charlesf
3mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
4mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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.
charlesf
6mo ago
Maybe, but I've never really used books very much as part of my practice. I find books about Buddhism and meditation interesting intellectually but not always useful for progressing actual practice. The ones I enjoyed the best are probably the more semi-biographical ones were other people share their experiences and details of their practice. There are certain predictable milestones as well as potential stumbling blocks that almost all life-long meditators eventually encounter. Some of these I would also categorize as real dangers. An experienced teacher is indispensable for navigating this and I don't find books or writing to be a functional ersatz. I imagine you could probably do ok with instruction over the internet though. Still, there a few books I've enjoyed that stick out. Anything by DT Suzuki is pretty good, though he is a major figure in modern pop-Buddhism that's not really his fault; the hippies became somewhat obsessed with him in the 60s. Alan Watts is also quite good, though I prefer his more academic audio lectures where he explains the basics of Indian philosophy. His other stuff in general is quite syncretic and personally idiosyncratic to his own practice and not really what I'd call standard or traditional, and the hippies got ahold of him too. Another author I enjoy is Taitetsu Unno who writes in English about, and is a minister in, Jodo Shinshu Pure Land Buddhism. There is much less interest in the west for Pure Land, despite it being the overwhelming majority of Buddhists in China and Japan. I learned to meditate at a Jodo Shinshu temple when I was young. Meditation is actually not a core practice of Shin Buddhists at all, most never do it at all, though it does exist in the tradition and is more common in the clergy. The underlying philosophy of Pure Land doesn't really require it as part of the practice, they are mostly chanters; their path to liberation is entirely different from the more well known types like Zen or Tibetan traditions. However this temple shared a facility with a Rinzai Zen sensei who held twice weekly sessions. Shin and Zen have a good and fairly long relationship in Japan so this wasn't that strange to the natives at the temple. I feel like speaking or writing about the experience of meditation is always something of a farce. Its a category of experience I find often beyond my ability to communicate about. At its core is meditation practice. I do a mixture of sitting and walking/working meditation as well as chanting, mostly the nembutsu. I think I understand the aversion to pop-Buddhism though. I learned at a temple of Japanese immigrants and their decedents. They were extremely sensitive to the idea of their religion being a caricature and their non-Japanese visitors being any sort of cultural/religious "tourists". Many of them were quite militant about resisting anything that felt like being exoticized and were very clear that they'd prefer that no non-Japanese were allowed in the services at all, ever. One thing the Shinshu in the USA does that I really like is translate the majority of their teachings into plain English, borrowing many terms from Christianity. Their organization is even called the Buddhist Churches of America. Many of these changes were made post WWII in an effort to integrate more fully into American culture. The temple I attended was founded by former internment camp prisoners who left their old communities en masse after the war and founded entirely new communities in American cities that had little or no Japanese presence before the war. I think that my introduction to the practice coming from this group was very helpful for avoiding a common trend I often see in western Buddhists of what I can only really describe unkindly as LARPing. I have over the years learned a great deal of Japanese and Sanskrit/Pali terminology out of academic interest and as part of deepening the practice. Some of these terms are very useful for describing concepts that sometimes require an entire sentence in English to convey, but I don't think a successful meditation practice requires learning any foreign languages at all, nor adopting the cultural practices of a different people.
charlesf
6mo ago
Instead that particular problem returns on schedule, almost but not quite clockwork, to make an outrageous post and get banned again.
Things like this will always remind me of the Something Awful poster who was banned for posting solicitations for one of his personal businesses in a subforum where that isn't allowed for 11 years. Then, 11 years to the day he broke the exact same rule in the exact same subforum. He caught another 11 year vacation and everyone fully expects to see him in 2035 when this one expires, assuming the forum still exists.
I've lost about 160 lbs on semaglutide and have been able to mostly maintain the lower weight for a number of reasons, but I can speak to the difficulty of "not doing something" and the different experience of the sensation hunger that I have now vs in the past.
Before describing my experiences with the sensation of hunger, I think its worth noting that I was relatively healthy and active as a child through my 20s and early 30s, so I always remembered what it felt like to not be fat and I think actually being healthy before I started gaining weight made it somewhat easier to ignore at first. I think people that are fat their entire lives have it harder. I began overeating after surviving cancer and the depression I experienced from the lifelong nerve damage I have now.
On the sensation of hunger and the specific wording I'm using "the sensation of hunger" and not simply the term hunger, this is part of the meditative practice that I think has allowed me to maintain the weight loss. In Buddhism we talk about dependent phenomena and conditional arising, and the fundamental emptiness of all such things. In this understanding, hunger is not an indication of needing to eat, or at all even related to the nutritional state of my organism, its a sensation like the temperature of the air, or ambient sounds. It never, ever, ever goes away. If I am awake, I am hungry. Starving. Even now that I'm "better", I'm hungry from the moment I awake until I return to sleep. No amount of eating of any type of food has any effect whatsoever on my sensation of hunger. In fact, eating generally makes me even hungrier, as well as exhausted. I could eat so much food that I had trouble walking, I would feel like I was on the verge of vomiting from how stuffed I was, and I was still starving. I think something like this drives the behaviors of many, if not all, obese people to some extent. I am fortunate that the same techniques I use to manage chronic pain work pretty well with chronic, inescapable hunger.
Until semaglutide. I knew once it started to work that there was probably always going to be an end date. The normal American medical system was a failure from the very beginning for me here, I've always had to obtain it on the 'gray' market so to speak. (Its actually much cheaper too, about 20% what my clinic's pharmacy would charge w/o insurance, which always refused to pay for it) So, while I still am able to maintain access to a "maintenance dose" now, I knew from the outset that I needed to use the possibly very limited time I had access to retrain my body and my mind to a new relationship with eating. I spend about 30-45 minutes per day meditating, and have for over 20 years now. One of these daily sessions is focused entirely on internalizing the fundamental emptiness of all phenomena, but specifically the sensation of hunger, to mentally sever the relationship between feeling the sensation of hunger and the arising desire to eat. Its now simply another flavor of physical pain. Its been largely successful; I've been able to sign a peace treaty, so to speak, with hunger. I do not attempt to fight it, or suppress it, but simply experience and observe the sensation without it conditioning my behavior. Without the previous experience with meditation for coping with chronic pain I don't think I could have done this. Using meditation to "short circuit" the connection between physical pain and mental suffering was much more difficult than addressing hunger, though the two are similar in many ways, the primary similarity for me being the absolute unavoidability of both. The pain my body produces is just as omnipresent as the hunger, and is likewise a false signal. The depression that I used to feel from chronic pain contributed to my overeating. In a way both of these issues had to be processed together to address either of them individually.
The second set of changes: I had to train my body to accept, and then expect, a completely different relationship with eating. I had to build enduring lifestyle habits that were unique to my situation. I mentioned earlier that actually eating offers no relief to the sensation of hunger and usually just makes it more severe. For me what worked is not eating at all, most of the time. Three meals a day, or even two, is entirely unworkable. Given the very low number of calories I can consume before I start to gain weight again, three meals would all have to be the size of snacks for most people. As I was able to cope with the hunger with the medication, I began to reduce my calorie intake, settling at what my doctor said it appropriate for a 6'3'' man, about 2400cal per day. This is way too much. I'm not sure exactly how people's metabolisms differ, and how much being sedentary due to my disability contributes, but at 2400 calories a day my weight will stabilize at about 330lbs. Even 2000 only gets me to about 290-300lbs. So I stopped counting daily calories for the most part and now account per weekly intake: 8000-9000 calories per week stabilizes my weight at about 235lbs. This generally takes the form of one 1000-1500 calorie meal per day in the evening with one 0 calorie day per week. I buy food once per week based on these limits. If I somehow eat everything before its time to shop again I'm looking at more than one 0 calorie day. I have to eat in the evening as it exhausts me and causes varying levels of brain fog eventually driving me to bed. After about 2 years of this my body is acclimated and I will actually become nauseous if I eat more, though I'm still starving the entire time I'm nauseous. It never goes away.
I think the people that gain the weight right back are largely letting the medication "do all the work" as it were. So, at least while they are on it they have the metabolism and habits of a normal person. Sort of. I suppose its possible to stay on it for life if the supply and price gouging issues can be resolved, but right now most people can't or don't. If you don't use the opportunity provided by the medication to reestablish a new relationship with eating and retrain your body and mind then its likely to only be temporary. In a way I'm fortunate to have already had the toolbox for dealing with chronic pain.
charlesf
6mo ago
The anti-cheat services compile quite a bit of data but its generally not released to the public beyond limited disclosures to try to sell their services to game studios. Valve anti cheat is one of the bigger ones. Its expensive, but customers will get access to the "rap sheets" as it were for various online credentials. IPs, UBID, steam installs, accounts related by payment method, hardware IDs etc. You don't get large data sets to just browse, but you can see the history or reports and flags for clients that connect to your game, substantiated or otherwise. You can set up auto-bans for known cheat engines or bad actors.
Not even seeing, let alone interacting with, a single other human.
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