cjet79
Anarcho Capitalist on moral grounds
Libertarian Minarchist on economic grounds
User ID: 124
cjet79
7hr ago
I am curious how this turns out and if you can find what you are looking for. I've been interested in doing something sorta similar. But have not bothered to try much.
I've read some ai generated stories on royal road before. And since I'm on royal road a bunch I am used to low quality stories. But I kept finding the AI stories kinda boring. I've thought that maybe getting the AI to imitate an authors' voice that you like might help with the boring ness of their style.
cjet79
9hr ago
There is a spectrum of illegality. At one extreme are the fully illegals. They crossed illegally, they operate in the black market selling illegal things, or only do cash jobs. At the other extreme are the people who scrupulously followed the process every step of the way.
In the middle are people with lapses. Student visas that expired while they were looking for a job out of grad school. Green card delays that meant they were supposed to leave the country for a month or two while things got worked out. H1-Bs between jobs. Kids brought here by parents that messed up the process.
Our immigration system is not simple enough that you can just easily categorize everyone into either extreme of legality.
Far stricter immigration enforcement is targeting those people in the middle. And even if you have scrupulously followed all the rules up to this point it doesn't mean something might happen in the future that causes a lapse. So risk averse people still don't want that harsh enforcement on the people in the middle.
I've never gotten in trouble for paying my taxes wrong, but I'm not in favor of making tax payment mistakes more harshly penalized. Taxes and income can get messy enough that I could screw up one day. There are tax dodgers and their non payment is making my taxes higher so I'm not happy about them and its fine to punish them. Same situation for immigrants.
cjet79
18hr ago
I think Trump is definitely attempting to put on a show for the base rather than doing things that might be effective.
This seems like the worst option of all policy worlds, because it's basically creating a selection effect for the worst types of immigrants.
It will scare off risk averse immigrants, and any immigrants that want a stable/predictable legal situation.
The easiest to find immigrants are ones that are trying to work within our legal system. They leave a paper trail. That paper trail might be from jobs, taxes, school enrollment, etc.
The hardest to find immigrants operate entirely in the black market.
cjet79
3d ago
Academic papers, but not a book. She has a friend in the DAR that has professionally published before and was giving her some advice.
cjet79
4d ago
My mom wrote a book. Its narrative non-fiction. About one of our ancestors that lived during the civil war and was one of the founders of the DAR. Told through a series of letters that she wrote and that people wrote to her. Very depressing. People die a lot, and the war was horrific.
I'm trying to read it and give feedback as an early editor.
cjet79
7d ago
I'm easily willing to bite that bullet, wokeism is Calvinism. And both of them have no place as being the US state religion.
I would like it if wokeism was labelled as a state religion. Someone would be doing everyone a massive favor if they went through the process of getting it recognized as a religion.
cjet79
12d ago
I've never played anything that could be described as "technical" with my daughters.
Travellers Rest and Stardew Valley were what I played with them. Mostly I played the game and they wandered around exploring and changing outfits.
cjet79
13d ago
A bit like Tropico for sure. Though I didn't think setting up zipline systems would be one of the funnest parts of this game.
cjet79
13d ago
I did play one anno game, but got a little overwhelmed with micro stuff. Something about the nature of this game discourages perfection.
cjet79
13d ago
New game that just came out Corsair Cove. It's a city builder but the city you are building is a pirate haven in the Caribbean.
The challenge comes from trying to balance production chains on the island, and create efficient pathways around your cliff city.
You send pirate ships off on missions.
cjet79
15d ago
My single favourite genre of non-fiction is stories about liars getting exposed as such.
You might enjoy Good on Paper if you haven't seen it already.
I do remember encountering serial liars in my life. It usually only takes a few months of exposure for everyone to realize whats going on. That doesn't mean they get punished for their lies, usually its just social ostracization. But institutions are terrible at catching and exposing them. The liars excel at interview format, and there is no limit to what they will put on their resume. That gets them in the door at institutions, especially ones where the interviewer/acceptor isn't really responsible for how the person is after they get in.
I'm pretty sure the claims you've collected here are only the tip of the ice berg. Serial liars tend to lie about everything. Its a game to them, and they do it constantly. Being around them too long creates this weird cognitive effect where you start feeling unmoored from reality. They'll lie to your face about events that you were at, and sometimes even things you did. I remember being angry originally, but then I switched to going along with it and egging her on. We made it a game to get her to tell the biggest lies to us and would laugh about her behind her back. She might have caught on to what we were doing eventually because she started avoiding us. We probably should have stuck with angry, because she was on a full ride scholarship to the college, and I don't ever remember her losing that scholarship.
cjet79
15d ago
No I think you are missing the whole point of the comparison I'm making.
To compare any meal you can make to a restaurant or fast food meal is not a good comparison. Sure you can make rice, chicken, and pop a vitamin on the side for pretty damn cheap. But its not the fact that you cooked it that is saving you money, its mainly the austerity of the meal itself that is saving you money. This would be like saying "I saved hundreds of dollars each meal, instead of getting a steak at a really good steakhouse, I instead made chicken and rice at home"
To make a fair comparison we need to do either one of two things:
- Find places that serve austerity meals and compare their cost to home cooking.
- Upgrade the home cooked meal to match a restaurant.
I didn't do the 1st option because it would be completely unfair, and not to me. There are places that serve austerity meals in America: soup kitchens. And they give away the food for free. So obviously home cooking loses on that metric.
I did the second option where you upgrade the home cooked meal to match an option from a place that is just above the bottom tier of food. I like Wendys, so that is what I picked. On this metric home cooking wins if you enjoy shopping, cooking, and cleaning or you work a minimum wage job.
cjet79
15d ago
Corporal punishment against my kids for not eating food feels wrong to me.
I remember having food arguments with my parents as a kid. I went to bed hungry a few nights, but I still never learned to like broccoli.
cjet79
15d ago
I handed the question over to Gemini AI.
It came up with $45 minimum for 4 sandwiches and 2 salads from Wendy's. And $30 minimum for buying all the stuff to make it yourself. Let's say that is three meals, and it comes out to $10 for making it yourself or $15 for getting it at Wendy's.
Yes, you can make cheaper meals by cutting corners and having fewer ingredients, but Wendy's could do the same thing! So you've stopped comparing like to like. And that is also part of my whole point that the food served by restaurants is often better.
This also assumes that your time/labor is free. Which is an ok assumption if you like grocery shopping, cooking, and cleaning. But most people don't like all three of those. If you value your time above minimum wage it quickly stops being worth it to cook for yourself.
cjet79
15d ago
Ya I don't mind catering to her preference here, it just feels strange because her younger sister has way more spice tolerance and I don't feel like we fed them that different.
cjet79
16d ago
My wife is German and had the same preference when she was young, she still sort of has the preference, but can get over it mostly.
And yes my daughter is very picky otherwise. Mostly she judges with her eyes a lot, but if we can convince her to try a thing there is more chance of her liking it. Hilariously got her to try my medium rare steak at a restaurant one time, and now she loves steak. Anything vaguely "spicy" is a hard no. I'm not like a huge spice freak. Jalepenos are generally spicy but not too spicy to me. But she considers things spicy that I can't taste any spiciness in. Any hint of pepper (as in salt and pepper) is too spicy.
If it was up to her I'm sure she'd be happy to eat the same thing day in and day out. I've made her a PB&J for lunch at camp every day this summer, no sign of her getting sick of it. She'd happily eat pasta (with butter), chicken nuggets (with ketchup), and (cooked) broccoli every day for dinner. Or at least she did it for a week before I gave up the experiment and thought I should maybe feed her different things for her own health.
cjet79
16d ago
Its a hassle and inconvenient. And you are usually talking about an extra 30 minutes of cooking/cleaning/shopping per meal, so 1.5 hours a day. For the "privilege" of less tasty meals. The cost savings feel minimal on a per meal basis, so it has to be a decision you constantly make to "save" money. I put save in quotations because your time costs money. If you enjoy cooking and dont mind cleaning up its no big deal, but for anyone that doesn't you are basically suggesting minimum wage rates. I can get a salad and a sandwich at a Wendys for less than $20. If I could make that exact same meal for 10$ in just 30 minutes (plus cooking and shopping for ingredients time) I'm basically working at a $20/hour wage.
Certainly poor people can save lots of money over time if they are basically willing to work an extra hour and a half a day, and cut out one of the main enjoyments in life. It also feels insane to me to blame them for not taking that "money-saving" option. They could also just pick up a second wage labor job to make sure they are working 70-80 hours a week. They can make sure to forego an extra hour of sleep a night for any jobs that don't require full wakefulness. They can use a crappy handme down phone and pick the cheapest data plan. They dont need a TV. Instead of a mattress they can just buy a sleeping bag. They can live in an apartment with a few dozen other people instead of paying rent on their own. Actually, they don't really need to pay rent, there are homeless shelters, and I've heard the weather in California is nice this time of year (and any time of year). Or they can always sleep in their car if they really need to even have a car. Or, even better, they can skip all the work. Just commit a crime that is serious enough for some prison time. Doesn't need to be a lot of prison time. Just enough to get in, once you are in you can do additional things to extend your time inside! In prison they provide rooms, food, toilets, showers, doctors, socialization, sunlight. Everything that someone needs to live.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but at some point people need to live. They need to be human. Food is one thing I'm not willing to hold over them and say "no you have to be a profit maximizing robot". I certainly don't follow that standard. My wife and I had our anniversary dinner last year at a really nice restaurant, the bill was around $700. We had a great time, the food was really amazing, the drinks were amazing, the service was great, we spent two and a half hours there.
I don't hold the poor free of all responsibility. I expect them to at least make half decent decisions on drugs, jobs, and location. Avoid drugs, find jobs that pay well for your abilities, and live in an area where you can survive and your children have the possibility to thrive.
cjet79
16d ago
It was like that for me before. My wife and I would regularly do our "date nights" by cooking a blue apron together. With three hangry kids running around it changes things. My one year old is nearly inconsolable if there is not food waiting on the table as soon as she gets home. My two older kids will just fight and then raid the pantry for junky snacks that ruin their appetite for anything vaguely healthier later.
cjet79
16d ago
My oldest daughter has the most annoying preference where she doesn't like different kinds of food items touching each other on her plate.
By making five fully separate food items I can usually satisfy all the kid preferences and still make something a little different for the adults.
My wife and I certainly love crockpot items, and I use them all the time for making host size meals
cjet79
16d ago
I guess mileage may vary. I have not lived in a large city like that. The friends that I had who lived there had all those complaints. And maybe yes it doesn't take much to do a setup to allow for cooking. But it is a one time hurdle that still has to be jumped over, so I'd at least add it to the behavior stack.
I had been about to write a whole thing about the hassle of cooking. I ran out of time and wrapped up the comment. So I heavily agree with you. I have a family of 5 and I am the primary cook in the house. We still end up eating out 2 to 7 times a week (I know that is a big variance, but lots of variance in my life right now). The home cooked meals are as simple and time saving as I can make them. I'm throwing pasta in a big pot, putting pre-breaded frozen chicken in an air fryer, and using microwave ready vegetable packs. And sometimes I'm skipping those second two things. On the harder side sometimes I am making meal kits from hello fresh that take like 1.5 hours. I'm trying to make this as easy on myself as possible and it is still a huge mental strain and stressor all week every week. At this moment I am typing this comment rather than figuring out what I'm gonna do for dinner tonight since the fridge is barren. I do actually enjoy cooking and making things, but that is something i want to do once or twice a week when I have lots of spare time.
cjet79
16d ago
I think it is mainly doomed because it starts with a bad analysis of "the problem".
There are things called food deserts, sure, but why? New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the world, even the poor are extremely wealthy by global standards. Go to just about any Asian city and you don't have to look hard for fresh anything, cooked anything, etc. There are markets all over.
New York doesn't allow open air markets, so that doesn't help. But there are still plenty of shops everywhere. Why aren't the shops selling a bunch of fresh ingredients?
Put yourself in the mind of a poor New Yorker. You've just acquired a bunch of fresh ingredients for cooking. Now take them back to your apartment. Your tiny, shitty apartment, with multi decade old cooking appliances, lack of cookware, and then when you finish out how to microwave the meal to completion you can serve them on your non-existent dishes and wash those non-existent dishes by hand in your sink because you don't have a working dish washer. Do we all see the problem? You have to be rich to afford a nice enough place to cook for yourself in New York. Even giving away food for free will not solve this problem.
The food deserts exist because of a lack of demand. And even giving away free food won't be enough to get poor New Yorkers cooking their own healthy food.
They buy snacks, easy microwave meals, and takeout food. If you can make all of those things more healthy without increasing their price you might be able to get more New Yorkers actually eating healthy.
But why do you even want them eating healthy? Is it because you want them to be less obese and more healthy? Well good news, we have a solution for that, they are called GLP-1s. Just subsidize them and hand em out like candy to New Yorkers. Or have bodegas sell them.
In conclusion Mamdani's end goals are attainable. He has just chosen to go about it in a roundabout and silly way that will accomplish nothing.
cjet79
16d ago
I would strongly guess human.
Writing skill: Once you get in the habit of certain writing techniques, it becomes hard not to use them. Just a simple one: if I am listing things out I find it very uncomfortable to do any list length other than three.
Tone: It's a shade too harsh. Unless you beat most AIs over the head it feels impossible for them to give this level of tough but fair criticism. I'd guess without using an AI that it would respond to the post with sympathy for their plight, maybe actions for change, and maybe additional criticisms of the women.
I would define effective as accomplishing policy goals. I did not know border crossings were so low. But I'm not sure which Trump policy accomplished that. I'm tempted to think that the most impactful policy they've done there is just not doing what the Biden Admin did which was actively screw with CBP, and actively stopping Texas from doing effective enforcement.
If we are gonna use the silly tuna can metaphor, we have a fence, one of the room-mates has been tearing holes in the fence.
The spectrum matters because of what kind of immigrants you want over here. If you want zero immigrants while still being able to say you allow immigrants, then sure maximum enforcement and maximum Kafkaesque rule sets are the way to go. Is that the goal? I didn't think it was.
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