Zephyr
19d ago
The fact that people defend the prequels are for this reason completely incomprehensible to me.
I'm personally partial to the argument that Jar Jar Binks was intended to be an "evil Yoda" type character. He's got supernatural luck at avoiding harm, he ended up getting himself into a position to hand the republic over to a chosen sith - like, he's already a fantastic villain.
Zephyr
20d ago
I did it on an old iPhone (iPhone 5?) back in the day - I saw an immediate boost in battery life, and it was only like an hour to figure it out.
Zephyr
20d ago
It still haunts me to this day - I can say from years of therapy that what has helped (even if only a little) is deliberately sharing small things with someone you trust. Your body is going to reject it - I’d recommend making a ritual of it (like, you will tell your girlfriend one small thing you like before going to bed each night).
Zephyr
23d ago
How exactly do you propose the parents should extract the value from their children? Lifelong alimony?
The easiest way to extract value from your children is to raise them in such a way that they'll want to help support you later in life. For example, spending time with them when they're young, helping them out both financially and socially when they're starting out on their own, and in general treating them well means that they'll be more willing to support you when you need it. If they don't want to support their children? Well, that's fine, but then they should be forced to plan for their own retirement instead of taking it from those they couldn't convince to help them.
I know of people who love and care for their parents - having their mother live with them and help take care of their children would not be a burden for those people.
I'll bite the bullet and say that if people (like my parents) do not produce kids who can/want to support them, and don't plan for their own future, then they should suffer for it; if I stop working I'll be homeless within a year, they can deal with the same.
Zephyr
23d ago
nobody lost money in absolute terms
I'd argue that the person paying the minimums did.
Zephyr
23d ago
They don't actually object to the media being woke at all unless it's very over the top (lectures about how straight men are evil, 100% female cast, etc.)
I'd argue that's the difference between "woke" and "progressive/raceblind" media. Like, if you have a new superhero that you're going to launch, and you decide that it'll be a Latina woman and most of the story is going to revolve around a hispanic community in Texas - that's not a problem at all. I may not be interested in it, but I'm not going to say it's necessarily bad. If you're going to take a superhero who was "pale, male, and stale", and make them into a Latinx girlboss who don't need no man - then you've just made a garbage piece of media.
Baldur's Gate 3 is actually a great example of something I'd say isn't actually "woke" - it's just progressive. I'm going to compare it to the recently developed "Siege of Dragonspear" expansion for Baldur's Gate 1&2 - if you aren't familiar, one of the major characters in Siege of Dragonspear has a fairly big arc where it is revealed that they are transgendered, and it's considered to be a big deal that they're living their gender expression and they're so brave for doing so. However, if anyone here has played Baldur's Gate 1 - you'll recall that one of the first items you get in the game (literally in the third explorable area) is a belt of gender changing. In a world where there exists a magic item common enough that a random ogre can have one - being trans just doesn't make any sense. By comparison, Baldur's Gate 3 has progressiveness "in the water" so to speak - characters are gay, multicultural, etc. But from my recollection, it doesn't have any major plot points that rely on progressive shibboleths to make sense - there's no "ACAB" making it so you can never trust the guards, there's no situation where the only competent person is a female POC who is being shouted down by the bumbling men, and there's no plot point that relies on realizing all orcs are actually noble and that the orc opposing you must be a mind controlled victim.
Zephyr
24d ago
I mean, to some extent, all 4 of 1-4 are already happening:
Most countries have at least some form of policy that incentivizes being coupled off with children; Canada, at least, directly pays parents via the Canada Child Benefit. I'm fairly confident that the US has options to file jointly or single for couples, enabling them to minimize the amount they owe in taxes. This means that people who are single are either paying more than their fair share, or couples are paying less than their fair share (depending on your viewpoint).
In an "almost certainly not what you meant" sort of way, parents (as in, working parents) are forced to spend their income on programs that are intended for the welfare of the elderly, or to support single mothers; most of these elderly have had children, so the labor of working parents is subsidizing the lifestyle of parents who are not working.
And it is currently illegal in Canada to discriminate against a pregnant woman; I ran into this as a kid when my teacher left for maternity leave, they hired a pregnant substitute, who also left for maternity leave.
I don't really have any point to this "well, acktually"-ing, just thought it was kind of funny.
Zephyr
24d ago
I don't think the US military would want you if you can not expand quadratics?
Not the US military, but the Canadian military (the artillery division, at least) had some "homework" for it where trigonometry was necessary (but using some weird measurement instead of degrees or radians). The CFAT (Canadian Forces Aptitude Test) was used to determine what roles you were allowed to go into in the military, and from my recollection (I didn't personally serve, but I had family who did) the lowest score allowable was something like a 7/42, which qualified you to be a cook - I think you had to get at least half right to be an officer, but again, this is like, 5-7 year old stuff in my memory, so I don't remember the exact breakpoints.
If anyone wants to take a practice version, https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/dnd-mdn/documents/jobs/20170906-preparing-for-aptitude-test.pdf is apparently the 2007 version.
Zephyr
26d ago
If they ACTUALLY didn't want to risk that brave new world
There is always the possibility that they're not that smart, or think their voters aren't that smart. After all, the voters did vote for them in the past.
Zephyr
26d ago
When we spoke about this a few weeks ago, she told me that it was because my area lacks ubiquitous, reliable public transport. I mentioned that we have a fairly effective municipal ride share program, and that I would be willing to drop a few grand on an e-bike that would get her almost anywhere in the region in about the same amount of time that she could expect if my area has a bus line. I also let her know that my job has a lot of flexibility in terms of hours, so I would willingly and joyously drive her wherever she needed to go whenever she didn't feel like using the other options. Her response was that she didn't want to feel Beholden to me, and that was the end of the conversation.
I broached the idea. She shot it down immediately, citing a new concern - she didn't believe that my area would allow for a career path for her. She also said that she knows it's hard for me to hear things like that without looking at it as a problem to solve.
I've done my best to figure that out, but she's told me after the fact after suggesting homes that it won't work for $(reasons) that are not immediately obvious to me as a non-resident.
One thing that seems to be a consistent pattern in what you write is that she has an objection, you suggest something that may solve it, and she comes up with a new objection, only loosely based on the old one. Although she almost certainly does have reasons for what she's saying, I would hazard a guess that she isn't actually telling you them; whether because she doesn't know her true reasons, she's worried you won't respect her true reasons, or her true reasons are not good for you.
Something you could try would be to let her take the lead on trying to solve the issues she's presenting; for example, ask her to send you listings for/schedule some tours/set up some open house visits (whichever of these you can stomach) for properties in the area that she'd want to move into with you. This changes it from being something that she is vetoing into something she needs to make a positive suggestion towards, which can re-orient her towards thinking of it as a possibility, as opposed to her thinking of everything that makes it impossible.
Similarly, try to tease out of her what her plans are for her career - she is currently working in hospitality, but is that her plan forever? If the two of you have kids, what school would you be sending them to? Would she be working full time, or part time, or none of the time? Again, the goal is to make it a real possibility in her mind that it could be long term, and to let her come up with the information she actually cares about.
I know you really want it to work out with this woman, but I do get a sense that she is just waiting for something better to come along. My advice would be to not commit to anything yet, but try to figure out if my (and several other commenters') fears are accurate. And to do that, I think you need to figure out why she's actually objecting.
Best of luck - I hope that I'm wrong and that this does work out for you.
Zephyr
26d ago
My gut says that people are usually provided PDFs as "printable" documents; the online link is just a bonus. There's a few situations where it could be of use:
- I'm booking a trip for my parents; I do the work of setting up the days for the hotel and the airline tickets, then print out the emails that are sent to me and bring them to my parents' house. My parents are ancient boomers, so don't use computers - but they definitely have iPhones.
- The PDFs contain information that is more generally applicable (see like, signups for a school dance); they print out like 500 copies, give them to all kids to take home, but also have a link on their website to sign up (which just emails you the PDF, because the person setting it up doesn't "get" what a QR code is).
Side note: it's a very millennial trait to not want to do purchases on your phone.
With regards to the payment provider; in all likelihood, it's the only one they could get approved. Governments have a lot of weird rules around exactly who you are allowed to use especially for handling payments - I'd guess that there is something specific about this one that ticks a weird box that no one else knows/cares about (once, when working on a government website, I had to copy all their font files out of Google Fonts, and store them locally on the build because they were not allowed to access any servers that might be in the US; they also have a super weird tracking service I'd never heard of before instead of using GTM or Google Analytics, for the same reason).
Zephyr
30d ago
This was literally done with the DARE program?
That's the point @phailyoor was making - you can make things sound awful by phrasing it in the maximally offensive way.
Compare: "The government must move to ban dihydrogen monoxide, a dangerous chemical that leads to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of deaths per year, especially amongst children!" to "Swimming pools can be dangerous for young children - remember to never leave children unattended near a body of water."
The first one comes with that breathless air of "you should be outraged," while the second is much more realistic.
Zephyr
30d ago
I think the argument @HereAndGone is making is similar to another argument that I've heard in the past; namely, that of how new technology is ruining attention spans and leading to a less informed populace. The argument against it (as exemplified by the XKCD I linked to) is something like:
- There are a lot of people claiming (new technology) is ruining the youth.
- They specifically point to shortened attention spans and lack of appreciation for the (old technology).
- They claim it is a modern problem, and new because of (new technology).
- However, this same complaint applied to (old technology), which means it is unlikely that (new technology) is actually that ruinous, and more likely that nostalgia is talking.
The statement that I believe @HereAndGone to be making is something like the following:
- There are a lot of people claiming that women being educated has ruined them as partners.
- They specifically point to feminist theory and women preferring to be "pumped and dumped" over long term relationships as a result.
- They claim this is a modern problem, and that going back to 1960s standards would solve it.
- However, these same complaints were being made in 1905, which means its unlikely that it's feminist theory that is that ruinous, and more likely that nostalgia is talking.
For what it's worth, I do not necessarily agree with @HereAndGone, but it is a perfectly acceptable argument. If I was making an argument against it, I'd state something like the following:
- Young women, like young men, are kind of stupid; especially around romance and dating, it is way too easy to think with your...hormones...instead of your head.
- Women tend to be more attracted to men who have a strong sense of direction towards what they want, versus the physical appearance men prioritize; this leads to them choosing partners who are more confident.
- However, because of #1, they often end up attracted to people who will not provide them with what they are looking for; for example, someone who is extremely successful will have many women attracted to them, so will not feel the need to commit. Someone who is less successful, but extremely confident, will often end up in conflict with them (whether physical or via not meeting their needs) by putting themselves first, and treating the woman's affection as "owed" to them.
- As a result, women end up in circumstances where their relationships reflect extremely negatively on men, as the selection effect of the men they go for shows them only extremely negative traits (this is where claims of "All men are like that" come from).
- Men who observe 4, but struggle to obtain a partner themselves, treat it as a symptom of feminism - whereas it's actually the other way around, feminism is a symptom of the above.
- And the reason that this has become more of an issue recently is not that women were educated; the reason is that as a society, we removed a lot of the guardrails around relationships for both men and women. In the past, women would often be safeguarded by male family members, who (in an ideal circumstance) would prevent men who are looking to exploit the woman from furthering the relationship, and (in the worst case scenario) would trade the woman off as a pawn for connections or friendship or wealth or whatever.
(Before anyone accuses me, a man, as being too on the side of men - I'll claim that there is an equivalent for men who choose partners just based on looks, and end up hating them once those looks start to fade).
It isn't unreasonable to look for solutions; however, going back to 1960 or whatever won't actually solve the problems. I'm also not a huge proponent of giving other people control over my life, so I kind of don't want to go back to #6 either. It's a tricky problem, and one we're not going to solve in a Motte comment (but it's fun to try!).
Zephyr
1mo ago
In Canada, #1 and #4 count as hate speech. #3 is actually an example of what I'm talking about - we aren't arresting them, and we can't meaningfully defend ourselves against them (in Canada).
So perhaps by "we" I mean "Canada and Canadians".
Zephyr
1mo ago
I feel like one thing that has been lost in modern life is the ability to have something that is disapproved of, but still permitted. What I'm thinking of here is that we can't just tolerate that some people are making different choices - we must celebrate them and take them up to 11.
We aren't permitted to say "Nothing wrong with gay men, but I wouldn't want my son to be gay" - that's considered hate speech.
We aren't permitted to say "It's fine if people take drugs, but it's an indicator of low class." Instead, we must have legal dispensaries and be unable to arrest the fent zombie screaming at me about the KGB.
We can't say "You're unattractive because you're overweight and unclean" - instead we have to celebrate "healthy at every size."
And we apparently aren't permitted to allow gambling without turning it into an aggressive in-your-face advertising blitz.
I long for the days where things could just be "not your cup of tea" (or as my sister puts it, "Not everything has to appeal to my delicate sensibilities"). Friction can help people avoid ruining their lives, while still permitting people who really want it to achieve what they want.
I had mice and it was the worst. Here are the things I tried which helped.
- Anything that has an opening, no matter how small, needs to be stuffed with mouse-proof materials (the exterminator I hired used copper wire, but said that the 'mouse excluder' fabric I purchased from Home Depot was good too; basically, you want something that if they chew on it, it hurts their mouths, so they don't). The sorts of holes that were being blocked were smaller than my pinkie nail, so be very thorough.
- I tried both the sound and scent repellents. They didn't solve the issue in any way.
- I used kill snap-traps, baited with peanut butter and nutella. I'd say on average they got a mouse every 2-4 days. The exterminator suggested I lay them down in pairs in case the mouse climbed across them, and I never had them fail to kill. Dealing with the bodies was unpleasant, but better than dealing with the live mice.
- If you have any food that is available at 'ground level' (like, I had rice on the bottom shelf of my pantry), try to make sure it is absolutely sealed away. They can smell food from a long ways away.
- (Edit) I actually forgot I did this, but I used to have a cat come over for a few days at a time; this was about as effective as everything else put together.
Ultimately, I solved the issue by moving out (cause my landlord was absolutely not going to help, despite numerous emails and phone calls). My new place has cats, which help a lot (growing up, I saw one mouse and one rat ever, and I always had cats around; the neighborhood definitely had mice and rats, they just mysteriously avoided the house that smelled heavily of their natural predators).
Zephyr
1mo ago
Forgive me if I misunderstood, but I don't think that's what people are referring to when they refer to a post-truth world. My understanding is that 'post-truth' means:
- Continued belief in something that has been proven false due to not wanting to engage with the source material (I believe the "Hands up don't shoot" or "Very Fine People" fall under this category).
- Using the fact it has been disproven in order to claim it is believable ("I believed my outgroup was eating babies, and even though this particular person was not, it should say something that I believed it plausible")
- Official sources deciding to claim that "we've always been at war with Eurasia" and people deciding to update their programming respectively (Masks don't work, until they're mandatory. The Trump vaccine is poison, until it's required. If you take the vaccine, you won't get COVID.)
(Apologies that my examples are all left-wing; I am certain right-wing examples exist, but I am loosely right-wing, so they do not stick out in my mind in the same way left-wing ones do).
The problem isn't the Truth smashing its boot into our faces; the problem is that tribal warfare has become more important than truth, to the degree that we can't do anything anymore (like, we can't say "more immigration may boost our GDP numbers, but it is causing the quality of life for the lower and middle classes to plummet, so we need to reduce it significantly." Instead, we have to claim its all bad, while the other side needs to claim its all good, and nothing gets done about it ever).
Zephyr
1mo ago
For what it's worth, as a renter I didn't pay property tax, whereas as an owner, I have to. If you count people who are renting as residents of the area, per capita tax income (at least on the local level) has to increase. Note that I'm in Canada, so it may not work the exact same way as it does in the states.
You also have the option of...not building 1,000,000 homes, and instead building a much smaller number. There are certain phenomenon that only occur when the number gets super large. Imagine, for example, that the town has a university that admits around 30,000 students at a given time. Instead of having them all as renters, you could build student housing for cheap up to say 15,000 units, and capture the value of people who would be there anyways. Regardless of what you think about universities, the modal university attendee is probably better behaved than the modal low income newcomer (and they would have a lot of incentive to capture those properties, as they are there anyways).
Now, if you're willing to use #unethicalLifeHacks (which as a government, you always are), you can pull some whacky shenanigans to capture extra value out of 'low income' housing. A very simple approach would be to make the 'market value' of the house be much greater than the value that it was sold for (for example, the government offers the house for sale at $100,000, which comes out to roughly a $600 monthly payment at 5% interest. After a year, the property assessment claims that it would be worth $600,000, which at a tax rate of 1% would be $6000 a year, or $500 a month. $600 + $500 < $1600 for rent, so you've managed to transform the rent seeking behaviour of the landlord into rent seeking for yourself, instead - and if there's one thing a government loves, it's more money.)
Zephyr
1mo ago
I won't go into specifics but most people figure it out by their late 20s
I'm kind of stupid, can you DM it to me? I am fairly certain I failed to figure it out.
Zephyr
1mo ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_Always_Chickens_Out
There's at least a few examples of him doing so. That being said, tariffs are still a thing, so YMMV.
Zephyr
2mo ago
As someone who leans more to states rights than not - I don’t think it is, actually.
The usual answer would be that each level of government is responsible for what only it can handle, and nothing more (in an ideal world). Territorial Sovereignty (whether that be through border control, military action, international trade, etc) are exactly the sort of things a federal government should be the authority on.
That being said, I’m Canadian, and I have no idea if that’s how it works out in practice in the US - but it is at least not inconsistent.
Zephyr
2mo ago
The parallels between being woke and being in a religion have definitely not gone unnoticed.
Zephyr
2mo ago
I'd argue this is actually one of those areas where you can get away with it; Hephaestus is specifically the god of the forge and crafting, and does have a limp. It fits well within his character to have him develop a mechanism for easier mobility. I wouldn't object, for instance, to Artemis and Apollo being portrayed as redneck hunters armed with rifles, as it still fits well within their characters.
I feel like when situations come out like this, it's important to save ire for when the diversity for diversity's sake actually ruins the end product; like, the 2016 Ghostbusters wasn't bad because they chose an all female cast - it was bad because they didn't realize that the reason the original Ghostbusters was good was that it was more about the realities of starting a small business than it was about the paranormal. You could easily have made a 2016 "female leads" version of Ghostbusters that wasn't garbage; were I writing it, I'd have set it up as an allegory for the realities of balancing working at a small business with raising children and maintaining a household. You can even make the lead women in the show the daughters of the original cast; that way you don't shit on its legacy, while continuing to explore the themes that made the original great.
I think as long as you're sticking with the correct themes and characterization, you can get away fairly easily with including extra diversity; however, most of the people including the diversity have long since had their brains dissolved by the woke milieu, and can't write anything interesting that isn't just "diverse = good." It's not bad because of the diversity - it's bad because it's bad, and you're only seeing it because a lot of people have had their brains rewired to think 'diversity!' is the same thing as a good and interesting story, so approved it despite it's terribleness.
Zephyr
2mo ago
That aside, I am a big fan of national ID cards. The US should have one, and so should every other country. I don't understand why the right is so opposed to it. It's the easiest way to control illegal immigration.
As someone who is opposed to it, what I'm most worried about is the possibility of the government being able to 'unperson' someone. I live in Canada, where the government literally banned people who had not taken the COVID vaccine from entering a lot of establishments, enforced by presenting positive proof that you had been vaccinated. This severely curtailed my ability to participate in society until the restrictions ended.
Here are some of the wonderful things that a government could do with a national ID, ranked approximately in order of how long it would take the slippery slope to get to that point.
- Require it for the purchase of (guns/abortion drugs/hormones). Use the fact that the person purchased them as an excuse to '3 felonies a day' them.
- Require it for sign on to the internet, in the name of 'safety'. This would probably start by requiring it for access to online government services, then expand to being required for internet sign on for people caught committing a felony involving the use of a computer network (think like, child pornography, or large scale fraud), then to children to ensure they only access the 'safe' parts of the internet, then to everyone, as a generation has grown up thinking it is normal.
- Require it for transit (for example, to use a bus, or to start your car); track people's movement with this (to be fair, this would require a digital ID; to also be fair, the chances of it being non-digital in this day and age approach 0).
One thing I think is a very big disconnect between the left and the right is that a lot of the right (the libertarian/small government part) sees governments as (at best) a necessary evil, while the left doesn't necessarily think of it the same way. As someone who has libertarian leanings, what I see is that the government is constantly expanding its own power, while making decisions that are not to the benefit of the majority of its constituents. Elections tend to be shams, as we don't get to vote on the policies we actually want - we instead vote only on the policies we are allowed to vote on (for example, a large portion of Brexit was people voting against immigration; but the government decided it wanted more immigration anyways, so did that all on their own; in the last Canadian election, none of the parties that have ever formed government before ran on decreasing immigration - and we have roughly the same absolute amount of immigration as the US does, with 1/10 of the population). Here are the results of the last Canadian election; notice all the blue in Western Canada? It doesn't make a difference at all, as Quebec and Ontario voted to continue allowing Central Canada to loot the piggy bank in the west (and from my awareness, this occurs in the US too; cities have a lot of seats, and overwhelm the nearby countryside, even though the policies that are desired by the city are not in the best interests of the countryside). They also constantly violate their own rules; in Canada, it was determined that the prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was 'not justified' in breaking up the convoy protest against him and his COVID policies. He suffered no consequences for this action. The order in the Canadian military to take the COVID vaccine was determined to be unlawful; however, by the time the ruling came through, it was too late to seek recompense for it (as a member of my family personally experienced).
To take a slightly more 'hinged' take on it; right now, in the US, I think it's fairly safe to say that a large percentage of leftists consider the current government to not only be illegitimate, but evil on top of that. I can assure you that when Biden was in charge, a large percentage of rightists considered it to be the same situation. Both parties spend approximately 50% of the time feeling like they're under siege from a government completely unaligned with their values; why would they ever accept anything that would make it easier for the government to do evil things to them?
I'm of two minds on this - I agree with you that there needs to be a level of immunity, but we also have an incredibly badly behaved political class.
I guess I tend to be a lot more on the side of "If it's something you can explain in 10 words or less, and everyone would agree about how severe it is, prosecute them - if it's something that requires detailed technical expertise to understand, then you probably need to let it slide." Under this standard:
To be fair, in general I prefer that our criminal system work that way - I remember someone said something like "The only real crimes are those you could explain to the founding fathers", and I kind of agree with that system; I think we have too many things that are either crimes or technically-not-crimes due to weird arcane loopholes that make intuition kind of useless, and the whole system relies on prosecutorial discretion to avoid everyone being in jail forever (which is another way of saying "If the people in power don't like you, you're going to jail").
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