The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
And the fact that she was only able to kill the Witch-king through a linguistic loophole is particularly galling.
English majors gonna English major; how could Tolkein resist the Macbeth callout?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
you are maybe thinking of page wire
Ah, yes, that's the stuff I was thinking of. Or maybe welded wire fence, which seems to be similar only welded instead of knotted. Guess that's more for sheep than chickens.
Not sure that making your house look like a chicken coop is the Chad solution here though
A guard made of chicken wire wouldn't look any worse than some of the official monstrosities
I don't know if my area has such a rule (it appears there is one for landlords but I don't see one for homeowners), but my relevant windows are not only free, they have a convenient ledge for kids to climb up on to make their jump easier.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
You know that insurance companies consider complying with their side of the contract to be completely optional and something only to be done under pressure, right? Their first response to a claim or request for pre-authorization or payment is a reflexive denial; that costs them nothing after all, and might make the claimant go away. So then the provider has to have their people spend time arguing with the insurance company and then MAYBE they pay or maybe they'll only pay for some of the codes and disallow others. The insurance company's reluctance to pay what they agreed doesn't appear on any of those contracts.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
I was thinking of some much wider stuff I've seen, but that must not be chicken wire.
The point is that it has to be LEGIBLY -- that is, documentably -- able to support the load in that particular application. It's not enough that it works, you have to be able to prove it works to the bureaucrats. Which with any sort of improvised solution, you can't.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
I have a bow window containing four casement windows each of which meets these requirements. This is a replacement window; there used to be a triple-window -- two double hung and one fixed window -- there, and both double hungs met those requirements. A large number of houses in my development have such windows (or a bay with two double hung and one fixed), they're not some exotic thing. Fortunately I'm in neither Canada nor New York so no guards or opening-prevention devices required.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
Except most people would bump that up to 75 and not consider it speeding
They can consider it what they like, 75 in a 70 is speeding. You're not demonstrating that speeding isn't faster by showing that driving 5mph over the limit is indeed faster than driving at the limit.
Which completely evaporates when you realize that if you do 20 over the limit for 100 miles straight your chances of getting pulled over are close to 100%.
LOL, no it's not. I've driven from Florida to the Northeast twice -- about 900 miles each time -- and gotten pulled over once per trip. A warning once and a ticket the other. And yeah, I was doing 20 or more over most of the time (note that the speed limit was mostly 55 and 65, not 70). On one of those trips I averaged nearly 70mph, including stops.
Plus you're now skittish and won't drive over the limit.
Nope.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
Alerting you that it's running out of power instead of leaving you unaware that it has silently failed is the alarm functioning properly.
That's what you and the bureaucrats say. I say waking me up in the middle of the night with such an alert is broken by design.
As for actual alerts, so far I'm a dozen or so to zero for false-to-real ratio. Most due to cooking, some due to shower steam, and a couple due to defective detectors that just went off for no reason.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
Granted becoming a cocaine dealer is beyond my (current) risk tolerance
Pro tip: One way to increase your risk tolerance is to start off as a cocaine user.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
Speeding is fun (or at least more fun than driving the limit), but it also significantly changes travel times. Not for trips to the mailbox, but many longer trips. Including with lights, since the lights are typically not synchronized to the speed limit (and as I mentioned elsewhere, sometimes they are synchronized to a speed significantly above the limit). For trips mostly on the highway it's basically linear.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16d ago
From what I've heard, they can certainly "send it to collections", in the sense that they can give it to an internal department to harass you about it. But they can't actually sell it to real collectors who ostensibly have a legally enforceable debt that they can collect from you, and who ostensibly have a legal justification to put marks on your credit score. I'd be curious to know if these individuals you know actually got marks from this specifically.
Not only can they do so, there are debt collectors who specialize in medical debt.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Like many modern systems, it's one that relies on the charity of good faith actors to subsidize deadbeats.
Not charity. The good faith actors have something to lose -- credit rating, property, time in court if they're sued by the collections agency. The deadbeats don't. So it's anarcho-tyranny. YOU, respectable working-to-upper-middle-class person, must pay those hospital bills. You might be able to knock them down some but you will pay or you will go to the poorhouse. YOU, Mr. Frequent Flyer drug-seeking deadbeat, you're fine, carry on.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
It is not one decision, it is many, made by legislators, judges, and bureaucrats. Most people prefer it this way and would be horrified at the suggestion that it be changed, so even if it could be undone, there's no constituency for it. There's a word for someone who opposes this kind of thing and acts on their opposition, and that word is "tortfeasor" (except where criminal law applies, in which case it is "criminal").
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
If the proper functioning of a smoke detector is to wake you up in the middle of the night with a hard to locate intermittent chirp that indicates no imminent danger, and cannot be silenced without getting out a ladder, removing said detector from the ceiling, removing the battery, and then pushing the test button resulting in a VERY LOUD but fortunately short alarm. But only the pencil-pushing bureaucrats at city hall think that.
As for fuses, I would feel the same about removing AFCIs if the damn things tripped every time you used a perfectly good vacuum cleaner (as was a problem for earlier ones).
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
There's been a massive increase in the use of strict liability (no mens rea requirement), novus actus interveniens is pretty much dead (and is dead when it comes to kids), the eggshell skull doctrine has been expanded beyond all reason, and even being sued is a life-ruining experience for an individual, even if the case is frivolous.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Such items would not meet the requirements of a window guard. It's not enough that things are safe, they have to be legibly and documentably safe according to the standards set by the building codes. You need a guard that's at least 1070mm (and no, that doesn't work out to something even in inches either; it's a little over 42 1/8 inch), doesn't pass a 100mm sphere (so the chicken wire grid is likely too coarse), and has load requirements that the mesh isn't documented to meet.
Or you spit on your hands, run up the black flag, and remove the WOCD without installing a guard.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
"The real problem is that the Blues want total control of everything down to your kids' innermost thoughts while the Red just want to grill" seems to be the most common narrative on the Motte and is of the Red=Chaos variety.
That's on the surface Blue=Law, Red=Neutral. Although when you combine it with "Blues want to allow trans-and-minority criminals to prey on people while Red wants them in the sex-(not-gender)-appropriate prison", you realize that no, it's not; Red sees it as being about Anarcho-Tyranny vs Ordered Liberty, and Blue does also. (Both are wrong, but IMO Blue is much wronger)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Yes. And if they're justified in their minds, won't stop for anything less than being stopped, and see retaliation as just a reason to escalate further, the answer is as FCFromSSC often notes: war to the knife, until one side is totally defeated. Probably (contra FC) the right, which has already lost totally in several states and while it technically holds the elected branches of the Federal government, holds nothing else.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
I promise you, that’s not what committed leftists think they’re doing.
I don't know what the Soros-supported DAs think they are doing -- they certainly SAY that's not what they're doing. But it is often what they are doing.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
In addition to not fitting the genre, that storyline makes Admiral Purple Hair either the protagonist or the Obi-wan style mentor, so it would have had to have been a very different movie (thought her ending still works)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Yeah, I normally wear a helmet when I bike for recreation, but when I commuted partly by bicycle I certainly didn't. Both because it's inconvenient and because I'm not exactly screaming down hills at 40mph when I'm commuting. Ironically my commute put me through the one local town which requires bike helmets for adults, but fuck them anyway.
(Dorkiness when biking for recreation is not really affected by the helmet, because the rest of the kit already maxed that out)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Helmetless biking at high speed is awesome. Especially when it's kinda hot.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
because lol piloting is hard.
Piloting is easy, unless you mean helicopters. Dealing with all the nintendo-hard licensing and air traffic control stuff is the problem.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Over on DSL, someone stated that the first thing they did when they moved into their house was to remove all the smoke detectors so the damn things wouldn't annoy you in the middle of the night with battery beeps. Not my thing, but, yeah.
Worst I do is speeding and other traffic violations. Even with those little violations, you start noticing things. Like... those assholes in the traffic department really ARE out to fuck things up. Do the speed limit (on an arterial) and you hit every red light. Violate it by a significant amount, and you hit several yellows in a row. Like the people who drive side by side for miles if you're doing slightly over the limit will often move over expeditiously if you come roaring up behind them at 15+mph. Like cities love to place no-U-turn and no-left-turn signs so you have to drive across town to go next door... and you can save 10 minutes by ignoring them (and also a no-U-turn sign indicates a good place to make a U-turn).
There's a Robert Heinlein quote
It may be better to be a live jackal than a dead lion, but it is better still to be a live lion. And usually easier.
A lot of "civilization" is about making it harder to be a live lion. But acting the jackal really sucks if you don't have the temperament.
Evidentally there's a philosopher named Sidney Hook, who Wikipedia calls a philosopher of pragmatism, who said about this:
It is better to be a live jackal than a dead lion—for jackals, not men. Men who have the moral courage to fight intelligently for freedom have the best prospects of avoiding the fate of both live jackals and dead lions. Survival is not the be-all and end-all of a life worthy of man. Sometimes the worst we can know about a man is that he has survived. Those who say life is worth living at any price have already written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they will not betray to stay alive. Man's vocation should be the use of the arts of intelligence in behalf of human freedom.
But that is not the general thought of the Western world today. Safety uber alles, and the state to make sure it is "unsafe" in a large way to violate that in a big way; this is why people find it perfectly reasonable to threaten a superannuated computer programmer with a trip to Riker's Island for riding a bicycle on the sidewalk. State capacity may be diminishing in the Canadian Interior, it's Orwell's dreamworld in my area.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
17d ago
Your examples have some superficial similarities, but some of them are actually quite different. Assuming none of your kids or their friends is a 4-sigma hyperactive retard, you can just remove or disable the damned WOCDs. This may increase your chances of liability but only by a very trivial amount; as you note, kids falling out of windows is pretty rare. On the other hand, a public slide is going to be involved in at least a minor injury at some point, because kids like to play and unlike their parents aren't super concerned about their own absolute safety. Which means there's a good chance of someone being sued. So if you're going to repair something like that, do it on the sly.
How do we make kids have more agency?
How do we make adults with more agency?
How do we go back to the society Alexis de Tocquevillle's observed?
The short version is that we cannot. The longer version is that the steps we would have to take would have consequences all the Good People would clutch their pearls in horror about. Kids could rarely fall out of perfectly good windows and it would be nobody's fault except the kids! Kids could burn themselves, cut themselves, even break a bone or very rarely kill themselves on playground equipment and the parents would get nothing but sympathy.
One of the open tenets of modern safetyism is that you do not do cost-benefit analysis with safety. This is a tenet violated all the time (because it's completely impractical), but it serves to anchor discussions and short-circuit objections. And a more general principle that is widely understood though rarely openly stated is that neither liberty nor enjoyment have value in cost-benefit discussions. That is, "because I want to" and "because it's fun" are not considered valid reasons to do something that has other drawbacks. Both these rules would have to be repudiated to return to the society you refer to. And they will not be, the safetyists are firmly in charge.
This is all a just-so story. Family formation and TFR were dropping at precipitous rates when housing prices were low. It is still true that 25-year-old men can be economically established; that they aren't attractive to 20-year-old women is for other reasons. It's fashionable to blame everything on housing (because it provides a reason for housing socialism, i.e. taking houses from everyone older than Gen Z and putting the previous occupants on an ice floe), but while housing is bad, it's not the reason for drops in TFR or household formation.
Mostly housing prices are high now because Millennials are doing catch-up homebuying, while Gen X is staying put and Boomers are stubbornly refusing to die. So demand is high. Supply is low for various reasons, but the biggest and intractable one is there's only so much land in desirable areas; back when housing prices were lower, many cities were utter shitholes and both jobs and population had moved further out. You can densify, but that gets you mostly rental pods and not homes. On top of that there's urban planners and their opposition to sprawl, and unwillingness to develop greenfields after the disaster of the GFC left many uncompleted exurban developments to rot.
Some of this will be solved; the boomers will die. The rest, probably not, so any relief will be quite limited. Unless the housing socialists get their way, and then housing will be like health care and higher ed, permanently.
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