Gaashk
9hr ago
I do not want to give my children phones, I hope by the time they are teens this nonsense is past, and I can give them boring phones where they can only call, text, and use maps. Things seem to be heading back that way among the people I know and read, which heavily overlaps with the sort of person who reads Jonathan Haidt. Unfortunately, it seems about as likely that by the time they are teens we will be living in an oligarchy ruled over by AI systems.
Gaashk
9hr ago
Interesting, thank you!
The colleagues I've spoken with and I are generally pretty hostile to any processes that require a phone (like two step authentication and emergency notifications), since they do not provide us with phones, and there are areas of the school that do not have reception. It's interesting that someone might think of their phone as more secure in some important sense. I have made transactions by phone, but it is an absolute last resort.
It does kind of make sense that the entire point is that the purchaser has to pay the fee, they are very explicit about that, and write on flyers things like Hot Dog: $6 ($5 to school, $1 to payment processor). I got a permit to visit a government park area, where the receipt said something like: $2.00 ($0 to for access to the area, $2.00 for the reservation system). The school seems pretty serious about never paying taxes on anything, it's possible that somehow this system, while much more expensive, is somehow easier for the Finance office than normal payment processors.
Normal surcharges, like when a restaurant announces on the menu an additional 4% for using a card makes more intuitive sense to me, because someone can avoid it by paying cash. Or sales taxes, since they can sometimes be avoided (though I'd much rather they were integrated into the price, as I've seen in Eastern Europe). It seems especially petty because there is no option to pay in cash for either the park pass or the school food.
Gaashk
18hr ago
What would they install? It's web based, no cards are run in person, and the users type in all their information for each transaction. If someone wants to buy something live at an event, they scan a QR code, and put in their information themselves on their phone (Though that's only theoretical, everything has been preorder by phone interface, actually). People can't bring their physical payment card and run it, like retail.
Gaashk
18hr ago
More than once, I've received an email with a link that goes to a PDF with a QR code, which leads to a website for usually making reservations or a payment or some such thing. Why would anyone want that??? I understand why someone might print a QR code for a paper poster, or in-person presentation, but in an email link?!? Multiple people have done this since Covid, including multiple school administrators.
When I receive these emails, I open up my computer and phone, load the PDF on my computer, scan the QR with my phone, load the site, copy the URL, email the URL to myself, then open it on my computer. Am I missing something essential about how this is supposed to work?
Relatedly, the schools around here have gone cashless. I can see how that would be convenient. But instead of using Square or something that charges 3% or so, they use a payment processor I've never heard of before that charges $1 per transaction, mostly for transactions of $5 - $10. Is it providing a real service of protecting the schools from liability somehow?
Given the time scales involved, and that neither of you sound like try things out and see people, it sounds like you should propose marriage, and then either figure something out together, or else give up on living together.
If you are sure she wants to be together long term, then six months of feeling weird about the situation can be worth it. Babies also throw everything off for a year or two, but are worth it. But not if she also wants optionality, it would be bad to move to the City, then not have it work out long term.
It kind of does sound like she's making excuses. I had a baby in a 500 sq ft duplex, and taught my husband to drive at 30 years old. Maybe she just really likes City? Maybe she has friends there she would be sad about losing? Maybe she's kind of scared of living together?
Edit: Does she like to move? I'd be more upset about the prospect of moving somewhere I felt kind of unsure about if it was implied that I would have to live there for the remainder of the relationship, and he would freak out if it didn't really work out and I wanted to move again after a few years (by "it", I mean the house rather than the relationship. I would be enormously uncomfortable with the implication that the next time I moved houses would be the last, and I'm pretty sure it would be a complete dealbreaker for my husband).
It's like when someone goes on Facebook, finds a maximally annoying political take by their second cousin, drinks a bit too much, and starts going on about how Those People, represented by the cousin, are the absolute worst, the bane of civilization, and are probably wrong about every single thing, including the things the may, by sheer luck, be right about.
The man sounds like an annoying prick, probably didn't deserve a nice wife to patiently raise his children, but wasn't wrong about everything even so.
Only tangentially related, but I've been enjoying Florence Welch's new album quite a lot. Playing it on repeat in the car, with the volume up. It's unfair, weird, and a bit unhinged, and her defense is that she was writing it shortly after suffering a life threatening ectopic pregnancy. Something off about the hormones, humors, and phosphates, so she read a lot about witches while recovering. It's somewhat a sequel to "King" from Dance Fever, where the refrain is "I am no mother, I am no bride, I am king," and then she did still try to be a mother, and it ended quite tragically, but she sings it with gusto.
Gaashk
5d ago
I'm not casting doubt on the DHS Official X Intern's ability to give it to us straight.
Then you and the Red Tribe are in agreement?
The Red Tribe generally believes the police's account of things unless they have a pretty strong reason not to. ICE is part of the police in their reckoning. Things are different with the FBI, but does the FBI even put out official statement about their side of the story?
It's not particularly different from the pattern where Blue Tribers exclaimed how terribly badly Derek Chauvin behaved, and the Red Tribers mostly thought that, huh, maybe that's bad, the police will probably investigate, and he'll get in some kind of trouble if his actions were unusually bad, but on net it's probably worth letting the police get away with a bit more roughing up than they are now, in exchange for more public order.
Gaashk
13d ago
Several times now, when I'm driving in the car, one kid will ask me a question. I will answer the question. A will then say, "Mom! I wasn't the one who asked you the question, C asked you the question." And my response is befuddlement, because I didn't use A's name, and I'm looking at the road not her, so why did she think I was talking to her?
Z also has trouble figuring out who we're talking to, even when we're all in the room together, and we're clearly looking at and turned towards one daughter or the other. Her little sister can keep track easily enough.
Gaashk
13d ago
I hope that having a label helps things to improve, and that things do continue to improve. That's interesting about the supplements helping.
I have three children, and my older daughter (Z, 6) is spectrum-y. It doesn't currently seem to matter all that much -- she's extremely verbal and likes stereotypical girl things, so doesn't stand out all that much. There was a highly verbal child in the intensive autism program I sometimes teach, and I though "wow, he sounds exactly like Z!" It's hard for me to pinpoint exactly why. It's also hard to describe why without myself sounding like a bad mother, and using term like "blathering." I thought that maybe kids are just like that, but my other kids are not like that.
I teach art professionally, so I thought that maybe I would teach her art. Mostly she wants me to give her a piece of paper and a pen, and then cuts it up into hundreds of tiny shapes, and draws things for her dolls on them, and leaves piles of tiny bits of paper all over the place, over and over again. Sometimes I try to teach her something specific, and she just kind of turns away and goes to work on the snipping and drawing, in a way that feels more like how I experience teaching the autism groups. If I give her a little handmade blank booklet, she'll replicate a Disney storybook, then another, then another, until I refuse to give any more paper. Sometimes she does things at school like hiding under a table rather than putting on her coat, or refusing to leave with us because the teacher is otherwise occupied and unable to dismiss her officially.
When Z was a baby, she had a terrible time with bottles, and my husband had to drive her to my job on my lunch break to breastfeed her in the car. She screamed and screamed, and had a terrible time learning to sleep. I wondered how the human race had managed to endure up to the present day. If she woke up, she would be up for two hours, and shriek at top volume if put back to bed.
Z likes to run in circles around the center of the house for over half an hour at a time, up to hours sometimes, especially when she was younger.
My other children are not like this. My second child is getting near four and can't talk properly, but is very socially warm.
I dunno, children are confusing.
Yes, this is a common conversational failure mode. I have repeatedly requested that some work meetings that inevitably end up that way feature a talking stick. The people who do most of the talking did not see a problem and declined. They may have thought I was joking, but I was not joking. I used to work somewhere that actually used a talking stick, and liked it a lot.
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure there are characters like that in Dickens at least, probably Austen, so if it's cultural it's been infecting England for hundreds of years. Was there anyone like that in Tolstoy? It seems like there would be.
The cultural technology that combats it not extending social invitations to the bores, but all social invitations have depleted, so it's a much weaker signal than it used to be.
Gaashk
16d ago
This is what I’ve seen from the Zoomers lately. K-pop Demon Hunters captures the desired affect perfectly.
Millennial women are sometimes still wearing skinny jeans but in a dated way, sometimes carpenter pants, but do seem to be struggling with developing a mature style. I’ve been wearing sleeveless grey or navy dresses over button up blouses this fall, and it’s fine, but not very fun.
Gaashk
18d ago
I have mixed feelings about this.
As you alluded, it isn't clear how many jobs are civilizationaly load bearing to begin with. Mine certainly isn't, unless you count having and raising children, and, no, that isn't counted at this point, in these discussions. Depending on what they are, it's not clear how many people can or should do them. Mr and Mrs Tinkerbell collectors might not be able to do them even if they were in good health (again, depending on what they are). 200 years ago almost everyone would be farming and making textiles, and since farming and textiles have become relatively niche, it's unclear how many of the "jobs" that have replaced them amount to watching one another's children and walking one another's dogs. We're apparently close to automating even emails and spreadsheets.
If I had heard about this 100 years ago, I would have supposed people would work a lot less, or we would have something like a UBI, but that's not what we have. Maybe we have bullshit jobs and gaming the system instead? Which isn't great, plenty of people are upset about the current state of affairs. I don't particularly want my kids to spend 40 hours a week, for 40 years doing fake work, that seems in some ways worse than farming and textiles, but it seems to be the direction we as a civilization are heading in.
Gaashk
27d ago
This is part of why I strongly prefer handcrafts to puzzles. I've been enjoying learning to make wire wrapped tumbled stones. My husband is tumbling them, and I am wrapping them.
Gaashk
30d ago
"Poetic Woods" by Anne Blockley (2023), hardcover version. I like it! Well bound, lots of paintings of slightly abstract forests.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Even though the QR code reader built into my phone camera works fine as far as I can tell, the phone in general is old, slow, and doesn't handle apps or webpages with ads well, so I pretend like it doesn't work. A few weeks ago I had to pull a Karen at a bar to get the bartender to give or tell me what the drinks were, since I was absolutely not going to scan their QR code on my phone, and sit there reading 30 drinks off my old, slow, sad phone/wallet. He produced a tablet for me. I was saddened but bought a foofy drink anyway.
A week ago, I tried calling AAA to have my car towed. Previously, it was 7 miles free. Now it's apparently 3 miles free, and after that you're supposed to pay the rest in cash (it was going to be $80 or so), or read a stranger your credit card over the phone. I didn't believe that could possibly be the protocol. I said that I couldn't possibly pay that way, that's not how anyone pays for official services, and demanded that he offload the car on the side of the road. He said he should probably return it to my house then. I said he could return it to the three mile mark. He said I would have to pay for the return trip. We finally settled on him dumping my car on the side of the road, and me reading my credit card number to a stranger over the phone, to be charged $30 for the misunderstanding. My husband brought all the kids, gave it a jump, and it made it to the mechanic. I guess I should have tried that first, but was worried it was the kind of thing that would get worse if I tried continuing to drive it while malfunctioning.
I attempted to cancel AAA, but apparently all I can do is remove the auto subscribe, and write myself a note to check whether they try to take money anyway some months from now (which Amazon Kids has done, and unsubscribing involved multiple text chats and phone calls). Not dealing with weird shady towing practices was literally why I've been paying for AAA all this time! That is literally their value proposition!
Gaashk
1mo ago
I say the Jesus Prayer a moderate amount.
I'm also into Jungian psychology, but not super seriously. LLMs are good at that kind of thing, because it mostly matters whether something resonates and is meaningful, like dreams or fairy tales, which people will notice for themselves.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Good administrators can be good, but it's not the sort of specialized position for which no qualified citizen is available, and must be drawn from the pool of foreign Olympians.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I feel like this must be wrong, archaeologically speaking, but my history is terrible and I can't counter you with a good example.
As I recall, Sanderson mentioned his time on Mormon mission in Korea as an inspiration of some of the cultural world building in Stormlight, specifically. Which makes sense. The culture can stay irrational longer than most of its members can stay alive.
At my white collar office, "yes sir"/"thanks sir" has become so overused I wouldn't be surprised if women are saying it to each other.
Some kids occasionally say "yes sir" to me, I can't tell if they're joking or not. I keep trying to get them to use "ma'am," but they just seem confused, like they've never heard it before.
Gaashk
1mo ago
This was my experience of reading the Twilight series a while back, at the recommendation of IRL friends. Also the time my godmother gave me a copy of Eat, Pray, Love.
I like Sanderson better than either of those. I like him about as much as Edgar Rice Burroughs, and more than Dickens, who's bloat I can't stand, and don't read by choice. I like him more than Terry Brooks, who is also a prolific mid-tier novelist, but went downhill faster, IMO. I haven't tried reading GRR Martin, and don't intend to, even if he manages to finish Game of Thrones, which seems unlikely at this point. The premise of 100 Years War, but with dragons and some vague magical happenings seems unappealing, even if the writing is better.
First of all, I don’t think people read particularly widely any more.
Prior to reading Sanderson, I read most of the St John's Reading List, as did the friend who recommended Mistborn. Brandon Sanderson is good like Joss Whedon, not like Tolstoy. If I'm having a good time, then I'm happy that there are 100 hours of Buffyverse shows to watch, and five Rosier novels to read, because they're fun. I guess I'm also glad there are 60 hours of War and Peace available, but not in the same way. I feel like I'm taking a course and learning a lot about the world and what people are like and building out my model of life and humanity reading War and Peace. If I'm reading The Way of Kings of watching Buffy, I know I'm not really learning much of anything, but it does get me a bit out of my own head and problems, which can be good.
Gaashk
1mo ago
I liked that the book was easy to read, which makes the motivation required to read it much lesser. I think a lot of the "I enjoyed reading as a kid, but now I don't" that young adults experience is tied to attempting to read more difficult books, when as a kid they were probably reading books with simple prose and an uncomplicated plot.
In my experience, it's more that as a child and teen, people were happy that I would disappear for hours straight to go read a complex novel. They were happy both that I was reading the novel, and that I was occupying myself. So I would read things like The Brothers Karamazov or Les Miserables or Light in August as an older teen, and enjoy them.
Now, as an adult with children, I read things more like The Way of Kings, because I might be interrupted at any moment, and even if I fight back, and glare, and say that I'm reading and want to keep reading, the immersion is not there. Brandon Sanderson writes in a way that invites immersion even if read late at night after a full day of work and putting the kids to bed for an hour. Emotional fatigue has the same effect. One winter, I was living alone in rural Alaska, and read everything by Edgar Rice Burroughs, because I was making up six different classes, from scratch, spanning 12 grade levels, and wasn't up to much else, but was also bored.
Gaashk
1mo ago
Poetic Woods by Ann Blockley, and reading A Wrinkle in Time out loud to my daughter.
Yeah, I don't have a huge problem with QR code tickets, and then I can choose to print them out, or load them on my phone. QR code coupons generated by apps that constantly change them or invalidate them when they are shared within a family unit are annoying, but they are coupons, and annoyance is expected.
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