cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
3mo ago
Summer pool season started a few weeks ago. I'm on the board for the local pool. It is probably one of my most time consuming volunteer activities.
On the upside the board is mostly fun people who have real lives, so the meetings are often productive with a minimal amount of political jockeying. We drink at board meetings, and one of the guys on the board runs a local wine shop and does a yearly wine and dine event for board members.
On the downside the type of people that join the board are still generally busybodies. The treasurer is very opinionated on people following the rules and has a strong desire to punish rule breakers. She had a very Political-Managerial-Class idea of how to enforce rules though. Her latest idea was a strongly worded email to all the members with enumerated punishments for not following particular rules. I had to point out that the people breaking rules were probably least likely to read any such email, and that we already had the authority to punish them we didn't need to warn them first.
I would generally suggest people get involved with their local community. There will absolutely be people that disagree with politically. But if you are serving a common cause then that political difference gets papered over as irrelevant more than you'd think. And it's a good way to have things bent in a direction you'd prefer.
I will maybe share more board stories in the future. Some stories might be heavily more culture war oriented, like the little trans kid on the swim team, or the twelve year old that pulled a knife out on another kid in the park across from the pool. These stories are kind of uninteresting in the way that we are generally trying to optimize for non-controversy. None of us want to be in a media segment about trans kids on a local swim team.
The actual controversial stuff that people argue over during the board meetings are financial things. Money is tight, and it's hard to know how to beat spend it to maintain a good experience for the pool members.
cjet79
3mo ago
If it was anglo names that would help with memorization. If it was mainly non-anglo names I think I'd be just as screwed. I've learned from reading translated works that only anglo names actually stick with me. And I fear in today's culture it would be lots of non-anglo names.
cjet79
3mo ago
I had the opposite reaction medication names are the fucking worst.
If you want me to remember the name of a medication name it something that makes sense like "blood pressure fixer" not something that looks like a latin vomited up a few different flower names. If there is more than one blood pressure fixer pill then start adding numbers or company names after the initial part of the name.
cjet79
3mo ago
I love being at the pool in the summer. I live in Virginia which is hot and muggy in the summer but still snows a few times in the winter. I hate cold weather. Anything freezing and below is too cold for me.
Hot weather and sweat is something I can sort of adapt to and deal with for a few hours. I've been to India in August/September. It's not pleasant if there isn't a pool I can jump into, but I'd much rather deal with that than a cold winter.
Without a pool, perfect weather is just whatever allows me to live outside as if it was inside. Post rainstorm in the summer is pretty awesome, cuz it also tends to tamp down on the bugs for a little bit.
cjet79
3mo ago
I'm a Washington capitals fan, loved watching them celebrate when they won the cup some years back. The DC area is usually a little buttoned up and proper, so it was fun seeing wild party culture come here even for a very brief window. I remember the caps players swimming in public fountains in the middle of the day with cheering fans and confused tourists from other countries standing around taking videos.
Also Ovechkin beat Gretskys goal record this year, which was a decent consolation prize for them losing in the second round of the playoffs. Some of the players that have been on the team since I became a fan are starting to leave or announce retirements. I'm hoping they can rebuild with a great new team.
Ovi also feels like he is from a different era of sports, staying with a single team for his entire career even though he is a star player.
cjet79
3mo ago
I'm wondering if we watched a different Iraq war.
I remember nothing but breathless exhortations about him definitely having WMDs. And that there was evidence because of yellow cake refinement. I don't even really know what that is. But then we invaded Iraq and there was a two or three year search for WMDs that then turned out to be totally fruitless. The only thing approaching WMDs were the defunct chemical weapons stockpiles we gave to them to fight Iran.
For a lot of people it was a huge black pill moment on media credibility.
cjet79
3mo ago
None of those stories clicked with me either. Though usually cradle and worth the candle get people.
I'd second the Mother of Learning recommendation that wayfarer suggested. If you bounce off that as well then the genre just isn't something I think you'll enjoy.
But if you want tighter storytelling and more of the arc story completion then maybe The Perfect Run might be a better entry point.
cjet79
3mo ago
I read quickly and nearly constantly, so that helps. Also its been 8 years since I started reading this genre. 25-30 stories a year isn't a hard number to hit. I've also dropped many long stories, I don't feel compelled to finish anything I've started, and if I read 200 pages of a 1000 page story I still consider myself to have "read" it.
cjet79
3mo ago
No graphical sex depictions in arkendriyhthrist. More of a fade to black style. Arks has a lot of middle but also a lot of ending. Honestly they could have stopped before writing either of the last two books and it would have felt complete.
The world building is top notch in arks, autist levels of details and background. The story probably drags a bit too much because of the level of details provided. So that might be a plus or minus depending on your preferences.
The church of most of the gods are good. There is a god of magic that is a little crazy and not good.
Protagonist is not OP in the story for at least the first 5000-10000 pages.
Governments vary quite a bit. Some are basically third world shit hole tier levels of incompetent and evil. Others are highly competently run by millenia old metal life forms.
On mobile so I can't dig up the specific stories.
The Perfect Run has a time loop aspect, superheroes setting, main protagonist has a save point he can set. It's complete and doesn't faf around as much.
Millennial mage is filled with likeable characters and nice humans.
OP characters are admittedly very common and that is short circuiting a lot of my recommendations.
cjet79
3mo ago
Mother of Learning is usually my first recommendation, if someone doesn't like it then I just tell them the genre is not for them.
Sympathetic protagonist my favorite might be Ar'Kendrithyst. Its an incredibly long story, but it is complete! The protagonist and his daughter get pulled into another world with a system that has stats and skills and leveling up. The protagonist is a bleeding heart liberal in the best sense of that term. He is a kind man that cares about others and for a long time has reservations about even killing monsters (the monsters in the setting are generally totally unsympathetic, they are either straight up evil, or amoral killing machines). He genuinely wants to make the world a better place for everyone, and the story is about how he accomplishes that getting over increasingly large obstacles. Main reason it might not be for you (or anyone really) is that the protagonist is bisexual. No graphic sex scenes, and its not very shoved in the face, but its present.
Any other aspects of MOL you liked? I've read like 200-300 stories in this genre, and about 20-30 of them are ones i might recommend for various reasons. That hit rate sounds terrible I guess, but lots of mid stories that just have better versions of them out there.
cjet79
3mo ago
Have you enjoyed any progression fantasy or wuxia novels?
I really like the genre but I bounce off of some stories real hard. Reverend Insanity is one that I could see recommended a thousand times and on the thousand and first time I'd still say "Our tastes are just different and I won't like that novel." I'm not even willing to give it a shot and try reading it.
If I see we have any overlapping preferences I might be able to recommend stuff.
cjet79
3mo ago
Yeah the BLS does good stats.
They also do various measurements for "unemployed" too https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t15.htm
cjet79
3mo ago
I think it is more of a symptom of the breakdown of communities. Shame works pretty well for someone within your congregation.
Someone with no attachments to others? No family, no religious community, no coworkers, etc. it's gonna bounce right off them.
cjet79
3mo ago
I think they just nominated Trump as king and kind of based all social standing on his level of approval. Which works as a quick way to build an alternative system, but maybe is not the best long term solution.
cjet79
3mo ago
Shame should be for those you love, and for when you can feel pride about them in equal or greater measure.
I think it works well as a tribal adaptation, for when someone else's actions can reflect on you personally, or when you realize that your own actions have caused a great decrease in social standing among you and your closest people.
The weaponization of shame against your out group just leads to your out group being inoculated against all shame. It is unlikely to stop their behavior long term.
cjet79
3mo ago
Original article was proposing enforcement of rules against bikers. I do know that cities often have cops on bicycles.
Maximum speed and some enforced guidelines on sidewalks sounds great. Where places are less dense enforcement would be hard but also less necessary as there would be fewer pedestrians.
Roadways for motorized vehicles, sidewalks for human powered things.
cjet79
3mo ago
I'd be fine with bikes lanes on side walks. Usually bike lanes are added to roads, if sidewalks were just enlarged and the bike lanes were added to them that would seem better to me.
cjet79
3mo ago
Sorry slight exaggeration. I can imagine people dying from a simple fall, it just seems less likely than when they get hit by a car.
cjet79
3mo ago
Bikes yield to everyone on nature paths and it has not effectively banned them at all. Instead such paths are filled with bikers.
I'd be fine with bikes only on streets in areas of less than 30mph speeds. As soon as it hits 35 though they are asking cars to generally slow down to accommodate them. At 45mph I think they are a danger to themselves and all other drivers.
I'm fine with effectively banning what I'd consider "racing cycling" this ain't the tour de France. Just like highways aren't NASCAR or formula 1. All people in shared commute spaces have to sacrifice the top speed of their vehicle for the safety of themselves and others.
cjet79
3mo ago
The deaths to pedestrians from cyclists seems like a bad statistic for either side to bring up, and a bad statistic in general.
- Cars are obviously more deadly on a per incident basis. I can't imagine a pedestrian surviving if I hit them regular speed in a car. I can't imagine a pedestrian dying if I hit them regular speed on a bike.
- Bike incidents are likely to be high, they share more spaces with pedestrians. Cars and pedestrians rarely overlap, they tend to intersect.
- The per mile deadliness makes bikes actually sound really deadly given how non deadly they seem. But that statistic is thrown off by high miles travelled by cars and low by bikes.
I think the risk to pedestrians seems minimal and bikes should just fully share the sidewalk with pedestrians. Bikes hitting people is most likely to ruin both people's day, but cars hitting bikes is most likely to ruin someone's life.
Every cyclist I've ever suggested this to hates it, and I think it's just because they don't like going as slow as you sometimes need to go on a sidewalk to be safe. But it is often what they are asking drivers to do: go slowly for the cyclists safety on the road. Which is when it turns into a whole political question. No one likes going slower than they can, so who has to suffer the indignity drivers or cyclists?
The answer seems obvious in my head, but I know I identify with drivers more (despite riding a bike around the neighborhood pretty often)
cjet79
3mo ago
I think lots of games end up encouraging unfun tactics and have to have artificial rules in place to prevent those strategies from dominating.
One obvious rule like this is just a raw limit on numbers. Matches are x vs x. Some MMOs like EVE online dont enforce this, and EVE as a result became heavily about how many people you could field.
FPS games have problems with "camping" and snipers. But hiding and killing the enemy from a distance when they don't have a chance to fight back is an objectively smart thing to do in a real war situation.
Flanking is one of the most basic tactics that tends to organically evolve all the time and not get whacked down by developers.
In RTS games: basically everything except has a real world analog.
cjet79
3mo ago
That is interesting, I'm not surprised I like the books better, but I wouldn't have thought many other people were the same.
The books can be sparse on details in a way that I like. The show fills in those visual details, mostly because it is forced to do so by the medium of film.
cjet79
3mo ago
I've been reading the murderbot series after watching a few episodes of the show and deciding I liked it and didn't want to wait.
cjet79
4mo ago
I think I remember some IRS rule going into effect a decade ago that said that if you renounced US citizenship you get taxed on all your assets as if they were income for that year.
I only knew about this because I studiously have followed libertarian arguments for a long time, including "if you don't like it you should leave" and the rejoinder now being obvious "ya and have a third of all my wealth stolen for the privilege of leaving, thanks assholes".
I think there was a lot of people leaving right before this rule went into effect.
We ban them from the pool. Short term bans at first and escalate to full membership removal. There have also been some party rentals that haven't cleaned up at all, cleaning fee for them.
By comparison to this forum I feel like there are way more options for punishment.
More options
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