ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
I was homeschooled through seventh grade by my stay-at-home mother. My memories of my homeschooling experience grow increasingly hazy with distance, but IIRC I just docilely worked through the workbooks that my mother told me to work through*, and read a lot of library books on the side. In public middle school and high school, I achieved grades sufficient for two colleges to offer full-tuition scholarships. I have a job that pays reasonably well.
*Exception: I wasn't interested in the Spanish workbooks that she bought for me, and instead (intrigued by all the species names listed in Encarta) I insisted on learning Latin—mostly by translating texts from English into Latin with dictionaries (1 2) and consulting the grammar information in a workbook, rather than the usual method of actually working through the workbook and translating texts from Latin to English. I can't say that I achieved fluency, but I did acquire enough knowledge to skip to the third-year Latin class in high school, after being forced to take a year of Spanish anyway in eighth grade.
My younger brother was homeschooled through sixth grade. Again, my memories are hazy at this point, but I think my mother had to take a much more hands-on approach with him, actually guiding him through the workbooks rather than just leaving him to do them himself. As far as I am aware, he did merely okay in public school and college (community college, after flunking out of West Point), but he, too, now has a job that pays reasonably well.
I have extremely blurry memories of one or two homeschooling groups and churches that my mother may have occasionally joined (my family was at least a little religious at some point, but dropped religion early on), but I don't think we participated much in such things. I have bad social skills and zero friends. My brother appears to have good social skills and several friends.
I still find it hard to believe that what is being reported is even possible
Back in 2021, one person said that he had filed 1,000 complaints (with no timeframe given) regarding violations of Title IX and Title VI at 330 different colleges. In 2022 he said the total was 1,200 complaints against "almost 300" colleges over three years. 7,300 complaints in a single year is a big number, but I hesitate to call it unbelievable that somebody could be more dedicated than the linked person.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
11mo ago
Do you use license-plate frame(s) on your car? Why or why not?
I strongly disagree with this extremely overbroad assertion.
In the first place, /r/4chan is not a substitute for 4chan. 4chan is a discussion platform that happens to be humorous on occasion, while /r/4chan is focused exclusively on finding humor (not necessarily "the better posts") on 4chan. If you want to read a non-humorous discussion of electric cars or urban planning or Big Yud, you won't find it on /r/4chan—you've got to go to 4chan itself.
In the second place, it is not reasonable to say that pornography "is the vast majority of 4chan". Even assuming for the sake of argument that the statement is technically true—i. e., that, of all posts made on 4chan, "the vast majority" are pornographic (and I do not necessarily accept that premise)—it is not actually possible for a user to browse the entire category of "all posts made on 4chan". In practice, it is extremely easy for a person who uses the catalog view to ignore (1) the obviously-pornographic boards and (2) the few obviously-pornographic threads that are tolerated by the jannies on the non-pornographic boards, and to focus only on threads that actually contain discussion.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
Try using the catalog view instead of the default view. And, in the settings, enable the "Inline quote links" option, so that you can follow a conversation without having to bounce up and down the page.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
There was a time that draining swamps was among the greatest achievements of the government.
Fun footnote in the court's opinion:
Leovy v. United States also reflected the law’s longstanding hostility to wetlands: “If there is any fact which may be supposed to be known by everybody, and, therefore, by courts, it is that swamps and stagnant waters are the cause of malarial and malignant fevers, and that the police power is never more legitimately exercised than in removing such nuisances.” Traditionally, the only time wetlands were the subject of federal legislation was to aid the States in draining them. Wetlands preservation only gained traction due, in large part, to advances in firearms technology that made waterfowl hunting feasible.
The Apollo developer says that he would do that if he had three months to do it in and if the price were only half as large, but the one-month period that Reddit chose to provide is too short.
Going from a free API for 8 years to suddenly incurring massive costs is not something I can feasibly make work with only 30 days. That's a lot of users to migrate, plans to create, things to test, and to get through app review, and it's just not economically feasible. It's much cheaper for me to simply shut down.
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
Kiwi Farms thread (requires Tor, Brave, etc.)
ToaKraka
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10mo ago
Option: 3
Ideology: Libright
Option 3 sounds a little strawmanny to me. A better version might be: "Repeal laws against 'gouging' the price of food in emergencies, because private speculators in food are better at preventing food insecurity than the government is."
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
time
Reading is one of many leisure activities that compete for your time. If, at any given moment, an activity other than reading offers to you a greater expectation of enjoyment, then obviously you should perform that activity rather than reading. But, in those moments where no option is better than reading, you should read.
motivation
If reading a particular book feels like a chore, then that book obviously isn't a good fit for you. You need to find a book where you look forward to seeing what will happen next.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
From the front page of themotte.org:
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Clicking on the title of the submission sends you to the comment thread.
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Clicking on the "N comments" text sends you to the comment thread.
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Clicking on the image next to the title sends you to the linked page (which seems to have been deleted by its author).
From the comment thread:
- Clicking on the title of the submission sends you to the linked page (which seems to have been deleted by its author).
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
Backups are important. I recommend keeping two copies of your data at home and one in your car.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
I recently enjoyed reading Romance of the Rails and American Nightmare, two books by Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner. They provide interesting overviews of the history of transportation and housing (respectively) in the United States.
A quote from Romance of the Rails:
The second blow to urban rail transit was a shift in the nature of work. In 1920, nearly 40 percent of all American jobs were in manufacturing, and there were just 1.3 service jobs for every manufacturing job. The number of manufacturing jobs continued to grow through 1980, but that growth was vastly outpaced by the growth in service jobs, so, by then, there were three service jobs for every manufacturing job. While manufacturing jobs were concentrated, most service jobs were diffused across urban areas. I call this the nanocentric city, because, to the extent that jobs had centers at all, there would be uncountable numbers of such centers in major urban areas. "Nanocentric" also sounds a bit like "noncentric", meaning there is no one center.
Just as urban planners were beginning to recognize the demise of the monocentric city, the service economy was leaving the polycentric city in the dust. Transit did a poor job of serving the polycentric city, with buses working better than rails. Transit is even less suited to serving a nanocentric urban area, especially a growing region whose job locations and patterns shift almost daily.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
10mo ago
Run a search in all your email accounts for the confirmation message that you received from themotte.org.
Any actual home construction seems to move it into the 200k range
Define "actual home". Home Depot and Menards offer several small and tiny* kits with sticker prices well under 200 k$.
*The official definition of "tiny house" is "400 ft^2 or smaller". In theory, four people can squeeze into a 600-ft^2 house without much trouble—say, 120 ft^2 for a living room, 80 ft^2 for a dining room, 100 ft^2 for each of two two-person bedrooms, 40 ft^2 for each of two bathrooms, and 120 ft^2 for a kitchen.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
Wikipedia says:
LitRPG, short for literary role playing game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels. The term was introduced in 2013. In LitRPG, games or game-like challenges form an essential part of the story, and visible RPG statistics (for example strength, intelligence, damage) are a significant part of the reading experience. This distinguishes the genre from novels that tie in with a game (like those set in the world of Dungeons and Dragons), books that are actual games (such as the choose-your-own-path Fighting Fantasy type of publication), or games that are literally described (like MUDs and interactive fiction). Typically, the main character in a LitRPG novel is consciously interacting with the game or game-like world and attempting to progress within it.
ToaKraka
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9mo ago
So essentially, deep down everybody knows it's going to collapse somehow eventually, and they're all trying to arrange things such that they're not the ones holding the bag when it does, which involves never acknowledging that to anyone else.
Peter Wallison says that (1) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac misleadingly categorized mortgages as subprime only if they were issued by a small category of "subprime lenders" (rather than the more typical definition of any mortgage made to a person with FICO score worse than 660), so (2) the banks never even knew that the situation was in the toilet.
Without understanding Fannie and Freddie’s peculiar and self-serving loan classification methods, the recipients of information about the GSEs’ mortgage positions simply seemed to assume that all these mortgages were prime loans, as they had always been in the past, and added them to the number of prime loans outstanding. Accordingly, by 2008 there were approximately 12 million more NTMs in the financial system—and 12 million fewer prime loans—than most market participants realized.
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
9mo ago
From the introduction:
This case is about the Free Speech Clause in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The explosion of social-media platforms has resulted in unique free speech issues—this is especially true in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. If the allegations made by Plaintiffs are true, the present case arguably involves the most massive attack against free speech in United States’ history. In their attempts to suppress alleged disinformation, the Federal Government, and particularly the Defendants named here, are alleged to have blatantly ignored the First Amendment’s right to free speech.
From the conclusion:
The Plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits in establishing that the Government has used its power to silence the opposition. Opposition to COVID-19 vaccines; opposition to COVID-19 masking and lockdowns; opposition to the lab-leak theory of COVID-19; opposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power. All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech. American citizens have the right to engage in free debate about the significant issues affecting the country.
Although this case is still relatively young, and at this stage the Court is only examining it in terms of Plaintiffs’ likelihood of success on the merits, the evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period perhaps best characterized by widespread doubt and uncertainty, the United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian “Ministry of Truth”.
The Plaintiffs have presented substantial evidence in support of their claims that they were the victims of a far-reaching and widespread censorship campaign. This court finds that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their First Amendment free speech claim against the Defendants. Therefore, a preliminary injunction should issue immediately against the Defendants as set out herein. The Plaintiffs Motion for Preliminary Injunction [Doc. No. 10] is GRANTED IN PART and DENIED IN PART.
The Plaintiffs’ request to certify this matter as a class action pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. Article 23(b)(2) is DENIED.
DAE make a habit of collecting funny 4chan screencaps? I've accumulated about 240,000 karma from posting them on /r/4chan over the past years.
Examples: 1 2 3
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