fartVader
10mo ago
LOL. Have you ever been to New York City?
I live in NYC.
NYC has managed to slow cars enough
What could NYC do to speed up cars more ? What has it done to slow cars down ?
NYC manages to excel by American standards, but that's a passing grade for global cities in the rest of the world. As compared to other cities of the world, NYC actually allows cars to take a highway straight into the downtown core of the city. Other cities cut off the highway at the edge of the ring road that surrounds the city core. Both Manhattan highways occupy the most expensive waterfront space in the world. If the 2 highways were fully moved underground, you'd be looking at one of the most expensive sale of airspace in the entire history of humanity.
Parking is free or dirt cheap in most of the city, while occupying area that generates far more revenue if given as restaurant seating space. Note there are 3 types of people who take cars into NYC. The first are people who are so rich, that they could have simply taken a daily cab instead. The second are slightly-rich people who commute into the city with a car, who should have to pay actual market rate for parking or have their employer pay it. The final are disabled people who ofc deserve to be accommodated, and should have separate reserved parking on each block.
fartVader
1yr ago
That's really interesting. I am not sure if that supports my anecdotes or balances it out ahaha. Either way, useful nuance.
I bet it makes for more creative love making. Porn is creatively bankrupt.
fartVader
1yr ago
Landlords are evil because the system enables them to be evil. The profession will still exist. But transition to a service profession. Similar to agents who manage properties for people.
If housing stops being an asset, it becomes a commodity. People who manage commodities still exist.
fartVader
1yr ago
The entire thing is so confusing. The only certain thing is that the version of the story in the media has to be false.
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Why is Paul in boxers ?
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Why are they both so happy ?
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Why is it so quiet even before the police get there ?
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Why does Paul open the door when both his hands are occupied ?
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Why does he have a drink in his hands ?
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What were they doing for 30 minutes until the police arrived ?
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How did an obese man break into fucking Nancy Pelosi's house without any alarms sounding ?
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Why does he say "It's good" when he is clearly threatened ?
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Who wears a shirt inside their house ?
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No security systems at all ?
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How did a guy hammering at a door not wake anyone up ?
The attacker:
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Illegal immigrant from Canada
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Had a Q-esque deranged manifesto that ended with American political theater.
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But was also a hipster nudist
All that being said, it looks like he is clearly attacked and got hurt in a manner that would be life-threatening to any 80 yr old. Why would an almost-retired 200 millionaire pull a stunt like this ? The alternate conspiracies also do not make any sense. I don't buy that this has anything to do with Trump or MAGA, but he does seem to be taken in with every major conspiracy theory under the sun.
Maybe reality IS stranger than fiction, and outside the media claims about the guys affiliation, the rest of the story is true. As strange as it is, that does seem like the story most likely to be true.
1 negation, and a couple of weird anecdotes.
The NFL player who collapsed had it happen due to a collision with direct impact to the heart. This was a completely different case than covid related myocarditis.
On the weird side, there have been 2 unique occurrences in the soccer world. Christian Ericsson is arguably the most high-profile death (and subsequent resuscitation) on the soccer field due to spontaneous cardiac arrest a few months after his vaccine. Players dropping dead isn't entirely unheard of. But Ericsson is the most high profile. On a similar note, Sergio Aguero, one of the greatest football players of his era, had to suddenly retire after his new club (in 2021) identified scarring on his heart.
Curiously, both players had spent their entire careers with world class medical teams, without any of them having any inkling of such major heart tissue scarring. Barcelona (Aguero's new club) famously called it gross negligence, saying that Aguero should have never been allowed to be a pro player, because someone during his 20 career should have caught this. This is after Aguero had just broken the record for most premier league career goals in the history of the sport at arguably the world's best team. Something doesn't compute.
fartVader
1mo ago
Tiktok is getting pushback because the parent company is controlled by China. That is all you need to know, and that's the only bit that matters. Anti-semitism and Gaza are excuses. 'Think of the kids' is an excuse and so are accusations of 'Tiktok killing attention'.
Don't get me wrong, Tiktok performs badly on all of those accusations. But, it is just the latest in a long line of social media companies that all transformed the youth along similar lines.
The US will go to any length to control the global narrative of 'freedom'. Tiktok is the greatest deepest invasion on American soil since communisms capture of academia, and the US is woefully underequipped to push it back. The US uses Israel to complain about Tiktok, because if they revealed the real reason, then it would correctly show the US for the paper tiger it has now become. The US is still the most powerful country in the world. But Pax-Americana is over.
fartVader
8mo ago
She says he lied about asking for a kiss. Why is she more credible than him?
have you ever won anything and celebrated ? You can barely hear you own voice. Now imagine that at WC scale in the greatest moment of your life.
You think in that moment, he went : "May I kiss you on the lips, deeply while shoving your face into mine mademoiselle ?" Ofc not. I would doubt his statement even if she corroborated it.
fartVader
8d ago
Does a bear wanna kill me ?
Afaik, only 3 kinds of bears attack humans
- Polar bears for food
- Mother bears to save subs (a solo bear has no subs, so not a factor here)
- Other bears when they scared
- Sloth bears cuz they crazy
A Polar bear will need to be starved for weeks before it starts hunting the one other human in the forest. And they don't climb trees, so I can reliably protect myself in the short term. Most other bears can be avoided strategically.
The reason humans are scary is that a serial killer will want to start planning their kill from minute 1. You have to fight the human on even ground. On the other hand, the bear will take ages before it decides to engage with you. You can plan your engagement with it perfectly.
That's why a sloth bear is the scrariest. They can climb trees, eat more often, actively engage with humans and react with incredible aggression. Nothing I can do. Dead before sunrise.
fartVader
1yr ago
what's to keep anyone from undercutting them
Why do you think Blackrock keeps buying every open lot with somewhat permissive zoning and converting it into apartment buildings. This is them trying to undercut the SFH mafia. However, it is in their interest for zoning laws to not get tooo permissive. Because they would suddenly have to be competitive, instead of just being marginally better than a SFH landlord.
As of now, it is illegal to build in most parts of the US. The US has only 1 dense city and that's Manhattan. Include the 5 boroughs, and NYC is remarkably underbuilt for its demand. Who controls if building is legal ? -> the landlords for that locale. (It is not that simple, but I'm skipping over a lot of nuance to make my tl;dr point). That's why I call it a colonial extraction racket.
Pretty much nobody in modern America is that poor, fortunately.
Yep.
fartVader
9mo ago
Most people just want to live where their family, friends, and jobs are.
Why not both. Nothing stopping family, friend and jobs from being in a city.
single monthly Costco run
I was being unfair. Costco is amazing. But a single monthly run vs Costco being your only weekly / twice-a-week grocery store are very different things. A monthly costco trip is a perfect SUV rental / 1 car household use-case.
I live in a townhouse in the suburbs. My kids could walk to elementary school. We walk to ice cream, groceries, and a couple restaurants. I can get on my onewheel and get a loaf of fresh bread in about fifteen minutes.
Can you tell me what general region you live in. That sounds delightful.
fartVader
9mo ago
historically been perhaps 20-40% of world population
See, here is where ethnicity matters. That number drops to 0-2% when looking at the continent of Asia.
Assuming the soul is somewhat immortal, Heaven is going to look whiter than a Cape Cod frat party.
doesn’t speak to whether the Truth of Christ is true.
It is awfully convenient to have your truth be unfalsiable. "I choose to believe what I choose to believe. I have no proof it works, but all of you are going to hell. I cannot be convinced otherwise."
You do you, but you can see how that is a hard sell right ?
fartVader
10mo ago
Have you walked from Chelsea to Soho?
Yeah, it's 30 minutes. In those 30 minutes you see more inspired architecture and more Michelin starred restaurants than entire regions of the US. A good few grocery stores, a target, every fashion store that exists and some of the world's premier underground performance locations (Smalls Jazz, Comedy central). You'll cross effectively 100k people worth of housing, and all in a 30 minute walk, 10 minute bike share, or a 10 minute subway ride.
30 minutes in the traffic in LA, and you're still in traffic while having burned 200 fewer calories.
fartVader
10mo ago
Can you expand this? I've never heard somebody blame the drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars before. Is the idea that you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?
That's my bad. I conflated multiple things together and wrote a confusing mess.
All 3 of these cities are designed with meeting the needs of car based visitors more than the needs of the residents. And it shows.
I meant that serving the interests of commuters rather than tax-payers of the city has led to cities being carved up in ways that is hostile to the city's residents. This is a pure urban planning complaint, and not an inner city related problem.
drug/homelessness/theft/inner city problems on cars
Agreed. I am blaming it squarely on incompetent city govts. SF, Seattle and Portland's local govts have done everything in their power to make public spaces feel unsafe and public transit feel unusable. To be fair, if you've ever parked in the downtowns of any of these cities, cars don't feel much safer either.
you should force people to live among the filth, because then they would be more motivated to fix it?
It is a good question. Because dumping an interstate through the city must've cost around $25B in adjusted costs (using BigDig as reference). Surely that is enough money to solve a homelessness issue for any competently run city govt. Sadly, SF is the diametric opposite of competent. So we have a human constructed hellscape that progressives are convinced is what heaven looks like. I like that about New England liberals. Lot less incompetent.
fartVader
1yr ago
Note : Noma (supposedly the world's best restaurant) has been surprising people with how delicious ants are for a good decade now. Credit where it is due, tribals in many parts of the world have known this for centuries. But, now people with 'sophisticated palates' can also approve.
I've eaten un-seasoned plain thai-water-beetles(big cockroaches) and they surprisingly taste more like pickle juice than anything.
Hey, if it is nutritious, doesn't trigger my disgust response, is delicious and cheap......then why not ?
I spent a good year creeped out the 'blood' leaking from raw (medium rare) steak. A few years later, I love it.
fartVader
6mo ago
I'm a pesky civilian, so maybe I am missing something. But the rules of war sounds like saying that a man shouldn't kick another man in the nuts. No, if you are more armed than me and the outcome is my death, then I am going to kick you in the nuts. A few times, for good measure.
laws of war to purposely destroy the environment. But, bombs are grandfathered into everyone's expectations.
Man, war is ridiculously pedantic.
fartVader
6mo ago
Utilitarianism in war : what are some under-explored tools of war that are effective but dismissed out of hand due to bad optics ?
This isn't so much a top level post as a seed to begin a conversation. I've always found it rather barbaric that the only acceptable way for a superior power to engage in war is straight violence & bloodshed. This is especially true with a truly imbalanced siege. In almost every occasion, the 'honorable' way of doing a siege costs more money, causes more deaths and eventually leads to the same outcome.
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Chemical warfare is horrible. But are there way to engage in chemical warfare that neutralizes the enemy without any long-term consequences to the heath of those attacked ? Why limit yourself to flashbangs and smoke grenades ? Why not use FPV drones with mass-pepper spray ? You can buy a 1000 pepper-spray FPV drones for a $1 million. Train a few people to operate them as a swarm (like a school of tuna) and they will be very hard to take out. A single deployment of the iron dome costs Israel more.
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Sound based violence has been used before, but can it be taken further ? Gaza is just across the border.
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Why not identify 1 of the tunnels on high ground and flood them ? Maybe flood them with sewage just so it is extra disgusting.
It's war. You're willing to kill by the thousands. Less than honorable means are absolutely acceptable (with long term effects accounted for) if that means a lower body count.
What are some other avenues of war that could be tried to minimize body count but increase effectiveness ? Is there some long term pandoras box reason to keep these tools of war off the table ?
fartVader
9mo ago
Have you been to NYC and gone beyond the "WTC <-> Times Square" region ? NYC is amazing and a lot of your complaints don't seem to apply to the rest of the city. I understand why you'd dislike the "WTC <-> Times Square" region. Even those who live in NYC hate it.
This is what non-expensive middle-class residential neighborhoods look like :
And I didn't even mention the actually amazing residential neighborhoods that are more upper-middle class like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Clinton Hill or the waterside parts of Jersey.
fartVader
1yr ago
you need to think of ways around it, reevaluate your willpower.
I am sick of people who somehow choose to be confused about how "some things are easier for some people." It is annoying how the same (not you) person who cackles at my inability to do simple chores , also comes to me for tips on simple google-page-1 social tasks.
Just because the steps are trivial, doesn't mean they are easy for someone to execute. That's not to say that 'just suck it up and do it.' is not valuable advice. But it is never productive to bring it up as the first solution to someone's genuine question.
fartVader
1yr ago
Consultants make that much about 7-8 years into training
You aren't doing yourself any favors by comparing yourself to the 1 well-compensated profession that even practitioners themselves will admit is a scam.
I don't really see why you'd think doctors are evil really
I do it because it is provocative. The main point alludes to the eternal tradeoff between protecting your paycheck and doing good in the world. Doctors are ideal bait, because it is the one profession which has an air of selflessness, and sets implicit expectations of reverence from the common man.
US doctors are far more professionally organized and cartel-like
Agreed. My fellow Indians doctors do not seem to enjoying the same luxuries as American doctors. If anything, being a doctor in India sounds like the worst of both worlds.
fartVader
6d ago
check out https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/
fartVader
8d ago
"Trans people are oppressed because girl bosses who gatekep what it means to be woman and then gaslight them by claiming to be allies?"
That's my best guess
fartVader
5mo ago
I am not much of a drinker, and have never been drunk. So, my choice of alcohol is almost entirely about taste.
My top are:
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Catalan Vermuth : Casa Mariol ships in the USA or MorroFi if you're in Barcelona. It's the best. I'm glad I found it later in life. If I'd found it at 18, I'd be an alcoholic.
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Vinho Verde : The cheap trader joe's stuff is great. Perfect with fresh sea food. Perfect for lunch. Perfect for those who don't want to feel like alcoholics for day drinking. Also a great cooking wine.
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Azulejos Tequila : It was the first Tequila I tried, and could not for the life of me figure out why people in the USA hated tequila. Unfortunately, my first experience with cheap shots was all I needed to understand the unwarranted Tequila hate. AzuleJos is not only excellent tasting as a sipping spirit, but it has the prettiest containers.
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Taylor Fladgate 10 year tawny port - This rubs my Vermuth itch in the USA. If you like sweet wines, but like more character than just plain sugar, then this is the one for you. Perfect dessert wine.
fartVader
9mo ago
There are 2 difference.
The first is that the European male lineage was almost entirely wiped out. If everyone is the child of the winners, then you're a child of the winners. If that genetic breakdown is more of spectrum, then some are more children of winners than the others. Second, Europe kept winning. They do not have an issue of cultural inferiority. The Europeans do not have their own white man to look up to, to borrow from and to integrate into.
fartVader
9mo ago
Don't look at history, look at population genomics. Razib Khan is your best resource for this.
That being said, genomics data on India is an evolving field, so confidence in some findings is not as iron-clad as the stamp of science might suggest. Genomics tells you the 'what', but it doesn't tell you much about the 'how'. This means that you're stuck drawing equivalencies from known events in history from other regions. They might be informed guesses, but that's all they are.
For example: Does the appearance of a new - mostly male genetic branch over a few hundred years guarantee 'invasion, murder & rape', or could it also indicate a large male immigrant population. Note: in the modern era of peaceful immigration, most immigrants are still young men. We don't really know what happened here, and all political/academic groups are happier promoting their own conjecture, than digging in and finding out who got it right.
The verdict on the supposed violence of ancient proto-Hindus will influence political will to demonize colonizing muslim invaders of the last 1000 years. It provides historical backing/debunking for the sharp line that supposedly distinguishes the southern Indian Dravidians from the northern Indian Aryans. It allows inquiry into whether India's central philosophical work (Rigveda) was even composed in South Asia.
Indians have been a defeated people for a whole millennium. Post-socialism India has tried to reclaim a confident image of itself, carved from great ancient kings, who are the supposed ancestors of the modern inhabitants of this land. The Govt. senses a great deal of risk in even allowing research that might imply that the genetic ancestors of a huge portion of Indians have always been a defeated people. To them, there is nothing to gain and a lot to lose. I don't blame them. It's a hard choice.
The others have covered most points. But here's a few more:
Modern civilization doesn't need to sustain the current status-quo eternally. Nuclear Fusion has been 5 years away for a good century, but it is reasonable to expect it to get there within the next century. Nuclear fusion is infinite energy. So, we only need to survive for 100 years. Piece of cake.
The young are increasingly anti-car, and many cities are slowly but surely, moving away from the 60s-highway-maximalist approach to living. The nature of capitalistic lobbying and collective delusion might make it difficult to uproot cars from our lives. But, it is NOT civilization ending. Car "free" cities ARE a future that is qualitatively better than what we currently have in North-America.
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