throwaway9980

There’s no scenario where a state leaves by force. There is a point at which apathy leads to dissolution. If no one cares, then it’s inevitable. It’s entropy.

Really? If Florida wants to leave, who’s objecting to that? Half the remaining states would be on the side of “good riddance to bad rubbish” and the other half would support it because “let’s go Brandon!”

I don’t think the hard part is getting people on board with it. The hard part is just getting a vote on it.

EDIT to address your point: I think if enough people want it, it will happen. The Civil War was about slavery, no matter what some folks will say. The current direction isn’t towards war, it’s towards an indifference followed by dissolution. There’s no energy to keep Florida or Texas or California from leaving if that’s what a large majority want.

Hitting my mid-40’s with a reasonably successful multi decade career in tech and I’ve recently realized that some gigantic percentage (plurality, maybe majority) of all the hard work has gone into competing against the people around me for opportunities. Not into actual value creation for others, not in service of others, purely focused on beating out other people for the chances.

I’m not sure how to reorient myself. It’s extremely disturbing to look back and think that all the good stuff was a side effect of spending enormous energy trying to outcompete others for opportunity. I don’t want to keep doing things this way, but I also don’t know how to change.

You’re describing a place that isn’t fit for living. As a a parent, I feel horrible for your neighbor. Genuinely curious what prevents people from leaving. Is it a lack of resources?

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

George Orwell, Animal Farm

Maybe people just don’t have clear class identities? I grew up middle, perhaps upper middle class in the US. Both of my parents, especially my mother, came from lower social economic backgrounds than what they provided for me. I was very close to my mom’s extend family as a kid. My grandparents grew up very poor. No running water, dirt floors type of poor. By the end of their lives they were upper middle class. Some of their kids did even better, others regressed to the mean.

We’re all still part of the same family. The shared values among the family are much stronger than any shared values across class identities. Class just doesn’t offer much explanatory value to me. I suppose I am upper middle class today, but I don’t think “oh yes, let’s instill some upper middle class values in our kids.” I don’t even know what those would be.

I feel the same way about donating to political campaigns. It’s just not worth it considering that that information is then public record and could be used against you in all sorts of ways. Perhaps I will feel different when I’m older and of I’ve enough money that I no longer need to worry about damaging my job prospects.

Maybe it would make it ok to donate if you also found a likable person on the other side to give money to at the same time.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will annihilate me.

I will almost certainly choose to have my children vaccinated as soon as they become eligible. On the other hand I find your argument difficult to accept. I am happy to be injected and subjected to lots of things for the greater good, that’s my choice as an adult, however as a parent I’m wary of any attempt to use my children in furtherance of the greater good.

Put it this way: if for arguments sake it was better for kids to simply become infected to gain immunity and the trade off is that adults might be more likely to be exposed, I think that the correct choice for a parent is what’s best for their child, not the group.

This is the natural response of parents who’s paramount concern is their children. Treating that concern as antisocial is how we end up with raging lunatics at school board meetings.

If enough Joe Schmoes have bad opinions it does in fact impoverish people and prevent them accessing necessary goods like food and housing. Many ideas are in fact wrong and if widespread terribly dangerous.

Cris Collinsworth, yes it’s spelled Cris, makes me want to rend my ears from my skull. Collinsworth and Al Michaels is like some kind of perfectly seasoned stew of stupidity worthy of Idiocracy. Listening to the two of them I can’t help but constantly think of the NFL as bread and circuses meant to placate a mentally degraded populace.

Amazon has invested in Rivian and they have the advantage of being “not Musk”. Bezos doesn’t want to give Musk any business. I thought it was funny that they made a big show of using Rivian trucks for the retrieval after the Blue Origin flight.

Early 40’s and I feel very lucky to have a job. I feel certain that once I hit 50 I’ll be unable to get hired. I think the trick is to make sure the job you have by 45 is somewhere that will be willing to keep you as you age.

Better still: sublease but don’t pay the landlord! I know someone in New York who tried to buy their neighbor’s apartment. The deal fell through because the tenant was nearly a year behind on a rent and couldn’t be evicted. Except the tenant didn’t live there anymore. They subleased the apartment and pocketed the cash instead of paying the owner.

Obviously this is fraud and maybe this person could be prosecuted for it, maybe, but it seems like the kind of thing that just slips through the yawning cracks.

Feels like a lateral move motivated by money and perhaps boredom. Interesting too to contrast Tinder with Bumble which is founder led and growing. Mature stagnant shuffling companies CEO, you can see clearly that the energy is gone.

Crop rotation implies the selection and plating of nitrogen fixing crops. For example, because corn requires significant nitrogen, we would plan peas alongside corn. Peas are nitrogen fixing and the corn stalks provide a good structure for the vines. The next season, the corn field would be planted with something entirely different.

Phosphate replenishment can be done by spreading manure or using fertilizers. It's a harder problem, but you have to work the problem.

It's absolutely true that you can't keep farming the same soil year in and year out and expect it to produce. This is why crop rotation is done and why fields are allowed to remain fallow from time to time. It seems to me that these concepts are bundled in the term "long-term sustainable farming."

Source: grew up in the sticks and worked on the family farm as a kid.

Dumpster divers are also recovering packaging for re-use.

It's oh so terrible isn't it? I feel like this is one of those flexible majority things that Nassim Taleb talks about [1]. The vast majority of people don't care one way or the other. There is a small minority who wants the numeric keypad and an even smaller minority that despises the numeric keypad and will never buy a laptop that includes one. For me, it's always been yet another selling point for the Macbook.

[1] https://medium.com/incerto/the-most-intolerant-wins-the-dict...

I've noticed a lot of NY plates where I live too. Since most people who live in NYC don't own cars, it seems like these must be people who are being displaced. I know quite a few New Yorkers who have moved upstate or out to Long Island semi-permanently.

Apple can’t fight this battle. No one can. The best you can do is make sure you are well versed in the current revision of wrongthink. Make sure you stay up to date. Adhere to the correct beliefs, actions, and words. Start now!

Brilliant. The financial hoi palloi also don’t seem to notice that their revenues are deemed income for tax purposes while for corporate persons revenue remains revenue and is untaxed. Corporate persons only pay taxes when they fail to ensure that there is no income at the end of the year. If only the rest of us could treat investments in couches and Xboxes as capital expenditures!

Towns tend to be this way, not so much cities. I live in a single family neighborhood in a large city and it’s both walkable and drivable. It’s not great driving beyond a 1-2 mile radius, but I don’t need to go that far more than once a week. My kids’ schools are all walkable distances, 30 minutes tops, or a 5 minute drive. Same for the gym, restaurants, bars, the grocery stores, etc.

The same way that my friend who is vaccinated was infected by his unvaccinated wife. Close quarters with an infected person is going to increase risk for some one who is vaccinated. The Pfizer vaccine is 38% effective [1] at preventing infection on average. It’s obvious that spending 8 hours next to someone who is actively infectious will reduce that efficacy rate.

[1] for the Delta variant, which at this point is what matters

Yeah, for this to be exactly the same the assumption would be that adherence to a certain dogma is a strict requirement for continued participation in society. Oh wait...

If Airbnb is violating local laws it seems like a simple subpoena would yield the necessary information.

This is a really important point that you’ve called out. All of those Airbnbs in your neighborhood are preventing the formation of new communal relationships.

I honestly don’t know. I don’t live in a country with stricter gun control. I live in the United States.

I’m not blaming loose gun control alone. There has been an increasing militarization of the police in the US for at least the last 30 years. Is this happening because citizens are buying greater firepower? Are citizens buying greater firepower because the police are militarizing? Are these two things unrelated? Probably not, but I don’t know. My point is that mixing these two things together produces bad outcomes.

The US is a militarized police state where citizens are armed to the teeth. This is a natural consequence of that reality.

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