jericho
1yr ago
I think part of it must surely also be generational / geographic. For instance, I went to high school in the early 2000s and saw all of one fight, and it resulted in one kid suspended and the other expelled due to a zero tolerance of violence policy. I didn't see any bullying of nerds through my school years, but if there had been any there it's likely it did not take the form that is usually depicted in older TV / movies (definitely no swirlies or people being stuffed in lockers) since that specific form of bullying would be punished harshly. Other nerds around my age I met later in life who reported bullying during high school basically all reported it as taking the form of verbal abuse, things being stolen or online harassment rather than physical violence . It's possible their teachers at the time would have reported no bullying happening because the kind of bullying they were looking out for (and that they had grown up with) was different than the kind of bullying occurring.
jericho
1yr ago
My understanding is that various drug manufacturers have taken steps to avoid their drugs being used for executions (believe this happened for both pentobarbital and sodium thiopental), which has led to prisons needing to use compounding pharmacies to make the drugs for them, with varied quality.
I've also read that many doctors don't want to be involved in the testing or administering of lethal injection cocktails, so the state kind of has to take who it can get, leading to more varied quality there.
I'm guessing MAiD hasn't yet had the same degree of pushback from those groups, at least so far (though I would be very surprised if it hasn't had any). That could certainly change in the future.
Also, frankly- I think comfort is a much higher priority for doctor assisted suicide than it is for execution by lethal injection. I think screaming pain moves the popular support needle away from euthanasia much faster than from execution.
jericho
1yr ago
My family had cats growing up, but they were pretty standoffish. Current cat is perhaps the most dog-like I've ever encountered, to the extent that he even likes to play fetch. Certainly a wide range of cat "personalities".
jericho
1yr ago
Spoilers for Mad Men, but I think it depends on who you consider the protagonist. From episode 1 Don is already pretty ruthless and confident. Peggy on the other hand is an excellent example of this slide/rise (also quite a few of the supporting characters).
jericho
1yr ago
Maybe that's true if we're talking about murdering one person versus murdering their whole family, but when we're working with a scale that is beyond emotional comprehension for most (all?) people, I don't think the distinction is important.
What do you think the cutoff is for emotional comprehension? I think it is higher than you suspect, if for no other reason than how that filters out to survivors.
For instance, on a raw level I don't think I can really process 300,000 deaths versus 6 million deaths. But using a hypothetical of something awful happening to my state, that's the difference between probably having a passing acquaintance die versus almost certainly losing multiple people close to me. Just because the quantities are more than I could reasonably handle on a direct basis doesn't mean there can't be a qualitative difference. The macro very much informs the micro.
jericho
1yr ago
Protip if you genuinely enjoy Sirius XM- Sirius reps will cave at the slightest bit of pressure if you say you're looking to cancel, I've kept the $5/month promotional rate for the last 5 years.
jericho
1yr ago
That's fair! I will add another thought, once again trying to put in perspective why these differences between two large numbers matter due to how the macro impacts the micro.
There's a John Calvin quote about relics:
There is no abbey so poor as not to have a specimen [of the True Cross]. In some places there are large fragments, as at the Holy Chapel in Paris, at Poitiers, and at Rome, where a good-sized crucifix is said to have been made of it. In brief, if all the pieces that could be found were collected together, they would make a big ship-load. Yet the Gospel testifies that a single man was able to carry it.
So, if X churches claim to have Y amount of the True Cross, and X times Y is far greater than the possible dimensions of the True Cross, then obviously some of those churches are lying or have been taken in.
Similarly, at some point when the numbers go low enough (even with those numbers still being more than enough to be well into the realm of the truly monstrous/genocidal!) one is implicitly accusing living Jews of lying (or, at best, having been lied to by other relatives) about their relatives who died in the Holocaust. Does it make sense why that would be seen as at least in the same ballpark as denial?
jericho
1yr ago
That's interesting! I wonder if there's even less today given the damage done to European towns and cities in WW2? It seems the far easier criticism would have been things like Saint's bones (I thought there was a similar quote from a protestant or atheist about all the Saints that walked around with many extra fingers but couldn't find it), though in both cases it isn't like the Church is saying that no one has ever made a forgery.
That being said, my purpose was more that despite that quote not directly saying "these churches are wrong/lying", Calvin's (apparently wholly incorrect) estimates of mass would necessitate that, independent of Calvin's estimates being accurate.
jericho
1yr ago
Got into VR recently, so I've been playing Beat Saber and Skyrim VR. Looking to see about setting up Elite Dangerous for VR in the near future.
For Beat Saber, I can get why most people who try it love it. I'm not usually much for rhythm games but it's quite fun and surprisingly decent cardio. Main complaint is that I don't like enough of the songs on offer to give it staying power. Looking into custom maps, just concerned most will be tuned to too high of a difficulty level.
For Skyrim VR (admittedly modded with what are generally regarded as "the essentials"), it's wild how different an experience it is and how new it feels given the hours I've already dropped into the non-VR version. The feeling of just wandering around the world and delving into dungeons is great. It has made me very hopeful for Elite Dangerous- my favorite part of that has always been exploration and I feel like VR will enhance that greatly.
jericho
1yr ago
Sounds like we have similar taste in games (and objectives, in any strategy game where I get territory on the Mediterranean coast I have an unshakeable urge to Mare Nostrum it).
In the past I've found myself in a bit of a loop with CK, Total War and Bannerlord where I go to the next one when I feel what is lacking from the current one. Something like: Bannerlord, but the diplomacy and kingdom management is lacking so -> CK, but then the battles are too automated so -> TW, but then I wish I was more in the thick of it so -> Bannerlord and repeat, not always in that exact order. Throwing in the occasional medieval-ish RPG for good measure. I have been greatly tempted by the CK3 mod where you fight the battles in Bannerlord, but I've heard it is a bit of a hot mess currently.
jericho
1yr ago
I'll for sure check it out. I played through the campaign unmodded some time back, but never did a sandbox career. Will definitely look into the roguetech mod when I do.
jericho
1yr ago
Could you elaborate on the SSN aspect? In the US one's SSN number is treated as kind of the ultimate verification for things, someone having it is a Very Big Deal. Is it used the same way in Sweden? While I'd be concerned for my privacy with some of the other aspects, I feel like having SSN publicly available would effectively make it worthless.
jericho
1yr ago
If we accept both positions, that unequal power structures undermines consent, and that there's an unequal power structure between whites and minorities (predominantly blacks), then this should mean that all interracial sex between a black person and a white person is rape.
There's definitely been back and forth in progressive circles about some views circling back to 1950's American Conservatism and this is absolutely one of them. Haven't seen it as much recently (could just be due to traveling in different circles, though I hope the "you've just reinvented anti-miscegenation" argument won out), but I definitely remember this coming up in progressive circles some years back, with people arguing such relationships were "problematic", but not rape (similar tone of discussion to say a 28 year old woman with a 62 year old guy- not quite willing to call it rape but people casting aspersions nonetheless). Though I'm sure someone somewhere went ahead and made the final push to the rape label.
I will say, when it came up it was almost always white guy x non-white girl and much less often white girl x non-white guy.
Whereas a white female slave owner (or someone adjacent to the slave owner, who still holds power over the slave, like a wife or daughter) and her male slave are portrayed as having equal ability to consent.
This specific scenario being the exception, I've absolutely seen this called out as the male slave being raped.
jericho
1yr ago
Can't comment on the other ones, but searching on reddit itself just seems to be terrible/nonsensical/godawful, regardless of what you're searching for. I almost always get significantly better results from googling "reddit [whatever I want to search for on reddit]" than actually searching it on reddit.
Bisexuality. We have no idea what to do with these. Especially what might be called "market bisexuality;" the observed tendency of bisexuals to end up taking the path of least resistance (typically sleeping with men) in any situation.
I had always figured the "bi guys are actually just gay, bi girls are actually just straight" idea was due to same sex experimentation being considered more normal for women (i.e "college lesbians" being more of a thing than "college gays"), and that could certainly also be a factor, but the "market explanation" makes a lot of sense to me and is somehow one I've not heard before.
jericho
1yr ago
That equivalency makes sense, but to be clear the LUGs I have met were all at colleges with roughly equal gender distributions (though I've also known "Catholic school lesbians" that were closer to the prison situation).
To clarify, I mostly meant the idea of "bisexual man = basically gay and bisexual woman = basically straight" could stem from both:
-
One seeing bisexual-identifying women often having a lower Kinsey # than bisexual-identifying men due to same-sex physical intimacy and sexual experimentation being more acceptable for women
-
Even people who are true 3's on the Kinsey scale are likely to have their partners weighted towards men due to it being easier to hook up with men
And that I hadn't considered 2. before, only 1.
Although 1. might be changing with Gen Z based on the fact that the increase in % LGBT of Gen Z seems to be primarily from an increase in the "B".
(using Kinsey scale for ease of discussion rather than as an endorsement of its accuracy)
jericho
1yr ago
At the bottom, or even the middle, race might serve as a better proxy for coarsely compatible genes than achievement. Because there isn't a lot of achievement to judge by.
The specific examples you gave reminded me of some of the (all white) parents on my mother's (lower middle class) side of the family.
I think there is much to be said about how the loss of "good" non-college jobs (especially in certain regions) in the US has led to a blending of the middle, working and underclass.
My cousins on that side had kids with people who, on paper, were very similar to them in terms of finances, education, race, religion, etc (often even meeting in their shared workplaces). But, if you went a generation or two back, the class differences would be apparent. And while they'd all fall under "red tribe", looking closer there would be clear cultural differences as well.
Obviously that still leaves open the % split between nature and nurture in terms of behavior, my point being the difficulty in distinguishing based on achievement may continue to become more difficult as automation marches on and class divides widen at the top and narrow near the middle and bottom.
jericho
1yr ago
Same. I don't have a strong drive to make my parents proud, but I have a VERY strong drive to not make them ashamed. To @hydroacetylene's point, it certainly helps that most of the things that would make them ashamed would be bad things in and of themselves.
Housing prices seem to be a major factor. Adjusting for inflation, my sister and brother-in-law are each earning more than both of my parents combined were when they bought a house, but ended up paying more for a smaller house in a worse neighborhood.
And this isn't even in one of the cities that's known for having ridiculous real estate price increases.
Edit to add: Career-wise, both my father (at that point in his life) and my sibling + in-law would be considered very successful. I'm not at the same level, but still above the curve. Also worth noting that my mother was able to quit her job shortly after the purchase of the house, so my father alone was able to support them + later on kids.
jericho
1yr ago
Since others have already covered weight lifting (personally my experience on that front matches closer to yours):
I don't think I've ever experienced "runner's high", but I do find cross-country running genuinely enjoyable (as well as walking and jogging). But only that- I do not enjoy running on treadmills or tracks and I do not enjoy rowing or biking, whether in nature or on machines. On the flip side, other family members absolutely hate running but fell in love with rowing or biking.
I wouldn't have been born without Lord Trevelyan, that doesn't mean my options are to either hang myself or a portrait of him.
jericho
1yr ago
I never thought I'd see a Pro/Con for NYC with "friendlier" in the Pro column, but I suppose it makes sense from an international perspective (NYC is routinely rated the least friendly city in the US).
jericho
1yr ago
I am intrigued by your definition of white, have you written more about it elsewhere?
Anecdotal, but this was my experience with a decent variety of in-person volunteering (food banks, soup kitchens, summer camps for troubled teens and for mentally disabled, habitat for humanity, special olympics, etc) in the cities I spent my high school through early career years (pops ranging from around ~.5 mil to 1 mil).
For basically all of those, there were either decently long waiting lists, make-work (i.e assigning multiple people to perform a task easily performed by just one) or both. Also similar impression of the people I was helping- I do not believe that was because those cities lacked the truly destitute or the profoundly handicapped, just that they weren't who I was dealing with as an uncredentialled volunteer.
Honestly my experiences with volunteering in my younger years have led me to focus on the near (friends, family, immediate co-workers, same-block neighbors) and the far (malaria nets, etc) for giving. The middle seems saturated.
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