domain:nytimes.com
pigeonburger
1d ago
To what extent is the current competency crisis in government, academia, etc. caused by an inability to spend time by oneself and actually put in the work?
Almost none of it, because IMO the competency crisis is caused by misaligned incentives. In government, the incentives are aligned with playing up tribal politics, not with competent management. In academia, it's in appealing to grant givers, making sensational claims that get published and cited, not producing solid science or advancing human knowledge. In business and especially for public companies, it's maximising current shareholder value rather than building a sustainable business. And so on...
That said, learning and putting in the work is a skill that I believe we in the West have regressed in. Some people expect to be good at something from the start or else they believe they'll never be good at it. Kids need to gain the specific insight of learning how to learn trained into them to grow into capable adults, and I think we might be currently failing at that.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
People in my area run reds all the time, but I never saw people try to beat the green like this except in Puerto Rico.
It's nearly impossible to "make observations" for cross traffic when you're traveling at 55mph and the vegetation blocks line of sight to the traffic in question.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
1d ago
I don't think I've ever seen it applied, certainly not in a healthcare setup. If someone's getting utility out of it, it's not happening where I could see them. Which isn't the same as saying it has no utility, it just doesn't seem to come up.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1d ago
7:1 starts with "judge not" but then immediately explains why you would want to do that: "lest ye be judged". It's saying "If you judge people then God will judge you." It's the exact same idea as 7:2 (which makes sense! 7:2 is literally the next sentence of the sermon!).
It's also worth noting that in John 8 at the end even Jesus (i.e., God) declines to judge her, and then says "Go and sin no more." Which means that acknowledging adultery is a sin is not the kind of judgement he is talking about. He's talking about the punishment part of judgment.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
1d ago
Interesting that NJ does have that law. Why did the judge instruct the jury as you indicated in your post, then, rather than saying that the law requires a driver to stop if able to do so safely? That seems like it would be more clear-cut as to wrongdoing.
urquan
Hold! What you are doing to us is wrong! Why do you do this thing?
1d ago
I guess this is just flyover country being behind on the trends, but my impression is that tattoos, especially lots of them, still do signal criminality or BPD or sluttiness, or at least an attempt to look cool.
They're also just a lot less common here, so maybe they're still a reliable signal of something.
Incorrect (in this state).
NJ Statutes tit. 39 ch. 4 § 105:
Amber, or yellow, when shown alone following green[,] means traffic[ is] to stop before entering the intersection or nearest crosswalk, unless when the amber appears the vehicle or street car is so close to the intersection that with suitable brakes it cannot be stopped in safety.
Nothing is said about exiting the intersection before the light turns red.
§ 67:
No vehicle or street car shall be permitted by the owner or driver thereof to so occupy a street as to interfere with or interrupt the passage of other street cars or vehicles, nor shall the driver of a vehicle or street car drive such vehicle or street car into an intersection if preceding traffic prevents immediate clearance of the intersection.
That means a motorist must exit the intersection before any other light turns green, not before his light turns red. A traffic signal normally will have an all-red clearance interval of two or three seconds, so the difference between these two definitions is far from negligible.
TIRM
1d ago
In 2025 your baron would have economic advisors who would correctly explain to him that his tax revenue and fiefdom GDP would increase if he allowed more people to enter.
Especially with martial arts, once I no longer had anything to prove to myself that I could do it, I just wasn't feeling it anymore.
Similar for me, but I swapped over to teaching it to others, which is quite rewarding on its own.
And you could always try some amateur fights if you want to challenge yourself (at the risk of injury).
But woodworking, at least for now, is fantastic.
3D printing is giving me a portion of this satisfaction of making something 'from scratch' and having a finished product at the end you can take pride in.
But so far that's mostly for trinkets and trivialities.
I dream of having a sizeable enclosed workspace on my property to tinker with cars and wood and produce fairly complex devices and objects. I am become Boomer, acquirer of hobbies.
I suspect gamification has spoiled our brains to expect more rewards for fake task than they deserve.
I think my only point there is that you're going to encounter the gamified stimuli anyway (unless you are VERY actively avoiding it), and it thus behooves you to let the 'good' stuff grab your attention (and money) or else something wasteful and trivial might, instead.
For instance: I do have Duolingo on my phone and I consider it a better use of my time than, say, Candy Crush or the bazillion basebuilding game clones out there, so its like, I dunno, substituting nicotine gum for actual cigarettes. I rage every time my phone updates and it auto-installs a bunch of the little ADHD time-suck apps on there that I have to remove manually.
And I can also say that there is zero chance I'll ever get 'bored' or feel 'satiated' with having sex with women, but that has run into the endless frustration that is modern dating that I bemoan elsewhere. I'm tempted to start setting aside a 'prostitute budget' for myself if I go another year or two without getting into a relationship, but I damn well know what its like to be intimate with someone you truly know and care about, and cares about you in return, so I don't think I can be truly happy just paying for it.
All these basic activities turn out to be the most fulfilling on a primal level, whoda thunk? (lots of people, it turns out, the modern world just wants to keep you distracted with candy and trinkets).
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
1d ago
It's illegal to be in the intersection when the light is red.
anon_
1d ago
I think there are multiple meanings of surrender that are confused here. I don't mean retreat and it's not just leaving the populace or the underlines to do whatever. In this context I meant it as keeping the organization of forces and all materiel intact and accounted for while ordering every member to obey without exception the orders of the victor.
Hamas is more than capable of imposing their will on the populace of Gaza.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
1d ago
Very interested to hear what you think of episode 3 and following...
TIRM
1d ago
Medical care in the 1950s was cheaper. It was easy to become a doctor and they were plentiful. The standards of care were incredibly low compared to 2025.
Let's get a magic wand that grants you inflation adjusted 1950s medical costs and 1950s medical outcomes. Would you wave the wand?
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
1d ago
What do you mean?
Exactly what I said. That the clear dualism you see is, in truth, a dialectical monism.
There is no such thing as rational thought detached from the urges you describe. Your plan to quit smoking is just weighting your fear or death heavier than your nicotine cravings, which you may override for both conscious and unconscious reasons.
There is no rational and irrational in truth, all is trans-rational.
Why do you think this is, if you can’t fall back to “it is in their instincts”?
It is in their nature.
My culture’s mysticism rigidly distinguishes between the Spiritual Person, which is spirit and intellect and prosocial emotions, and the Flesh, which is the instinctual cravings of the animal part of man.
Assuming from the vocabulary that you are talking about Christianity, I must remind you that you are One in Christ. Christian Mysticism specifically rejects Platonic dualism through the incarnation, the resurrection of the body and the unity of soul and flesh which the Eucharist represents.
anon_
1d ago
I’m well aware that the liberal modernity I oppose is the only thing keeping me alive at all, let alone giving me the lifestyle I currently have, and that come any serious reactionary victory, my life will most likely end (and become massively worse in the case it doesn’t)… and yet I still want that liberal modernity destroyed.
Well, I appreciate the honesty, but why would anyone join you on it?
Has anyone here seen the movie Serenity — the Firefly sequel/conclusion movie? If so, do any of you remember the speech by Chiwetel Ejiofor’s nameless “Operative” character — the “there's no place for me there” one?
I also thought of that. It's a good cultural marker how one feels about that speech.
TIRM
1d ago
is the only reason you hold your political views because you expect to personally benefit?
No, but if a political system screws people like me or literally kills them, then I do not endorse it.
anon_
1d ago
“I will be a warlord” is a very different type of fantasy than “I will be a poet”. Both fantasies, both silly, but silly in different ways.
I disagree. Both are saying "I will occupy a tiny slice at the top 2% of society".
Maybe I should back that up. They are silly in different ways but they have some important overlap which is that either way, the odds are slim.
anon_
1d ago
The fact that this is extremely close to
- I want worker's revolution that provides me with enlightened socialist superiors so I can be an autistic craftsman while they run the government
And I think both will end in the same exploitative place and the rediscovery about why socialist revolutions had to be enforced violently.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
1d ago
I legitimately did not know that converting to another religion means you don't qualify for the Law of Return. What I can't figure out (with five minutes of Googling) is whether that applies to atheist or agnostic Jews. Like, atheism isn't a religion you convert to, right? But it would be weird if Christian Jews were disqualified but atheist Jews weren't.
gog
1d ago
The tough-guy/hot chick tattoos of yesteryear are mostly finished in the wild. Some 40 year-olds who didn't get the memo still get them, but most of the tattoos I see nowadays are just crappy line doodles of flowers or mountains or whatever on the floppy, under-toned triceps of 20 year old girls. These don't communicate criminality or BPD or sluttiness like they did in the old days- they signal (intentionally or not) total conformity to Latest Thing. They look stupid, but I wouldn't even say they look ugly- they just look like she got pen on her arm, like an accident. Tattoos as threat- or sexual availability-signals I could at least understand, but I don't understand these new ones at all.
Throwaway05
1d ago
I think this is too harsh, MBTI has value if you understand its limitations. For example managers can use it as a shortcut to understand management styles until you get to know your staff on an individual level.
In a healthcare context you can use it to understand a little bit about what interventions, therapy, explanations and so on will work for a patient until you get to know them better.
Most patients won't know that they prefer a logical style of consenting over an emotional one, but if they tell you they are an INTJ you can be pretty sure, etc.
anon_
1d ago
I don't claim it's a very special insight, but I think the romanticism of one side has been made into a meme (on KYM no less) and it was worth looking at the less explored side of it as well.
The leftist mockery of rightism is never about how it's unrealistic, only that it's evil.
oats_son
1d ago
Hey, lots of veterans are meatheads who make awful decisions, too. Who was doing the raping during the Rape of Nanking? Yes, that's a bad example in the context of America.
Not all veterans, of course, but men in the service are commonly exactly the stereotype that I'm struck by when I notice multiple visible tattoos, coarse rough-and-tumble assholes who one-up each other, drink, and do stupid things. My favorite non-fiction book is probably Quartered Safe Out Here, which certainly did not dispel my false stereotype. I actually didn't recall that Pete Hegseth is a veteran, if it helps.
Hah I had to stop midway through ep 3. Not because of the sexualization necessarily just a sort of 'what am I doing here' type moment. I find it increasingly hard to 'waste' time nowadays.
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