2rafa
2d ago
Perma DST is preferable in northern climes because
-
Almost nobody (save for a few joggers) is out enjoying the additional hour of sunshine. In many places, like Northern Europe and much of Canada, people are already at work when it gets light even with DST. Meanwhile, many more people (those who work early shift, kids getting off school, people who have half an hour to go out for a coffee at 4pm, students, NEETs and those retirees who wake up late anyway) are available later in the afternoon to enjoy the extra daylight.
The real reason permanent DST won’t be rolled out is because of the risk of kids getting run over or moms crashing on the way to school in the dark. That is the sole reason and it’s why politicians are scared of it.
-
Perma non-DST is extremely dumb for the reason you mention.
2rafa
2d ago
What’s the endgame? I don’t think I’m blinded by my small existence, I think they’re blinded by science fiction; they fantasize about playing golf on an alien world with candy cotton trees, about going on space liners around the rings of Saturn, about going where no man has gone before. They imagine a universe of earth-like worlds with breathable atmospheres, each full of its own mysteries, cultures, fertile soil for new civilizational growth. Is it they who are lying to themselves. Space is a black void. It is strictly worse than earth in every way. Better to be done with the delusion now (which, again, is not to say I’m against exploring it, only doing so honestly).
2rafa
2d ago
Except that I’d guess 100 years ago parents spent way less personal ‘emotional’ time with kids, kids were much more independent, were raised by neighborhood older figures in informal crèches until they were old enough to play by themselves, whereupon they did so until they went to school, which they did until they had to work and/or get married. The sentimental, schmaltzy suburban model of parenting where mom actually spends hours every day with her kids above the age of 3 or 4 is the new thing. I think there are a lot of big failure modes when parents spend too much time with their children; they should love them, but not be too close.
2rafa
2d ago
But why, though? The US was and is better in a lot of ways than Europe (more arable land, great scenery, natural resources). What does space have over earth? The view?
Habitation on Mars would be in radiation shielded bunkers underground, how is that even comparable to living on earth?
2rafa
3d ago
The best and most charitable way of defending Kinkade (or indeed Ross) is that he allowed people to yearn for beauty that he didn’t deliver, but came close enough to to be appealing to people’s base aesthetic sensibilities.
It reminds me of @orthoxerox ‘s suggestion that McMansions look weird because they’re a collection of room that have historic / classical architectural elements like ornate gables and columns and decorative elements draped over them in a garish and jarring way. They lack the symmetricity and sense(s) of scale, proportion and place that the classical architects, aspects of whose styles they copy, had.
The same is true about Kinkade. He is a poor artist, independently of style. His proportions are off, his raw technical ability lacking, his understanding of color nonsensical or zero (pick one). But in his images his customers found something pleasing to their base instincts. Sure, they could buy a print of a romantic landscape made with technical skill, but that wasn’t as easily found and marketed in the mall. Kinkade was there, nobody else was.
It reminds me of architectural critics’ mockery of really ugly and misproportioned attempts at “modern classical” architecture, like Poundbury or a lot of Robert Stern stuff. And sure, most of their criticisms of kitschiness and an absolute lack of understanding of a lot of classical proportionality are valid. But by God, they’re trying. The criticism is, in almost all cases, aimed at the idea rather than the outcome, when what the customer really desires is a better classical (or in the case of Kinkade, idyllic / quasi-realistic / pastoral scenes) product.
2rafa
3d ago
People on that Reddit are especially stupid. On the UKpolitics subreddit there was some good discussion about UK’s fiscal situation and some actually highly upvoted replies saying that the 20% band should be raised to 30% and the personal allowance should probably fall to the ~£8k range.
I respect the ambition of conquering space, but I think there’s also a clear and unspoken disconnect between what’s promised - which is a kind of romantic, sci-fi version of the age of exploration - and the reality.
There are no planets we’ve ever found that can likely support human habitation without terraforming. Certainly nowhere else in the solar system would support human habitation without terraforming, which mostly involves hypothetical technology and would take thousands of years, just to end up with a worse version of what we already have. What’s more, a multiplanetary species would likely still be at risk of pandemics / MAD / extinction-risk events. Sure, an asteroid can’t destroy us, but most other extinction scenarios would still be viable.
There is no major viable route to other habitable planets; we’d need to send probes to find them first, and we can’t do that at speeds fast enough to make that kind of search viable. Even if one was miraculously found, it would require thousands of years on a generation ship (involving mountains of uninvented and possibly impossible technology) or cryostasis (see above) to make work.
I’m all for exploring space, but I’m also 99% certain that human civilization, whatever becomes of it, will be tied to earth as the center of its story from beginning to end.
Sam Kriss is a notorious blowhard, but on just one thing, he was prescient:
Humanity will never colonize Mars, never build moon bases, never rearrange the asteroids, never build a sphere around the sun.
There will never be faster-than-light travel. We will not roam across the galaxy. We will not escape our star.
Life is probably an entirely unexceptional phenomenon; the universe probably teems with it. We will never make contact. We will never fuck green-skinned alien babes.
The human race will live and die on this rock, and after we are gone something else will take our place. Maybe it already has, without our even noticing.
If your response to this is to post the NYT quote from the early 1900s about man not flying for a thousand years, then I care not to argue.
Space is a black void with a few resources we can mostly find on earth. It can never replace the Wild West, the frontier. It is empty, and it can never be home to us. This is where we have evolved to live, and to die.
2rafa
3d ago
I think that was more true when I came to the UK in 2016. It feels like today there’s increasing acceptance that the mythic “tax the rich” well is not as deep or as well-supplied as it seemed during Occupy or even upon Corbyn’s Labour leadership election victory.
You’ve got things precisely in reverse. The best thing about socialized healthcare is that people know exactly who to blame: themselves. For example, in the UK, Canada and elsewhere there is widespread acceptance that, where the healthcare system fails, it fails because there isn’t enough money, and that’s that.
No Brit is assassinating an NHS official because of a lack of care, because they know that the money for great service doesn’t exist. A “denial” or a “delay” is the fault of anyone who doesn’t want vastly higher taxes, ie. almost everyone. People occasionally complain about bureaucratic managers, but the real reason is obvious. There are no villains, just hard financial reality.
In America, the private system means people can blame “greedy” capitalists for this kind of thing, instead of looking inward. Nobody has to confront that fact that paying $1m/year so some old person can live another year in extreme pain is actually a terrible deal (not to mention cruel), any denials or issues are just the fault of muh corporate greed.
The US system therefore allows for an endless pity party that, when it meets listless and likely mentally ill young men, results in actual violence.
2rafa
3d ago
Yes, because of the sexual revolution. Whether that was or remains in women’s interest is a different question entirely.
2rafa
4d ago
The majority of people who watched Jersey Shore did so "ironically", self-consciously. They outnumbered the people who watched the show "uncritically" by a significant margin.
Is this the case, really? The vast majority of people who watch trashy reality TV - the Kardashians, Real Housewives of X, 90 Day Fiancé - certainly don’t do so “ironically”.
It happens a handful of times a year for people who are usually elite figures in surgical and clinical specialties, for example the surgical director of a top UK hospital trust hired to run a similarly-sized team in the US (who, for reputation’s sake, is still expected to do some surgery/clinical work on the side), or a renowned psychiatrist hired by a US university/teaching hospital whose application is obviously expedited for similar reasons.
For any normal senior doctor they will in 99% of cases have to redo residency unless they’re a global figure of import, presenting in top slots at the bigger international conferences in their field and have a lot of people on side in the US.
So sure, if you’re a towering figure in ophthalmology and are friends with half the people on the leadership committee of the American Board of Ophthalmology or whatever and get hired for a top position at a hospital in NYC or LA then you can probably skip it and they’ll wave you through. Otherwise, the possibility of an exemption is a myth.
2rafa
4d ago
I don’t think anyone who isn’t an eccentric academic wears bow ties that aren’t black tie or (once or twice in a lifetime, unless you’re the king) white tie. But I didn’t think it was a formal rule that you couldn’t wear a bow tie during the day.
One sad casualty of progress I’ve noticed is that pinstripes have essentially entirely vanished from the City. They were rare pre-COVID, but are now a legacy product.
2rafa
4d ago
I guess they’re mixed-race white and Indian, but I’ll leave deeper classification to the genetics forum nerds.
2rafa
4d ago
Medical school students who start at 18 in other countries still have a “college experience”, they’re still on campus, can still party, join clubs, whatever, they’re just doing a more intense course.
2rafa
5d ago
By the way, and I truly am sorry if you’ve gotten that impression, I have a great deal of respect for doctors. I think you do a great job, and I think you should be well-paid for it. And and, I think doctors’ pay is only one part of the issue with the US system’s immense inefficiencies, of which a great deal can be laid at the feet of Congress, insurance companies (not out of ‘evil’ or even the profit motive, but just because of the perverse regulatory and incentive environment they’ve been out in), the way big pharma is funded and to some extent the tragedy of the commons.
My only real ‘thought’ on doctor pay is that we should have more doctors. Let’s train them, let’s import them (from native english-speaking countries with decent standards, like our peers in the anglosphere), let’s do whatever it takes to increase residency spaces. And let’s make residency easier, let’s limit medical liability to bring down the ridiculous cost of malpractice insurance, let’s make medicine an undergraduate course like it is elsewhere so doctors don’t have to waste four years and more money going into debt.
But yes, ultimately, let’s work to bring down some salary costs. Is that so unreasonable?
2rafa
5d ago
The way to filter out strivers is extreme classism of the old-school sort. Gate professions by last name, by prep school, by who your father is friends with and you keep the scummy, first-generation strivers with their bad manners and grubby hands out.
This system is actually ideal. It doesn’t preclude class movement, it just requires that it be a multi-generational project. By the time new money is accepted into the striver jobs, the kids are as accustomed to success and fat and lazy from it as everyone else.
2rafa
5d ago
No not really, we aren’t a large enough slice of the pie and you’d cause a shit ton of new problems. We’ve already seen this a bit. More people are working part time, quitting, dropping out of residency, graduating from medical school and not doing medicine, not providing certain types of services or working in certain locations. That’s with a modest decline in salary and things like an increase in administrative burden and a decline in respect. This would shoot up if you dramatically cut salaries.
Yeah, this is the eternal threat, right? But ok, what are these people going to do? How many jobs in America are there that pay as much as medicine and aren’t ’top of the corporate pile after a 40 year career’ type jobs?
Very, very few.
A few jobs in big tech. A few jobs in front office high finance. A few jobs in big law. A relative handful in (other) professional services.
None of those professions have medicine-tier job security. All of them (save maybe big tech) have very long hours. All of them are ultra-competitive.
Doctors on the internet always seem to assume they could be investment bankers or deepmind engineers instead, but I don’t think they could. The truth is that medicine is a lot less competitive and more midwit than most of these jobs. Plus, most of these jobs have an extreme up-or-out career progression that medicine just doesn’t have. Of a thousand junior investment bankers at Goldman Sachs who already passed an application process with a 1% acceptance rate, how many become managing directors or seniors in PE? Maybe thirty or forty. Most end up failing out into comfortable PMC professions, often paid less than many medical specialties and again still with far, far less job security.
Plus, there’s status. Nobody in modern American society has higher status than doctors, not billionaires and certainly not bankers, lawyers or engineers. That also has value - socially and for one’s own ego - that can’t be measured solely in pecuniary terms.
Even if medicine paid half as much there would still be doctors. There are still huge numbers of bright eyed, intelligent college students with elite credentials who want to be journalists.
2rafa
5d ago
It could be that this same issue is just an order of magnitude worse in the United States than elsewhere, though then I'd want to go a step further and look for the cause of that discrepancy.
The reason the US is in a worse place is actually extremely simple - the requirement that foreign doctors redo residency to practice in the US. Australia and the UK both import many doctors from overseas.
2rafa
6d ago
Promiscuity is probably harmful psychologically, but just as there are plenty of alcoholic men who can nevertheless find an attractive wife, there are plenty of very promiscuous women who - despite having engaged in activity that is probably harmful to their mental health - marry well, as those examples show.
A man would rather a virgin than a harlot, but the beautiful promiscuous woman rarely has issue finding suitable men, if she wants.
There simply is no logical argument for why seed oils are uniquely bad for you to an extent that justifies online hysteria. You would think they were on the level of smoking two packs a day.
More options
Context Copy link