Alabasata
5mo ago
This came up in a meeting with whitehairs. I claimed that setting up childcare on site would help attract parents. To which one replied, "Well, I'm a parent, and I don't see how that helps me any!"
My primary impulse is still "No, you were a parent." And there's some background wars of framing that go into this.
Alabasata
5mo ago
The pun is appreciated, though the conclusion is not. In my deferens, it's always taken at least two to tango when children are made.
Alabasata
5mo ago
Survey about parenthood: how do you describe people whose kids have left the nest? I was under the impression that the social role of "parent" took a back seat when the kids move out, but a conversation with grandparents last night has gotten some responses I did not expect.
Some people always want to be referred to as parents once they've had kids...and my gut feeling is that I don't like unspoken implications of that. Haven't put it into words yet why, though.
Alabasata
6mo ago
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Over 20 years, a high school classmate presented me with a star chart. I used to remember what my rising sign was. I never remembered the squares, trines, or other angled relationships with other signs. We haven't spoken aince graduation.
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A year before COVID, I danced with a woman at an independent art show. She asked me my sign. I asked her to guess. She smiled & said what her favorite signs were. I was not in that list. The next morning, she thanked me for the cup of tea I prepared. I sent a couple text messages, but she seemed uninterested. I moved on.
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Another coder I know posts about star signs roughly one a month. He has a lot more women in his social circles than I do, and they engage with him fairly well. I have noticed this, as well as his interest in the well-being of his toddler daughter.
Astrology is a tool. You can use it as a game, or you can get autistic with it and try to make grand statements about people's character. Lots of people like games; not a lot of people like to be defined.
Keep in mind that when someone is tasked with a decision and is suffering from analysis paralysis, even an irrational & arbitrary distinction such as birth month can narrow the field down to a reasonable set of choices.
Alabasata
7mo ago
This ignores the potential for either favoritism or lack of oversight towards people who are in the same church. After all, our church has the best people. /s
Alabasata
7mo ago
Also note that deliberate race-swapping can still make good art. Both Spike Lee & Mel Brooks made "Where did we go right?" movies where the premise is that terrible stereotypes actually sell great. (Bamboozled & The Producers)
"X But it's a $Demographic Movie" doesn't have to suck. It's still all in the execution.
Alabasata
7mo ago
I misread this at first. I had thought the daughter said "eat me" as a retort. That would have been twisted-sitcom funny.
No, this was a proposition from the father from the start. We do not share the same sense of humor.
Alabasata
7mo ago
I actually did miss your mention in OP, thanks for calling my attention to it. (I also actually have no idea who Bill Diblasio was before this thread, so am not keen to comment on him in particular.)
If the concepts of races get more defined than they are now, you'll find a lot more Diogenes "Behold!" cases cropping up. Blackness in particular is a more interesting thread after the Drake/Kendrick throwdown earlier this year.
I prefer to think of Black as an ethnicity, much like how the Jews are. It's less DNA than it is culture. "This is our music, these are our dances, this is how we tell history to each other." If you were raised in it, you are at least informed by that culture - even if you reject it later in life.
And because these identities are going to be internally & externally checked, the edge cases will keep coming. Generally, I'll defer to the groups who have more at stake to claim her or not.
Kamala Harris was accepted into Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the Blackest sororities you can find. I trust them to vet & measure Blackness better than Donald Trump (or TheMotte) can.
If she's Black enough for them, she's Black enough to me. Total distraction of an issue, not unlike talking heads asking if Obama was Black enough during his primaries.
ASIDE: Is there a programming term for classes with predefined variables that are declared but not defined? It's the only analogy I can think of that approximates the issue.
Alabasata
8mo ago
I'm a bit hazy on Cerebus, but I seem to recall he had a bit of a brain-break during Church & State II. Where, like, not many of the remaining 200 issues were actually worth reading.
Gorgeous scenery, though.
Alabasata
8mo ago
Counterpoint: it is becoming more common for grocery stores & gas stations to lock their bathrooms. This is a downscaling of trust.
Maybe retail is more accepting to take money from anyone regardless of appearance. But the real trust is if they'll let you take a shit like a civilized person.
Alabasata
9mo ago
Can confirm on tuckering your kids out with physical activity.
My 2yo has just discovered she can sit on her sportsballs like a yoga ball. Naturally, I took mine out and showed her things I can do with my ball. Monkey see, monkey do. I get a little extra workout in by adding "dynamic resistance" to my movements (there's a proper term for it, but DDPYoga branding has broken my brain). She falls asleep within 30 minutes of being put to bed.
Keep them running, climbing, bouncing on large rubber balls. Keep em laughing. I expect this love-of-movement will help set her up for a glorious adulthood.
Alabasata
9mo ago
On psychology research: How do I find if there have ever been studies done to see how much people are primed to agree with survey questions, regardless of the context?
Example: Consider the "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree" scale of questioning. Suppose a group of people are randomly assigned a list of questions that ask the same content from two different directions. "I feel safe if I park near the front of an ATM" versus "I feel unsafe if I park near the front of an ATM". Two questions with opposite directions. If people are rational on average, you would expect the amount that agree with the first question would roughly equal the amount that disagree with the second question.
I suspect that people are not rational about these questions. I suspect that people are simply more likely agree with whatever statement you put in front of them, positive or negative. I also suspect that the tendency to agree with the statement may be skewed by the demographics of people taking the survey: socioeconomic, age, race.
I have no proof of this hunch, and it feels kinda Dark Arts to even suggest this is probable. Do we know if there is ongoing research to confirm or deny this claim?
Alabasata
9mo ago
Trump, an honorary Jew? I'm not seeing it.
A strong New York accent is not enough to make a Jew out of Trump. Noveau riche gaudiness is not enough to make a Jew out of Trump. Shamelessly leaning into "I want my accountants wearing yarmulkes, not daishikis" stereotypes is not enough to make a Jew out of Trump.
What are you seeing that I'm not?
"Otherthrowing the system" is usually composed of a variety of reasons, ranging from "not being in the demographic of who's in control of The System" to "not having access to people in control of The System" to "the effects of living under the people who have control of The System are intolerable" to "the people who are in control of The System aren't very good at keeping The System running". It is not surprising one is tempted to say "curses!" faster than "thanks!"
Just as you are allowed to distrust people who use these particular Arguments As Soldiers, it is also allowed for them to mourn the deceased arguments.
Alabasata
11mo ago
I'm starting a GoFundMe to commission a klezmer rendition of "On Eagle's Wings". Then, and only then, will the inferior WASP culture be washed away from sea to shining sea.
/SaturdayCartoonVillain
Alabasata
11mo ago
Alabasata
11mo ago
From my understanding, Mondragon members have largely pulled the ladder up behind them (point 7 here).
Alabasata
11mo ago
We are kinda in an anomolous time. The ratio of median home price:median income is in uncharted territory. Granted, this is a national ratio, so local market movement is a huge factor.
Without major amounts of extra supply coming on your local market or an exodus when Lake Mead runs dry, I don't see a regression to the mean happening any time soon. It's a hard choice, given your increase in housing cost.
Alabasata
11mo ago
If you focus on the gaps, you'll see gaping maws everywhere. An incel may see all the reasons why they're undateable. A Black-pilled HBDer may see themselves as inherently slower.
If they can't start with seeing themselves from their strengths, they are unlikely to grow into the best they can be.
I know many retired E-9s of color. The oldest is a Vietnam veteran. He needed help taking the placement test in the way his white peers did. After he got that help, he did the right thing and passed it down to his mentees. It's not just innate intelligence that gets passed down, but also experience. Experience, expectations, and emotions.
There's a strain of community activism called Asset Based Community Development. Like many programs, they started with the initials (ABCD) and made a bacronym. Unlike many other programs, they prefer a bottom-up approach. They assume people, all people - limited though they may be - have put in the work to get good at something. Good enough that they should be valued.
I don't know what your life goals like like. You may not reach the intellectual & career heights of people that we write about. (SPOILERS: most of us here won't either.) But if you can operate in your zone of excellence, and help a brother or two get at least half as good as you are - that's still a life of positive impact.
Alabasata
11mo ago
If I remember right, the law claims there is no such thing as consensual sex in prison. It's just selectively enforced by the wardens to minimize the effort needed to maintain control. Having a zero tolerance policy for prison rape creates more work, so is naturally opposed by the wardens.
Alabasata
1yr ago
I rarely have dreams I remember through the morning. Though after becoming a dad, they do come a little more easily. Maybe it's the sheer emotion of being with my little sprog, maybe it's the long-term management of raising her. Hard to say. Emotionally-charged moments do tend to get the dream machine cranking harder.
Today, I dreamt about the loss of control of who is in my house. I remember I was in a house larger than my current one - but still believed it to be mine - and being shocked that people I disapproved of were in it. The details are very fuzzy of how they got there, or how they tried to remain despite my protests.
Last night, in a fit I threw one shelf of my medicine cabinet into a laundry basket. The clutter was so bad I couldn't see the back of it any more. We ended up having far too many expired items. Also, duplicates of stuff that might have been bought because we couldn't see what we had? Anyway, the first shelf was finally ordered & visible and all was right with that little corner of my world.
It's possible the purge triggered that line of dreaming. I'm not a strong believer in cause-and-effect here. Possibly other causes I'm not aware of as well.
Just picked up Bastiat's "The Law". It's...fine, I guess. It deserves to sit next to Communist Manifesto as an example of Romantic political pamphlets - their use of language points to their beliefs as self-evident truths. They don't wish to persuade, only to start talking points that they hope others repeat. For 1800s Europe, I guess that worked? It's still used on Twitter, Tumblr & Reddit today - so the technique seems useful enough.
But at least I finally have an idea of where "taxation is theft" came from. I wasn't fond of the idea before, and this book doesn't do it any favors.
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