5434a
9mo ago
The internet has diminished the cultural isolation art and culture needs to gestate and develop organically leaving us with a choice between big budget, mass market, safe investment, market-led retreads or retro nostalgia for "authenticity". The shortfall is filled up with short-lived memes that people can latch onto and share but don't engender any feelings of lasting personal investment ("I was a let's go brandoner before it was cool and I'll remain one when the casuals have moved on").
There's a whole chapter in David W Marx's Status And Culture that covers this in some depth if you want to read something longer than Motte comments.
There's also the matter of consumer technology maturing and effectively stagnating. When technology phases into affordablity there's a lot of low-hanging fruit available, plus the promise of higher-hanging fruit as the tech improves, plus a residual barrier of entry to casual participants. Now everybody has a combined office/studio/library/theatre in their pocket whether they need it or not and its workings are locked behind bootloaders and signed certificates on one hand and hot-glued security screws and millimetre scale surface mounted components on the other. You either have to be a team of specialists or a border-line autist savant to meaningfully explore beyond the walls of the heavily populated omni-garden.
5434a
9mo ago
If you swapped the newspapers for cardboard boxes I have a box room that's at roughly 3 and that's after over a year of using it as a staging area for de/cluttering projects.
I clean the house to floor level roughly once a week and leave the kitchen clean every night.
Just finished W. David Marx's Status And Culture. Interesting and expansive without tediously reiterating the same points over and over to reach the magic 350 page count as so many pop intellectual books do. A little too blinkered though; yeah status plays into and undergirds a lot of society, but it's not literally everything*. Most of it will be familiar material to everyone here but it's still good to see the theories fleshed out and not just used as stick to beat on the outgroup de jour.
About to start The Stories Of Ibis.
*Edit: What I find frustrating about the typical analysis of status is that it treats status as an end in itself. I see status as a means to reach/achieve/reflect the underlying concretely valuable objectives and avoiding the suffering of being deprived of the same.
5434a
10mo ago
I don't know Sargon's style but I assume it's a drily ironic joke that the world didn't change, the people who say it did did.
5434a
10mo ago
Oh nice, I didn't know about the new miniseries. I'll add it to the download queue.
I'm content to take a punt on Tai-Pan next seeing as it's the next chronological installment, hopefully it's okay even if it doesn't measure up to Shogun.
5434a
10mo ago
I re-read Shogun last year for the first time in 20 years. Is the plot slow? Well, I also read Crime & Punishment and Brothers Karamazov last year, and compared to those the plot is a rocketship.
I found the plot moved faster the second time because I was familiarised with all those aspects of foreign culture and language that are used. More importantly, on reflection the feudal Japanese culture is a critical plot mechanism; the extreme honour based social structure is exactly what the main character has to adapt to in order to understand and participate in the power struggle he finds himself caught in. And the more his understanding improves the more his agency develops giving the result that the plot is pushed along faster.
I won't say that it's a "great" book but it was good enough to make me think I should get around to reading the next book in Clavell's Asian Saga. On the other hand I won't be looking for any more Dostoevsky.
5434a
10mo ago
I've started a "quick" project to apply some basic maintenance to my bike. Just enough to get it up to acceptable standards and out of its decline into neglect. In the process of changing the balding tyre for a new one I discovered one wheel is not only a little wobbly and malformed (whatever, lol) but also cracked. I'm not an expert but I assume that a cracked metal wheel is a significant hazard and demands replacement. So I started looking for a replacement. Long story short what I learnt is that bicycle standards are all over the place (apparently 1.75 and 1 3/4 aren't the same - who decided to cross the streams by decimalising imperial measurements anyway?!) and that the first cheap one I'd seen really was a suitable replacement and not the potential risk of a wasted purchase/return/repurchase I was worried it might be.
I don't know how many hours I've wasted (it was more than two), or whether they really count as wasted, but I know that a 1 day job won't approach being finished until next week when I finally collect the new wheel that I had no idea I needed to order. Such is the work of being a jack of all trades. I could have handed it to a bike mechanic, had it fixed the same day and eaten the bill but by that logic I could just take taxis everywhere.
5434a
10mo ago
Similar story here.
you never get any "holy shit I need to change my life" moments
I stopped smoking weed because that was literally the only effect it was giving me. It became like a boredom magnifier where instead of zoning out and happily wasting time I'd zone alllll the way in and get frustrated about the lack of progress on my ambitions. Made worse by smoking it at the end of the day when there was no opportunity to make any concrete progress on those projects beyond ruminating on how I could do them if this, which I would do if that, which I can't do because...
5434a
10mo ago
Same as last year: keep punching my to-do list in the face until one day I can begin doing things I want to do instead of being preoccupied with tying up the loose ends of things I haven't finished or fielding the various entropic have-to-dos that crop up. In brief: keep tightening up with the long term view of gathering some slack.
First significant project on the agenda is to build out some built-in bookcases that will furnish me (get it) with enough storage space to absorb all the overflow that's accrued, with extra space to use for staging following projects (sorting through my tools, disposal of surplus, etc).
5434a
10mo ago
Stir fry with a home made scratch sauce takes about 15 minutes with practice, maybe 30 without or if you have to slice the vegetables instead of using a pre-packed mix. There's a few variations you can spin on it too (add peanut butter = ersatz satay, switch the meat for cashew nuts, switch noodles for rice, etc).
2 parts soy sauce
2 parts ketchup
1 part vinegar
1 part honey
Five spice / garlic granules / chilli powder to taste
Adjust to taste.
5434a
10mo ago
I've read most of the replies and I wonder if it doesn't boil down to unwillingness to entertain anything short of a perfect case. If a vegan can't provide a watertight case for how turning vegan will generate ideal outcomes on all aspects under consideration then their argument is irredeemably flawed, and if their argument is flawed it can be rejected wholesale and we can all carry on as we were. And of course The Motte is a filter for people who live to pick holes in arguments (cue "no we're not!").
What if vegans could show some net benefits at below net cost to you? Would you/we recalibrate not to eating a fully vegan diet, but simply eating less meat? Or does it have to be the once-and-for-all slam dunk that settles the matter for ever?
5434a
10mo ago
A friend lent me Sum, a collection of very short stories about different permutations of the afterlife. It's refreshing to read something that gets straight to the point.
5434a
11mo ago
How do you retrain your brain to say ‘although you think you’re winning, you need to reset the rules of the game’?
Impose a change of routine on yourself so that you can't idly default into your unsatisfactory habits. I guess the simplest one would be to power off your networked devices for a time, maybe say for two hours after dinner. Then find out what your now unoccupied mind prompts you to do instead. Maybe you tidy up. Maybe you fix something you've been putting off. Maybe you go for a run, or start writing, or start the prep for tomorrow's meals. All fairly mediocre, but still a switch from passive to active. Or maybe you start planning your personal Hock.
Mediocrity isn't going to reject itself.
5434a
11mo ago
There usually are other places that you can ask your questions but nowhere that offers such a broad range of topics to such a large userbase with such a low barrier to entry and all in one place. That was always a double-edged sword but it progressively swings further towards the low effort = low quality side.
In terms of content it used to be like HackerNews and now it's like Facebook. People don't go there to discuss questions, they go there to reassure each other they're in the right.
The scale of users means you get increasingly squeezed between the opposing forces of shitposters and overworked moderators. So they get a lot of idiots asking questions and a lot of replies that assume anyone asking questions is an idiot, and then the mods have to spend time cleaning it up instead of building out better tools that might help prevent those questions.
It doesn't help that Reddit's search has been shit forever. The sorting algorithm and karma system also incentivise repeating popular questions no matter how any times it's been asked before. And instead of fixing search to improve the UX for existing users Reddit prefers to chase new users by gamifying and appifying, while marginalising their smarter users (who might have contributed a lot of the better quality content but didn't represent much/any value to their revenue).
5434a
11mo ago
Finished Brothers Karamazov.
After reading both that and Crime And Punishment this year I think I'm due for something much lighter. Does anyone have any recommendations for above average short story compilations?
5434a
11mo ago
15/24. Basically 50/50 coin flips apart from the really obvious ones like Bilbo and Sildenafil.
5434a
11mo ago
Colours can be tasteful if they're used with care but generally less is more. Our neighbours use multicoloured lights but it's offset by each bulb being very small. The bigger the display the more the colours will clash. Red and white could be a suitable combination for the season but monochrome white makes an effective Schelling point for a whole neighbourhood to converge on and create a semi-coordinated appearance.
For me blue lights don't say Christmas (or Judaism), they say either "blue LEDs hit the market and everyone began using them in order to look more futuristic... twenty years ago" or "emergency vehicle". The one positive is that it's not as eerie and unearthly as green. Blue is cold and eye-catching and that's why it's such a confusing choice to have a big bright one on the front of so many TVs, but again: "futuristic". Christmas lights should be warm and festive, like a log fire reflected on a brass coal scuttle or candlelight shining through stained-glass. White lights are bland but at least they're reminiscent of frost and snow and fit a wintertime palette.
I've noticed a lot of people don't distinguish between warm and cold white though and end up using the bluish white lights indoors where a warmer tone would be much cosier and more inviting, leaving their sitting room with a similar lighting ambience to a commercial kitchen.
I guess that now LED ropes are getting cheaper soon everything will look like Tron. "Bloop bloop bloop! Merry twelve slash twenty five."
5434a
11mo ago
You tend to lay out the necessary groundwork before getting carried aloft where the scenery is sometimes strange and unfamiliar but the pilot is competent and the navigator knows where they're heading. OP is more like an angry cab driver.
5434a
11mo ago
Adjusted for inflation, whatever that comes to in current prices, of course.
A lyrical finesse on a par with the original.
5434a
11mo ago
Hindsight is 20/20 and "easier said than done" notwithstanding... At the risk of being a back seat woodworker I'd redo the front panel and make it cleaner and simpler by replacing it with a cover flap, maybe with just the volume knob exposed. Faster and more practical would be to make a new flap on top of the existing control panel and avoid having to alter too much of the finished work. Just seems a shame after making such a good job of the power/turbo buttons.
5434a
11mo ago
When you say "unacceptable or indefensible," do you mean you knew you were in the wrong? Or you knew that, even if you could verbalize your feelings, they'd be rejected or torn down by argument?
To spare you a long rambling post I wrote: Yes. But there's many more reasons to not say anything, an important one of which is feeling that either I can't find the right words or the words I can find would only make things worse. However in reference to the question at hand the motives are all either neutral or defensive.
In a nutshell avoidance or conflict aversion of one form or another is a much more probable cause than passive aggression.
When you're being given the silent treatment, is it unwise to ask why and seek reconciliation? You are, in a sense, rewarding the behavior.
On balance if you're confident that's what is happening and you want to reconcile then perhaps it's best to take the bait and cut to the chase. But if someone has backed off because they feel imposed upon then following them around making further impositions will only make them back off further, or drive them towards adopting a mode closer to active aggression. For a teenage boy I'd assume they withdrew in response to feeling imposed on in some manner rather than ignoring you to "get you back", but there's always exceptions.
5434a
11mo ago
What are you counting as silent treatment? It could mean making a point of pretending someone doesn't exist, or it could be expecting someone to proactively reach out more than they're interested in doing so, or it could be badgering somebody who then retreats without satisfying your appetite for their input.
I could have been accused of all three at points. In the first case it would have been simple carelessness and taking someone for granted rather than a conscious tactic to upset them. In the second it's just disparate needs for reassurance. The times that I most remember consciously choosing to be silent were when I didn't fully understand myself and so couldn't say what I felt, or I did understand myself and knew that my position was either unacceptable or indefensible, or a combination where I knew my position was unacceptable but couldn't understand and express why I held it even if I wanted to. In that aspect I'd say it more closely matched "their words don't matter" rather than "act like a brat", but it assumes that sufficient words are available to be said.
What was I hoping to achieve? Distancing myself from what I felt was unpleasant and uncomfortable or insurmountable. Simple defence. I was never trying to make anyone else feel bad ("pushing back", even if passively), and I still can't fully wrap my head around the idea of both wanting to make someone feel bad and imagining that not talking to them is the way to do it. Passive aggression relies on baiting someone into questioning what they did wrong. Either they come to agree that they did something wrong and address that, or they're forced to accept the frame in order to deny it whereupon they can be attacked directly (actually obliquely). But it depends on them taking the bait, which depends on them caring, which depends on them noticing.
5434a
11mo ago
Sounds like a stated preferences versus revealed preferences problem. You can't know which is true until you've had a genuine opportunity to choose.
Because we're all complicit. It's easy to protest against The Man with The Button, it's a lot harder if the enemy is our own inescapable lifestyle. Follow the logic through far enough and you're left with a choice between tech evangelism or retvrn to anti-natalism and depopulation.
The other alternative is to shrug and/or put your head in the sand, hence the "...nothing", or to argue that it's all fake, but that's limited by its reactionary nature. It doesn't advance an independent agenda.
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