Gaashk
1d ago
It doesn't have a bad reputation in comparison to other places, it just doesn't have much of an economic base. Maybe it's just the last place in the country for all the subsistence farmers' children to move to an apartment in town. Maybe the Intel plant is a bigger economic force than I realized?
- & 3 Possibly!They have a mix of old and sprawling. Currently they're building apartment complexes and the kind of subdivisions everyone else built in the 90s, like the city planners saw Phoenix or Houston and admired them. People are anxious about this -- there's even less access to water than Phoenix or Houston. My neighborhood is on water restrictions right now.
That's interesting.
I have tolerable art skills, but low intrinsic motivation. Sometimes I get over the hurdle of deciding what to paint, and then I do actually paint it, but more often I get stuck at "what could I possibly do with another painting of a flower? Where will I store it? I already have too many photos even, and I don't have to physically store them" and don't paint it.
I spend a lot of time talking to software developers and adjacent people, and am entirely unable to imagine what kind of thing I would program, if I had a program creating ginn. There are some apps (ugh, terrible word, so tired of it) that I have that want fewer of. Why did I have to download an app to get a concert ticket? I don't think it's just because I'm old, I'm not all that old. My millennial friends are often talking about how much they dislike screens, and want less of them, and less things on them, and how there's quite too much digital product already, even for free.
Gaashk
1d ago
What's the deal with new housing going up like crazy in places that have few jobs and negative population growth?
I asked an AI about this, and it said something about how even though people are leaving the region, there's still a backlog of housing supply, especially for smaller units such as apartments and starter homes. I do in fact see a lot of apartments going up, and I suppose "starter homes," though the kind that costs more than the median home price for the area (which is not especially high). And then the expectation is that when Xers and Millenials get older, they'll buy the sprawling houses that are currently occupied by boomers? These houses seem very large, and I don't really understand them.
I sort of get what's happening in places like Arizona and Florida, where a larger than usual retiree cohort wants to live somewhere warm in a nice new easy to maintain house. I guess Phoenix is still adding subdivisions by sheer force of cheapness?
Gaashk
3d ago
Jezebel
Yeah, when I looked her up just now, an article that came up mentioned the TV show, which I had never heard of. Her website has her most recent articles in famous places like The New York Times and The Guardian, which look dreary.
What are the certain internet corners saying?
Gaashk
3d ago
I've been listening to To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf. It reminds me of my experience trying to read James Joyce: mostly confusion. But since it's an audiobook, at least I can accomplish tasks while I listen.
Gaashk
3d ago
I think I heard Louise Perry talking about it on her podcast, but that was the first I'd heard of Lindy West, and it wasn't clear why people care, or what West is known for. Surely she can't be known simply for being fat and abrasive?
Gaashk
3d ago
The dream: I live somewhere hot and sunny. I get a solar panel attached to my house or carport or neighborhood. The money I was already spending on energy goes into paying for the solar panel.
The reality: subsidies go to the enormous concentrated solar farm in the middle of the desert. Birds and lizards keep getting burnt to death from the heat, and it looks terrible over much larger areas of land than an equivalent fossil fuel plant and oil pumps. They pay less in taxes than the oil extractors, and maintain fewer roads (I care about this in a large, net oil producing state). Are the giant desert solar farms supplying energy to one of the desert data centers that's competing with traditional chile farmers? Is it running air conditioners somewhere? Where? I could look this up, but neither have most of the people taking the poll.
Result: Meh. It's a good idea to develop the technology, I guess. Not especially "green" in implementation, though.
Gaashk
5d ago
Yes, I think in the long term we'll just have to move (and kind of wanted to anyway).
In the meantime, we are extra annoyed that they built a house, and then an unpermitted tiny house (the county apparently doesn't care, we did tell them), and then invited their dysfunctional son into the tiny house with his loud engine, while pregnant with our third child, which has a way of trapping people for a while, and not getting the best sleep to begin with.
I guess now I have something to add to the list of things to look out for when buying a house in the future, anyway.
Gaashk
6d ago
There is an irrigation ditch, owned by the water association, and I could certainly stand in the ditch as he drives past, or in my own driveway, which merges with his, it just doesn't seem very useful. He already knows we don't like it.
Yeah, the sheriff department said that we could try calling their help line each morning, and maybe they'll come check it out. It just seems annoying for both us and them when nothing will probably come of it. They said they can, if they come when he's still here, pull out a decibel counter, if he doesn't notice them and turn it off or something. One time they came to check on him, and he went completely dark and silent for three days, which surprised me and seemed disproportionate.
Gaashk
6d ago
We are exurban, and the houses have moats, in the form of fenced yards with dogs that go all the way around their house, such that there isn't a way to do neighborly things like knock on the person's door and yell at them.
I suppose someone could try sitting in the road, and then they couldn't leave while the person's there without talking to them, but if the sheriff came, it would probably be the the person sitting the road who would be in trouble for it, and the neighbor would just continue their behavior thereafter, nobody's got time to sit in the road each morning even if it's allowed. It's unclear whether the early morning revving is technically illegal or not, since acquiring this neighbor, I have noticed that these vehicles are A Thing, and I hear them every now and again, here and there.
Our neighbor has intentionally altered his car's engine and muffler to emit a loud rumble, more than much larger trucks. He likes turn it on early in the morning and warm it up (when it's about 50f out) for ten minutes, to "go exercise." We have talked with his mother and the sheriff about this, but he hides from us, and will not talk. It bothers my husband more than it does me, I'm a heavier sleeper in general, but waking up to a pissed off husband does bother me a lot.
The internet says we could try playing the rumble all night long from a noise machine, but in addition to not wanting to spend the money, that seems like it would be worse. I don't want to spend the money, then have it be worse.
We could just wake up at that time in general (usually the alarm is set to an hour later), but would continue to feel angry about having to make that change for someone we dislike, so wouldn't help that much.
Any suggestions? Would a cinderblock wall help?
Gaashk
7d ago
No, I don't get it. This is why I don't like postmodern art, I never get the references, or only very fuzzily. It seemed like he was referencing things in "Asteroid City," but that I didn't get it, and also didn't enjoy it.
Gaashk
8d ago
Possibly so, and it's not like it's of no value at all to the girl herself, but it's kind of a mixed value. A girl can play up her sexuality for attention from men, which is exciting but also scary, and many very young women either don't like it, or do things they regret and feel upset about later. Or she can play up her femininity in a modest way, and get protection and help from men, which can be helpful, sure, but to get any kind of lasting social credit, she does also have to act well, for whatever her local social definition of that is.
Gaashk
8d ago
Clearly I described low status behavior, if you immediately assumed I meant underclass. Sure, it might still be less low status than some other ver low status behavior, like being a childless meat packing plant worker or something.
properly raising children as responsible mothers
Which is work carried out intentionally and intelligently over a long period of time. Being a good mother absolutely can confer status on women, though much of that status comes into effect when the children are mostly grown, which is a pretty long deferral period even for most careers. So in the meantime women do a bunch of status signaling around not letting their kids look at screens and other such mommy wars things, which are only able to generate a small amount of status, at large inconvenience.
Personal anecdote: my status dropped a bit upon having children, because previously I had some amount of high openness adventurer and religious adherent status, whereas now I spend all my free time with my family, and I've basically dropped out of all my social organizations for the time being. My status at work went down slightly, especially it's low status to have to return quickly from maternity leave, which I had to do for financial reasons. This seems fairly common among women with young children, the gestating leads to isolation, but good mothering can raise status eventually, if it works out, but since it's dependent on other people, there's always a risk one of the kids will have serious mental health issues outside their parents' control, which will also sink status in a way that's difficult to recover from.
Gaashk
8d ago
This kind of reminds me of the romantic discourse about "careers" and "finding a fulfilling career," as though most people's jobs are so status enhancing. No, most people don't live there. Most girls aren't "born sexy," and even those with favorable genetics can totally make a mess of things if they just go with whatever seems fun and exciting in the moment. "Dr Ana" isn't right, but she's more right than this rubbish about how all women are valued for gestating fetuses, as though women with a bunch of kids and various baby daddies get so much status and respect for their femininity. Because poor, fat, socially inept women get so much respect. No! I hope @HereAndGone2 appears and says something suitably caustic.
Women are, to some extent, admired for different things than men, which can include doing a good job raising children, and can include their beauty, and some of those avenues have deteriorated lately, like the women who host the church socials, but that's a different conversation.
But, sure, just telling boys they should simply adopt female role models if there aren't any good men around isn't going to work, fair enough.
Gaashk
10d ago
268, unlike most in the thread I was strongest in literary, second in aesthetics, and 37th percentile in technical. Very low in cultural.
Gaashk
11d ago
I vaguely remember people making a big deal about China and India both having more than a billion people, and the US having less than half that, which seems at least a bit grounding, and I don't pay close attention to these things.
Gaashk
21d ago
The situation sounds somewhat like the complaint that young teen girls who feel insecure about their appearance go on instagram to see what the norms are, where the algorithm, sensitive to stopping and viewing times, will feed them more and more unattainable images and anorexia content. Whereas it won't show it to their mothers (I have a lot of pretty landscape paintings and handmade historical costumes on Instagram). I can't remember a real person spouting the male collective guilt line, but then I don't linger on such a thing when I find it, so the egrigore doesn't bother feeding me a stream of it.
Gaashk
23d ago
I doubt your description of grief was accurate for most people at any point in history, including now. I know women who were widowed with young children, and in general they don't entirely break down. It's super sucky, yeah. But they work and care for the babies and sometimes move houses and all sorts of functional adult things. This is not on account of not loving their husband! People do all sorts of difficult things, they work in the bottom of mines until they die, too, and fight in the trenches.
In the same societies with high infant mortality, mothers had to nurse their babies basically full time, and also carry them everywhere they went. Helping with the reaping? Carry the baby. Going to bed? With the baby. People talk about babies not having an idea of themselves as separate from their mothers for some time, and the "fourth trimester." Losing an infant would be like a super sucky miscarriage or stillbirth, something modern women do still experience. I know someone who lost her baby at a couple of months old, and she's really upset about it, for sure. She talks about it and posts memorials and raises money for causes that are trying to help babies with similar problems. But, yeah, she did still have to care for her other children and go back to work in a reasonable amount of time.
One thing I think might be more important is that women bearing and losing multiple children is more symmetrical with men fighting in wars (and losing friends, it's not like soldiers at war have a reputation for unusually cold friendships) than with men working jobs, especially office jobs. A society where men fight and possibly die, and women bear and raise children, and possibly die, is tenable. One where men work office jobs and women also work office jobs, but can bear children if they choose, as their hobby, is not tenable at scale (gestures to modern world).
(But all people in previous societies were religious to some extent, which does probably improve purpose and resilience. The woman who lost her baby also talks about wanting to see her baby again in Heaven, which was a big concern, and why Catholics have infant baptism)
Gaashk
29d ago
Yes, I have a lot more sympathy for trying to get parents to not let their kids have smart phones, in comparison with not letting them have computers more generally. I don't want my kids to have smart phones until they're old enough to drive, but we'll see if that ends up working out or not.
Gaashk
29d ago
I've seen that on Youtube, but not Netflix or PBS kids, which is what I'm most familiar with. I've seen a lot of Gabby's Dollhouse lately, which isn't fantastic, but seems reasonably innocuous. Youtube Kids especially seems to be absolute garbage. Octonauts looked fine. I watched a lot of hours of my brother playing Mega Man and Super Mario Brothers as a kid, which was not very productive for sure.
Gaashk
29d ago
My father reports being an introverted child in the 50s and 60s, and spending a fair amount of time literally staring at a wall. Sometimes playing wall ball with himself. My mother had a swimming pool, so was better off. My impression from Southern American writing is that people spent a lot of time squatting beside roads and getting into fights. I suppose it's fair to ask, when doing things through a screen "what's the alternative at this moment?" If the alternative is "get more sleep" or "spend time in the garden," then, certainly, one should go do that.
Gaashk
29d ago
Yes, this is what bothers me.
If I watch shows, do taxes, make arrangements to meet up with friends, learn a craft skill, write an essay, facilitate a video call between my mom and her grandchildren, and troll my outgoup, all on screens, then I should probably also go touch grass or something, but some of those are way more subject to overuse than others.
The algorithm discourse bothers me less, I am more concerned about my children seeing wildly different content than me on the same platform.
Gaashk
29d ago
Yeah, I think it's very difficult to implement policies from the company side. Davidson said that he thought it was utterly insane that families in the 90s bought computers and connected them to the internet at all, but as I say, he was on a podcast and published a book, so how extreme could he really be in that respect?
Instagram is interesting, because it shows different faces to different people. Also on Maiden Mother Matriarch, Jean Twenge was talking about how it conforms to the insecurities of girls, especially, but an adult might get a totally acceptable Instagram feed. My feed is a couple of IRL friends, a bunch of totally normal art, and some costumes, but I didn't have an account until I was almost 30. AI also sees extremely sensitive to phrasing, so if you write to it as an adult who's trying to get something done, it will be your colleague, but it's hard to pretend to be someone else effectively enough to guess how it will respond to them.
Smallish but historical cities of the Southwest.
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