TheDemonRazgriz
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User ID: 3577
TheDemonRazgriz
20hr ago
Ha! That is crazy, I’m pretty confident I know exactly which town you’re referring to… and if so, you definitely know my hometown too, we bordered you, although you probably never thought about us much. In high school I found out there was a running joke one town over (not originating in your town, the other one) that “in [my town] even the black kids are white”, if that jogs your memory at all, lol.
We did have a quirky political environment, in some ways we were mega-liberal (possibly even more than in what I assume is your hometown) but in other ways we had some pretty ardent conservative streaks. It was a small and rather odd place, a lot of very good memories but also some not-so-good ones. We were extremely tight-knit, since everyone knew everyone else since either kindergarten or 3rd grade (depending on which side of town) which I think is (subconsciously) why we reacted how we did to Bin Laden getting taken out: the fact that one of our classmates’ dads had died in 9/11 made it feel more personal, like they had come after us and we had finally gotten revenge. Obviously there were some people who didn’t really care, but they just shut up for the day, lol. There were downsides to that kind of closed social environment for sure, and I knew some people (including friends) who fell on the wrong side of it, but the upsides were real too.
Small world indeed. I don’t suppose you grew up Catholic? If you did, there’s a high chance our families went to the same church.
I was in pre-K, or possibly preschool actually, so it’s a hazy memory, but I do remember it. I think I’m basically the youngest possible person to actually remember 9/11; I suspect this is a factor (among many, but still) for why I’ve always identified more with “young millennials” than “old zoomers”. I grew up in a town in North Jersey where people commuted into NYC for work, the kind of place where you can see the skyline very clearly if you get up on a hill, so it was pretty personal for me and mine.
I can remember being pulled out of school early, but I can’t remember how the teachers were acting or what they told us (I assume at this point I was still just thinking “yay, half day!”). My mom picked me up and to distract me, or possibly to distract herself, took me downtown to go to a certain toy store that I liked. It was a very nice day to walk around after all, perfect sunny weather. By this point I remember noticing that she was stressed out, as though something was wrong. When we arrived, the store had closed early for the day, and in fact there was almost nobody around on the whole “Main Street” area. This was weird, so I asked my mom why everything was closed. She said that everyone had gone home because there had been “a big tragedy” (in retrospect, I’m not sure if she knew yet that it was a deliberate attack, not an accident… she probably did by then, but I don’t know what time this was all happening). I asked her, “what’s a tragedy?” Can’t really imagine being in her position for that one, but she explained — I don’t remember how much she told me, but at least to the effect of “something very bad and very sad has happened in New York, and people have gone home to talk to their families” — and everything felt very serious.
It was almost certainly the first time in my life I had ever really felt somber, or had the realization that truly bad things do happen in the world. I assume afterward when we went home I just played in the yard or read a book or whatever other normal kid stuff, but that moment really stuck with me, and I do remember exactly where I was.
Obviously not everyone my age actually remembers the day, but it definitely had a big impact on all of us in town. I grew up in a small town, so we basically knew all of the same people all the way from the beginning of school through graduation. One of my classmates lost his dad in the attack.
One of my history teachers (who was supposed to catch a flight the very next day in fact) made a point of reminding students what it was like in the area at the time, since none of us could remember. Our town was under the takeoff and landing paths for an airport, so normally you’d hear a vague background noise of jets all day. In the weeks after the attack, it was silent, punctuated every couple hours by the roar of a fighter jet on patrol.
I think the day had a huge formative impact on everyone my age and a bit older. Really planting the idea that yes, there are sometimes real enemies out there. Despite being a thoroughly left-liberal town/school, we never really had an anti-American set of kids, even among the SJW-types and the edgy punk types (who I was adjacent to) they’d at least keep that kind of thing to themselves. I recently watched the documentary “102 Minutes That Changed America” with my wife, which is a really excellent compilation of footage from various people on the ground on the day of the attacks, played in real time as events progress, and including some street interviews. It was an emotional experience watching ordinary people reacting and slowly realizing what was happening; surprisingly raw even now, frankly enraging, dredging up a latent feeling of “fuck the people who did this” that’s definitely etched deep in my bones in a personal kind of way.
One more aside: when the SEALs finally killed Bin Laden in 2011 (8th grade for me), it was a party atmosphere in the whole school. Basically everyone came in (spontaneously, with no real coordination, we just all heard about it in the morning and reacted the same way) decked out in American flag T-shirts and hats and whatever like it was the 4th of July and we’d just won the Super Bowl all at once, and nobody got much work done all day.
TheDemonRazgriz
11d ago
I would assume simply a typo (or confusing “paternity” for “parental”), or intentionally using “paternity” as a generic/unisex term (like when people don’t use the word “actress”).
TheDemonRazgriz
21d ago
It is. They’re the same tattoos.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
My friends frequently describe me as the "stupidest smart person they know" , so I relate to this lol
Ha! Back when I was in middle school or so, I said something to my friend (wish I remembered what) that prompted him to crack up and say “you know, I can never tell if you’re the smartest dumb person or the dumbest smart person I know.”
I suspect this website attracts a type.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
My circle must just be in the stone age, then, because I still know multiple people who don't own computers.
Well… while I agree that the figure of one-in-four Americans using LLMs daily, or half weekly, is very hard to believe (I would love to see a breakdown of who exactly responded to that survey and how the data was weighted), I think you might indeed know some real stone age outliers.
Are you including smartphones and tablets in your definition of “computer”? If yes, then not only do I not know anyone who doesn’t own a computer, I don’t think I know anyone who knows anyone who doesn’t own a computer. And that’s including my elderly relatives and their circles, friends who have family from third-world countries, etc. If not and you just mean desktops/laptops, then I can at least think of my 92-year-old grandmother, who never bothered learning to use a computer when they were new and only reluctantly accepted a gifted tablet from my parents around a decade ago. But that’s about it.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
The flying car is held back by trying to be a car, which is the part people actually want. A flying equivalent to the station wagon is several steps less attainable than the ForTwo.
Yeah, this is the crux of the problem imo, combined with the need for a runway to take off and land. Forget the safety regulations, we are not actually capable of making a flying car. What we are capable of making is a drivable airplane, but there’s no demand for that.
Looking for some General Advice for Retards Dummies on going from renting to owning…
I live with my fairly-recently-married wife, renting a condo in a major city, and we’ve been looking at options to buy property instead. Well, as luck would have it, our landlord just recently reached out offering to sell us this very condo. His asking price isn’t a great deal, but it’s a fair one and I’m confident the unit will appreciate over time, probably significantly (aside from the general housing trend, it’s in a convenient and fast-gentrifying location). Based on what I’ve seen so far, we wouldn’t get this good of a place and this good of a location any other way.
So, I’m thinking we’re going to go through with it. My father in law has offered to gift us a frankly ridiculous-to-me sum to use as a down payment (in his half-joking words, “think of it as coming from your inheritance”) because he’s very eager for us to have a real asset on the books, so I’m not too worried about balancing monthly payments against the length of the mortgage, although I would love to hear what people think about that. One concern on my mind is that we will eventually need to sell and move to a proper house further out of the city, I assume before the mortgage is paid off. We’re in our late 20s and intending to have our first kid within the next couple of years. This place is big enough and located well enough to be suitable for at least one kid up through toddler-age (and in fact there are a number of families with young kids in the building) but for a 2nd or 3rd (or just an older kid) we will certainly want an upgrade. If anyone has gone through that process I’d be curious to hear as well.
Basically I’m just looking to hear the general thoughts of motteposters who have gone through this already. Also curious about the expected etiquette for negotiation.
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
Does FIFA need capital?
No, they’re quite profitable. The case is as simple as “more money for the ownership.”
TheDemonRazgriz
1mo ago
It was front and center as “breaking news” on the NYT mobile app when the surge started and is still highlighted as a major item with its own section-header, “Migrant Surge into Spanish Territory” (just checked). Mainstream US news definitely considers it a big deal.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
I agree. I actually also agree with the main thrust of his post, but orbital datacenters make zero sense unless you’re wrongly thinking “space = cold” instead of “space = vacuum”. Power needs could theoretically be solved by using nuclear reactors instead of solar panels (which is still pretty impractical compared to just… building a reactor on Earth) but the absolutely ludicrous size of the necessary cooling radiators (and what happens if/when that radiator gets hit by a micrometeor or a piece of debris? how easy is it to repair? how long can you wait?) makes it a non-starter, barring some borderline-magitech advancement in cooling that would surely also make it easier to build on Earth. Cooling and especially power are the limiting factors of datacenter construction, above the raw land requirements.
Maybe there’s a future case for datacenters on the moon, using some sort of geothermal-esque cooling system with boreholes? I imagine the underground temperatures of the moon are pretty damn cold, I bet we could use it as a heat sink. But there a whole lot of steps to cover before there’s any benefit at all to doing that instead of just building a normal datacenter.
I think the only real economic case for what we’d recognize as sci-fi-level space development is mining, whether that’s helium on the Moon or rare earths from asteroids, etc. I think this would require launch economics to get vastly cheaper before anything could come of it, but it could potentially take off as both a sovereign and zero-pollution (on Earth anyway) means of acquiring certain resources. I think it’ll happen eventually. But not very soon. Near-future space development will be all about communications, GPS, and surveillance — perhaps with a bit of weaponization thrown in to deal with the surveillance.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
like 1-3 numbers you rate on a scale from 1 to 10.
The problem is that most users would rate everyone they like “10” and everyone they dislike “1”, thus making the data very coarse and rather useless. Very few people actually have the inclination to rate basically anything on a meaningful scale.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
I can believe underrepresentation (although some Asian overrepresentation in tech feels, frankly, pretty organic) but I don’t for a second believe that Big Tech is only 10% white. That seems like quite an exaggeration.
Although, my two personal friends who work in the FAANG world are an Indian guy (to be fair, he’s a citizen and a very patriotic rah-rah-USA kind of person) and a black guy, so hey, what do I know. Are there real stats on this out there?
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
As I understand it there really was some kind of irregularity with how VAR was used, I believe that they used slo-mo or still frames in a context where it isn’t allowed (because all contact looks worse slowed down) or something similar to that, but they’re not hiding that, it’s in the official FIFA statement. It also was an extremely harsh call, and Messi had done the exact same thing (worse, honestly) in a previous game and wasn’t even given a yellow. They all-but-never overturn decisions within a tournament though, so imho, that’s all probably the fig leaf and Trump contacting Infantino is the real reason. I think the only other time this has happened was way back in the 60s? They did wipe away a multi-game suspension for violent conduct for Ronaldo to let him play in this very tournament, but FWIW that red card happened before the tournament so it isn’t quite as egregious/comical.
I was texting with a friend about the overturned suspension earlier today, and literally during the act of sending him a meme about “Trump called up FIFA to make this happen lol” it was confirmed that, in fact, that was exactly what happened. What a time to be alive.
Anyway, culture-war-wise I haven’t seen any truly negative opinions about the decision from Americans, certainly not from American soccer fans. Everyone I’ve seen or talked to has been amused and/or happy. It is admittedly kinda dirty but, well, it’s FIFA. Even the liberal NYT commenters on an article I read seem to at most be saying “I wish it hadn’t happened like this but I’ll take it.” Hell, even my mom (who utterly despises Trump and doesn’t care that much about sports) isn’t too broken up about it. That red card was total BS anyway, so this is how it always should’ve been.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
The good ol’ “half your age plus seven” rule of thumb still reins supreme, I think.
I do think the whole age-gap-discourse phenomenon has gone utterly off the rails, but it has always seemed to be a deeply internet-bound phenomenon with little impact on the vast majority of people’s daily lives, and I think it has just about nothing to do with the fertility crisis.
And for the record, some twitter rando’s opinion does not mean anything. “Some guy on twitter said it” approaches anti-endorsement.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
Yes, it’s important to remember for these kind of conversations that active Reddit posters are a fairly small portion of users; most posts are made a small portion of super-active posters; and most of those people are genuinely insane. Over-indexing on what redditors are up to is basically selecting for the beliefs of a particularly deranged subculture of a subculture.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
I think the legislature has abdicated its power to the court (and the executive), much more than the court seizing it.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
A small but lovely part of watching the World Cup was seeing beautiful people from around the world representing the appearance and character of those countries. That's banned now,
FWIW, they’ve been subtly bringing this back. I’ve watched quite a few of this year’s World Cup matches so far, and pretty much all them have included at least one obvious “check out this hot girl” crowd shot for each country, usually more. Not as blatant as the gratuitous “zoom the camera directly in on her boobs” shots you’d see in the 2000s, but they’re clearly not sticking to the ostentatiously sexless #metoo-era posture either.
Fundamentally though I agree with you. It doesn’t matter much that most people don’t really care about woke-scolds’ pet issues, because woke-scold types are vastly overrepresented in positions of power; they will enthusiastically use that power to advance their positions; and normal people do remain terrified of upsetting them, because they are disproportionately common in positions of power. This is all true.
I will say, when I interact with people younger than myself, the age gap stuff seems to have few true believers. Zoomers seem to be stuck in a collective action problem where no one wants to be the first to break from the perceived consensus, and many (especially girls) feel the need to performatively enforce the perceived consensus lest they be shunned, but the consensus doesn’t really exist.
For example, a friend of mine was working for our college’s IT department after graduation and eventually started dating a sophomore who he basically met through that job. Based on what you see online, you might expect that this was somehow fraught or they’d have to defend their gasp 3-ish year age gap or the fact she was a student and he was staff. In reality common sense prevailed, and there was no such friction. Well, we did rib him a little at first (“you can’t even take her to a bar bro lol”). In fact they’re still together several years later and I suspect they’re going to end up married.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
Seems like a big upgrade on “impotent terrorism and/or suicide by cop.”
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
The most charitable way I can think about this is that they feel a social obligation to speak in solidarity with their fellow travelers, and the fact that doing so requires them to spout obviously absurd bullshit is not an obstacle to this.
This is exactly what it is. If you pay attention, you’ll see it everywhere, from people of all political stripes. The median person just cares more about winning than truth or abstract values, simple as.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
Yeah I agree with that. I was really just wondering why Britain, specifically, had this particular problem. Plenty of places with problematic migrant groups (France, Germany, Sweden) did not have this qualitative kind of problem or this degree of coverup. I do think their particular history likely plays a role. But it could also be down to something as simple as no other country having large-scale migration of the particular Pakistani subculture that forms these rape gangs, like how only Sweden has issues with migrant gangs regularly throwing bombs at each other.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
The problem with the grooming gang seems to be instead that, for the Anglo to care about the White poor, they had to go against the minority community.
I agree that this is true, but (to my knowledge, I’m not British) there’s an additional element of class at play in Britain. It’s obviously true that western elites writ large “love to signal how much they care about minorities and the poor outside their household” but in the UK this attitude is standing on the back of a long history of especially stark class differences which persist to this day, such that the poor are not merely “the poor” but fully other, a separate and inferior culture. Today they deserve pity and perhaps charity but are still broadly contemptible. This differentiates the native lower-class from poor immigrants, who are now seen as Diverse and Enriching to the culture, where the native poor are seen as the same drag on the culture they’ve been seen as for centuries.
I suspect this cultural history is the secret sauce for how this problem became so much more pronounced in Britain than anywhere else: other countries have problems with migrant crime, including sexual violence, but not with mass-scale organized rape gangs.
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
A jew sabbath checking an intern
WTF is “Sabbath checking”? What are you talking about?
TheDemonRazgriz
2mo ago
And I’m kinda surprised it doesn’t have a rape problem.
Burning Man says they don’t have a rape problem. I recall reading (or watching? not sure) somewhere that they have a bad relationship with the local sheriff/PD because the Burning Man security staff pressures sex assault victims into not reporting to the police, and even recanting after calling the police (“do you really want to get The Man involved? have some drugs and chill out”), thus keeping the statistics down.
I am quite confident that, in context, they are calling the entire concept “paternity leave” in a unisex way, as in “parental leave”. The same way some publications would call Anne Hathaway “an actor”, or the person who takes your order on a restaurant a “server” rather than a “waiter/waitress”.
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