Gaashk
3d ago
Good administrators can be good, but it's not the sort of specialized position for which no qualified citizen is available, and must be drawn from the pool of foreign Olympians.
Gaashk
7d ago
I feel like this must be wrong, archaeologically speaking, but my history is terrible and I can't counter you with a good example.
As I recall, Sanderson mentioned his time on Mormon mission in Korea as an inspiration of some of the cultural world building in Stormlight, specifically. Which makes sense. The culture can stay irrational longer than most of its members can stay alive.
At my white collar office, "yes sir"/"thanks sir" has become so overused I wouldn't be surprised if women are saying it to each other.
Some kids occasionally say "yes sir" to me, I can't tell if they're joking or not. I keep trying to get them to use "ma'am," but they just seem confused, like they've never heard it before.
Gaashk
7d ago
This was my experience of reading the Twilight series a while back, at the recommendation of IRL friends. Also the time my godmother gave me a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.
I like Sanderson better than either of those. I like him about as much as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more than Dickens, who's bloat I can't stand, and don't read by choice. I like him more than Terry Brooks, who is also a prolific mid-tier novelist, but went downhill faster, IMO. I haven't tried reading GRR Martin, and don't intend to, even if he manages to finish Game of Thrones, which seems unlikely at this point. The premise of 100 Years War, but with dragons and some vague magical happenings seems unappealing, even if the writing is better.
First of all, I don’t think people read particularly widely any more.
Prior to reading Sanderson, I read most of the St John's Reading List, as did the friend who recommended Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson is good like Joss Whedon, not like Tolstoy. If I'm having a good time, then I'm happy that there are 100 hours of Buffyverse shows to watch, and five Rosier novels to read, because they're fun. I guess I'm also glad there are 60 hours of War and Peace available, but not in the same way. I feel like I'm taking a course and learning a lot about the world and what people are like and building out my model of life and humanity reading War and Peace. If I'm reading The Way of Kings of watching Buffy, I know I'm not really learning much of anything, but it does get me a bit out of my own head and problems, which can be good.
Gaashk
8d ago
I liked that the book was easy to read, which makes the motivation required to read it much lesser. I think a lot of the "I enjoyed reading as a kid, but now I don't" that young adults experience is tied to attempting to read more difficult books, when as a kid they were probably reading books with simple prose and an uncomplicated plot.
In my experience, it's more that as a child and teen, people were happy that I would disappear for hours straight to go read a complex novel. They were happy both that I was reading the novel, and that I was occupying myself. So I would read things like The Brothers Karamazov or Les Miserables or Light in August as an older teen, and enjoy them.
Now, as an adult with children, I read things more like The Way of Kings, because I might be interrupted at any moment, and even if I fight back, and glare, and say that I'm reading and want to keep reading, the immersion is not there. Brandon Sanderson writes in a way that invites immersion even if read late at night after a full day of work and putting the kids to bed for an hour. Emotional fatigue has the same effect. One winter, I was living alone in rural Alaska, and read everything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, because I was making up six different classes, from scratch, spanning 12 grade levels, and wasn't up to much else, but was also bored.
Gaashk
9d ago
Poetic Woods by Ann Blockley, and reading A Wrinkle in Time out loud to my daughter.
I visited the Bahá'í House of Worship near Chicago when they weren't having services, and it was beautiful and welcoming. Like the Unitarians, they aren't worried about practitioners of other faiths going to hell for being wrong, and they have nice aesthetics.
Gaashk
10d ago
I believe my grandmother grew up Unitarian, and that was where she got her quiet atheism and staunch belief in never discussing religion from. She was a good lady, including those attributes, and I'm not trying to make fun of her.
People say it as though they are being sarcastic, but Woke America is literally what agnostic Christians are. I tried going to my neighborhood Presbyterian church once, and the main song was about the singer's friend dying from Aids in 90s New York. Then I stayed for coffee, and the music director was trying to talk about his genderqueer daughter as delicately as possible -- he was clearly a bit distressed that she doesn't consider herself a daughter anymore and he's not supposed to use gendered language, but was struggling.
My father kept trying to go to an Episcopalian church that didn't particularly believe in Christ, because they had a nice choir, and nice architecture, and candles during the appropriate seasons. But the sermons were terrible, like the middle aged women getting up on their social media soapboxes, and he couldn't manage.
I don't get it on a visceral level, but it is what it is. There seems to be something important about actually believing in Christ, without which Christianity becomes horrifically cringe, more than even fake paganism which at least has nice bonfires and solstice celebrations and whatnot.
As others have said, there are churches that aren't like that. Usually they aren't that upset if someone shows up, and they don't necessarily believe in God, but are polite about it. If they're one of the livelier churches, they might try to convert you, but even if they're all Hellfire about it, it's still probably a richer cultural experience than the Unitarians.
If you don't believe there's a One True Religion, it might actually be worth thinking in terms of rich cultural experiences, rather than intellectualism or not believing weird things. I like visiting Sufis, for instance -- I once was in a screened off female balcony while some Sufi congregants chanted themselves into a trance and stuck skewers through their faces. It was super interesting! I was glad I went! If someone invites you to go sacrifice a cow of something, consider going. Humans don't seem capable of making religions that are deep and lively without also being kind of weird, and risking snake handlers or whirling dervishes or some such thing.
Gaashk
10d ago
An acquaintance was posting on Facebook about hiring iconographers to paint frescos on the inside of the church. There aren't many such people in the US, it's quite specialized, so they were bringing over people from Eastern Europe to do it. Presumably if it cost another $100,000 they would wait for a different administration to reverse the decision. They would probably not go ahead and hire an American, because they want a very specific look, and also it's a team of several people. Possibly for that sum of money they could send some Americans to Eastern Europe, train them for several years under a master there, and have them come back and do the work. On net, I would be fine with that solution, and might have volunteered as an apprentice.
I don't know how many work visas are odd little edge cases like that, and can appreciate a law that doesn't try to incentivize more people to make their IT help desk or whatever look like a quirky little cultural job.
Gaashk
16d ago
Education, so same issue. (I've taken a decent number of education classes, and they were mostly at least attempting to teach according to the course description)
Gaashk
17d ago
Apropos cancellations from the right, is there any way to get a professor in trouble for teaching about social justice instead of the content they were supposed to teach? Especially if they are assigning most of the semester grade for writing and talking about social justice, not what's in the course description? Especially if it is a required course, with no option to change sections?
Gaashk
24d ago
Some people buy personal humidifiers, and keep them beside their bed. I grew up in an extremely hot, dry desert, and probably just acclimated. Also, we switch off between an AC unit and swamp cooler. As a kid, we had a swamp cooler in most of the house, and one room with an AC, and my parents were constantly telling us which windows we needed to open or close accordingly.
Gaashk
24d ago
Painting Abstract Landscapes by Gareth Edwards and his daughter Kate Reeve-Edwards. In general, I like it. Somewhat poetic writing, but also straightforward technical suggestions, and nice clear prints. Worth enjoying as a physical object.
Gaashk
1mo ago
What is he angry about? Is there an alternative to his current setting that's feasible, and where he wouldn't be angry? Sometimes there isn't, but also sometimes there is. Anger is often meant to spur people into action, to change their circumstances. Teenage boys are often physically stronger than their teachers, and really can't express anger towards them. It will certainly get him fired quickly from many jobs. But, also, the extremely restrictive prison like environment of many schools, where they can't even leave campus for lunch, isn't inevitable.
I went to community college instead of high school -- technically I was "duel enrolled" as a homeschool student, but I wasn't really studying anything in particular other than the college classes. I was angry or shocked a couple of times, so I left, sat under a tree grumping for a while, complained to my parents, and then came back a couple of days later for the next class. As long as I did my work, nobody much cared.
I also taught at an alternative high school in a small town. The teens often just didn't come to class, probably two days a week. If they were angry that day, I wouldn't want them to come to class, they were better off going for a hike in the woods or something.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Sure. That's in the drunk college student, but way way faster realm. Nice to have, provides consumer surplus at free tier or $20/month, but probably not $200/month.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Word processors already look for typos that are actual words, but don't make sense in the current context, without applying AI. More and better autocorrect is about in line with the original thesis -- they're good at spreadsheet scale tasks, which is useful but not a huge amount of a given person's job. I'm not completely sure what professional editors do, but I think it's probably a bit deeper than looking for typos.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Having poked at ChatGPT a bit, I'm not particularly surprised. If I think of a job it could potentially do that I understand, like graphic designer, Chat GPT (the only LLM/diffusion router I've personally tried) is about as good as a drunk college student, but much, much faster. There are some use cases for that -- the sort of project that's basically fake and nobody actually cares about or gets any value out of, but someone said it should be done. "I'll have GPT do that" basically means that it's considered meaningless drivel no matter who does it.
I suppose at some point it'll be able to make materials not only quickly, but also well -- but that day is not today.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Yes, but anything hyper local is too much even for my laughably nonexistent opsec.
Gaashk
1mo ago
There is a part of me that thinks the people in these social groups are otherwise reasonable, but they are also caught up in the social mania of modern times. I would like to be more social and make more friends, but the social norms of the spaces around me make me uncomfortable and closed-off to people. There don’t appear to be spaces near me without the straight white men are problematic norm for the areas I’m interested in (such as book clubs or running clubs).
The problem with the niche crunchy con book clubs is that they're organized in person, often at churches, so you wouldn't know unless you, say, attended the church or somehow made friends through other means, but I can't think of how. My parents are in a very nice book club that's currently reading some 19th Century Russian intellectual, and previously read Death Comes for the Archbishop, GK Chesterton, CS Lewis, and so on. It was formed through their local Antiochian Orthodox Church. My dad also plays tennis with his church friends, specifically, including from a church he attended 30 years ago, they both changed churches several times since, but they continue to be tennis friends.
You might say that you don't believe in Jesus any more than you believe that white men are still benefiting from unearned privilege, and fair enough. But social groups gain cohesion through either a shared moral narrative, or shared ethnic identity. I suppose an alternative is an ethnic club -- I've still seen Celtic and Greek clubs anyway, perhaps there are others? I've also still seen evidence of current activity from the Elks and Rotary Clubs, I'm not sure what they're like, but they donate eyeglasses to children anyway.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I got it to write some emergency (and therefore generic) substitute plans, and it produced a downloadable doc, which probably saved me three hours, so I appreciate that. Apparently Teachers Pay Teachers is now a bit scammy, and also I'm unwilling to spend my own money on that kind of thing.
I tried getting some advice on a personal project a month or so ago, and GPT 4 kept saying things like "that's awesomely profound and deep!" with each step, which was annoying, but I hear the new model might be better, and also it does better when just told to knock it off, which I didn't try.
GPT 4 hasn't been very useful for conversation, since by default it produces essay length answers (and sycophancy), but I haven't tried any other models.
It's been reasonably useful for summarizing light research and making concept art.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Modern elementary school does have a much stronger childcare component than neighborhood schools in the past (though not necessarily more than boarding schools, which were somewhat more common). I could certainly imagine heading in the direction of educational assistants supervising children as they learn from interactive digital materials, or several educational assistants directly teaching phonics to the children if the older teachers find it too unbearably boring.
As far as hiring a 16 year old who's likely to quit to form her own family after six year or so, vs a 23 year old who's likely to take maternity leave at some point for an elementary teacher, it just depends on what the prevailing life path for the society in general is. As you mentioned elsewhere, elementary teachers are pretty conformist, and will teach at 16 if that's the Done Thing, or else go to college if that's the way to show you're conscientious and normal. I doubt there's a way back at this point, since generalist labor is increasingly automated, so there isn't that much demand for even more very young women to work before having kids.
I say the Jesus Prayer a moderate amount.
I'm also into Jungian psychology, but not super seriously. LLMs are good at that kind of thing, because it mostly matters whether something resonates and is meaningful, like dreams or fairy tales, which people will notice for themselves.
More options
Context Copy link