That’s nothing, ‘node_modules’ has been linking the math of infinity to my filesystem for years.
7,153 karma · joined April 17, 2008
One, there's a big urban/non-urban split in American culture. The former are far less likely to know anything about working on cars, nor are they likely to have a friend or uncle that can help.
That cohort is very over-represented on HN.
Second, there's a lot of shady stuff happening in the used car market, and you really do need to be on top of things to not get scammed. We're talking that's absolutely illegal, but also difficult and expensive to enforce, so if you get stuck on the wrong end of a deal, you're just going to eat those costs.
Fixing your diet is one of those sort of flywheel problems. It takes time to figure out what's both healthy and palatable for you, time and freezer and/or refrigerator space to do meal prep, time and energy to work out, and so on.
All of those are skills that are hard at first. Even with YouTube, you don't go from "burns water" to "Michelin star bodybuilder meals" without a lot of practice.
The better you get at all of that, the faster and easier it becomes, until you hit a point where it's just "how you live", and all that energy and time are again free to pursue other things.
If you have money, sure, you can outsource a lot of that. Zuckerberg has a personal chef and dietician, as well as a handful of dedicated personal trainers guiding his fitness regimen.
But most of us can't afford to invest $250k/year or more into that problem.
Police aren't going to arrest you unless they're pretty sure the charges are going to stick, but once you're in custody, they are... well, let's just say "highly motivated" in getting you to sign a confession, and they have a great deal of leeway that is unavailable in the US.
In order to naturalize, you must present a compelling case to do so: you must speak, read, and write Japanese to the level required by compulsory education, must demonstrate that you can and will supporting yourself financially, must have no criminal record in Japan or elsewhere, and nominally must be married to a Japanese citizen.
Japan does not allow dual citizenship. If you naturalize, you are required to show proof that you have surrendered any non-Japanese citizenship.
Everybody speaks the same language and has the same cultural norms, which are the foundations for any high-trust society.
Japanese culture has an exceedingly high focus on the appearance of cleanliness and politeness. The inside of someone's home might be a hoarder's dream, but the outside will be clean.
Someone might be an absolute jerk, but to act on that in most social spaces would have very real consequences. Rude behavior, like dancing and playing loud music on a train, will get you arrested here.
Misbehavior in Japan is dealt with, and quickly.
On that note: Japanese police don't play games. You do not have a right to a speedy trial, there is no jury of your peers, and they can hold you as long as they'd like. The phrase "police brutality" does not translate into Japanese.
Do not break the law in Japan.
There is a de-facto truce between the Yakuza and the police, as the Yakuza deal with foreign gangs and other problems that would be... difficult to solve with normal police work.
Japanese gangs are fiercely nationalistic. If the police don't handle you, the Yakuza will, and although I don't have any data to back this up, I'd wager that the police are the better option.
Additionally, Japanese neighborhoods have social responsibilities. Every couple of months, I am responsible for cleaning our trash area for two weeks, and there's usually some kind of repair or cleanup event twice per year.
In Japan, many people have lived in the same place for multiple generations, and can trace their ancestry within Japan back for thousands of years.
Japan is, quite literally, their ancestral home, and they act like it.
Healthcare is one of the most regulated industries in the United States.
Want to be a doctor? You've got the aptitude, the knowledge, the mindset, and the will, but a government-guaranteed cartel of medical schools won't let you in, so too damn bad. Learn to code.
Want to open a clinic? You really only need about a half-million in hardware to operate at the level of a 1980s hospital, but regulatory compliance will push your annual opex into the millions as a baseline, not to mention having to deal with the nightmare that is health insurance.
Those "massive entities" you mentioned are entirely protected from competition by force of law.
You know why healthcare used to be cheap? Nobody had insurance.
Anyone that had the aptitude and wanted to be a doctor basically could.
You went to the hospital, paid your bill, and that was that.
I'm not saying "zero regulation, caveat emptor!", but over the past hundred years, the precise opposite of "deregulation" has happened across every aspect of American life.
Sure, we all knew when the drill would be so we could adjust our schedules, but the actual alarms did sound, and the entire building evacuated, which included climbing down something like fifty flights of stairs with your emergency bag -- mandated by law in Japan -- in-hand, plus (optionally) using a fire extinguisher on a pretend fire after you got outside.
Sure, the extinguishers were just pressurized water, and you were spraying at a metal target, but you still had to pull the pin, squeeze, and aim, and they were at full pressure.
Was a good reminder that it's way better to have your first experience with stuff like a fire extinguisher happen under controlled conditions, as opposed to having to figure things out before your kitchen fire gets out-of-hand and burns down the house.
Same goes for radio, changing tires on a car with the provided jack, and so on.
Preparedness is 90% "knowing what to do" and 10% "having the right tools for the job".
That kind of death used to take a standing army backed by decades, if not centuries, of training and discipline: Caesar's slaughter of the Helvetii is the first that comes to mind, maybe followed by the Qin wiping out the Song during China's Warring States period.
The articles may or not be useful, but you can bet that someone in the comments will link to a bunch of other related work.
Most people on the streets aren't capable of maintaining a house, mostly thanks to drug use, with mental illness as a smaller-but-still-significant secondary cause.
Fixing this would also put a bunch of activists out of a job, would remove a lot of cover for state-sponsored domestic terror activities, and would require harsh measures that are total non-starters.
Ergo, nothing is going to change on this front until either powerful interests want it to change, or until there is some sort of mass event that kills off a substantial fraction of the population.
Try "are mandated by regulators".
People keep bringing this up.
The massive size of American-market cars is thanks to regulations introduced by the Obama administration.
They effectively outlawed small cars.
Plenty of people would love to be buy a modernized take on an 80s or 90s car, but they literally can't be made or sold in the US.
I live in Japan, and have a Kei from maybe the early 2000s? My only complaint is that the A/C is like being coughed on by an asthmatic penguin, because otherwise, I absolutely love that car, precisely because it's like driving a Honda from the 1980s. Lots of glass, low beltline, all the rest.
There is am amazing wealth of design language that could be used for electric cars, but for some reason, most manufacturers seem to land between "metabolic syndrome power ranger" and "criminally battered emoji".
Raising luddites that can't type won't serve them well over the course of their lives, but neither will allowing them to become tap-and-scroll dopamine zombies.
It's a difficult balance.
My strategy will undoubtedly evolve over time, but I suppose it could be summarized as "permit supportive technology, aggressively deny anything else"
Of particular note is that most, if not all, "for kids" content is actively harmful.
The key to making things work is having a cohort of parents that have similar priorities. If the parents in your social group default to shutting Junior up with an iPad, you're going to have a bad time.