fartVader
1yr ago
No candidate has greater potential to derail DeSantis than Trump. He clings onto the hardcore vote and takes them with him, sets fire to his opponents in the primaries, and renders them worse general candidates.
I hope Trump actually gets convicted, irrespective of the validity of his crimes, just to render him ineligible. Even if De Santis loses in the generals, seeing him as the opponent will force democrats to prefer a moderate candidate.
fartVader
1yr ago
MAGA is about aesthetics, not the issues.
The issues will stay the same. The aesthetics are going from institutional kamikaze (Trump) to institutional capture (DeSantis / Rufo).
Trump is the only candidate which has a chance
We aren't talking about Jeb or Ted as the alternative. DeSantis has shown himself to be a competent public speaker that has united coastal and urban florida voters.
fartVader
1yr ago
There really is no winning with Trump.
Both Democrats and Republicans seem to be their own worst enemies this time around. Democrats can't figure out 1 decent candidate because of the infighting and senile old man. Trump out here making it impossible for a Republican politician to move on from MAGA while at the same time being unelectable.
fartVader
8mo 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
8mo 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
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
11mo ago
Not sure I agree. You assume that those who cant do simple chores cant do difficult ones either.
I personally have been pretty good about most things, and especially the hard stuff. But I do struggle to consistently drink water or fold laundry.
If anything, is exactly because I have so many important tasks at hand that the trivial ones fall to the wayside.
fartVader
11mo 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
1yr ago
Not scare quotes at all. I meant to point towards exactly what you pointed out in your comment. That car-free cities are only nominally car-free. Car-free just means low-car, which is both an achievable and desirable future.
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
Wish I would've thought of this one first :\
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 music should serve the theme, and not vice versa. Genre should be seen as tool-kits. You start writing music with the intention of constructing something. A good musician knows to find the right tool-kit to build the structure they have in mind. If the tool guides the dream, then the dream loses all purpose.
Hair metal can be fun in context : stadium & road trip music. But it does not lend itself well to deep listening. Metal is by-definition an intense & tense (alliteration not intended) type of music. That's why it lends itself well to intense emotions which can only develop after years of festering. Grief, anger, wrath, despair & violence are obvious. Meditative states, yearning, (the feeling of) enlightenment are less obvious ones that lend itself well to the genre tools leveraged in metal.
Some metal tools make for great happy music. Djazz is one such example. But mainstream metal genres make for schlocky happy music . Although admittedly, I have occasionally indulged in some of it. Speaking of schlocky metal, here are my 2 "favorites" : Children of Bodom : rebel yell cover and Iron Maiden - Charlotte the Harlot.
fartVader
7d ago
There are only 3 public newsletters that I think gives you a genuine alpha over the 75th percentile trader.
- https://stratechery.com/
- money stuff - https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/authors/ARbTQlRLRjE/matthew-s-levine
- https://sinocism.com/
Do they sound unreasonably dense and hard to parse? Yes, they are meant to be. You don't get an alpha by doing easy things.
Otherwise, the best way to be a stock trader is to become a rich person's golf buddy, and hope you overhear some stuff between drives.
fartVader
14d ago
It is about making it lucrative to those who are on the fence. The people with strong opinions on kids are not changing their opinions.
fartVader
2mo ago
That makes a lot of sense. Where I lived, the church bells only rang twice a day.
fartVader
4mo ago
Fully agree on frogs legs.
Objectively a better chicken and wont be convinced otherwise.
Dunno about pig offal, but chicken liver takes amazing. It's my home town delicacy. I also cook really great gizzards, but theyre admitedly work.
Haggis is the mosy disgusting thing in planet earth and i really did give it a fair try.
fartVader
7mo ago
Well, she is currently living through her 'Europe' phase. I can hardly blame her for wanting to try out great food while travelling through Europe.
fartVader
7mo ago
That one is going to be hard. On our very first date, she made it amply clear that her "things ranking" went as follows:
- Sleep
- Chocolate
- the idea of Antonio Banderas in the 1998 mask of Zorro.
I have finally made it to #3, toppling Banderas, but she would totally dump me before giving up sleep or chocolate.
But yeah, we've gone from a bar of chocolate to a couple of squares of dark chocolate. So there's progress.
fartVader
9mo ago
Fair. Urban snobbishness is a problem across societies around the world, and it gets on people's nerves real fast.
Greenwich is also in the "WTC <-> Times Square" region. Greenpoint is in Brooklyn. You're correct that the densest parts of Manhattan are overwhelming in an alien manner, where someone who hasn't grown up there will find it too intimidating.
Funnily enough, having grown up in a 'nice residential part' of the arguably densest city in the world, I feel a similar 'hell on earth I need to escape' feeling when I walk through a sprawling maze-like suburb.
A 1k sqft house will be around 800k in prospect lefferts gardens today. But it is also one of the most rapidly gentrifying parts of Brooklyn. It was closer to $500k just a few years ago. Not cheap, but reasonable for the region. Especially given that NYC prices are destined to hold stable. Remember, a public school teacher or a blue collar worker in NYC can easily make around $80-100k. (Subway drivers & Public school teachers make ~90K), so it is not too bad.
This is a fallacy. No one wants to turn any city into NYC, because that's impossible. No place is NYC.
The goal is to make urban down towns less hostile. Take a 500 acre downtown circle and strip 2 car lanes from the all roads there. Add high-frequency bus only lanes & bike lanes that run within that small zone. Replace parking lots with missing middle-housing. Put large parking lots on the highway approach to this area. There, you just made your urban hellhole an urban paradise, provided more housing, and car owners aren't any more inconvenienced. Maybe move downtown Denver closer to downtown Miami in scale.
The goal to make suburbs less Hostile. To remove a few yards and add a few triple deckers. You'd expect it to look like Seattle's recently developing Wallingford/fremont neighborhoods than NYC. The suburban houses are still there, many yards are still there. It is still quiet, has good parking and feels safe. Or even Portland Maine. Both are perfectly walkable, bikeable urbanist darlings. There is even good bus connectivity within the main urban area.
Urbanists suggestions for rural areas are similarly in-keeping with the needs of a rural town. Northeastern villages are fairly walkable and cycle-able too. See Lincoln NH.
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