bolido_sentimental
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User ID: 205
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Did you get his book yet? It's a very handsome volume.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
I live in a bubble and I don't know what other people do, but to me Substack has brought a real renaissance in self-published long-form articles; the discoverability and follow-ability, and ease of doing these things, is greatly improved from anything else I knew of before.
To give kind of a corny answer to your broader question: I more or less agree that most things have gotten worse, including several things which were really important to me. (The landscape of fiction publishing is a big one.) But it's not entirely a bad thing; to some extent it forces us to define what is important to us and actively fight for it, instead of assuming that a gentle and friendly world will keep providing it without our doing anything. For example the smartphone problem: if you respond to this by intentionally selecting for "people who have fought this off and remained unaddicted" as your friend group, you may end up with a cooler and more resilient friend group than you would have if it had never happened.
TL;DR I agree with you, but let's make the best of it.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Geriatric psychiatry sounds like a truly miserable way to spend your time. I'm no doctor, but it seems like there's little improvement you can provide for most people like that.
Curious to know if you've met any other Indians about the place? And what are you missing the most from home? I recall when I did my year in Asia, my parents sent me a box full of American candy; little knowing that I could buy basically the same things at the corner store. But the sentiment was nice. (They also sent me a lot of underarm deodorant at my explicit request, and that was a lifesaver.)
I appreciate the update. We do miss you. Hang in there and try and make the most of it. If nothing else, as you continue to suffer various indignities, bear in mind that these will be great sources of stories you can tell in the future. "I'm telling you, it was 2024, and I had to try and use a bloody digital camera. What's that? You don't even remember what that is?"
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Having a beer this evening, and I realize that my knowledge of beer trends is very old. In the 2010s, there was the big shift to IPAs that I remember, as well as lots of people complaining about only being able to get IPAs at bars. Then in the 2020s, there seemed to be this tilt towards sours and goses. That's the last I heard, honestly.
Does anyone know where the beer trends are going? What's cool now?
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Personally, I nod along unless I foresee some reason to have significant future dealings with them. I tend to leave stupidity unchallenged; "let wrong people be wrong," is what I usually say in life. If I'm in a room with people who say things like "our underfunded schools," I'm generally thinking about how to leave that room and go somewhere else.
With people who I respect and who I know are actually open to thinking about the topic, I would ask them if they could describe to me what the schools need more money to do; if they could name specific budgetary shortfalls, or if they had any idea of the amount that is currently spent per student, and what they think that amount should be instead. Questions like this can lead to an interesting discussion with a non-hostile interlocutor. With a hostile interlocutor, they'll probably see you're trying to trap them and terminate discussion somehow.
I'm trying to model their responses in my mind now, and I know I've often heard, "Pay teachers more." But I don't see the path for that leading to better educational outcomes, and indeed if we pay them more for shitty educational outcomes, that would work against incentives.
Anyway, as you know, few people are actually thinking about the issues to this level of depth. I rarely have these conversations in real life.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
My honest-to-God answer to this is that for daily use, I just buy simple, conservatively-styled Rockports, and replace them when they wear out. Like this. Yes, it's just a basic-ass black shoe; but it feels and performs very well, and it looks okay.
Real shoe connoisseurs will not be impressed by this, but the man on the street or the lady from Inside Sales might. And after all, I live in Ohio. People's expectations are easy to exceed here.
I do believe that durable, comfortable, good-looking true dress shoes exist, and I also think there are some Mottizens who will be happy to chime in with recommendations. I feel like I've seen them talking about it before.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Hopefully this is not gauche to do but:
@self_made_human, how are you liking the U.K.? Haven't seen a legit update.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
I so agree with this. Teachers told me that schools were underfunded, and I believed them. I had not yet learned about how incentives drive what people think and say. I also uncritically believed that more/better education = smarter/more effective and thoughtful people; and I also didn't think about American public education as it is done, having any directional political valence.
I am perhaps not a deep enough thinker to analyze the many variables that would go into that answering that question intelligently. I also do not have a sufficiently complete model, still, of what drives the culture war.
I do think that one theoretically possible end state of the culture war would be: Both sides accept that the other side exists, and is too widely supported to extirpate; therefore, it is not worthwhile to spend energy on waging that war. A second Trump victory, in this model, could have sent the signal: "The Right is strong. We leftists do not have as complete a mandate as we imagined. We must modify our offerings to appeal to more people;" and I think this would cool the culture war if it happened.
However, that is more of a mistake theory model.. I am now a conflict theory thinker, and now I am not sure what could cool the culture war apart from shows of chilling authoritarian force, which I pray are never used. I'd rather have a healthy culture war, no matter how unpleasant I personally find its existence, than to have an environment where the war is no longer allowed to be fought.
To be honest, I just don't know how this could be measured.
To be more specific about my feelings: I thought that Democrats winning the election would reduce the amount of grievance media generated by the left. I guess my thought process was: "We have had four years of loud, grating Orange Man Bad/white nationalism is the greatest threat to our country content. Well, now Orange Man is out, you have achieved what you wanted - we can all move on to something else, right?"
I did not realize the full extent, at that time, to which the media cycle is driven by generating fear and upset, and how little interest there is in the truth; nor did I realize to what extent many people take what the media tells them to be truth, without questioning it.
I suppose I actually agree with you - I think the war is less hot; but I also feel like @The_Nybbler was vindicated too many times, and the world continued to get worse.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Thanks for your response. I enjoyed reading it and commiserating. We're a bit apart in age but there is a great deal of common experience here.
For me personally - the church thing was certainly an intentional decision on my part to start using the "church subculture" as a primary social outlet. In my 20s, my socializing involved much more of "people in bars," "people at concerts," etc. It is true, though, that being in America means that it is at least somewhat viable to go this route as a younger person; but I would note it's still very much a minority position, even here. Where I live, you can safely assume that most under-30s you meet will be secular leftists who would not consider going to church.
"Fraternal organizations" are a somewhat unique thing. They are organizations that meet usually for charitable endeavors; and they have club houses in each neighborhood where they exist, where you can go and hang out. Generally speaking, they will have a bar and maybe a kitchen, and if you're a member, you can go there and drink very cheaply if you want to. Some of them are: the Fraternal Order of Eagles; the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks; and of course the Freemasons. It was a very common thing in America for men to join these up until maybe the 1970s or so, but they declined with the advent of television; Robert Putnam writes about this a lot in Bowling Alone. If you're a reader - the novels of Sinclair Lewis from the 1910s and 1920s have lots of characters who are members of these orders.
Anyway, like seemingly every voluntary social activity outside the home, these orders are mostly the reserve of provincials and the aging now; but I went as a guest to the local Eagles lodge a few times last summer, and it was really nice. If these exist near you (or whoever is reading this), they are absolutely a viable option to be your "third place," but many people don't even know they're there.
drift took place all the way through 20s, by the time we were all 35 we had nothing in common anymore
I am 35 now, and I'm experiencing this. I think it is more me that has changed, than them, but I suppose it is inevitable that one or the other will change. I continue to fight it, because I like still having an existing connection with the people with whom I formed pleasant memories; but the memories and the connection are fading together.
I love lots about [golf] but my game is crap and I haven’t yet got over the ego hump of getting lessons and putting in the hours to improve.
You and I have this in common as well. It does suck a bit, to try late in life to take up something which will require hundreds of hours to get good at; with golf I'm trying to decide if I've given up on it. I hit a lot of great wedge shots somehow, but everything else is just frustration, and that's simply because I haven't practiced and learned enough. As I mention elsewhere, I've taken up chess, and at least I can practice that substantially at home. But yes - I've kept up with tennis because I already invested the hundreds and thousands of hours to get good at it: I did this in my teens and 20s. Now it forms one of the limited number of "things I am genuinely good at," which is a number I may be unable to increase now.
I also write some poetry but have zero time for the poetry/spoken word scene.
I was a very keen fiction writer up until I was about 30 or so. Now, yeah, I no longer like the kinds of people that I could potentially share and discuss it with; and feeling like I have no possible audience is quite demotivational. Perhaps I'm best off roping in my friends and family to suffer through that.
Great, deep post. AAQC'd.
Some thoughts I have:
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Regarding churches: I have certainly felt the same thing about sadness at them dying off. And I am myself part of a relatively small cohort of under-40s at the church I attend now. However, I do think this is creating some healthy pressure on them to adapt. I have spoken to pastors at some declining churches and asked them what they are doing to try and recruit new members - I have never gotten a response that indicated they even think about it seriously. That is not good enough. Sincerely, I believe that churches with that attitude deserve to die out. Meanwhile, I am indeed aware of some churches in my area that have retrenched, come up with some new ideas, and are expanding. I think my church "makes a great product," for lack of a better way to put it; we have something good to offer, and we should capitalize on that. I may look to start a committee about that in the new year where we members can work on that.
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Regarding aging: this is just really true, and I commend you for pointing it out. In particular, it makes me think about "bubbles." I have been awash in "self-improvement culture" for many years now; I don't know if I started seeking it out, or if the algorithm presented it to me, or if my involvement developed from my own ideas, or what, but - I have internalized the idea that, to be a desirable partner, you have to improve and maintain yourself. You must meet standards of physical wellbeing and style; cultivate yourself into a person that others would like to talk to and be around; achieve adult levels of life stability.
To me, that is so clear that I can't imagine not doing those things. Conversely, as you mention, there are some people for whom these ideas make up no part of their thinking. I genuinely do not know what they are thinking about instead. I am not entirely judging them; perhaps they like their way of life better. But the outcome is that there are a surprising amount of young-ish people in my extended circle, who are not legitimate romantic prospects for anyone. And these may be people in their age-based "prime;" it only gets worse from here if they don't shape up. Or they may, as you say, be people who spent their entire prime in a totally unviable state, and are now declining even from there. As you say, it makes me really sad. Personally, if I died relatively soon, I have a couple of decades that I can look back on very positively. I made the most of what I was given, more or less. It's very, very painful to think about someone looking back on having failed to do that.
- Regarding dress shoes: I admittedly work in a manufacturing facility, not an office building. But I do try to wear the dressiest shoes that are comfortable throughout the day. I at least wear black or brown leather shoes all the time; I abominate my coworkers who wear New Balances. We are allowed to wear whatever we want, but I want my department to look like we give a shit.
I have actually had multiple people - a neighbor and a coworker - try to talk me into making wagers on sporting events via apps. Not just telling me about their own, but actively trying to convince me to do it myself. It's the first time I can remember being peer-pressured as an adult.
To be fair to them, I think this is because they'd get some sort of referral bonus, not entirely because they want their decision validated by me.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
I actually voted for Joe Biden in 2020, specifically because I thought his election would cool the culture war. In hindsight, this displays an unbelievable level of misunderstanding of the sources of the culture war and its continuing escalation.
People of the Motte, what does your social life look like these days? What would you like for there to be more or less of? What is working well? What would you change?
Here are the social things I did in the last week. Of note, I am engaged, and so my fiancée (F) gets of my social points.
- On Saturday, F and I went to Saturday church service, and then we went to a church festival elsewhere of a different church. (I tried to win at the "throw a beanbag at the bowling pins" game, but only hit the target 1 of 3 times. Poor showing.) We bought some stuff at the rummage sale, and listened to the local cover band play '90s hits.
- Review: I would have liked to talk more to the people at church; instead, we left after the service ended. I want to increase those bonds. I think later this month I will attend my church's book club, currently reading Trials of the Earth: The True Story of a Pioneer Woman. Going to the festival with F was a lovely time that I would repeat without reservation.
- On Sunday, F and I went to a charity gala sponsored by my employer. We made small talk with a few people, listened to guest speakers, and watched an auction.
- Review: This was somewhat tedious, but I was honored that my employer picked me as one of just a few representatives to the gala. I would do this again, but I would not really look forward to it.
- On Monday, my friend S came over to my house. We drank some bourbon and he beat the piss out of me at chess. S is a computer science student at the local university; I met him at the church I attended before I moved out of that neighborhood. S is a 2000+ rated player on Chess.com. He was happy to explain his moves, and my moves, and the implications of each while we played; and I learned a lot.
- Review: This was a lot of fun and I would like to do it more often. However, overall I'd rather rest on Monday nights than do social things.
- Wednesday is me and F's scheduled weekly date night. We opted for a quiet night in. On this occasion we read the pre-marriage book we're going through together, made some pumpkin cookies, played with my cat, and watched Gunsmoke.
- Review: An enjoyable preview of married life, which generally reflects my preferences in every way.
- The one other usual activity, is that I typically play tennis once a week with J, a man in his 50s who I met at a Meetup.com meetup. J has a moderate mental disability of some kind, and as a result has a mental level that I would say is about 12 years old; and it is very hard to understand him when he speaks. Nevertheless he's actually a pretty good tennis player, and he also likes to rant about the current political situation in a way that I find quite entertaining. Anyway, I bailed this week because I'm trying to get over a bunch of minor injuries.
Additionally, I have perpetual text or e-mail conversations going with: three friends from high school, two former coworkers, and my mom.
My assessment of my own social life: I do wish I had some more groups of friends based on similar interests, but this has never worked out for me before. I could start going to the local chess club or something; but every time I've gone to some sort of interest-based group in the last ten years or so, it's been dominated by strange people with poor social skills, who presumably are only able to socialize with this captive audience. I would like to become engaged with local political entities, and I might go to a dinner hosted by the local political party club in two weeks, just to see what it's like. And sometimes I think about joining a fraternal organization, and letting that be a place where I go to watch baseball games and drink beer socially in the summer; perhaps I will do that.
In general, I am plagued by the idea that I can't find high-quality, interesting, enjoyable people to hang out with - I have the ones I already have, but I can't seem to add to their number. It seemed so easy in college (as everyone says), but maybe my standards were just lower. In adult life, I seem to meet them basically at random, scattered about all different places and activities
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Just by the by: when I bought the car I have now, it had pretty dark tinted windows. I drove it like that for a while, and then took it to a tint shop to get the tint removed. The tint guy thought I was nuts, but seriously - I could not see what I was doing. Driving at night was impossible.
Since that experience, I keep a large distance from cars I see on the road with heavy window tint. My sense is that only can they not really see, but they are not drivers who are choosing to optimize for safety by any means either. Anyway I think it's a good law, and I wish it were enforced.
This is the one that provides the most support in the specific case of Lockland; the director, John Keuffer, is quoted fairly often in the local news here. And as another commenter notes downthread, Catholic Charities is heavily involved. I used to spend a lot of time with a girl who is now a fairly high-ranking leader in this region's Catholic Charities organization - we worked at the same previous job together, and she kept me posted during the application process for the job with CC.
The impression that I get is: there is a substantial amount of people for whom helping people who claim to be hungry and homeless is a Good Thing, full stop; and any downstream consequences of that are not important to them, are not actually even considered, compared to this higher priority. It's quite hard to argue against it, especially with highly empathetic people: the people who already live in Springfield or Lockland are not, currently, hungry or homeless to the same degree, so of course their needs are considered second.
I live nearby and can say, in support of your first point: Springfield, Ohio was already totally fucked, and therefore it's a great place to put migrants. It is a quintessential Rust Belt city that was hollowed out by deindustrialization; it is a satellite of Dayton, which is even worse off.
This is happening much more widely even than what is reported on. Down the street from me, the village of Lockland was gutted by the closure of the original Stearns & Foster mattress factory in the early 2000s (along with many industrial closures for decades prior, and even the closure of the original Miami & Erie Canal in the 1910s... Lockland is a hard-luck place); it is now being resettled by Mauritanians, with the enthusiastic support of local NGOs.
I guess for the record, Mauritanians that I have met have been nice to me personally, and I am not aware of them making particular problems for everyone; but it is also true that they have concentrated in one neighborhood and turned it into Little Mauritania. I suppose it's better than the building sitting empty as they had done previously; but I wish that my own culture had simply stayed there and built new things after the factories closed, instead of decamping to distant commuter towns like Mason. Easy for me to say, I suppose.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
That is a remarkable historical fact. Going through this list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_emperors
As you say, damn near every single one had a reign ending in their death, with a definite majority of those being violent death.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
How do you cope with the idea that you or your loved ones might not go gently?
I've been thinking about this topic a lot recently. My fiancee basically lost her entire 20s having to be a stay-home caretaker for her grandmother, who had (and has) Alzheimer's. While she frames it as a choice that she was happy to make, from talking to her family, I really get the impression that she was basically the one who was sacrificed so that nobody else would have to address the situation. Honestly - I think it's an atrocity, and I can't listen to her talk about those years without boiling up with anger.
I love my parents, and when they get to that point, I want them to be safe and well cared-for; however, I'm not going to value their wellbeing above the wellbeing of the other members of my family. I grasp that there will be sacrifices to make, but the rest of us deserve a chance to live too. Furthermore, I don't see that any of the adults on either side of my family are making the appropriate preparations for their old age, and I intend to defend my nuclear family from potential consequences of this.
I am aware that my attitude about this is very hard and negative these days, and it may soften with time. I can't say I have a specific plan. I try to cultivate my material prosperity and physical strength all the time, because I think I will end up needing them.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
These are called filial responsibility laws, and they also exist in America. An interesting effortpost could be made by someone investigating the extent to which they are enforced here - something Wikipedia is kind of vague about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws?wprov=sfla1
I think about the topic of bad drivers a lot - I think it is absolutely a systemic issue, in American society anyway. Cyclists are perhaps uniquely vulnerable to the things bad drivers do, but of course pedestrians and other drivers are affected as well.
I have the sense - entirely subjective, backed by no data admittedly - that the problem is less with driving ability and more with driving decision-making. That is to say: driving tests are testing for things like the ability to handle the car properly, and the ability to follow the rules of the road. However, the dangerous situations I see on the road are commonly not caused by people who can't drive the car safely, but people who don't do so for other reasons: they are impatient, they don't care about the safety of other drivers, they are drunk or high, or they are looking at their phone instead of the road. The guy that killed the Gaudreaus is a great example; he was drunk but I see this happen often. It's illegal to pass on the shoulder, and in instances like this there's no need to. You can always wait until you have room to pass legally, but dude decided that that didn't apply to him.
Just as a related thought, not tied exactly to your point, but I also subjectively feel like since the advent of smartphones, the quality of driving has dropped sharply; and I wonder if this is supported by evidence. I don't know if there's anyone tracking the frequency of, for example, someone failing to turn left when they get the left-turn arrow, because they're watching their phone instead of the light; and how many quality life-minutes that's costing society.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Pine Bluff, AR is pretty rough, but probably not that much worse than Jackson, MS or other similar places in the South. I frankly thought immediately of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, which is definitely a bitterly poor place that I've heard of as being uniquely bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Ridge_Indian_Reservation#Social_issues_and_economy
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
This is a good point that I had not thought of.
I keep trying to draw some sort of second-order conclusions from the Haitians eating cats thing. Is it supposed to sway people who were on the fence about border controls? Like, if it is true - then what? I imagine the leftist response to this story being absolutely confirmed would be:
0.) Continue to deny it anyway.
1.) When they have learned our country's norms they'll stop, it's not really their fault.
2.) Even if it's true, it's their culture and we should respect it, not try to change them to be like us.
3.) Either way the good they bring outweighs the bad.
Even my liberal dad admitted, he would feel concern about having 20,000 Haitians added to his community all at once. My impression as a private citizen has been that this reinforces something already true about America: the only way you can control who lives near you is to make more money. You have to continually move up the housing ladder so that you can live only near people who can afford to do the same thing; this is the only way to ensure you live near pro-social people. The poor people who were not able to leave Springfield when its industries crashed - they are "suffering what they must."
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