charlesf
18d ago
I feel similarly when I find an article that is supposed to be about a subject I'm interested in, only to be presented with an article that is about the author, with the ostensible 'subject' as the backdrop for a largely biographical story. I'm fine with autobiographies if they are explicitly that, but an article that is supposed to be about, say the history of telephone technology, is in fact about the authors trip to a telephone museum, or the crazy encounter she had while researching the subject.
charlesf
18d ago
I use a fair amount of cash as I make regular purchases that give a discount for it (or more accurately charge a fee for using a card of some sort, but its presented as a cash discount to placate the public.) I've not seen the old bills in a long time. My sister is a district manager for a bank chain and she says the machines they use to intake cash would sort those for return to the treasury for disposal a decade ago.
edit - ive got about 500 in 20s on me now and the oldest one is from 2021.
charlesf
24d ago
A leftist doing what Charlie did, travelling around colleges to initiate debates, wouldn't really find debates all that often. This does kind of happen though, but they're just called guests, or maybe speakers. They get to use a theatre or or larger classroom and are generally welcomed.
charlesf
1mo ago
Not a rebel song, but Parting Glass by Luke Kelly. Luke Kelly is going to show up a lot on lists on best versions of trad/rebel songs, as likely will Ronnie Drew.
The demo pyramid in the poorer parts of the US is not quite as bad as the more affluent parts. Our prospective clients are all locals; no one moves to Appalachia if they can avoid it. The whole region is slowly shrinking, but not this fast. We had 77% fewer new referrals in 2023 as 2019. Some of the smaller centers have closed or combined staff under one org. The older addicts also report essentially no 'kids' (people under 25 or so) at the dope spots. Arrests for the <25 demo are down across the board for pretty much everything. No real good causal links to anything, just more of the trend of kids not leaving the house I think.
Here's a recent story about a similar trend. https://www.npr.org/2025/06/10/nx-s1-5414476/fentanyl-gen-z-drug-overdose-deaths .
“Kids who were in eighth grade at the start of the pandemic will be graduating from high school this year, and this unique cohort has ushered in the lowest rates of substance use we’ve seen in decades,” said Richard A. Miech, Ph.D., team lead of the Monitoring the Future survey at the University of Michigan. “Even as the drugs, culture, and landscape continue to evolve in future years, the Monitoring the Future survey will continue to nimbly adapt to measure and report on these trends – just as it has done for the past 50 years.”
charlesf
1mo ago
I've volunteered in a community drug rehab since my brother died from heroin abuse years ago. We've noticed a clear, sustained downward trend in new, young addicts in the last 4-5 years. We don't have any strong proof, but many of us suspect that legal cannabis in stores have prevented the new generation of potential dope addicts from every meeting a classic 'drug dealer' or engaging with the black market at all, never forming the relationships that eventually lead them to meeting heroin/cocaine/meth dealers. While the causal mechanism here is pure speculation, the rehab running out of new addicts is very real. I understand incarceration stats are having a similar trend. Probably a good amount of overlap in the people concerned.
charlesf
1mo ago
Depending where you are, legal weed might not be any cheaper than it was under prohibition. Every state has its own idiosyncratic system placing artificial constraints on production, pricing, and availability. Where I live the prices are more or less the same as they were in the decade before legalization, and had been at that point since the late 90s. Overall quality has gone up in general, and the higher quality illegal cannabis in the past did cost more at times, but that was largely driven by wealthy consumers driving the price up to capture the limited supply. States are still artificially constraining supply through various licensing/acreage/plant # limits on growers, but prices are also controlled in many states so wealthy consumers can't really wipe out the market for high end like they did in the past. Now the dispensary just runs out of product pretty regularly. Cannabis is a very hardy, easy to grow plant. Its resistant to disease and drought. Processing the dried flower is also fairly simple and low overhead; even the various extractions and tinctures that power the wax/oil products and edibles are generally faster and easier than the process for other crops like tobacco. Without the states limiting production the various markets could be easily flooded. Its also quite easy for individuals to grow it themselves; its literally a weed.
On the subject of strength, you can get weaker products. I know because I prefer them. Since the cancer I've lost all of my tolerances for everything; I can't even consume alcohol in any amount anymore. The main problem is that potency information isn't always clearly labeled, is often inaccurate, and the weak stuff isn't as popular so there are fewer offerings. Its there though. You can also do what I do and slice the gummies with a razor into 10ths.
charlesf
1mo ago
There have been a few books that were especially well written that I read twice. The first time I'm too consumed with finding out what happens, plot progression, resolution of tensions etc. I overwhelmingly am interested in how the story ends, which distracts from some of the finer points of the writing, sub plots and characters that weren't critical to the main storyline etc. During a second read I already know how these things are going to resolve and can more enjoy the total quality of the writing. Most books aren't actually good enough to warrant this though. I can usually tell when I'm going to reread a series pretty soon after I start it too. Steven Erikson's books are a first example I can think of.
charlesf
1mo ago
Yea I remember a fair amount of this clustered west of Skid Row in a neighborhood called the Toy District I think. Not just toys though, just about anything that can be mass imported from Asia wholesale can be found there now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toy_District,_Los_Angeles
The article discusses the economy of the area a little bit. Looks like this: https://maps.app.goo.gl/1XyjCRMusLzY5SGBA
charlesf
1mo ago
I'm to old to have ever used these, and my wife and I have been together since the 90s. However, where I work brings me into contact with a lot of college age and slightly older people who do use these apps to varying degrees. The young men are often getting together on breaks to critique each other's profiles, and the women get together to...also critique men's profiles. As far as I can tell there are a handful of distinct experiences being had here. If you are a good looking man, top 10% or better really, you can have sex with a lot of average women. If you are an average woman you can occasionally have sex with a very good looking man. If you are an average or worse man you can finance the above interactions while being strung along with the promise of maybe having the first experience described here, until you realize that's not going to happen and give up. Very rarely an actual enduring relationship will develop, but these seem more like a fluke than any intent of the app creators. The apps that empower the women even more than usual like Bumble seem to be loosing popularity too. In theory women like being the only party that can initiate a conversation. In practice they are terrible at it and generally unaccustomed to putting any effort into courtship at all. There also appears to be a fair amount of romance fraudsters as well, who seem to target both genders equally, through with different strategies.
charlesf
1mo ago
In addition to the rituals of the active civic Roman religion, ancient Romans (and all ancient people) were incredibly superstitious to an extent modern people struggle to imagine. Magic and the supernatural were very obviously real to them. Worldly events, good or bad, had supernatural causes, or at least nudges, and the original Roman religion was the organic accumulation over time of how, when, where, why, and who interacted with this supernatural reality. Of note these needs did no go away when the empire adopted Christianity. Many changes were made to the religion of the apostles to satisfy the Romans need to interact with the supernatural forces that obviously drove all events on Earth.
charlesf
2mo ago
The Indians I work with say its about 30%. Work has sent me to Hyderabad a couple of times, and a few other cities like Chennai and Delhi for shorter periods, and this % seems like its large enough that its much easier to actually be a vegetarian there. My coworkers there always just used the shortened term "veg", which was also the label used on menus and food packaging. My veg coworkers from the US always enjoyed being sent to Hyd for a while as you could reasonably expect effort to be put into the veg offerings almost everywhere, though we could all do without the heat and humidity of India in July/August, though Hyd seemed not as bad as some other cities. Also you can get beef in India if you really want to; ask the Muslims about it. You can generally identify them by their names in many cases I've found.
charlesf
2mo ago
If imitation meats were a bit higher quality, a bit cheaper, and reliably available I'd switch to them without hesitation. I always try the newest offerings on the market; we aren't quite there yet, but I feel like we're getting progressively closer.
I've already stopped eating mammals. It started with pigs over a decade ago, then all mammals about 5 years ago. Just birds and fishes. I might eat a lizard but its never come up.
charlesf
2mo ago
but had truly abysmal response rates for reasons I can't quite fathom
As someone with chronic health issues that knows the inside of the hospital fairly well, any communication from a health care provider that isn't explicitly from someone in scheduling or providing test results is assumed to be a new mystery bill you were never informed of verbally or in writing at any point, and 95% of the time that assumption is accurate. Sending the survey as a text message or email will have better hit rates. Also, this seems like it shouldn't need to be said but really, really does, make sure the survey actually works. I actually try to complete these when I get them (probably 8-12 a year) and fully half of them are dead links or malfunction in some other way. The institutional work ethic of an organization free from market forces and able to obfuscate its billing practices without consequence, imo, spills over into absolutely everything they do and encourages mediocrity at best.
Both of my neighbors are doctors and both are on their 2nd marriages with younger women they met at work. The surgeon had a huge new sprawling estate built to house not only his current wife and 4 young children, but also his 3 adult children from his first marriage who refuse to move out. His house actually has separate living rooms, kitchen, garages etc for both 'halves' of his family.
edit - neither are nurses. While it is common for doctors to "trade up" to younger women, the doctors and nurses I've spoken with (my wife, sister in law, and nephew are all nurses), say doctor/nurse affairs seldom lead to long term relationships as they all kind of hate doctors generally, as a class of people, and nurses personalities are often not pliant enough for the doctor's liking. Instead both of my neighbors married admin staff of some sort, one was an insurance liaison at the hospital, the other worked in patient intake.
charlesf
2mo ago
I actually opt into a service with Google where they track where I am at pretty much all times through my phone. I can go to a dashboard and follow myself through the past going back to when I first opted in. I assume they do this for everyone and I'm only opting into the tools to see the data myself. My wife can also see where I am at any given time, which is also intentional. I have issues with my health and get holes in my memory; I've needed others to be able to locate me before when I'm not well.
charlesf
2mo ago
- 350 miles
- 50 miles. In the state capitol. Its not a very high end one though, clients are mostly politicians and local lawyers it seems.
- <1 mile. Tobacco.
- 8 miles
- 8 miles
- 50 miles
charlesf
2mo ago
This is a good point actually. I've knows a few Chinese American youths who spend a lot of their non-school time working at the restaurant their parents own. None of these kids were on the books as employed at all, and received pay to match.
charlesf
2mo ago
I speculate the the higher income families might also have more connections with which to secure their kids summer work. All of my summer jobs as a teen and in college came from connections, not randomly dropping applications or otherwise cold approaching employers. Living in a higher income area probably helps too; one of my summer jobs was working at the boat service center at a private marina.
charlesf
2mo ago
4m per year? or 4m total between 2025 and the end of 2028. I wonder sometimes what the actual realistic ceiling is on deportations. There are only so many ICE members, courts etc to process them. Though the budget for such was recently increased, it takes time to hire and train and build institutional capacity in any organization. I would expect a ramp in capacity over time; 2028 is likely to have more than the prior years. I read a semi-convincing argument that at current capacity, assuming the political will remains strong, we could maybe do 1m a year. Definitions and motivated statistical analysis also confound efforts to accurately capture such figures.
charlesf
2mo ago
Anything like this that still exists on the internet has to be protected from "the web at large". These sorts of things worked in the past due to the filtering of all internet users for for smarter, more tech savvy, PC owners. Anything today that gains a reputation as someplace quality discussions might be taking place will be face a number of dangers from people and groups who would have been filtered out in the old system: bots, paid shills, culture war crusaders, and people who interact with the internet entirely through their smart phone. This has forced the older, higher quality users onto largely private Discord servers, Onion sites, or fora that otherwise apply a filtering mechanism locally, either through vigorous manual enforcement, like this place, invitation only membership, paid accounts, or other equally effective systems. While I don't think its been explicitly investigated or analyzed, I think its largely the case now that the dangers that the new cohorts of internet users present to thoughtful discussion spaces significantly outweigh the potential losses of smaller numbers of new quality contributors.
My father was a career NCO in the USMC, retired in the early 90s. Apparently the military is, or at least was, ripe with various theories and conjectures. His take on UFOs/UAP was that someone(s), somewhere made a decision to deliberately trick a small number of the most gormless, credulous service members in all the branches into having sort of staged experiences to leave them with the impression that there actually was knowledge of UFOs in the USG somewhere, its generally well covered up, but somehow a steady trickle of corporals and specialists were leaving the service absolutely convinced that they saw something they weren't supposed to see or otherwise experienced direct evidence of aliens. I've met a few of these intrepid veterans myself over the years and they really did seem absolutely convinced, though they were quite poor at actually communicating their experiences of describing the 'evidence' they witnessed. As to why the DoD/USG decided to plant misinformation in a subset of the troops and release them in to the general population to spread their stories, this was never clear.
The most common story I heard was usually about them witnessing some technology or phenomena that obviously could only have been reverse engineered from, or made out of, salvaged alien technology. A few attributed nuclear power/weapons generally to this.
I went to a Catholic high school and took a class on the different varieties of Christianity, both historical and modern, both extinct and existent. Jehovah's Witnesses we used as the example for a modern, existent, non-trinitarian division of Christianity. We learned about some older, extinct ones too like Arianism. While the LDS church does also seem to fit the non-trinitarian definition, they weren't generally lumped in with the JWs. The class was taught by a Jesuit, who despite being a member of the Catholic clergy did make an effort to teach the material objectively, with clear times in class where we could discuss what we thought of these different groups and he would also as his personal opinions at times, always in conformity to Catholic understanding. He tended to divide the 'wrong' Christians into two broad groups: those who have misinterpreted genuine scripture (he put the JWs in this group) and those who have elaborated, extended, and expanded what they think counts as scripture to an extent that they aren't really Christians at all anymore if you examine them in depth at all. He put the LDS church in this group (as well as Islam). He actually mused on the similarities between Mormons and Muslims more than once. His take as to why they were alike was that both groups (early Mormons and 6th century Arabs) had received the proper scripture, both descend from historically Christian populations, but found the New Testament unsatisfying to their egos and elaborated falsely upon the legit scriptures b/c they needed a way to make their group the main characters in the story of God, implying their motivations were both childish and selfish, and a deliberate rejection of grace. He was fun when you could get him going.
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