bolido_sentimental
No bio...
User ID: 205
My father has been a glazier for 40 years, and I've worked with him on occasional jobs here and there. He is self-employed, and primarily does storefront windows and doors for restaurants, banks, retail, offices, etc.
Pros:
- Nothing gross about it really. All metal and glass. Sawdust, metal shavings, etc., but nothing unsanitary.
- In growing areas the demand is tremendous. It's a somewhat uncommon trade skill, but required in damn near every building everywhere. For many corporate clients, if you can get on their approved vendor list you can basically name your price, and they'll pay it without blinking.
- Pretty high-precision/high-craft. Not mindless at all. Lots of practical problem-solving. Your work may be beautiful. You can drive around your city and point at all kinds of buildings and say, "I did part of that."
- You go all over town or your region each day - no being chained to a desk. But your range wouldn't typically be more than a couple hours from home.
- Don't have to work for a company or with anyone else if you don't want to. The most he does is occasionally hire laborers to help move very large things.
Cons:
- Glass and metal are sharp and can be dangerous. You really have to take safety seriously. People do get seriously injured or die in this line of work, but it doesn't have to be you.
- Shit is heavy. Glass is just very heavy. Finished units are heavier still. A lot is mitigated by various simple machines, carts, dollies, and so on, but there will be times when you must shift some big thing around a corner with muscle force, and you'll feel it the next day. Having said that, my dad is in his 60s and still has all his functions, and tells me he has no unusual daily pain.
- There is often work at heights, potentially extreme ones, usually on scaffolding. Wear the safety harness. And of course you'll certainly be outside in the heat and cold.
- It's a potentially hard skill to pick up, in that you either have to get someone to teach it to you, or work for a company doing the scut work for a couple of years while you learn. No legible credentials (in non-union states anyway), which may be good or bad depending on your perspective.
I can say I would be quite happy if children of mine went into it. It's honest work and actually quite deep and interesting.
bolido_sentimental
26d ago
There's always geocaching.
https://www.geocaching.com/play
Can help you look at your environment in a new way, and also creates a nifty record of all the places you've been.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I didn't really appreciate what he did when I was a young adult. I was a real whiz kid in school, and it seemed a shame not to use the scholarships and get out into the world that way. In hindsight I might have chosen differently, and now I have a whole mid-level career's worth of sunk cost that would make it probably too challenging to switch.
I think he'd be more than happy to sell all his stuff and his book of business in a few years for a nominal cost, if he knew the right person to take it over; but he's quite solitary and prefers to work alone, so it's unfortunately possible that his knowledge will die with him. Maybe I'll talk to him about trying to find an apprentice.
bolido_sentimental
1mo ago
I didn't know you had a blog. Where can we read it?
bolido_sentimental
4mo ago
Welcome back @SkookumTree. A lot of us unironically hoped for the best for you in your absence.
bolido_sentimental
8mo ago
I am a native of Tennessee, have lived in Kentucky, and currently live in Ohio. None of these could be described as "blue states." Pretty much everyone that I talk to on a daily basis lives and votes in one of these three states.
For the last three or four months, almost every person I know has been assaulting my ears, unsolicited, with monologues about how Trump is a racist, sexist and fascist, and he must be kept out of the White House. Literally - I'm not saying that as a stock example, I mean that people have actually used those terms, in series, in sentences to describe him and his politics. Additionally, multiple people have told me they wish the would-be assassin's bullets didn't miss their mark. These people include my dad - a blue-collar tradesman; my coworkers, at a blue-collar manufacturing firm; my mom, a retail worker; a close friend of mine who joined the Army; and a guy I know who works in construction. No matter their age, race, or who the winners' policies would be likely to benefit, there is a lockstep consensus, even though these are all people who are the types of people, in the appropriate states, that you'd expect to support Trump. The only exceptions that I personally have are my fiancee and her family, a close friend from church, and an old coworker. All other people are happy to start venting about Trump to me.
(Notably - and this is not meant to be boo outgroup - I never hear anyone talk about how the election outcomes, or the policy outcomes that follow from that, will affect them personally. One guy I work with did at least reference his neighbors who are voting for Trump because they don't want their taxes to go up, which he described as "greed.")
My subjective impression, is that this is primarily caused by the successful capture by liberals of so many institutions, resulting in leftism becoming the "default position" in America. When all the big companies, all the media, and all the artists and musicians push in the same direction, you have to be a serious non-conformist to push the other way; and that is an uncommon trait. With that in mind, I don't know how the Republicans ever win any elections.
bolido_sentimental
6mo ago
People of the Motte, I am getting married one week from tomorrow. AMA, I guess. And thanks to everyone for many years of life advice. I've been lurking since the days of /r/slatestarcodex, and I genuinely think that the things I've learned from some of you have helped me reach this happy juncture.
Also - any tips to make the wedding day go smoothly, as well as the first few weeks or months of married life? It's just a small wedding we're having - 50-60 people and a reception at the banquet hall down the street. All less than 15 minutes from home.
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.
bolido_sentimental
9mo ago
Flout, not flaunt.
bolido_sentimental
10mo ago
I have often wondered if we will eventually reach a state where you can only navigate to destinations you can enter into your car's navigation computer; so that if you wanted to go off road or to somewhere you aren't authorized to go, you simply could not do it with the car.
bolido_sentimental
11mo ago
People of the Motte, I am engaged to be married. AMA I guess. Reaching this state was a surprisingly long journey - I'll be 35 on wedding day. I have been dating off and on since I was 18, and at that time I never would have imagined that I'd still be playing the game 15+ years later. Glad to be finally be checking out, hopefully for good.
I can't help but wonder how checking Culture War Roundup threads every day for the last 10 or so years, may have contributed to my ultimate change from rootless, callow 20-something to homeowning family-seeker. This was previously a classic path that people tended to follow, but relatively few of my peers ended up following it. I often wonder if being a SSCer/Mottizen has actually been a good thing for me, or whether I'd have been better off never knowing about the things we discuss here. Nevertheless, though you do not know me, there are many of you to whom I'd send a wedding invitation if I thought we had room for it; and indeed it will be an interesting culture war occasion to observe, as many blue tribe + red tribe friends and family will meet for the first time. But of course on the day, I'm going to really try not to think of it in those terms lol.
Anyway, as far as Friday Fun: my fiancée and I have been doing jigsaw puzzles lately, while listening to the "oldies" station on AM radio. I think for many people, if you see this activity on a list of activities to do, your eyes may pass right over it - it seems so boring that it doesn't merit serious consideration. But seriously, it's actually really satisfying when you get the whole border put together, or when you get on a roll with a big section of the puzzle. Are jigsaw puzzles what they call "lindy"? In any case, I realized there must be a reason why they continue to sell jigsaw puzzles in every Target, Wal-Mart, Meijer, Big Lots etc. in America. Consider giving it a try if you want to do something easy and analog for a while, as a nice little break from technological recreation.
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."
bolido_sentimental
6mo ago
Thanks man. I was going to tell you the other day - I feel like the quality of your posts has improved a lot over the last six months or so. I am learning a lot when you post these days. If you would just stop picking up lifting-related injuries, you'd really have it made.
I am 35 and she is 31 - it took me much too long to get it together, and I wish I now that I would've done this when I was 25. I would have liked to have maybe four kids, but as it stands I think we'd be very happy if we managed three; we're aware of fertility windows, and honestly I myself am a little concerned about how well I'll manage small kids in my 40s. I am already a little bit slower and creakier than I was in my 20s. Two is probably the true most likely outcome.
The primary thing that I think I mainly picked up on from relationship discussions on the Motte, was the legitimate futility of trying to use dating apps as an average-looking guy. It always felt a bit frustrating, but seeing the data drove the truth home. Instead I just worked on becoming a man that would be a good partner, and going out into the world a lot instead of staying inside on the computer. I remember years ago telling people about the concept of "micromarriages," which someone shared on here.
https://colah.github.io/personal/micromarriages/
There are a lot more general world-view things I learned from the Motte, but that concept is the most specifically applicable to romance - if you don't go places, you'll never meet people.
Accordingly - I met my fiancee at a fan group meeting of the local baseball team. It was handy to immediately have a shared interest to talk about, and it was then simple to ask her on our first date - which was to the team's Hall of Fame & Museum. And then while doing those things, we learned about each other's other interests, which made it easy to find new things to do together. It's all been remarkably smooth; maybe this is the fruit of spending many years going on bad dates, being in unsatisfying relationships, and generally gaining life experience.
bolido_sentimental
2mo ago
I would commend to you El Astillero (The Shipyard) by Juan Carlos Onetti. One of my personal favorite books.
bolido_sentimental
10mo ago
It's largely been forgotten now, but Baltimore used to be a tremendous steel city, based around the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point facility. It was the largest steel plant in the world in the 1950s. There were many other large mills and shipyards there, making all kinds of things out of steel. Here's a good article about this:
Baltimore was hit extremely hard by deindustrialization, and decent jobs have not come in the same numbers to replace the ones that were lost. I suppose the interesting followup question is why the population remaining in Baltimore reacted in such destructive ways.
bolido_sentimental
4mo ago
There are many implications to each of these questions.
1.) Honestly, "the transmission is the weak point" is something I've heard about nearly every make of vehicle. They just seem to break more than other components of the drivetrain. Ironically, the only transmission I have direct personal knowledge of failure in was that of my mom's Toyota Camry back in the 2000s. Anyway, the only vehicles I'd specifically avoid for that reason are Nissans. Bear in mind though, this is just my anecdata. You could find hard facts about failure rates if you went looking. My impression was always that Honda made some of the best automatic transmissions around.
I have always gone out of my way to proactively drain + fill automatic transmissions with fresh fluid every 50k miles or so, and have never had a transmission-related problem. On my old Volvos, it was almost exactly the same procedure as replacing the oil, so not a big deal.
2.) I think knowing how to drive stick is a skill worth having. It doesn't take that long to pick that skill up - maybe just one day if you have someone to show you and plenty of time to practice. Additionally - manual transmissions are much more repairable and durable than auto-transmissions, and some people get them just for that reason. You'll be able to drive any vehicle you encounter, and honestly, it's just kind of badass.
I don't like them that much for city driving, though. It's kind of a pain in stop and go traffic.
bolido_sentimental
8mo ago
People keep talking to me about "civil war" and "post-election violence" and so on. Are any of you preparing for that in any particular way?
I can't really envision anybody messing with things in my inner-ring suburb, or my dumpy little house in particular, but who knows, I guess. I could sit on my porch with my shotgun but I'd just feel like a tool.
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.
bolido_sentimental
10mo ago
I've been thinking recently about the stickiness of reputations among brands, and about whether it's something that companies really have the power to shift or not.
Here's the specific example in my mind. You know how, if you browse the Internet for many years, you'll see certain apparently-organic consensus points occur again and again? Reddit is especially known for this, but it happens elsewhere too. Well, in all my years online, the one I've seen the most often, in the most places, is:
A. Cars are mentioned. B. "Get a Toyota or Honda. Those are the best cars."
The corollary of this line of thinking is: "(Not-Toyota/Not-Honda) is junk." I've probably seen this statement about every manufacturer, but it's most commonly applied to the cars of the former Fiat-Chrysler group, including Fiat itself and Dodge. Ford, GM, and Nissan also get it a lot.
I've driven many Toyotas and Hondas. They are indeed very good cars. I have nothing to say against them. However - based on modern manufacturing technology, on any given metric, how much better are they likely to be than the equivalent car by Subaru? Or even Chevrolet or Dodge? What's the base rate of mechanical failure across these marques? Does anyone know? More to the point - is anyone looking? I would imagine they are not at all, based on typical shopper behavior. I think they mostly go by reputation.
What I find interesting is that in some cases, reputations created long ago stick around forever; and in some cases they don't. For example with Dodge, I'm specifically aware of a big problem they had with a 2.7 L V6 in the '90s which had big sludging problems and hence an elevated rate of engine failure. Prior to that, as I understand it, their main reputation was making fairly staid, uninteresting, but fine commuter cars like the Plymouth Sundance, Dodge Aries and so on. They also made a nice line of minivans. Anyway - at least since the 2.7 L V6 problem, I feel like, subjectively, people no longer trust them; and may never trust them again. Say that Consumer Reports announced that a hypothetical 2025 Dodge Journey was the best in its segment for reliability and features. Would you even consider looking at one?
Conversely, some companies like Audi (the sudden unintended acceleration debacle) and Subaru (head gasket failures) seem to have mostly shaken off their negative reputations; at least, I don't see them taking serious stick online over those things, and the products sell as well as anything else.
Is this just locked in now? Even if Toyota and Honda just made 50th-percentile-reliable cars from now on, would anyone ever notice? If the best car you could possibly get at a given price point was actually a Volkswagen or a Volvo, and remained that way for a decade, how long would it take for sales figures to change? How long would it take for me to stop seeing "get a Toyota or Honda" in every /r/personalfinance thread about cars?
N.B. I'm not car shopping right now. In the past, if I talk about this topic online, people will genuinely reply, "Just get a Toyota or Honda, man," as if that's what I were asking about. I'm not getting anything any time soon. My current car is fine.
bolido_sentimental
6mo ago
She doesn't - which is interesting, right? I do regularly bring up things I read about here, as "something I read about online," and we have great discussions as a result. But she's not the kind of person who gets gratification from reading tens of thousands of words of political and cultural discussion online all day; which is only fair enough. In fact, I'm not sure I have ever known anyone in real life about whom I've thought, "This person could be a Mottizen." It's strange to even think about how any of us came to this point - how many years' worth of obscure blog posts you have to read to know what some of our posters are even talking about.
Anyway - I'm not certain it would be a good thing for two Mottizens to date. (Has it ever happened that we know of?) I don't comment much in the real Culture War thread, not because I don't have opinions, but because I try to keep the culture war itself at arm's length if I can. If she were on here too, it would take over my life even more than it already has. Instead, with her, I can touch grass.
bolido_sentimental
11mo ago
It's hard for me to compose an answer to that, because it's been such a constant part of my life for so long now. I can barely remember all the things I used to not know. (Additionally - it's hard for me to compose an answer, because I never have acted on my ambition to "lurk less + post moar" as an aid to getting better at argumentative writing. I guess it's still not too late.)
Here is my best answer, I guess. I discovered the SSC-sphere around 2013. I had just dropped out of a political science Ph.D program - I realized that, basically, trying to write and publish academic papers was miserable to me and I did not want to spend any more of my life doing it. Anyway, even with that pretty high level of education, I still believed such things as:
- "Christians believe in a magical being because they are deluded."
- "Republicans want to restrict abortion access because they hate women."
- "The NSA wants to read all of our e-mails because they are evil."
I could give an unlimited number of other examples like that; and I was certainly 100% within the left-liberal bubble at that time, so the examples would be biased in that direction. Basically, exposure to the SSC-sphere enabled me to build a theory of mind for all kinds of groups and beliefs. Over the years, people in the Motte etc. have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to understand what people really believe and why.
This is a continuous, lifelong process; I'm certain that I still have wrong ideas about lots of people's beliefs. And, my biases have shifted in the opposite direction, but they definitely still exist. But I just didn't think about it at all before - I believed what the people around me believed, and I didn't think about it. Now... at least I think about it, I guess. I no longer think "x believe that because they're idiots" or whatever. I try to understand how people arrive at their conclusions, because even if I oppose them, I still have to live with these people; and having some understanding makes it feel better, or if I want to act against them, I can do it more effectively.
bolido_sentimental
10mo ago
Can you offer support for your assertion that white Appalachia mirrors Baltimore? It has never been my impression that the rates of violent crime or property crime are at all comparable between those places. To provide one example, poor, mountainous West Virginia had the lowest crime rate in the nation from 1971 to 1998.
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
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.
Have any of you ever memorized poems? I understand this is something that used to happen in school at least at one time, but I wonder if it died out entirely.
If so - did you find it worth doing? Or, indeed, the memorization of anything else? (Not referring in this case, to, e.g., the endless Anki decks of medical school, or all of the TCP/UDP ports for your CCNA, but rather just for fun.)
More options
Context Copy link