cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
2mo ago
Wedding was otherwise good, and bride seemed happy, so no real complaints. Just selfishly wish the music was better for my dance floor moves.
cjet79
2mo ago
At a wedding, normally pretty fun for me, but the music ... Ugh.
It's too old. Perfect music for someone born in 1985 but I was born in 1990, and the actual wedding participants were born in 1995.
DJs are important.
cjet79
2mo ago
Check out this enemy spoilers for the new expansion: https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-429
cjet79
2mo ago
I don't know if they changed the original biters. I know they changed some of the turret behaviors.and each planet is going to have its own unique challenges and enemies.
cjet79
2mo ago
I'll play coop when the expansion drops. Don't want to get burned out on the game before then.
cjet79
2mo ago
There is tribe and then there is political party, and I think Trump is closer to tribal divide than party divide.
And the way I'd ask the question is to get their initial reaction to Trump, not their thought out and considered reaction. If someone randomly brought up Trump to you would your reaction be something like "why are they bringing him up?" Or "what about Trump?" That would be the "confusion" reaction. Meaning you don't really respond to him emotionally too much. Strong blue and red tribers will skip past the conversational confusion and straight to a reaction about the man, because he has a strong emotional salience to them.
Scott Alexander, as firmly part of the grey tribe as anyone could be, spent thousands of words to persuade republicans not to vote for Trump. Should I suspect that he is crypto-woke?
He also wrote "you are still crying wolf" about Trump being racist. Which had some strong blue tribers almost foaming at the mouth mad at Scott. Your reaction and Scott's reaction to me seem grey tribe leaning blue, because you are forming opinions about Trump because of policies or things he does. If you were strongly red or blue tribe the facts would literally not matter.
I do not consider Scott ultimate grey tribe. I think that he thinks he is very grey tribe because he likes living in super heavy blue tribe areas and he knows he doesn't fit in among them. But there is the rub: he likes living in super heavy blue tribe areas.
Do you feel more comfortable among blue tribe or red tribe?
I think I'm grey tribe leaning red. I'd be confused if someone randomly brought him up. But his antics sort of use me, and I generally dislike his policy prescriptions. I'm not strongly emotionally attached either way to him.
cjet79
2mo ago
Just say "Trump" and their reaction should be enough.
Any positive reaction: clearly red tribe.
Uncertainty or confusion: gray tribe.
Any negative reaction: clearly blue tribe.
cjet79
2mo ago
It looks extremely promising. I've already thoroughly enjoyed the space exploration mod that was created by the guy leading the design for the new expansion (the factorio company hired him). Their Friday blog series has managed to track down and kill some of the slightly unfun parts of the game, or just optimize it to perfection. There are game mechanics in factorio that felt fine because basically no other game really has them. Things like creating circuits that set programmable behavior (other game have circuits stuff, but rarely to this extent). They streamlined it all.
Quality modules are option as far as I know. But I also plan to heavily use them. Right now factorio kinda lacks an endgame resource sink to get awesome stuff (you can sort of get it with research, but it doesn't quite feel right). I can't wait to pour massive amounts of resources into a legendary suit filled with legendary modules shooting legendary guns.
I'm excited about creating another multi planet factory system.
cjet79
2mo ago
There is at least a tiny trend towards healthier beers. Non alcoholic and low carb, without too many sacrifices for flavor. Athletic brewing company is the local option small time brewing option for me, but all the major beer makers seem to have been chasing non-alcoholic and even lower carb versions of their old offerings.
Its probably not necessarily as "cool" as past trends, but I think there is money in it. It requires more science than artistry, and the effort being carried out by the big beer makers suggests that they are at least trying to tap into an underserved segment.
cjet79
2mo ago
My social life feels a bit full, but also I haven't seen enough of some of my long time friends recently.
I have friends from: neighborhood dads, underwater hockey, college, libertarians, and friends of friends. Its easy to see the neighborhood dads and underwater hockey people on a regular basis. Some of my favorite people are ones I didn't meet directly, but met through friends of friends, and I've missed three of the last invites from one of them and I feel bad and need to fix that somehow.
Some of the funnest people to hang out with are often the people I have very little in common with, except an easy going personality and good social skills. My wife is in that category, where we basically like none of the same things, but talk easily with each other and make each other laugh.
More of my social time is being eaten up with kid activities, and meeting parents of my daughter's friends. Generally its not so bad, people in my area that have managed to settle down with a partner and have kids tend to at least have a basic level of social skills.
I do wish I could get more people to play video games with me. I will maybe start putting out feelers on TheMotte closer to when the new Factorio expansion comes out. But if anyone is available to play Starship Troopers I'd like that as well.
cjet79
2mo ago
Also, Factorio is eating me again.
What? The expansion isn't even out yet. I've been holding out waiting for it.
cjet79
2mo ago
Its probably a bad sign, but I don't feel I've been wrong about much. Probably because many of my views are hedged in the first place. I expect tradeoffs for policies, so I'm less surprised by the downsides. I'm also deeply uncertain about many things. I only hold a few opinions super strongly, and those opinions tend to be values statements rather than policy prescriptions.
The last time I remember having a seismic shift in my views was about a decade and a half ago when I was in college. I suppose I'd bought into the sexual revolution hype that women could be carefree and open about sex, and I thought as a guy I just wanted a lot of sex with different women. After I started actually having sex with real women I quickly came to feel that this was all wrong. Women care about sex, and can't help but become emotionally invested in it and their partners. And I wanted a steady and loving relationship more than I wanted a parade of new women. I came to view women that don't have the emotional attachment to sex as emotionally broken and likely abuse victims. And men that haven't figured out the benefits of a relationship over casual sex as just immature.
My positive views on drug legalization, open immigration, open trade, and free markets have remained almost entirely unchanged. If anything I feel more certain in these views because I have witnessed the negative tradeoffs of them and have found that they are tolerable and not as bad as I feared.
My negative views on government power and foreign intervention have also remained unchanged. I feel that some of my fears of these things have been borne out. The failures in Iraq and Afghanistan were things I thought would happen. If they had instead been huge success stories I would have had to shift my views. State surveillance and power over the internet led to some very ugly things during the Covid era.
cjet79
2mo ago
It seems like the calming is partly just out of exhaustion, and because its no longer the 'new hotness'. It was a cultural fad, and such things tend to lose popularity mostly on their own.
Not to say the damage will go away.
cjet79
2mo ago
Congrats!
Father of two with a third on the way for me.
The advice in this thread is great. I read through a bunch to try and make sure I wasn't giving duplicate advice.
I'd add that your little one is going to come out with their own personality on day one. This is way more obvious when you've had a second kid.
My first child, very sweet and easy going, she came out and barely cried enough to let the doctors know her lungs worked. My second child came out screaming like a pterodactyl and had me and the nurses kinda reeling back like whoa. The second one has had a much more forceful and loud personality.
Some of the ease or difficulty of parenting will be related to their personality, so don't let the first child either give you a big head if it's too easy, or discourage you if it's too hard. Its going to be a bit of the luck of the draw.
cjet79
2mo ago
This is the kind of question I've been turning to AIs for lately. With all those cooking and recipe websites out there they must of had a lot of training data.
These were chatGPT's suggestions (condensed):
- Smoked Paprika
- Fennel Seeds
- Star Anise
- Lemon Zest
- Cumin and Coriander
- Balsamic Vinegar Reduction
- Cinnamon and Clove
- Chili Flakes and Cocoa
- Fresh Herbs (Basil, Thyme, Rosemary, Mint, Tarragon)
I'm not a huge fan of tomatoes, but I've always found acids to change their flavor in a way that lets me enjoy them more. So if the people around you are getting sick of tomatoes, maybe something with lemon juice or balsamic vinegar.
cjet79
2mo ago
First practice of the season for the college team. It was an off campus practice and we had to share the practice with the local team. But we had three recruits show up, which is not too bad for a first night. We went out to get burgers afterwards and I bought dinner for the new players. I heard them saying they had a lot fun to each other when I was out of the conversation but not fully out of earshot.
I'm trying to reshift the priorities of the club away from travel tournaments and entirely into recruiting. We are in a precarious situation where everyone is a senior and the club is on track to dissolve next year without someone to take up the mantle. If it comes down to it I will bribe some college freshmen to do it.
cjet79
2mo ago
Climatologists are mostly unwilling to consider these proposals. So all the official papers written by government orgs, NGOs, or University groups don't even consider this proposal. Even if many of them are aware of it, and they are definitely aware. People have known about this option for a few decades.
Its sometimes hard to know when a particular academic subject has gone over the edge from being disinterested scientists to mind-captured ideologues. (its certainly obvious when they are way over the line like in sociology, but I mean the crossover is hard to spot). I think this is maybe the clearest sign that climatology has gone over that edge.
Honestly, geoengineering proposals are awesome. And even a scientist with 1% mad scientist personality would want to study it. Luckily the public won't remain ignorant forever, and they'll just route around the climatologists: https://time.com/6314541/overshoot-commission-calls-for-climate-geoengineering-research/
cjet79
2mo ago
It is an ambiguous terms, but ignoring the concept might be more of a loss in understanding.
I think if there is anything that should be meant by state capacity it should mean the ability to wage war. Specifically to get shit done that allows for the waging of war. That would include industrial mobilization, but it would also include a competent and efficient bureaucracy, and a willingness and ability to use force to achieve ends
War is the one thing governments do that most other organizations don't do. And it was historically how you replaced badly functioning governments, so it was the only thing where the government had some incentive to do it well
America is in a unique situation that no one can really challenge them on the same footing in a war. They've had constant foreign adventures and occupations since world war 2. And if you didn't watch the news you could probably have gotten away without noticing any of them.
So there is no way to fully test the US's state capacity, and it likely doesn't matter too much if no one is around to defeat us. At least not yet.
cjet79
2mo ago
Isn’t there an obvious explanation?
I thought that they obviously made a mistake: the immigrants were supposed to be distributed, but all of the immigrants assigned to the few dozen different Springfield's throughout the US somehow all got sent to the same one.
No it was generally 90's rap songs.
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