guajalote
8d ago
I deliberately wrote decent burrito, meaning something roughly on par with Chipotle. That did not exist most places in the US 30 years ago.
I can't imagine the Midwest being so very different as not to have its own terrible burrito factory at the time?
My mom grew up in a very rural part of the midwest. She saw an avocado for the first time as a teenager when another kid who had been on vacation somewhere brought one to the school as a curiosity to show people.
guajalote
8d ago
Tell me if I'm getting the argument here:
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You feel your life is worse than your father's.
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When people argue your beliefs are factually incorrect, you say its about "the messaging strategy, not the object debate."
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Based on your feelings (which need not be true at the object level), you believe you are entitled to submit a list of "specific asks" to someone (?) who is for some reason obligated to implement them.
Can you flesh out the last part?
guajalote
9d ago
So first of all... yes.
That is certainly not the experience of most people 30+ years ago. My mother who grew up in the Midwest never laid eyes on a burrito until she was at least in her 20s. My father grew up in the SF bay area, so he likely ate them from a young age, but he's in a small minority. And even he didn't have access to sushi or other such "exotic" food we take for granted today.
But my point is that I think you are probably doing better than your parents and you are simply failing to recognize it (or if not you personally, then at least the average member of your cohort). Your kids are 4 to a bedroom, but you admit that is because you are simply prioritizing your spending differently. You are spending more on things like food and healthcare and in exchange receiving much higher quality food and healthcare than your father's generation did. My burrito question is emblematic of this fact. And you can't just handwave away modern cars and phones and TVs and the internet and everything else your father didn't have. You are objectively choosing to spend money to get more and better stuff in other areas of your life for yourself and your children, and in exchange you are settling for slightly worse housing. You and your family are objectively better off overall.
I completely agree we need to address affordability, because it's good to do that regardless of whether people are doing better than their parents or not. There are a bunch of simple things we can do to accomplish that, but they largely lack political support: deregulate housing and make it much easier to build, get rid of tariffs, lower taxes and government spending.
guajalote
9d ago
Apply the burrito test to your own life. When your father was your age, was a decent burrito available at a nearby restaurant at any price, let alone $20? Unless you live in certain places like California, the answer is almost certainly "no."
guajalote
29d ago
They were pulled from the home by economic incentives, not economic need. As wages rose, employment became an increasingly attractive alternative to staying home.
guajalote
1mo ago
By that logic, the fact that Trump chose the word "bleach" instead of "disinfecting nasal spray" is what cost lives.
guajalote
1mo ago
I think the progressive would claim that immigrants overperform in football because they are oppressed and excluded from higher education and white collar employment opportunities. Still a dumb argument, as it implies that getting rid of oppression would also "destroy football throughout the UK," but not an endorsement of HBD.
guajalote
2mo ago
In general it is impossible to predict when a crash will happen until it has already happened. So I am a greypiller. You should always try to be prepared for the possibility of a downturn (whether in the larger economy or in your own personal economic fortunes) but you're fooling yourself if you think you can predict them.
I like the Killers, and I do pay attention to lyrics, but I think you're right in that most of the Killers' lyrics are nonsense. Sure, the song has general themes of jealousy, but not much coherence beyond that.
Consider the first two lines. "Comin' out of my cage and I've been doin' just fine / Gotta, gotta be down because I want it all." These lyrics barely make sense and seemingly have nothing to do with the rest of the song. And then you get to lines like "Turning saints into the sea / Swimming through sick lullabies" that make even less sense. Sure, you can try to interpret them to mean something, but they're mostly just there to sound cool. I doubt Brandon Flowers intended any deeper meaning.
It's not even clear to me that the song is about infidelity. I read it as being about a guy who is pining after a woman who its not interested in him, and he is imagining scenarios where she is sleeping with other men ("it's all in my head").
guajalote
3mo ago
I think "chud" and "chad" have started to merge in current usage to some extent, such that the term chud is now more like an endearing, jokey insult. It reminds me of how millennial boys would refer to ourselves and our friends as "assholes" in a positive way. Also reminds me of how the connotations of the word "dude" shifted in the past.
guajalote
6mo ago
The weatherman isn't giving you the weather. He's giving it to the news station that is then broadcasting to you.
This is a loophole you can drive a truck through. "Party B isn't giving unsolicited information to Party C. Party B is giving it to the broadcast station, who is then broadcasting it to Party C."
guajalote
6mo ago
I'm not sure I accept your premise that advertising is a net negative. There are certainly many things I have gladly purchased that I found out about through advertising. My intuitive sense is that ads have had a net positive or at least net neutral impact on my life, not a negative one.
But I will accept the premise that we want to ban ads for the sake of the discussion.
Advertising is whenever party A pays party B to give unsolicited information to party C.
As one of the "resident lawyers" I don't think there's a way to meaningfully define advertising in a way that only captures what you want to capture.
First off, your definition doesn't stop party A from directly advertising to party C. This is the first major loophole, and it's incredibly easy to get around. Big companies just increase the size of their marketing departments and do all ads in house. Little companies can't afford to do this and just get crushed. Bad outcome.
Second, there's the issue of "pays." In the example you give, you seem to interpret this narrowly to mean "give money" but there are many ways to compensate or incentivize people to do things without directly paying them. So this is another relatively easy loophole to exploit.
Third, there's "unsolicited information" which is extremely nebulous and includes many things we don't generally think of as advertising:
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Suppose I turn on the TV hoping to watch the local news. The news broadcast is interrupted by a weather report. I didn't want to see the weather report because I get the weather from an app on my phone. Isn't the weather report an example of party A (the station) paying party B (the weatherman) to give unsolicited information (the forecast) to party C (me)?
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Suppose I pull up behind a car with bumper stickers on it (e.g. "Baby on Board" or the Christian fish). Isn't this an example of party A (the driver) paying party B (the maker of the bumper sticker) to give unsolicited information (the info on the bumper sticker) to party C (me)?
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Suppose I buy clothing with the brand's logo prominently displayed on it. Isn't this an example of party A (me) paying party B (the clothing company) to give unsolicited information (the clothing brand I am wearing) to party C (others around me)?
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Suppose I hire an artist to make me a large sign supporting my favorite politician and I place it in my front yard. Isn't this an example of party A (me) paying party B (the artist) to give unsolicited information (my political views) to party C (others around me)?
guajalote
6mo ago
Courts instruct juries on the meaning of the law, then the jury is supposed to apply that meaning to the facts. So, at least in theory, the jury is not supposed to be determining the meaning of the law.
More importantly, jury trials are extremely expensive, and companies want to know what's legal and what's illegal without having to spend ungodly amounts of time and money litigating in Court. Clearly written laws save a lot of money and are easier and cheaper to enforce.
guajalote
6mo ago
The argument is that different people have different preferences with respect to ads. Some people don't really mind them and will accept them in exchange for cost savings. Other people hate ads and have the option to make choices to avoid them. Thus the current system allows everyone to satisfy their preferences reasonably well. A system that banned ads would only allow one of these groups to satisfy their preferences.
guajalote
7mo ago
As a lawyer I just want to mention that not all lawyers adhere to what you call the "lawyer"-side viewpoint. In particular, trial litigation tends to be highly meritocratic because you are constantly going head-to-head against other attorneys in hearings and trials. Being good at your job and having reputation for credibility goes a long way.
guajalote
7mo ago
So far as I can tell, what this guy is saying is true for a majority of men who have young kids. Pretty much every father I know has admitted that he can't wait until his kids are older, and that simply being around them is exhausting.
I'm a father of a one-year-old and I'm also an attorney who works a lot of hours. It's true that taking care of young kids gets exhausting or boring at a certain point. On the other hand, it's still way less exhausting and stressful than working an actual job.
If I had to choose between spending 12 hours a day with my kid and 10 minutes a day working, or spending 12 hours a day working and 10 minutes with my kid (assuming all other things, including income, remained equal) I would certainly choose to spend 12 hours a day with my kid. Yes, it would get exhausting at times, but it's still way more fun and rewarding than work. I have a hard time understanding the psychology of anyone who would choose otherwise.
The Christian God or a different one? I'm curious what specific creation myth(s) are so common in China that 1/3 of the population believes in them.
The impression I got from speaking with Tibetans about their creation myth is that they seem to be "old earth creationists" who believe the earth is older than it actually, like hundreds of billions or trillions of years old. Not sure if the same holds in China.
guajalote
8mo ago
I've only seen a few episodes of Avatar and it's been a long time, but if I recall, being a "warrior" in the world of Avatar is more like being a DnD Adventurer or a Knight of the Round Table than it is like being an actual soldier in a real-world war. Warriors rarely die, when they do they die heroic and meaningful deaths, everyone's fighting for a meaningful cause, etc. In a world like that, where war is fun, it feels unfair to exclude girls from the fun so they are obliged to include them. Even Tolkien had a few badass girlboss warriors in LoTR. In the real world, and in more realistic or gimdark fictional settings, it makes more sense to exclude women from combat.
guajalote
9mo ago
Public defense does not pay very well and SF cost of living is sky high, so it's nearly impossible to live in SF on a public defender's salary. Even if people want to do public defense in SF, it's difficult to sustain financially.
guajalote
10mo ago
I think Lakoff's analysis gets causation totally backwards. It is not that a speaker's choice of language shapes his audience's beliefs. Rather, an effective speaker chooses his language so that it will resonate with his audience's pre-existing beliefs and attitudes. It is the audience that determines the parameters of what effective use of language looks like. Lakoff's view strikes me as a misattribution of agency. He thinks conservatives are manipulating their audience with their word choices, when in fact conservatives' word choices are being dictated by their audience.
guajalote
1yr ago
I replied to your OP a few weeks ago expressing skepticism that using ChatGPT was actually improving your writing. This comment reinforces my skepticism. Yes, the ChatGPT output has fewer "errors" but it does a worse job of conveying the message than the user's own error-ridden text. Even from a purely stylistic standpoint, the ChatGPT output is worse. One of the hallmarks of bad English prose is using extra words to say nothing, and ChatGPT is guilty of this in virtually every sentence. It's not the perfect being the enemy of the good. The ChatGPT output is not good.
Adjusted for inflation, do you make significantly less than your father did at the same age? If so, that would explain your experience. But it is very much not the typical US experience. Real wages have risen consistently, and this is true across all income deciles.
Of course, there is a distribution of outcomes, and some people will inevitably see their incomes decrease even as most incomes increase. You may be one of those people, for whatever reason. This is not a new phenomenon, and it doesn't warrant new policies to address it. It's just a fact of statistics that some people will (based on genetics, luck, whatever) diverge from the typical outcome and end up making less than their parents did, even while most people are making more.
If that's not the case, then it means you are choosing to allocate your resources differently than your father did. You are choosing to live in a high cost of living area (the fact that it's the same zip code is irrelevant; the relative desirability of zip codes shifts over time). You are choosing to spend more on other things besides housing square footage.
How did you take that away from what I said? I said you were choosing to spend your money differently. That's not accusing you of being wasteful (although if you are being wasteful, that would certainly be a relevant fact). I'm saying you are prioritizing other goods more highly than you prioritize housing square footage. That may be a perfectly legitimate thing to do.
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