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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2710 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 27, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What's currently the most cost-effective and practical method of getting ahold of Ozempic/whatever weight-loss drug in the US without a diabetes diagnosis?

Also, is it worth messing with oral delivery, or are they flat-out less effective than the injection method?

I'm tired of people lying to me that I'm not fat when I observe the differences in the way the world treats me vs other people every day.

Does anyone have any experience with the US intellectual property system? I’m pretty confident I have invented a novel technique for denoising signals which I think may actually have applications in other areas beyond my field but I am trying to decide if it’s actually worth the trouble to try and monetize it instead of just donating it an an open source project I help maintain.

I work for an institution which splits royalties with the inventor (me), but I am very hesitant to get my intellectual property office involved since the second I do they will prevent me from doing option 1 above. I also assume the time and paper work burden for me would be onerous and detract from the parts of my job I actually like.

I also don’t have a good sense of how often inventors even get compensated for this sort of thing (if say a camera manufacturer uses my algorithm how could anyone every prove they stole it from me?). Is my intuition that I most likely won’t ever get paid anything anyway correct?

https://yosefk.com/blog/patents-how-and-why-to-get-them.html has a good overview of patents in the US

…What sort of noise? In my line of work, we’re hard limited by the thermal noise floor.

Anyway. My understanding of the patent system is that it’s enforced by lawsuits. Someone sets up a factory making your widget, you hear about it, you sue for infringement. The larger the operation, the more value in bringing a suit. As a result, the legal department of those large companies will seek out your license ahead of time. Especially if your company is on the prowl for violators.

I have zero idea how this works for software. Presumably all the same rules apply, but if a commercial product skimmed your paper and implemented it, how would you ever know? And yet people clearly do patent techniques, and if your technique is as applicable as it sounds, you might really get value from patenting.

So, uh, no idea. Sorry. Hit me up if you decide to share it though :)

>be me
>interested in reading cases where US citizens (not aliens) are prosecuted for marriage fraud
>PACER's search function is useless
>GovInfo and RECAP's search functions return mostly false positives
>a Westlaw subscription would cost 100 $/mo
>try to hire four different "legal researchers" (who I assume are paralegals) on Fiverr for up to 30 $ with a simple query: "I would like the docket numbers for the last twenty convictions of citizens (not aliens) for 8 USC 1325(c) (marriage fraud). I assume that such information is available through legal subscription services."
>they all flake out without explanation (and without asking for more money)

Can the lawyer denizens of this website explain to me why this is so difficult? Am I underestimating the billable hours that would be required for this seemingly simple search even with the fancy tools of Westlaw/Lexis/whatever? Am I really obligated to hire a lawyer at 200 or 400 $/h for the privilege of knowing which files I should download from PACER?

Westlaw and Nexis aren't going to include trial level cases that didn't result in published opinions; that's not really what it's for. The answer is that you have your paralegal look into it and prepare for disappointment. I wish I could just search my local court by subject so I could find a cheat sheet when I have to file something I've never filed before, but no such function exists. I could give you my process but it's useless unless you're concerned about cases filed in Allegheny County, and even then it involves looking at a lot of cases and requires access to back issues of the local legal journal. The fivver people were probably too embarrassed to tell you that your request was impossible to fulfill. DOJ usually issues press releases for convictions, so you could try looking there.

Moderation queue.

I recognize that my perceptions might get a little skewed…

No I don't read every comment just skim the things I'm interested in. Some weeks there are barely any posts I want to participate in, some weeks it's every post.

Personally I like that the content here isn't never-ending.

The "firehose" view makes getting an overview of all the active discussions easy. But reading everything seems unnecessary.

Holy crap I had no idea this was a thing. Thanks for sharing. How do you get back here without this link?

Click on the link that looks like a speech bubble near the upper right corner of the page.

Thanks! Wow this is fun. Who knew.

This is the usual way I read the motte.

You do have to be careful, though -- sometimes you can end up with a perfect comment responding to what you thought a discussion was based on a reply to a reply to a reply, and then you realize you spent all that time reverse-engineering what was already stated or dismissed in the discussion.

I read everything and never comment. It's way easier.

Minimize top level comments I don't care about. Fully read the ones I am interested in. Skim others.

We allow, even encourage, some very long comments, and I think it'd be helpful to have a way to fold the comment itself without hiding it's responses. Some sites have 'click to show more ' on long posts.

The CSS highlighting of new comments since last page load is fantastic, though.

The highlighting of new comments is indeed our best feature.

I'll skim or collapse the threads that I'm not interested in. Holocaust relitigation, US Supreme Court cases, Ukraine posts (other than maybe one or two commenters), Israel-Palestine, US internal party politics, Catholic theology, that kind of stuff that's either stale, broadly irrelevant to me or concerning people I've never heard of.

I have to allow myself some skimming on the CW threads, but I read most of the normal weekly threads as well as any other thread that catches my interest, which is most of them.

Is anyone familiar with Rands Leadership Slack? Is there a better community that this, for tech leadership discussions? Preferably not political (Rands is still kinda woke).

I want to start fishing.

Rough location; Eastern US. Mid-atlantic to as far north as Boston and as far south as South Carolina.

For any anglers that might be on here, I'd be interested in recommendations for books, apps, YouTube channels, and subreddits (or other forums altogether) to help me get started.

Please and Thank You.

I've really enjoyed fishing the few times I've done it. I just can't stand the constant line tangles, knot tying, and hook prickings. Any protips to keep these to a minimum?

Boston and South Carolina have entirely different types of game fish.

You can get decent gear for a very reasonable price point. You will want a hat, sunglasses, longsleeves, cooler with water, etc. Just go fishing more than worrying about specific setups and reels and whatever. Follow state game laws.

For cleaning your fish you will need one filleting knife and a surface to clean it on. A board with a clamp definitely makes it easier but you don’t need one. Wash your filets thoroughly and then use or freeze within a day or so.

Whatever type of body of water you want to fish from there is a dozen YouTube videos for

My big rec is to get your gear then go fishing and realize what you need / how you feel

I basically did the same thing on the South Florida coast and the biggest thing was getting out there and seeing what I enjoy

Considering taking the grill-pill: Does anyone here have any experience or recommendations on pellet smokers? I've had some success in the past smoking meat on a basic kettle grill with charcoal, but it's a bit of a pain to setup and baby sit all day. I'm thinking it'd be interesting to get something a bit more turn-key to make it easier to do more frequently, and pellet smokers (Traeger, et al) seem frequently recommended these days for both traditional low-and-slow barbecue and occasionally for other outdoor cooking (pizzas? burgers?). Are they actually as good as advertised? There are tons of models at different price ranges, but which features (and sizes) are actually useful?

I already commented, but I personally took the grill-pill recently, so I am interested in what you end up doing. If you have enough room, I don't really see why you couldn't do both the pellet smoker and also something else. A portable Weber Jumbo Joe would be very cheap used, wouldn't take up much space, and would still be big enough to do indirect cooking as well as searing and also be able to put out an appreciable amount of food but you may be cooking in batches more than you would with a full-size one. Plus you can more easily take it to a relative's house or out in the woods if you want to take the battle to the enemy.

A family member recently discussed pellet smokers with me; he recommends the Weber Searwood 600 for $999 (Weber is known for its quality), and he also listed the Green Mountain Grills Trek Prime 2.0 Wifi Pellet Grill for $399 (it is pretty small). I think Pit Bosses are considered okay, similar to Blackstone. They may not have existed long enough to have a whole lot of sentiment on forums. Check Amazing Ribs to get good reviews on smokers.

They can get pretty pricey, compared to a charcoal grill, but maybe worth it, if you like to cook a lot of briskets. Briskets are hard to do well on regular smokers or grills, but apparently a pellet grill can nail them consistently, and it's automated, so you can set it before going to work and then come back and have tasty brisket, whereas other smokers would require a free weekend. On the other hand, I wouldn't trust a pellet grill to "grill" anything.

Personally, I'm just going to stick with stuff I can do on the Weber 22 inch kettle grill for now. I did a pork butt on one a couple weeks ago. My uncle took the Weber Smokey Mountain approach, which is much better at smoking, and he claims you can take out one of the grates and just use it as a regular kettle grill if you want; he got the larger of the two models. Check Facebook Marketplace for both because they're both significantly discounted when used, and they're big hunks of metal that typically outlast their owners, so used is basically as good as new in most cases. If you want to smoke with a kettle grill, definitely pick up the Slow N' Sear.

Man achieved barbecue perfection with the invention of the Weber Kettle in 1952. If it ain't broke, don't fix it

One of my coworkers got one of them and was pretty happy with it for low-and-slow -- while there's still some setup, he was able to set up ribs or a side of brisket and just leave the cooker for 4+ hours. And at least by my (admittedly low) standards, the output was fantastic and impressively tender even with some lower-grade cuts, if a bit subtle on the smoke side.

More marginal for anything that needs a lot of heat. Burgers were cooked enough to be safe, but I've gotten better sears on a 110v electric. He let my try a kabob recipe and had similar problems. Either never tried anything doughy, hasn't mentioned it. So probably can't replace a normal grill entirely.

Big complaints he's mentioned so far were maintenance being a little obnoxious, especially if not cleaned out properly, and the dependence on outside electric. Losing shore power while he was away from the cooker definitely lost half a day of cooking and would have ruined the food if he hadn't gotten a notification. Not sure how much the maintenance issue is standard, his model, or his tendency to leave pellets loaded for some of the most humid months.

I'll have to flag him down to see if I can get the exact model; he mentioned that pellet capacity varies a lot, and that he went for one of the bigger ones specifically to because of that.

tried anything doughy

I'd never considered that you could smoke bread. This is going in my culinary bucket list next to pickled cheese.

Wait until you get to the endgame: pickled sausages. Pure lard, vinegar, and salt, absolutely nothing redeeming and absolutely delicious. Bonus points if they come out firecracker red.

I got a 199 electric smoker

I love it

One day I will upgrade it when I own a home but I use it two times a week for all kinds of meats and fish

I add wood chips every 45 minutes

Comes out awesome

What’s the wealthiest country with a non-marginal presence of each category of megafauna?

Temperate bears are easy- it’s the United States, if you say that doesn’t count for some reason(tinkering with the definition of marginal, I guess), then Canada. The next one seems like it’s probably Japan. Polar bears would be Norway, but let’s say those are a marine mammal.

For elephants, I’m guessing either South Africa or Malaysia, depending on exactly the range of Indian elephants. For giraffes and rhinos, I’m a bit more confident in South Africa.

For big cats I think this is Uruguay, with jaguars. Maybe there’s more leopards in Saudi Arabia than I think, though. Of course if you count pumas as big cats(they are after all both those things, but taxonomically different) then the US wins again.

For big grazers, this is the U.S., with bison. If you specifically restrict it to large antelope it might be Kazakhstan.

For apes, I’m pretty sure it’s Malaysia, with orangutans. Large monkeys would be Saudi Arabia, with baboons.

Big canines would be, probably, Norway.

Eagles are probably Switzerland.

Big snakes are, I’m guessing, either Malaysia or Singapore.

Any categories I’m missing? Any corrections?

I have a few thoughts.

Bears: I'm going to throw in a vote for the US. Black bears, brown bears, and grizzlies are all common. Russia might be in the running too.

Big cats: are you only including panthera, or "cats that are big"? The US might come back into the running with mountain lions if it's the latter.

Canines: the US probably wins here hands down if you include the larger eastern coyote. If you don't, it gets a lot murkier.

Big snakes: this might be the US these days. The Burmese python population is out of control in Florida, and they get enormous.

You might want to include a few more categories as well.

"Large browsers" are different from "large grazers". The US and Canada have moose and elk. Several countries in Africa have giraffe.

"Crocodilians" have representatives in the US, China, India, multiple South American countries, and at least Egypt. This probably goes to the US or China

"Aquatic mammals" is another interesting one, with freshwater dolphins (India, China, South America), manatees, and dugongs. This probably goes to the US, unless the dugong is more common in the Taiwan straight than I thought.

I'm not sure what the technical term is, but "giant honkin' birds" would be tricky. You have ostriches, and emus, but a few other that might fit as well. This gets complicated by the fact that the big two have been exported and farmed all over the world.n Australia probably wins here?

Australia probably wins for giant flightless birds. It also probably wins for giant lizards.

Crocodilians- I mean there’s american alligators, and theres saltwater crocodiles in Australia. Aquatic mammals almost certainly goes to US, with elephant seals even if manatees are too marginal.

For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.

Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.

For large browsers I think the US wins again, with moose.

Not for the bison? They're heavier, but less gangly.

Bison are grazers, not browsers.

Now I’m imagining a bison with a browser-grade neck. Cartoony animal.

Today I learned this distinction. Thanks!

Bears is definitely US or Norway. No way it’s Russia- it’s just too poor to win on widespread species. Canada, Japan, Scandinavia, all have bears.

I think I wrote that while I was trying do do some per Capita GDP vs megafauna math. If it's just "has animals", you're definitely right.

I mean, the winner of GDP per bear is probably some euro country with very few bears.

The Dubai zoo may end up winning all categories.

Scandavian winning again due to their socialized natural resources…

I would guess France, actually- a small but self-sustaining bear population with a large economy.

Not sure how you are doing wealth comparisons is it per capita? Total GDP? Median or average?

Norway has a higher median Wealth than the US but loses in total and on average. So big Canines might also be US again with wolves living there. But Norway also has brown bears and polar bears. So if they win the wealth game for canines they'd win it for bears too.

Same issue with eagles.

I'm also not sure if Singapore should win anything. Depending on how much work "non-marginal" is doing for the population counts. There might be more large snakes in zoos and private collections in the US then there are in Singapore.

That also brings up the invasive species issue. Florida has a bunch of large snakes. They are not native to the area, so do they count?

Also we could add crocodiles to megafauna. Florida/US probably wins that.

Wild horses is another potential category. They are large grazers, but it feels like they are pretty different from bison. There is a wild population of them in North America in Virginia and Maryland, and maybe out west still. But they are also an invasive species in North America.

The invasive species issue is more important than you might think. Texas ranchers have a surprisingly large number of large game animals for hunting purposes. Some of those ranch animal populations actually outnumber the estimated wild populations for those animals.

Hogs might also be megafauna. They are bigger than wolves, and certainly bigger than Eagles. America wins that depending again on the invasive species question.

The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy. ‘Marginal’ and ‘wealthiest’ are turning out to be more relevant questions than I thought.

Texas ranchers have a few big antelopes, but I don’t know that it makes much difference- bison are native to Texas anyways. I guess free ranging gemsbok makes a difference if you’re specific to big antelopes.

Reticulated pythons in Florida probably matters, though.

Might be a bit of a u shape phenomenon. They exist at low wealth and high wealth. It's not just big cats, but big predators in general.

Urban areas are voting for policies of allowing predators to live among their nearby rural areas. The rural areas hate those policies for obvious reasons. Happened in Colorado where they were releasing wolves.

Yeah, but if Saudi Arabia decided to reintroduce its original population of lions due to enormous wealth, they’d still have gone extinct in the middle.

Are there first world countries that developed to first world standards without pushing their native large predators out? I mean, Canada and Uruguay are contenders- with the obvious similarity of large tracts of essentially uninhabited land because everyone lives in one or a few major cities. The U.S. is similar- wolves, bears, and cougars were largely extirpated from the areas people actually live, the recent range expansions are driven by population concentration and deliberate reintroductions. Maybe bears in Japan?

There are plenty of mountain lions in the US, and I think they're "big cats". I've also seen claims of jaguars' range extending across the border from Mexico, but relatively few documented encounters.

I've personally seen a bobcat, but that probably is too small to count.

If I see a mountain lion in my neighborhood, something has gone very wrong.

Whereas if I see a mountain lion in my US neighborhood, I have something mildly unusual to post about on nextdoor. Occasionally a mountain lion even makes its way into the heart of a major city, though that makes headlines when it happens.

There are fairly common news reports of them in several California and Colorado cities that I can recall offhand.

Oh, most certainly.

It’s my pseudo-suburban wasteland that ought to ward them off. We get yotes and bobcats.

Theres one gets shot in downtown Dallas every couple of years. Usually around the dump or in the trinity river floodplain. Their normal range peters out right around where the Fort Worth far suburbs turn into generic small towns.

The original question in my head was ‘how first world can you get without driving your big cats extinct’ which then evolved into the broader question with wealth as a proxy.

If so, I don't really think any answers to this question (your broader one) are really indicative of much because there is one glaring confounding factor in the metric you're using. Most megafaunal extinctions did not occur during the transition to industrial modernity; rather they occurred when all modern humans were still firmly in the hunter-gatherer stage. The giant ground sloths in South America, the mammoths and mastodon in North America, as well as Diprotodon and the marsupial lion in Australia were all driven extinct via a combination of human pressure + environmental shifts during the late Pleistocene. 65% of megafaunal species went extinct during this period, and when it came to animals above 1000 kg, 80% of them disappeared.

What really does this metric in is that this loss of megafauna wasn't exactly evenly distributed throughout the world, it was particularly severe in the Americas and Australia, whereas Africa, South Asia and Southeast Asia were less affected. And the worst Pleistocene megafaunal die-offs occurred in regions which happen to correlate with first-world-ness today. Long before any human societies became recognisably first-world the distribution of megafauna globally was already very skewed, and relative megafaunal diversity in any region has a whole lot to do with whatever happened during the late Pleistocene and not quite so much to do with industrialisation.

There were jaguars on the Texas gulf coast until the 30’s. Tigers lived in thé actually populated parts of southern Russia until soviet times. Mountain lions lived through most of the east until the late nineteenth century and they’re still present in the outer suburbs of most American cities in the west- their ecological requirements aren’t that different from pantheras.

Wolves live up and down Italy. Bears are surprisingly willing to live near people.

Clearly large predators living near civilized people is a thing that has, in fact, happened.

I had a black bear in my driveway Monday evening. Just outside 495 in Massachusetts.

Polar bears would be Norway, but let’s say those are a marine mammal.

...makes arbitrary decisions about categories of aquatic fauna purely for convenience

...is trad Catholic

Yep, checks out ;-)

Eagles are probably Switzerland.

I would say Australia is a very good contender for this. The wedge-tailed eagle has a massive wingspan and length and it is endemic to the Australian continent. They are often seen here and are in fact the most common of the world's large eagles. IIRC Australia also has higher median wealth per adult than Switzerland, though also lower average wealth (I suppose Switzerland's average is pulled up by a small percentage of really high net worth individuals) so I think it fits well here.

A possible runner-up is Japan (probably features third behind Australia and Switzerland because it's not super wealthy, and it represents the edge of the habitat range for the species in question). The Steller's sea eagle is one of the heaviest eagles and can be commonly found overwintering in Hokkaido (they are also found in South Korea and China but in smaller numbers, so depending on your definition of marginal you could count them or not). The actual core of their habitat is in Russia, but that country definitely isn't wealthy.

Big snakes are, I’m guessing, either Malaysia or Singapore.

Singapore definitely wins this, they have the reticulated python. This alone doesn't make them unique - many other countries have large snakes, but what really wins them the title is that they are also very rich.

But I would include Australia before Malaysia in that list. Northern Australia in particular has its fair share of large pythons like the Australian scrub python (which is one of the world's largest pythons, capable of preying on wallabies) and carpet pythons, which can get large: example 1, 2, and 3. Also here is an olive python swallowing a crocodile in Queensland. You're welcome.

I realise this reply is very Australia-heavy but I think people underestimate just how much actually gigantic wildlife there is in the country. They definitely win the "large marsupial" category with red kangaroos, too.

America has golden eagles, sea eagles, and bald eagles. How you measure wealthiest probably determines whether it, Australia, or Switzerland is the wealthiest country with lots of eagles- all three are way ahead of Japan, but there’s also Canada, Austria, etc in between.

You have a good point re- big snakes and Australia. The real question about whether Australia or Singapore wins that competition probably comes down to the definition of marginal.

Big Rats - The Motte.

Whatever the hell Moose are.

A moose once bit my sister.

Moose bites can be pretty nasti

No, really! She was carving her initials on the moose with the sharpened end of an interspace toothbrush given to her by Svenge, her brother-in-law.

Everyone posting on this thread has been banned. The mods responsible for banning them have also been banned. The forum will now be moderated by llamas, until the police and/or French army turn up and say that this is all too silly.

She had it coming.

Moose

Meese

One of my friends has a 9-year-old niece, and she's a fairly precocious reader (to his delight). She apparently, and I'm quoting here, "rips through books and has outgrown Highlights." He's asked for recommendations for a monthly magazine or book-club that is age appropriate and steers clear of culture war fodder/is non-woke. Any suggestions from the Motte?

My go to strategy as a kid was to walk through the library looking for Unicorn stickers (which signaled fantasy) in the children and/or young adult section (and later the adult section when I became a teenager). And then look at the cover, read the synopsis, and pick out books that sound interesting. (I eventually picked up intuition based on the cover art too, since that's correlated with... something something target demographic and sub sub genre, but I can't really articulate any of that in words other than to avoid books which look too much like other books you've read and disliked, and try to read books that look like other books you really liked).

However this was like 20 years ago and I have no idea to what extent the woke has penetrated fantasy. And also don't know what your niece's preferred genres are. So my actual advice is 1: have her just browse through the library and pick things out, and 2: don't be afraid to go slightly over age range. A Precocious 9 year old can handle books intended for 14 year olds, they're unlikely to have anything truly inappropriate, it's mostly an issue of word complexity and character age.

However this was like 20 years ago and I have no idea to what extent the woke has penetrated fantasy.

I haven't read as much fantasy recently as I wish I had, but from what I have read, my impression is that while I don't agree that it's as extreme as @YoungAchamian makes out, there's usually at least some element of wokeness in most things. For example, here's a list of some of the things I've read over the past few years and what stands out in each of them as particularly culture-war driven:

1/ The Chronicles of Castellane (Cassandra Clare): Everyone seems to be bisexual by default, although the main characters look at this point to all be ending up in heterosexual relationships, making the bisexual angle come across as oddly token in retrospect.

2/ The Library Trilogy (Mark Lawrence): One villain is the rabidly racist, anti-immigrant king of the city where the events of the story take place (whose name happens to be one letter away from "Donald"). Also involves inter-species romance.

3/ Where You Must Not Go (Emil Haskett): A Swedish urban fantasy book. Of the five main characters, one is gay and one is a straight male SJW who sometimes wears makeup (and whose parents are a gay couple). One of the villains is a violent, racist, homophobic ex-mercenary who's also a repressed homosexual. Nothing too extreme but all together a collection of profiles that would be quite statistically improbably IRL.

4/ Age of Madness trilogy (Joe Abercrombie): By far the most high-profile name on this list and also the only grimdark series mentioned here, which you'd think would be particularly resistant to woke influences. Arguably woke features include universally hyper-competent female characters whom everyone is in love with, a racist country lord who's also a repressed homosexual and finally a memorable scene where the urbane and sophisticated prince lectures this same country lord on the merits of diversity and multiculturalism during a visit to the capital (and truthfully speaking makes a much more articulate case than Sadiq Khan ever does). That such elements were noticeably absent from the same author's previous books, e.g. The First Law trilogy, does throw into sharper focus the exogenous changes that seem to have occurred in the broader genre.

Maybe I was being a bit hyperbolic. My gripe is really that romantasy is being claimed as fantasy and is polluting IRL conversations on good fantasy books. But you sort of gave some ammo even to the hyperbolic argument. I love Joe Abercrombie, and I think Mark Lawrence is a good author. Neither of their earlier books are particularly woke. Some could even claim the opposite but as you pointed out they definitely have changed. And these are at least the upper echelon on fantasy authors. I went into the bookstore recently to grab "The Murderbot Diaries" and in that sci-fi/fantasy section I couldn't help but see how many slop authors or romantasy books absolutely filled the shelves. To the point that I had a hankering for some Steven Brust's Taltos and it was not there, crowded out for books on Fairy Magic Academy and R.F Kaung's tired racial rage disguised as historical fantasy. They had the more mainstream famous ones of course: Dune, GoT, Cosmere, and Kingkiller (Despite Rothfuss being too far up his own ass to ever finish it.) But not the greats: Pratchett, Erikson, Bakker, Wolfe, Brust, Gemmel, Cooke, etc...

Maybe I've gotten too old (figuratively, I'm in my early 30s), but I definitely remember roaming the wilderness of the library, in my youth, picking up weird, zany, interesting fantasy books based on the covers and the synopsizes, and them having actual quality and being enjoyable non-sloppy, non-political reads.

Edit:

Age of Madness trilogy (Joe Abercrombie)

I want to push back on the claimed wokeness of this one a bit, I read it when it first released, in 2021 so forgive me if my remembrance of the details are murkier. First off, the hyper-competent female character is literally a robber-baron sweat shop owner who is in a forbidden love affair with her stepbrother (The urbane prince). She is in no way portrayed as good person or even super competent (The whole riot arc in the first book?) since her "father" (Head of the CIA) pretty much runs the country and lavishes everything on her. I don't remember the young (18) country lord being racist. An arrogant bigot: Yes. He's also just a homophobe not a closet homosexual. Yes, his retainers were gay, he has a nasty reaction to it, but I don't remember ever thinking he was secretly into the retainers in any other way than a platonic male bonding way. The urbane, metrosexual, openminded prince gets the shit end of the stick by an astounding degree even if you end up rooting for him. He also bumbles through a lot of stuff and is essentially the trope of rich wastrel sons being useless. The whole burners/breakers plot is clearly mapped to activists being absolutely shit, not really wanting a functioning society and also secretly being funded by the head of the CIA to take down the big banks (Who are also trying to control society). And not in a way that maps onto our political climate neatly.

Wolfe

I remain ever thankful that I stumbled upon a copy of Shadow & Claw at a comic book store when I was in my early 20s and bought it based upon the name and badass cover. Any book store that doesn't stock a copy in the scifi/fantasy section is immediately suspect.

Any book store that doesn't stock a copy in the scifi/fantasy section is immediately suspect.

Absolutely! Also your cover is way better than my version.

extent the woke has penetrated fantasy

Every extent. It's really dominant. What's made worse is that a new set of "fantasy" fans are really insistent that their magical dragon school romance with 86 interspecies love triangles is actually really fantasy!

It seems like “romantasy” has become the default genre for young women, it's pretty startling. I also have met people who seem to be basing their conception of what romance should be like on these sorts of books. I know a young lady who's desperate for a man who also reads romantasy, which is particulary bizarre because these are books written with female protagonists from the perspective of women. I'm not sure what she expects her dream man to be getting out of these books.

Maybe that kind of thing has been around for a long time. But I know older women who like romance books, and they were never like that. My mother is an avid reader of romance, and a shipper before shipping was cool (there were, in fact, fan forums that shipped Anakin Skywalker with Padme Amidala, and yes, my mom is still sad he turned into Darth Vader).

But my father is certainly no romance novel protagonist, yet my mom talks about how funny he was when she met him, and how all the girls thought he was cute, and talks lovingly about going on drives in the country with him and listening to music, and says that even when there was tension in the relationship, it didn’t matter — “I loved him.” They’ve been married for 40 years. That’s my parents.

My mom is just a sweet lady, she likes love stories because she loves people, and romance novels are about people connecting with each other and sharing vulnerability.

I worry that maybe the market for romance stories has shifted from, “sweet story about people overcoming adversity for true love” to “escapist experience where you get to imagine yourself being seduced by one of Snow White’s magical creatures.” Also, please do not look up "scenting."

I get the feeling that older generations viewed these stories as an enjoyable narrative with an inspiring message about the sacrifices that lead to love, which could be tempered by the actual lived experience of seeing your mother and father, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and grandfathers, go through the reality of marriage and as such understand that the reality isn’t like books — and yet still worthy.

I second the 80's Cricket magazine. Also the old Analog and those sorts of magazines. The old Boys Life magazines were also good if she's not sensitive to the title. Used bookstores used to have them.

Around that age my modern kid read/we read with her the Little House books, Boxcar children, Trixie Beldon, Three Investigator, (the old) Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Chronicles of Narnia, Madeleine L'Engle, Ursula K. LeGuin, Roald Dahl, Lewis Carroll, E. Nesbit, Susan Cooper, Peter S. Beagle, the color Fairy books, Edgar Eager, Wizard of Oz books, Chronicles of Prydain... So I guess I am saying if you can't find some easy subscription thing like Cricket, do a do it yourself book subscription and send a "keeper" book or 3 every month. (In contrast to the Magic Treehouse and Rainbow Fairy books which will slowly drive you mad and you will gleefully pass along to another child as soon as your kid lets you.)

Nice list! Could add "Famous Five" and "Swallows and Amazons" et al if you want to inject some anglophilia and normalize free-range activities. (eg. looking for pirate treasure, or being a pirate, depending on one's taste"

I mean for little girls, I remember reading Beverly Clearly’s Ramona books as a kid, Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High. Those aren’t woke and would probably be interesting to a girl.

If you can find the 80’s run of Cricket literary magazine for kids, I have very fond memories of it.

The Newbery Medal and the similar Carnegie Medal provide lists of children's books decades long which have been critically acclaimed for their quality. As long as your friend stays away from anything after 2010, the titles should be non-woke.

In particular, the early Newbery Medal winners and runner ups (called Newbery Honors) are entering the American public domain. Thirty-one of them are currently there, and another nine will join them on January 1st, 2026. So if your friend is willing to give his niece an e-ink reader, he can just download several of them for free from Project Gutenberg.

Alternatively, he could try a long running series such Animorphs, Goosebumps, or Encyclopedia Brown.

Not exactly a book club, but as a former precocious and voracious reader, the Great Illustrated Classics served me well at that age. It's classic literature like Jane Eyre or The Red Badge of Courage rewritten to almost exactly that level, but the maturity of the underlying subject matter makes them hit much better than other books for middle schoolers. Excellent mix of volumes for boys or girls, and more than enough to keep the kid busy until she's ready to try (and fail) to read OG Dickens.

And I'm very happy to note that the prices are very reasonable for books these days.

Oh man, talk about awaking a core memory. I read Great Illustrated Classics' The Swiss Family Robinson cover-to-cover like a half a dozen times as a kid.

What is your advice for getting to know the ins and outs of a local community? We just bought a house and are joining an HOA for the first time. There are various things I'm a little frustrated about in the community, but overall it seems like a good place.

We plan to stay here for a while, so I don't want to come out brandishing my frustrations first thing. How would you go about learning more about the community, outside of going to the meetings and social events and such? (which we plan to do)

Also, feel free to use this as a general thread to discuss good or bad HOA experiences! I'm curious...

What is your advice for getting to know the ins and outs of a local community? We just bought a house and are joining an HOA for the first time.

Umm, abandon all hope ye who enter here? (Kinda sorta but not really) Kidding!

I've had the misfortune pleasure of living in two separate places with different flavors of homeowners organizations. The first community in question was a relatively large community of several hundred houses and the second was a much smaller community of ~50 houses. Both communities provided water and road maintenance for the respective homes. The first had some pretty restrictive covenants, was well run, and expensive AF while the second was almost completely unrestricted, cheap AF, and still trying to live in the close knit community days where everyone knew everyone and households pitched in together to fix community problems, which to me does not seem to work in the 21st century. Regardless, my experience has been tons of dramatically unreal expectations and soul sucking low stakes drama, which greatly inhibits the ability of the HOA to do meaningful things. This was, IME, especially true of the smaller community, which did not have enough of a homeowner base to really afford the type of service and reliability that the homeowners desired and expected. Both communities were big on getting new homeowners involved in the HOA. DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO BE ROPED INTO THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Leave the complainers and the power trippers to each other--your sanity will thank you.

What happens when women don’t get attention?

The old adage says men want sex the way women want attention. But attention, unlike sex, seems easier to come by... for now.

As dating grows more complex, and sometimes risky for men, we’re seeing the rise of alternatives: AI girlfriends, VR porn, sex robots. Add to that a growing visibility of trans women in romantic spaces, and a strange new question emerges:

What happens when women can no longer command attention?

We know what many men do when they’re denied sex or companionship. They turn inward or rage outward. Some retreat to forums. Some go monk mode. Some hit the gym. A few, tragically, turn violent.

But when women can’t get even a glance, no matter how they dress, how they walk, or how perfect their makeup is, what then?

I suspect they won't react like men.

Oh, we're doing the meme where women are begging for attention as men replace them with AI waifus?

It's not going to happen because men are also biological units with evolutionary hardwiring. A woman willing to put out is never going to be alone. She might not get the guy she wants, but she can get a guy. And a man who has the tiniest shot at a real girl who doesn't repulse him will prefer her to a digital waifu.

Trans women are a tiny presence for all the noise they make, and if surveys say 3% of heterosexual men would consider dating a trans woman, I'd bet the number who really would date a trans woman is <1%.

I mean if you create a super stimulus, then people will absolutely choose that over real life. There are beetles in Australia who prefer shagging beer bottles to real females. And that happened without humans doing beetle psychology and A/B testing to create the best, most addictive Waifu-bot possible. Humans designing robot waifus would be working overtime to make their version as stimulating of the male mating system as they can.

Just looking at the NEET phenomenon as an example — people choosing to escape living an actual life in favor of internet, TV, and gaming. Is it normal or natural for a person to choose to live an isolated life indoors over going out with friends, accomplishing things, and moving forward in life? But if you make simulated reality good enough some nonzero portion of the population will choose that, and the better the simulacrum, tge more people get sucked in.

I expect robot waifus to eventually be good enough that all but the most successful men who could get supermodels anyway, and the rest will be at home alone wanking into a robot who’s learned exactly how to get him to spend time with it.

Trans women are a tiny presence for all the noise they make, and if surveys say 3% of heterosexual men would consider dating a trans woman, I'd bet the number who really would date a trans woman is <1%.

Given the fraction of men who participate in machismo-based homosexuality in places where it is socially acceptable (American prisons, non-Taliban Afghanistan, ancient Greece etc.) or the demand for ladyboys as sex workers in cultures like Thailand where that is the normative way of being a trans woman, I would say that 3% is on the low side for "What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.

Men don't want AGPs and AGPs don't want cishet men, so if AGPs are more visible than ladyboys (and in the West they are) then surveys are going to underestimate willingness to date transwomen.

"What fraction of men would dick another guy if there was a non-gay way of doing it?" I would bet that the real number is in the 3-10% range.

Well, "date" is different from "dick", and the chief complaint from trans women is that men are willing to have sex with them but not be seen in public.

I recall there was a survey (probably not a great one, but whatever) that something like 1/3 of men had had a sexual fantasy about a transgender partner. There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories. So you're correct that the level of sexual interest in trans women is higher than is accounted for in the 3%.

But the fact remains that we're still talking about less than one percent of the population, which already regards men being interested in them as highly suspect precisely because of the gulf between that 33% and the 3%. Statistically, any given man that expresses interest in them is around ten times more likely to be looking for an exotic sexual experience than a relationship, and the majority are uninterested in that -- not least because being transgender implies a certain discomfort with one's genitals, around which the sex fantasies often orbit. The minority that is interested in being an exotic sex fantasy is highly likely to be swamped by offers and choosy the same way cis women are.

But also, "having a sexual experience" is only one of the many reasons a man might desire the companionship of a woman. "Being seen as a man who has been chosen by a woman" is also a huge factor -- and it's one that the hypothetical about AI girlfriends doesn't take into account.

I don't disagree that some men on the margins are exploring alternative sexual experiences with gay men or trans women or whatever, but this just isn't a big enough segment of the population to have much of an effect on what straight people are doing.

There's also a stat that the "trans" section of PornHub is one of the top categories

Out of how many? Not a gooner, legitimately asking.

There's a little over a hundred straight categories, and transgender usually ends up in the top ten.

I'll caveat that these aren't really good data. There's a serious lumpers-vs-splitters issue where pretty popular-but-conventional stuff gets divided up into sometimes weird subcategories in ways that probably let transgender stuff punch a little above its weight class -- that's probably while creampie, for example, ends up relatively low.

((For those interested: just under fifty gay categories, and ftm usually coasts in around the mid-20s.

For an even-less-scientific number that's not even measuring the same thing, e621's total post count has male/female at 744k, male/male at 568k, female/female at 113k. Compare gynomorph at 216k, gynomorph/female at 37k, gynomorph/male at 24k, andromorph at 27k, andromorph/male at 9k, and andromorph/female at 0.5k. Gynomorph explicitly isn't the same thing as transwoman, and andromorph explicitly isn't the same thing as transman, but they're probably more revelatory about how furries think about woman-with-dick and man-with-pussy.))

If that's true then what's your explanation for the drop in sex, number of sex partners, marriage, dating etc since the advent of highly engaging and digital entertainment and social media?

When exactly do you have in mind?

All the trend lines I was seeing with a casual search start earlier. Here’s one shocked by the decline by 2010.

As with most new technologies, it destabilizes the economy, leading to outsize gains for those who were already in a good position. The dating market bifurcates, with more and more women using the tech to access a shrinking minority of men. Those guys are doing great. They did great in the sexual revolution, and they'll do great any time women are freed to pursue them en masse.

It's also a heyday for women to monetize their sexuality for the majority of men who are priced out of the dating market. Lots of lonely, horny young men to be milked for cash until they figure out AI chatbots are cheaper.

To be clear, most people are still going to pair up, this is all on the margins. But the margins are where movement happens, and the group of marginal sexual partners is growing.

More people are choosing not to go out and do the work. Porn is easy, people are difficult.

Those who do are still getting laid.

More people are choosing not to go out and do the work. Porn is easy, people are difficult.

and

And a man who has the tiniest shot at a real girl who doesn't repulse him will prefer her to a digital waifu.

don't seem compatible.

Yeah, on the margins technology (or at least something) is clearly having an effect. Maybe it's some chemical in food or water. Or one of those classic social science multifactorial explanations with 50 different causes.

The 'true human love will always prevail' rhetoric is just a story trope. Those bars, nightclubs and third spaces are still shutting down, are they not? We can see the statistics.

https://old.reddit.com/r/Infographics/comments/1c742ed/percentage_of_americans_married_by_birth_decade/ We can see the statistics on marriage like you say.

AI pornography is the worst it'll ever be.

I feel like this scenario is exceedingly unlikely, and if it comes to pass, then the women will also be able to enjoy the unlimited attention of caring and attentive (while dark and brooding) AI Husbandos.

Even if that's not the case, there's probably enough residual demand for Legacy 3D Women that they'll find some men to give them attention. Ugly women manage today, somehow.

What happens when women can no longer command attention?

They will do the same thing they've always done in this situation--abuse social power to outlaw alternatives so men's only choice is to give them attention. And then whine that they get too much attention from men.

If all you have to post is a low-effort snarl, put some more thought into it or just keep it to yourself.

Okay, if your hypothetical came about -- what do you think they'd do? Don't just put us on the spot like that -- it sounds like you have something to say. Say it!

Add to that a growing visibility of trans women in romantic spaces

Last time I checked, only 3% of heterosexual men report that they would date a trans woman. Maybe that's increasing. But even if we granted that huge numbers of men gained a newfound interest in trans women, it simply isn't the case that trans women will form some great competition for cis women. There aren't many of them (what, like half a percentage point?), and most are not interested in heterosexual men, whether because they perceive heterosexual men aren't interested in them, or because they believe they can't build a relationship with them, or because they prefer women. We're looking at a fraction of a fraction of a percent here.

It's possible that some fraction of bisexual men will start dating men at higher rates (see the "I traded women for femboys" meme), but my understanding is that the situation for male-male pairings is that sex is easy to find, but ghosting and avoidant attachment is even more common than among straight men.

Sometimes straight men like to proclaim, "maybe I will go gay!" like a kind of protest, same way that women annoyed with men sometimes start investigating political lesbianism, but same-sex pairings are just different in important ways due to biological and cultural factors. The grass is rarely greener on the other side. Fantasies aren't going to save you, and trans women aren’t your fantasy. They’d be the first people to tell you that.

Cats.

This happens to most formerly-pretty women past a certain age. The unlucky ones get fat or ugly by their early 20s, those who care more and stay put-together and healthy can “enjoy” (and sometimes, often even, it is enjoy, but rarely always) male attention into their early 40s. The truly valiant crusaders, the 99th percentile, the $100k deep plane facelift aficionados, can make it to 60 as milfs. But age comes for everyone lucky enough to live out a whole life, and most women make do. Some go a little crazy for a while (an overdone and trite topic in women’s literary fiction, especially of late), most don’t.

Some young women will always want male attention, but even if most young men are inside playing VR waifu simulator, my guess is there will still be enough around to offer it.

So, what are you reading?

Still on a bunch of stuff. Adding Red Dynamite: Creationism, Culture Wars, and Anticommunism in America, another open access book, to my list.

Naomi by Junichiro Tanizaki. Slowly getting out there.

The Divine Economy, by Paul Seabright.

Basically it's a look at religion through the lens of consumer economics. It can be a bit dry at times (although thankfully there's no equations so far) but otherwise it's really interesting. Living in the secular West it's good to be reminded that, for most of the world, religion is a huge part of daily life and is genuinely important.

I finished Jeff Vandermeer’s Southern Reach trilogy last week. Good finale, if a bit weaker than the others. The irrationality of Area X is just less compelling than the anti-rationality it displayed in the first and second books. But I suspect that’s inherent to writing a plot where characters are supposed to do anything rather than have it done to them.

I still absolutely recommend trying the first book for anyone into literary sci-fi or the New Weird or surreality.

Now I’m halfway through Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City based on a recommendation from @pbmonster. Five out of five stars so far. It’s such a pure example of what that thread was calling “competency porn,” except it also dodges the excesses which litter the genre. The protagonist is smart and driven and charismatic in a way which makes it clear that he, along with everyone around him, is under tremendous stress. This does wonders for the believability. I’m staying up too late reading it.

It kind of reminds me of a more serious counterpart to the Moist von Lipwig Discworld novel Making Money.

Free by Lea Ypi, a memoir of the author's childhood in Albania as it transitioned out of the USSR out of socialism and into a liberal democracy. Unsurprisingly, it presents living in a socialist country in a very negative light. Comparisons with My Brilliant Friend are apt (Albania in the late 80s/early 90s seems about as economically deprived as Naples in the 60s), even though this one is marketed as non-fiction. Very readable, and I'm glad the focus is mainly on the politics and the disruptions the author's parents had to cope with, rather than endless trite anecdotes about the author's interactions with her primary school classmates or whatever.

A quibble but Albania was just communist and was a member of the Warsaw Pact Member, so was aligned with but was never a part of USSR.

Also, it quit Warsaw Pact in 1968 due to its alignment with PRC.

Thank you, amended.

I'm on the fifth book of Card's Tales of Alvin Maker and wow, an amazing Fantasy series. It stuck in my mind as a kid because the storytelling is so good, but going back and reading it now is incredibly rewarding. I'd give it a try if American fantasy appeals to you at all.

Ministry: The Lost Gospels According To Al Jourgensen by Al Jourgensen and Jon Wiederhorn.

The Worm Ourobouros, again and still.

Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century. I read a Kindle sample and found its subject matter interesting, but the actual treatment of it seemed convoluted and overly materialist, and on top of that the full book is quite expensive. I'd rather just read Frantz Schmidt's diary directly, if I could get a reasonably readable edition of it. All I find is direct scans of 19th century versions in fonts that are cute in their antiquated way, but to be quite honest I'm habituated to more accessible typography.

Faithful Executioner

That has been on my reading list for several years now, but I’ve never gotten around to picking it up. Would you still recommend it despite your somewhat tepid review?

As said, I've only read a sample, which probably amounts to the first twenty or so pages. The subject matter is very interesting, but the style in which the book is written annoyed me. It kept spiralling around key information without revealing it directly, semingly trying to build up tension. And I just don't need that in an educational book. Too many wasted words and repetitions, and far too much time spent on emphasizing how alien the profession of the executioner must seem to modern readers. Then an aside into how the guilds discriminated against executioners purely because of their members' economical insecurity, and that kind of historical materialism plus armchair psychology really turned me off. I had hoped that the author would simply go over the source material and provide additional context, but instead I got a newspaper-article-level clickbait narrative and a bunch of unqualified comments that were ass-pulls from the land beyond even speculation.

All that said, the author clearly did a lot of research and I would have liked to read about that, but not at the price of 15€ plus all the useless bullshit he packed into his book (or at least the early pages thereof that I read). So I'll personally prefer to just read the source directly, if ever I can find a readable version of it.

If you aren't a picky reader but interested in the subject, then it's probably a perfectly servicable pop-sci book.

Thanks for the detailed response!

I've been noticing a lot of interesting trends as I read comments here, and I have a few questions for anyone who would be willing to answer.

For these distances, I'm only looking for rough numbers.

  1. How far away is the closest symphony orchestra that pays it's musicians?
  2. How far away is the closest bespoke suit shop?
  3. How far away is the nearest commercial farm (not hobby), and what do they farm?
  4. How far away is the nearest Amtrak station?
  5. How far away is the nearest Walmart?
  6. How far away is the nearest international airport?
  1. 350 miles
  2. 50 miles. In the state capitol. Its not a very high end one though, clients are mostly politicians and local lawyers it seems.
  3. <1 mile. Tobacco.
  4. 8 miles
  5. 8 miles
  6. 50 miles

  1. 5 miles

  2. 2 miles

  3. 1/2 mile, corn, but it was in the news that they're getting bought by a housing developer

  4. 5 miles

  5. 1/2 mile

  6. I think like 50 miles. The regional airport flies direct to all the big international hubs though (10 miles)

  1. about 15 mins, 10 miles
  2. about 20 mins (it's really close to #1 actually but somehow google maps says it'll take 5 mins more to get there. Probably due to a bunch of 1-way streets aligned the wrong way).
  3. Depending on what you mean by "farm". If you mean anybody who grows stuff that people eat for profit, then about 3 mins walk. Or 10 mins walk into practically any direction, they are everywhere around (though house prices are squeezing them out). If you mean a larger production with serious machinery and volumes, probably 1-2 miles. Two literally nearest ones grow cows and corn, as far as I can see, but there are all kinds around here. In fact my neighbors across the road have a large field but I am not sure if they grow stuff commercially (I can't see very well into that part of their property and I was never curious enough to find out, but wouldn't be surprised), but if they do then the answer would be "right next door".
  4. If you need specifically Amtrak, about 250 miles. Though there's talk about building a new line - not sure how real, but if it happens, it'd be about 10-15 miles likely. There used to be train service there, but closed in 1990s.
  5. 4 miles, 10 min drive. There are other large shops closer than that.
  6. Nearest major airport is in about 10 miles, which can take you to every major hub around the US and some other places, but it isn't "international" anymore as the company that was doing flights to Canada doesn't do it anymore. Which I guess is good as it eliminates the need to maintain the whole international security thing. So the nearest international one would be in about 350 miles, though the one you'd actually want to use if you flying to Europe or such is about 650 miles and about 1.5 hour flight.

  1. Given that I’m already on record as a North Texan, I don’t really want people drawing rings around the Dallas symphony. There’s probably a closer one…

  2. Can’t answer, which makes me feel like a proper peasant.

  3. Complicated by our tax incentives. Random businesses are encouraged to maintain small fields or pastures. I wouldn’t call them “hobby,” but they’re not the main revenue stream. So the nearest farm is probably a dairy 6 mi away.

  4. See point 1.

  5. 3-4 mi.

  6. See point 1.

1: 20 mi

2: <1 mi

3: either <5 mi (for the small vegetable farm nearby) or 30 mi to a larger orchard/farm. For a full-on commercial farm, 50+ mi i would guess although I've never been to it.

4: The local train station is <1 mi; nearest specifically Amtrak is I believe 20-30 mi, though I've never used it.

5: 15 mi; there's a Target <5 mi.

6: 40 mi, with the regional ~15 mi

  1. 11km
  2. 2km (I live next to an italian neighborhood)
  3. 5km (it's a large rooftop greenhouse farm), greens, microgreens
  4. Going with Via Rail as it's our equivalent, 6km
  5. 1km
  6. 25km

1.) 20mi / 32km

2.) 20mi / 32km

3.) If you count horses, or wine grapes, less than 5mi / 12km. Otherwise like double that, I have lots of produce, hay, corn, soybeans in the area.

4.) 12mi / 20km

5.) 12mi / 20km

6.) 12mi / 20km

The place I live is suburban but right on the edge of a rural & agricultural area.

All of them are within about 15 miles. The farm is regular produce for bourgeois consumption.

  1. 1.5km
  2. 1.2km
  3. 6km for what looks like a vineyard in the suburbs and 9km for the really large farms.
  4. 5km for the nearest train (not tram) station.
  5. I don't think we have an equivalent in Europe but there's a supermarket 400m away and some bigger ones 2-3km away.
  6. 11km

1: 65 miles

2: 85 miles

3: 30 yards, wheat this summer

4: 40 miles

5: 3 Miles

6: 5 miles (it technically has a regular flight to Canada), or 45 miles to an actual regional airport.

  1. <1 km
  2. 3km
  3. 1km, apples
  4. 5km (not Amtrak)
  5. 4 km (local equivalent)
  6. 220km
  1. 20 minutes
  2. 2 hours
  3. 5 minutes, corn.
  4. 20 minutes
  5. 15 minutes
  6. Local airport has "international" in the name but doesn't go to any other countries. Doesn't even go to a majority of US states. So I guess 40 minutes, but really 2.5 hours.
  1. Under 10 miles.
  2. No idea. Women's fashion shops with custom alterations under 15 miles.
  3. Nearest I don't know. The one we get our dairy from around 30 miles and same distance for a different one we get fruit from. Vegetables... Probably further away but they have a drop off under 5 miles away.
  4. Around 5 miles.
  5. 1 mile, but I preferentially go to the one around 8 miles away.
  6. Around 5 miles.

Without looking each one up:

  1. 30 miles?
  2. I'm not sure. The only person I know who asked about this ordered one from Vietnam.
  3. 20 miles? Green Chile, probably.
  4. 30 miles?
  5. 15 miles?
  6. 30 miles?

I feel like most of these are just different ways of asking "how far are you from the core of the nearest city?"

Nice try New York Times.

I'm going to say about 15 miles for all of these, plus/minus 15 miles.

Same. As is likely true for most people living in large metro areas in the US.

  1. 3 kilometers
  2. 1 kilometers
  3. 19 kilometers, dairy
  4. 2 kilometers. (This is a Canadian station but the Amtrak line from NYC 'Adirondack' runs there, otherwise a station owned and operated exclusively by Amtrak is 109 kilometers)
  5. 6 kilometers
  6. 18 kilometers

Not to bury the lede this is downtown Montreal

  1. Stuttgart I guess, around 60km from here.
  2. There used to be one (several in earlier times) in town here. Not sure if it still exists. So, maybe 4km. Otherwise: No idea, I don't own a suit.
  3. About 20 meters, I can see hear and smell it from here. They used to farm vegetables for their own use, have some crop fields further out but I don't know which ones are theirs and what crops are on them (lots of corn is up right now in general though), and they do have good number of cows.
  4. Presumably it's in America, so at least one Atlantic away. But if you just mean a generic train station - about an hour on foot if you know the slippery shortcut up a hidden valley, about ten minutes by car if you take the long way. 2km away if you could fly.
  5. Supposedly there's one in Switzerland. There aren't any in Germany as far as I know. The closest generic supermarket is about 3km away, over in the next village.
  6. Stuttgart again. Somewhat over 60km, since it's on the wrong side of the city.

  1. A couple of miles

  2. Less than a mile

  3. I didn’t know, but there are apparently dozens of commercial farms in the green belt around London, maybe 20 or 30 miles? Livestock, milk, fruits, the usual.

  4. The north-easternmost Amtrak station, so either Boston or somewhere in Maine if they go that far north.

  5. Don’t have it here, but their nearest former subsidiary Asda is ~4 miles away. The nearest Costco is like 6 or 7 miles away.

  6. 5 miles to London City, 20 to Heathrow.

There's a farm on the Isle of Dogs that is probably the closest to the average Londoner, but even outside of that are quite a few farms inside the southern boroughs

Mudchute farm is great and kids love it, but I wouldn't call it a commercial farm.

The M25 is 15-20 miles out of central London and there is some agricultural land inside it, particularly in Kent and around Watford. Mostly a mixture of wheat and rough grazing. The serious market gardening is further out - presumably because it is labour intensive and needs to be somewhere where migrant farm worker dorms are cheaper.

The density of ASDAs in London outside zone 1 is such that I am surprised you can be more than 2 miles away from the nearest one. If the "Walmart equivalent" is any big-box retail discounter (including Aldi/Lidl) then make that 1.5 miles.

For my own answers to the questions (also in London suburbs)

  1. 8 miles, 45 minutes door-to-door whether you bike, train, or drive outside rush hour. (In central London)
  2. 1.5 miles for a studio which sends designs to Italy for cutting. Savile Row is 9 miles away.
  3. 13 miles, about 1 hour by bike or public transport, 40 minutes driving. (Nearest land which is clearly farmland based on Google satellite)
  4. Nearest commuter rail station is <0.5 miles. If I leave the house 7 minutes before the train is due I won't miss it. Nearest station with intercity trains is 5 miles away on the edge of central London.
  5. Nearest ASDA is <1 mile away.
  6. 5 miles

Birmingham, Alabama. Suburban neighborhood called Crestline Park.

Alabama Symphony Orchestra's offices are 3ish miles away, but I hear them perform 6ish miles away.

I can get a custom suit within 1 mile, actually bespoke 10 miles.

I'm having trouble sorting through recreational barns, hobby farms, plant nurseries, LLCs that own houses which call themselves farms, wedding venues etc. The nearest Tractor Supply store is 14 miles away, I have had commutes that involved passing small groups of cattle, cotton fields.

Amtrak is 6 miles away, Walmart is 1 mile away. Birmingham Airport calls itself international and presumably has a minimal number of flights to various Caribbean island countries or Mexico per year. It is 5 miles away. Atlanta Airport 147 miles.

  1. Two hours by car
  2. Two hours by car
  3. Five minute walk (wheat)
  4. Hour and a half by car
  5. 8 minutes by car
  6. Two hours by car

Why don’t you just ask people directly how rich/poor or urban/rural they are?

I was driving through an extremely rural suburb of a city the other day that was also extremely wealthy. There was a wildly high end custom furniture store next to a Walmart. As I drove home, I saw an Amtrak station in the city, then realized there was another out in the middle of nowhere.

It made me realize that a lot of the things that people use as tribal or economic indicators in the US might not be as cleanly distributed as people think.

This is more fun.

  1. 40 minute walk, 15 minute drive with usual traffic
  2. 40 minute walk, 20 minute bus ride
  3. 30 minute drive. Fruit, berries.
  4. 20 min walk 5 minute drive
  5. Looks like 22 minute drive
  6. 40 minute drive or 15 minute train from station that is about ~20 minutes away from where I live.

How far away is the closest symphony orchestra that pays it's musicians?

15 minutes away by subway

How far away is the closest bespoke suit shop?

10 minutes away by foot

How far away is the nearest commercial farm (not hobby), and what do they farm?

50 minutes away by car, strawberries

How far away is the nearest Amtrak station?

Halfway round the world. 15 minutes away by subway if you're fine with any other long-distance trains

How far away is the nearest Walmart?

Halfway round the world. 40 minutes away by subway if Metro C&C counts

How far away is the nearest international airport?

25 minutes away by taxi, 45 minutes away by subway and express bus

by subway

Alright, but what is that in freedom units?

I joke, but I really have no idea how fast the average subway covers ground. Our light rail is…not particularly efficient.

Beats me. I have no real sense of how far away more remote locations that are reachable by subway are.

Maybe ten handegg fields per minute?

For me:

  1. About 100 miles
  2. About 150 miles
  3. About a quarter mile (Holsteins)
  4. About 35 miles
  5. About five miles
  6. About 110 miles

Fifteen miles; Three miles; three miles; three miles; eight miles; thirty miles. Slightly changed distances in different directions.

The Farm sells all kinds of things, and it’s a perfect example of how poisonous foreigners are to a community. This is a locally owned multigenerational farm, so they price things fairly because their neighbors are their community. They pay good wages, because they hire their neighbors and their neighbors are their community. They are devout Christians, so so they live humbly and give back to the community, which is their neighbors (the list of their giving is absurdly long). There are a lot of older adult workers, who are definitely “inefficient”, but there’s not a sociopath or a foreigner or a corporation owning it, so they care for those whom they hire. It’s a beautiful Americana farm and store. They sell organic, because like most Americans they have a distrust of most commercial pesticides.

If Indians bought the farm, all the employees would be overseas relatives; some of the proceeds would be sent back home; they would have to signal their wealth more, meaning resources wasted on commercial goods; they wouldn’t care about fleecing others; it is unlikely (but I suppose not impossible) that they have the morality to give lots of their profits away, and if they do, it is unlikely to be toward the White American community nearby but instead toward various Indian things, or perhaps to an elite institution that doesn’t need the money. If devout non-Christians owned the store, they would be giving back to their non-Christian institutions, meaning the resources are gone from the community.

Visiting is wonderful; everyone is nice and everything is cozy. It stands in stark contrast to the convenience stores (and in past decade, Dunkins et al), where you have some aggressive impolite overseas Indian staring at you the entire time, and everything is ugly and cheap, and they only hire their relatives.

This got reported for your gratuitous shoehorning of an anti-immigration rant into the thread. While you are allowed to rant about immigration, you should do it in a thread where that's actually the topic, rather than derailing some other discussion so you can rant about your thing.

(1) 17 miles (27 km)

(2) I'm not sure what a "bespoke suit shop" is.

(3) I'm not sure how I would search for that. Also, it's my understanding that most farms near me are "preserved" (heavily subsidized by the state government), so the question may not even be meaningful for me in the first place.

(4) 4 miles (6 km)

(5) 6 miles (10 km)

(6) 43 miles (69 km)

I'm not sure what a "bespoke suit shop" is.

It means a place which will make a suit from scratch, to your measurements and specifications. It's expensive as you might imagine, but if you want something that a normal manufacturer doesn't make it can be the only way. I've thought about going to one of those, just because manufacturers don't make three piece suits in sizes large enough for me (and I like a three piece suit).

Only open to American readers, I assume.

I'd actually love to know the same numbers for non US individuals, if only because the Amtrak bit would be hilarious. Your equivalent long distance commuter train equivalent would also be interesting.

I can find all of these within a 10km radius (assuming the Finnish state railroad station is valid for Amtrak and the nearest big box store for Walmart). The nearest farm I could find where I could definitely say what they farm produces potatoes.

From my house-

  1. Is definitely downtown Fort Worth(easy commuting).

  2. Depends on what you mean by ‘bespoke suit shop’. There’s a tailor in the nearest shopping center. There’s a habadAsher in the next nearest one. An actual from scratch suit place is, again, a trip to Fort Worth.

  3. Small cattle ranch within thirty minutes, but I think it’s a breeding operation to sell sperm more than a meat production place. Multiple actual cattle ranches or big grain farms within 45 minutes. Thats just top of the head, there might be a fruit orchard closer. I’m assuming you don’t count people who sell backyard eggs and the like.

  4. Idk I assume ft worth.

  5. Very close.

  6. Probably DFW airport.

Huh. I really thought you were down near Houston.

Google Maps doesn't even try when I try to find a path to the nearest Walmart, which would be in Canada. So I guess we'll never know.

~100 miles for 4 and 6, and at least that for 1 and 2.

Walmart is 3 miles out. Farms are closer than that, mostly wheat, some cattle ranches.

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