charlesf
8d 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
13d 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
13d 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
18d 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
18d 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
18d 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
21d 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.
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.
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