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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2351 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 28, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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This isn't really a question. Would you mind dropping it in the main thread?

Does anyone else remember how, in the 2016 election, there was this one weird poll that constantly showed an edge for Trump while all the others showed Hillary winning easily? The LA Times Tracking poll. Here's what it looked like at the end: https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2016/trump-vs-clinton but IIRC it was almost always like that.

Whatever happened with that? Did they just... stop doing that poll? I can't find any current polling results from the LA Times or USC. IIRC they had a weird format where, instead of polling different each week, they polled the same people over and over. It sounds dumb but somehow it ended up working, so I'm surprised that it just went quietly went away and no other polling group tried to copy their methods.

Also IIRC their poll gave Trump a much larger amount of support from black voters specifically, but it was literally just one black guy in their sample group who really loved Trump. But I can't find any sources for that now- am I just hallucinating all of this? Or has Google memory-holed all of this?

Does anyone have any experience subscribing to a private Plex server to get access to movies or shows? I’ve been messing around with IPTV over the last few weeks, but I think a private Plex server will suit my needs better.

I'd like to know too as I'm surviving off public trackers like torrentgalaxy, but I'm starting to get sick of the upkeep of trying to keep my downloads hygienic and sourcing good quality torrents. Something like plex might suit my needs if it works for a reasonable price.

Netflix's library just can't compare to private servers.

What gardening plants/projects/techniques have high value per effort? Now that I'm married and we have our own place I actually have control over a garden rather than helping with my parents as I did growing up. I'm fairly picky about what foods I like to eat, but there's still a wide range within that, and my wife is less picky, so we have a vegetable garden with a bunch of stuff. We also recently got a variety of berry bushes we are trying to go, and I'm experimenting with growing potatoes in cloth bags. So right now we have a bunch of different plants and I don't especially know any of the details about which ones like what conditions or what makes the difference between a mediocre yield and a good yield. We put down mulch to help block weeds, and a wire fence to keep out critters, but aside from that, what are things I can do that are especially beneficial relative to their effort and cost? Also, which plants give disproportionately high value relative to their effort to grow? For context, I am in the northeast U.S. with a relatively unshaded yard, at least where the garden is, and partially clay-ish soil.

Wish I could give you more concrete advice, but I'm on the opposite side of the country, on sandy soil, and in a much milder winter climate.

For me all the brassicas are a staple all year round. You can't beat good broccoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, etc. (collard in winter).
It never goes below 10F here, so it's all easy to keep alive with only the most sensitive stuff in a cold frame. I've had spinach come back up from under 2' of snow, but if there's a killer frost before the snow it'll kill anything outside a frame. New england winters sound much harsher, so your window is probably limited there.

Green beans are essential in summer. Squash is fun just to watch it spread. Tomatoes... Eh, they never seem worth the effort for how little I actually eat them, although seeding a few golden cherry types near the house makes a wonderful snack.

Garlic is one of the better things you can grow almost anywhere. Just make sure to get a good hardneck that bulbs on your long summer days. Mine just came out and is hanging in the shed, wonderful crop this year.

Potatoes are fun and easy. I actually just stick them in a trench on a bed and hill them up. This year I grew a few hundred pound in a compost trench that's going to take a screening hedge this fall. Lots of stuff loves growing directly on a compost pile.

I'm very against mulching tbh. In spring it leaves your undersoil cold and harbors insects. In summer it soaks up any rain and water and evaporates it off without it getting into the soil. Here people use either bare dirt or black plastic mulch, which is absolutely great.
Somebody convinced me to try a woodchip-heavy mulch in one area this year, and I have a pic somewhere of a chard plant totally skeletonized by woodlice.

Speaking of cold frames, they're the most time and cost-effective way to do any cold weather gardening. Even in the summer they're great for starting your winter veg under insect mesh. Mine are full of the final batch of tray-seeded brassicas to go in before the final direct-seeding of spinach.

Imo the real value in a garden is always having something you can just go get for dinner. A lot of people grow way too much in summer and get bored of picking and pickling it or whatever. Cottagecore women especially tire of it quickly.
Better to have a bunch of fast cabbage in the spring and winter than a giant crop of useless football-sized sauerkraut stuff in August.

Oh, and fuck raised beds, especially the silly wooden ones. Zero point, active detriment, God knows why people do it.

One last thing: it sounds like you've already picked a spot, but I found out too late that sun isn't the only important factor in location. I have a tiny 12x12' secondary garden uphill now, which gets much less light in summer due to east+west tree shading, but stays 5-10F warmer than my valley garden during winter (and gets almost as much light due to sunrise/set being further south).
It's great for keeping broccoli going in the heat of summer too.

Thirding the expensive/delicious/rare criteria.

I really enjoy eating berries off the bush, so if it's something you enjoy, plant some blackberries, raspberries, gooseberries, hardy kiwis, blueberries (I think blackcurrants are illegal in the US). They don't require much care beyond pruning and maybe covering them for the winter. And protecting them from the goddamn birds.

If you're somewhere like Vermont or NH, then it's a bit cold for growing real damn good tomatoes, but you can still try.

We got some pretty good tomatoes last year, but the whole garden seems to be floundering this year (except cucumbers which are doing great) and I'm not sure why. It's in the exact same spot with approximately the same weather, though maybe we haven't paid as much attention to watering it on hot days as last year.

I've never heard that about black currants. I just googled it, and it looks like it used to be illegal but they lifted the ban in the early 2000s since better anti-fungal stuff has come out and they're less of a threat to trees now. But they're still really rare due to having been banned for so long. I didn't even know black currants existed until I started looking to buy berry bushes last year.

If you're somewhere like Vermont or NH, then it's a bit cold for growing real damn good tomatoes, but you can still try.

Fedco seeds is based in Maine and they sell some varieties that are adapted to growing in cooler weather (still not frost-tolerant, of course). I think Cosmonaut Volkov is a pretty decent variety.

Seconding the "expensive, delicious, and/or rare" thing. There's a reason that tomatoes are a classic home gardener crop: good tomatoes are so much better than what you can find in the grocery that they are basically two different things, and getting the good stuff from a farmer's market is expensive. Berries are also a great choice, though I will warn you that you probably want to invest in some bird netting or you are likely to get most of your crop stolen (by the birds, I mean).

Some other considerations include whether you are more limited on space or time, and to what extent "fun to grow" is important. If you are space limited and just want good bang for your buck, potatoes are a terrible choice; if you are not space limited and want something easy and fun, potatoes are pretty cool; they don't require much maintenance, and digging for buried treasure at the end of the season is great fun (or at least it was when I was a kid; I've been space-limited as an adult, so...).

Like potatoes, onions, carrots, and other cheap stuff that keeps well are not great choices unless you really have fun with them. Greens (lettuce, cabbage, spinach) are really situational; how bad a problem you have with insects can make or break you. Cucurbits are pretty fun, though I'd go for summer squash / zucchini and cucumbers rather than winter squash, as the risks are higher and relative returns lower for winter squash. I liked growing green beans and snow peas, but YMMV there. Both hot and sweet peppers, if you like them, are, like tomatoes, a great choice. Tomatillos are great fun too, but you need to be a little more careful as they don't self-pollinate and need to be picked before they are ripe.

One thing that might not be obvious is how much the variety you plant can matter. Don't just get stuff off the shelf at Home Depot for most things. If you want to eat fresh green beans, get something good like Fortex instead of whatever the big box store sells. Do your research on tomato varieties and select for the things most important to you. There are a million cool hot pepper varieties that you can pretty much only get from specialty stores; you don't have to grow only jalapenos and banana peppers. In general, starting things from seed is a lot of fun and opens up a world of varieties that you'll never see if you buy starts.

As far as other things to do:

  • Fertilize (but you already know this). Compost is great because it also provides organic matter, but cheap granular fertilizer will do in a pinch.
  • Tomato cages are for dwarf varieties and determinates only, and even then I'm skeptical. Otherwise you want stakes (ideally 6ft) or a tall fence to tie them to. You don't need to aggressively prune your tomatoes, but you do need to keep them off the ground.
  • If you have something you would like to grow, look up information about it online -- at your local agricultural extension, not random gardener tips pages (the latter contain nonsense as well as good advice, and take effort to filter). This will tell you more, and more accurately, about what you need to do for the particular plant than some rando can.

My stance is that you should grow things that are expensive, delicious, and/or rare. You shouldn't grow things that are cheap and abundant unless you're trying to be self-sufficient. So don't grow onions and potatoes, do grow soft fruits, fresh herbs, and/or varieties that can't be bought. Throw in some cut flowers too if you like. For pure disproportionately high value to effort it has to be perennial herbs or a mature nut tree. Whatever you choose try to choose your varieties so that they cover early, mid and late season instead of having a glut that lasts two weeks and then nothing for a year.

It's a lot of work up front, and potentially not feasible if you don't have a blank canvas, but I think one of the best investments you can make is to really thoroughly prepare the ground. Ideally you want it to be nice soft fertile material that you can easily dig down to at least 6". It makes everything afterwards much easier and more productive. I suppose the short cut there is getting a pig to dig the ground over while it fertilises it for you. Likewise chickens make for near autonomous organic slug control.

I'd guess that the single highest value per effort is probably in choosing the right plants. If you can find plants that thrive in your garden you'll get a much better result for less effort than any amount of techno-fixes being spent on the wrong plant.

I'd guess that the single highest value per effort is probably in choosing the right plants. If you can find plants that thrive in your garden you'll get a much better result for less effort than any amount of techno-fixes being spent on the wrong plant.

How do I figure that out? Do I try to google a database for what plants grow optimally in my region? Or do I have to trial and error if soil quality and sunlight amounts vary enough such that my yard is somewhat unique?

Bottom line is it's always trial and error to a degree, but you'd be foolish not to do the basic book research first. There'll be a database somewhere with climate zones and the corresponding plants/crops/varieties because it's such a perennial concern. If you wanted a better answer than I can give you maybe try looking for a local horti/agricultural college with a friendly librarian. Printed seed catalogues from local vendors are good too and probably a more user friendly format than an online catalogue as they offer more discoverability than a janky proprietary search engine, plus you know they'll be available to buy instead of reading up in a book or blog that you found via Google about what sounds like a perfect plant and then finding that the only people who sell seeds are on a different continent and want $30 for postage of a $2 pack of seeds.

If you wanted to do things The Proper Way you'd start by doing a survey of your plot for soil composition, temps, rainfall, sun/shade aspects etc before even planning what to plant but that might not be practical if you're working around an existing set of planting - it's not worth ripping out a mature ornamental tree just to vacate the best spot for heirloom cabbages. USDA zones are the baseline, you can probably find a map that will show you your average last frost date too.

In common sense terms though it's more like don't get carried away and decide that mangoes, avocadoes and vanilla pods are delicious and expensive so they'd make good home growers. You potentially could techno-fix them so that they would grow (heated glasshouse, supplemental lights, irrigation, frost protection, humming bird mimicry hand pollination, etc) but it will always be more trouble than it's worth. At the other end of the scale for instance where I live blackberries grow like a weed, so although I could grow them very easily I can just as easily gather them from any number of field hedges should I choose to while at home I cultivate tayberries (a raspberry x blackberry hybrid) that I've never seen for sale in a shop. All I do is prune it once a year and it grows so well that the only care it needs is tying up to train and support it.

I don't actually have a lot of experience growing for the table/pantry, I mostly grow ornamentals on a casual sink-or-swim basis, I just get a bit vexed when I see people getting into grow-your-own and they spend their time and resources growing basic staples in a plot too small to ever achieve a fraction of self sufficiency. I like carrots as much as the next man but I can buy a whole bag of them for 50p any day of the year. I like strawberries too, but even at soft fruit farms I've never seen alpine strawberries for sale. They're too small to be remotely economical commercially, but they're so good that they're worth growing at home alongside or even instead of a higher yielding variety.

at home I cultivate tayberries (a raspberry x blackberry hybrid) that I've never seen for sale in a shop

The berry farms that visit my local farmers market had these, and Loganberries, which are similar, for a few weeks. This week they were back to black/blue/rasp/straw. Although I have also seen black cap raspberries, which are slightly more exotic.

I highly recommend thimbleberries. They are much too delicate to ever be commercially viable, and they are incredibly delicious.

Do I try to google a database for what plants grow optimally in my region?

Yes, USDA zones are a good start.

What's the correct amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Let's say that you could set the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by simply twisting a dial. What do you set the dial at? Here are some options:

  • 172 ppm : 800,000 million years ago. Glaciers cover Washington DC and Paris.
  • 280 ppm : 1750 AD on the verge of the Industrial Revolution
  • 350 ppm : Late 1980s
  • 425 ppm : Modern estimate
  • 1600 ppm : Eocene period, 50 million years ago. Tropical conditions prevail over the entire Earth.

You might be tempted to set the level at the pre-industrial level. But the climate back then was rather non-ideal. The Earth was in the depths of the Little Ice Age. The Thames river often froze. And, with this level of carbon, the return of another true ice age would be almost certain.

If I had control now, I'd probably set it at 400. But I think the ideal level for human habitation of the Earth is somewhat higher. The problem of course, is that there's no way to get from here to there without massive ecological disruption.

Doesn't it just depend on where you want to live? If you want to live in northern Canada then sure, bring on the global warning! But that would also make places like the middle east, India, and Southeast Asia unbearable to live in. And those places all have a lot more people in them than Northern Canada.

What were the levels in the Carboniferous? Because I would set them to this value.

175–600 ppm according to Wikipedia.

Any reason for that being the ideal level?

I want massive flying insects. I guess the oxygen levels would have to be higher for that as well.

Maybe he wants to have abundance for all?

The problem of course, is that there's no way to get from here to there without massive ecological disruption.

Is that true? I'm not sure. It would probably depend on how much higher "somewhat higher" is and how quickly one wants to turn the dial. Rates are probably the single most important thing in many of these conversations, and they're often the things that are most poorly investigated/understood.

I'm not sure if this is going to get any eyeballs here, but I don't think a short post asking a question is appropriate for the CW thread.

Is there an overview of Gamergate anywhere, from the pro-Gamergate side? The anti-Gamergate view is readily available on Wikipedia. (I hope I'm using pro- and anti- right.)

In particular:

  • What concerns were there about "ethics in gaming journalism"?
  • What is the response to "Grayson never actually reviewed any of Quinn's games, and his only Kotaku article mentioning them was published before their relationship began"?
  • Was the claim of a conflict of interest really based on a typo in "The Zoe Post"? What is the response to this revelation?
  • How did Sarkeesian and Wu get involved? What is their relation to "ethics in gaming journalism"?
  • Was there really pre-existing seething from gamers about Depression Quest that motivated Gamergate? What was that about?
  • What is the response to the harassment Quinn, Sarkeesian and Wu received?

I wrote a four-part post here about exactly this a while ago, with a focus on the Grayson/Quinn conflict of interest, and some of my responses in the thread address the pro-GG response to harassment. For bonus points, I have also summarised cases of unethical conduct among the anti-GG side here, for example an instance where they rallied around a known pedophile in their ranks.

God fucking damnit, I got so much shit for writing these. Who's laughing now?

Thanks, this is exactly what I was looking for. There was a conflict of interest after all!

Those IRC logs don't really exonerate Gamergaters, though. The people there are openly talking about sharing Quinn's nudes. I thought these were supposed to be the non-harassers? Gjoni himself condemns it, but the rest of the server seems fine with it. Sharing her nudes is clearly harassment, and if they're doing this, how do we know they aren't engaging in all the other forms of harassment she received?

And another question, if you don't mind: what is the timeline on the Grayson/Quinn conflict of interest? Did people first believe she traded sex for positive coverage, and only when this turned out to be false did they find out about their prior (non-sexual) relationship, by going through their Twitters? When did each of these events occur?

Also, do you know how Sarkeesian and Wu got involved? Wikipedia places them right next to Quinn as victims of Gamergate, but as far as I can tell, there were no allegations of unethical behaviour on their part. According to Wikipedia, Wu was targeted "as retaliation for mocking Gamergate", while Sarkeesian was targeted because people didn't like Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. Would proponents of Gamergate consider these harassment campaigns unrelated to Gamergate?

Edit: I'm going through the /r/kotakuinaction stuff, it might have the answers to my questions, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

I wrote a long response, then I accidentally erased all of my progress. Now I'm writing it again.

Those IRC logs don't really exonerate Gamergaters, though. The people there are openly talking about sharing Quinn's nudes. I thought these were supposed to be the non-harassers? Gjoni himself condemns it, but the rest of the server seems fine with it.

The user discussing sharing Quinn's nudes in that IRC chat log is mainly SweetJBro, and you can see many other participants in the server objecting to the idea. Such as this entire block of text from the chat logs:

Aug 18 17.42.01 SaladCream Posting the nudes wouldn't be productive

Aug 18 17.42.11 VidyaBro saladcream is right

Aug 18 17.42.14 Geno_ Yeah but we need to put her as the villain

Aug 18 17.42.16 Geno_ not the victim

Aug 18 17.42.19 cuteGamrgrll doin' it indiscriminately might be a little reckless though.

Aug 18 17.42.22 Geno_ Otherwise it won't work

Aug 18 17.42.25 cuteGamrgrll GET THIS HOT HEAD OUTTA HERE

Aug 18 17.42.34 BurgerKing Don't forget

Aug 18 17.42.41 BurgerKing You post those nudes she can go to that pax panel

Aug 18 17.42.44 VidyaBro we can always save the nudes for an encyclopediadramatica page

Aug 18 17.42.48 BurgerKing and make us look like the bad guys

This certainly isn't a case of "coordinated harassment through IRC", as anti-GGs tend to describe it.

Sharing her nudes is clearly harassment, and if they're doing this, how do we know they aren't engaging in all the other forms of harassment she received?

Given the size of GamerGate, and given how prominent and hot-button GamerGate was at the time, there are almost certainly a non-zero amount of GamerGaters who would've harassed Quinn in some capacity. The question is whether or not GamerGate tried to police itself, and there are multiple instances of them making attempts to do so. I'm not saying they were all Literally Angels, I'm saying that the description of them as a "harassment campaign" is inaccurate.

And another question, if you don't mind: what is the timeline on the Grayson/Quinn conflict of interest? Did people first believe she traded sex for positive coverage, and only when this turned out to be false did they find out about their prior (non-sexual) relationship, by going through their Twitters? When did each of these events occur?

I believe initially the typo in Gjoni's post making it seem like they were on break between March and June, instead of May and June, led people to believe that Grayson and Quinn were having sex while he was giving her positive coverage, outlined by this Internet Aristocrat video called "Quinnspiracy Theory". I don't believe the idea of sex for positive coverage has actually been conclusively refuted with this new timeline though. Putting the sex a few days after the coverage doesn't necessarily make it any less transactional.

Regardless of whether they were wrong or right about that initial detail, they uncovered a conflict of interest - in fact many, across the industry. They might not have been right about every detail (4chan/8chan shitposters aren't the most rigorous people), but they were right enough, and right about a lot of things that people would really have wanted to deny.

Also, do you know how Sarkeesian and Wu got involved? Wikipedia places them right next to Quinn as victims of Gamergate, but as far as I can tell, there were no allegations of unethical behaviour on their part. According to Wikipedia, Wu was targeted "as retaliation for mocking Gamergate", while Sarkeesian was targeted because people didn't like Tropes vs. Women in Video Games. Would proponents of Gamergate consider these harassment campaigns unrelated to Gamergate?

Off the top of my head I can't tell you about Wu, but I can about Sarkeesian. GamerGate partially originated because of the reaction to the uncovering of these conflicts of interest, specifically the infamous "Gamers are dead" articles that appeared en masse after Quinn started getting flack. One of the most famous ones was written by Leigh Alexander, a journalist who likely knew Quinn in some capacity beforehand (given the twitter logs). As a result GamerGate ended up not just being about conflicts of interest; at least part of GamerGate was about the idea of gaming being gatekept by progressive cliques who were completely contemptuous of your average game consumer, and who would dishonestly use accusations of racism and sexism and other such tactics as a method of both deflecting from their own failures and enforcing their preferred sets of norms upon an unwilling consumer base. Sarkeesian's grifting was sufficiently egregious and also sufficiently related to this phenomenon for it to become a hot topic among GamerGaters. I also recall that it was claimed that threats that Sarkeesian got even before GamerGate was even really a thing was "GamerGate harassment", even though this was effectively evidence-less, with Anita herself trying to retroactively contextualise her harassers as being GGers, and this shaming tactic also helped pull her into GG's ambit.

Sarkeesian wasn't even a fan of video games. She claimed to be a gigantic consumer of games since she was young, several times. Then people discovered a lecture where she was caught explicitly saying that she didn't really like them. The pro-Sarkeesian crowd tried to spin this as her being a "casual" fan who didn't base a significant portion of her personality on being a fan of videogames. But that was absolutely and demonstrably not the way she advertised herself before.

People in gaming don't tend to take very kindly to moral scolds who attempt to force their own sensibilities upon a community they're not part of. What Anita Sarkeesian experienced here is... fairly normal, and the main unique thing was her insistence that she had been uniquely victimised because of her sex. Look at the case of Jack Thompson, a fervent critic of video games and their supposed ability to cause violence, as another example. The main difference is that Thompson was derided by pretty much everyone with articles in Ars Technica and Engadget advocating you make a Thompson lookalike in Mortal Kombat and beat him (his avatar) up, whereas Sarkeesian ended up overshooting her funding goals by several orders of magnitude because of the sympathy drummed up for her.

And to risk sounding like a broken record, there was certainly harassment against Sarkeesian, but the harassment against her mostly didn't come from GamerGate, and in fact there were instances where GamerGaters attempted to oust people who were sending threats to Sarkeesian, something which even Kotaku admitted to. GamerGate certainly didn't like her and gave her a lot of shit for her actions, but saying negative or even unpleasant things about her isn't automatically harassment.

EDIT: added more

Is there an overview of Gamergate anywhere, from the pro-Gamergate side?

The sidebar and wiki of /r/kotakuinaction appear to contain links to several summaries.

Are modern military logistics really an example of a successful socialist system in action, as some left-wing individuals on Twitter like to argue?

You can look up "war communism", Trotsky had basically that exist idea and it failed miserably.

Military logistics are not an example of socialism. They are an example of central planning.

You can have capitalist central planning- dirigism, for instance.

It all depends on what you want your 'system' to accomplish. Militaries have reasonably well-defined goals, to "kill people and break stuff". They do a great job at that, and an okay-ish job at managing the logistics to support said goals. Their primary concern in the logistics effort is not actually efficiency; it's resiliency to adversary action. Efficiency is a secondary goal, which can become more of a focus against an adversary that can't suitably contest it (for example, Iraq was unable to significantly contest US logistics to build up theater forces in the run up to either Gulf War). Even then, it's not entirely clear what the measures of efficiency are/were.

If you include the procurement process as part of the entire system, things are even more muddy. Obviously, it doesn't help that any such procurement is also pointedly subject to adversarial pressures (in other words, adversaries are always trying to invest in ways specifically to make your investment worthless), but even not considering the adversarial piece, it's still kind of a mess. One of the best tables I've ever seen was in a document that was doing a retrospective on the air war in Gulf War I. It had a list of 'newfangled' weapons systems in one column, another column with quotes from the manufacturer's documentation about how it was designed to perform (for example, "all-weather, night, ..."), and then a third column detailing how it actually performed. It was pretty eye-opening for why military brass has a love/hate relationship with procurement; they want the shiny new stuff with the fancy capabilities, but they also don't really trust that all that shiny new stuff is actually going to work in practice.

But all of that is a bit of an aside, because fundamentally, what we're looking for out of an economic system rather than a military one is a system that provides the goods/services that general consumers want. One might still question whether that's actually what we want, but that's the typical goal. One example of tensions here is the question of whether what people happen to want actually trades off with some 'higher' goal. In the military space, an example would be, "Yes, we know that people (soldiers) seem to want one thing, but this other thing will definitely, absolutely be better at winning the war," with a simple example being something like the [CONTROVERSY ALERT, but Sagan, why is this still that much of a controversy...] the A-10. It's a thing where there are tons of people who say they want it, but TPTB are basically stepping in and saying, "No. You may want it, but we are really really sure that the way to actually win the damn war is to not give you what you want." But you can already see the fundamental tension here between needing to have a set of TPTB who are capable of making such a determination, free enough of all sorts of shitty political/other influences that result in actually terrible imposed decision-making.

Most free-marketers will say that this tension is even worse for a general economic system, and that we simply have no way of appointing a group of TPTB who can actually make those value judgments for society in a neutral, dispassionate way to optimize some relatively well-defined goal, because there are extreme difficulties in every step of that process. This challenge is considered an unfortunately mostly-unavoidable problem for the military, but a death knell for socialist economics, mostly because we have an alternative that completely avoids that problem. Then, in my mind, it really comes down to how much you personally believe that there actually is one or more very well-defined, very discrete problems in the economic system that admit a public choice-constrained solution to come in and declare, "No. You may want it, but we are really really sure that the way to actually accomplish [insert some description of some hopefully-somewhat-agreed-upon value here] is to do this instead."

wait I want to read 4 more paragraphs on the A-10!

Yes, centrally planned militaries have outcompeted all other types of military organisation. The market can outcompete the state on many things but the monopoly on violence and it's successful preservation and expansion are, at least for now, domains in which state organisation dominates. Volunteer militias and private military companies exist and have had victories against state-led armies in modern times but this hasn't lead to any long-term changes in the meta (even when volunteer militias win they usually just go on to establish a traditional military).

If you accept this view then those left-wing individuals have just gotten you to concede the minarchist position. State-controlled industry, dissolution of property rights etc are hills the socialists still have to climb and the historical record is very against them here.

Throughout history, militaries have been noted for their incredible waste and inefficiency.

In some rare cases, they can operate effectively. This is almost always during wartime – either because soldiers are willing to die for the cause or because they will be killed for disobedience. (Presumably, this gives the wartime military a significant advantage over Walmart).

Socialist countries have noticed this "one weird trick", which is why they try to frame the day-to-day business of government in terms of war.

In that militaries and socialist countries exercise absolute and capricious control of the lives of their subjects, they are quite similar, and often capable of amazing (though brief) feats of human achievement.

In some rare cases, they can operate effectively. This is almost always during wartime – either because soldiers are willing to die for the cause or because they will be killed for disobedience. (Presumably, this gives the wartime military a significant advantage over Walmart).

Well, I'd also note that for much of history, armies at wartime could be somewhat more self-funding that at present, thanks to looting and plundering — indeed, when it came to sacking cities, they could even be profitable endeavors.

Which gets to a counter-argument: the vast majority of modern military "soldiers" — those who aren't the "tip of the spear" actual fighting men — are performing roles that, up until sometime in the mid 19th century at the earliest, would be considered "camp followers." I note also how often generals and commanders would end up supplying their troops out of their own pockets — see George Washington petitioning the Continental Congress for reimbursement of various expenses of his troops. Add in things like buying and selling commissions.

So, is it really necessary that the camp followers of the past now be given the same uniform, the same honors, et cetera, as the actual warriors? (Or does this constitute a kind of "stolen valor" intended to lower the status of fighting men?) Could a modern army be run on an updated version of 18th Century "capitalist" logistics, rather than what we have now? Or is there something about the nature of modern combat that means military supply chains require this sort of "socialist" central planning to be effective?

Or is there something about the nature of modern combat that means military supply chains require this sort of "socialist" central planning to be effective?

Yes. I'll try to keep this short because I'm meeting a friend in fifteen minutes so I've got to go fast. But with the advent of heavy artillery, planes, tracked vehicles, trucks, etc. the fighting strength of armies have switched rather decisively from individual armed men to the equipment they operate. Because this heavy equipment requires so much fuel, ammunition, maintenance, etc. to operate, this means that the center of gravity (in the Clausewitzian sense) of any army of the 20th or 21st century is in its administrative "rear" and the logistical operations they run. An army separated from its source of supply ceases to become an effective fighting force and has to devote most of its time to somehow surviving, if it can.

This is why the operational and strategic doctrines that emerged during WWII and after focused on creating ways for the mobile forces of your army to target these rear elements. The Soviet or German plan for any great offensive was to figure out the best way to achieve this: usually by creating some kind of breakthrough on a narrow front that your tank/mobile infantry divisions can exploit to get hundreds of kilometres into the enemy rear and target the really important things: railway junctions, bridges, communication nodes, ammo depots, repair yards, slaughterhouses, granaries, oil dumps, etc.

WWII is the period I'm most familiar with but usually armies operated even then with much more rear personnel than those at the front. The Western Allies had a ratio generally of 1:6 frontline infantry/armour:rest of personnel. The Commonwealth forces generally had more artillerymen in a corps than infantry. Germans and Soviets ran more infantry-heavy because they were less mechanized (especially the Germans).

You don't read many memoirs from cooks or artillerymen or tank repairmen because they didn't see much combat, at least among the western Allies. In the more wider-open Eastern Front things were more fluid and the Germans were particularly enthusiastic about pressing administrative personnel and other rear-area types into infantry roles because of desperate manpower shortages. In any case in the mass encirclements that characterized the big offensives in the East it didn't matter what your job was, your life was on the line and everyone had to fight.

The Commonwealth forces generally had more artillerymen in a corps than infantry.

Really? Isn't the rule that infantrymen are always the most numerous? Even if you include AA and AT...

More numerous than any other individual combat arm? Generally, often yes. But in modern professional armies they don't tend to approach a majority. How things might actually play out for conscription-based armies which train most conscripts as light infantry remains to be seen though I suppose.

For the UK (and the Commonwealth countries which largely followed their military organization during WWII) there were two very important deciding factors which relegated infantry to a lesser size than the artillery. Most importantly was the scale of losses during WWI: politically, demographically, economically, whatever lens you looked through they were so high they could not be repeated. That inevitably meant a focus on greater firepower and heavy weapons rather than having infantry carry the burden.

Less importantly aside from the brief fracas in France the initial major land fighting the Brits did was in North Africa when the Germans were roughly on par with the in the air and the desert allowed for fluid maneuvers. This meant more losses to rear-area personnel and so they carried more men and got a higher proportion of trained replacements. This ended up adversely affecting British and Canadian forces in Europe because the decline of German air power and operational maneuver greatly reduced the risk to non-infantry combat arms. There was a persistent shortage of infantrymen throughout 1944 and 1945.

It is important to note that this wasn't some crazy or ineffective idea: artillery was in WWII, like all other modern wars, the main killing power on the battlefield. Certainly if you read German memoirs they are constantly bitter about the total dominance of Western Allied artillery (and air power). In Normandy there was frequent complaining about it being a "rich man's war" because of how badly the Germans were being outshot. Allied artillery command and control was also significantly more sophisticated and was a huge advantage.

Yes in the sense that if you have a shit ton of cheap labor just about any shortfall in efficiency can be made up for in raw manpower.

Notice a few things about the military, and how it is odd for socialista to laude it:

  1. The military is very strictly hierarchical. Whereas a lot of socialist propaganda rails against hierarchies.
  2. Being a grunt in the military sucks. Most military personnel are grunts. Thus life in the military generally sucks. Thus life in socialism would generally suck.
  3. It is not a self sufficient entity. It is reliant on resources from a supporting government. Resources in the form of taxes, manpower, and technology. This suggests socialism is not self sustainable.

Your number 3 is the one that most closely addresses the "socialista" argument, which is generally along the line of 'you say market mechanisms are so great for distributing goods and services among people, but that's not what the military uses for determining which supplies go to which troops where, is it? No, they use the kind of central planning — "to each according to his need" — that you capitalist boot-lickers always deride as inferior and unworkable. Where's your capitalist army, then, if markets are so much better?"

How about a corporation as an ideal Socialist organization?

It has strong central planning (by the CEO), often with literal five-year plans. Good managers will distribute tasks based on each worker's ability, and assign resources according their needs.

Where are the capitalist corporations, you ask? They took one look at the downfall of Sears, and decided that Socialism is best.

There's quite a few differences you're glossing over.

Companies can fail and be born, and there are thousands of them at any one time. Plus they can get information from the price system that central state planners cannot. They also pay people according to negotiation, rather than according to needs.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1468-0335.1937.tb00002.x

Coase's The Nature of the Firm is probably the finest exploration of why firms exist. Basically it costs a lot of money to come to an agreement, and agents within the firm can save a lot of the cost of those agreements. So optimal firm size varies with how costly those agreements are to reach.

That's what annoys me so much about Sci-Fi that dramatically changes the cost of reaching an agreement and then ignores the enormous world changing effects such a change would have on the business world (with extremely low transaction costs single person entities would probably be the most efficient firm size in a lot of industries).

Corporations exist in a market system that sets the prices for all their inputs and outputs. Without it, making those 5 year plans would be impossible.

As a very long-term but low profile mottizen, I feel like I have made a thread about quite a lot of important junctions in my life asking for advise. Here comes the next one:

I bought a house! Still not 100% official but will be soon. It is not in a perfectly pristine condition but did not seem too bad either. Needs some urgent renovations like a new floor and some semi urgent ones like a new kitchen.

I assume most people here are a bit older than me and have some experience with such things. So give me your best house owning tips please. Especially looking for websites/books/Youtube channels about DIY and house decoration and whatnot.

A lot more things than you realise will need maintenance. Find the manuals for all of your appliances and check the recommendations. Normally you won't need to do it as often as a manual recommends, but you at least need to bear it in mind.

Loads of household DIY jobs can be easily done thanks to the internet and youtube, but the biggest barrier is tools. Unless you've got plenty of disposable income, don't stress about buying everything you need at once. A good set of screwdrivers, a hammer, and some allen keys will take of a lot initially. Remember you can easily buy this stuff second hand.

Furniture as well. When I first moved into my own home, we bought a lot of very expensive items brand new. And what difference did they make? Look and quality was not that spectacular. Years later, we buy a lot more stuff from ebay, facebook, etc. A wooden table from 20 years ago will be just as solid as one you buy now. Mattress and sofas I can understand, but anything else? see what's out there

I'm in a similar situation, having just recently got a house with my wife.

I absolutely despise and am bad at handyman work stuff, but I also despise spending money, so am willing to suck it up and learn stuff if that's what it takes.

That said, I am willing to spend money if it's something that actually requires expertise, or is going to save lots of effort relative to its cost. Which general maintenance tasks or categories of tasks have a higher efficiency in terms of money saved / time spent such that I should definitely learn how to do myself, and which tasks fall on the end that I should hire someone to do?

The things you want to learn are the basics of each category, so you're not calling out an electrician or plumber for very simple things. You should know how to clear minor drain blockages, check and clear your traps, replace taps/faucets, and drain your radiators. Above that level, get a plumber.

You want to be able to replace light switches, sockets, and fuses, but leave the rest to electricians. Get a saw and keep hold of any wood off cuts so you can do minor repairs and throw together simple items without calling a joiner/whatever Americans call them.

Hocam is this in Turkey or a western country? Advice will vary based on your answer

Paşam this is Western Europe

  1. You will have people advertising their services too you directly for the sorts of things you need when you own a house(eg home repairs and maintenance services, pest control, alarms, etc). All of the direct advertisers cost more for a lesser quality of work than contractors you can find on your lonesome, and this is not an exaggeration. Keep a capacitor on hand for your air conditioner(you can order one off of Amazon for like 10% of what an HVAC company sells them for) and swap it out off of a youtube video before you call a company.

  2. Save up for property taxes- it's cheaper than escrow.

  3. If you have wooden subflooring, just ripping the carpet up and staining it will probably look quite nice. This is extremely easy to do and you can buy stain and some rags from home depot, and get a friend to help you for pizza. If you have concrete subflooring home depot linoleum is extremely cheap and similarly easy. Likewise, painting is pretty easy- but use primer(which is much cheaper than regular paint) for two coats, then one of paint. You will never match paint colors perfectly and for your top coat of paint, you do get what you pay for.

  4. Keep trees away from your house. There's foundation issues, roof damage, it invites additional pests, etc.

  5. On plumbing- take your p-traps apart and clean them under each sink when you move in and then every year, and flush tree killer down your toilets every year. The good stuff will be labeled something like 'not for sale in blue states'. Plumbing youtube is generally very easy to follow and has most homeowner-friendly repairs in multiple easy-to-find videos- and major plumbing companies sometimes publish tutorials on stuff like fixing toilets as a form of advertising.

  6. You can get good used appliances for like half the price- both from professional used appliance dealers who offer a warranty, and from randos on craigslist who don't need them anymore.

4chan.org/diy

There’s always something more to do.

lol I didn’t expect that. It’s mostly electronic design though I think

Click on the catalogue to get the full listing.

https://boards.4chan.org/diy/catalog

Many general threads.

I’d been letting my Motte replies stack up in my inbox, so I just cleared the reply counter and reduced that attention debt to zero. Did anyone have any lingering thing they wanted me to address?

Yes. How does the FairTax proposal work?

Flat percent gross receipts tax with one exception: If enacted, every business pays 25% of the receipt price of goods and services directly to the federal tax authority, except for used goods. This ensures that goods from used jeans to used skyscrapers are only taxed once, ever: you buy it, it is yours to resell without government interference. This protects private property rights.

Flat universal rebate: Every citizen and legal resident gets a direct-deposit monthly rebate, 1/12 of 25% of the federal poverty income level (with certain adjustments for married, kids, etc., adjusted yearly). This dollar amount is supposed to recoup the taxation paid by the poorest, so the government doesn’t cost them a dime on net. Everyone gets an identical flat amount, rich or poor, a true national dividend. This can even benefit the unbanked, who can get a checking/savings account due to the guaranteed nature of the deposit. This makes it fair.

Ends FICA payroll withholding: Income tax is eliminated permanently and the income tax amendment repealed. FICA withholding is replaced with a one-time downward wage adjustment equivalent to the FICA calculation, whereupon workers get their full contractual wages with no taxation, no April 15, and no fear of the taxman ever again. This ends government intrusion.

Ends the IRS: Replaces a unionized bureaucracy/federal revenue police force/retirement fund for bureaucrats with an automated system and a much smaller revenue enforcement bureau aimed solely at businesses. This yields cost savings for every taxpayer in every bracket, while keeping the plan a revenue neutral replacement for income taxes.

Ends investment taxes: This encourages people to invest without fear of jail or penalties.

It's a new form of Affirmative Action in South Africa where they check your skin tone with a pantone strip and adjust your income taxes accordingly. Or so the name naively suggests (I do recall reading about it, thinking it was a good idea, then forgetting everything else).

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the relationship between morality and game theory. Who/what should I read to get a handle on this?

Lets talk grilling.

My old grill finally crapped out on me. It is 30 years old, rusted all over ajd frankly it likely poisoned me every time I cooked on it because of extensive rust and chemical scouring to clean it, but I abused it till the legs finally rusted over and broke.

So, having abused a fully depreciated asset till death, I am looking for new steak scouring options. And in this fresh market I find the Weber egg to be the premier product recommended by social osmosis.

Thing is... I don't find the end quality to be necessarily better than my existing alternative of reverse sear into broiler.

Grill marks are undesirable byproducts, further charring is controllably obtained by blowtorch, smoke is infusable at source in a brine or introduced in a sauce. With broilers I can capture the drippings onto a bed of potatoes or in a pan I can glaze the fond for a pan sauce.

So, what am I missing? What is the weber fulfilling that I can't mechanically obtain with pans and grills?

Go to your nearest shawarma place. Ask them from where they buy the spare burners. It is possible to do amazing things with infrared gas burners - to me this is the best way to prepare quick meats.

One big advantage of a grill is that you can marinade meats and cook them without the sugars burning in a way that isn't really possible on a stovetop or oven. But it sounds like that isn't what you like.

That's exactly how a grill should go out.

In Southeast Asia nobody wants to spend much time outside, at least not unless they have to. The vibe is completely different to the temperate climes where a grill is best suited, a nice northern hemisphere summer day where it’s 80 degrees (25c) with a light breeze, not too humid, a fine day to sit outside, drink, and participate in conversation while cooking at the same time instead of having your guests have a great time without you while you’re stuck in the kitchen. If I lived in Singapore, I’d rarely go outside either.

Hmm. I live in the Southeast, which isn't as tropical as where you are but is closer than some...

I now own 3 outdoor cooking appliances (Griddle, Pellet Smoker, Charcoal Grill) and consider the last to be the most foundational and valuable of the three.

The flavor of charcoal ignited via the chimney, is unmatched, IMO. You mention jus being able to drip onto vegetables, but I prefer to skip the "casserole" effect or moisture sharing frequently. For potatoes, for example, I want them tossed in OVOO and spices and put on a baking sheet instead. Favorite stuff I use it for:

  • Corn covered in cajun oil or butter, wrapped in foil.
  • Peppers and onions grilled for low-carb meal components or Salsa.
  • Yogurt and spice-marinated chicken thighs
  • Thick-casing sausages (Conecuh?!?) are best cooked on a grill

I don't know how much time and effort you spent cleaning your grill. My Weber (not the egg) requires being emptied of dust once every 2-3 cooks, depending on which briquettes I used, and a 10-second scrape-off with a steel brush. I think getting an egg would give you more smoke and insulation, but you'd lose the ability to just flip the thing over in an ash disposal area. I can't overstate how little maint and cleaning this takes compared to even broiling, where your sheetpan is going to require some soaking and elbow grease.

I got this grill when it was 15 years old and it's been 5 since, with almost no sign of degradation. Personally I think a vanilla steel grill with a cover is going to give you more bang for your buck unless you want to also be using it for smoking.

If you really don't like grill marks then this overall may not be for you, but reverse-searing a ribeye and having bacon-wrapped poppers to go with it is one of life's great joys. I personally think using a torch just misses something, and I've been told that the time for charcoal to ignite from a chimney is "Exactly one beer".

By clean I refer to rust on the grills themselves. Again, average humidity of 80%. Terrible things happen to man and machine in such an environ.

I appreciate the diminished appeal of the casserole effect, but that doesn't change the fact that exuded juices go SOMEWHERE and flaring on coals is inefficient maillard reaction to my optimization schedule. I want my flavor on my food not on my heat source, and grilled veg is additional real estate taken up when I should be focused on meats.

The charcoal flavor is what I see I am going to really miss out on, and I am trying to get something equivalent to that. My wok skills are sufficient for wok hei when stir frying , but I can't get that on steaks and that is the holy grail I am looking for.

I was suggested one of those aluminium foil mini bbq set things which is an aluminium tray with briquettes sprinkled in it, and then tenting foil over it to form a smoker. I was tempted go firmly but politely tell that friend to leave and never speak of cooking to me again, but upon reflection it might have merit.

I'm not sure what @2D3D meant by "Weber egg", but I have something that might be described as such. The Summit Kamado is vaguely designed like the big green egg and other such grills, although instead of ceramic it's made from two layers of steel with an air gap for insulation. I can attest that cleaning is real easy - use the lever which controls the bottom vents to sweep ash into the bucket underneath, which detaches so you can dump it out.

I actually like the Summit Kamado quite a bit and it's been worth the $$$ I spent on it. But I didn't mention it in my other reply because if one is on the fence about the utility of a grill at all, a $1200 grill is probably not in the cards.

Broiler puts the heat inside your house, grill keeps the heat outside your house. Useful in the summers.

Other than that, maybe hot-smoking. I don't think you can do a decent hot-smoked salmon in your oven with liquid smoke and, but that's just me, and I could be wrong.

I live i southeast asia. The heat is an everpresent oppressive nightmare and I am 100% convinced the 70% average humidity when sunny does things to cookings no western chef has ever dared contemplate.

Never tried grilling baking broiling frying steaming or anything fish That is my one true enemy, an eternal nightmare of inconsistent textures and cook times incomprehensible to my feeble impatient hands. I defer to anyone who can cook fish well, but this specific deficiency seems to be spreading among my peers and I fear in a generations time no one will know what to do with snapper.

Never tried grilling baking broiling frying steaming or anything fish That is my one true enemy, an eternal nightmare of inconsistent textures and cook times incomprehensible to my feeble impatient hands.

Grill needs to be very clean (but oiled) and hot in at least one area -- sear just long enough to break free of the grill over the high heat on both sides; at which point you may be done if you are cooking fresh salmon or similar for people who don't mind it rare, otherwise you may need to move to a somewhat cooler area of the grill and fuck around until it's flakey but not dry.

Reverse sear into broiler? How does that work? Normally with a reverse sear I would oven/sous vide the steak, then slap it on the pan to sear. Do you mean cooking in the oven and then using the broiler for a reverse sear?

Purely in terms of results, just the smoke flavor from charcoal. I know you said that you can replicate it with a brine or sauce, but I don't think it's possible. Other than the smoke aspect, there's nothing. When you get down to it, the grill is basically an oven, and anything you can do on the grill you ought to be able to do in an oven.

But honestly? I grill because it's fun. I love cooking outside, I love the big "FWOOSH" of fire that I get when using lighter fluid, I love playing with fire even when I'm not using lighter fluid. I also like developing the skill of working with my grill and getting consistent results. Yeah, I could cook burgers that are great in my skillet. But I would have a lot less fun doing it.

Burgers are pure grill beasts. The juices extruding in a pan are far too voluminous and I just end up boiling the thing. I have had surprising success with a wok smoker to infuse, but my best smoke result was liquid smoke soaked salt crystals torched onto a steak after the sear for full crustification.

My normal pattern is cold sear with flips every 20 seconds and resting every 4 minutes to let the temp even out or oven a big batch and then mass broil. The specific advantage is the exuded juices dripping out instead of staying in the pan and grey banding my meat.

Will bear in mind the specific utility of smoke, but southeast asian humidity does a number on briquettes and wood chips give an acrid burn unless I control it in a foil tray within a smoker. Ultimately seems a weber is looking less attractive save for satiating an animal male instinct.

How do you advertise merit?

I've had some extremely impactful projects at my first job. I got promoted from Junior Engineer within a year, etc. currently I'm on track to become a Senior in 6 months. It's my first job and I'm 1.5 years out of college fwiw.

Honestly, Idk how to convey any of this to new employers. How do I even explain what made my work good without giving away trade secrets???

I don't want to rack up YOE at one company and fall back onto a regular career trajectory with a job switch.

Whenever possible, document the money that your initiatives and projects either saved your employer, or earned for your employer. State it in easy to digest terms. I like STAR format: Situation, Task, Actions, Results.

ex: As a senior risk management and transaction compliance manager, I initiated project Waste Not, where I initiated an org wide SOP review which identified over 80k redundant investigations per year under current processes. After eliminating this waste and streamlining our processes our org saved 6mil USD on operational costs YOY compared to the previous process state.

Keep it simple and easy to understand when spoken in an interview. Have supporting docs if you can (this is often not possible with NDAs).

If its not a cost saving/revenue generating position, find some other way to quantify impact in easy to communicate ways. If you took lead on a big project that got attention in the press, you can usually use your companies own press releases without violating your NDA (I'd hope anyway)

  1. Say what you said about how you've been quickly promoted within your first couple of years out of college.

  2. Explain what you accomplished without revealing how you did it; "I came up with a new testing process that reduced our testing costs by 5%" or whatever.

Early promotion to "Senior" is an objective fact which is legitimately impressive. If your current employer is reasonably well-known in your industry, then your next employer will know just how impressive it is.

Just... Write down the details of what you've done in a work journal. Update it quarterly. I've done so much awesome shit in the past 10 years where the details have faded away, and I hate it.

Just put some numbers/stats and keywords that sound impressive, at a lot of companies HR department, which is where your resume gets initially parsed, won't even have the knowledge to understand technical jargon. Also, most companies put the resumes through a filter before human eyes ever look at it, which is why you should try to match keywords to job postings.

If you're lucky enough to talk to an actual human, if the person isn't technical you wouldn't be able to divulge "trade secrets" even accidentally, and if they are technical you should be able to prove your competence by just talking with them.

Honestly I wouldn't worry about it too much, I highly doubt what you've worked on would qualify as trade secrets that you absolutely cannot divulge, and on the chance that it actually is the case, well your company should've thought twice before assigning a junior engineer with that kind of work.

As an engineering manager, I would advise against putting impressive-sounding stats and keywords in your resume if you can't back them up. The resume is the only thing I know about the candidate before talking to them, so I scan it for various impressive-sounding stats and keywords to use as starting points for the discussion.

If the candidate sputters out when I throw stuff from their own resume at them, it's a no-hire.

Is there a decent explainer breaking down il/legal migrant inflows into the US? I'm aware of the CHNV mass parole program, but is that separate from the flights bringing in "inadmissable" migrants?
How do both of these compare to numbers from the southern border?

There's this general attitude of "everyone knows what's going on", but nobody except Datahazard seems to have a clear picture of the stats.

Last time I looked at the numbers was in the Covid era, when the big split was section 8 vs 42 deportations. So those are pretty much useless, now.

Maybe the CBP stats for transfers (meaning repatriations) and arrivals? The latter gives a ceiling of ~3,500 entries per month at southern-border airports. That is hilariously tiny compared to land traffic on the border. Given the poverty involved, that isn’t too surprising.

By “flights bringing in inadmissibles” I assume you’re talking about the policy getting excoriated here? Comparing those numbers to the airport numbers above, it seems clear that the flights are from border sites to the rest of the U.S., regardless of how the passengers got to the border.

Homeland security page

PDF on overstays from the Congressional research service

Monthly tables from Homeland Security

Article from Pew research this month.

None of this may be what you're looking for; maybe someone else can provide better links.

So, what are you reading?

Still on This Star of England and The Mysterious William Shakespeare. My appreciation of Shakespeare is certainly increasing as a side effect.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. Everyone's read her debut, The Secret History, and loved it. I've previously read her second novel The Little Friend, which was a bit mid. 200 pages in and The Goldfinch seems closer in quality to History than Friend. It's very affecting and I'm curious to see which direction the story takes.

This past week I finished two books: Dark Age by Pierce Brown, and The Canceling Of The American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.

Dark Age was better than Iron Gold (the previous in the series), but still wasn't up to the high standard set by the first trilogy. I didn't hate the book, but it still took a concerted effort to make myself finish it which isn't a good sign. I'm on the fence about getting the last book. On the one hand, if I didn't enjoy the new trilogy much thus far, I probably won't change my feelings on the third book. On the other hand, enough interesting stuff happened in this book that I do kind of want to know how it ends. We'll see.

Canceling was about what you might expect, especially if you read The Coddling Of The American Mind (which I have). In a lot of ways, Canceling is kind of like a part 2 to Coddling, showing how the problems of the previous book have grown even more in our society (mainly at universities). The picture it paints of things going on in America is not going to be news to anyone who frequents this forum, although there were specific events I hadn't heard of. Unfortunately, the authors' thoughts on what one can do to fix the problems (the main thing I was interested in with this book) weren't really anything that was actionable for me. Not that it's useless advice, but it's 95% focused on parents and people who work in education (both teachers and administrators), with the other 5% being "before you make a donation to your alma mater, ask them if they do XYZ to promote free speech, and decline to donate if they don't". But I already don't donate to my alma mater, so that's not really something I can apply. Overall it was a decent read, but not as useful as I was hoping.

Among other things, mainly finance, I'm reading Titan: The life of John D. Rockefeller.

The world's first billionaire. It's not bad. Yet to see what turned him into something of a sumbitch. Money, power, and perhaps the sense that whatever he did could be justified by the contributions he made to his church and other charitable ends.

I really enjoyed this book. Ron Chernow is my second favorite biographer after Robert Caro. The main thing that I recall from this book is how Rockefeller's dad was a con artist and John D spent his whole life trying to run away from that fact.

Yes, the early part of the book shows a lot of disgusting behavior from his dad. That would deform someone's psychology, especially in times with no therapy.

The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self

So far, not overly impressed. The author's use of Japanese terms to capture the essence of his own esoteric concepts seems forced and false. Sometimes it seems like I'm reading the journal of Chris McCandless (if things hadn't gone wrong for him.)

But I'll finish it. Another book given to me. Yours sound more interesting.

Downloading pics in browser often fails for stupid reasons. Suppose when I'm browsing web and clicking "save picture as" and it often fails even if picture has been downloaded. Why does it think it needs to be downloaded anew? They pretend to care about privacy, then why browser programmers want to expose user's action as "open in another tab" (when image url is from another domain, cache is prevented from being used, intentionally or "download") to website? Why does it think user needs a red warning if a pic was downloaded with no-TLS but if it's "failed" then message looks very much like it was downloaded successfully. Sometimes browser can't get the full-res picture and doesn't get it, either because my country blocks website or website itself doesn't like download (e.g. it thinks picture is being 'hotlinked' or my pc needs to go thru cloudflare). Why my browser would cooperate with website owner or censorship not owing to download, rather than me (sometimes i'd be happy with lower res as well)? Very depressing

reddit somehow detects if user wanted to open a picture in another tab and returns HTML instead. why on earth browser is supposed to honor that?

I can't verify this will solve your problems but I use a firefox extension called imagemax url that i guess was intended to find the largest image size but it actually goes through these things that obfuscate the image link so you can just right click and download the image once you click on the extension (it's just a selection in the right click context menu). It's definitely handy for the new annoying trend of making things undownloadable.

firefox extension link: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/image-max-url/?src=external-rfaq

script link: https://openuserjs.org/scripts/qsniyg/Image_Max_URL

EDIT: Also, some images that have been fucked for me with bad headers or whatever, where they won't open in my image viewer or Photoshop, I can open them in paint and just save them again and it has made them usable for me after doing so.

Ah thanks. It solves some but not all shortcomings with it. Is there a firefox extension which allows to view cached content?

All the extensions that I saw that said they did this are defunct now. There's a program for doing it but it sounds like more of a hassle than it's worth if this is happening all the time.

https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/mozilla_cache_viewer.html

Did you possibly post this in the wrong thread? This seems like a perfectly acceptable post for the CW thread, and while CW topics are not forbidden in the Smallscale Question Sunday thread... this doesn't appear to be a smallscale question.

Oh, yeah I did, thanks for the heads up.

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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