SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
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User ID: 225
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
It's both, depending on context. Republicans consider themselves the adults in the room in the sense that they think they are the ones willing to do the messy business of doing what needs to be done to keep this country going strong, and being true to traditional morals rather than what they consider to be frivolous and immature lifestyles on the left. Democrats consider themselves the adults in the room because they think Trump is utterly insane, and they think they are the only ones willing to stand up to his brand of insanity and act like grown-ups.
From my point of view neither is really the adults in the room, but that's what they seem to think of themselves at any rate.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Damn this was a good post. I like your thesis a lot, it makes sense but I had never considered it before. I almost hope you're wrong, because if you're right it is another sad testament to the dangers of ignoring Chesterton's Fence. It seems like a real sad statement about Western society if we took the social roles developed around the strong (though not inexorable) innate drives of the sexes, and then tore those social roles down without ever bothering to understand why they worked.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Kind of off-topic, but what the hell is that columnist smoking!? No, a boy who goes "don't worry, I have pads just in case my friends need one" would not be drowning in prom invites. He would be relentlessly mocked and ostracized for that behavior. The only scenario in which it would perhaps go the boy's way is if he was hot, in which case he doesn't need to do that to attract girls anyway. Just an absolutely bizarre take that makes me wonder what the heck the writer is even thinking.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
if you are rewarded for recklessness (or punished for prudence) a lot of the time and only punished for recklessness when something goes wrong, the punishment when something goes wrong needs to be large to outweigh the benefit and thus provide a net disincentive.
Losing your job is already a pretty big disincentive (assuming no golden parachute shenanigans). I don't think it needs to be bigger than that necessarily. On top of that, there's every reason to believe that the company is going to struggle financially as customers bail - this is further disincentive at the company level, and will affect the decision making at the individual level.
I hear that it's basically required in a bunch of fields for regulatory compliance purposes; is that not so? Also, uh, I can't get any hard numbers but I'm guessing a bunch of people died due to hospitals getting hit. When you're playing the government-contracts game, there are responsibilities attached to that.
Crowdstrike is not required, security measures are required. It's up to the regulated organization to choose how to implement that requirement. I don't think that they become critical infrastructure just because critical infrastructure orgs choose to make use of them.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
For what it's worth, I kind of love it when you tap the sign. It's a well written post and I enjoy reading it every so often.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
This is how we get hundred billion dollar black holes, massive financial crises, wars that go nowhere based on pure fantasy and defiance of reality, 20 years of barking up the wrong tree on Alzheimers research due to fraud...
No, we get that by rewarding incompetence (there's that sign tap again...). We don't need to overcorrect to fix that, we just need to actually punish those people instead of promoting them or whatever.
I believe in regular punishment for regular incompetence but this was above and beyond anything normal. Just doing as you're told isn't good enough for critical infrastructure like this.
This isn't critical infrastructure, come on. It's freaking antivirus. It's not the only one, nor is it ubiquitous. It's just another software product.
Any normal person tests updates before releasing them.
I'm willing to bet you that the technical people did want to test updates. Maybe their direct managers did too, although that I'm less certain about. But at the end of the day, when your boss says "do this or else", very few people are willing to take the "or else" option. That's not unreasonable of them.
And in the case of egregious failures where the whole organization has gone badly off the rails, why should anyone trust that they'd do a proper post-mortem?
Because they did.
Furthermore, punishment enhances public trust that everyone is in it together.
We're gonna have to agree to disagree on this one. I don't think it helps.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
What if a selection of Crowdstrike executives, coders and management had to have 'moron' tattooed on their foreheads?
That would be neither useful, nor justified. First, plenty of those people you named are almost certainly guilty of nothing except choosing to do as they were told instead of losing their livelihood. That doesn't deserve punishment. Second, for those who are truly guilty of negligence, losing their job is enough negative consequence as long as it isn't some bullshit "he got fired but he got paid handsomely for it" as is often the case for executives. We shouldn't reward incompetence (cue @faceh justifiably tapping the sign), but neither do we need to take extreme measures to punish it. Just regular punishment is enough, if we actually do it. Third, your solution would ultimately just cause people to work hard at covering up their sins and make things worse overall. You would have to be pretty stupid to do an honest post mortem if it meant someone was going to get a caning or a "moron" tattoo as a result.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
I would not say that "nut" is at all uncommon, but maybe I just hang around degens.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
By far the weirdest thing to me when I proposed to my wife was how nerve wracking it was. We both kinda knew it was coming, I was pretty damn sure she would say yes, but it still was very scary even so. Weird how that works.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
I understand why this feels true, but does it actually mean anything? Having children is - literally, words mean things - a eugenics program, in that your instincts for sexual attraction, both physical and social, are very clearly selecting for some sense of good genes to pass onto your children.
Hell yeah, this is the pedantry I crave late at night. :D
My objection here is that for something to be a program, it needs to be intentional to that effect. Simply being driven by subconscious biological urges and social tendencies isn't enough. Calling something that happens as the byproduct of other forces a program strikes me like calling humans furnaces because they turn fuel (calories) into heat. It's kinda true in a sense, but not what one normally means when they say that word.
The experience of your children in life in the future surely does matter. Imagine if your five year old fell off of a bike without a helmet and lost 10 IQ points. I feel like that'd be tragic!
I think this is a stronger argument, although I think that unrealized gains are nowhere near as bad (all else being equal) as actual concrete losses. And I also think that people here way overrate the importance of intelligence. Realistically, if OP's kids turn out to have 110 IQ instead of 125 that's not actually a big deal. OP gets along great with his 110 IQ girlfriend, doesn't he? Why would it be a problem if his kids are as smart as their mom? It's not like it'll prevent them from being successful and happy in their life or anything like that.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
If you are lucky enough to meet a woman you love, then further that luck when that same woman loves you, and then you show yourself to be among the truly blessed and manage to be healthily and happily married, and then, miracle of miracles, get her pregnant and she carries the child to term and has a boy or girl with no complications, then you've really had an amazing good fortune that many in history have not.
This is probably the most spot on thing in the entire thread and I hope OP really takes it to heart. Not everyone is so lucky to get all these things, and it is foolish to throw away the good thing one has because "well maybe I could do even better". People who do that often live to regret making that choice, because it turns out they couldn't do even better.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
It seems to me like you are far too focused on the idea of children getting good genes. Having children isn't a eugenics program, it's something you do (or don't) because it's meaningful in itself. It sounds like your girlfriend is fine (it's not like she's a moron whose company you can't stand, or you wouldn't have made it this far), and your relationship is fine. The only problem seems to be that you're getting in your head about something that isn't even important.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Cocaine has always been considered a hard drug, as far as I've ever known.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
That is not true. The potential consequence is "you are pregnant", getting an abortion is one answer to the consequence. It isn't the consequence itself.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
More accurately, "don't have sex unless you can handle procreation if it happens". And yeah it's unpopular, but that doesn't make it incorrect. Being an adult means being prepared to handle the consequences of your actions.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Transgender issues are very important to [some groups], but the median swing voter in Wisconsin doesn't give a damn....
As someone from Wisconsin, who knows my fair share of swing voters, they absolutely do give a damn. There are plenty of people who aren't diehard for one party or the other, but who find transgender stuff to be fairly off-putting.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
The thing I think is tough about that is that one form of usage bleeds over into the other, because the language people use every day is what shapes their perception of what is acceptable. This reminds me of something I read about parenting, actually. Children are prone to misbehave, and teenagers even moreso than little kids. As a parent, you can't stop that pushing of boundaries. But the suggestion I read is that if you make the boundaries stricter than you think they should be, then when your kids push the boundaries they will still be in the realm of acceptable behavior.
It seems like a similar dynamic might be important in terms of teaching kids how to communicate properly. Like you said, people don't really care that much how kids text their friends. But by harping on how they should talk while they text their friends, you might be able to instill in them proper writing in more formal contexts. I don't know for sure. But it feels like there might be something there.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
For a young woman that has any sex life, the possibility and consequences of getting pregnant loom large.
Indeed. That is why one should not have sex unless they are prepared to face the potential consequences. It's not like women simply wake up pregnant and had nothing to do with it.
I consider abortion to be infanticide. I know you probably don't, and we don't have to try to argue with each other on it because it won't be productive. But I imagine you can understand how thoroughly unpersuasive your argument is for someone who thinks as I do, right?
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Yeah basically I think you have it. Framing things in terms of "women's rights" is more effective in terms of appealing to people's emotions.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
But what "rights" are we talking about? If this is the number two issue for women, I have to assume there's some sort of female-centric set of rights, right (haha)? Well, of course the thing to point to is Dobbs and abortion. What "right" was stripped remains a mystery...
This is not in any way a mystery and I have no idea why you say it is. Supporters of legal abortion are very clear that they think it is a woman's natural right to choose whether or not to have a child inside her, and that this right means women should be able to get an abortion. I don't agree with their analysis, but it's also not like it is hard to learn what they think.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
I'm not sure what @2D3D meant by "Weber egg", but I have something that might be described as such. The Summit Kamado is vaguely designed like the big green egg and other such grills, although instead of ceramic it's made from two layers of steel with an air gap for insulation. I can attest that cleaning is real easy - use the lever which controls the bottom vents to sweep ash into the bucket underneath, which detaches so you can dump it out.
I actually like the Summit Kamado quite a bit and it's been worth the $$$ I spent on it. But I didn't mention it in my other reply because if one is on the fence about the utility of a grill at all, a $1200 grill is probably not in the cards.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
Purely in terms of results, just the smoke flavor from charcoal. I know you said that you can replicate it with a brine or sauce, but I don't think it's possible. Other than the smoke aspect, there's nothing. When you get down to it, the grill is basically an oven, and anything you can do on the grill you ought to be able to do in an oven.
But honestly? I grill because it's fun. I love cooking outside, I love the big "FWOOSH" of fire that I get when using lighter fluid, I love playing with fire even when I'm not using lighter fluid. I also like developing the skill of working with my grill and getting consistent results. Yeah, I could cook burgers that are great in my skillet. But I would have a lot less fun doing it.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
This past week I finished two books: Dark Age by Pierce Brown, and The Canceling Of The American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.
Dark Age was better than Iron Gold (the previous in the series), but still wasn't up to the high standard set by the first trilogy. I didn't hate the book, but it still took a concerted effort to make myself finish it which isn't a good sign. I'm on the fence about getting the last book. On the one hand, if I didn't enjoy the new trilogy much thus far, I probably won't change my feelings on the third book. On the other hand, enough interesting stuff happened in this book that I do kind of want to know how it ends. We'll see.
Canceling was about what you might expect, especially if you read The Coddling Of The American Mind (which I have). In a lot of ways, Canceling is kind of like a part 2 to Coddling, showing how the problems of the previous book have grown even more in our society (mainly at universities). The picture it paints of things going on in America is not going to be news to anyone who frequents this forum, although there were specific events I hadn't heard of. Unfortunately, the authors' thoughts on what one can do to fix the problems (the main thing I was interested in with this book) weren't really anything that was actionable for me. Not that it's useless advice, but it's 95% focused on parents and people who work in education (both teachers and administrators), with the other 5% being "before you make a donation to your alma mater, ask them if they do XYZ to promote free speech, and decline to donate if they don't". But I already don't donate to my alma mater, so that's not really something I can apply. Overall it was a decent read, but not as useful as I was hoping.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
3mo ago
People who run on the euphemism treadmill don't seem to grasp the fundamental truth of the situation: words don't have stigma attached because the words are a magic spell, they have a stigma attached because the situation they describe is bad.
For example, being mentally ill is bad no matter what we call it. No matter what we call it, people will start to use that label as a mocking term. You simply cannot change that by changing the term, you have to work to fix the underlying problem if you want to make things better. But a lot of the euphemism treadmill aficionados seem to willfully disregard this truth of the world, and insist that mental illness (or whatever) isn't actually bad, and the problem is purely with how society reacts to those people. It's not true though, and all their efforts will never make it true.
According to Wikipedia, yeah his father was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Not that I'm a fan of Pooh-bear, but it makes me kind of happy in the schadenfreude sense to learn that. Mao was an utter shit-bag, and I am amused by imagining how mad he would be if he found out that the son of the guy he purged is now running the country.
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