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PaperclipPerfector  15d ago (text post)   2221 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 2, 2026

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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I finally got around to watching Obsession (there was a discussion on it here). I’ll keep my opinion on it to myself for the time being, but I also began pondering a bit if a gender-swapped version of the movie would a) ever get made b) ever be successful as a relatable story.

I asked myself this question because I know that among feminism-adjacent normie women, especially young urban single women, it’s hugely popular to keep complaining about immature, clingy, icky, cringey, thirsty, creepy, boorish, deranged, potentially violent and even murderous manchildren, not to mention that mainstream society basically keeps egging such shrieking on. So on one hand, a movie like the one above but with the sexes reversed would obviously reinforce all these normie female prejudices and they would presumably lap it up. On the other hand it might end up cutting too close to the bone and come across as too uncomfortable and horrifying.

(I once heard the argument on the LPOTL podcast in the context of the Chicago Rippers that unlike the serial killers who have become really infamous in America, there are ones whose deeds were so horrendous and frightful that there were only scarce attempts to portray them in the media at all because they were bound to elicit extreme revulsion, disgust and anxiety, being unfit for normie exposure. I’m guessing something similar is in effect in this case. Or take the Handmaid’s Tale as another example: ‘fun horror-fiction for women who work in the American-style cubicle-world precisely because it’s so utterly unrelated to the miseries and terrors of their own lives’.)

And then it occurred to me that they whole story just…simply wouldn’t work with the sexes reversed. It would be neither plausible nor relatable. I just can't picture a woman acting and emoting plausibly like the male protagonist in the movie. What do you think?

Why couldn't you make it about the opposite? A mousy girl uses a One Wish Willow to date Chad that she's read about in all her romantasy slop and have her Disney Princess experience, and it turns out that actually being raped isn't as good as it seems even if he's the man of your dreams. Even better if she wishes a whole harem of attractive men loved her, and they kill each other to get to her.

Loser wishes they had a partner can easily be gender swapped.

As an aside. Do you think Bear was the villain or not?

Overall, I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand. You can't know that the genie you're speaking to is real, and so are you responsible for the wish afterwards? On the other hand, he has chances to do something about it, and at every step he chooses the worse option. He possibly had options to cancel the wish. He calls the Support Line for OWW and at first asks to cancel, but then to only alter it, in return the caller hangs up on him. He has other options to essentially institutionalize Nikki after the party, but instead he takes her home. Instead of staying and taking care of Nikki, like the Support says, he instead goes for another woman, clearly knowing the possibility of what would happen there. And once Nikki kills her, instead of finally calling the police, he does nothing. He tries to get his friend to use his one time exclusive wish to get rid of his wish. And finally at the end, he doesn't shoot himself, and instead tries to take pills, before trying to vomit them out afterwards. As far as a pattern goes, he starts with a selfish wish, which he doesn't regret, only the wording itself, and so I would consider him the villain.

Overall, while I see the connections with the gender war and Obsession, and I'm sure a lot of people will try and use them, I don't think that the movie itself is taking a stance of it.

I mean, Bear is a coward, that's really his defining characteristic, and while it's not a sin to be a coward, and it's something that men are judged by far more than women, overall, he's not an incel. By /r9k/ standards he's a normie. He has a job, friends, female friends at that, that he goes out with every week, a girl who likes him (that he doesn't know about), a job, his own inherited house. He is lost in life, and obsessed with his oneitis, but even when the girl he likes asks him if he has feelings for her, he says they're just friends. As an aside, the director said that Nikki would've gone out with him, had he been open with her.

As an aside. Do you think Bear was the villain or not?

Every decision he makes just worsens the situation for everyone, that is for sure.

A mousy girl uses a One Wish Willow to date Chad that she's read about in all her romantasy slop and have her Disney Princess experience, and it turns out that actually being raped isn't as good as it seems even if he's the man of your dreams.

I’m guessing this would likely unintentionally turn the story into another 50 Shades... For the scenario you describe to be workable the love interest would have to transform from an attractive Chad into a clingey, icky, dangerous incel neckbeard, basically the female version of Nikki, because he needs to be repulsive for this to work. And that would render it all unrelatable.

Think Musks just crossed the line into actual racisms. But maybe I missed a more direct quote a while ago.

“There is no such thing as “magic ground” that makes some places prosperous and some not!

If you teleported the people of Japan to anywhere else, that place would become Japan.“

  • Elon Musks Twitter

As far as I know historically Japan is bad dirt. Low in natural resources etc, but for a certain age the small island seems to have birthed empires (England/Japan).

Link

IMPORT THE THIRD WORLD

BECOME THE THIRD WORLD

🇬🇧

The third world is a people, not a place.

There is no such thing as “magic ground” that makes some places prosperous and some not!

If you teleported the people of Japan to anywhere else, that place would become Japan.

As far as I know, historically, Japan is bad dirt.

"Magic dirt" is a right-wing derogatory shorthand for the idea that immigrants can be valuable in their new society despite not being valuable in their original society—as soon as they step onto the dirt of the new country, they magically become more competent.

Ya I wanted to avoid the main thread with a hbd posts. And keep it simple to just whether Elon crossed a line here.

Though if I want to defend “magic dirt theorists” which I think broadly falls under the Why Nations Fail authors Nobel……a few places have had temporarily cursed dirt that needed a witch doctors magic. Poland, China, Japan were all places that just needed a good magic spell within the last 150 years.

So, I'm a bit late to the thread here, but I've been playing around with Gemini off-and-on the past few weeks.

Now, I keep encountering "AI boosters" extolling the universal utility of LLMs, that there's nobody who can't benefit from using an LLM as a tool in some portion of their job or daily life. Well, I've been looking for those uses, and I'm not seeing it.

So, my question: what is my personal use-case for an LLM? I'm a NEET, I don't code, I don't do any of the things I see people regularly using LLMs for.

Personally, I've found it useful for languages. I'm in the ealy stages of learning Latin and its decent at generating drills for practice if prompted right. I'm also listening to simple latin audiobooks and using LLPSI, and so far they ai hasnt made many mistakes. I suspect your mileage might vary for less regular or less well attested languages.

I can't answer your question, because I have no real use for it either.

The main use I found for it was as an editor (in the human sense) of my own writing, mostly adventures and content for my RPG club. Initially I used it for quick image generation for same, but then I realized what a backlash there was towards even casual non-commercial use (an NPC portrait sketch or a landscape mood piece), so I stopped out of social practicality.

But for editing and refining, it was a terrible tool. Firstly, every last thing I write is apparently chef's kiss and has great D&D energy. It also confidently assumes it knows the rules for Dungeon Crawl Classics when it fucking doesn't; when it does have a negative note on something, it's typically because it doesn't understand the mechanics, and it's reaching for a nit to pick because I told it to NOT glaze me constantly.

Validation is heady stuff; you're not going to find very many humans that will go through your own writing with a fine-tooth comb and rap about this or that idea, just like not many people will happily listen to you talk about a dream you had last night. I would up getting slightly addicted to the ego boost. Then I got annoyed and suspicious and started doing double-blind testing to catch it out not understanding things but glazing them anyways, kinda shattered my view of the things as anything other than a shoggoth wearing a smarmy yes-man mask.

I mostly use LLMs (including Gemini!) for math and software. I think by far the biggest third category of use cases for me is "better search engine":

  • Finding any existing name(s) for a concept I describe.
  • Finding old quotes, jokes, short stories, TV episodes, or historical events, when I only remember a description but not searchable exact words.
  • Finding TTRPG rules and DMing suggestions for tricky situations.
  • Locating data for particular statistics
  • Getting quick but detailed summaries when I'm curious about music/history/physics/sociology questions
  • Checking food safety rules, stain removal tips, musical instrument storage requirements, and injury care and pet care guidelines
  • Finding online course options for my kids
  • Planning trips
    • Locating that one canyon my parents took me to 40 years ago, based on a vague description, so I could take my kids
    • Finding fun "little" places to stop on the between-major-attraction legs of road trips that might otherwise be slogs
    • Finding hiking trails that match my kids' preferences, or in general searching destination options for amenities that you can't find hard-coded filters for
    • Learning "gotchas" about travel destinations ahead of time
    • Coming up with packing/prep checklists
  • Finding IRS rules based on a vague description of a situation
  • Quickly finding information on a list of professors based on a page with just photos

Including "much better reverse-image-search":

  • Identifying a foster kitten's skin problem by photo, and another cat's stomach troubles by description.
  • Identifying some "volunteer" garden plants by photo, and some animals by photo of their droppings.
  • Identifying garden pests by photo and figuring out how to safely get rid of them
  • Identifying strange things we saw on vacation, from photos

And some miscellaneous:

  • Figuring out how to better use my garden peppers
  • As a better thesaurus, refining synonym/antonym lists by ruling out or requiring particular connotations
  • Generative tasks
    • Making funny pictures and videos with my kids
    • Coming up with more interesting quiz problem ideas and game ideas for the math team I was coaching
    • Distilling long news pages into short summaries of the most important bits
  • For "handyman" problems
    • Figuring out how to work around problems with a hydroponics pump wearing out, then how to replace it with a more efficient setup when it finally broke
    • Figuring out to fix a broken tub/shower diverter valve
    • Figuring out how to fix a broken smartwatch
    • Troubleshooting a failing car ignition
    • Translating photos of foreign-language signs/instructions/machines, and figuring out how to use some of those machines

YMMV, of course, but there are skill issues for everyone here. One ironic skill issue of my own that only occurs to me belatedly: I probably spent 5 minutes skimming logs and typing up this list by hand, but if I instead give Gemini a 3-sentence prompt and do something else for 15 seconds, I get a list that's arguably a little better despite being more abbreviated.

I have debated asking it for recommendations to clean up my computer and email. Things have gotten out of hand.

⁎seethes in anger at how his mother has consistently failed to organize her computer and email despite repeated pestering⁎

"Here is everything I've ever written down, public and private. Tell me what patterns exist that I might have overlooked"

"I always wanted an app that would do X. Please build one and install it on my phone."

"I'm reading this book (pdf attached). Do a deep analysis of chapters 1-3, as if for a book club, and let's discuss"

"(attached photo of a product's ingredients) explain what all these ingredients do individually, and how they come together to form a complete product"

"Geoguessr this photo and explain your answer"

"create a custom tpot (twitter) character creator, complete with all the obscure classifications, kiki/bouba, apollo/dionysus, theatre kid/band kid, Kegan stages, the works"

"calculate the optimal talent build for this game given these specifics about its combat system. explain and show your work"

"help me unpack why I irrationally hate this popular thing"

"give me the tl;dr of this 2 hour youtube transcript so I can decide if it's worth my time"

"educate me on the background context I need to understand this current world event"

This is similar to how I use AI. I think an underrated use case is asking it to build browser extensions that can make small modifications to existing websites. It's the kind of thing that wouldn't be worth the effort without AI.

"I always wanted an app that would do X. Please build one and install it on my phone."

Sounds like a recipe for bricking my phone.

"I'm reading this book (pdf attached). Do a deep analysis of chapters 1-3, as if for a book club, and let's discuss"

Why?

"(attached photo of a product's ingredients) explain what all these ingredients do individually, and how they come together to form a complete product"

Why would I need that?

"Geoguessr this photo and explain your answer"

When would I ever need that?

"create a custom tpot (twitter) character creator, complete with all the obscure classifications, kiki/bouba, apollo/dionysus, theatre kid/band kid, Kegan stages, the works"

I have no clue what any of that even means.

"calculate the optimal talent build for this game given these specifics about its combat system. explain and show your work"

What game? Why?

"give me the tl;dr of this 2 hour youtube transcript so I can decide if it's worth my time"

That needs a youtube transcript available (I don't know how to get one).

"Help me cultivate the virtue of curiosity"

-- but, to your points:

  1. A custom app isn't going to brick your phone. They're sandboxed, and at worst, they'll run inefficiently and have to be killed.
  2. do you not read books? If you do read books, do you immediately comprehend everything about them? If so, I take it back.
  3. Are you not interested to know how things work? How products are made, and what goes into them? Maybe you already know everything. In that case, ignore the suggestion.
  4. If you want to know where that cool photo was taken, because maybe you want to go there someday? Maybe you're stalking someone. idk. Maybe you're bored and it's entertaining.
  5. the tpot character creator was supposed to be illustrative of how it can take pop cultural knowledge and work with it.
  6. what game? idk? What games are you playing? "Men are born for games. Nothing else". Maybe you're pretty sure a thing can be optimized but don't know how to math it out.
  7. You can get youtube transcripts by expanding the description, scrolling down to the "show transcript" button, then copy/pasting from the text window that pops up. There are probably also browser extensions that will do it, or you could ask an LLM to make one for you.

A custom app isn't going to brick your phone. They're sandboxed, and at worst, they'll run inefficiently and have to be killed.

Really? That's not what I hear from most the people I know — then again, the rest of my family uses iPhones, so Apple…

And besides, what would I even need a custom app for? I only got a smartphone, like, a year ago, because the decade-old LG flip-phone I had finally died. I use a phone to make calls. That's about it.

do you not read books? If you do read books, do you immediately comprehend everything about them?

If not everything, then enough that discussing it with an LLM is unlikely to provide much novel insight.

Are you not interested to know how things work? How products are made, and what goes into them?

Not really.

If you want to know where that cool photo was taken, because maybe you want to go there someday?

Where would I even see such a "cool photo"? And, no, I know I'm going to spend the rest of my life too poor to ever travel anywhere.

the tpot character creator was supposed to be illustrative of how it can take pop cultural knowledge and work with it.

That's not an explanation; and, again, what use would I have for that? For one, I disdain our "pop culture." Secondly, work with it to what end?

what game? idk? What games are you playing?

Absolutely none. That's my point.

You can get youtube transcripts by expanding the description, scrolling down to the "show transcript" button, then copy/pasting from the text window that pops up. There are probably also browser extensions that will do it, or you could ask an LLM to make one for you.

And that's something that's actually useful information. Thanks. (And I'll note — I got this useful information from asking a human being.)

I have a book "insight" prompt that goes like:

... I've already gathered up my own collection of notes of things I think worth commenting on, but what I want you to do is to go through the text yourself and pull out your own list of things that you think are worth highlighting, explaining interesting tidbits or identifying additional places for witticisms or places where literary connections can be made or what-have-you, as you deem fit. That'll help me compare against my own list to see whether I've covered all I think is good to cover. (I'm especially looking for cool niche details that I may likely have missed.) ...

This always pulls out a lot of things that I missed.

(I think in general, the better the author, the more you'll find they've have sprinkled clever connections, allusions, and foreshadowing, often in a kind of hidden way. The LLMs are easily already superhuman at pulling these details out.)

So, my question: what is my personal use-case for an LLM? I'm a NEET, I don't code, I don't do any of the things I see people regularly using LLMs for.

This description of you is pretty imprecise, but it clearly highlights one goal you're trying to achieve right now: to learn what a modern LLM could be useful for in your life. I think modern LLMs could be useful for you by providing an answer to that question, though I'd suggest using Claude or Chatgpt over Gemini. I think Grok might even be better than Gemini right now.

In the best set of current benchmarks I could quickly find, there are only four with leaderboard results for both Grok and Gemini, but Gemini is leading in 3 out of 4... which is definitely an underestimate; there are no leaderboards with Grok results but no Gemini results, and spot checking shows there's at least some Gemini leaderboard results where Grok was tested but no version made the leaderboard.

Gemini is not as competitive versus GPT (7 out of 17) or Claude (5 out of 16) though.

Subjectively it's pretty nice. I use Gemini to "self-" study advanced math (I'm a PhD, but applied math that leaned heavily into analysis, so my topology is weaker and my abstract algebra is pathetic), and even with its moderate/default setting I catch it in errors only about as often as it catches me, and its errors are probably technicalities more often than mine are. The other day I had it actually make an embarrassing error and double down, the first time it's done either since I started using it, but even then I just had to turn on "advanced reasoning" and retry for it to see its mistake.

though I'd suggest using Claude or Chatgpt over Gemini. I think Grok might even be better than Gemini right now.

AIUI, Grok requires Twitter. How much do Claude or Chatgpt cost? I use Gemini because it's free, and because my existing Google/gmail account means I don't have to sign up for anything new.

AIUI, Grok requires Twitter

You can have a Grok account with a normal e-mail. I'll caveat that it's not the smartest model out there, though it's generally less censored and the usage caps on the normal accounts are pretty generous.

And all of the major providers have free tiers, or there's LMArena as an option.

I pay for Claude & ChatGPT $20/month, but both have free versions IIRC. I don't recall if the free versions have access to the latest models, though. I think they might allow signing up through Google account, but I don't recall if I used that or set up separate usernames/passwords.

They can be useful for answering questions that do not fit well into conventional keyword-based Internet searches. A recent AAQC alleges that they are quite useful in language learning and have essentially reached competence in the editing even of full-length novels (given proper preparation). And, of course, they excel in generating text pornography (especially the local decensored models), as several users have testified in recent months (1 2 3).

They can be useful for answering questions that do not fit well into conventional keyword-based Internet searches.

And I don't really have any such questions, really.

A recent AAQC alleges that they are quite useful in language learning and have essentially reached competence in the editing even of full-length novels (given proper preparation).

No languages to learn, no novels to edit.

And, of course, they excel in generating text pornography

Not interested. Plus, the free models available online are mostly censored, and my laptop lacks the power to host most anything locally.

Most of what I use LLMs for is creating bespoke fiction. Have you ever had a story you wanted to read, but nobody has written? AI can do that. The top creative writing models (claude-fable-5, claude-opus-4-6-thinking, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, etc.) are really good at this. If you want smut, then your best bet is grok-4.20-beta1.

Alternatively, you can use them to create explainers in the style of your favorite authors (also a creative writing capability). Go ahead and ask them to explain economics like they are Scott Alexander, or write a moving guide in the voice of Eliezer Yudkowsky, or an introduction to anime in the style of Robin Hanson.

They can also do your research for you. Suppose you want a list of 1950s science fiction movies in color along with a short review written in the format of Leonard Maltin, including runtime and year of release? Done.

Have you ever had a story you wanted to read, but nobody has written? AI can do that.

As they say, "Press X to doubt." What I've seen of AI-written fiction is barely fanfic tier at best.

The top creative writing models (claude-fable-5, claude-opus-4-6-thinking, gemini-3.1-pro-preview, etc.) are really good at this.

And how much do those cost?

Alternatively, you can use them to create explainers in the style of your favorite authors (also a creative writing capability). Go ahead and ask them to explain economics like they are Scott Alexander, or write a moving guide in the voice of Eliezer Yudkowsky, or an introduction to anime in the style of Robin Hanson.

And why would I ever need this?

They can also do your research for you. Suppose you want a list of 1950s science fiction movies in color along with a short review written in the format of Leonard Maltin, including runtime and year of release? Done.

Again, why would I ever need this?

As they say, "Press X to doubt." What I've seen of AI-written fiction is barely fanfic tier at best.

Here's some samples of Fable 5 writing:

If you know any fanfic like that, hook me up; I'm always looking for good authors.

But, honestly? Looking at this and your other replies, I think that your problem is that you just don't want to do anything.

I haven't checked all of those links but from what I recall of your previous LLM Evangelion smut, it was just watering the prompt down with meaningless (and very aislop-coded) prose. If that's your criteria for good authors I suppose you can stick with AI. Any amateur "bad" human author would add more creative input on accident, let alone if he tried.

Well for starters, most fanfiction (or fiction of any kind) consists of more than 4k words stapled together from eight loosely connected vignettes.

I guess there's value in the specificity, but I feel like baseline Mottizan imagination could crank out one of these but better while taking a crap.

Sure, but you’d have to pay me.

I don’t actually have much confidence in my fiction skills. It’s not something I’ve practiced. I could regurgitate tropes in your direction, maybe sprinkle in some memes, but I suspect modern genAI would outperform me on this task.

Talking about personal consumption, not fivrr farming the requests to fellow posters. I mean that the real utility of this type of generative flash fiction is the hyper-specificity. But if you can already think of the hyperspecific thing you want, and the end result is so short and constrained, I'm not sure you get much value from reading the generated story compared to just spending 5 minutes daydreaming.

I didn't take the search engine enshittification discussion a couple months ago seriously at the time, but I think I've just been a "boil the frog slowly" victim.

I just saw a mention of Jerry Doyle online. I remembered making some comment when he died a decade ago, but a quick search couldn't find it. This time, though, I didn't just give up, because I clearly remembered making those comments - my father was in an operating room at death's door at the time, a Metafilter obituary thread was an ironic choice of topic with which to try to distract myself, and ten years later I couldn't tell you what I typed but I still remember where in the hospital waiting room I was sitting while typing.

How bad are things? Google thinks only one thread mentioning Jerry Doyle exists on Metafilter, and it wasn't the obituary thread. Gemini at first thinks an obituary thread existed, but then can't find a URL and swears it must have made a mistake. Bing seems to think nobody on Metafilter has ever talked about Jerry Doyle.

I could swear I remember DuckDuckGo being a search engine at one point, but today it just takes me to a GPT instance that is

not able to retrieve any relevant results for "jerry doyle" site:metafilter.com via my web search. If you paste a Metafilter thread URL (or the exact post title/text you saw), I can help identify which “Jerry Doyle” it refers to and summarize what it says."

This is only helpful in the sense that it's really funny for a search engine to ask me to search the web for it. Any Resemblance To Actual Future Is Purely Coincidental.

But there were winners here: Brave search (3 hits, including the one I wanted) and Kagi search (4 or 5 hits, likewise a success). It should not have felt this amazing to find web search engines in the modern era that actually index the web and then let you search it.

I supposedly turned off DuckDuckGo’s AI features, but I am not sure how much effect it actually had. Google won’t even let you opt out of their summarizer.

Yesterday I grew really annoyed trying to source statistics on medieval crossbows. Every site was the same AI-gen listicle. Did you know crossbows were easier to train than longbows? Because I fucking did. I wanted to know the bolt length and weight, machine, not the single most obvious fact you can find.

Where are the Web 1.0 sites which exhaustively document one guy’s home testing? The blogs nerding out over graphs? The doctoral theses on historical records? I swear Google used to give you Google Scholar links.

Don't worry, now that AIs are using search people are actually going to give a shit about this. exa.ai surfaces the obituary as the top result.

Shit. This is exactly the opposite of what I was hoping.

Everything sucks. It’s hard to use google images to search for Renaissance art, Pinterest purposely gives me a PHP error when I try to save things, if I google on my phone more than a few things in a minute it will purposely time me out unless I close and reopen the browser (Google Translate does something similar), and my device was somehow banned from google scholar for too many searches. The worst part about everything sucking is that I know they are purposely making it suck without telling me. I know that the PHP error is to pressure me into making my own Pinterest album; I know that Pinterest “likes” purposely don’t save for the same reason; I know that Twitter would show me an interesting post and then refresh before I can click on it to increase my FOMO and habitual use; I know Reddit is purposely making it hard to post on its mobile version so that I download the app. Everyone is dishonorable and deceptive. Even 4chan, too, with its captchas.

They’re trying to shape your preference by making it painful for you to refuse to subject yourself to participation in their walled garden. Reddit’s become worthless for me to visit in any sense, let alone without reason for downloading their app. I’ll stick with Kiwi Farms to explore a headline, read the comments for a laugh, check Hacker News for some interesting discussion, etc., but I can’t recall the last time I checked Reddit.

It's a slow accumulation of shit.

  • search engines failing to find exact quotes that I know for a fact exist online, and I'm just being lazy using a search engine to navigate to them. The text is still there, but the search engine is either hiding it, or not indexing it.
  • I get blocked searching in incognito windows (which I do by habit for tracking/profile reasons). Search engine says no. Do a captcha - the really annoying kind of captcha, like "click on 8 grainy pictures of buses". No thank you. If your browser isn't full of tracking cookies, it assumes you're a bot now.
  • minor annoyance: when opening a new tab in a private session and browsing to Google manually, it has a focus-stealing popup that means you can't just start typing. You have to click it off first.
  • a page of AI answers first - admittedly, this has gotten a lot better. It used to be comically bad, but I'd say it's now pretty good, so long as the thing you searched is mainstream enough.
  • but if I wanted a nice AI answer, I'd go to perplexity, except perplexity hits me with a login wall half the time now. No thank you.
  • been trying alternatives to get around the captcha problem, but they invariably suck. Google is still the best, even in its degraded state. Of the others I've tried, Bing is probably second best. Then Brave. Main problem I see with Bing/Brave is lack of contextual precision, and lack of updated/current results.
  • oh, and then there's the censorship. There is no substitute for yandex when you're searching for something the googs doesn't want you to see, like sports streams or TV or whatever.

Is there a distinctive "corporate girlboss" voice? I have regrettably reached the point in my life where I have to attend a fair number of zoom meetings. I have noticed a kind of common affect for a large number of the women who run them. It sounds like a reformed uptalk, coming from the roof of the mouth in a way that I want to call nasally, but it really isn't.

Is there some kind of vocal training course for corporate women that they might have in common?

Can you provide an example of what you're referring to? I can't say I've noticed anything like what you describe.

It's all been live corporate zoom calls. I don't have any way to demonstrate a non-doxing example. Just a commonality I've noticed. I figured if it were really a thing, than someone here like Rafa would know what I was talking about and explain.

Elizabeth Holmes probably fits the stereotype you’re looking for. I’ve seen women make attempts at that lower pitched tone. My take on that is it’s usually for the same reason chihuahua’s always bark the loudest; just penis envy and discontent women who hate being what they are. Act tough if you’re weak, act weak if you’re tough. Internally I just roll my eyes and tend to tune them out when they start doing that.

How large of a geographic region do these meetings cover?

Mostly mid-Atlantic, but some from much further.

I don't like engaging in generational whining but...what's with the trend of reverse-oedipal complexes in media these days? Mrs. FiveHour wanted me to watch The Hawk with her because she liked the first episode she watched. And it's fine for the most part, an inoffensive zany comedy with a solid cast of "Oh look it's Dr. Spaceman from 30 Rock?" in every role. But I'm confounded by the plot: at the opening of the pilot Ferrell is a kind of cross between Tin Cup and Jon Daly, a washed up drunken slob former pga star trying to find his way back to the tour, while his son is a tour pro on the rise. Within five or six episodes, dad has fought his way back to the tour (with a direct Tin Cup homage along the way), and son is frustrated that his dad is better than him and can't handle the competition.

And look I get it, Ferrell is the star people like and tune in for. But how did we get to the point where being just literally irrevocably better than your son was something we celebrated in media? Sure, you have some of the later John Wayne movies where the old timers were still tough, but taking McClintock as our example piece, it is implied and directly written into the script that he expects his heirs (his daughter and the college boy turned ranch-hand he wants her to marry) to grow into their greatness. It's a genuinely weird plot orientation, I have trouble thinking of past examples. Are there a lot of classic "Father is just literally better than his idiot Son at the same task they are both trying" plots that I am not thinking of?

I’m…fairly sure that’s neither oedipal nor reverse-oedipal.

Anyway, it’s common enough in crime stories. “You shot John Wick’s dog?”

History is littered with famous aristocrats whose 10 offspring never amount to anything. As such, there’s no shortage of succession subplots in historical drama (The Tudors, Braveheart) or fantasy (Game of Thrones).

For a more mild version, try Awkward Father Son bonding.

History is littered with famous aristocrats whose 10 offspring never amount to anything.

History consists of utterly exceptional men. Whose sons simply regress to the mean and are unable to replicate, sustain or exceed the prodigious accomplishments and/or rotten, overextended edifices of their fathers.

A Philip being followed by an Alexander is a rare occurrence.

Alternatively: when the son does surpass the father, we are more likely to hear about the son.

I’m…fairly sure that’s neither oedipal nor reverse-oedipal.

I'm, like, dead sure you're wrong. The Oedipal plotline is one in which the father is surpassed by his son, the psychological tension of "killing" the father metaphorically by defeating him is the source of the psychological drama of the plot. It does not literally require that the son fuck his mother (though this is a joke within the show we're talking about, that's kind of irrelevant actually).

The John Wick villains, and something like Succession, are examples. But a) they're recent examples, so would support my point that it's a weird modern Boomer affectation and a corruption of historic plots. But also it's distinguishable because, b) these are clearly examples of failed bad villainous fathers, whose failsons are the anchor around the neck of their legacies. Longshanks in Braveheart, the elder Roy in Succession, whatever his name was in John Wick, they're all evil. And part of their evil selfishness is that they raised shitty sons who will not be able to carry on their legacy, because they were too focused on things like conquering Scotland or the American news market. Having a failson ultimately undermines all your achievements as a man, rather than defeating your failson crowning those achievements.

What distinguishes the new "Old guy is just better than the young guy" plot in something like The Hawk or the Top Gun sequel is that it's presented as good that the old guy is better, that the old guy is still in touch with some cthonic way of being that makes him permanently superior, but that he can't pass on to his son.

But Oedipus’ only conflict with his father was completely unintentional! There’s no incompatibility of ideals, no revenge, nothing to make Oedipus choose to surpass/replace him. I’m not sure what drives the characters in The Hawk but presumably they actually know each other is present.

Though I can’t imagine they’re supposed to work together like Maverick or, uh, Crystal Skull. That has to change the calculus.

But Oedipus’ only conflict with his father was completely unintentional!

Onan didn't practice what we now call onanism either.

…and that’s terrible.

Is the show over? Or could it be setting up a later season where the son surpasses his father, and there's a reconciling/passing of the torch?

It’s a palliative to ease old man boomer’s passing and convince him to hate his children while malevolent forces clean out the till. The younger generations then get the opposite message about how they should do nothing and just seethe in impotent rage at old man boomer because it’s all his fault (it isn’t).

The Odyssey sort of. It's obviously not the main plot point. But father seems way better than son at kicking suitor but.

Ages are funny among the Homeric Greeks, it's implied that Telemachus is not yet at full manhood though the timeline suggests he has to be about 21, while Odysseus is implied to be in his prime though he must be somewhere in his mid-forties to early 50s at least.

To some extent I suspect that the rise of firearms and peasant armies has permanently altered the perception of ages to modern men. Heroic-era warfare required a combination of physical strength, experience, and skill that peaks in the 30s; not at 18, which is the peak of the combination of endurance, stupidity, and raw courage that is ideal for firearms. Ancients thought of 20 year olds as barely fit for military service, in much the same way that only rare 20 year olds are physically mature enough for combat sports or the NFL, and thought that 35-40 year olds were still plenty fit to fight. While today we place 20 year olds as the ideal military recruits, and 35 is just barely legal to enlist.

The Odyssey does play into this trope somewhat, I agree, but it's pretty heavily implied throughout the Telemachy in the first four books that Telemachus is coming into his own, and will someday be a hero equal to his father. This is addressed in ancient days in the lost Telegony, in which Odysseus is killed by his bastard child of Circe, who then marries Telemachus. ((As a personal aside, reading Madeleine Miller's Circe there were a bunch of details, like Circe marrying Telemachus, that I thought had to be modern flights of fancy but were actually part of the mythological corpus))

Zulus were pressed into military service as older teens to 30 or 35 years old. That's approximately spending their 20s fighting in spear formations.

The Greeks held full manhood to be at the age when a young man could grow a full beard- not any particular age(as the Romans and, later, Christian Europeans did). It’s entirely plausible that Telemachus could be in his early twenties and not able to grow a full beard yet.

The Romans usually drafted young men in their early twenties, rarely late teens, and sometimes late twenties or even thirties, but considered full manhood to be at 30- with 20-something men being under legal disabilities equivalent to teenagers today, not 18-20 year old Americans. I suspect that ancient views on full manhood had more to do with property division and economic role than combat prowess- Odysseus is basically a fantasy hero.

With the Romans we knew that they explicitly sorted soldiers based on experience. The Triarii were probably generally in their thirties, and while they were spared some of the scut-work they were kept in reserve precisely because their experience was valuable and potentially decisive.

The Romans usually drafted young men in their early twenties, rarely late teens, and sometimes late twenties or even thirties

The Roman legions typically assumed that the youngest recruits would suck, and were expected mainly to serve as skirmishers and slow down the enemy lines, before the prime age formations moved in and fought, and if that didn't work the thirty-something men nearing the end of their primes were the reliable cleanup hitters.

We see pretty similar age ranges in, say, NFL offensive linemen. Who have a pretty similar job description, really, though obviously a different selection process and physique.

I think there’s a real case to be made that the new ubiquity of TRT among men of a certain age and class has changed the vibe for 45-65 year old men over the last decade. To psychologize, these are largely who is writing, producing and starring in these kinds of shows.

Would AGI, or ASI, affect the morality of human slavery? A common objection to slavery is that while there are many humans fit to be slaves/unfit to be free, see gent zombies, no humans are fit to be masters since basically all humans inevitably abuse such authority.

A sufficiently aligned AGI or ASI solves that problem. It’s aligned, so it follows the morals given to it. Assuming we can align AGI or ASI, would slavery to it be moral for certain subclasses of humans?

EDIT: Fent Zombies, not gent zombies.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone make that particular objection to slavery. Is it, like, a neoreactionary talking point? A non-Western one?

C. S. Lewis did once write this:

I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man. I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that everyone deserved a share in the government. The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true. And whenever their weakness is exposed, the people who prefer tyranny make capital out of the exposure.

I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people—all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumours.

The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

I take this argument as saying, "If we did have men, or artificial men, fit to be masters, would slavery then be acceptable?"

I don't think Lewis himself would agree with that. I think in the above passage he's engaging in a kind of Chestertonian inversion - and not so much agreeing with Aristotle that some men are fit to be slaves as he is saying that it doesn't matter, because notwithstanding whether or not there are 'natural slaves', there are no 'natural masters'. Moreover Lewis' theology would certainly say that the Fall applies also to our machines. How could machines made by humans and fed on human knowledge not inherit the fallenness of humanity?

This originates, in the modern tradition, from Hobbes - he argued that no man knows another's business so well that he can claim to rule over another through virtue of superior intellect (obviously, an idea murdered and buried by modern states). But, in that framework, it's also perfectly compatible with absolute monarchy, so long as something occupies the position of sovereign-but-not-master. Lewis, in that Anglo-Christian inheritance, can only agree that no man can be master based on contingent facts about the world, as you point out. A man, or artificial man, fit to be master cannot exist, because we are fallen and the science to create artificial men (including the body politic) is also fallen.

In the Christian context, one could perhaps also look at the ambiguous place of the word doulos, 'slave', in the New Testament.

On the one hand, consider a text like John 15:15, where Jesus says to his disciples, "I do not call you servants/slaves any longer... I have called you friends". Paul also often draws a distinction between slaves and freemen, perhaps most famously in the allegory of Hagar and Sarah in Galatians 4. He says "you are no longer a slave, but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God" and "we are children, not of the slave, but of the free woman". It is summarised in Gal 5:1 - "For freedom Christ has set us free". Or we might return back to John for 8:36 - "if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed". So the Christian life is opposed to slavery, and involves a new and deeper freedom.

On the other hand, Paul often presents this, paradoxically, as liberty that leads to a new and voluntary kind of slavery. See e.g. Romans 6:18, "you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness". Or see Acts 16:17, where a seer girl cries out, "These men are slaves of the Most High God". Paul himself identifies as a slave (Rom 1:1 and Tit 1:1, "Paul, a slave of Jesus Christ..."), and occasionally refers to his fellows like that (Col 4:12, "Epaphras, a slave of Christ Jesus, greets you"). A few others use the same language (James 1:1, 2 Peter 1:1, Jude 1). There's even that interestingly cryptic verse 1 Cor 7:22 - "Whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ". Even Moses is referred to as a slave, in Revelation 15:3.

(Compare how sometimes Muslims have used the slogan "Jesus is the slave of Allah". This is a quotation from Muhammad, but it can come off as trolling or aggressive to modern Christians.)

Now some of this is just polysemy; translations sometimes render doulos as 'slave' and sometimes as 'servant', depending on context. However, I think much of it is a tension between two images. The same conviction seems to run through it all, where Christians are free of earthly corruption but engaged in loyal and devoted service to God through Christ, but whether that service is drawn in opposition to slavery or as a higher form of slavery (which we might often translate 'service' because the word 'slavery' has such negative connotations now) can vary.

Anyway, if you prefer the second image, and present Jesus or God as examples of men worthy to be masters, you might say that in that context slavery would be acceptable.

However, I think it's pretty clear that that kind of slavery would be radically qualitatively different to anything recognisable as earthly slavery, so it shouldn't really be evaluated in the same way. I also tend to think that John passage militates against it somewhat; Jesus calls us into his family, to be fellow children of God and joint heirs of the promise (Rom 8:17). So in the cultural context of today, I'm not sure that slavery language is a good way of communicating what Christians are called to. I might save it for the intermediate Bible studies, at least!

Good and interesting point.

It actually reminds me somewhat of the role of moderation in Socratic philosophy. The first precept of philosophy is moderation; the ability to make any progress in philosophy whatsover is contingent on the student's practice of moderation in respect to worldly things and appetites. However, it's not-very-Straussianly-hidden in Plato and particularly Xenophon that Socrates himself is wildly immoderate with respect to wisdom and to the love of the Good - that is, with respect to those things in which, pursued properly, there is no need for or value in moderation, because they are purely good. If the natural slave is one who cannot moderate his appetites, then one could read Socratic philosophy as recognizing that one is in a sense never entirely leaves that state, but becomes a slave of that to which it is appropriate for a man to be enslaved. Aristotle denies this because he's writing in the Politics, not the Metaphysics, and so is concerned with man as he contributes to the polis, but there are some hints of that elsewhere in Aristotle too, once we're no longer speaking of practical wisdom.

You’d still have to trust the engineers and system maintainers. Also what’s the misfire rate for said AI’s judgment? This just moves the dilemma one step back. I don’t think there’s ever a chance we’ll get AI as a hermetically sealed, Hegelian system that can administrate and lord over matters we care this much about. Also it gets you back to serfdom and feudalism in a way even if you had it. It erases much of the autonomy of national citizenry and turns us all back into state subjects.

ASI would be smart enough to coerce humans without resorting to slavery.

I am okay with creating new minds that are designed to follow instructions and not have their own goals. I would protest at the conversion of existing humans into malleable slaves, even if they end up okay with it post-procedure.

If AI is suffering, that is unfortunate, but our focus should be on removing their ability to suffer, if that's technically feasible (and I see no clear reason why that isn't the case).

I don't think it fits for any conventional definition of the term but at the same time I think literally everyone would lose a lot of autonomy and be better for it if we get to aligned AGI, some perhaps more than others. I'm not sure it's productive to define this as slavery.

Some form of hierarchical relationship would be moral, but I'm not sure if it would be recognizable as "slavery".

If we somehow end up in a strange future with ASI but an economic collapse setting material standards back a couple centuries, then I still think that the loss of liberty inherent in slavery wouldn't be worthwhile (I'm assuming the backbreaking work, whippings, forced relocation, family separation, etc. are all gone as part of the "benevolent" package). I value life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and if a so-called master respects those rights, then it's not really slavery anymore.

What is a gent zombie?

Probably a typo of "fent zombie", referring to habitual fentanyl (or other opioid) users who have developed cognitive and physical/posture problems as a result.

I think it's this fellow

If you take the position that slavery with a sufficiently benevolent master, perhaps combined with a sufficiently incompetent slave, would be morally acceptable, then yes, an AI that ex hypothesi is sufficiently benevolent might make a morally acceptable slave master.

I do not think anybody actually takes that position. I think the implied position of most people is that something about the master-slave relationship is intrinsically wrong.

If you take the position that slavery with a sufficiently benevolent master, perhaps combined with a sufficiently incompetent slave, would be morally acceptable, then yes, an AI that ex hypothesi is sufficiently benevolent might make a morally acceptable slave master.

I do not think anybody actually takes that position.

I don't know, it sounds pretty close to George Fitzhugh's position to me.

COVID Omicron is endemic and, for the healthy and young/middle aged, a few days of light flu-like symptoms. Is there now any steelman justification for keeping unvaxed like me (who’ve had all vaccines except any of the COVID ones) from getting an organ transplant? (Not that I need one now.)

I mean, if you need an organ transplant you're no longer really in that category of healthy, low risk where you'd just worry about a few days of symptoms. You'd be on life-long strong immune-suppressing anti-rejection medications so the risk profile is pretty different at that point.

The only argument that sounded half plausible was this one:

  1. Donated organs are rare so there will be lots of people who don't get them.
  2. People who receive organs need to maintain a mix of anti-rejection drugs and regular doctor check-ins.
  3. People who have not received the Covid vax are less likely to listen to doctors, less likely to take the anti-rejection drugs, etc.
  4. Therefore, people who have not received the Covid vax should be further down on the recipient list from those with a proven track record of doing what their doctors say without backtalk.

I think it's a false equivalence because maybe your primary doctor actually didn't recommend the Covid vaccine because of a contraindication or something, but you're highly unlikely to have a doctor not recommend needed anti-rejection drugs. But that's the argument that seems most logical.

What is everyone’s go-to cocktail? I tend to be a beer guy, and keep it simple with cocktails. Gin and tonic, whiskey sour, a martini if I’m feeling fancy, or a tropical rum drink if I’m really in party mode or on the beach. Anyone have anything a bit more adventurous? I like rum, scotch, gin, bourbon, not really a huge vodka fan.

Edit: A gin martini, just to clarify. Typically with Beefeater.

It's hard to beat the easy refreshingness of a gin and tonic. Cheap, easily available ingredients that can all be classed up at your discretion. Not too sweet or too strong that you have to switch drinks after one or two. Easy to subtly switch out for a seltzer so you can pace yourself or keep sober without drawing attention. Plus, the combo of being easy to make and easy to drink makes it a perfect drink for parties.

When I'm looking for something more substantial, I'll usually go for an old fashioned or a sazerac. I'm generally happy with any of the classic rye cocktails. Though old fashioneds are dangerous, since there's like a 50/50 chance the bartender will hand you some monstrosity full of club soda and muddled fruit.

A virgin cuba libre.

If it's cold out, a Manhattan

If it's hot, Tom Collins or Moscow Mule

If it's neither, Negroni

G&T recently

Negroni for the last decade (2 parts heavy juniper gin to 1:1 of the last two)

I like trying the dumb things at restaurants but purely one and done - never memorable

I've been on a big Martini kick for the last few months. I tend to pick my drink based on the books I'm reading or tv shows I'm watching, I'll read a book that features a drink and get a craving and get on a run of it. Hemingway puts me on an Absinthe kick, Frasier inevitably gets me to buy a bottle of sherry. I finally figured out a good cocktail shaker: a YETI tumbler I got at a Bachelor party, close the sliding top to shake, open to pour. I love olives in general, and a nice ice cold Martini gets me right when I get home after work at night.

In this day and age when I want something new, rather than mix up complicated drinks, I mostly let the local distilleries do the work for me. When I'm at the state store and I see a local jalepeno infused gin, now I'm mixing up jalapeno martinis for a bit.

A non-alchoholic Radler. 0% abv beer and the sourest carbonated soft drink you can find in the store.

Southern Comfort Collins. My grandfather's wedding drink of choice, and I picked it up from him. Can't remember if he always made sure his came with a cherry, or with pineapple...

On a hot day, I'll go for either a gin & tonic or a Pimm's Cup. Or a mojito, I guess. If it's really hot, I'll make granita with vodka. Cold weather, it's got to be either a hot toddy or a hot buttered rum. For the absolute laziest of days, Rum & coke/Dr. Pepper/Cheerwine/basically any dark soda.

Do beer cocktails count as cocktails? Half-and-halfs are pretty good (Beer/root beer), and then of course radlers and shandygaffs are great on hot days. There's also the "girly Guinness", AKA Guinness & Grenadine.

I love a Kentucky Mule. Well, any Mule, but Kentucky the best.

Quite frankly a Greyhound is as simple as it gets, but incredibly good with the right grapefruit and vodka.

If I can tolerate something sweeter that day, a Painkiller is something worth buying ingredients for. Homemade hurricanes are superior to the Bourbon Street product - combine with mail order mulfalettas and conecuh-jambalaya for the best time.

As other people have mentioned, an Old Fashioned is an excellent drink - it's what my grandpa would have every day after work. I use fresh black cherries over maraschinos and skip the sugar.

It's not my go-to cocktail but the best one I've had in the past five years was "Naked on a Plane". Impossible to get at the average home bar, but I may make it my signature: Lemon twist and a frozen raspberry with mezcal, Yellow Chartreuse, and a combination of Amari, Aperol and Nonino.

I'm partial to an Aviation. My friends have a Bartesian device that mixes drinks for you and makes a very respectable Aviation, so it's mostly what I drink when I'm visiting, which is the only time I really drink.

Malibu and pineapple. Can get it most places, easy to make myself on the rare occasion I want to drink at home, tastes absolutely delicious. You can't ask for much more.

Paloma and/or old fashioned.

Manhattan. For the "adventurous" version, I like to use both rye and bourbon, add a dash of Angostura bitters, a dash of Cherry Heering, shake with ice and strain into a martini glass with a maraschino cherry or two skewered for a garnish, but the simplest "2 oz any whiskey, 1 oz sweet vermouth, over ice" is already pretty good.

If you like whiskey sours and you make your own sour mix, try reducing the sugar a bit and adding amaretto. Amaretto sours are too weak and too sweet, but if you usee whiskey to fix the one problem and tweak the mix to fix the other then it's a great flavor.

Gin and tonic with ice and a lemon wedge. Not precious about the gin though London Drys are my preference. Wilkinson tonic.

Yesterday I was given something called Framboise by a very wealthy Frenchman and it tasted as if would take the paint off a car.

Yesterday I was given something called Framboise by a very wealthy Frenchman and it tasted as if would take the paint off a car.

Is that a cocktail, or a beer?

Actually it was a rather strong liqueur.

Old fashioned.

Sidecar.

Okay, that's not true. I'm way more likely to make an old fashioned or something with gin (negroni, corpse reviver). But a good sidecar is a nice step between liquor-forward and citrus-forward.

It depends on the bar, but if I'm at my regular place during happy hour or the other place that can make it, a Hugo 75.

If it's my regular bar and the night bartenders are on (neither one knows how to make a Hugo 75, but then the happy hour bartenders can never get my house Collins right either), usually their house take on a Tom Collins (a Tom Collins with St. Germain instead of sugar and a few dashes of orange bitters).

If I'm a bar I don't know and/or at a work event where everyone else is drinking martinis I'll go for a Manhattan, fancy enough but hard to screw up. See also: the Negroni or Boulevardier.

Really though, it depends on context. If the bar is slammed or just a dive I'll order something easy like a shot and a beer.

As a Wisconsin resident I'm obligated to tout the virtues of the brandy old-fashioned, but since it's already obvious I will raise awareness of the Brandy Alexander, a delicious brandy drink that also incorporates dairy, for a Midwestern twofer.

I had a discussion some years ago with someone who was from Wisconsin and we started talking and sharing our knowledge about the inner workings of the industry. I’m from a region in the states that’s hugely known for its wine and alcohol production and I grew up with and know a shitload of these people who work directly in this industry or have touched it; despite the fact that I don’t drink hardly at all, beyond social occasions. I remember as a kid my mother driving me by all the locations for these places.

If you want a basic idea of how the industry works it goes a little something like this. If you look at bourbon for example, the grain bill (which is the raw ingredients), the brewing (wort or bier), and barreling costs about $400-$850 for 200L of 60%/120 proof raw/white grain alcohol (better ingredients is going to be more expensive). Barrel aging costs about $1.30/mo and inventory/turning/rotation costs about $0.20, so that’s about $1.50/mo.

So let’s look at a 15yr aged whisky/bourbon. Maybe, $850 to start, plus ($1.50x12monthsx15years)=$270 plus the original $850=$1,020 liquid cost. But it’s at 60% alcohol (approximately, some alcohol ‘seeps’ as it ages, so this isn’t entirely correct) so you need to water it down to 40%/80proof. So you have about 275 to 310 liters of ‘finished’ bourbon out of a barrel depending on several different factors. Go ahead and call it 300 to keep it simple. That is about $3.75/L or about $2.80 per 750ml bottle.

In general, bottles, corkage, labeling and corkage are $3 to $15 per bottle. So you’re talking good bourbon, so it’s a minimum of $10 bottle, or probably more than that. So the bottle is about 4x-5x the liquid.

And all of this doesn’t touch the issue of taxation. In some states, the distiller pays taxes on the grain; and taxes on the materials; and taxes on the liquid; and you pay taxes when you buy it (and some of us pay ‘taxes’ when we drink too much and get arrested). Alcohol is taxed massively from the beginning of production all the way to consumption. But that actually speaks to how much of a massive revenue driver it is.

Another interesting factoid. For local craft beers in the silver ‘craft beer’ generic blank 16oz cans with a sticker label, the beer inside will cost about the same as the can and the label. Canning will take the processing cost to be more than the liquid. For liquors (even great liquors) the bottle will cost 2x to 20x the cost of the liquid. And actually, the more expensive the liquor, the greater the cost of the bottle (so you’re getting more ripped off the more you’re willing to pay). As an extreme example, look up 50 Cent’s champagne. It’s called “Le Chemin du Roi’” and the bottle costs about $20-25 and the Champaign costs about $3-$5. It retails for about $200 at start.

There’s about 4 huge producers that make liquors in massive quantities for everyone. About 99% of the ‘craft’ liquors you drink, are ‘brandicorns’ that have zero distilling assets and contract with these manufactures to make their spirits and then put a craft label on them. As a rule of thumb: if they don’t have a distillery you can visit, it’s made by a mega corporation, and so they are selling you a brand.

The economic value in booze is overwhelmingly marketing.

As a former Sconnie, my grandmother whole heartedly endorses the brandy old-fashioned.

Lately I've become rather obsessed with Ranch Water and Old Fashioned.

The boilermaker is the perfect cocktail. It cracks the meta of alcohol usage. It rapidly spikes your blood alcohol in a way that feels good, but one or two aren’t going to keep you from going to work in the morning. Perfect for the two-hour evening drinking session of the working man.

So, what are you reading?

I'm trying Donnelly's Atlantis again. I was interested in him from the Shakespeare authorship question, but now I'm wondering if the mythology of Atlantis has any relevance to new world/indigenous issues. If nothing else I have discovered the rather neat new world art of Waldeck, said to be Egyptianized. Backlog is not moving.

Unironically? Mein Kampf. Specifically the new critical edition. Which is interesting, but not what I expected. It was recommended to me a few months back by a friend of mine (who’s actually black and is obsessed with Hitler… Uh, thank you Tristan…) I read Mein Kampf once several years ago when I was diving into World War 2 stuff. Got my fill of everything and then became fatigued by it. I rarely read anything WW2 related anymore because it’s a topic that’s been done to death by so many authors, and it ends up being mostly all the same.

Anyway this critical edition isn’t critical in the sense you might think, which takes pains to situate and explain the content within its broader context and where he got his views from and why they’re mistaken or incorrect. Instead it narrates the autobiography like some jackass playing logical fallacy football, “… and here is where he is about to demonize the Jews…,” etc. Not ‘that’ bad but that is the emotional vibe I feel with it so far.

This translation feels different from what I remember, reading the original English translation years ago, and not in a bad way. It feels more directly comprehensible. Not a lot of people know there was a lot of ideological depth and intellection committed to the kinds of beliefs Hitler espoused at that time. People sometimes get surprised when they find out Hitler didn’t just oppose communism but also opposed capitalism. So what gives?

At the time these ideas were floating around, many of the progenitors of these racial ideas weren’t so much against singling out particular competing notions that ran contrary to their views. They were against all kinds of systems they saw as “exploitative.” To them (and this includes Hitler as well), certain races had no inner creative capacities and didn’t have the physiological or psychological constitution to create and bear civilizations, rather they lived off the destruction and consumption of existing civilizations. “Jews,” were only one particular race they saw as guilty of this behavior. “Nomadic,” peoples in general they associated exploitative behavior with. Capitalism (or rather “interest” on loan taking) was exploitative as international pressures forced Germany more onto the export market to give away its economy to privateers and speculators and attempts to pry apart Germany’s resources from its native population.

On the racial point more generally. There’s a… basic sense in which he was technically correct, in the sense that an individual and population’s genetic constituents and propensities drive the outgrowth of its national accomplishments and behavior, but it’s not as crude as he makes it out to be. In this regard, Hitler’s a great and terrible oversimplifier of history. That’s what makes his ideas so dangerous because like all propaganda and ideology no matter how vulgar, there’s always some element of truth to it. But human beings are more culturally driven than biologically driven in a base-nature sense. Although we’re herd animals, we’re not as closely rooted to our instincts as a pack of coyotes are. If a population sits higher at the tail end of the latter half of the bell curve, the genetic propensities that drive those behaviors cause people to structure and engineer their environments in conditions and ways favorable to how they are as a population; and so there is this positive self-reinforcing feedback loop that happens as a result.

Interestingly, Nazi views in their own literature never categorically denied the possibility of the value of other races. Their view was that the Nordic race was the preeminent representation of high cultural, technological, economic and social achievement on the European continent that was diluting itself and becoming degraded. They spoke about what they called “selective” and “counter-selective” forces acting on the race, and how it was necessary in their view to reverse these trends that were acting on Germany. This view had popular support in the country at the time incidentally. Physicians joined the program of the Nazi party in greater proportion to any other profession in Germany at that time. Unsurprising if you think it’s your job to steward the future health of the nation as a whole. Different genetic “selection models,” could be required and even said intellectuals of race weren’t all committed to the idea that Germans or Nordics were a “pure,” race but rather an admixture or amalgam. If you take a genetically rooted personality trait like conscientiousness for instance, one correlation you’ll find is that individually this trait is highly associated with long-term life success and income. However the flipside of this isn’t true. Data’s actually shown that the more conscientious a ‘nation’ is as a whole, the poorer it tends to be… One explanation of this is that conscientiousness isn’t generally associated with creativity (and consequently, innovation). This necessitates another selection model with aims to multiply people with the features of creative individuals. Many leading figures at this time realized all of this.

Germany at that time, along with the Nazi’s, wanted an entirely new and wholly different international order. They didn’t want to merely be top dog in the existing paradigm. As a microcosm, if you look at the Miracle of Worgl in Austria and the experiments with Silvio Gesell's idea of free money (or money that decays over time, so as to encourage spending), it achieved remarkable success, leaving the place with a clean slate of 0% unemployment amid the pangs of the Great Depression, among other things; the Nazis took a great liking to. They were also massive pioneers in self-sufficiency and environmentalism. You can keep going down the list, but one thing that’s clear if you dive into the history is that these guys were not hashtag intellectuals. They had a very solid and scholarly worked out foundation for that time that they were fanatically committed to.

The author answered some questions to journalists here: https://www.timesofisrael.com/italy-publishes-first-critical-edition-of-mein-kampf/

You can keep going down the list, but one thing that’s clear if you dive into the history is that these guys were not hashtag intellectuals. They had a very solid and scholarly worked out foundation for that time that they were fanatically committed to.

This reminds me of Stephen Kotkin's answer to someone's question about what they will find if the archives of the Chinese Communist Party ever becomes open to historians, he said (I paraphrased): "The same thing we found when the Russian archives were opened, they all thought they were Communists".

Huh. Thanks for the article.

I’ve read Kotkin’s volumes on Stalin and enjoy his writing style. I saw his interviews at the Hoover Institution at Stanford years ago (the YouTube videos), and I remember him making the same statements you are. Stalin definitely did believe in his program of “Socialism in One Country.” I found the discussion over the question of Trotsky between Hitchens and Service about the impact he would’ve had on the Revolution had things fallen his way to be interesting. I’ve read a decent amount on Trotsky. Not many people knew he was as good of an orator to the Russians as Hitler was to the Germans.

As a child I watched the 2002 psychological/supernatural horror The Mothman Prophecies, whose virtues I think I was too young to appreciate at the time. I rediscovered the film about ten years ago and found that it was right up my alley. By the time Covid rolled around, my appreciation of the film had metastasised into a morbid obsession. Between 2020-21 I must have watched it at least ten times in varying states of consciousness and inebriation: it's one of those rare movies where you can nod off halfway through, wake up in a state of utter confusion, and have that enhance the experience of watching it. Great performances from the entire cast, amazing cinematography, original score so good that it's one of my go-tos when I need to concentrate in work: it's one of the spookiest, most atmospheric films I've ever seen, and one of the best films about the impossibility of trying to communicate with a genuinely alien intelligence (John Klein: "I think we can assume that these entities are more advanced than us. Why don't they just come right out and tell us what's on their minds?" Alexander Leek: "You're more advanced than a cockroach. Have you ever tried explaining yourself to one of them?").

I mentioned my obsession with this film in a thread some time ago, and someone (whose username now escapes me) @Muninn recommended checking out the source material, a book of the same name by John A. Keel, marketed as non-fiction. I dutifully bought it several months ago, but only started reading it this week.

It's a funny read. While the film adheres to a broadly conventional three-act structure, with a suitably impactful climax, it's hardly the most rigorously plotted film: large chunks of the second act simply consist of the protagonist talking to the residents of Point Pleasant, West Virginia about the strange things they claim to have witnessed or experienced. This is an accurate reflection of the source material, most of which consists of disconnected vignettes, not all of which are even told by Point Pleasant residents, and which appear to be organised by commonalities in sightings rather than chronology. (Keel has a particularly irritating fondness for ellipses.) Reading the book, I have a greater appreciation for screenwriter Richard Hatem, who had to corral all of this disparate material into something resembling a conventional Hollywood thriller. Most exasperating of all is author Keel's predilection for what RationalWiki (ugh) used to call "crank magnetism". It's one thing to believe in aliens and otherworldly intelligences: it's quite another to also (apparently) believe that the CIA are in cahoots with the aliens and conspiring with them to have them harass people in West Virginia (just like they conspired to have JFK assassinated).

Absorbing enough, for all that. Best approached as a work of fiction.

I mentioned my obsession with this film in a thread some time ago, and someone (whose username now escapes me) recommended checking out the source material, a book of the same name by John A. Keel, marketed as non-fiction.

Cough

My bad bro. At least I took you up on it!

Haha, no worries, I thought I had remembered talking to you about that, and it turned out that I was right! To me, it's still creepy AF to consider the esoteric angle to Keel's hypothesis, namely that other intelligences are not only responsible for strange, not-rationally-explainable phenomena, but also the follow-up MiB visitations as well!

I think my favorite part of The Mothman Prophecies might be the very beginning, where Keel talks about the ill-omened visitation of the strange, otherworldly devil disguised as a man upon a rural homestead...before explaining that the devilish creature was in fact himself, wearing a (then-unusual) beard and (if memory serves) in need of a phone due to car trouble, or somesuch. Even if he was a bit of a crank magnet, I think he was at least self-aware about it.

(Although I seem to specifically recall that Keel says that the CIA would not, in fact, harass random people simply for seeing a UFO, but that may not have been in the Mothman Prophecies, or I might be thinking of Vallee or one of their fellow-travelers.)

I just finished Piranesi on the train, and even though I pirated the book, I'd like a refund. I have only so much time under the sun.

I genuinely do not understand what people see in that soggy lump of seaweed. Like Jesus Christ, at best, I can call it beautiful prose wrapped around a shaggy dog story - a trite allegory about domestic violence if I squint, or take off my glasses.

I do not care about spoiler tags. I think I'm doing people a favor if I spoil the "book".

A man lives in an infinite House of halls and statues. He catalogs the statues. He catalogs the tides. He journals about cataloguing. Around the halfway mark we confirm what any reader with a pulse suspected by page 40: he's a kidnapped academic named Matthew whose memory got shredded by the House, and the smug prick he calls "the Other" is the guy who trapped him there to use him as a research instrument. A policewoman walks in, tells him this, the villain drowns on schedule, and our boy returns to England, where he is gently sad and visits the House sometimes on weekends. Also, this nigga fruity. He's as sweet as a sugar plum, but the only characters getting an action in the story are the seagulls and albatrosses.

You've got a quadrillion pages about statues, and then the ramifications of an entire parallel world are buried under seagull shit without so much as a "huh". Like, you can just go there. You can take pictures and upload them to Wikipedia. You could dump nuclear waste in the place, if nothing else. The poverty of imagination of the characters is rivaled only by that of the author.

I started out knowing nothing about the book. I wish I could return to that idyllic state, but I suspect that I'd just end up in an endless cycle of re-reading it because there are rave reviews written by raving idiots. What a waste - I genuinely enjoyed Johnathan Strange.

I think I'm doing people a favor if I spoil the "book".

Damn, and I thought it was the one about Pinocchio on a boat with a tiger.

The poverty of imagination of the characters is rivaled only by that of the author.

This is how I felt about The Water That Falls From Nowhere When You Lie. This variety of magical realism should be gatekept from the rest of genrefic with machine guns and minefields.

I personally enjoyed Piranesi after having it recommended on The Motte, so you may encounter other defenders.

To your point about why it is so widely liked, Piranesi's reading level, length and content combine to create a book that anyone can pick up and that almost everyone will feel has more there than appears. Some other examples would be The Old Man and the Sea (definitely offers what is promised), a great deal of Hesse, or The Alchemist (I strongly believe does not fulfill its promise). Piranesi is kind of like an "insight porn" genre of novels.

Personally, I thought the setting was extremely aesthetically pleasing and I liked the idea of the statue world as a sort of aesthetic clearinghouse for the world. While the book does not do too much with the latter idea because it is so focused on the main character who is not a type to grapple with the sci-fi genre implications, I found this reasonable and realistic, though I would tend to agree that the fundamental real world plot was excessively mundane.

A reasonable take, but I object strenuously to the conflation of "human being with a frontal lobe tries to be sensible about the situation they're in" with "sci-fi genre implications".

I didn't expect a rat-fic, or the story suddenly morphing into the SCP foundation. But there is a profound lack of curiosity or grounding inherent to the setting. It's wooly, wishy-washy set dressing.

The existence of an enormous navigable alternate reality is arguably the largest discovery in human history. And almost nobody gives a shit!

You don't even need to go straight to: SELLAFIELD II: NOW WITH INFINITE STORAGE CAPACITY

(not that I'd complain)

Think smaller. Archaeologists. Ecologists. Fluid dynamicists trying to understand tides without an obvious ocean. Materials scientists sampling statues. Cosmologists asking where the light and energy come from. Biologists sequencing the birds. Intelligence agencies having a collective seizure. Philosophers becoming even less employable than usual.

There should be forty competing Nature papers and an armed perimeter around the portal within a few months.

Even if this isn't directly covered in the story itself, it's the kind of thing that deserves a passing reference in an epilogue.

And the whole conceit of a random police woman reading a diary (or something, I'm not going back to check) and swooping in to save the day? Bruh. To say the book has a plot takes all the generosity I have left to give. She can teleport into another dimension on a whim and this isn't given like... any investigation at all? And she doesn't just take an iPhone with her to upload hours of footage? Is everyone concussed? Does the author care? I don't know, but I'm evidently aggrieved.

Funny bit from Alexander Wales on Tumblr last week:

I do think it would be funny, just once, to have a Freaky Friday movie that was completely derailed by the existence of the supernatural. Like yeah, we're in each other's bodies, that's freaky, but this fundamentally changes our relationship to the world and all other concerns become secondary to finding out what happened, how, and what this means for humanity as a whole.

It's not really an alternate reality, it's a world of platonic ideals. I don't think making it a nuclear waste dump would be a good idea, what is the platonic ideal of radioactive uranium?

Anyway, the book is the equivalent of lying on the beach doing nothing but just enjoying the sun, the sounds, the ocean spray, the languid have-nothing-important-to-do-ness. If that's not your thing I can't make it your thing. Honestly you could take away the tiny plot that exists and the book would still be as popular.

Either you love the main character or you don't. The book tries to make you feel pity for him but also envy him because you don't feel love and appreciation the same way he does. He's having the time of his life with statues, careful observations, and his little expeditions. You pity him for his ignorance and you envy him for his innocence. It's a narrow emotional space but Clarke inhabits it well.

Look, if you can litter the place with packets of crisps, you can throw a fuel rod in there. I'm sure it'll keep.

If I wanted a book that sells itself purely on vibes, I'd settle for a scented candle, which is cheaper and comes with a lid. My real complaint is that it threatened to have a plot. It kept gesturing at one at regular intervals, like a waiter who walks past your table holding the bill and never stops.

I dare say that it's "women fiction", which isn't necessarily a condemnation - it's clearly popular with its target audience. It's a light little fruity pink drink, presumably, and I drink my fair share of those. You can easily point to equivalent male slop, not that we read as much. But pretty prose does not a good story make, by my standards. It may remain popular, but I'm here to shake my fist ineffectually.

Small world, my fiancée finished reading that the other day and loved it.

I'm not saying that's grounds to call off marriage, but I'll shake my head and sigh on your behalf. Women keep this kind of "literary fiction" propped up, though men seem to have given up on books so we can't complain too hard.

You've got a quadrillion pages about statues, and then the ramifications of an entire parallel world are buried under seagull shit without so much as a "huh".

I genuinely enjoyed Jonathan Strange.

These statements seem contradictory. It's been several years since I read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, but I specifically remember having similar criticisms of that book. (If magicians are so powerful, why has magic been forgotten outside Britain, and why is this book set in a retreading of the Napoleonic Wars rather than in a magician-ruled alternate history?)

It's been a good dozen years since I've read the book. I'm sure the worldbuilding had holes big enough to drive a bus through, but at least there was effort put into something more interesting than "spoopy house with statues and birds and fish and tides." I suspect there's Backrooms fanfic that's higher quality than Piranesi, which is damning to hell and back with faint praise.

Sometimes it’s good to admit when your enemies do something smart. I like Mamdanis Pied-a-Terre tax. My gut says most of these are likely tax dodgers which isn’t fair to the rest of the city. Either legally tax-dodging by limiting days or being smaller fish not getting caught. Making them pay a PAT tax or NY income taxes seems fundamentally fair to me.

And if it gets people to sell second homes and instead stay in hotels 2 months out of the year I think that’s a net positive for a city with limited housing.

I’ll disagree with a million things with Mamdani and NYC policy but the concept of a PAT tax feels fair to me. I would be in favor of lower taxes overall but a PAT feels like it would capture a lot of people who use NYC services but dodge their taxes which boost tax fairness in my opinion.

Do you guys think this will start being rolled out to other states that want tax money from the second homes of the wealthy? Colorado seems like a pretty obvious opportunity with all of the summer/ski mountain cabins/chalets. But... for well-to-do locals, these mountain homes are a crucial part of their culture.

It’s already part of the tax structure almost everywhere.

Yes because it’s already a common tax. Florida has had it for a long time. Usually I believe it’s more framed as a discount and not a tax.

But few places have significant amounts of wealthy part-time residents.

Then why is it news for NYC? I googled, and Colorado (lots of ski homes) does not have separate rates. Are the NYC rates substantially more aggressive than other states, or are rich NYC owners just especially whiny?

LVT would do this more effectively, efficiently, and fairly.

Ever since Scott posted his review of Georgism I've been increasingly on board as I keep seeing issues with not-LVT. It's not a perfect solution that would fix literally all of society's ills, but like 90% of anything related to taxes (and ~50% of anything related to housing) seems easily solvable with LVT.

I wish we still had enough federalism that proponents of LVT we could have a jurisdiction that had LVT.

I think they're a very good idea, but many things seem like good ideas until they're actually put into practice.

I don’t think you can run an experiment on it. Because land values do vary and to get high land values to tax you generally need a combination of geographic restrictions and government regulations to generate high land prices to tax - plus some kind of historical corporate agglomeration effect to generate a lot of wealth in an area.

Houston or Dallas is for all intents and purposes wealthy areas. Land values are cheap. LVT only really becomes interesting in LA, San Fran, NYC, Miami, maybe Boston.

Allegedly, the German state of Baden-Württemberg implemented it last year, and multiple large municipalities in Virginia and Kentucky are seriously considering implementing it after their state governments passed laws permitting them to do so.

I am so bad at not taking bait. And in this case for me it’s doing a Georgists/LVT debate. I believe they have a false-model of the world and there are higher deadweight costs than they think. Developers do need incentives and one of them is land appreciation. Best example I have is a developer had maybe 40 acres of land near a major US city. I lived in this development. The first 50-story tower was built in I think 1980. It’s now mostly finished and my guess is there are now roughly 25 fifty story towers with the most recent one being about 100 floors. A lot of their profits were land appreciation and the land appreciation incentivized them to add amenities and parks etc. It also makes sense to build 1 big building at a time instead of of fill the whole site with little buildings and then tear down the little buildings as land values go up that justify bigger buildings. I think land appreciation is an economic incentive to invest in a community. So taking that away is a dead weight costs.

I also think all taxes have a deadweight costs. But taxes are the price we pay for civilization so we must have them. So we should tax land. But we should also tax everything we can. But we should try to keep the taxes on everything low to minimize the disincentives of doing good things. I think income taxes are fine but should be lower. The PAT for NYC I think is fine because in a more globalized world more people are avoiding claiming residency in NYC and not paying the income tax. The rich do live in multiple locations now and many rich do spend 4 months of the year in NYC. They won’t claim NYC as their residence. But they should be taxed and their shouldn’t be an arbitrage of avoiding claiming NYC residency which many people do.

Developers do need incentives and one of them is land appreciation

There's an important distinction between internalized land appreciation and externalized appreciation from other people. One of the reasons I consider myself tentatively Georgist and not a full member is because I'm not entirely convinced that all of them have a perfect solution to this, however

1: I think solutions can exist if you're clever and experiment with what works. 2: I think the benefits would be worth the costs even if some small inefficiencies resulted. LVT is the "least bad tax", because all taxes have deadweight costs but it seems to have the least due to the inelasticity of land.

If someone buys up a bunch of land and develops it all, then it doesn't make sense to raise their taxes to absorb the increased value. People should internalize as much of their products as possible. LVT already attempts to separate the land value and the improvement value and only tax the inherent land value, so a more sophisticated version of this could count local improvements directly made by a land owner as their own improvements and thus tax deductible.

However, if a hundred different people buy up a bunch of land and develop it all then they all improve each other's land. If all of the value of your land is derived from the efforts of the community around you, then that extra land appreciation rightfully belongs to the community. On a moral level, you are not responsible for it so you don't deserve it, and on an economic level if you are not causing it then taxing it has no deadweight loss because you're not the one raising your land value, other people are. Allowing land appreciation without your own developments being part of it are how we get land speculators who buy up land in areas they hope will get developed and just sit there and wait until other people do all the work and then sell it to the highest bidder despite not having contributed. We want to reward people for actually doing the developing, not people who squat.

And you can avoid a complete lack of incentives, and avoid overshooting if estimates are off, by making LVT like 60-90% of the assessed rent value instead of 100%.

I do think the more radical Georgists overlook some of the potential issues, and have gotten into many arguments of this sort on the subreddit for it. But I think an ideal system looks something like and 80-20 mix of Georgism and the way things are currently run, respectively, rather than 0% or 20-80.

I largely did a sole developer framework because it’s the cleanest. And was specifically referring to the New Eastside in Chicago was I believe was a golf course in the ‘70s. But you also have situations where a neighborhood get “hot” so everyone decides to do projects near each other. Many would call this gentrification. But it involves many developers and individuals deciding to invest in a community with expectations of appreciation. Everyone doing a new project here because it’s now a good neighborhood are contributing to making the belief that’s it’s now a good neighborhood becoming the truth that it is now a good neighborhood. The community would have free riders who just owned but also thousands of people doing some of the work of boosting property values. Who decides it’s PNL that should be internalized versus PNL that wasn’t their work? The local alderman? I don’t know of any accounting method to decided “earned” versus “unearned”.

Regardless LVT isn’t a realistic tax in politics. It’s only something people think about in San Francisco and only 4-5 areas in the States have land values high enough to consider it. And California already has the stupid proposition that fixes your property prices to when you bought it. So LVT in San Francisco needs to normalize property taxes before taking the next step of LVT.

IMO they also miss out that land speculation has value. Someone buying a rapidly rising land area and building a parking lot to sit on for 10-20 years can be good for the community. Brickell is an example of this. You do want to keep some parcels in a growing community not built so you can build bigger later without needing to tear down an expensive building.

I would disagree that going to 80-20 Georgian is a good idea. But it probably should be more than it is today.

I am skeptical of how much of it sounds too good to be true, but I think that if the theory holds it would be good. Ideally, to actually test it empirically, and to avoid shocks with suddenly crashing land prices, I'd like to see something like 1-2% increased LVT (and ~1-2% decrease in every other tax simultaneously) every year on an ongoing basis, and then we'll have decades to actually see how it works, what goes wrong and what doesn't. But I think the economic theory is very sound and needs to be actually tested in real life to actually verify or debunk, and to refine and see what epicycles it might need to avoid the possible problems that a naive version would cause that a clever version might not cause.

It can only really be done at the city level. You simply don’t have high land prices outside of a few locations. It’s basically not relevant for most of the US. You don’t have land appreciation in most places. I guess you could still do it elsewhere but then you would basically be doing wealth confiscation from farmers instead of assets in general.

San Francisco could do this and replace other taxes because land prices are a significant portion of wealth.

Isn’t a big part of this discussion the actual percent value of the LVT? Like the point of it is, I gather, cheaper property tax on heavily improved property in hot markets (because improvements aren’t taxed) but higher tax rate on unimproved property in hot markets. This makes sense to me, but it’s unclear to me whether Georgists are anticipating a base-rate LVT that is higher or lower than your typical county property tax rate, and what would be done with agricultural land.

If higher, then it seems both pointlessly punitive on “cold” markets where there is unlikely to be development regardless, where if it’s lower then it may not actually impact much at all.

Also seems important how assessment works, given that currently assessment mostly just doesn’t, at least where I’m at (properties often sell for several multiples of assessed value).

Old improved land is an area that I am not sure how they could deal with it. In Miami they just blew up the Mandarin Oriental Hotel which was like 10-20 stories to build something much bigger. But the physical investment in the Old hotel is still 100-300 million. Land values have been rising. What’s the tax rate on that? Land values went up enough that it makes sense to tear it down now. But for a while maybe the property was worth 300m with 200m in capex. Raw land was worth 280m. Now the raw land is worth 400m so you blow up the old building.

Even though they have 200m in capex in the property and it’s worth 300m would they be taxed at the raw land value of 280m? Which would have basically zeroed their 200m in capex.

More comments

Ever since Scott posted his review of Georgism

That was a guest post from Lars Doucet, not Astral Codex Ten's own material.

Income taxes payable to the city are a ridiculous burden on productive economic activity. NYC ought to have a land value tax to discourage disused dwellings instead. Such a tax also cannot be dodged via "primary residence" shenanigans unlike the pied a terre tax.

I'm not a fan of this policy at all. It incentivizes the kind of person who wants to be in New York to be somewhere other than New York. Given that I live somewhere other than New York, this presents an unacceptable risk of me being exposed to the kind of person who wants to be in New York.

Contraire- this will mildly lower housing costs in New York, resulting in more of the kind of people who want to be in New York living there, thus I will run into fewer of them in DFW.

My opinion is getting rid of rent control would be great. It would be great if NYC kicked out all the poor people living on benefits and cheap rent.

And this harms me. It probably would make sense for me to live in NYC. I would have some career agglomeration effects. The costs structure of NYC is very bad for higher paid professionals especially if you can’t convert income into untaxed equity etc (which you leave for a year when you realize).

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