Gaashk
5mo ago
That's a good point. Upon hearing a prophesy of terrible children, it might make sense to first try to figure out what went wrong, rather than give up entirely.
Among basically average parents I've seen some have one problematic child and a couple of better ones, in which case maybe it's better to have more children (or at least more than one).
Gaashk
5mo ago
I don't think either? Neither scenario is related to why I have kids now, so they might not be in hypothetical true prophesy world.
Maybe I'd have more kids if I had married younger. Maybe I would have fewer if I were more organized about taking birth control pills at the same time every day and renewing on time.
Gaashk
5mo ago
The difficulty is pretty variable.
I'm an introvert who loves alone time, and currently 7 months pregnant with two children under 5. I would go on week long silent retreats if I could. My daughter is extremely hyper, showing signs of ADHD. Trying to rest at home with her is awful. Going on adventures with her is pretty fun. I'm reasonably optimistic that her energy levels will pay off in the end, but times were bad when she was a baby in a little apartment. A teacher friend with similarity energetic children is putting them in a bunch of cheap Parks & Rec day camps, and I think I'm going to have to do something like that in the future.
My brother was very challenging for my mom as well. Some parent/child combinations are just really difficult, for personality and energy level reasons.
Gaashk
5mo ago
It's the meme version of getting smallpox etc, without either vaccines or any childhood immunity. Western Civilization has great books too, bot it takes quite a lot of education to appreciate it.
I suppose the "white person" version of just naturally absorbing weaving and making attractive books is that my parents were always, every day, talking about what they were reading, reading it out loud, and going on about their favorite books and philosophy professors -- a kind of meme childhood immunization.
Gaashk
5mo ago
This reminds me of some articles Scott had shared a while back about "vibes collapse" in remote tribes, when first introduced to larger civilizations. For instance: https://smoothbrains.net/posts/2022-08-24-planetary-scale-vibe-collapse.html
I'm not certain what to think about it. Since the smartphones and modern social media are only ~15 years old, we're still figuring out how to fit them in at a civilizational level.
The classy people like @WhiningCoil are taking up aesthetic crafting hobbies and artisanal homeschooling sans social media.
The uncool moms like me are begging our children to please, please just go watch a couple of episodes Octonauts so that I can get some alone time.
People have been making fun of the overconsumption of written stories since before Cervantes. I suppose it would probably be useful to consider something telos related, but haven't heard anything extremely compelling yet. Perhaps it would be good for some Jesuits to bring the tribe more Aristotle.
Gaashk
5mo ago
In the case of restaurants, I'm not sure having different priorities, other than authenticity, is a mistake. Unless people are getting food poisoning, people are allowed to like what they like, whether or not it's the same as the preferences of the people in the cuisine's country of origin. Restaurant owners should go ahead and optimize for that, offering enchiladas at their Chinese buffet or whatever if that's popular. Unless the reviews literally say "this is extremely authentic!" I wouldn't read any opinion on the authenticity into the review.
I would expect Google reviews of various other businesses to mostly be about their customer service, there probably isn't any way around that.
Gaashk
5mo ago
"He cutted!!!" for skipping ahead in a line. I can't remember if they say they cutted the paper or not, I think it might go both ways.
Gaashk
5mo ago
Was it the same Njall's Saga essay as Scott posted during last year's ACX book review contest? If not, you should read that one, it's hilarious, but I don't think the comments were exactly a discussion either, mostly just a lot of people saying that they enjoyed it over and over again. Which is discouraged here.
This is the first I've heard of the homosexuality paper, and won't based off of this.
Everyone has an opinion on sex.
Gaashk
5mo ago
I don't. Suppose I say "I should trim back the plants in my yard," this is silently followed up by "in order to better enjoy spending time in my yard."
Perhaps when my mother was younger there was some hope left for "may" vs "can" when making requests, but that ship has sailed, and I think she may have given up on it.
I'm about to give up on "cut" in the past tense, the kids seem to be losing some irregular past verb forms.
Gaashk
5mo ago
If someone finds them a match and pushes things forward, do you have any sense of whether they do alright at marriage?
Gaashk
5mo ago
I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. What trap? What standard for agency? Isn't f3zinker the one asserting without elaboration that women have no agency?
Gaashk
5mo ago
Yours is closer to my experience as well, though I'm willing to believe there's a vast experiential gulf between hot, agreeable woman in CurrenYear who performs for Only Fans and average, prickly woman a decade ago at a provincial state U who hangs out with Baptists and the kind of Greeks who teach folk dancing and won't let a 20 year old drink ouzo with them.
Gaashk
6mo ago
I was admittedly both rather low agreeableness and not particularly hot, and also unlikely to be friends with Ms. Khalidi. But it doesn't take all that much willpower to not invite a man into your dorm room on the first date after getting burned a couple of times?
Gaashk
6mo ago
It’s honestly bad manners not to sleep around if large parts of society.
That seems like a reasonable enough thing to be pushing back against.
Gaashk
6mo ago
She was casting a great deal of shade on magazines for girls, probably produced by women. In general she seems to think that older women are failing to appropriately guide younger women, both going on about the devil and hell, and suggesting that anal sex and being hit with a riding crop are things girls are likely to enjoy.
In no particular order:
- Her college sex and dating environment does sound pretty bleak.
- Islam as represented by the people in her life also sounds pretty bleak in respect to women.
- She does seem to be perpetuating some of the bleakness with camgirl activities and inviting romantic prospects to bed then ejecting them again, rather than just not inviting them.
- As is sometimes said, it probably isn't to women's advantage that colleges are very female now. But it doesn't even seem cearly to men's medium term advantage, if the women come out jaded and thinking of men as basically beasts.
- It seems like eventually the college girls would learn to say things like "I want a romantic relationship, not a one night stand" and hold out against the "why's" with their experiences of disappointment? It doesn't seem like most of them care all that much for the sex in and of itself, or are all that carried away in the moment aside from the effects of intoxicants they're choosing to take.
Gaashk
6mo ago
Fair enough, it just seems somewhat at cross purposes with the dream of convincing all of your relatives to spend time there in comparison with, say, orchards.
Gaashk
6mo ago
I genuinely want more content in an Ethiopian setting. They had a really interesting civilization, with good aesthetics, that's underrepresented in media. On the other hand, I don't play this kind of game, so my opinion doesn't matter much.
Gaashk
6mo ago
(I like scrub desert more than average, so others may feel differently)
For other people, yes, because the glare is significantly increased. I suppose it wouldn't make much of a difference farther from the roads, but it also seems like there would be a significant cost connecting to the grid from farther away. I'm in favor of the solar panels for individual houses, schools, military bases, and so on, and it seems promising for places with long electrical connections that are currently maintained for fairly small neighborhoods. If the plan is for the family settlement to generate solar power and use it for their AC or something, that isn't a problem.
Wind farms are unsightly, visible from extremely far away, and kill a fair number of birds.
It's possible that both ventures are still worth it in some situations, but probably not in the case of an amateur landlord who is wondering about putting a shrimp farm in a desert with uncertain water sources.
Gaashk
6mo ago
Are there large cacti? Mesquite? Creosote? Palm trees? Juniper?
There are people growing North African oasis style gardens in that climate, with citrus, olives, and date palms (best example at https://www.goglobaltoday.com/st-anthonys-greek-orthodox-monastery.html). But that takes a long time, a lot of work, and a good well.
What temperature zone is the land? What kinds of things are currently growing there? What's the soil like? What is the water source? All these things matter a lot for what you're able to do with it.
Pecan groves are nice, but take a long time to establish.
I have strong negative feelings about solar and wind farms. Solar farms make the whole area hotter, more glaring, and worse, are placed exactly where the electricity is least needed, and I don't know if they're easy to maintain or not, but wouldn't expect so given the kinds of minerals that go into making them.
The water source is important for a farm or anything aquatic.
Ranching is very common, but also doesn't seem that great a lifestyle, unless you're into that specifically, which it doesn't seem like you are. Desert ranching, especially, seems to be a lot of trying to find the cattle and hoping they don't overgraze the land, lots of driving pickup trucks, hauling stuff around, moving heavy objects. I like this guy https://www.amazon.com/Dirt-Soil-Familys-Regenerative-Agriculture/dp/1603587632 but that isn't desert.
Edit: If you're allowed to build a well, but there isn't one yet, research that first! Someone in my area just said they spent $60,000 on digging a new well when their previous shallow well was depleted.
Gaashk
6mo ago
This seems relevant to the other threads about why many women seem to prefer being in the workforce and making a legible amount of money for doing somewhat tedious things with peers to staying home, deciding on what chores to do themselves, and feeling vaguely bad about the outcomes.
I ought to clean a bunch of surfaces in my house and cut back some weeds that are still there from last fall. Instead perhaps we will buy a couple of cottonwood trees and plant them, because it's way more satisfying of the trees manage to survive and grow. There's also a dead fruit tree to cut down, but I feel entitled to not do that, as the pregnant woman in the family.
Gaashk
6mo ago
Fact is that most boomers enjoy working around the house. Fixing up odds and ends and getting a perfect green lawn are hobbies not chores.
Or they move to Phoenix and get one of those yards with gravel and river rocks winding their way around cacti, and a community pool, and only have to work on it twice a year.
What's your main concern about marriage?
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