Tacherus
11mo ago
My three big projects at the moment are picking up piano after 20 years of not playing, studying for the JLPT in December, and training to run a 10k in November.
They’re all going well so far! I’ve been surprised how quickly piano has come back. I can already run 10k but have a target time so will be working on getting my speed up the next few months.
I have been playing a lot of Unicorn Overlord lately and am also kicking around an idea for a prototype that might improve on it in a few key ways. Happy to share details if anyone is curious.
Tacherus
11mo ago
To me this seems like the next step in a longer trend. In my news bubble by far the most common headline commentary is about how “bizarre” what Trump or whoever said.
A quick google news search for “bizarre”:
“Pete Buttigieg blasts JD Vance’s ‘strange worldview’ and bizarre GOP agenda”
“WATCH: House Dem makes bizarre claim while dodging question on VP Harris' 'border czar' record”
Maybe the weird thing is slightly different but it seems part of the same trend of “who can even understand those guys. It’s just bizarre.”
I think it’s the inevitable result of not being able to handle the idea of disagreement. If you don’t have political views, you’re just right, then it’s not disagreement, it’s a bizarre rant.
Tacherus
10mo ago
I think about that a lot, for what it’s worth. Asking Pence not to certify the election seems like a bright line though.
If not for the 2020 election shenanigans I’d probably agree that he’s just like the prior republican candidates and we’ll see him as tame in ten years compared to the New Threat.
Tacherus
9mo ago
For me it all comes back to what kind of cash flow you need. Depreciation notwithstanding, if I lose my job I’d much rather have a car that’s losing value on paper than have a monthly payment I need to make.
Tacherus
11mo ago
Is number 5 surprising? If it’s an ongoing investigation presumably she wouldn’t want to comment one way or the other.
Tacherus
9mo ago
It’s related but not quite the same. If my savings are in the market for instance and I’m let go because of a recession, suddenly my obligatory expenses could mean I have to sell at the worst possible time.
I’m not saying renting is never a good idea but racking up fixed expenses poses risks.
Tacherus
9mo ago
What is your evidence of the general rule?
To make sure I understand, you’re saying “in general, capitalism leads to decisions made by people with skin in the game,” right? Would you be willing to flesh out an argument a little more? I just don’t see why that’s true.
Tacherus
11mo ago
I wonder if it would be more straightforward to implement completely scriptable spells. If that’s sorted out then you can always scope down what’s possible and slap UI to generate certain types of scripts.
Tacherus
2mo ago
DEI is just Applied Cultural Marxism. And I'm allowed to say this because I learned about it in university in those terms before its activists started to pretend that correctly identifying their ideology is a conspiracy theory.
I’ve heard this term bandied about for years but never directly encountered someone who uses it. Can you explain what on earth it means?
Some potential meanings I’ve considered and discarded:
- dividing the world into oppressor and oppressed
- some sort of natural outgrowth of Marx from the Frankfurt school
- Marxist analysis somehow applied to culture?
- centered on critique of capitalism
- use race or sex instead of class
Most of the “applied cultural marxists” and postmodernists seem to outright reject Marx and any similarities in their thinking (e.g., oppressor and oppressed) seem to pre-date Marx.
So I’m left not understanding what people mean by it precisely. It seems to me at this point the phrase is meant to just tar by association, but I’d really like to hear if there’s something more meaningful to it.
Tacherus
9mo ago
Interestingly I’ve heard the same thing from the other direction, that honest portrayals, the best portrayals, are inherently anti-war.
Tacherus
9mo ago
This was interesting to read. I’m learning Japanese right now and recently have been practicing kenjougo and sonkeigo (forms for extra politeness).
One of the exercises was an extended dialogue of an employee and his boss talking and I had to convert the normal forms to the honorific ones.
It really surprised me when I was done how much of an asshole the boss seemed to me. My tutor had to repeatedly reassure me that he’s not being an asshole; its ok because he’s the boss.
I accepted it more or less but now what you’ve said has made me reconsider a bit if maybe there’s something to it.
Tacherus
9mo ago
That’s what I thought at first but it seems like they’ve got the same background as the members. How do you account for the split between leadership and members?
Tacherus
10mo ago
How can he not? The dynamic seems less driven by re-evaluation and calming down and more due to needing to paint the current opponent as the end of the world. Whoever the 2028 republican candidate is will need to be portrayed as the worst yet, which necessitates “Trump wasn’t actually so bad.” It’s inevitable I think.
Tacherus
10mo ago
Thanks for the article. It exhibits a pattern I’ve noticed of wanting to signal sophistication and subtlety by injecting confusion and the resolving it.
Here we have an article about a guy who has acknowledged using fake data.
Why does the article waste time discussing accidentally incorrectly performed research?
It’s so the author can navigate the murky waters created by introducing a fairly unrelated topic, then sieving out the original point which anyone could have made in two paragraphs.
Between this, the Alzheimer’s stuff, and many others it seems pretty dire for the trust the scientists crowd.
Tacherus
9mo ago
That makes it sound a bit like you’re not simply not voting, you’re not really “participating” at all.
I’m also grappling with whether or not to vote at all, so I’m asking myself as I’m asking you—are you actually doing anything other than complaining? And complaining in the most ineffective way to the least degree possible?
To the second question you asked, an attempt at a steelman would be to imagine you’re in a room with a bunch of people and dinner plans come up and you say nothing. The choice is narrowed to two restaurants and you say nothing. A vote is taken and you think it’s pointless so you leave during the vote and come back.
It seems to me even if you’re the only one who wants Mediterranean and there’s no hope of swaying enough to your side, you still come off badly if you can’t even be bothered to say that.
Like I said though….grappling with it myself. Not sure what I’ll do.
Tacherus
10mo ago
I was wrong about what people are like and what they want.
At my first corporate job after grad school I was unchallenged, frustrated with the slow pace, and eager to make more aggressive plays.
I left for an AI startup after a couple years and it totally changed the trajectory of my career and my life.
What blew my mind was trying to recruit people and seeing how risk averse they were. I left 6 years ago and most of them still work at a 200-year old company.
I completely reworked my model of what people get out of “wage slavery” and realized that many, many people will trade 20%+ of their earning potential for stability and security.
My dreams of democratic workplaces with profit sharing and so on fell apart because I realized, as much as the left might insist otherwise, that’s not actually what most people want.
Tacherus
10mo ago
A couple things stand out to me, in no particular order.
Friends of mine saying that Kamala’s lack of policy proposals is good, actually, because whatever she said would just get attacked. I guess the idea is nothing she could possibly say or do is worse than Trump so gotta get her in by any means necessary, including vibes.
I watched Kamala’s speech at the DNC and it honestly reminded me of 2012 republicans. Lots of talk about how great the country is and framing things in terms of freedoms.
I remember distinctly in 2016 some mixed wires with BLM and so on as to whether things looks bad for black Americans. I remember getting that vibe from the Dems but then Trump also said that and suddenly Hillary starts going on about how tone deaf that is and using the word “vibrant” a lot.
I’m not sure if it’s just about who is incumbent now, but I suspect it’s part of a larger shift towards Democrats wielding a cultural majority, or at least acting like it.
Out of favor, Democrats were the party of misfits, the marginalized, and dare I say it, the weird.
Tacherus
11mo ago
N4! I’ve been going kanji for several years and started taking conversational lessons last year working through Genki. Are you studying on your own or in a class?
Tacherus
1yr ago
It’s an old idea at this point that “woke” is a new religion, but my pet expansion of this is that “the weight of history” has replaced the concepts of judgment day and the afterlife.
I was just discussing this the other day with someone actually. I wished at the time that we had a better education of unsuccessful progressive movements as well as successful. The operative question ought to be “how could you tell at the time” but to even countenance that it could have been confusing is unacceptable.
That’s what we face though, living through history. It’s been stunning to see how many are willing to abdicate thinking it through in favor of listening to prophets claiming to know how they’ll be judged long after they’re dead.
My question for people is how they would have known to be for civil rights but against lobotomies.
Tacherus
9mo ago
Imho it’s a numbers game until you build out a network. My first job was the result of months of cold applying to things. Every job since has been joining someone I’ve already worked with which is so much easier.
Does your school have alumni job placement help? That can help bootstrap a network, along with talking to former classmates.
Are you getting interviews but not offers? Or just not hearing back after applying?
Tacherus
9mo ago
I listened to an interview with I think a psychologist a few years back who argued what we diagnose as PTSD in soldiers is often really the loss of the close relationships and the intense bonds that develop. The feeling of having someone’s life in your hands and willingly putting yours in theirs.
Returning to the world involves a grieving process, he argued.
Tacherus
10mo ago
In the interests of discussion I’ll say I think A7 is not cancel culture. I’m not even sure A8 is.
Is it cancel culture to post that I simply think an inoffensive podcast, say, has declined in quality and I don’t think it’s worth people’s time?
I think the line is crossed at A9 where I start imposing sanctions on people who disagree. Forcing people to pick a side is how you get people who don’t actually care that much to join a mob.
Doesn’t the whole concept of externalized costs undermine this claim?
I’m don’t think it’s a specific failing of capitalism but the insulation of decision-makers in business from consequences seems alive and well to me.
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