RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
No bio...
User ID: 2051
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
8d ago
I think what is meant there is the occasionally reported situation of the (often heavily obese, or else it would be too obvious) teenage mom and her family being in denial of the pregnancy right until birth, and then it's too late.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
10d ago
Wow, you're not kidding. I haven't really liked /r/slatestarcodex for quite a while now, but so far its failings were imo mostly on the "naive, well meaning quokka stats nerd" end of the spectrum. Now, some of the most highly upvoted comments there are completely misinformed apologia of the killer on how the insurances are killing people for profit.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
10d ago
So you were mostly drinking outside in the forest?
Uh, no. For may-tree planting it varied wildly since you needed lots of space, but never in the forest since you want to make a camp fire, and a camp fire in the forest while drunk is how you get forest fires. Typically it would be something like a paddock, or a large roundabout, or in someone backyard if it's large enough. For other events it would usually be some large communal building, such as the old school building.
Who bought the drinks, the older teens or the parents?
The parents usually supply whatever is on the high end of acceptance for your age, older teens whatever is on the low end. So for, say, a 14yo, parents would supply beer and older teens would supply harder alcohol (and it would be expected of the older teens to look after him, and this can be enforced since the parents know exactly who the older teens are). But it also varied a lot depending on the parents opinion.
As an American, the laws for liquor were very strict, so it was hard to get any. We would occasionally have "field parties" where you drive out to some random rural location, sit around a circle, maybe a fire if someone was prepared enough to bring supplies, and pass a bottle around (usually bought by someone with a "fun" older sibling). Really a miserable experience all around I think. The more common way was that we'd go to the house of our friend who had an alcoholic single mom, wait for her to fall asleep, and then raid her liquor cabinet. Yeah... not good times. We'd also have to think of a cover story to tell our parents.
Yeah sounds sad. I used to believe in the idea that some things can't be enforced, such as limiting alcohol, since it fit very with my experience and we were taught in school how badly prohibition fucked up. But nowadays I think it all is just secretly revealing your preferences, or at least of society at large - limiting alcohol can't be enforced if people don't want to. But if they do, it works.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
10d ago
Which ones do you mean with "later" ? At least for the N64 ones I didn't get this impression - though I admittedly don't mind open plains much.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
11d ago
theMotte may originally be an offshoot from SSC, but by now the connection is pretty weak. Scott only very rarely links here, and vice versa Scott is now just one of many writers that get mentioned here regurlarly.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
11d ago
where do kids there go to drink? Do they just openly drink with their parents?
It's complicated and not just about alcohol, but generally yes, or with their tacit acceptance. I'll use the example of a specific festivity, "Maibaum pflanzen" ("planting the May-Tree"), because it's a nice progression from young to old, but just our small town would have a low double-digit number of festivities like these (for the interested germans, the others I remember in my town were: Straßenfest, Dorffest, Gemeindefest, Wursteball, Osterfeuer, Schützenfest, Karneval, Vaterstag). Once you're 16, you'd also be allowed to drive over to other towns, which meant that there was something going on every weekend.
End of April, we would celebrate the start of spring by going into the nearby forest, cutting down a birch, and setting it up in our local neighbourhood. All neighbourhoods around would do this, with around 20 people per tree, so you would have something like 10 trees up in walking distance, and of those everyone would know literally everyone else. You'd sit down in a circle around a fire and the tree would be some meters away so that it's hard to see from the fire in the dark. There would be a game of stealing the trees from others, mostly played by teens and young adults, and next day the captured trees would be chopped into small pieces and distributed among the group, some keeping their piece as a celebration to commemorate the number of trees stolen, but usually just for burning wood.
Before you're 12, you'd generally just help decorate the tree, eat Bratwurst, play games with the other kids, maybe visiting some other trees with a group of kids. Some neighbourhoods would put up a "kid's tree" which was just a branch from the larger tree, and which would be small enough for the younger kids to steal without needing an axe. Once you're around 12, you'd be allowed to help cut and carry the tree in earnest and drink your first beer (obviously, cutting the tree was itself a beer drinking game) and help protecting the adult tree. Around 14, you'd be allowed to join the older teens when stealing adult trees (which is mostly done between 2-6 in the morning when the majority of the adults went to bed, and the few left over to protect the tree will be drunk or even sometimes fell asleep), and the older teens would let you drink your first hard alcohol with them. This would often also be the first time when you get REALLY drunk once, and you (as well as the older teens that supplied you) would be lightly punished or at least reprimanded by your parents to be more careful next time.
Around 16, you'd be strong enough to carry a tree with a group of other teens, which meant that you'd be allowed your own tree altogether. Whether you actually did this depends on whether you can organize a group of older teens/young adults large enough, a place where you'd be allowed to put up the tree, and food & drinks for everyone, including visitors. This would be the time when getting REALLY DRUNK will be fully tolerated. When I was around 17, we'd set up a tree with 6 teens my age at my parent's house (since they were away for the night at the neighbourhood's tree) and vowed we'd protect our tree by putting a nail in the tree for every finished bottle of hard alcohol and hang the bottle there, and when we woke up the entire tree was decorated fully with more than 20 bottles. We've had a few visitors, but even accounting for that it means everyone drank at least 2-3 full bottles of hard alcohol (and we also drank at other trees we visited), in addition to copious amounts of beer which is generally not even counted (we literally have the saying "you can't get drunk on beer") and which we obviously didn't even bother putting on the tree. We all had such a bad hangover that we didn't go out drinking the next day, which you'd usually do as it is worker's day with lots of bigger festivals. My parents just laughed and made fun of us.
So you usually don't drink much hard alcohol directly with your parents as a teen, it's expected of you to help organize events with friends which then allow you to get drunk. Most parents directly help supply some amount of alcohol for every celebration you throw or join, but usually you have to organize some on top of that (which isn't difficult). Drinking alone or at any time that isn't a designated known event is heavily frowned upon(except beer, since, again, it doesn't count). Some teens would only join events with their parents, and correspondingly drink much less, much later.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
11d ago
For better or worse, we've went through that process before my time; In our Bauernschaft of 500 people, there used to be 5 Kneipen, of which only a single one was still open when I was a kid (an I never went there myself, it was oly old people). I have been told that during covid, one secretly opened again though that has stopped once the measurements had been lifted.
During my teen years, it was typical to first meet at someone's place with a group to get drunk except for the designated drivers, and then you drive to wherever is the nearest current fair (usually a Schützenfest) at that weekend, which could be 20 kilometers or more. My friend group was with more than 20 people of both genders pretty large, so we would often just get drunk together and skip the part of driving anywhere.
From what I've heard, the region hasn't changed much culture and living standard-wise; It's not comparable to the pitiful misery that is the contemporary british countryside. In terms of TFR it's still among the highest in germany, but unfortunately it went through the same 2022 post-covid crash as the rest (up to that point, it had actually slowly been increasing for nearly a decade).
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
12d ago
My kids are far too young for these particular topics, but it's pretty simple in principle: You decide beforehand where your red lines are (which should be mostly concentrated on whether something is time-consuming/expensive/impossible to undo) and communicate that as clearly as possible. If you get the impression they're trying to skirt the edges and/or rules-lawyer, you may let them get away with it the first time but with a warning, after the second you put your foot down. As usual when it comes to social topics, the trouble is in the specifics.
On drinking, I'll probably, like my own father (I literally had fights with my dad since I wanted to stay home and play video games, he told me "what are you doing on a friday night at home? Go out and get drunk!" - I was annoyed, but imo he was mostly right), actively push them towards going partying & drinking early-ish, but in environments I trust such as local fairs or the CVJM (I'm not religious, but I've had good experience with these kinds of organizations as a teen). Ideally I'm also present & available if they need me, but where it's too large and crowdy to have them in my sight all the time so they can goof of with friends, as they should. Also, imo as a parent you deserve knowing your kids friends, and they should only go partying with friends they've known for a while and which I know as well. So I know that somebody is looking after them and I know who to ask if they don't come back at the agreed time. Obviously, going to an entirely different place without telling me would include a strict punishment, since that's how teens go missing.
On internet usage, I really don't care much as long as it's age-appropriate, and I'm already even quite laissez-faire on what is "age-appropriate" to begin with.
On reddit, it is extremely lopsided towards the ultra-online with very large amounts of free time and has a strong tendency for circlejerks by basic design, and very biased towards progressive by moderator action. I wouldn't be particularly surprised if half or more of the frequent posters are young women without children, but some child-related degree/occupation that makes them feel like they know what they're talking about. So tbh I'd discount pretty much all opinions there as neither good nor representative of the average parent.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
12d ago
Teen drinking is universal outside the US, near-universal in the US, and lindy.
This. In my town, it was normal to start drinking beer around 12-14, and to start drinking hard alcohol (up to blackout drunk) around 14-16. And I'm not talking about poor white trash, this is a prosperous, unusually high TFR conservative & religious farmer's region in western germany.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
14d ago
The line between status and popularity is blurry, though. Some may even say it really is the same at its core.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
14d ago
Welcome back, Alone. We've missed you.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
16d ago
Interestingly I have heard this is not quite as obvious as commonly assumed. While the majority may do exactly what is assumed, allegedly there is a substantial minority group that doesn't like it and thus has other practices (mostly oral).
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
16d ago
Let's start with a deliberately silly example: Imagine somebody shows you two images. Both look broadly similar in style & quality to you, but there is a single off-coloured pixel in one off them. As the other person tells you, the images are indeed broadly similar, but this kind of pixel is in every image made in a certain way, that making images this way is considered tacky and tasteless, and that trained professionals can spot the pixel in the blink of an eye, which you can't because it follows complicated rules of position. Would you defer to their judgement of taste?
At least for me, a lot of artistic ideas, even after hearing their reasoning, make me go "sounds nice for you, but no thanks". No matter the complexity of rules, it's ultimately arbitrary and interchangeable. Discernment is intrinsically something that can be completely made up, on any topic, and in any way. So it's value as a skill is quite questionable.
That doesn't mean I don't have my own tastes, and for some things I even have some strong opinions as well. For worldbuilding in stories, for example, I'm a strong proponent of strict internal consistency, or in art I'm a big fan of geometric principles (unsurprisingly, as a mathematician). But I don't really have much trouble just simply ignoring allegedly important discernable differences unless somebody can give me a very good reason why I should care.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
19d ago
I agree that this isn't fully universal. I also was lucky, as the first PhD student of a newly minted group leader in a subfield of applied math (population models, in particular cancer) I had both great latitude and lots of attention if I needed help. My course when I did my Bachelor's and Master's also was still quite restrictive in comparison - 40 people at first, of which 20 dropped out in the first years. So our classes were also quite small.
But I also have shared some classes with medical or biology students, which would often be triple-digits, and worked quite a bit with medical or biology PhDs. Some institutes had rooms full of PhD students who had the same supervisor (though support through mentors did lessen this a bit). My wife, who used to be in neuroscience, had a supervisor who spend no more than 15 minutes on meetings with her - once per month. Her project was more or less entirely pre-defined, and the adjustments she took were due to her own stubbornness, not because the Professor really wanted to give her the latitude. When I had my defense (in the UK, you talk multiple hours, in detail, about your work with two independent reviewers), one of the reviewers positively noted that not even once I said I'd have to ask my supervisor, that for every thing I did I had a ready-made explanation on why I focused on this and where the approach comes from; According to him, his own PhD student would competently carry out his directives, but he was very frustrated how often they'd not actually understand why they did the things the way they did it. Unsurprisingly, he was a medical doctor, and this is something I've heard from multiple Profs in medical sciences. By my wife's account - and some personal discussions I've had with acquaintances -, the situation in psychology and sociology is much worse yet.
You also have to keep in mind that PhD-student do not spring into existence from nothing, and that supervisors do not spend all of their time only on PhD students; Universities as a whole have been steadily expanding since the beginning of the last century in most western countries (see for example this report though I don't think this controversial), albeit at different rates and with different timing of the surges & plateaus, which means this has been the experience of pretty much all currently living Profs independent of the exact timeframe.
So what impact does the expansion of the universities have on PhD students? First let's assume you're a specific PhD student: The professors get more teaching duties, so they have less time for you. Then, because they barely get their other duties done, they more or less need to push parts of the teaching duties on you, which means you also have less time for your PhD itself. Also, there may be more professors to deal with the increased burden, but these are those that wouldn't have made the cut. In the worst - and not even that rare - case, you have a situation as I described for the "midwife professorship", which is someone who might not even have gotten a PhD at all in the past getting a full professorship for essentially political reasons (and thus it's no surprise she tends to be more political than scientific in her attitude).
Of course, it impacts the PhD students themselves as well: As described in the earlier post, they are more likely to be used to a more standardized environment from their bachelor's and master's, making it more difficult to suddenly work independently. And similar to the professors, the additional numbers are more marginal PhD candidates, so they're on average worse to begin with.
Universities were, objectively, massively expanded in that timeframe. "We increased the number of students tenfold, but this did not change quality or composition or culture" is just not a very credible claim. On the other hand, it's just common sense that if you try to take in the top 5% vs the top 50%, the average student will necessary be MUCH worse, even if your measure of competence is unreliable. Likewise, if a professor suddenly has to teach a multiple of the students he used to, the quality of the education almost necessarily suffers (not to mention a similar effect to the students, in which people are given increased responsibilities to handle the load of teaching that in the old regime would never have been given such responsibilities).
Pretty much all older staff reports roughly the same story: In the past, professors had reasonable loads of students, which they could handle on a more individual basis, and which were mostly capable of acting independently. Nowadays, the professors have so many students that they had to transform everything into a standardized, school-like environment. This includes a lot of busywork that can't be too hard since - and here is some divergence - one side says the students are just way worse but we don't want failure rate of >50%, the other side says because it would require more personal interaction for struggling students which the professors simply can't supply anymore. To keep the appearance of excellence, this busywork is also often more time-intensive for the students than the technically harder assignments that students would have gotten in the past. The few professors that don't standardize but keep open-ended problems often don't manage to teach anything and end up having to just pass everyone. The style of political courses functor is describing fits into the same mold imo. It's just really convenient to reduce everything into a one-dimensional political analysis and works very well as a standardized approach.
In fact, I'd argue that most older staff even underestimates the scale of this process, since a large part happens through the generation of new fields that have minimally trained professors and low to no enforced standards. My university for example almost doubled its student body since I started studying here, went away, and came back. All the original courses, however, still have almost the same size. Instead, we have A LOT of new courses that frequently are just thinly-veiled ways of enrolling marginal students that didn't make it in the original courses ("media informatics", for example), and almost universally have very low standards. My wife had to work together on a project with a newly-created "midwife professor", head of the newly created "midwife university course", who is just a practicing midwife that went back to university, did a PhD with a single publication, and instantly got her professorship. She doesn't seem to have any idea how science works whatsoever, and nobody can make her since she has an ultra-safe position as the original arbiter in our university on what "midwife science" even is. And there are multiple new courses like this from which I have not directly heard anything yet, but also no reason to believe it's any different. And both my wife's and others report on existing collaborations that they often try to hide their ignorance behind moralistic grandstanding.
In general, another thing that I have been perceiving myself also is that there is zero pressure to make things harder for students and a lot of pressure to make things easier. If I pass everyone, literally nobody will complain as long as I went through the motions of designing some very easy assignments. On the other hand, if the assignments are too hard and too many fail, firstly it's just extra work for me since I see them again next year, and at some point I have to do an oral exam which is even more work. Then you have the students themselves complain. Then if you fail too many the university admin staff will complain as well. My natural attitude is normally "if they fail, they fail", but even I actively work towards making assignments easier for the students just to spare myself the hassle. It just seems extremely obvious that such a system will only ever get easier over time. And once you have little to no meaningful standards, it's easy to bring in politics, because why not?
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
25d ago
AFAIK median ages always include children. So any place that families go to will be much younger than a place with mostly singles, even if the singles themselves are younger.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
26d ago
The mobile app is also decent. I've been playing it a bit with friends.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
26d ago
Noah claims that progressives were in favor of immigration primarily, if not only, because Trump was against it, and that the right in general is against immigration on racial grounds. It's hard to take someone seriously after this kind of statement; The left has been very strongly in favor of immigration in general since the 90s, and this has been the case worldwide. The backlash to immigration has likewise happened worldwide, and for near-identical reasons: The number of immigrants were much higher than expected, the strain on the welfare systems, increased crime, etc.
Maybe it's because I'm in academia, but all the extremely woke people here haven't actually changed their opinion, and they haven't actually lost their positions, either. If I read the university newsletter, it's still full of "how to appreciate our diverse gender presentations" and very thin on hard science. If I walk around the campus, it's full of "critical orientation week" advertisements, which is exactly the kind of "critical" you'd expect. The university provides rooms for this week, which ostensibly is against the university, completely free of charge, of course. It's not even very long ago that the university kicked out a right-leaning moderate because "university is not political" and that the university should not "provide resources to political groups".
And this is the core problem imo: If there is a conflict and the right-leaning side is losing, the left will often successfully take away positions up to and including booting them out entirely. If the left loses, they just keep everything they try again after a while. Universities are still de-facto purging themselves of even moderately right-leaning people and promoting quite frankly completely insane people, so long as they are sufficiently far left. Unless we start kicking out far-left cranks the same way we do for the right, I don't see the general trajectory changing much. Sure this or that particular DEI statement gets discontinued, but the next thing is already being implemented.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
28d ago
To steelman her, not committing to an LDR which is longer than the period of dating beforehand, after just three months is pretty reasonable.
Since she presumably told you how long she will be gone, she can't really string you along endlessly. So keep it casual for the time being, but also make your feelings clear, and that you intend to start again right where you left off once she's back. If she does as well, great, if she finds new excuses or breaks it off after a few dates again, don't fall for it again. You can also offer to visit once if it's not crazy far away and not too hard on your wallet and just see how she reacts. Especially if it's a place you plausibly might have wanted to visit independent of her.
Dunno though how much you should listen to my advice. I've only ever had one serious relationship, with my wife & mother of my kids, and intend to keep it that way. I also always hated casual dating, in particular never used any apps, and made it clear that I only date with the goal of an eventual, stable family in mind.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
28d ago
On the other hand, many relationships I've talked about more in-depth with people include some moment in which one partner, usually the women, has some doubts and breaks it off for a while only to come back (often almost immediately). LDRs are one of the most common causes. And she is kind of right, if you only dated a few months, not committing to an LDR of more months than that is a very reasonable decision. Doesn't mean she isn't open to a proper relationship afterwards, and the fact that she starts the messages again shows that she likely has at least some interest still.
Imo experience with all sorts of addiction has taught us that almost nothing works once people are already addicted, and getting addicted can happen quite easily once you get in contact. If legal platforms block access, the addict will find another way. The key is to generate less addicts in the first place.
Low friction = more addicts = more problems. This is extra true for gambling, since it doesn't get you near-instantly chemically addicted the way some drugs do, it needs some time to be cultivated and re-enforced. If you need to repeatedly, physically go to a casino, people around you will notice, you might have to explain yourself to your partner or parents or close friends, and for yourself it's easier to notice when you start losing significant money. And noticing it early is important to get people to stop before it's too late. If you play on the phone, you yourself might only notice much, much later how much you have played and how much you really lost, and others notice even later, if at all. Not that this is impossible to happen with casinos, it's about the ease it happens with. There's related approaches, such as requiring casinos to change a fixed sum into a number of chips that you play with (which makes it obvious how much lost every time you go) vs just directly playing with cash (easier to lose more than you wanted to play with) or just pay by card (extremely easy to blow a lots of money), or to require limits on how much someone can lose in a specific time frame, and so on. All of these have the purpose to a) give a legal outlet to avoid the proliferation of a black market b) reduce the generation of addicts by increasing friction c) reduce the negative impact of being an addict by making sure you can only lose x money per hour or so spend.
For similar reasons, nowadays I feel like the old approach of having a small amount of a drug being mostly legal or at least not super punished, but if you were caught trading significant amounts you were fucked, was a certain sweet spot. The friction to even start drugs was quite significant. There is an argument to institute a similar ban on gambling, where small-scale private gambling is explicitly legal, but once you do it large-scale it becomes illegal full-stop. You can then still meet with friends and play a round of poker with real money but still mostly low stakes, but you don't get this industrialised pipeline of addict generation we have now.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
1mo ago
Tbh that does sound incredibly naive. The start-up scene, or more generally capitalism, isn't good bc everyone involved is a perfect angel. It's because the competitiveness forces you to develop a good product that people actually want to buy, and to cut the slack and produce it reasonably cheaply. That's it. Worse yet, there are many tricks how people try to get around the competition with backhanded, negative-sum strategies, and you have to account for them & stop it. The problem with everything else, such as bureaucratic institutions, is that they often don't even attempt to account for these strategies so they run even wilder. Or worse yet they naturally incorporate the opposite.
It's douchebag who needs to please you vs douchebag you need to please. Nothing more, nothing less.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
1mo ago
As long as FDP, Linke + Others stay below 5% each while still adding up to almost 20% it might be enough.
RenOS
still waiting for his official theMotte anniversary doomsday bunker™
1mo ago
What makes you say that?
For starters, I recognise almost every single prolific poster as someone who used to be one at themotte beforehand, and they number in the low double digits. themotte also has quite a few people who have been around for very long, but we also regularly have new posters I don't recognize immediately, it has way more prolific posters to begin with, and there is a decent amount of turnover. It's failing is that it almost exclusively attracts a certain group of disgruntled, cynical liberals with a small number of mostly educated genuine (far-)rightists. Theschism, as far as I can see, is at this point more like a club for a small group of friends that is open to others more in the technical than practical sense. That's fine if that's your goal, but it hardly feels like it even competes on the same level as themotte.
Edit: Also, I think the kind of establishment liberal who would hypothetically come here would not be an uncritical accepter of the NYT or the Guardian, they'd be able to at least entertain and defend the credibility of those papers.
Maybe I was a bit harsh, but then we get to the point again that we actually do have quite a few people here who still on-net are pro-establishment, even if we are quite cynical about it.
I also vote for 4 as the pinnacle of the older style of Civ (stacking units, quadratic tiles), especially with various mods, many of both overhaul and rebalancing ones are great.
5 imo worth trying out as well for the newer style (non-stacking units, hexagonal tiles), again there are lots of (but much less than 4) nice mods. There is also a very well made fully free(!, no ads, nothing!) mobile version called unciv.
More options
Context Copy link