domain:alakasa.substack.com
2D3D
6m ago
It is everywhere in kids stores. Small town mayor basically outsourced all civic functions to a kid and his dogs that have a variety of public services available 'on demand'. Child labor, animal exploitation, privatization of public services... all that is missing is guns drugs and prostitution, then it'll be true libertarian paradise.
2D3D
10m ago
WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS WATER RIGHTS
When buying remote out of state property ALWAYS make sure you confirm the extent of development you are allowed to make on your 'own' land. You can make your own outhouse, pay for a macro cell comms tower, but you cannot live without water.
Shrimp farm in the desert sounds....uh, insane? Covered farms still suffer from evaporative heat loss and shrimp die notoriously easily even in unlimited water scenarios, which you will not have even if water rights are not an issue. Farming also sucks, you need warm bodies and thats a challenge onto itself. Solar farms require good grid connections. Weird outdoor off-grid rehab center might be the best of your current options.
Gaashk
1m ago
What temperature zone is the land? What kinds of things are currently growing there? What's the soil like? What is the water source? All these things matter a lot for what you're able to do with it.
Pecan groves are nice, but take a long time to establish.
I have strong negative feelings about solar and wind farms. Solar farms make the whole area hotter, more glaring, and worse, are placed exactly where the electricity is least needed, and I don't know if they're easy to maintain or not, but wouldn't expect so given the kinds of minerals that go into making them.
The water source is important for a farm or anything aquatic.
throwaway-7742
2m ago
No, for better or for worse.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
4m ago
Do keep in mind that our brains have specialised circuitry for language learning that it doesn’t have for say aerospace engineering or history trivia facts. Ideal language study methods are also very different compared to any other field of knowledge. So it’s not the best field to focus on when discussing this topic
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3hr ago
I don't have an insightful answer to your question but I hate tats myself. A lot of my friends, even if roughly my age, have them, and the tattooing stories all sound inane to me.
The popular belief about Japan is that tattoos are a signal of organized criminal membership (Yakuza) and this has been my own experience. The view that Japanese therefore find tattoos "scary," however, I'd take issue with. Japanese are very aware generally that tattoo cultural norms are different outside Japan, and seeing a tattooed foreigner isn't particularly traumatizing, but probably does seem like a class signal. In other words because the yaks generally attract the socially disaffected (e g. burakumin or Zainichi Korean, etc.) and then gang members have the irezumi (traditionally tattooed with bamboo needles) sleeves and back-tats etc., to be seen tattooed is to be unconsciously associated with the dregs of society. Like seeing someone with a gold incisor, even if you know they're not in some gang or whatever.
For this reason many places where all or part of the full body is on view such as pools, hot spring resorts, or sento (public baths) have signs everywhere that tattooed patrons are forbidden. (Although I've seen at least one Japanese man at a hot spring with a tattoo on his shoulder, and to my awareness nothing was ever said to him and he certainly was not kicked out. Then again he was a big dude and onsen staff are generally dainty women or old spent dudes. If tattoo guy had the stones to wade into the hot spring without fear of social rebuke, he pretty much was home free.)
There are also sento baths that do not forbid tattoos and these are usually straightforward, no-nonsense public baths in dingier areas.
I was raised to see tattoos as trashy. My dad was in the Navy and apparently this view lodged in his mind. He also liked Catholics, though wasn't one himself, because he said the Catholic guys were the one group that didn't immediately visit brothels at port. (I cannot verify the accuracy of this.)
Back on topic: Lots of young Japanese women now seem much more interested in tattoos than their parents, but only seemingly those already immature in their social development or mildly out-of-step anyway (e.g. they are also interested in foreigners.) For guys if you're a musician or otherwise resolved to stay on the fringe (artist, bar owner, etc.) you can get away with tats, probably.
hanikrummihundursvin
6m ago
That's been the program so far.
No one asks these questions in any other context. I mean, isn't a lot of suffering self inflicted? No one forces the third worlders to continually make mistakes. We just keep giving them money and privilege them in our first world societies. Their populations keep growing and we just accept more immigrants for the greater good.
The pro-Israel narrative doesn't compute with the rationalism or moralism behind all the other oppression narratives. People are continuously trying to carve out some special clause that allows us to ethnically cleanse the browns just this once. The inconsistency is glaring and the ethnic motivation behind it transparent, as this is only being asked because it's jews and Israel.
NelsonRushton
7m ago
Tell me what you really, really want to happen if you "win"? Most leftists won't come out and say "I want Israel to be destroyed." Some of them will give some sort of pie-in-the-sky one state answer, like above. But the reality is that the literal destruction of Israel is the only real "win condition" for them.
Hear, hear!
dasfoo
3hr ago
In simple utilitarian terms Palestinians obviously suffer more. The end.
But what if it's self-induced suffering, gamified to achieve victory on the scale of "who suffers the most?" Is that still "The End?"
Throwaway05
25m ago
Why shouldn't an owner be able to buy a failing restaurant, sell the real estate, and then let the restaurant fail?
Sounds fine, until your area loses its hospital because PE came in and did something similar (it's a growing problem in healthcare). Lots of organizations you wouldn't want to lose are sitting on valuable real estate and operating with razor thin margins or other similar sins.
Tenaz
34m ago
What would you do with three hundred acres of desert?
I'm thinking about buying a lot of land because:
- It seems like a good investment. Extremely cheap ($100k) and in an area which might plausibly see good growth.
- I eventually want a "homeland" for my family, a place where we don't have to worry so much about land costs or neighbors, and can live close to each other. Ideally there would eventually be a business or two in the area (even if just farms) to support people who don't have remote jobs, but the point is to have a place to retreat to when life gets tough, and maybe a place to move to once you have kids.
I'm not all that wealthy though, so it doesn't make sense to get started with it right away unless I can make the land productive in the meantime.
A few ideas:
- Rehab center
- Farm
- Fish/shrimp farm
- Solar farm
None exciting enough to pull the trigger, though I'm researching solar farm subsidies and shrimp farm economics just in case.
Quantumfreakonomics
38m ago
In the two minutes of Paw Patrol footage I watched in response to this comment, it feels more like propaganda for Apple or Tesla than anything. Every single problem no matter how minor was solved by deploying a neat technological gadget.
jeroboam
2hr ago
They try, but they're just so bad at it. Part of it is unavoidable. The U.S. is the world's top oil producer now.
But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas. In other news, apparently one of the helicopters sent to aid the rescue of the Iranian President has crashed with multiple casualties.
miras_chinotto
certified low iq
2hr ago
Helicopters in rough terrain and bad weather is uncomfortably close to rolling dice with your life on the line.
Quantumfreakonomics
46m ago
Is it instability if Israel just wins? Do any Iranian officials really want to spearhead a new anti-Israel campaign? Sounds like a death wish.
you-get-an-upvote
Hyperbole is bad
2hr ago
Is the number of sex partners in last year corrected for gender-based social desirability bias
"I believe X and the public statistics on X are not trustworthy because of Y" would have been a much more honest argument than "I believe X and the statistics support me".
bonsaii
8hr ago
I have a baseline high level of suspicion towards Youtube polyglot videos. These people are like magicians in that they give an illusion of an ability when their real talent is for something somewhat orthogonal (that is, less about being actually proficient, but rather about looking proficient in select settings that they tune). A few tricks include:
-
Controlling the conversation: The main skill many of these "polyglots" have is in pushing conversations towards topics about which they have the appropriate stock phrases well rehearsed. Sentences about how much they "love the culture", "I always thought [insert country] was so beautiful", "the [insert cuisine] is delicious" etc. If someone says something the "polyglot" doesn't understand they'll smile, nod, say "that's great" or "hmm, I'm not sure" and quickly try to change the subject. The better ones can do this more subtly, but even the clumsier ones can get away with it since most viewers aren't watching critically.
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Selective editing: The format lets them use staged videos or simply to selectively include footage of their best performances. Given the incentives on Youtube I don't really trust most to not do these things. For every free-flowing Mandarin conversation there may have been 10 where the polyglot just totally misunderstood the native speaker.
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Optimizing study: Words and phrases are Pareto distributed, so you can get to a basic conversational level in most languages with about 3000. If you're good at point 1 above you can probably get away with much fewer. For comparison, a native speaker is estimated to have a vocabulary of 20k to 35k. If you're loose with the definition of "fluent" you could just study these most optimal 3k for several languages instead of becoming highly proficient in one.
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Piling up on highly similar languages: The distinction between a "language" and a "dialect of a language" is more political than anything objective to the forms of speech themselves. An English-only speaker could likely become fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, Italian, and French with less effort and time than it would take to get equivalently fluent in just Japanese (or Mandarin or Arabic or Korean). By largely focusing on clusters of highly similar languages, they more easily inflate their "language count".
Most genuine "polyglots" (high proficiency in 3 or more) I've spoken with say that they can only have thorough, complex conversations in 2-3 highly distinct languages at any given moment. Even a few months of disuse is enough for them to feel significantly sluggish retrieving words and forming sentences in their native languages, albeit still highly proficient. If they know they'll need a particular one soon (like they'll be traveling to [insert country] next month), then they can review for a week or two and revive the quick access (like putting it in RAM), but trying to keep all of them active simultaneously makes organizing thoughts a bit chaotic.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2hr ago
But also, these governments are clown-level incompetent, and are always backstabbing each other to avoid their quotas.
To be fair, I'm pretty sure Western governments are not above bribing them to backstab each other.
sarker
Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?
3hr ago
Personally, I subscribe to the conspiracy theory that the oil price is manipulated by middle eastern government actors.
fartVader
1hr ago
Looks like some subcontinentals tried to sneak into an Egyptian womens dorm and the Egyptian men drove them out
Do you have any source for that claim? I have tried looking, and found nothing that indicated this. What I could find makes it sound Egyptians got into a fued with Krygyz men, and some how Pakistanis got involved. That morphed into a large anti-foreigner sentiment at large, affecting Egyptians, Indians and Pakistanis as a whole.
The last place happy to accept subcontinentals
"Subcontinentals" is a contrived grouping. India-Pakistan have diverged just as South Korea - North Korea or Turkmenistan-Northern Afghanistan have diverged. The term doesn't provide resolution, is a mouthful and obfuscates for no good reason.
Every international story of brown people & crime involves one of 3 scenarios.
- Pakistani-muslim child molestation rings or terrorism threats.
- Sikh crime syndicates born from expelled sikhs (wanted terrorists in India) who were naively given refuge by foreign nations.
- Internal crime because of innocent tourists travelling through the Bihar, UP, Jharkhand (with sub-saharan HDI and only somewhat safer than that part of t world) corridor alone.
soon would just be the UK and USA.
I am not as pessimistic. SEA, Australia & the Gulf have seen no changes in their welcoming-ness towards Indians. East-Asians are as xenophobic as ever. And Europe remains non-commital as ever. If anything, Europe is becoming more welcoming to high skill immigrants, opening new doors for Indians to enter through.
Canada has changed tunes. But honestly, Canada's open door policy was long overdue for a change anyways. Even Indian themselves were confused at how welcoming Canada was of our local rejects. Ukraine and Central Europe have seen conflict, but those are all medicore medical students who want to come back to India anyway. I don't expect there to be any real impact there.
Eventually, India will need to self-sufficient. The country needs to take charge of developing its HDI, re-civilizing the 'subsaharan zone' and derive its sense of identity through internal achievements, and not external validation. The painful path towards it has begun, but it is still a long ways away.
They are increasingly popular in Poland. A tattoo place I pass by once in a while is called "ACOTATANATO" (translates to "but what will daddy say to this?", a mystery why it's not "ACOTATONATO" which is still correct and flows better) - a vapid, somewhat common reason, I imagine. Rebellion in the face overbearing authority, except such prepackaged rebellion is common, and authority in retreat.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
1hr ago
Look into a thermomix? (70s solution of engineering societal problems away)
Or just hire a cleaner? (Modern solution of importing cheap labour)
haroldbkny
10hr ago
Why are tattoos ubiquitous these days? Almost everyone seems to have some where I live, even young teenagers. Are people really going to go the rest of their lives and be glad that they have a sagging triangle or cross or butterfly on them? How can I convince my kids in 5 years that they do not need or want to have one just to fit in, and that they're too expensive and most people will regret having them for various reasons?
It seems to me that there is likely a culture war component to this as well, as tattoos seem to be wannabe gangster, rebellious, and individualist, even though you'd probably be more rebellious just staying tattoo free these days.
The problem with positing an "original wrong" is that the 1948 war was started by the Palestinians and their Arab allies, and subsequently they lost. So the search for an original wrong already has a wrong that came before that origin. Yes, you can arguably repeat this process for pre-1948 wrongs, but the "original wrong" you suggest is definitely not correct.
Stopping the settlers would fall far short of Palestinian aims. It has repeatedly failed to be a sufficient concession in prior peace talks. And even when tried unilaterally by Israel, made things worse, not better.
Do you apply this principle evenly? Does it apply to Germans expelled from Eastern Europe in the aftermath of WWII, for instance? Are they entitled to carry out unrestrained acts of revenge in Western Poland in response to being expelled? And since this applies to any arbitrary wrong, as you have written it, to beat my usual drum, are victims of vaccine mandates and lockdowns entitled to carry out unrestrained non-hypothetical fedposting? Are Trump supporters wronged by being under the wrong government, as Palestinians living under Israeli rule would be, and thus entitled to fedposting? And, of course, does this apply to Israelis who are wronged by Palestinian attacks and, therefore, entitled to seize justice by committing their own revenge?
Maybe you do think this. In which case, this position is just more might makes right (despite you objecting to might makes right), using arbitrary violence instead of precise violence to try to maximize the might they can exert from the weaker position.
More likely, you do not think this. But if so, you are missing any particular reason why Palestinians are uniquely entitled to engage in unrestrained terror tactics, and I'm yet to hear a good one. If it's the degree of political repression, then the majority of the world's countries including many western countries are on the fedpost list for some form of repression or another. If it's being ruled over by the wrong ethnic group, then it's ethnostate for thee but not for me, because I am also ruled over by a Prime Minister of a different ethnicity, and I'm not entitled to kick out all the foreigners. If it's that Arabs were turfed out by Jews after they legally purchased the land from absentee Ottoman landlords, consider the ethnic makeup of London and the financial impossibility of living in London for many natives. For every justification I've heard, there's been a parallel elsewhere where any resistance was considered unthinkable, let alone random acts of terror.
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