BahRamYou
17hr ago
what does a 1950s hotel look like? I feel like, in some places it would be really good, and in other places it would be terrible. Just luck of the draw, maybe.
BahRamYou
18hr ago
that sounds uh... awkward. i mean. I'm glad that you're family was so close. you're probably happy in many ways, and I envy the close family relationship you have. but wasn't it uh... awkward...?
BahRamYou
18hr ago
far enough that it's a pain in the ass to walk there before having coffee in the morning
BahRamYou
20hr ago
Yeah. I thought that went without saying, but its worth spelling that out in case some people don't know.
This also led to ann odd situation where, for a while, relatively poor white people in the rural south could afford help that middle class whites in the northern suburbs wouldn't have.
BahRamYou
20hr ago
Ironically im currently living in an airbnb with no coffee maker, so all i can have is crappy instant coffee. But i guess its nice i can stay in an airbnb and not uh.... a boarding house? Whatever the 1950s equivalent would be.
BahRamYou
21hr ago
I dont think its like, objectively morally wrong or anything. I just think most people find it uncomfortable and would prefer not to live that way. At least past the age of, like, 6.
BahRamYou
23hr ago
Right? This is the sort of argument that makes economists look like crazy people. Or rather, like ivory tower academics who have no idea what the real world is like. It's almost like a strawman version of an economist, where the only thing he cares about is maximizing GDP and ignores anything else.
There's plenty of other things you could point to in the 1950s that would horrify a modern person though. For example, most of their jobs were terrible, and families were cramming 4+ kids into a tiny home, with kids sharing rooms in bunk beds. Also very limited heat or AC, and you'd waste a lot of time on menial household chores if you weren't rich enough to afford servants.
BahRamYou
1d ago
Interesting. I should really get around to reading that series one of these days. I remember starting it as a kid and being very confused that it wasn't like the Narnia books.
BahRamYou
1d ago
I'm much the same. half the reason I eat at restaurants is just to get out of the house and have a change of scenery where I can relax and experience the meal. Getting food delivered in a soggy Styrofoam container so that I can spend my meal staring at a screen is just dystopian. It's surreal to sit in a popular restaurant which is completely empty of anyone actually eating there, just an endless stream of delivery drivers coming in to pick up bags of plastic containers.
BahRamYou
1d ago
The rich 1959 guy wouldn't necessarily be driving to a restaurant. He could also afford to keep a personal cook or housekeeper. Or, you know, just have a servant to do all the regular housework while his fancy wife did the cooking.
I think a lot of these "would you rather" comparisons across time are hard to compare, because we've basically substituted capital for labor. So would you rather have a human do stuff for you, or a machine? I've never had servants so i can't really say, it seems like it would be awesome in some ways but also really awkward in other ways
Anyway, "I Love Lucy" was a great show and driving a brand new Cadillac to the local supper club sounds awesome, so I don't know what he's talking about there.
BahRamYou
1d ago
sigh I suppose it's up to us middle-aged men to lead the way. who wants to help me start a Hitler Youth scouting organization? (kidding obviously, I don't really want to do that)
BahRamYou
1d ago
Since the younger generations seem to have a weird fascination with Nazis, maybe they could bring it back as the Hitler Youth instead. I think that was basically the "scouts" for 1930s German kids.
AIUI, actual Boy Scouts (grades 6-12) are less coddled, even now. They're more independent, they plan their activities themselves and can choose to focus on actual adventures and range time and such. But I don't know for sure, because my own son begged me to stop with the pussified social studies bullshit before then (there were other, personal reasons involved as well, but when I bring scouts up now, a few years later, all he remembers is the boring bullshit and the too-rare hikes). And it's a moot point, because the Boy Scout Troop that his Cub Scout Pack fed into collapsed, because there was no new kids joining.
That was pretty much what happened to me. I remember going to cub scout meetings and mostly just being bored, doing a lot of cheesy arts and crafts project. All the den leaders were women. I looked forward to doing the cool outdoorsy stuff that I saw my older brother doing in the boy scouts, but then it collapsed before I was old enough to join because the Boy Scouts still insisted on having a male scout leader for that, and none of the men in my area wanted to do the job.
I will also say... Looking back, yeah, I can see how being an Eagle might have benefited my life in a lot of ways (like looking good on college applications). But as an 11 yr old kid I had absolutely no concept of any of that, I just wanted to have fun with my friends. So it's not surprising to me that a lot of the kids grinding Eagle Scout are just getting pushed by their parents to munchkin the merit badges.
edit- Probably a big factor in why no men wanted to do it, is that it was an after school program. That meant they had to be available from 3-5 PM on weekdays, and most of the men were busy working at that time. Also they probably wouldn't allow some random unemployed dude to do it, and it's not a paid position so... I don't know how they expected it to work.
BahRamYou
4d ago
For sure. The Negative Nancy/Debbie Downer types who are just constantly complaining can really poison a work environment. Even when their complaints are justified, chances are we all already know and don't need to be constantly reminded of it. As an adult I actually really appreciate the people who can put on a cheerful face and make the best of a bad situation.
BahRamYou
5d ago
I actually do think that a million Russian dead is clearly too high for the same reason that half a million dead Ukrainians is too high: we would see the evidence everywhere in both economies if that were true. For example, this interview with Russia's former deputy energy minister was a year ago but seems credible where he pushes back on Russia taking a million people out of the economy not being likely at that point
I wonder if we're seeing the sort of issue that historians have in assessing ancient wars, where a lot of people just stop being counted in the official population numbers. That doesn't necessarily mean they're dead. I imagine there's a lot of men, especially on the Ukrainian side but also in Russia, who would prefer to not let the state know that of their existence right now. Obviously it's better overall that not as many people are dying, but from the state's cynical view it's sort of the same whether they're actually dead or just unreachable.
BahRamYou
6d ago
In my experience, trans people tend to lead rather unusual lives, in many ways. That makes it hard to draw any clear chain of causality.
In particular, there's a type of "theater kid trans," who has an extremely extroverted personality and is constantly going out of their way to seek attention They can make a lot of friends that way, but also annoy people. I can see how that sort of person could end up getting murdered by someone they annoyed, and it's not directlly because they're trans, but it's not totally unrelated either. The fact that so many of your examples are black adds a whole other element to this of course.
BahRamYou
7d ago
the evidence is that Orientals and Ashkenazim have higher IQs than average gentile whites, and this explains much of their over-performance.
define "much". From what I've seen they have a slightly higher IQ, but also a much higher in-group preference and organization. It's the latter that seems to explain most of their success. This leads to the twitter meme of "check the early life section" where so-and-so famous person is always like "born into a jewish family, he attended an elite school and then quickly got promoted."
BahRamYou
11d ago
The reality is that men are fairly expendable. Society can afford for 30% of young men to die in the trenches and recover fairly quickly; their widows receive help from the community to raise children, and later they marry older widowers. Meanwhile, if 30% of young women die, the population pyramid of the next generation will crater, and society will be burdened by orphans with lifelong mental problems due to attachment disorders, triggered by loss of mothers during infancy.
Maybe in the past that was the case. It doesn't seem to describe our current western society though. Most women aren't having children, and most soldiers don't die in a war. And either way the "community" doesn't care.
Ironically one of the subgroups which does still seem to get pregnant a lot is women in the military. So maybe putting more women in the military would actually increase our population?
BahRamYou
11d ago
This is weird because Poe really isnt that young. He was uh (looks up dates) played by a 38 year old actor when TLJ came out? Plus he was already a main character in TFA, and that movie made it a point to show he was already a character with experience, just like han in the original movie.
It really comes across the opposite way. The older, higher ranking officer expects blind obediance. Poe is clearly correct, but she wont listen to him because he didn't have enough stars on his uniform. The only solution is mutiny
BahRamYou
11d ago
Stories like this are why I just dont have insurance. Urgent care, sketchy unregulated providers, and (maybe) energency room for me. Plus some medical tourism.
BahRamYou
11d ago
It was handled... strangely. Almost like some 70s B movie. Kylo and Ray have some mystical soul connection which is never explained. There's a bunch of scenes of him unnecessarily shirtless, and Ray obviously pining for him like a lovestruck teen girl.
Then she's suddenly like "nope! Changed my mind!" And flies away on her own. It felt to me like the writers and actors all really wanted this romance to happen, but the producers stepped in to cancel it. But im just wildly speculating. I hope someone makes a documentary about the making of this movie someday.
Imagine if they'd gone the opposite direction. The climax of the movie could be a big, sweaty, BDSM themed sex scene between Ray-Lo. Both the boomers who want a girlboss, and the zoomers who hate sex in movies, would be totally freaked out. People would be talking about it forever. A forbidden love story for the ages.
(You might notice that I have very weird taste in movies)
BahRamYou
11d ago
That's fair. It's not like I can read Rian Johnson's mind and see what he was thinking, and of course other stakeholders also had input. I kind of think it doesn't matter though- whatever his intentions were at the time, he ended up making a movie that brutally deconstructed Star Wars much worse than any parody ever could.
Not even close to what I wrote. But hey, if you want to relive your childhood, I'm sure you can find a retirement home with small rooms and a roommate to share.
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