domain:cspicenter.com
token_progressive
maybe not the only progressive here
11mo ago
I'm not familiar with local politics in Jacksonville past hearing from multiple people that the Florida State Democratic Party is incompetent, if not actively working against their stated ideals, including actively pushing away people wanting to help. Maybe the local party in Jacksonville is better or you can find some local politician you can connect with, but the other approach might be looking into local citizen lobbying groups that care about the issues you care about like a local branch of Strong Towns, a local transit organization, or something else. One way to find such organizations is looking for lists of endorsements of candidates with views you agree with, but other than that I don't have any ideas.
I don't think "blue politics" is a meaningful term if you're talking about policy on housing and public transportation. Most large cities in the US are dominated by the Democratic Party and there are major intra-party arguments over the appropriate policies, and to some extent they are issues that cross party lines (e.g. YIMBY free market arguments may appeal to some Republicans). Looking at Donna Deagan's campaign website, "zoning" is mentioned quietly in one section and transit isn't mentioned at all. My interpretation is that she's unlikely to make big changes on either, but maybe I'm missing some local details.
A few states have been making zoning law changes at the state level recently because the local levels haven't been willing to do anything. But some of that is that no one municipality wants to make a change while their neighbors don't, so zoning at the state level fixes some coordination problems. Jacksonville's weirdly large size (compared to other urban areas where the metro area is legally organized into many more municipalities) might make it easier for zoning changes to happen at the municipality level.
bolido_sentimental
11mo ago
Has anybody here ever tried tai chi?
I can't quite get a handle on if it's a practice which could provide real benefits in terms of flexibility, coordination, etc., or if it's just a meme activity.
I find myself thinking about it mainly because I keep driving past a tai chi studio and I wonder what they get up to in there. I imagine it's not the optimized/minmaxed exercise mode for strength, cardio health, or anything else, but I'm tempted to go take a class or two anyway just to say I did, and to meet the kinds of people that do it. Curious to hear your experiences.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
Different election results do yield different policies. The structure of the US government, however, means that there is heavy status quo bias - 50% + 1 is not adequate to radically alter policy.
Weird... the word on the street in Europe is that the Anglo "first past the post" system makes things a lot more amenable to change, in contrast to coalition in-fighting of continental parliaments.
I'm going to need you to elaborate, because this looks like a complaint about being unpopular and a wheeled goalpost.
The "demonization" complaint might look that way, but censorship? If something was unpopular you wouldn't need to shadowban it, or ban it outright.
orthoxerox
I realized I can change my flair color to Barbie pink
11mo ago
No, it lowers property values.
Well, if the 4channer and pub philosopher assembles as much evidence as Diamond did, sure.
Yeah, but that's not how it works. Look, I found the video taking Diamond apart. Full of evidence, and it's better presented than Diamond's, but no one is going to put them on equal footing. This is a systemic failure in our society, we constantly promote half-baked nonsense, and bury it's criticism.
But I don’t see the point in summarily dismissing an argument simply because it is a theory of everything, nor because it is beloved by the establishment.
I do. What are the chances of someone discovering a proper Theory of Everything? In history / social sciences they inevitably turn out to be self-congratulatory stories we tell ourselves, the evidence turns out to be misrepresented in various ways, and counter-evidence turns out to be left out (deliberately or otherwise). These sorts of huge theories require huge amounts of effort to refute them (the video I linked is a mere 2 hours and 46 minutes for example), so at the end of the day it seems the appropriate reaction is "cool story, bro" not putting the person on an interview circuit.
Not to mention that that leaves no bottom rung for theories of everything written by journalists.
I don't see why we have to pull up journalists from their rung.
orca-covenant
11mo ago
There's an interesting hypothesis (postdating Diamond? I think I loaned out my GGS copy a decade ago and never ended up getting it back...) that potatoes (even better nutritionally than corn) might not have been an advantage for civilization in particular because "leave it in the ground until you need it" doesn't reward the sorts of planning and storage and trading and so forth that lead to large scale social organization ... but maize is the same sort of "harvest it in season and dry it and store it" crop as the Old World grains.
Sounds like a hypothesis mentioned in James Scott's Against the Grain. (Although, weren't potatoes a staple on the famously centralized Inca empire? I might be wrong)
TheDag
Per Aspera ad Astra
11mo ago
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
No. It was generally due to these cities being settled before cars were in widespread use.
I don't think this is a good explanation. This is Jacksonville in 1914. This is the same location today. It had transit and density, and like most US cities, probably removed it after cars started becoming common.
deleted
janeerie
11mo ago
Yes, I would be extremely put off by either of these suggestions. God, I am so glad I don't have to date anymore.
roystgnr
11mo ago
They were. (though apparently they could be preserved by poor-man's freeze-drying in the cold mountains, via an Incan staple food "chuño"?) I don't recall any other ancient place potatoes were a staple, either. They didn't make it to North America from South America directly, they made it via Europe.
I don't understand the Inca Empire at all. If I were to name obstacles to their growth, "their food plants were too awesome" would be low on the list, way behind "their territory was a thousand mile strip of poorly navigable mountains and their best boats were rafts".
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
As silly as it may sound, this is one of the things that made me go full-tinfoil. Is there anyone happy with the current dating scene? Well, JhanicManifold is, I suppose, but how did we let it come to this?
Azth
Enoch Powells Friday night masseuse
11mo ago
I agree at a sentimental level, it feels like carcinization towards totalitarianism in some form or another in an inevitable outcome of techno-capital development.
JarJarJedi
11mo ago
Some of it complaining about Disney appeasing China.
Let's compare. Somebody saying a wrong pronoun once: we have firestorms on social media, boycotts organized, marches, dis-invitations from conferences and events, the whole shebang. I mean, look at how Rowling is treated - and she's a leftist just like them. I hear most of HP movie cast doesn't even talk to her now, she's not invited on events celebrating her own creations, and they tried to boycott a game just because it was set in HP universe.
Now let's consider a fully grown fascist state, having actual concentration camps, murdering people and disassembling them into organs, also very explicitly racist and homophobic - and let's consider Disney going to that place, and literally filming a movie where camps can be seen on the background - and what we have? Some mild complaining here and there? I think it's clear where their hearts are.
Gdanning
11mo ago
What are the chances of someone discovering a proper Theory of Everything?
But that should not be the criterion. The criterion should be whether the argument and evidence brings us closer to the truth.
badnewsbandit
lol 🦂 lmao
11mo ago
Your after image shows less streetside parking and the streetcar delete in favor of a bike lane and enlarged tree lined sidewalks (one is near triple width of the before, other is only double width).
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
11mo ago
They're the same thing, and that's might point. Evidence for specific claims like "one crop provided more calories per acre than another" bring us closer to the truth. The chances of assembling many such specific claims, and evidence for them, into a sweeping Theory Of Everything has minuscule chances of bringing us closer to the truth.
Douglas Emhoff, husband of Kamala Harris, posted a photo on Twitter celebrating the Jewish American Heritage Month.
Met with Jewish White House staff in celebration of Jewish American Heritage Month. Our Administration is proud to recognize the Jewish staffers who help carry our nation forward each day and are helping create a more inclusive tomorrow.
I counted, give or take, 155 Jewish Staff Members. There are 474 White House Staff Members in total, meaning that Jews comprise 32% of all staff members. This is a radical over-representation of 1400%, or 14x what should be expected given the population of 2.2%. As everyone pictured is White, presumably this really is a photo with all the Jewish staff members who wanted to participate in the event (otherwise: why no black staffers present?). There may be some not pictured for various work-related or personal reasons, and perhaps some with Jewish spouses pictured. I had difficulty finding the figures on other demographics. According to an authoritative source, 14% of the staff are Black (this just happens to be the same number and is not a typo). I could find nothing on Asian members, but perusing the total list of White House Staff names I calculated give or take 50 with exclusively Asian names; this should be construed as a minimum because of high exogamy rates and names not always being obviously Asian. That puts Asians at 10.5%. Given that Black people sit at 14%, I would go out on a limb and say that the Latino constituents also comprise roughly their makeup in America; let’s peg it at a slightly lower 15% (if someone wants to check from the list of staffers’ names be my guest).
All of this puts the non-Jewish White percent at 28.5%, counting the Turkish and Arab names as White (and ignoring the probably ~2% Native American that Joe slipped in there). And so, among White House staffers, Whites are quite under-represented and Jews are enormously over-represented. This is problematic IMO, because the domestic founding population of a nation shouldn’t be so under-represented, and a single ethnic cluster with a strong activism network and their own influential nation state probably shouldn’t be 14x over-represented among White House staffers without anyone in established media criticizing or noticing. Alas, such topics have been posted frequently, but in previous cases the over-representation was among Cabinet Members and Supreme Court Justices and so on. This shows that even in a large sample size such as 474, the over-representation remains. If I could put my position into as few words as possible, I would steal from a random tweet on the subject: “Half of the White House staff is Jewish, but we get told that ‘White Supremacists’ run America lol.” What pains me is that while the default white Americans are so under-represented, they are the ones who face the most ruthless black propaganda against their demographic. It’s important to educate others on the problem of representation, I suppose.
MollieTheMare
11mo ago
I'm also confused by this comparison, surely if you are going to pick a comparison this can't be the most dis-favorable to modern Jacksonville. The density is arguably higher, at least the buildings are taller.
It does show something I did think to myself last time I was in downtown Jacksonville though, the area has an absurd number of parking garages. I assume it's because I-95 is the most convenient way to get there.
I don't think "more" transit is the solution though. There's already several stations within close walking distance along downtown. But look at the top review for Central Station:
Not safe even if security is around they are useless, trams don't come on time. Doors closed on me twice which is dangerous at the same time consuming for commuters since tram time isn't accurate at all.
gattsuru
11mo ago
I don't have a photographic memory, and may have a worse memory than most people. Have tried some techniques like the memory palace, but they're very hit-or-miss for me, at least.
I've got a handful of tools set up, but they're mostly glorified record-keeping:
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a todo list for major projects separated by scope, following the Ruby-inspired rule to break apart a scope or trim down my targets if they exceed 5-7 points. I've moved it to Nextcloud for sync purposes, but for a while I was using SVN (not recommended).
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a (set of) TiddlyWiki for keeping high-relevance notes (cfe The New Zettelkasten as a more aspirational breakdown that I'm absolutely not anywhere near). I'm not sure TiddlyWiki is anywhere near the ideal software for this, and even in its class there are a variety of other strong tools (eg Logseq has a lot of fans, Foam if you're a VSCode masochist). (way back in the day this went on a PalmIIIc, but that was awful.)
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and I've had downloaders akin to Gwern's approach, to try to make more readily locally-searched tools for heavily-used forums and social media (largely inspired by the broken search at RPGnet back in the 00s). It's not always the better option, but it's good for narrowing down time periods to then use other online search tools.
These aren't good tools, though, and there's a reason I've got this on my list of things I'd love to hear from someone deep into the reeds on it. A TiddlyWiki dive from site->user->subject->category->timeblock is hard to actually follow unless you're looking for something as broad as an entire field of study, and in many ways that's the simplest use case. By contrast, looking up some reference from a book I read five years ago the process is usually something like subject->book->topic, but this struggles badly given many books have important revelations away from their core subject (eg, I read an important bit about multiplexing in power plant design, does this fall under electrical engineering, or under fossil or nuclear power, or something different). Grepping the full file works where there's a rarely-used technical term, but falters when a matter is more colloquial: as an example, if I'm looking up a SCOTUS cert request on warrant requirements, which narrows things down a bit, but it was a specific case where the cop was a thief, and it probably would have just been faster to do a site:scotusblog.com search for "rare coins" to find Jessop.
The philosophy behind Notes Must Link helps, a little, but only at the largest scales. I want to think tags could help, but narrowing down to a hundred posts, many of which are only tangentially about a topic, doesn't make for fast lookup. And if you have four hundred tags, you're a) not going to use them, b) not going to find them, and c) won't be consistent in application.
((and, uh, it's pretty unpleasant to read for pleasure while also taking this depth of notes. For written fiction, I'm usually just throwing a single author->book->summary + clever quotes bit, and sometimes not even that.))
More generally, I don't have any real ability to search video, and my attempts to kitbash an audio transcription capability are pretty error-prone, and there's legal reasons you shouldn't default-record audio anyway. I kept manual notes from the IRC era and still type down major information from Discord channels, but keeping up with even a couple Discords worth of incoming information is unmanageable. Other formats -- IRL, video games, VR -- are pretty much just out of scope.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
11mo ago
· Edited 11mo ago
I dislike the whole premise of this post. The phrase “default white Americans” is a categorization I’d wholeheartedly reject, as a supposedly positive variation of the Chinese robber fallacy hinted to be synonymous with “volk”. I assume most of the Jewish staffers are “default Jewish Americans” and the Black staffers are “default Black Americans,” absent any further info. “Americans who chose to be American by legal immigration” is a much more meaningful category.
“Jewish” and “white” also need some breakdown. Alexander Vindman, central to one impeachment of Trump, was a Soviet citizen at birth, to a Jewish family in Kiev (at the time). Without any of that knowledge, I’d think him one of your “default white Americans”.
I’m an American by birth and default choice in a land which accepts all comers. I care less about underrepresentation by bodies like mine and more about hearts and minds like mine. I want Allen West as President, David Mamet as White House speechwriter, Thomas Sowell as head of the Fed, and so-called Ultra-Orthodox Jews on the Supreme Court bench.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
11mo ago
Default White is a regrettable term, but “non-Jewish” is even more regrettable, and saying the word gentile in this context seems off. Similarly, “plain” comes with negative baggage. I also don’t want to say European, because the majority of Jewish Americans very much have European heritage. There really aren’t too many options, and I think if I said Christian-ancestry I’d also find disagreement.
what_a_maroon
11mo ago
The sidewalks are largely irrelevant, since at the time walking in the street was much more common and generally not illegal. Removing the streetcar is a substantial loss. The buildings on the left have been replaced with a parking garage, so the loss of street parking isn't very relevant either. This example is not as bad as many cities in the US, but it's certainly no improvement for pedestrians.
Well, if the 4channer and pub philosopher assembles as much evidence as Diamond did, sure. But I don’t see the point in summarily dismissing an argument simply because it is a theory of everything, nor because it is beloved by the establishment. Not to mention that that leaves no bottom rung for theories of everything written by journalists.
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