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alchemist


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 04 18:23:45 UTC

				

User ID: 61

alchemist


				
				
				

				
0 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 18:23:45 UTC

					

No bio...


					

User ID: 61

My view from continental Europe -- Brexit has been pretty horrible for Britain, and the lies to sell it (buses claiming 400 million a week were being sent to the EU) have been unravelling, so people were pissed at Boris, which meant the small-but-insulting blunders -- e.g. having big parties while other people couldn't visit grandma -- were enough to oust him.

Truss came in and made stupid destructive tax cut promises that even people in favor of tax cuts thought were stupid, and no one had her back, so apparently she's on the way out too.

So now I'm feeling smug for seeing the first poorly written paragraph and then the monstrous wall of text and then skipping the post entirely.

Life is too short for shittily written monster posts.

Make your point clearly, and succinctly, meeting your readers where they are, and not clothing it in unnecessarily verbosity in an attempt to sound learned.

Or don't, but I'm not going to bother reading it otherwise, nor will most others.

[I know it's not your post, but I'm tired of poorly written posts]

Wow, thanks for sharing. I would love to see you post it on the Reddit adoration thread in /r/programming!

Thank you for doing the legwork (I'm assuming you did :D, too lazy to verify).

Didn't Mark Twain say something like "It's not the things you don't know that get you, it's the things you know and are wrong"?

There are claims that men interrupt women more than vice versa. The only 'study' I know was a self-reported single write-up, and the person didn't control for power, e.g. that it's likely the boss interrupts the intern more than vice versa. Even though, in the study, the person who interrupted most was a female vice president.

Interesting. I don't consider fare skipping as bad, as there is almost not cost to be made up by everyone else. The train would still run if I weren't on it. My taxes are significantly subsidizing it. I guess there might be a small increase in crowding. Prices (in terms of zones and such where I live) also feel a bit arbitrary. There are also fairly byzantine rules about what counts as one trip (e.g. transfers and such).

I assume you don't consider it fare-skipping if I have a monthly pass, but forget it at home? Or, a classic when when I used to commute -- I got a monthly pass each month, but would sometimes miss the start of the month. Is it fare skipping if I buy a monthly pass for the month, but only Nov 2, and I ride on Nov 1st? Is it fare skipping if I buy a daily pass from someone else? Is it fare skipping if I ask strangers if I can be on their group ticket (which covers up to five people)? Basically, I agree there is some harm, but it's considerably smaller than that caused by littering.

Anyway, I tend not to do it because (1) it makes me unpleasantly nervous on the ride and (2) if everyone did it we'd have a problem. But I don't see it as having a negative effect in the same way that littering does. Similarly, I see a difference between, e.g., leaving your McDonald's garbage in the train (or on the ground at the train station) vs throwing an orange into the woods beside a trail. The latter is mostly not seen, and will disappear in the not too distant future, so has almost no cost (but if everyone did it, and there were a lot of them, would also be something of a problem).

This feels like the right take to me. The recent cut of two internet cables, hundreds of miles apart, that resulted in the trains not running for hours in Germany seemed like another flex -- your infrastructure is vulnerable, stop supporting the Ukraine or things will get worse.

I'll admit, this aligns with my bias of the Putin as the bad guy, rather than the US. I do find the idea of the US taking pressure off the German politicians an interesting one. The gas shortfall is not getting as much news attention as I would have expected, yet fairly serious steps (e.g. all public pools and saunas being closed to save heating costs) are being taken, which does suggest a "this is serious, but don't cause a public panic" type approach.

Well, if you assume disproportionately many will come from the "young men" demographic (which does most of the crime) I would predict a considerably larger reduction.

What if you don't think Black people are inferior, but the particular person in front of you, who happens to be black, is inferior?

Ha! Well, I also consider theft clearly and considerably worse. But I thought it was being put in with fare-skipping and jaywalking, both of which I consider near non-issues. Maybe close to shoplifting, although that has a bit more clear victim.

Ha, you are not wrong! I tend to skip the multi-page treatises fairly aggressively. Perhaps that says something about my attention span (my last non-fiction book, The Secret of our Success, which despite being quite good, took me forever to finish!), but I'll just accept that. I think it says more about my patience and valuation of time though (which is a fine, but real, difference, IMO).

You might enjoy Câlisse moi là from Lisa LeBlanc.

I do, even though I don't understand more than about 1/3 of what she sings.

Well, I'll just say I missed that entirely. I'm not sure if that's Poe's law, or something else (my own shortcoming? forsooth!)

Why not?

They can get some points, but not big points, because most of the world manages it (especially, as you note, when you're under 30, and even slightly active). I also don't give big points out for brushing your teeth, combing your hair, or cleaning your ass after shitting. I don't think I'm setting that high a bar, although I recognize obesity does seem to be getting ever-harder to fight. (I also have some sympathy for people who's parents screwed them on the eating habits and metabolism front).

Is that a thing in the South of the US? I never saw it growing up fairly poor in Canada, nor did I see it in when I lived in California.

If you're talking Lost in Space (which fits), that daughter is actually adopted, and ends up meeting her father, who is black, so it works in-world quite well. It was weird at the beginning, I grant you.

RoP has no such excuses. I found it okay for the elf (in the army, people come from all over, and he was more elf-like than most of the community-theater-roman-senator elves anyway), but for the Harfoots it's very distracting and weird.

I'm glad to hear it works well, but in the stills I've seen, it looks so silly an obviously wiglike. (as do some of the white people's hair though).

It didn't feel cramped that way -- full of life and stuff. It didn't actually feel cramped at all, just that it was filmed on a stage (especially Numenor), which is not good for your sense of immersion.

FWIW, a good friend had a relative do this in Canada, and while painful, it seemed to be a comparatively "positive" experience. They were terminally ill with cancer, however. I still consider a good thing they didn't need to suffer longer than they chose to.

I use uBlock Origins, which is very good for websites, I think, but doesn't seem to do anything for YouTube. Any recommendations?

I always thought that was a great response to the women's soccer pay thing in the US. They're not playing the same sport, any more than the U15s are. The hard question would be "should the U15s be paid the same as the men?"

(Yes, I know that in the end they were actually getting paid more, AND they chose that model after rejecting the same contract as the men. Such a shit show of lies.)

This all seems a bit overdone to me. I'd say women and the left probably don't think that they are letting in primarily criminals, and even if they do let in a few, it's not their fault/they can fix them/it's because of their unfair environment. So they see themselves mainly as helping some poor oppressed folk, which to some degree they actually are.

This seems like the strongest argument. Attraction isn't something that you choose, so you don't need to follow current year's obligations.

"Selfish gene" comes from the eponymous book by Richard Dawkins, and centers on exactly that idea.

Religion is an interesting one, because I've just read a great book called "The Secrets of our Success", which talks about culture and inter-group competition, and religion seems a very effective way to strengthen cultural norms, and also to strengthen inter-group non-family ties, both of which are important for intergroup competition.

I'm personally still not a big fan, but it was interesting, and I do note a slide towards conservatism as I get older (although I think that's also the shift of the left away from liberality (of which I'm a fan) towards identity politics (of which I"m not).

Yes, it feels (ha) like there is an increasing war on meritocracy, and truth. And it also seems like it's having consequences, making the world worse for everyone.