jeroboam
11mo ago
Minor annoyance Friday. I'd like to take a page from our European brothers and whinge about something that has crawled across the pond. This time, the direction of flow is reversed. A European custom is being imported to America.
I am talking about hotel bedding. Specifically, the trend of having a single, heavy duvet as my one and only bed covering at a hotel.
This bizarre bedding choice seems ideal only from the perspective of saving a few shekels on laundry. It is completely awful in every other way. Why must I choose between no covers and a giant heavy cover? There is no way to be comfortable if the room is above 60 °F (which is guaranteed because hotels also muck with the AC unit to save money). I find myself waking up, drenched in sweat, only to kick the heavy duvet off, then freeze, then compromise by having my torso covered with my arms and legs hanging out. It's not a nice way to spend the night.
I first discovered this awful arrangement in Germany in 2012 but it seems to be becoming more common in the United States as well.
It is time to scrap these monstrosities and replace them a sheet and two layers of washable, microfiber blankets. For the freaks, a heavy duvet may still be made available in the closet.
Fuck you Europe. Sincerely.
jeroboam
11mo ago
What are all the ways people here would say the pandemic era changed the world?
It made the mask a cult symbol in the United States (and possibly other Puritan countries as well). I recently traveled to Italy and was surprised that just about no one was wearing mask. If I saw someone in a mask, it was almost always a US tourist.
As a high-cost signal of tribal allegiance, it's not quite at the level as a Confederate flag or a neck tattoo, but it's quite impressive how so many people in the U.S. still wear the mask despite everything.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Have you ever dealt drugs out of your apartment, or lived with someone who did?
Correction: Have you ever dealt drugs out of your apartment, or lived with someone who did, and also had a DEAD BODY in your car?
Just saw this posted today.
https://twitter.com/AporiaMagazine/status/1654233104523968512
It's not just partially genetic. The difference in intelligence between two individuals is mostly genetic. Most people, including the credentialled, naively assume the opposite, thus coming to incorrect conclusions about many social problems. That's one reason it gets mentioned a lot here. The other, more important reason, is that the Motte is one of the only places where a reasonable discusssion about HBD is allowed to take place. If we wanted to talk about baseball, there are a million other forums for that.
jeroboam
11mo ago
While true, these cases are also tried in the media. My parents, with their steady diet of CNN and MSNBC, were sad when Rittenhouse got off because he they thought he was a "white supremacist" who shot people in cold blood.
It's tough to find a jury that is insulated from the news media, and people can also lie to get on a jury.
If the media tars Neely as motivated by hate, he will have a tough time getting a fair trial regardless of what happens in the courtroom.
jeroboam
11mo ago
It's been tried before though, hasn't it? Twice, in fact. And both times Israel was able to repulse massive armies before the U.S. got involved. In fact, the U.S. had to intervene because Israel was TOO successful.
Raw numbers don't mean that much in the face of massive organizational, technological, and motivational superiority.
I suppose you could theoretically zerg rush Israel with like 1 million poorly trained soldiers and win. I don't think that's possible right now absent a major casus belli to motivate the troops.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Looks like you are right. I just checked Wikipedia and the invaders did have nearly 1 million troops in 1973 and over 500,000 in 1967.
Need more zerglings then. Maybe 2 million would suffice?
jeroboam
11mo ago
Somewhat related. I've noticed that the quality of hackernews discussion has decreased in the last year.
There are a lot more Communist teenager vibes now then there used to be, and I'm afraid its heading down the same path as Reddit with left-wing politics drowning out everything else, even topics completely unrelated to politics.
jeroboam
11mo ago
What would you do?
I was in Istanbul last month. I saw two people being scammed.
Here's the setup. Istanbul's tourist district is full of scammers. They prey on naïve Westerners who are good people, and thus believe that other people are good people too. On the first day, I was standing near
Hagia Sophia with my sister, looking lost. A scammer slithers up and says "The Mosque is closed. Where are you from?" My sister, a sweet and innocent person, answers honestly. "Seattle". The scammer is smooth. "I love the fish market. I used to drive a Penske truck near there for my carpet business." He's not letting us talk and he's trying to get us to do something. I'm not sure what. After a little back and forth I blurt out, implausibly, "we're busy", grab my sister and walk away to a stream of insults from the scammer.
I figured that he just wanted to charge us for an overpriced tour. Searching online, I realized it's worse. After giving you a "free" tour, they try to get you into their carpet or art shop. "I just need to pick something up. Please come in." Free food and tea is given, as well as a hard sell on an overpriced carpet. At this point, the tone changes, and people might feel forced to buy a carpet because of the "implications".
After our encounter, I was hyperaware of this sort of scam and I think I saw it happen twice.
The first time, I saw a tourist woman being led by a Turkish man. After following them for a couple blocks, they entered this ceramics shop. I kept walking.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Testi+seramik/
The next day, on nearly the exact same block, I saw another woman being led by a Turkish man. This time, the destination was an ATM machine. The woman withdrew some cash while the man stood back doing weird air punches. They headed the other way and were gone.
What, if anything, should I have done? I wasn't 100% sure that the women were being scammed. And, of course, by intervening I could have put my own safety at risk as well as the safety of the women.
In the United States, I would have called the police at a minimum. I might also ask the women if they needed help, or even just "accidentally" bump into them and strike a conversation. Here, I felt paralyzed. In the end, I wasn't worried for the women's safety. But I could see they were going to have a bad and very expensive day. I suppose I also felt disgusted at Turkish people for allowing this as well as disgust at the women for being so obvilious. Not sure there's a right answer here. I just want to see what people think.
jeroboam
11mo ago
It feels like society is degrading. But people always say this, even during times when society is actually becoming more polite. I wonder if there's a more objective way to measure it.
Probably don't tell stories about their good treatment so we only hear from people with bad treatment or that have mental illness (i.e. half of Reddit).
So here's another +1.
I had a serious form of cancer about 10 years ago. My treatment was wonderful. My doctors were excellent. Treatment started very quickly after I first went to primary care doctor with a mysterious lump. Furthermore, my cheap insurance paid for most of it. There were no surprise bills. I was out less than 10k out of pocket. I am lucky to be living in a major city in the US.
jeroboam
11mo ago
On the plus side, we're probably less than 5 years away from really good multimodal medical diagnosis AI. Hopefully these tools will start being used more, checklist manifesto style, as a sanity check for any diagnosis.
Haha. I've done that too. "There's an auto parts store just down the road. Let's go walk there and I'll buy you one!".
The petty scams in America are just so pathetic compared to what you see in Europe. How come, despite having a huge population of marks, we don't seem to have a dedicated scammer class in the U.S. like they do in Europe? Pickpocketing is practcially non-existent and the scams are so amateurish. A country like Hungary would do well to export their Romanis to the U.S. by helping them gain asylum. Hungary would benefit. The Romanis would benefit. U.S. liberals would cherish the opportunity to interact with another underclass.
Edit in response to replies: Yes the U.S. has other scams. Presumably Europe has those other same scams too. Nevertheless it's interesting that some varieties of scam seem to exist in Europe but not the U.S. It would be a lot easier to pickpocket in the U.S. than Europe. A handful of Romani in SF could really do some damage. People are rich as Croesus, they don't try to protect their wallet, and crime is legal. I have literally never been the target of pickpockets in the U.S. and I wear my wallet in my back pocket with no paranoia whatsoever. In Europe, I have twice had people try despite much better protection of valuables.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Wow, that sucks. I can't even imagine how stressful that would be. Having a good doctor makes a world of difference.
The system seems to rely upon the good nature of some doctors. There are lots of doctors working for not much (compared to the stress of the job and compared to something like a Google engineer). On the other hand, there are profit-maximizing doctors pulling down 7 figures who are probably responsible for a large percentage of the cost inflation.
It's tough to get rich seeing patients. But if you own an MRI machine or other diagnostic equipment you can really make bank. I'm pretty sure it's been shown that doctors prescribe more unnecessary tests when they are financially rewarded for doing so.
Deleted: Long post about why we don't have a 20 hour workweek. Will post tomorrow on the main thread.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Pre-steroid bodybuilder physiques are quite normal looking. Big, lean, natural. Choose two.
jeroboam
11mo ago
230 at 20% body fat is no joke. That's the "can probably beat 99% of men in a fight" physique that women seem to love.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Why we don't have a 10 hour work week.
I am not an economist, but it feels like there is an easy and obvious solution to why we don't have a 10 hour work week despite increased economic productivity.
Let's say I work 40 hours a week. I get paid 100k per year. Now, let's say I negotiate with my employer a deal to work only 20 hours a week. How much should I get paid?
The answer, of course, is much less than 50k. Although I will be doing half as much work, the overhead of my employment (health care, HR, managing me) has not decreased by 50%. Perhaps, depending on that overhead, the value of my half-time employment is now only 25k a year, or maybe even 0!
Let's take this a step further. Let's say I'm a surgeon that trains for 10 years and then works for 30 years after training. Let's assign a cost of 1 to the training years and a benefit of 1 to the working years. The surgeon has a net value of 20. If now, he only works half as much, his net value doesn't go to 10, it goes to 5. We now need to train 4 times as many surgeons.
People naivëly assume that, as a society, we have a choice to work half as much and be half as rich. I don't think this is the case. By working half as much, we might see a 75% or more reduction in material prosperity.
This is obvious when we look at who works. Contrary to what most people think, rich people work more. People who earn more per hour tend to work more hours. They get highly compensated for additional labor, and are therefore more incentived to perform it. This is as it should be. A society where the highly skilled work fewer hours is one that seems a massive decline in standard of living (as per the surgeon example above) Expensive assets need to be utilized more completely than cheap, replaceable assets. We can afford it if the poor work few hours. In fact, in the United States and other western countries this is already the case.
This obviously has huge implications for inequality. Too reduce inequality, we have to reduce the rewards that high-income people get for their labor. But this will cause a large reduction in the hours worked by high skilled people and will cause a much larger decrease in GDP than the reduction in hours. By tolerating inequality, we can have a much higher level of economic output, and thus more money to be spent on social welfare programs. The costs to reduce inequality are very high indeed.
jeroboam
11mo ago
This is an important point. Live long enough and you grow to become very skeptical of the Western narrative that different leaders will create different outcomes. People cheered when Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and became leader of Burma. They jeered when she went on to persecute the Rohingya Muslims. The Arab Spring told a similar story. As did the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. Simply adding Western democratic mores to a third world country doesn't seem to change much.
There is, however, one type of leader who tends to create long-term positive impacts for a country. And that is a benevolent dictator, or dictator-lite. Examples of leaders in this mold are Rwanda's Paul Kagame or Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew. Perhaps the most salient current example is President Bukele of El Salvador who has already achieved massive quality of life gains for his citizens by declaring martial law and throwing all the gang members in jail.
While these leaders improve their countries and achieve huge popularity, they are not cheered by Western governments and NGOs, who tend to favor untested opposition groups who inevitably become corrupt the moment they are handed real power.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Reposting your reply here to save people a click.
Other posters point to the Roma, but let's explore the difference between the Roma and the stereotype American underclass. The Roma are defined by tribalism, an absolute devotion to preserving their own traditions and family. The American underclass is defined by a near total lack of parental involvement, a sky high rate of fatherlessness, kids getting "lost in the system" after cps takes them away, foster care, raised by grandparents, etc. If you're born into a two parent household in America you are wildly likely to escape absolute poverty and crime, while efforts to break Roma gangs have historically relied on getting the children away from criminal parents.
Pickpocketing, done right, is a skill one must learn. It requires coaching, practice, dexterity, memorization of plays, teamwork. It's the kind of thing that will be passed down within a family, not the kind of thing 5 fatherless boys on a block will invent for themselves. If one was born into a criminal family in America, odds are the father is gonna get three strikes and 20 years before he can teach the kids anyway.
I think this is the best explanation.
jeroboam
11mo ago
Unfortunately it seems almost inevitable when modern industry and commerce makes the institution of bazaars obsolete and a corrupted version of it survives solely due to tourist inflows.
This makes sense. I was wondering how the business model of the bazaar could possibly work. Surely scamming and harassing every customer isn't a viable business strategy? But in a world where any real business has been disrupted, this is all that can survive. I suppose parallels exist in the United States. Mattress stores, for example, charge 5x what they should, but only need to sell to 1 customer a day to keep the lights on. Anyone comparing prices will just buy off Amazon, so better to charge 5x than 1.2x. You'll get the same number of sales either way.
Personally, I spent basically no money in Turkey. As a tourist, my motto is never buy what anyone is selling. I'll never go into a restaurant with someone outside roping in customers for example.
But I can see how this strategy would work on less well-traveled tourists, especially coming from places like America that have no immune system to barkers.
Wouldn't these non-profits quickly fall into the same morass as existing non-profits and government bureaus? Eventually, all the consumer surplus created would be sucked up by waste, especially in the form of excess compensation.
Witness, for example, the stupendous growth in Wikipedia's budget:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Fundraising_statistics
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