bolido_sentimental
No bio...
User ID: 205
bolido_sentimental
8d ago
I drive a Buick and I really like it. Every time I see the last-gen Buick Regals I drool a little bit. There's a station wagon version that looks simply awesome to me.
bolido_sentimental
8d ago
The ones I always forget are the ones which have not been that big for very long. Fresno, Phoenix, the various ones in Texas. It's hard to tell from your map which ones you've already got, unfortunately.
Can you share the game with us? I'd like to have a go myself.
bolido_sentimental
19d ago
- Extroversion: 93
- Emotional stability: 13
- Agreeableness: 17
- Conscientiousness: 36
- Intellect/Imagination: 95
Wow. I sound kind of nightmarish to be around. I wonder if I have enough conscientiousness to reflect appropriately on this.
I find this a fascinating question. It represents a very different cost for each of us. For me, even though I've been around since the original SSC CW thread, I've always been a very low-volume poster. As a result, I'd barely notice being banned, whereas it would probably be significantly impactful for the people you mentioned. Such a system wouldn't bother me. I'd eat a life ban for Ilforte or @TheDag or somebody, honestly, if it worked like that.
I recognize what you're saying, though, and I don't mean to minimize the costs imposed by misbehavior. Certainly repeat offenders should be penalized, and I don't disagree with your decision to ban BC for a while. From my perspective, though, as someone who is usually here with the intention of reading The Motte rather than digging in to the Culture War with my own hands, it's better to have someone like BurdensomeCount around rather than not. This is because while he does break the rules, I admit that, he also has a reasonably good chance of saying something that makes me think about things differently. That's what I'm here for, and that's why I felt like standing up for him. But of course - it's not all about me, by any means. Indeed I think it's probably more important to make mod decisions with the contributors in mind, not the readers. So I get it.
bolido_sentimental
20d ago
I would advocate for a temp ban here. I agree that he goes too far sometimes, but BC often posts well-considered or interesting/unusual takes. In general, I feel like the benefits from his posts outweigh the demerits of his occasional blow-up.
This is just my opinion.
bolido_sentimental
20d ago
Right, there's also the tennis player Ashleigh Barty. She had an indigenous great-grandmother, and so via this 1/8th connection she became the "National Indigenous Tennis Ambassador for Tennis Australia." "I'm a very proud Indigenous woman and I think that for me taking on this role is something very close to my heart. I'm very excited," she said about this.
bolido_sentimental
22d ago
Well, the real story behind this: the 4050CL that you can get online is as good as it gets these days, and it's a good pry bar that will meet any typical need.
But - my dad has been a glazier for right on 40 years, and I used to go help him on jobs sometimes, and when we'd meet other glaziers, builders, etc., it happened unusually frequently that they'd comment on his ancient RD4050 from before they discontinued it in the 2000s. And lots of times these old farts would pull out their own old banged-up 4050s, and start telling stories about how they'd bought this one in 1993, etc., etc. It was the damnedest thing. Old glaziers are like that about all kinds of tools, but the Red Devil 4050 is the one that stands out in my mind by name. Even now, I'll go back home and stand around in his workshop, and he'll pull out the 4050 and say, "Bet you ain't got one of these." I'll say, "Give me one then!" and he'll say, "I can't, you can't get 'em no more. The new ones ain't as good."
Taking this somewhat literally: Raymond Carver is my favorite writer's favorite writer. (Haruki Murakami talks about his admiration for Carver in many of his nonfiction pieces.)
In another area: Agnieszka Radwanska played a style of tennis that connoisseurs really appreciated, despite her lack of success at the absolute highest level. See also Fabrice Santoro.
To go completely afield: the Red Devil 4050 is your favorite pry bar user's favorite pry bar. Possessing especially the original version of this is a mark of taste and distinction in certain building trades.
bolido_sentimental
24d ago
And it's on sale for eight bucks? I'm sold.
bolido_sentimental
25d ago
I recently joined a D&D campaign as a player, and was invited to write a backstory. The act of doing that was my favorite creative thing I've done this year. Fantasy is not really my chosen genre, but it was very helpful to have that as an "assignment" to work on. I wonder if there are more ways I can take on "writing obligations."
bolido_sentimental
25d ago
This feels true. I have noticed that when I am experiencing a subjective feeling of "being stressed out," I react by doing all sorts of mind-occupying or mind-killing activities; almost as though I am hiding from using my mind for anything.
Many great writers, C.S. Lewis to take one example, strongly recommended taking long walks often. I used to do this, and have drifted out of the habit. Maybe now that the weather is cooling off, I can get back into that; and with no headphones, in a familiar park.
bolido_sentimental
25d ago
Ahahaha there's definitely something to this. Several years ago, when I lived in a different town with my best friend, I bought some LSD from a strange Serbian guy I knew. Then I put it in the freezer and forgot about it.
I visited my friend this year, who still lives in the same apartment, and we remembered the LSD. We took it together and found it to still be very effective; and we had what we both consider to be the best time we'd had in many years. And indeed we had many great insights at that time.
Unfortunately I've lost touch with the Serbian, and I have not taken the time to find out where I can source additional psychedelics. Perhaps it would be worth putting in the effort.
bolido_sentimental
26d ago
Does anyone have advice about how to restart your creativity or imagination? This is a strange question, I know.
When I was a bit younger, I was a very keen creative writer. I always carried a notebook with me, and usually within a couple of months I'd have filled it up with ideas and would need to get a new one. I always had some short story or longer project in progress, and if I finished or got stuck with one, it was never long before I had a new idea to work on. As I've aged into my mid-30s, and settled into a steady career and routine, I feel like this has slowed down immensely. Recently I realized that I'd carried the same notebook for over a year, and it still wasn't full. I try to fill my life with new stimuli, but somehow it is as though these don't want to congeal into new writing ideas. It's not so much a question of putting time into it exactly - I have time in which I can do things like this. But if I sit down and just try to force it, I end up getting bored, frustrated, and distracted, and walk away to do something else.
Is this a normal side effect of aging and life becoming more stable and boring? If this has happened to you, did you find any effective countermeasure?
bolido_sentimental
28d ago
Not of fiction, I've never tried to. I do have one legit writing credit: I wrote a section of a guidebook to the city I live in. So that's something.
bolido_sentimental
30d ago
I regret to advise it really do be like that. All I can say is you do usually get a sprinkling of well-adjusted people amongst the shut-ins. I, for one, am full of physical vigor and fashion sense.
I did NaNoWriMo for about ten years, and was the organizer of it in my city for two. When I started as a 20-year-old, I had no idea what it took to write a novel. By the end of my time doing it, I had "won" multiple times and knew that I could sustain big projects as long as it took to finish.
NaNoWriMo, as an exercise, is one of the best things I've ever done for my creative life. There's just no substitute for getting words on paper. 90% of it may be trash, but the 10% where you're really feeling it and it turns out well, it's extremely fulfilling and motivating.
I eventually concluded I had gotten all I could out of it. The community aspect of it is effectively moribund now. In 2020 and 2021, NaNoWriMo HQ forbade official in-person meetings, regardless of whatever local Covid regulations were. Additionally as you can imagine, as a San Francisco-based organization, their official messaging has become extremely woke in recent years. NaNoWriMo is the prime personal example from my own life of entryists making something much worse than it was at inception. Still, every city is different and you may meet some interesting people. A core aspect of NaNoWriMo is "write-ins," where you gather with other WriMos and grind out word count in a coffee shop or something. It's a nice accountability feature.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
I use dumbbells for presses! I can't get my friends to do it with me. It also has the added bonus that I probably won't be able to crush myself to death with them. It's great!
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
For my birthday, a friend of mine got me a golf book, The Eternal Summer by Curt Sampson. It follows the majors in 1960, a transitional period in the professional game where Ben Hogan was waning, Arnold Palmer was at his peak, and Jack Nicklaus was just starting to emerge.
I'm not really expanding my mind with this, but reading about golf is relaxing to me. One thing it's got me wondering about, is why golfers often seem to peak much sooner than their physical abilities do; and then some mental factor makes them decline. The example in this story is Ben Hogan: dominant in the early 1950s, he was still able to strike the golf ball extremely well as he aged into his 40s, but somehow lost his ability to putt. Why does this happen? One would imagine you'd lose ball-striking first and putting last. It's one of the oldest questions in golf, and I don't know if it's ever been satisfactorily answered.
You also have players like Rory McIlroy, who burst onto the scene and won four majors very young, and has not been able to win another one since 2014. He remains an overpowering driver of the ball, and somehow the finesse areas of his game have declined; this, even though he's lost absolutely none of his physical ability. Why would a player of golf, a game which seems to reward incremental improvement over time, peak at age 24?
Someone in the Motte recently observed that people in creative areas are most productive from 25 to 40, and then the rate of new production drops off steeply. I wonder if there is some related phenomenon that happens in golf. Troubling as I hurtle towards 40 myself, lol.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
Working that shift is probably the thing I'm most nostalgic about from that phase of my life. I still went to bed right when I got home, and it was simply impossible to oversleep. And the sleep quality after eight hours of slinging boxes, it was magnificent. I've never slept so well since.
The way it worked for me was like this:
- You go to your local staffing agency in the nearby strip mall. Every town I've ever lived in has several of them.
- You fill out some forms they give you, which include what type of work you can do. For me this was just, "labor."
- They call you in a day or two and say "XYZ Corp. needs some material handlers starting this Tuesday. They're paying $14.50 an hour and there's mandatory overtime. The shift is 2:30 to 11:00 PM. Stop by here before then and we'll give you your badge and show you the safety video."
- You go and do that, and then on Tuesday you start working at XYZ Corp.
Depending on the company, they might hire you on to their own paper after 90 days or 6 months or whatever. Or you might stay on the staffing agency's paper indefinitely. I supported myself all through my early 20s doing jobs like this.
The actual work consisted of such tasks as:
- Taking boxes from a conveyor belt and loading them into a truck.
- Unloading things, from a truck, and placing them onto a conveyor belt.
- Taking objects from a conveyor belt, and putting them into boxes.
- Inspecting bottles of mouthwash on an assembly line, and doing weighing and cap tests once an hour.
- Digging holes.
- Watching a moving belt of electronics recycling stuff and picking out trash.
- Assembling books-on-tape packages.
- Loading big metal components (I genuinely don't know what they were) into this machine that would put a liquid coating on them.
I met many people whose entire working lives consisted of these jobs. I almost was one myself. I remember reading Slate Star Codex on my phone in the break rooms of these places, lol. There was never a resume involved. A lot of times these dudes also knew about casual work on the side. I still remember my buddy Luis, who every Saturday morning at like 5:00 AM would send me a text that was just an address and a work task. "8737 Maple Avenue. Fence posts. Eighty dollars." He would always be pissed off at me at our next actual work shift if I didn't show up.
I do concede that if, when you're at that level of the economic ladder, you decide to go and work for, e.g., Kroger or T.J. Maxx or some other significant corporation, yes, they may ask you for a resume. I actually remember consciously thinking about what the options were: you could work in a call center, you could go do fast food, you could work retail, or you could take a factory/labor job. I hated talking to people in a "customer service" kind of way, so for me the choice was always obvious.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
Strongly doubt it occurs to them. Almost definitionally, people in underclasses work in jobs that do not ask for resumes. I did a lot of those jobs when I was younger, and met a lot of people who, I am pretty sure, went their whole lives and will die having never made a resume.
This is one non-HBD reason that is often given for why big gaps persist across generations. Those people never meet or interact with anyone who can model the actions that result in middle- or higher class lives.
I have an extremely ordinary and common name, so much so that in my not-large high school graduating class there was a guy with the same (first and last) name as me. I have known people of multiple races with this same first + last name combination.
I often feel like this is kinda nice. Nobody can prejudge me very effectively from my name alone, they have to evaluate me on other traits. And I'm a little bit harder to Google, there are so many results which are not me.
It's so hard to judge because of the quality of his competition. He seems to have good power and good athleticism for his size; he does sometimes land his overhand right, and when he does, his opponents are hurt. However, his opponents are never good enough boxers to exploit his weaknesses in technique and inexperience.
You may find it instructive or interesting to watch an actual championship cruiserweight bout, such as this one from earlier this year between Chris Billam-Smith and Lawrence Okolie. Consider if Paul would be able to effectively mitigate Okolie's constant holding and spoiling, or whether he could withstand Billam-Smith's accurate, powerful punching. He's never had to face anything at this level, and I doubt that he'd be able to; but then, these are the best cruiserweights in the world. Okolie would certainly smother and overpower him, and I think there's no way he could prevent Billam-Smith from taking his head off.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=9JsWrAQnrTQ
(or just the highlights: https://youtube.com/watch?v=3G-DOtO6FJw&t=1s)
I'm prepared to believe that Paul could hang in there for a while against a fighter like Blake Caparello: fading former fringe contender, KOs less than 50% of his opponents, has lost when he's stepped to higher class. That would be the real test for Paul, and it's what every real boxing fan would like to see; but I guess there's no reason for him to ever do it.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
This is something I'm having a hard time with.
Up until about, say, the time of the pandemic, I was a fairly apolitical person. As a result I could, and did, date all kinds of girls. Since then, I've become honestly, genuinely conservative. But I still have a blue tribe-y background. I feel like I'm caught in an uncanny valley, where left-wing girls won't like me because I don't agree with them about virtually anything; but conservative girls don't like me because I came to it relatively late in life and am not a genuine, lifelong red-triber. Feels like all I can do is simply continue trying to become more attractive.
I'm quite interested in that. Please do share.
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