Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Dating is actually very similar to sales. I've bever met a successful salesperson that couldn't get a date (many that couldn't sustain a relationship, but that's a different matter). This is because sales requires you to hone skills and behaviour patterns that specifically are useful in dating, not solely because of x inherent trait that makes a person good at both sales and dating.
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
That name is actually Sadhbh, not Sidhbh.
Very nice old Irish name, pronounced "sive".
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
The nitrites are proven carcinogens
Titus_1_16
30d ago
A couple of points: first, in terms of English proficiency being a cultural solvent - English already is the lingua franca of Europe, as it is in many other parts of the world. When an Italian meets a German, 9 times out of 10 they will speak English. When a Finn meets a Spaniard - English (although the Spanish are generally pretty bad at English). And so on.
If Europe is to achieve some manner of proper confederation and thereby preserve itself as anything other than a relic over the next century or two, it needs a language with which to do this. English in Europe (and remember it is after all a European language) doesn't just mean Americanisation, it also means the coalescing of pan-European consciousness.
So English proficiency is not purely a malus, or purely a tool of globohomogenisation.
Secondly - I know you're talking about Latvia as a long shot in terms of migration and integration, but actually its neighbour just to the north, Estonia, explicitly is pursuing a strategy of welcoming ambitious foreigners from the likes of America. They've set up an E-residency scheme that's kind of notoriously open to abuse, but it's meant a lot of foreign tech setting up shop there. Estonia is a more reasonable shot for someone of your profile to move to and integrate into, if you're interested
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Which Jesse Singal article, the trans kids one?
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
This is a wittier version of the same point I was going to make - bravo
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Would the USA be "more democratic" if toddlers could vote?
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
You might not believe this, but he's not.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Personally I think a 50 year limitation seems fair.
Do you agree that Israel should stop accepting their annual "sorry" payments from the German government, pursuing old men who were Nazis, etc?
It strikes me that it's basically impossible to make proper restitution for millions murdered, but relatively easy to make whole someone that's had their land connived and stolen away from them. If anything, all the Israeli schmaltz and guilt about WW2 should stop well before the Palestinians give up on regaining their rightful homes.
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Ishiguro is British, not American.
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Damn, that's how I'd classify you too. 4 times a day at 40? What are you, top 5% of age-weighted wankers?
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
A niggle, but:
aren't African Americans more like 10% of the population, with the other 2.5% that's black being mostly African immigrant
It seems intuitively incorrect to me that one in five black Americans have even recent African ancestry. I would guess it's more like one in ten at most. Can any Americans vouch for the likelihood of this?
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Re: eating well all the time, it sounds like you've accidentally reinvented French food culture. I don't think it's a problem, but it may certainly be a shock to the system if you have an Anglophone background
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Dive
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
Oh right, I didn't realise that was the spelling she's using herself. That's totally, totally stupid if it's actually legally spelt that way; Sadhbh is already a name you need to know how to pronounce, so why bother chsnging the vowel and not the cluster of consonants at the end? Maybe to avoid having the letters S - A - D in her name?
But if I were anglicising that name I'd just spell it "Sive".
Titus_1_16
1yr ago
"Death con 3" seems deliberate and funny to me. The man clearly has a knack for language, and I think it's more likely this is deliberate.
Titus_1_16
30d ago
Russia looks pretty white to me, just saying.
Russia is only about 70% ethnically Russian, from memory. Eyeballing it, at least half of the countries in Europe would have a higher % of their primary ethnicity.
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
Super interesting, and you're quite correct: relatively mild criticism as it goes
Titus_1_16
4mo ago
That's really interesting, what would be some anti-Jewish stuff in the New Testament?
And actually, do any of the books of the New Testament ever go after other groups (ie Roman pagans, Persian Zoroastrian monotheists?)
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Interesting euro/American contrast here - fewer Euros would tolerate living in a place where you can only "exist" (ie do normal stuff like go to work, go to school, see friends, buy groceries, etc) with the help on a car, so this dilemma doesn't arise as much over here.
That is, I fully accept that freedom of travel should be a fundamental right, but also agree that driving a car is not - it's something you do on the state's sufferance.
These two principles don't often conflict in Europe, but it's a damn hard dilemma. Probably it's easier to solve with AI driving than by rebuilding most of your cities
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
Hmm, personally I think that sets too high a bar for constituting a "movement" at least in the intellectual or cultural sense. Sure, a handful of books doesn't constitute a political movement - for that you need crowds, voting, candidates (though note that this definition also means the "alt right", such as it ever was, was not a "movement") but I think the bar is different/lower for an intellectual or cultural movement.
It's a consistent cliché in intellectual history that some group strongly disavows belonging to a single movement, while then spending the next 200 years being taught and studied as one. French New Wave Cinema, the Vienna Circle, etc.
My suspicion is that, (if there are such things as essays and undergaduates a hundred years hence) a student writing in the future about how American religiosity collapsed to European levels in the first decades of the 21st century will mention "the new athiests". Before of course talking about the triumphant rise of Zensunni Catholocism in the 2030s, which fuelled the Butlerian Jihad.
Titus_1_16
5mo ago
modern democracy is much more actually democratic than Athenian democracy
The Athenians took the word "democracy" to mean one thing, and modern Western politicians take it to mean [almost anything they want]. It's small-minded to claim one particular state of affairs is more "democratic" than another - very many political system can fairly lay claim to the term.
It's a defensible position to describe as "democratic" any that involves a reasonable number of people voting on what's to be done/whom to rule them.
Beyond those bare bones, it's like arguing which of Louisiana and Utah is the more American, or Pentecostalism and Anglicanism is the more Christian. Ie, a futile endeavour to rile up true believers
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
Not negligent per se; let's just say they didn't sincerely prioritise the flourishing of those they hadn't the heart to murder.
Suppose for example I'm the governor of some territory with a load of indigenes and colonists. Even if I set aside a physical space for the indigenes and make some financial allowance for basic medical treatment and what-have-you, there just aren't enough men or dollars or hours in the day to really ensure the indigenes' flourishing.
An AI will only be able to conquer and master humanity if it is significantly more capable than us. Consider how we might expect, say, a mediaeval army versus a modern polity to care for spare people in their charge. Now consider than any humanity-beating AI would be far more competent than a modern state, and by a much greater degree than the modern state outclasses some mediaeval horde.
I think an AI good enough to beat us could also husband us well without breaking a sweat.
I don't think it's true that a purposeless life need be as squalid as those of many modern indigenes - many perfectly nice and even quite good lives don't have any purpose that's apparent to their possessors. And honestly, life in divine obedience to a real machine God seems at least as purposeful as any of the religions of the book. I reckon it would beat "modern hedonistic self-actualisation" too.
Titus_1_16
6mo ago
I think until such time as Israelis stop kvetching to Germans about the Holocaust, Palestinians can be permitted to protest their subsequent territorial expropriation.
If the boss doesn't come into the office, but instead works from his home, does that mean "the real office" is the boss's house?
Yep, higher-ups often choose to work from their home country. Check out average pay in the Paris office, or Zurich. Also both higher than Dublin. Doesn’t mean they are also headquarters.
Finally, I suspect that Dublin figure excludes equity, due to the ridiculous way it's taxed here.
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