birb_cromble
No bio...
User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
29m ago
Every time I hear somebody recommend an ARM, I reflexively think of the 2022 rate spike, and the Volcker shock. How did you get over that? Interest rate risk is scary.
I don't know if the post you cite is really the best example of this site's Length Problem, but I'm glad you brought up the Length Problem more generally.
When I started reading /r/slatestarcodex's culture war thread, posts were long for a reason. Posts were frequently written to cover current events. Authors generally understood that their audience might not have the full history and context of the event at their fingertips, so the better posts would frequently provide information to the reader about what was happening, what events lead to the current situation, who the players were, and why the topic was important enough to bring up. That framework helped expose me to a lot of world events, history, and concepts that I otherwise would not have seen at the time. It created a lot of long posts, but the length was a byproduct of an attempt to maximize understanding.
More and more, post length here feels performative. There's not a lot of context; most posters seem to assume that every reader is exactly as plugged in as they are. The broader history is gone. Sure, we know from the post that Jaan van der Grindl went and Said a Thing On Twitter Again, but who the hell is Jaan van der Grindl? Is he somebody in a position of power? Does he have some unique influence over the broader population? Hell if I know. If I click on the link, I'll find out that he's railing about immigrants or birth rate. Awesome. Now I have to figure out if this is something van der Grindl says regularly or if it's out of character for him. Did something happen recently to make this relevant? Hell if I know. Now I get to read bad machine translations of Dutch news articles to try and find out. Maybe I'll get lucky and learn that there are protests in Europe again. What makes these different? Protesting is constant over there. The sense that the modal poster is trying to maximize understanding is gone.
Beyond that, the discussion space has largely collapsed. You'll see topics about Catholicism, declining birth rates, AI, immigration, and... that's broadly it. Somebody is going to reflexively say to "be the change that you want to see in the world", but believe me, I've tried. There's not much engagement outside of a handful of well worn paths.
As a result, I've broadly retreated into the other threads on the board, where people actually talk about things that might be new and interesting. For example, did you know there's a highly coveted waiting list for luxury beans? I sure as hell didn't. It's a window into a culture that's completely alien to mine. There's probably all kinds of room for a culture war post about that. Right now I'm trying to write a post about how Fender is in the middle of a lawsuit that's threatening to upend the entire midlife crisis industry, but I don't know if I'll bother to finish it. If I provide all the necessary context, I fear nobody will particularly care, because they're all busy talking about how AI will fix the European fertility crisis by making all the immigrants Catholic, or something.
Hell if I know what to do about it, though. It seems like it's what the regulars want.
birb_cromble
18hr ago
I understand. Guess I can't ask who these non-woke publishers are, without infringing on your opsec?
Look for smaller publishers who release a lot of mil-sf.
I'm wondering why you are drawn to writing and getting published. Is it like, a need?
I like to entertain, and if I'm going to do it with my writing, I need an audience.
birb_cromble
1d ago
I'm going to try to avoid culture warring here, but I filtered my submission list pretty heavily. Most of the outlets I've worked with in the past are having a hard time right now.
A lot of them went full woke in 2020. This meant that unless you could assert some kind of special status, you got put on the bottom of the pile. This sucked for me because I can't claim a special status, and it sucked for the publisher because their existing readers stopped buying, and the new stable of authors didn't pull in the crowds that the publishers expected. The revenue loss meant they couldn't accept as many submissions, which lowered my odds even further.
Concurrently, the AI content tsunami over the last few years hit the industry like a freight train. Historically, the fact that writing takes more effort than reading shielded the industry from bad actors. Once generative text turned that convention on its head, it was almost impossible to get a signal through the noise. Bigger buyers had to shut down submissions for months as they figured out what to do with tens of thousands of nonsense manuscripts pouring in every day.
Thankfully, I've found a handful of publishers who are:
- Technically proficient enough to put basic filtering in place.
- Aggressively politically incorrect, but still left-coded enough that publishing with them doesn't brand me with a political scarlet letter.
It's a small market, so I probably won't get the chance to publish often, but low odds in a small market are better than zero odds in a big market.
birb_cromble
1d ago
Given relatively high mortgage interest rates over the last several years, my partner and I have been been delaying purchasing a shared home and have spent the time building up a stronger financial position instead.
Watching the behavior of the 10 year Treasury, it looks like we're going to be stuck between six and seven percent for the foreseeable future, so I should probably start planning. Are there any good rules of thumb for choosing between a 15 and 30 year mortgage these days? I hate debt, so I gravitate to the 15 in all cases, but I also know that's a preference, and not based on anything rational.
In the last couple years, I've had a pretty bad run of luck with open fiction submissions, after being fairly successful before that. I recently wrote an original piece for an anthology that got shortlisted, and now formally accepted. I'm pretty excited about it
birb_cromble
1d ago
Remember that submission I had shortlisted? It got accepted!
birb_cromble
1d ago
I feel like if I read it on release, it would have been an incredibly controversial mindfuck of a read. These days? Not so much.
birb_cromble
2d ago
How is that going for you so far? Sadly your timezones don't line up with mine.
And the more narrative elements they add, the more I dislike the writing.
For all the faults in the writing, the character of Kayex more than makes up for it. He's one of the first mechanicus characters I've seen that really nails the religiosity and pure wonder of the machine cult. Things that 40k would normally paint as malice come out as alien benevolence, and I love it.
birb_cromble
2d ago
My fondest memory of a fireworks show was in Maryland
Oddly, both of my best fireworks memories also happened in Maryland.
For the first, I was at a lacrosse camp on the eastern shore, and a couple was having a wedding at the same location. They were celebrating with a fireworks display, and they were generous enough to let us kids watch as well. The thing was, they didn't want us mixing with the wedding party, so they placed us directly under the display. I think we might have been thirty feet from the mortars, at most. The experience is completely different at that range. The detonations are tangible.
For the second, a couple of friends and I slipped away from home on New Year's Eve and went to the inner harbor in Baltimore. I sat on the water's edge watching fireworks reflect on the bay, with a pretty girl curled up against me for warmth. It was one of the first times in my life when I realized that I could get away from everything at home and things could be better.
birb_cromble
2d ago
the only people who actively dislike the guy are rabid MAGA who aren't going to vote for a Democrat if it's the second coming of Christ
The Greenberg family may also have a few opinions.
birb_cromble
3d ago
Spending is $1524.36 lower than this time last year. I had a few quarterly and yearly bills come due that bumped up my spending more than I would have liked. Nonetheless, I preservere.
birb_cromble
4d ago
I'm going to second the credit card comment. Not having a credit history made things a lot harder for me when I went out on my own. If you can help set that up, it will be a boon.
birb_cromble
5d ago
No kids. Partner can't have any.
birb_cromble
6d ago
When the game first released, you had maybe 3 talents you could pick, and you were allowed to pick one for about four tiers over 30 levels. Combined with no weapon customization, it was a pretty bland experience.
Eventually they gave each class one skill point per level, and a sprawling skill tree (not path of exile bad) that allowed you to customize your build. Two veterans can play completely differently now. You can also save builds and swap them between missions.
After that, they added weapon customization. You can level up weapons, as well as swap perks and blessings if you've earned enough "weapon XP*, either by playing missions or sacrificing weapons of the same type.
They've also added three new game modes: havoc, which is the "real" endgame, but really requires a four man group, mortis trials, which is a wave mode that has roguelike elements, and expeditions, which suck.
birb_cromble
6d ago
Did you dip out before or after the skill tree rework?
birb_cromble
6d ago
How do you get around the language barrier? Did you learn the language, or do you stick to areas where English is common?
birb_cromble
7d ago
As a small point of order, I don't think social security will be gone - I just think it won't be 100% of what should be available, and I'd rather ignore it entirely than try to predict what the real percentage will be.
birb_cromble
7d ago
Spending money now at least guarantees you'll get something for it
That's part of the problem; I'm not really sure what something I would get. I'm pretty happy living a simple life. I'd rather do what I can to secure my current life as much as possible, rather than do anything fancier.
birb_cromble
8d ago
When planning for retirement, is there a useful heuristic for when it makes sense to pull back on contributing to your 401(k) and stashing money in a taxable brokerage account instead?
Right now I'm operating on a premise that looks something like this.
- Assume my retirement spending base is the equivalent of the highest inflation-adjusted year I have on record.
- Assume $15,000/year (inflation adjusted) for private insurance until I can get Medicare at 65.
- Assume Medicare will exist when I'm 65.
- Assume social security will not be available on retirement.
- Assume the market between now and my death at 95 will have 5th percentile performance (ie: dogshit)
- Assume my tax advantaged accounts will be accessible without penalty at 59.5.
- Add a small yearly buffer as a safety factor.
My thought right now is that I should keep contributing to the 401(k) until I have enough saved so that I can survive entirely on my tax advantaged accounts from 59.5 to 95, based on those assumptions.
Is this reasonable? I've had "you must contribute to your 401(k) or you will die starving in a ditch" pounded into my head for so long that it seems almost blasphemous to even consider alternatives.
birb_cromble
8d ago
I have two months left until I move out for college.
Hold out as best you can. I was in a similar boat and getting out on my own was the best thing that ever happened to me. I wouldn't be surprised if it were for you too.
birb_cromble
9d ago
Darktide has a new DLC character, so I've been killing in the name of the machine God for the last couple of nights.
birb_cromble
9d ago
One of my siblings has an untreated mental illness, and over time it got unbearable and dangerous.
I moved and made sure she didn't have my new address or phone number. I also made it very clear to the few remaining family members who still talked to her that they were not to provide her with that information for any reason.
My life is a lot better since then. I don't have anybody pounding on my door and scream-sobbing at three am anymore. Nobody's slashing my tires. Nobody's calling my landlord and claiming that I'm a child molester because they didn't like my tone of voice at Thanksgiving dinner.
I still miss her, but at this point I know that she'll just drag me down with her if I let her back into my life. I understand the anger. She could easily seek treatment, but it's like she enjoys being like that.
I wish I had a better answer.
birb_cromble
10d ago
I saw that movie at a dollar theater on a 100 degree day when my apartment didn't have air conditioning.
I still almost walked out.
I couldn't get medical clearance for the Peace corps, but I still keep in touch with people who did. From my personal experience, two kinds of people really thrive in the program:
It doesn't sound like you're in the first group, since you mentioned the foreign service.
Are you in the second group? Would you drive four hundred miles to be in a united way photoshoot for a chance to serve as John Thune's personal assistant? Would you claim that a coworker you barely know has a cocaine habit if it meant you were 15% more likely to get a promotion? If so, the peace corps might be great for you.
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