DoctorMonarch
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User ID: 947
DoctorMonarch
7mo ago
It's really unfortunate for Michael Lewis that this unforced error of a book was published at the same time as his prior work, The Blind Side, looks really messed up in retrospect because of the conservatorship lawsuit between the black athlete in question and non-adoptive millionaire booster quasi-familial adults covered in that story.
DoctorMonarch
9mo ago
"The share of Belgians with a Belgian background clearly increases with age: it amounts to 52.3% among 0-17-year-olds, 63.2% among 18-64-year-olds and 85.9% among those aged 65 and over." https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/population/structure-population/origin
Googling- 113,600 births in 2022.
Kind of a mistake of a country. If I were an ancient Celt getting slaughtered or enslaved by Caesar I'd be embarrassed to have it named after my people in a roundabout way.
DoctorMonarch
9mo ago
Keep an eye on the Enhanced Games, announced last month. Seems like a step toward what you want to see.
DoctorMonarch
4mo ago
One thing I'd add is that past examples like good advice or straight up having the cash to assist with certain major purchases, parents can further advantage their kids. They add their underage children (or of age, but that's less relevant) as an authorized user to a specific credit card. Paid in full, on time, utilizing ~7-15% of limit, and increasing limit every 6 months-year... kid could reach adulthood with a perfect score and many years of reliable history.
This knowledge is becoming more common in various different populations- my upper middle class friends' parents who worked in accounting/finance did this for their kids about 20 years ago (mine did not), but I recently had an uber driver who had been doing this for his teenagers.
I expect as underage credit building becomes more common, young adult scores will become less indicative of ability to pay, though I imagine fuckups will ruin their own scores quickly enough for the system to correct things. I expect said fuckups will be a central example of how credit is a privilege based system, though it's more of a loophole exploit that didn't substantially exist for most of the system's history.
DoctorMonarch
5mo ago
SENIOR: (long pause and head scratching) The Bible! The Bible forbids it, son!
JUNIOR: Where?
SENIOR: (fast and frantic searching through book) Wait, son! It must be here, somewhere!
Strawman Senior really, really doesn't know his Bible. Sad! It's on page 1 or maybe 2, depending on your copy.
Genesis 1:27
So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
As far as the text is concerned, there are just sexes, gender as a separate idea doesn't enter into the conversation. Under Levitical Law crossdressing is a capital crime.
There are plenty of infertile women and eunuchs (by birth and those made so by other humans) and men who lay with men (not recorded positively) throughout the Bible.
As far as self-mutilation is concerned, Jesus advises cutting off your own hands or feet or plucking out an eye if it leads you to sin, but this is after talking about tying a millstone to the neck + throwing into the sea to anyone who leads a child into sin. He does talk about making yourself a eunuch for the Kingdom of Heaven, but Origen, who is rumored to have taken it literally, says it would be very foolish to take this mechanically literally.
I'd be fascinated to see a thriving church (Nicene affirming, biologically reproductive, retaining generations, active missions) that is trans-affirming.
DoctorMonarch
9mo ago
Extremely exciting week in my suburban neighborhood due to a very evasive goat.
https://www.al.com/news/birmingham/2023/07/goat-on-the-lam-for-three-days-corralled-in-irondale-and-then-breaks-loose.html https://www.wbrc.com/2023/07/18/oh-my-goat-animal-jumps-out-owners-car-window-causes-wild-goat-chase/
Any goofy local news?
DoctorMonarch
4mo ago
You're absolutely correct that no credit mix = no 850, the actual perfect score.
But my understanding is that above 760 there aren't any better rates or other perks, it's just a nicer cushion.
Auto loan is certainly possible with parental cosigner.
Mortgage is kinda wacky but could be done with parental cosigner with the kid still living with parents but landlording to pay mortgage. Down payment on a house would certainly be worth more than covering tuition at most colleges/most subjects, even if housing is in a bit of a bubble and rates are ass.
DoctorMonarch
5mo ago
Responding to you and @orthoxerox It looks like, from wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_halal_and_kosher_fish#Halal Sunni regard all sea game as halal while Shia permit scaled fish and some crustaceans, but largely call other sea creatures haram. The Houthis in question are overwhelmingly a variety of Shia.
DoctorMonarch
8mo ago
Boomers dying, downsizing, moving into nursing homes are one part of things working out, and the geographic preferences of homeschool/work from home families are another, and gentrification of blighted urban areas are another. The economic decline/stagnation of some older working class suburbs won't be great, but the houses will be filled.
DoctorMonarch
3mo ago
Phonetically, such that we get "Daenerys Targaryen 丹妮莉丝·坦格利安 (Dān nī lì sī·tǎn gé lì’ān)"
https://ltl-school.com/game-of-thrones-in-chinese/
But the article talks about how the translation uses some classical and literary Chinese for flavor.
You could try watching 3 Kingdoms from 2010 or other adaptations? Putting a unique face, costume and demeanor to a character helped me a lot.
Have you tried Mother of Learning? I enjoyed it more than Practical Guide to Evil or Wandering Inn. A few stylistic hiccoughs in the early parts, and a few pacing issues in the middle, but great overall in my opinion.
While not a novel, Alone in the Wilderness is a great outdoorsman autobiographical documentary.
DoctorMonarch
10mo ago
You have not defined ambition and that is annoying to me.
Looking at various definitions of ambition. There is "a strong wish to achieve something" which, I suppose when put into action might be called "Drive".
There is also "a strong wish to be successful, powerful, rich, etc." which is possibly closer to the idea you are debunking, except you're doing it by saying that successful/powerful/rich/etc. is highly relative. I think few would disagree.
I do not think your introduced terminology/acronyms adds anything and that is annoying to me as well.
DoctorMonarch
11mo ago
How come, despite having a huge population of marks, we don't seem to have a dedicated scammer class in the U.S. like they do in Europe?
For the amount of effort they put into scams, they would legitimately make more money working a typical sales job in the US. Also MLM exists here and scams do happen in tourist heavy urban cores like in NYC.
DoctorMonarch
4mo ago
how does one successfully integrate the digital world into the classic murder mystery or thriller structure?
The answer is that for whatever reason, the digital world is a mountain of red herrings distorting and disrupting informed observation. The laziest way to do it would be that an influencer who has faked their death multiple times for clicks is murdered for real, and their dipshit following is muddying all possible genuine search ability with "We did it Reddit!" mass broadcasted armchair investigation. Even better if there is an "influencer detective" condensing the phenomenon.
For very tangential reasons, this question reminds me of the how to show texting/internet in film addressed by Every Frame a Painting https://youtube.com/watch?v=uFfq2zblGXw
DoctorMonarch
5mo ago
School districts as a group resist adopting the best pedagogical practices to prevent enough improvement in student outcomes for the public/lawmakers to conclude they don't need more money.
They resist Direct Instruction at lower levels because it's very happy-clappy/scripted and the teachers hate it.
They avoid hardcore tracking and generalized testing out of subjects because of ideological reasons. This is despicable.
They do not contemplate individual full tutorial because of budget, but would admit from their classroom size model that it's probably better, just not contemplating that it's hypothetically two standard deviations better.
I'm pretty sure it's the ~new next to new posts/replies next to timestamp, which makes desktop searching for new content very easy rather than looking for a pale blue highlight.
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