bolido_sentimental
No bio...
User ID: 205
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Right - that's a better way of phrasing it.
To me, this appears to be obviously true, and it certainly adds to my cynicism that addressing this situation does not seem to be part of anyone's political platform; I believe the going theory is that those affected are solid clients of the Democratic party, and actually trying to improve their lots (or the lots of the people stuck with them) does not change the political calculus at all, so there's no need to do it.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Well, I can't argue with that. I just wonder where they were happening, and over what. I admit I didn't go into the residential areas much.
I've visited Gary multiple times, just to look around and do photography. I would say that I honestly felt quite safe there; much like Cairo, Illinois, another place where I've been which has suffered a similar fate - anyone that would rob or shoot me migrated away 20 or more years ago. The place is simply empty of people to a degree that's hard to even explain. There's nobody there.
I wish I could share my pictures, but it would destroy my already crap opsec.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
It's largely been forgotten now, but Baltimore used to be a tremendous steel city, based around the Bethlehem Steel Sparrows Point facility. It was the largest steel plant in the world in the 1950s. There were many other large mills and shipyards there, making all kinds of things out of steel. Here's a good article about this:
Baltimore was hit extremely hard by deindustrialization, and decent jobs have not come in the same numbers to replace the ones that were lost. I suppose the interesting followup question is why the population remaining in Baltimore reacted in such destructive ways.
My impression is that the situation in Great Migration cities especially deteriorated after deindustrialization. If there were still good livings available for people with relatively low human capital or skills, I imagine the overall chaos would be a lot lower. I've never heard a good answer to the question of: "If we transition to a "knowledge economy," what are the people without useful knowledge supposed to do with themselves?"
Of course I don't dispute that the lever of "actually enforce all of the law, throughout the city" seems to have been abandoned.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Apropos of nothing: I have a copy of Make Room! Make Room!; but I have never yet seen the original Logan's Run (the book) in the wild at a bookstore, though I've been casually looking for it for years. I wonder if it had a limited print run or something.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
From your perspective, what would the local government need to do to improve life in Baltimore? And why do they not do it, whatever it is?
(I imagine nobody knows re: the pizza. It's not that hard to make a good pizza.)
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
I was thinking about this recently, in the context of the "population pyramid" getting worse and worse. What would be the effects in our modern society if all else were the same, but no one lived beyond the age of 75? Or if statins had never been invented?
I'm not advocating for, or evaluating the morality of doing this; it just makes me wonder. To what extent is the debt crisis, for example, caused by longer lifespans?
See also Logan's Run for a dramatically less serious examination of one solution to this issue, lol.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
I've sent letters and postcards to my friends for many years. People are usually delighted to receive mail from someone they actually know. It also makes a durable store of memory when you receive them.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Currently going through Will Durant's The Study of Philosophy, in which he explores and explains the ideas of great philosophers from Plato through to the 20th century. If I stick with it and read it all the way, I can gain exposure to the ideas of thinkers like Spinoza and Spencer, who never came up in philosophy intro classes in college. In general it's of course not as intensive as reading the primary sources, but I think it can give me an idea of which ones interest me the most to pursue later.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
A related topic that I often think about:
By a quirk of fate, I share the name, both first and last, of a famous professional athlete. I wonder how much opsec that gives me, if any. Imagine someone called "Thomas Brady" - I'm sure there are hundreds of them. But if you Googled "Thomas Brady, Atlanta, Georgia," would you just get all the times Tom Brady did something in Atlanta?
I can't think of how to phrase this, but: does anyone know of a good source or place where I can read about the black American lower class? In terms of their daily lives, aspirations for the future, hobbies, etc. I don't know where to find anything that's not a hagiography from the left, or Sailer-style noticing. It seems like, apart from social media, it is the least-represented, least-analyzed group online.
I know that for such topics as the fentanyl crisis, there was a big genre of think-pieces in which journalists went among the white lower class and asked them, "Why do you do what you do? How do you think this happened?" and so on. I'm not aware of anything similar where black people, who are not middle-class aspirants or celebrities etc., are asked, "What's going on? Why do you like this and not that? How do you feel about Policy X? What do you think AI is gonna do to the economy, or to your own job prospects?" and so on.
I get some exposure to this by talking to my next door neighbor, but he, specifically, always steers the conversation towards trying to buy my spare car; and I'm not ready to sell it yet, so I just go inside lol.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Oddly enough, I'm Facebook friends with the guy who operates that site. I think it's a great effort, but it's still less valuable, to me, than knowing the actual rates. It's like your likelihood of being murdered in Dallas vs. in Des Moines: if it's a difference from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 55,000, how does that weigh against, say, the value you would've gotten from that extra cupholder?
These are imaginary numbers, but hopefully you see what I'm saying.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
I've been thinking recently about the stickiness of reputations among brands, and about whether it's something that companies really have the power to shift or not.
Here's the specific example in my mind. You know how, if you browse the Internet for many years, you'll see certain apparently-organic consensus points occur again and again? Reddit is especially known for this, but it happens elsewhere too. Well, in all my years online, the one I've seen the most often, in the most places, is:
A. Cars are mentioned. B. "Get a Toyota or Honda. Those are the best cars."
The corollary of this line of thinking is: "(Not-Toyota/Not-Honda) is junk." I've probably seen this statement about every manufacturer, but it's most commonly applied to the cars of the former Fiat-Chrysler group, including Fiat itself and Dodge. Ford, GM, and Nissan also get it a lot.
I've driven many Toyotas and Hondas. They are indeed very good cars. I have nothing to say against them. However - based on modern manufacturing technology, on any given metric, how much better are they likely to be than the equivalent car by Subaru? Or even Chevrolet or Dodge? What's the base rate of mechanical failure across these marques? Does anyone know? More to the point - is anyone looking? I would imagine they are not at all, based on typical shopper behavior. I think they mostly go by reputation.
What I find interesting is that in some cases, reputations created long ago stick around forever; and in some cases they don't. For example with Dodge, I'm specifically aware of a big problem they had with a 2.7 L V6 in the '90s which had big sludging problems and hence an elevated rate of engine failure. Prior to that, as I understand it, their main reputation was making fairly staid, uninteresting, but fine commuter cars like the Plymouth Sundance, Dodge Aries and so on. They also made a nice line of minivans. Anyway - at least since the 2.7 L V6 problem, I feel like, subjectively, people no longer trust them; and may never trust them again. Say that Consumer Reports announced that a hypothetical 2025 Dodge Journey was the best in its segment for reliability and features. Would you even consider looking at one?
Conversely, some companies like Audi (the sudden unintended acceleration debacle) and Subaru (head gasket failures) seem to have mostly shaken off their negative reputations; at least, I don't see them taking serious stick online over those things, and the products sell as well as anything else.
Is this just locked in now? Even if Toyota and Honda just made 50th-percentile-reliable cars from now on, would anyone ever notice? If the best car you could possibly get at a given price point was actually a Volkswagen or a Volvo, and remained that way for a decade, how long would it take for sales figures to change? How long would it take for me to stop seeing "get a Toyota or Honda" in every /r/personalfinance thread about cars?
N.B. I'm not car shopping right now. In the past, if I talk about this topic online, people will genuinely reply, "Just get a Toyota or Honda, man," as if that's what I were asking about. I'm not getting anything any time soon. My current car is fine.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Can you tell me some of your favorite games from the last few years?
I usually enjoy indie games I have played, but I don't go to the online places where I would hear about them. Really, I've been hosed on discovering new games since Tips and Tricks magazine went out of business.
I've had to face this problem a lot during my adult life, and I've basically concluded that I can't form relationships of real depth with people like that; nor do I especially want to. I know there's always the possibility that I am the one who is deluded, but I sincerely maintain intellectual curiosity and humility as a core value, and select for it in friendships. I guess I have the "abundance mentality" around these kind of entry-level relationships: I can always make more of them, because people like being around me for whatever reasons - I am not forced to offer my actual friendship to people that I don't want to.
This problem is distinct from the ability to get along with such people, which I think is a critical skill of adulthood. Being able to steer conversations to safe topics is something everyone should be able to do. But regarding the feelings of alienation and frustration, you just have to accept that not all people will be your people. You can choose to continue to get to know them as much as you want to, but don't imagine you'll make converts or something - you have to keep looking if you want to find your people. I have had this experience many times in my life, and indeed I'm still looking for a place where I can feel safe and happy among like-thinking people.
(Perhaps this relates to the voice vs. exit dichotomy as well, and maybe it's my personality: rather than spend energy on "voice," I usually choose "exit." Maybe I've missed out on some things as a result. A related question: if you could just flip a switch to honestly, sincerely believe in your mind the mainstream view about everything, would you? Imagine how much less friction your life would have.)
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Yeah, definitely. Depending on the forum, I'd probably pay a lot more than that if I had to.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
How did you meet?
She started a Meetup.com group dedicated to following the local baseball team. I went to the first meeting, and she and I got along right away. We started talking outside the Meetups, and after a few weeks I asked her if she wanted to go to the baseball team's Hall of Fame with me. From there we just kept doing stuff together; when I "asked her out" it wasn't really a big transition in our lifestyle by that point.
How have your expectations for a partner changed over the years and across relationships?
Let me share something which is kind of embarrassing now, but to which I bet many men can relate. When I was in my teens and early 20s, I actually described my dating behavior to my male friends as a "quest to gain XP." That is to say: the only criteria I set in those days was 1.) looks okay 2.) is willing to date me. This is a daft way of living your life, to be honest. I certainly did date many kinds of women: a schoolteacher, a college professor, a pediatrician, a hairdresser, etc., etc.
In hindsight, I know that I was just doing this for validation. I was a very ugly, awkward kid until I finished puberty, and it took me an extremely long time to develop inner confidence. As a result, I was dating without actually assessing my partners for any kind of suitability for long-term relationships. I just wanted physical affection, and to be continually told I great I was. I did get those things, and unsurprisingly, it did not make my life any better, and left me wondering what the point of it all was. Meanwhile, I created all kinds of false expectations in my girlfriends, which would inevitably be disappointed after I had wasted much of their time.
It was in 2020 that I had this realization fully, and at that time I stopped dating entirely; I realized that I needed to make a decision about what I was trying to accomplish, and to stop causing unnecessary pain to other people. So I concluded that I did want to get married, I did want to start a family, and that I needed to focus on cultivating the characteristics in myself that would lead to success in these endeavors, and to find a partner who had them as well: emotional stability, the capacity to love strongly, honesty, high time preference, and so on.
I repent greatly of the way I handled dating in the past. It simply added to the amount of misery in the world. I wish I had known better.
Do you have any regrets that you learned from or might be generalizable?
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” - Sun Tzu In the past I learned tactics about dating - about how to be charming, about how to make people like you, etc. I had no strategy: I had no goal, and so there was no way the relationships could go anywhere. It feels like a big waste of time, and while one might say, "You learned something and so it wasn't time wasted," I am cognizant of the fact that by being married at 35 instead of 25, it's 10 less years I can enjoy married life.
If I had had a plan to begin with - I did date some excellent women with whom I might have built excellent lives. Those opportunities are now gone. I love my fiancée, but people should be aware of the "secretary problem." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem
It's fine to date for fun. I don't have an issue with doing that. I would recommend anyone who is young, though, to start thinking about the big picture of their life as soon as they can conceive of it. I do, honestly, wish I had done that.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Every day I wake up and lament that Mark Martin never won the Cup.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Would it have been different if you could have used strikes? Remember, no-holds-barred was the premise.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
Does anyone know of a good tool or method that could be used to archive all the pages of a given Substack?
I know this is paranoid, but there are some that I'd like to save locally, in case the site is taken down or something.
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
It is simultaneously exciting and exhausting. I am excited to finally give up bachelordom, and I am excited about my fiancee; the main thing I worry about there is that any time we spend together feels too short, and so it could have the effect of making my entire life feel much shorter than it otherwise would have.
Are the two of you planning on having children (and if so, do you have to worry much about having time)?
We are, and I do worry a bit. On wedding day, I'll be 35 and she'll be 31. She and I both lament to some degree that we didn't meet earlier in our lives; and I do think that if I had my whole life to live over again, I'd have certainly preferred to get married much younger than I actually am doing. I just didn't know any better - I nearly learned it all too late. So she and I both have the attitude of: we'll take what we can get, and be grateful for it. Ironically, from a culture war perspective, the issue of the "fertility crisis" is perhaps my biggest pet issue - I even wrote essays about it college, a long time ago now. I wish I could raise 8 children, but to some extent I'm paying for the folly of my youth, I guess - perhaps every one less child I can have, is punishment for one heart I broke or something, lol.
If we can get to three I'll be ecstatic. Frankly if we even get to one, I'll be ecstatic; I take nothing for granted in this.
What's one thing you especially appreciate about your fiancée?
Ayn Rand would not approve, I know, but she is remarkably selfless. The wellbeing of her inner circle of family is her first priority, and this is apparent in everything she says and does. I have known lots of people who say things like this, but very few who actually act accordingly. I think she'd probably be too clumsy or slow on the draw to actually take a bullet for me, but I think she really would try.
She is also an optimist to almost a Pollyanna extreme. It can be a bit frustrating at times, but in general it's a great complement to my occasionally Nybbler-esque cynicism.
Puzzles
I do know what you mean. Lately that's been me and the Chess.com app, lol. I spent so much of a beautiful day yesterday, trying to get one more win. At least with the puzzle I have going right now, I know I'm supposed to wait until she and I do it together.
Since you asked, I will tell you. I hope this is not too boring.
Well - I was raised by atheist parents. They weren't vocal about that; I don't think it was even something they decided. They just don't believe anything, and never think about religion. So I was raised with very little exposure to Christianity or any other faith, and I certainly had no developed system of morality, the purpose of life, etc. "Do nice things to other people" and "pursue your happiness" was all I had.
I am a pretty gregarious person; over the course of my life, I met and got to know all kinds of different people from many different backgrounds. In my early 20s, I met two people (in separate places and circumstances - they never knew each other), a man and a woman, who were sincere Christians. Call them A + K I guess. They were open and accessible about it, and would let it be known generally that their faith guided them and drove them in all that they did; they would give thanks to God for anything that they had, and seek solace from God when anything bad happened. Ultimately they would pass out from my life, though I kept in touch with them to some degree; looking back, later, I realized that they were probably the two best people that I ever knew. They both married good partners and built extremely happy lives centered around their family. As people, both of them were intelligent, creative, principled, thoughtful... and just altogether enjoyable to be around as few other people I've known have ever been.
Anyway. After I left that Ph.D program, I cohabitated with a girlfriend, in a terrible apartment which was all we could afford. It was infested with fleas, and water came in through the ceiling often. Having never understood the concepts of networking, internships, etc., I was no more prepared to find work than any man on the street, and so I had a job doing data entry; she was working at a Publix grocery store and going to film school. We were very miserable together. Though we believed we loved each other, we were each dominated in our own way by our insecurities and knowledge of our mediocrity. Furthermore - we had no conception of a future, of what we wanted out of life. I believed I would become a famous novelist, she believed she would become a great filmmaker; this was delusion. We knew absolutely nothing about what is really involved in accomplishing such things. Ultimately: this relationship broke down. We moved back in with our respective parents, since neither of us could carry the lease.
I felt a profound sense that all of my efforts in life were dissipated into nothingness. I failed at everything I tried. I had no money, no prospects; I had even gained like 25 pounds from eating too much "party mix" from big plastic tubs. (That part is not really relevant but I still think about it sometimes.) I considered what successful people I had known had done, and how that differed from how I had lived my own life. I remembered A + K, who were living lives I thought better than my own in every way. Previously, I had thought the claims of Christianity vaguely ridiculous, as that was what my peers believed; at this time, I humbled myself, and began to look into it with a more open mind, for I reasoned that, if nothing else, the people I knew who believed these things and acted accordingly were far happier than I was.
That's the part of the story that actually matters, I guess. The process of becoming a Christian is maybe not as interesting. I started reading a Bible; as I moved around the country during the next few years, I went to various churches, and spent time with pastors and small groups, hearing what they claimed and evaluating if it was something I could accept. Where occasionally some aspects seemed impossible, I concluded that far, far better and wise people than me had accepted them, and I would hold my doubt and wait for full understanding to come at a later time, or never if that's how it turned out. Once I settled in what I think be my permanent geographical area, I formally took membership in a church. I believe as sincerely as I can, and where I do this poorly, I pray to do it better. I do not know if this was, ultimately, a valid, logical, or sensible way of doing things; but it is a true story, and I can also say that my life is better in every single aspect than that of the 24-year-old me who had to move back in with his parents. (Of course, some of that also results from a number of steps I took, also rooted in increased maturity and life experience, that eventually resulted in material prosperity; but that's a story for another time.)
bolido_sentimental
3mo ago
It's hard for me to compose an answer to that, because it's been such a constant part of my life for so long now. I can barely remember all the things I used to not know. (Additionally - it's hard for me to compose an answer, because I never have acted on my ambition to "lurk less + post moar" as an aid to getting better at argumentative writing. I guess it's still not too late.)
Here is my best answer, I guess. I discovered the SSC-sphere around 2013. I had just dropped out of a political science Ph.D program - I realized that, basically, trying to write and publish academic papers was miserable to me and I did not want to spend any more of my life doing it. Anyway, even with that pretty high level of education, I still believed such things as:
- "Christians believe in a magical being because they are deluded."
- "Republicans want to restrict abortion access because they hate women."
- "The NSA wants to read all of our e-mails because they are evil."
I could give an unlimited number of other examples like that; and I was certainly 100% within the left-liberal bubble at that time, so the examples would be biased in that direction. Basically, exposure to the SSC-sphere enabled me to build a theory of mind for all kinds of groups and beliefs. Over the years, people in the Motte etc. have spent a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to understand what people really believe and why.
This is a continuous, lifelong process; I'm certain that I still have wrong ideas about lots of people's beliefs. And, my biases have shifted in the opposite direction, but they definitely still exist. But I just didn't think about it at all before - I believed what the people around me believed, and I didn't think about it. Now... at least I think about it, I guess. I no longer think "x believe that because they're idiots" or whatever. I try to understand how people arrive at their conclusions, because even if I oppose them, I still have to live with these people; and having some understanding makes it feel better, or if I want to act against them, I can do it more effectively.
It's incredible to me, just how large a portion of the U.S. consists of areas like that. You can drive for hours through formerly-inhabited areas, in most of which you can fairly confidently say: "This will never be anything again." "That building will eventually cave in, no one's gonna save it." "This must have been beautiful in the '50s."
I wish we lived in a different world, where that didn't happen.
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