dev
22d ago
You've basically described the stereotypical 1950s situation, which is usually considered to be "stultifying" by women.
Was it actually stultifying by the majority of women who actually lived through it? Or was it considered stultifying at the time by a small minority of the women who get the most press because careerist women are in a better situation to push agendas in the mass media, and then every women growing up since then has been subject to a torrent of propaganda about how unhappy 1950s housewives were and so they believe that it was stultifying.
dev
24d ago
The reason to do a near Earth space colony or to go to Mars is ultimately to build giant solar orbiting colonies and to embark on interstellar conquest. Why? Because God wills it. Or, to put it in humanistic terms, it is the greatest possible thing the human species can possibly do, and we should strive for that.
Right, now America spends trillions of dollars a year on pure vanities. A K through college education system that is a total wreck because it is serving a hundred different mutual-contradictory goals. Trillions on healthcare to make decrepit elderly stretch out their lives another few years. Trillions on sports, games, fictional entertainment, etc.
So all your complaints that this would cost money...so what? What else are you going to spend it on?
Even if technology development by industry leaders such as SpaceX lowers launch costs by 1,000x, which I find to be an absurd proposition, that's still $1 million/day with no return on investment.
Is it absurd that it will happen within 5 years? 20 years? 100 years? Even if it took 100 years, it would still be worth the effort.
What about Lebensraum? If that's really the issue, why don't we see the development of seasteas or self-sufficient cities in otherwise inhospitable regions of earth (the top of Everest for example).
Because they are not stepping stones to settling the stars. Also, while settling the Himalayans is less challenging than space colonies, space colonies have certain areas, particularly, access to solar energy, which they have potential that is better than anything on Earth.
This one is a little bit more speculative. The West, and much of the West of the world is entering a demographic spiral, with birth rates falling ever lower below replacement. This relieves a lot of the "population pressure" to colonize space,
We don't need space exploration to handle an exploding population; we need space exploration to give a reason for elites to promote fertility. Right now, our elites, our society, don't really have any positive vision of the future and don't really believe in anything. If you are just trying to maximize pleasure, low fertility makes sense. A lot of elites have an environmentalism/sustainability fetish, and because of this are actively anti-natalist. An elite that actually believed in interstellar conquest, would want its people to be fruitful and multiply, would want its people to flourish, in order to maximize expansion.
dev
2mo ago
She certainly is earlier in the video, but we lose track of her face as her girlfriend yells at her to drive, I assume that might have been some adrenaline rush at that point that would have contributed to her bad/reckless driving. I would think there is a case for charging the girlfriend.
dev
2mo ago
Given that the other videos showed the cars wheel were fully turned, I don't think she was deliberately trying to run him down. I think she was trying to recklessly and illegally trying to escape police detainment, and between the panic and bad driving and recklessness, may have clipped the officer with her car. This is downstream of her probably being misinformed that ICE had no ability to arrest her. As I understand it, ICE cannot serve arrest warrants for citizens, but if citizens are illegally obstructing ICE operations they ICE does have the power to arrest. So she and her GF thought they could smirk and harass and insult and obstruct and then drive off with no consequences.
I think the shooting is legally justified, but I wouldn't want that officer hired to be my local beat cop. He was more careless with his positioning and more trigger happy than he had to be.
dev
3mo ago
Shagbark bemoans that a bunch of pseudo intellectuals cannot find a cheap neighborhood to be unemployed in yet still meet up for beer, cigarettes, and High Quality Discourse About Subjects of Great Import. Now, I've been in enough bars around the country in all kinds of different cities and towns to know , sadly, exactly what Shagbark is envisioning.
This is true and false. It is true that pontificating over beers is not real work, and has real risk of being wankery.
However, to have a culture that is doing real artistic or intellectual work, it sure helps to have a lower cost of living so the writers or artists can spend many, many hours on the work in their homes and garages or workshops or converted lofts without having to work 50+ hours a week at a stressful job. And it helps to be around others, not because the work is done at the bar, but because you get credit for the work at the bars, you get feedback and ideas, you get inspiration and motivation.
Mottizens! Would this actually work or would most of us, being Turbo Autists, shut down in public and let this drunken HippyCath dominate the space? Would there be verbal equivalents of AAQCs or would it all devolve into drunken shouting before anyone got to their second section heading?
Having been to many events with intellectual friends I've met through writing online, it has been a great experience. It's not a time for inventing theories or fully working out theories, but it is great for cross-fertilization, getting inspiration, learning things people weren't able to put in their writing, brainstorming, etc. etc. However, it would be a big leap from meeting up once or twice a year, to actually living with them. Not sure how that would work out.
dev
4mo ago
Also "It's relatively uncommon to sue over medical debt for a lot of reasons - including that the patient often doesn't have the money, also because it's easy to make a bogus counterclaim for medical malpractice , and nobody wants to deal with that over an unpaid $1300 invoice."
Example of someone getting wages garnished: https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/ue3xgd/getting_wage_garnishment_for_medical_bills_was/
dev
4mo ago
Looks like it might vary a lot by state: https://old.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/14towop/what_happens_if_you_can_never_pay_back_your/jr5zc7b/
dev
4mo ago
Do you sign the documents at the hospital they give you where you agree to be responsible for any bills you accrue? If not, how do you talk them out of making you sign?
dev
4mo ago
My understanding from a lot of searching old reddit threads on the topic a few years ago is that it varies greatly. Sometimes they send it to collections and you can negotiate paying pennies on the dollar. Sometimes the hospital plays hardball and will get a order order to garnish your wages or bank account.
dev
6mo ago
Varies widely. I'm sure some relationships are completely hands-off, but then you have cases like owner Bob Kraft and Tom Brady where they lived near each other for 20 years and saw each other outside of football and Kraft has said he loved Brady like a son.
dev
6mo ago
Also, the phenomena of the right-wing grifter, who is trying to patch together a living from begging for subscriptions and doing ad reads for supplements, is entirely because the right does not have the patronage ecosystem that the establishment left has. IIRC, journalists at Pro-Publica are making salaries well into the six figures thanks to support from foundations. So they don't have to sound like grifters when they speak to the public, because they have that support behind the scenes. And then there is the entire university system, which is what left-wing patronage really looks like.
dev
6mo ago
I did college debate as well. This is specifically a problem for prominent rightists doing open speeches or debate in front of leftists, in the last 10 or 15 years, where the rightists has a view that the left has decided is no longer in the realm of acceptable debate, ex: the current Republican presidential nominee/president is good; gay marriage is bad; 13 do 50 or anything race realist; ice deportations are actually good, etc. I can hardly think of any rightist other than Charlie who was still doing those kind of open-invite debates at colleges on those kind of topics. IIRC, Charles Murray basically stopped doing events after the attack at Middlebury.
This is a ludicrously hagiographic way of saying "he was a political commentator that did not actively advocate for violence". I suppose that, sadly, that last part is becoming an increasingly high bar these days.
Yes, this is it. Personally, I might have the talent for it, or been able to develop the talent, and perhaps once was on that path, but I don't have the guts to put myself out in public and go around debating leftists in person at venues across the country. In terms of virtue points, maybe I get 8 for honesty and he gets 5 points, but he gets 10 for courage, and I get like 2, so he beats me.
cynical apparatchik
Russell conjugation: I'm a team player, you are a PR spokesperson for the movement, he is a cynical apparatchik/propagandist.
He was a charismatic and courageous movement spokesperson. He was not a first-class intellectual; nor was he a paragon of truth-telling virtue/disagreeable autist.
If Kirk basically trusts Trump, there isn't anything necessarily cynical about changing his tune on Epstein when Trump did. I'm basically the same way, and I don't have anything to gain for changing my opinion. I assumed there was a deeper conspiracy behind the Epstein thing, like he was running a blackmail ring. But if the Trump people have looked into and not found anything, then that increases the probability that there wasn't actually a blackmail ring. I don't think Trump is hiding is own deep guilt, because if Trump was guilty of anything more than bad taste with regards to Epstein, I think the Biden administration would have revealed it. What Kirk and Trump are most guilty of is in promoting the idea that there were releasable "files" in the first place, and not just a lot of sealed grand jury testimony and raw interview transcripts full of known-to-be-false statements.
dev
6mo ago
But lots of those dividends and asset sales are from retired people, so you are overestimating average income very substantially when you divide by the workforce.
Yeah, it would be better to divide by total people with taxable income, to include the retirees.
I think the Census and BLS surveys have problems, I'm not sure if they include dividend/asset income, and I've also heard they cap the income recorded for privacy issues (because high earners are rare enough that if they were reported, it would deanonymize the data)
You want to include dividend/corporate profit income as part of the average income calculation, because the whole idea is to put a floor on how much the owners of capital can push down wages using immigration.
dev
6mo ago
Total personal income (including income from dividends and asset sales) divided by the workforce is something like $150k. But then you want to take out imputed rent from the Personal Income number, and also maybe include seniors earning income as well in the divisor. The best way to do the calculation would be total aggregate income as reported to the tax authorities, divided by number of people with taxable income.
dev
6mo ago
Here is my compromise for the United States:
- Give up to 100,000 provisional green cards a year based on getting a three-year contract to work at an annual salary at least 2X the American average income (something like $250k) If more demand than that, the visas go to the highest bidder. Also, give no more than 10,000 to a single country of origin.
- Give up to 50,000 provisional green cards to youth under the age 20 who score the highest on an old-school SAT test, test to be taken in the United States or a consulate at a cheating proof facility.
- Give up to 100,000 provisional green cards to people of any age who score the highest on a battery of scientific, engineering, and mathematics tests.
This replaces all H1bs, student visas, OTPs, diversity visas, etc. If the worker brings their wife and children that comes out of the quota. They cannot bring their uncles and brothers and nephews.
Now I know, the general response is "because those jobs should go to the locals!" but the thing is, talented local people already have jobs. If they're hard working and capable, then they're mostly already doing their part in achieving Y (or doing something else in another industry) because companies want them.
There is a vicious cycle here where we encourage native born Americans to enter the college->fake job pipeline, then we bring in immigrants to do the real work. This suppresses the wages for the real work, which creates all the more incentive for a native born American to get some kind of fake patronage job, and so forth. Of course, then the immigrants have children and we tell them they need to go to college and get a fake job, and thus we need even more immigrants and the entire thing becomes a ponzi scheme.
dev
8mo ago
A Tesla Model 3 is superior in every respect to a 1970 model year muscle car, but seeing a 1970 muscle car in the background of a beach photo creates a vibe of "this was a rich society" whereas a Tesla Model 3 in the background doesn't.
The other thing is that the muscle car was designed and built in America, and represented the top technology in its price rare. The Tesla Model 3 being an exception, most of the things that make us richer in 2025 aren't actually made in America. And if they are, they are often worse than versions made elsewhere (even if they are better than the 1970 version).
dev
8mo ago
Putting aside tattoos specifically, obviously any sort of appearance choice is some kind of reflection of the person's personality, sense of self, sense of who they want to be, role they are presenting to society, etc. etc. And obviously it is a very old and natural human activity to make judgments based on this. "Is this person signalling affiliation with my in group?" "Does this person have good taste?" "Is this person conscientious?" "Does this person respect group norms?" If we did not expect people to judge us based on appearance choices, we all would just be wearing gray sweatsuits everywhere.
dev
9mo ago
I don't understand the laws that say that "left lanes on highways are for passing only." So it is just illegal to be in the left lane (since anyone passing in the left lane would be breaking the speed limit laws)? Why have the left lane at all? If you have a fairly busy highway, is everyone supposed to be crowded into only two lanes? Is the idea that once traffic becomes so congested on the middle lanes that the speed is below the limit, then people can move into the left-lane to "pass" at a higher speed? But then are cars supposed to be weaving back into the middle lane after they overtake a car, then back into the left lane to pass, then back into the middle lane, etc, so they are not "cruising" in the left lane? Or is the whole thing just a way of saying, " yeah we know the speed limit is fake and we don't want slow pokes driving the speed limit in the left lane"?
dev
9mo ago
- Yes
- Yes
- To the letter or lower in the city. On country roads, OK to go 5MPH to 10MPH over and up to 85MPH on open highways
- No, on highways the left lane should be going 5MPH to 10MPH faster than the lane to the right of it. Riding someone's bumper is never ok. On stroads, the left lane is for through traffic or people who need to make a left turn.
- Not sure what you mean by cut off. If you need to get in that lane and can safely do so, then you have to do what you have to do. But you shouldn't play chicken and force them to put on their brakes, better to miss your exit than to hope the other person can avoid a crash.
- No.
dev
9mo ago
It's a little counter-intuitive how cars are far more likely to kill us, but we get more angry at cyclists.
I think it is because most cars are relatively well-behaved and they respect my right-of-way at crosswalks and don't try to buzz me. It's just the 0.1% that is going to blow a stop sign or not yield that might kill me.
While with bikers it is a far greater number that don't respect the rules and will buzz dangerously close to myself and my kids on the sidewalk. They probably won't kill me, but they give me a sense of rule-breaking and fear.
dev
10mo ago
It's still exclusive to the group that actual owns it. Someone from a neighboring tribe can't bring all their cattle and graze it without permission (or there would be war).
dev
10mo ago
This is not how land title works in traditional livestock-grazing societies. Multiple cow-owners' cattle can graze the same land as long as the total number of cattle does not exceed the capacity of the land.
Sounds like the community is an organization that owns the land, and has rules about how each person can use it. Nothing you said contradicts anything that I wrote. Customary rights to graze a certain amount at a certain time is still a form of property right, same as an easment is a form of property right. Not all property rights are "you have 100% total control to do whatever you want."
Is your argument against "ownership" in general? Or is your argument that ownership by a single person is bad, ownership by a family is bad, ownership by a joint-stock corporation is bad, but ownership by a cooperative is OK?
There is absolutely no reason to take this article seriously. It's the head of a trade group saying this, that is a political job, he is probably just repeating politically fashionable ideas.
Well it's not necessarily practical as an individual solution. But you have just identified the "two income trap" solution
I think that is part of the problem. Off-shoring, immigration, automation and AI have stratified the economy into high-paying niche jobs or fake jobs; and low paying commodity slave jobs. We don't actually need more people in the workforce, we have more workers than we know what to do with. But if you want to have a job that pays to the middle-class or upper-middle class standard you are accustomed to, its going to be a niche job, and that makes it quite precarious. And the precarious nature of the job makes it dangerous not to have both parents in the workforce. What if the bread-winners niche dries up? The family is screwed.
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