists can easily be brought into the fold without needing them to scream allegiances. But maintaining constant interaction with these folks is important. Hell, DARPA funded labs and affirmative-action-agnostic universities like Caltech/MIT also have avenues Republicans could exploit. non-coastal STEM focused public universities like UMich, UWisc, GATech, Purdue also have some possible avenues for alliance.
I could go on, but prestige education, prestige news (in any medium of their choice) and prestige entertainment are essential institutional pillars for any successful movement. As long as conservatives fail at establishing long term strategic progress towards these 3 pillars, all the tactical wins are meaningless.
Greenwich is also in the "WTC <-> Times Square" region. Greenpoint is in Brooklyn. You're correct that the densest parts of Manhattan are overwhelming in an alien manner, where someone who hasn't grown up there will find it too intimidating.
Funnily enough, having grown up in a 'nice residential part' of the arguably densest city in the world, I feel a similar 'hell on earth I need to escape' feeling when I walk through a sprawling maze-like suburb.
A 1k sqft house will be around 800k in prospect lefferts gardens today. But it is also one of the most rapidly gentrifying parts of Brooklyn. It was closer to $500k just a few years ago. Not cheap, but reasonable for the region. Especially given that NYC prices are destined to hold stable. Remember, a public school teacher or a blue collar worker in NYC can easily make around $80-100k. (Subway drivers & Public school teachers make ~90K), so it is not too bad.
This is a fallacy. No one wants to turn any city into NYC, because that's impossible. No place is NYC.
The goal is to make urban down towns less hostile. Take a 500 acre downtown circle and strip 2 car lanes from the all roads there. Add high-frequency bus only lanes & bike lanes that run within that small zone. Replace parking lots with missing middle-housing. Put large parking lots on the highway approach to this area. There, you just made your urban hellhole an urban paradise, provided more housing, and car owners aren't any more inconvenienced. Maybe move downtown Denver closer to downtown Miami in scale.
The goal to make suburbs less Hostile. To remove a few yards and add a few triple deckers. You'd expect it to look like Seattle's recently developing Wallingford/fremont neighborhoods than NYC. The suburban houses are still there, many yards are still there. It is still quiet, has good parking and feels safe. Or even Portland Maine. Both are perfectly walkable, bikeable urbanist darlings. There is even good bus connectivity within the main urban area.
Urbanists suggestions for rural areas are similarly in-keeping with the needs of a rural town. Northeastern villages are fairly walkable and cycle-able too. See Lincoln NH.
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