JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
1d ago
In US now I think there are laws now in many states that require the loaners to tell you how much you will be paying in interest (and therefore overall) at least at some point of the process, and have you sign on that. So theoretically it shouldn't be a surprise, but practically of course not all people read that anyway.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I have to say each time I see that $0 in the "non-recurring debts" in my financial dashboard I feel that little warm fuzzy feeling inside. I realize that not all debts are bad debts, rationally, but some part of my brain just insists "neither a borrower nor a lender be" and I can not fully deny it.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
That only makes sense if you paycheck keeps up - I guess if your job is connected to extracting or selling natural resources (oil, gas?) it could be real. But I think actually Russia has subsidized mortgages: https://realting.com/news/russian-mortgage-market-analysis I imagine that's what people actually do.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
I have my house paid off. I mildly regret it from time to time because the interest on the loan when I paid it off was about the same as today's interest on the savings account, so I probably lost some money on that. On the other hand, the peace of mind it gives is not to be discounted. I have lost (and found) jobs twice since then, and in both cases I could feel much less stressed because questions like "could I be in a situation where I'd have trouble paying my mortgage because of cash flow issues" never bothered me. Whatever happens to my job, whatever happens to the market, stock or real estate, my house is mine - that may be a bit irrational financially, but still feels good.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Everybody who has an Android phone is technically a "Linux user". So it's about as much of an alternative lifestyle as driving a Honda Civic.
JarJarJedi
1d ago
Oh damn, I missed the best part: this guy is literally named Shahid Butt. They are going to have a terrorist named Shahid Butt on the city council. If I lived in Birmingham I'd vote for him (I would never live there so I can say whatever I like).
JarJarJedi
2d ago
Possible but I don't see why would they suddenly stop announcing it. What changed?
JarJarJedi
2d ago
That "Asian" category Brits use is very annoying. As if Japanese and Pakistanis are exactly the same and it's not worth differentiating between them.
JarJarJedi
2d ago
Maybe the drug smugglers got the message and stopped using that route, or reduced its usage, at least in the places where they can easily be intercepted and blown up? I mean, those people are not dumb, they should be used to adapting quickly.
JarJarJedi
3d ago
A Muslim activist who served a prison sentence for his role in an overseas terror plot is now seeking elected office in Birmingham, Britain’s second-largest city, as local elections approach amid heightened communal tensions. Is there something special going in Birmingham, or it's just how things are in UK now?
JarJarJedi
4d ago
I think I have to disagree here. I have no idea if I'm qualified to give any advice here, all I have is N=1 data point of 20+ year long marriage. But I don't think it requires KPI goals. I mean it's cool if you run marathons together, but it's not a requirement. People being comfortable together and genuinely interested in each other's happiness is a requirement. That's where the compromise comes from. If I want to do something, and I suspect my wife may be not ok with it, I ask, and she can say no. Or she can say yes. Or if she says no, and I really feel like I need it, we can talk about it. The key here we want to find that point where we're both happy - or at least, the least amount of unhappy - about the outcome. It's not a mathematical formula and it's not a ledger, if you start keeping balance on it, you're going to get in trouble. But it's totally about sometimes just doing something you otherwise wouldn't do because your partner wants you to. If you're going to be good long-term partners, you will be able to find a way to figure out how to negotiate those things, everybody does it in a different way. If you can not find a way to do it, then probably the partnership is not going to work out.
JarJarJedi
4d ago
Unglamorous jobs have their audience too. I am pretty close in my career to the point where taking a boring, well-paid job would suit me just fine. I am not there yet, but likely in another 5 years I will be. I mean, I am not averse to glamorous and exciting ones, just it's not the only acceptable option for me anymore. Of course, it has to be worth it - if it's boring and pays peanuts, no thank you. So maintaining legacy system is not that hard, if you are willing to pay for it. Of course, top management in BigTech Inc. wouldn't want to, why would they.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
It may be cheap on the scale of Amazon/Facebook, but it's usually not how it works. It's on somebody's budget, that somebody is a middle manager, and he should show how much money his work is bringing to the company, to earn bonus and promotion. Telling his boss "Shut down this service and save $X/month" is one way to do it. And any service that is not championed by somebody important and not producing cash is always under the sword of Damocles. Google is doing that all the time, shutting down very popular services, just because.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
At what point is this no longer just people exercising their first amendment rights?
I think a lot of people misunderstand what First Amendment means. It protects the freedom of speech, but it doesn't mean anything you do with speech is now outside the law. It means you can not be prosecuted just for speaking, but if you speech was part of another crime - fraud, murder, insurrection, conspiracy to obstruct law enforcement, any crime - then you can be punished for that crime, and 1A would not shield you just because your participation used speech as a medium. It's of course more complex, but the point is - you can exercise your 1A rights and still be prosecuted, if conspiring to attack ICE officers is a prosecutable offense. It'd be probably hard to upgrade it to felony murder because the prosecution would have to prove direct causal link between what somebody said and the actions that led to death - which will be very hard to do, since nobody probably told them explicitly "now go and drive over ICE officer that is standing on the corner of This and That!" (though Good's partner, saying "drive baby drive!", could be in legal jeopardy for that, if the feds would want to go after her). But if feds can establish the causal link between something said on the char and some lawless action, like attacking ICE officers, then they have a basis for prosecution. If they find an organizational structure (which is almost certainly there, the question is whether the feds can find the hard evidence for it) then they could also employ RICO which doesn't even require causal links. But Republicans, for whatever reason, have been very reluctant to use RICO against the militant left.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I wonder how this process actually works? It does not feel scalable. It would take a person likely a couple of days at least to go through 100k+ page text, especially if they want to pay proper attention. From what I read online, agents receive thousands submissions per year. Clearly, there must be some filters. I can guess "previously famous author" and "the guy I know or that somebody I know vouched for" are the obvious ones, but what comes next?
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I never really realized how much work goes into post-processing photos. I usually just click on my phone, upload it and forget about it. And the quality is not bad, modern phones have pretty decent software. But compared to something done by somebody who knows what they're doing, you can really see the difference.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
Thanks! I was just looking for a new set of skiing socks. My favorite ones are very close to turning into gauze. They have pretty generous return policy for an online clothing manufacturer, I'll try them out.
JarJarJedi
5d ago
I haven't found in-ears that I can tolerate yet, but my QOL while in flights rose significantly when I started using noise-cancelling over-ear headphones (mine is Bose). They really filter out all the annoyance of the flight (and the airport). I just put an audiobook up, relax and my flight experience now is pretty low-stress. My only regret is I didn't start doing it earlier, using non-noise-cancelling headphones or just toughing it out. It's absolutely different experience (at least for me) when I don't have to deal with the noise.
JarJarJedi
6d ago
I'll do it for $700 million a year, half of which I will transfer to the NGO that whoever makes the decision to hire me chooses. That's how they do it in SF (allegedly).
JarJarJedi
6d ago
Presidio and Golden Gate parks are pretty nice (or at least they were last time I checked, years ago). No budget required.
Sorry, you don't know shit about "private beliefs" of Russians.
Sorry, you are not a foremost expert of what do I know. I actually know personally quite a few Russians and talk to them regularly (at least once a week, often more). And of course, I read a lot of what was written about Soviet intelligentsia in 70s-90s, that I could not witness by myself - it's not exactly dark ages. But if you think that personal attacks in the style of early post-soviet Usenet (oh those were the days!) is a convincing argument, you may not "know shit" about what proper argument actually is. That is why you may be confusing one with ad-hominem attacks.
who feels entitled to characterize Russians as de facto subhumans
I never did that. Russians, of course, are very human, as much human as any human. They have different traditions and cultural values than some other people, but that's a common human trait - Japanese culture is very different from Arabic or Bolivian culture, and that doesn't make any of those subhuman. I am just commenting on the various aspects of Russian/Soviet culture I had an opportunity to observe and am still observing.
are a very annoying, very stereotypical Russophobic Soviet Jew emigre,
I don't think me annoying you is a negative quality, I can not be judge about how stereotypical I am, and I am a Jew who have emigrated, there's no denying that. I however object to being characterized as "Russophobic" - and extremely object to being described as "Soviet".
gerrymanders historical Russian cultural achievements so that they're overwhelmingly attributed to "not really Russians"
Wha? I never even discussed Russian achievements and didn't attribute them to anybody. I don't know who hurt you, but it wasn't me. Just to remove the doubt, sure, Russians had a lot of cultural achievements. I love Pushkin (though still not entirely getting Tolstoy, to be honest). OK, Pushkin is actually not that good an example, to think about it... How about Tutchev then? He's good too. Speaking seriously though, you are maliciously misinterpreting my words - which had nothing to do with attributing Russian cultural achievements at all. Looks like you're in active search of offense to fit me into a stereotype you have in your head. I imagine it's simpler that way.
I do not recognize your entitlement to do this or to question me on my prejudices.
I think if you have to take the fifth on the question of whether you're an antisemite, that's answer enough, thank you. You may notice I can answer questions on my presumed prejudices directly and resolutely, while you can not. And I think we both know why.
Your DARVO is also not appreciated. You're not as clever as you think.
Maybe I am not very clever. But if you consider yourself a "victim" of me, justifying your use of antisemitic tropes, I would like to know how exactly did I victimize and offend you. What triggered you the most?
JarJarJedi
7d ago
The next ones IMHO are much more fun. Except for Gentleman Jole which I recommend skipping and finishing with Cryoburn or Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, depending on in which order you want to go.
JarJarJedi
7d ago
I'm on #8 now. It is a bit dark (and from what I heard about it, is going to get darker) but I am liking it so far. Getting to the end will likely take me a couple of years though, as I need to take breaks for other things.
Is the current perception of Russians not war propaganda?
Depending on whose perception we're talking about. Some of the media is surely full war propaganda, but I am not talking about this, I am talking about general cultural perception beyond that.
the Russian thinking class was deeply integrated into the European network
When was it exactly? I am not sure which period you are talking about. Sure, in some periods many Russian aristocrats didn't even speak Russian, preferring French instead (just open War and Peace and see how it starts - hint, it's not in Russian) - but they as well might have been other nation entirely (and to be honest, sometimes that's who they were, though I guess Americans don't have much reason to cast stones here). The problem is, however fascinated Russian aristocracy were with European culture, political ideas of European classical liberalism never taken any root in Russia, outside of a few kitchens and magazines. Even Pushkin, if you mentioned him already, was kinda torn between being attracted to European freedom ideals, and his imperial obligations as Russian national poet, so every side now can find a suitable quote from him. But those ideas were mainly for the elite, and even for them they were rarely more than theoretical talk to be enjoyed between peers.
There's no Orthodox resurgence as of 2025, Russia is a transparently secular state,
You must be kidding me. Russian leaders officially participate in religious ceremonies, and the Orthodox Church is pretty much integrated into Vertical of Power. Including performing ceremonies of blessing for space rockets and strategic bombers. Which btw I have no problem with - if they believe it, that's their complete right to pray however they like and worship however they like - but calling this situation "transparently secular" is nonsense. Of course, officially Russia is not a theocracy, but a secular state, but practically, Orthodox Church has a very elevated status and influence. And it continues to spread - for example, since 2026 one of mandatory school subjects will be "Духовно-нравственная культура России" - official indoctrination course, developed jointly by MGU and the Orthodox Church.
If we're talking about private beliefs, Christianity stated to become fashionable among Russia's intelligentsia right about 70s, as I said. Sure, there are still a lot of atheists - Soviets worked on that quite thoroughly and those generations are still alive and largely in power - but I think it is appropriate to call it "resurgence".
I get that you emigrated around that time and will never refuse to dunk on the Slav goyim.
This is the second time you use words which make me suspect you have problems with Jews. Is that right? Speak plainly - are you an ideological anti-Semite, or do you think using antisemitic tropes somehow makes you cool kid? I am willing to engage with opposing opinion, but I see no point in engaging with somebody who considers me subhuman on genetic level.
A lot of historical rulers did pretty much the same, except there was no console cheat.
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