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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1477 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 3, 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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Does anyone have the article about how the deep state saved America by resisting during the Trump presidency in 2016? It was written from a pro-establishment, liberal point of view and was published by The Atlantic or a similar publication. I can’t seem to find it on Google anymore

It’s not the famous Time magazine article about how the 2020 election was fortified, is it?

https://time.com/5936036/secret-2020-election-campaign/

Yes, that’s it. Thank you.

The article refused to show up in my Google search results, even though I literally searched for 'shadow,' 'Trump,' 'election.' Those same keywords worked last week. Yandex finds it, though.

The Time article above is still the top hit for me on Google with those search terms.

Most results I see are from the last 24 hours. Could be Google running A/B tests, or maybe the constant election updates are affecting search rankings. Doubt it's anything malicious though.

In reading court opinions, it is routine to see sentences like "15 years with a 7.5-year parole bar", "16 years with the possibility of parole after 8 years", or "5 to 10 years".

Today, I was somewhat surprised to learn that parole is, not the exception, but the norm. According to federal statistics, the typical state prisoner serves only 44 percent of the sentence nominally imposed.

Do the illustrious lawyer denizens of this website have an opinion on this? Should a sentence of "16 years with the possibility of parole after 8 years of good behavior" be rephrased to "8 years with the possibility of extension to 16 years upon bad behavior", to avoid confusion?

Should a sentence of "16 years with the possibility of parole after 8 years of good behavior" be rephrased to "8 years with the possibility of extension to 16 years upon bad behavior", to avoid confusion?

No, for the same reason that a product/service should be "Regular $10, on sale for $5!" instead of "Regular $5, surge pricing to $10!". The headline number you choose matters, and if you go worse than the baseline you had better be prepared to rigorously defend your choice.

No, because being granted parole isn't the end of things. If you're sentenced to 10 years and are granted parole after 5, you're still under the supervision of the Department of Corrections for the remainder of the sentence. If you violate the terms of your parole you could get thrown back into jail for the remainder of your sentence. The other angle to thinking about it is that parole isn't a right; it's at the discretion of the parole board. You could be a model prisoner but be denied parole for other reasons. Saying that you're sentenced to 5 years with a possible extension of up to 10 would imply that the parole board would need an affirmative finding of some kind of bad behavior in order to keep you in jail longer than 5 years, which they don't need.

Hey Mottizens, what are your funeral plans?

... am I the only one satisfied with threescore and ten?

I have no plans, and I'm hopefully young enough that I won't have to make serious plans any time soon, ojalá.

But I would very much like a traditional church funeral, where everyone dresses up, wears black, they play sad songs on an organ, and a traditional sermon is preached. It'd be nice if something was said about what I left behind in the world, but I would prefer if the focus of the funeral is not on myself but on the transcendent values I believed in during my life. I have never had a particularly intense fear of death, but I do very much fear the death of my ideas, my worldview, my way of life, my values. I would consider it the most meaningful celebration of my life if the focus were not on me, but on God.

I realize that sounds rather entitled, but my perspective is that very strict, formal funeral rites make clear the gravity of what's happened and provide order and familiarity to the horribleness of death. What I want for my family and friends is a participation in that, as well as a reflection of my values.

I have the same beliefs about weddings -- I think a big problem with Western culture is how flippantly and casually we treat everything, how businesswear has been eroded and even at funerals and weddings people don't put on their Sunday best. We apply the same flippant attitude to people dying and people making a solemn promise of commitment to each other -- is it really any wonder that people just go "bury me in a ditch," or don't get married? Where's the meaning and significance?

I want my funeral to be a funeral, and my wedding to be a wedding. These are not times for creativity and individuality, they're life scripts -- often literally scripted -- and the point is that it's not just random people doing random things, but the participation of particular people in a larger whole, a solemnization of something that many have gone through before and will go through in the future. You're not alone.

There's something about major services in our culture that's so empty, so lonely, so disconnected, that even at the times we are most vulnerable, dead or grieving, engaged and married, there's nothing to actually hold us up other than our own thoughts, our grief at a funeral or our hand-written cringey vows at a wedding. Big, important, meaningful things are happening, and instead of supporting people with the weight of a thousand years of tradition, we tell mourners or the betrothed to fly, bitch. I don't want that for either my wedding or my funeral.

As part of a Catholic family we don't believe in any particular sanctity of the body once the soul leaves it. Accordingly, we don't visit graves, because nobody is there to see. So having an actual gravesite isn't important to me. Given that, I want my body to return to the earth, and I see no reason for it to be preserved for eternity with embalming chemicals and entombed in a large metal coffin. Unfortunately, state and local laws make it very difficult for one to obtain a natural burial, so I want those close to me to steal my body and bury it in an undisclosed location in the woods. That way, it can help germinate a tree or perform some other useful function. This would seem to obviate a funeral but I definitely want a funeral, not for my own benefit but for the benefit of those close to me. I've had several friends and family members who have died and requested no funeral, usually on the grounds that it's too much of a hassle. While I can't say I'm a fan of the whole traditional funeral thing, it is nice to have an opportunity to gather together in a time of need. I remember when my aunt died and there was no funeral and it was just an empty feeling. So I want there to be some kind of memorial, but I'll leave the details to the discretion of my heirs.

As part of a Catholic family we don't believe in any particular sanctity of the body once the soul leaves it. Accordingly, we don't visit graves, because nobody is there to see.

Uh, what?

As part of a Catholic family we don't believe in any particular sanctity of the body once the soul leaves it. Accordingly, we don't visit graves, because nobody is there to see.

You can believe what you wish, but this doesn't align with my understanding of the approach Catholicism (and Christianity more broadly) takes towards the dead. In fact, it rather startles me that you would present this set of beliefs as typical of a Catholic family!

In particular, my understanding of the Catholic tradition is that Catholics are all about believing in the sanctity of dead bodies -- if not, what's with all the relics, and pilgrimmages to the burial places of saints?

What I was taught as an evangelical mirrors this, that dead bodies needed to be given respect and a Christian burial as Christ promises not just a spiritual resurrection but a resurrection of our mortal bodies like his body. Furthermore, I always understood that Christianity viewed the body as a fundamental part of the person, not a mere vessel for the soul, a view which I was taught was gnostic.

In confirming my suppositions, I came across this Papal letter by Pope Francis discussing the Catholic view of burial:

"By burying the bodies of the faithful, the Church confirms her faith in the resurrection of the body, and intends to show the great dignity of the human body as an integral part of the human person whose body forms part of their identity.... Furthermore, burial in a cemetery or another sacred place adequately corresponds to the piety and respect owed to the bodies of the faithful departed who through Baptism have become temples of the Holy Spirit...

With some minor quibbling, this also represents the evangelical view of death and burial that I learned as a child. I certainly knew, and know, Catholics and Protestants alike who believe people's bodies are simply vessels and 'prisons' to be escaped from, but this was always more of a folk belief than the Gospel, and when I was a theologically precocious evangelical kid I understood it to be incorrect. The one big thing about which Jesus and Paul agreed with the Pharisees was the resurrection of the body!

I respect that you have your own views about the meaning of death and burial, but I wanted to make it clear that what you said doesn't reflect the way Christian tradition has generally understood the meaning of the body and of death.

Just to add to this- visiting a gravesite today literally has an indulgence attached. It’s not just that Catholics are allowed to visit graves, but that it is officially encouraged.

I like walking in cemeteries. For that reason, a bit later in life I hope to set aside some funds for a burial plot and a headstone here in the neighborhood. Ideally, I can think of something neat to have them engrave on it. Then, someday, awkward teenagers on a semi-date amble can read it and think, "Wow, that guy must have been a kook when he was alive."

The funeral service itself, gee, idk. Let the pastor and my surviving kin do that however they think best.

Pray that whatever gets me gives me enough advance warning to make funeral plans?

My father wrote up his own funeral service, after a cancer diagnosis that came about a year and a half before he died. I wrote his eulogy, but he had everything else from decor to intro music to hymns picked out. It was astounding. It wasn't so much about his specific choices (though I loved that he'd asked my oldest daughter to play one of his favorite songs on the piano there, and I'd never have had the guts to deck out a church in helium balloons if I hadn't been under specific instructions), it was about the fact that he'd always been the sort of person to take charge whenever something important but unpleasant needed to be done, and make sure it was done right, and there he was doing it again from beyond the grave, for a room full of people who loved him and knew him well enough to find the situation hilarious.

Honestly, though, I'm not even sure if he needed a year to plan. If my daughter (who'd only recently started learning piano) hadn't been in the schedule I'd have wondered if it was a decade old. After the service we took his ashes out to put next to my mother's in niche #1 of the church's columbarium, which of course he'd reserved for the two of them several years earlier when he had the whole thing built.

My goal is to live long enough to see three centuries. Beyond that all my money and assets is split between my parents, in the likely event I outlive my parents will change it to my siblings or their children. Funeral-wise my only requirement is a Catholic funeral, if I anticipate having a lot of extra cash, will give money to the presiding priest, servers, pallbarers, and pay for the meal afterwards.

My kids will tell you that when daddy dies, just throw him in a ditch.

Do you want ants coyotes? Because that's how you get coyotes.

What do I care, I'll be dead!

To be at least one year after the heath death of the universe.

My plan is "I don't care". This might change if I become someone whose funeral will be a public event, but as a private person, whatever people that succeed me prefer works.

My mother has repeatedly told me and my brother that she wants us to cremate her cheaply rather than wasting thousands of dollars on an expensive burial and funeral. I see no reason to deviate from that course of action—though, really, it doesn't matter, since I'll be dead.

IMO, much more interesting than funeral plans are inheritance plans. I've been thinking that a cool way to divide up an inheritance would be to multiply each heir's share in proportion to the product of the square of his age and the square of his life expectancy. This would direct more money toward middle-aged heirs, in preference to (1) elderly heirs who already have enough money and will squander any new windfall and (2) child heirs whose money will be squandered by their parents.

My own will essentially follows the default for intestate succession, with a few changes:

  • The idea described in the previous paragraph is implemented

  • My brother is elevated to the same tier as my parents

  • "Per capita at each generation" is reverted to "per stirpes", which IMO makes much more sense

  • A parent or brother who has changed his name does not inherit (really just a backdoor way of ensuring that anyone so estranged that I don't even know his new name does not inherit)

Why is the Chase Oliver / Mike Ter Maat ticket listed as as Independent on Alabama ballots even in counties such as Madison, where Libertarian is explicitly on-ballot for other positions?
https://www.sos.alabama.gov/alabama-votes/2024-general-election-sample-ballots

Did they fail to secure some endorsement, or is there a more boring technical explanation?

Not sure. I know the Mises caucus of the libertarian party wasn't in favor of him.

What are your have-to-try-this-at-least-once-in-your-lifetime foods, meals, or general dining experiences?

My (basic) contribution is eating at a bouchon.

Brazilian Churrascaria, preferably in Brazil. Vegans need not apply.

Alternatively, Argentinian Steakhouse (in Buenos Aires) and get a steak (of your choice) and local red wine.

I haven't had better meat eating experiences, and I've been around the world.

eating at a bouchon.

Holy God, yes!

This is what "going out to dinner" across the rest of the Western world aspires to be. Everywhere else fails.

Friday night fish fry in a north woods supper club

There are no answers that aren't basic, or at best pretentious midwit, don't beat yourself up. I'll be even more fundamental.

-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.

-- On a summer day, go to a baseball game. Get a hot dog and a beer during the second or third inning, early enough at any rate that the game is still wide open to possibilities. At any MLB game it will be too expensive, but a local MiLB game will probably be just as good.

-- Learn your grandmother's favorite recipe, from her. The one with a lot of steps that aren't written down, that you have to do by guesswork and feel.

-- Stand in line for at least an hour at a dive/cart/stand. In college on a trip to Berlin we went to the cart that supposedly invented Doner Kebab. The line itself was a festival atmosphere, we were chatting with the people around us, the guy behind me was an Ameri-weeb who was a family guy super fan. It's an experience.

-- Eat something you hunted/fished yourself, immediately, without intervening storage.

I took a bite out of a silver salmon that I had just pulled out of an Alaskan river, just because I saw Bear Grylls do it and thought it looked cool.

It was incredible. Core memory.

On general dining experiences, I nominate the Supra, from the Republic of Georgia. It’s a feast/symposium, with elaborate toasting rules, homemade wine and cognac, and a nice assortment of dumplings, meat dishes, bread and cheese dishes, etc.

Japanese all-you-can-eat barbecue changed my life. Gyu-Kaku has solved food. It's over.

We have about three such places within a kilometer. My recent favorite is yakiniku king though it's a little pricey for every week. Dad (I) also gets the all-you-can-drink. That means 3 + beers to make it balance out. I quite like the garlic sauteéd in butter in the little foil pan that you let heat as you're cooking meat/vegetables.

I finally managed to get my husband and kids to go to a Chinese hot pot restaurant with me, and now they're 100% on board with making it a regular thing. The basic concept is this: you have one or more pots of broth at your table, with individual burners built in to keep them boiling, and then you have various raw vegetables, noodles, thin-sliced raw meats, etc, which you cook in the broth and then remove to your plate to eat. At the place we went to, there was basically an open buffet with all kinds of stuff to take and cook in your broth, plus sauces to dip your cooked food in afterwards.

Sounds a lot like Japanese nabe, which we have at home about twice a week in winter Last night's was kimchi nabe. It's one big pot here though that you spoon (or long chopstick) off into individual bowls.

Yeah, I've had a similar thing at Japanese restaurants under the name "shabu-shabu". When I was first introduced to hot pot maybe 20 years ago, there was always only one big pot at the table, possibly divided in half so you could have a spicy broth and a non-spicy broth, but the place we went to the other day offered a choice of the big pot or individual soup pots for everyone.

I'm still not entirely clear on the difference in shabu shabu and nabe except that shabu shabu meat is somewhat thinner, is removed from the pot almost immediately and eaten with a sort of ponzu sauce (and vegetables eaten with a sesame sauce) while the soup continues to simmer. In nabe it's all just in there and you spoon out portions and add more of whatever until everyone's full, sometimes adding either udon at the end or even leftover rice and an egg to stir in and create what's called zousui which is like a brothy rice soup. (This prevents leftover soup from just sitting there).

Then there's sukiyaki, which is beef (while shabu shabu and nabe are usually pork-based). Sukiyaki sauce is also considerably sweeter and some people (who are not me) dip their beef slices in a beaten but otherwise raw egg.

The division for a spicy and non-spicy is new to me, and I think that's a good system. Generally in my experience any broth-level spiciness I would assume to be Korean. The spiciest Japanese condiment is yuzugosho (as far as I know) but I've never seen it in broth. Wasabi is spicy but in a different way.

Certainly, there's a lot more love for chili peppers in China. I was once told a bit of Chinese wordplay about the provinces of Hunan, Hubei, and Sichuan that roughly translates to say the first two don't fear spice, while the third fears what is not spicy.

Kinda big-scale question, but it's not exactly culture war and the other threads fit it even less I think so I'll ask here. Something that has been bothering me for a while is this question: who is managing the federal government right now? I mean, US is the presidential republic. So, theoretically, the President is the person who is supposed to define policy and manage affairs, at least as far as executive branch of government - which is by now enormous - is concerned. The proverbial buck, as they say, starts and stops with him, at least that's the theory.

However, I think it is completely laughable to consider the idea that the person who is nominally the President now is capable of anything like that. Moreover, I can't really know but I have a strong suspicion this is the state of affairs for at least a couple of years by now. In that timeframe, certain decisions have been made and certain policies are being followed, etc. etc. - so some kind of governing is happening. Who is doing it? Is it Jill Biden? Is it some kind of collective like the Politburo in the USSR? Is it just each department of the government doing its own thing and minding its own as it sees fit? Who is the real President or Presidents?

You're not nearly cynical enough. Notice how everything feels pretty normal? The sky isn't falling, at least not any more than it was five-ten-twenty years ago? It's always like this.

The president is mostly, not a figurehead, but a directional leader at best. The administrative state (and the MIC which is typically not included in that category by Republicans for some reason) has at times stymied or snookered every president since JFK. We are constantly having this conversation, about every president in my lifetime.

I don't think with Obama ("I have my pen and my phone") or Trump (who was supposed to overthrow democracy in 2016 but got too distracted by tweeting and forgot) there was a question about at least intent for the President to rule. Of course, no ruler is absolute - even kings and pharaohs learned that their power is not infinite if they pushed the limits - but at least they were trying to rule. With Biden, there's no plausible way he could.

The White House chief of staff and his staff, high level people in the executive branch offices like the State Department and the CIA, heads of cabinet departments for domestic issues. Hundreds of anonymous bureaucrats.

But how do they decide who's on top? What if CIA wants one thing and State Dep another and chief of staff another?

Presumably they discuss and either compromise, trade favours, or go with the opinion of the most senior & respected person in the room. It's entirely possible to make a flat / informal hierarchy work, it's just hard to break it out of serious deadlocks or disagreements.

So, what are you reading?

I’m still on Future Shock, Galactic Patrol and Crystallizing Public Opinion.

Keynes' recent biography by Zachary D. Carter (among other books, as part of a broader effort to study interwar period; would be glad to discuss)

Phaedo, Cratylus, Theaetetus.

Phaedo was deeply moving to me in the context in which I read it. Cratylus I... Honestly didn't get.

On audio I'm motoring through lonesome dove, which feels a lot like Master and Commander in terms of characters just DOING things constantly.

What's your take on Future Shock? It must seem a bit dated by now? (And the Bernay's book is even older)

I’ve been reading it at a snail’s pace, so I can’t say too much at the moment, but honestly, Future Shock is already one of the most interesting books I’ve read. I’m not very impressed with many takes on progress, but by focusing specifically on change and its psychological counterparts (as opposed to end results), it brings out a lot of insights which seem worth studying. There’s a vision here, something that’s just a little cerebral without being untethered. I’ll try to do a proper review for the next thread.

As for Bernays, I wasn’t very impressed with him the first time I read him, but he’s one of those writers who stick in your head for some reason. The books which click years later are the best, and his fit that category for me.

Jesus and Judaism by Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer. Highly recommended, I keep opening new Wikipedia tabs to read them later because there's so much new stuff for me in each chapter.

Wabi Sabi Painting with Cold Wax. The examples are more abstract than I prefer, but the colors and marks are attractive. Some of the text is interesting and useful, though most is generic.

Will we be having an Election Day Mega-thread on November 5? Or do election post just go in the culture war thread?

Isn't it already? I can't wait to be free of this election.

Post one!

Yeah someone should make a discord (cringe i'm sorry) or a telegram channel for fast cool witty motte update/analysis

Why not do it on here?

Just, like -- post a thread and crank up the wit man -- it's free country, right?

Reddit-style forums like this have always felt bad for live update events since the multitude of nested threads and lack of strict chronology is hard to track

Small scale future predictions, anyone?

I predict that ‘impossible burger/soyrizo’ type stuff will get pulled from shelves as a normal product(maybe available in niche markets), but that the meat substitutes will become major ingredients in chicken nuggets and burritos and the like up until the level where governments won’t allow it to be labeled as meat.

This is anecdotal but having worked in a couple of kitchens I've been surprised at how well veggie burgers sell. I've never tried them myself but apparently they taste pretty good.

Veggie burgers, and the slightly more specific black bean burger, are fantastic little bites that give you protein without making you feel as heavy or full as a normal burger. Im not even a vegetarian and i love the things. Take a frozen veggie or black bean patty- throw it in the microwave for two minutes, then into a tortilla with some hummus, feta, and your choice of chopped veggies and you have a healthy high protein big snack or light meal that wont bloat you up. My go-to for busy evenings.

I think they succeed because they're not trying to be a meat substitute, they're something else delicious.

you have a healthy high protein snack or light meal.

I can kind of squint an agree with you, but only just barely.

Black bean burgers are mostly carbs. They're above average in protein, but I wouldn't say they're high (especially not when compared to animal proteins). And they're low in fat.

Every human needs some mix of carbs, protein, and fat to survive and feel good. The zero carber types are as wrong as the zero/low fat types are as wrong as the vegans (low protein. Close to impossible to get necessary protein on a strict Vegan diet).

I worry that a lot of people aren't actually checking the nutrition facts of black bean / veggie burgers and thinking that they are somehow nutritionally identical to actual meat. They aren't and eating a lot of them would create the kind of hyper carbohydrate nutrition profile that can lead to one of many metabolic syndromes.

I find the food industry in the U.S. to be one of the more cynical industries out there. At their core, they're just going to sell what people want, which is mostly junk that our lizard brains haven't learned to not like yet. But the cynicism comes in in how they constantly find new ways to re-package the same basic slip into various "healthy" versions - aided and abetted by the nutritional-fad-diet industrial complex. Off hand, I can remember Adkins, Keto, Carnivore, and the 20+ year "low fat" diets.

I read the labels of coconut and almond "milk" recently, and realized they're literally just flavored carb-water. At least soy milk has a bit of protein in it.

Hmm, now that you point it out i didnt realize how bad the macros are on black bean burgers specifically, like you say its majority carbohydrates. Well, good to know.

My usual choice of veggie burgers includes lots of nuts in the make-up, so its a pretty much even 33% carbs/fat/protein calorie distribution, for about 125 calories total, im pretty happy with that mix for my normal eating habits. Add 1 tablespoon of hummus, maybe twice that in feta with some chopped veggies in a whole wheat or spinnach tortilla overall works quite well, dont have the exact macros to hand but i did calculate them and was very satisfied with the results.

They are really good with bacon & cheese especially -- but yeah, I will actually eat those black bean ones if we have some leftover.

A lot of these (especially Beyond Burger) were very much hyperdunbarist financial basket cases, selling at losses in the hopes of scaling up to break even. It's not surprising to find the balloon deflating for them. On the up side, this probably works as an argument against their use as 'fillers', even without a DeSantis-style intervention or shocked consumer outrage. If they cost too much to sell at a small premium against meat, they're not going to sell under it. On the downside, that's only true until someone decides to change reality: methane, waste disposal, and land taxes on meat-raising businesses have long been a popular pressure tactic.

There's a handful of fake meats that aren't that bad -- there's a lot you can do with crumbled or hard-pressed tofu, especially if you're more interested in being good than being similar -- though I don't know how bad their business case is. Napkin math says comparable or slightly under, but that's making a lot of assumptions about labor costs.

I’d been under the impression that the high costs were mostly due to recouping R&D costs and that as the financials for selling to vegans clarify as quite bad, it will be entirely possible for liquidators to sell to Nathan’s hot dogs or whatever as a below market filler.

I was under the impression Beyond specifically was selling at loss as measured by manufacturing and shipping costs, even leaving out R&D:

"Beyond Meat’s gross margins turned negative: it actually cost Beyond Meat more money just to manufacture and ship its products than it could sell those products for."

There's some that's assets munged into gross margin calculations because of how inventories are defined, but not that much. If and when they go bankrupt, whatever stock they have might get liquidated, but unless a lot of their cost on margin is downstream of spoilage and packaging, I can't see a business case to keep using the recipe, and without expensive bits of the recipe you're mostly looking at a bunch of the stuff that's long been used as filler.

What's your reasoning for the ‘impossible burger/soyrizo’ getting pulled? Are they not selling?

Yeah last I checked Beyond Burgers was near bankruptcy.

The problem is there is no market for these foods.

They taste bad, they are expensive, and they are unhealthy. Who is the imagined customer for this product?

I was genuinely curious, not because I'm interested in going full vegetarian, but because I thought it's an interesting thing to try. But I didn't like the taste at all, so I gave up on the thing.

So historically the key to mass-marketing a meat alternative, at least in the US, has been Catholics in lent. That's why you see fast food fish sandwiches/fried fish baskets advertised heavily in February and March(Here's an article on lent in fast food business planning: https://www.mashed.com/441836/why-lent-is-big-business-for-long-john-silvers/). And beyond burgers could easily have chosen to do this, they just didn't. Instead it seems like they legitimately thought there were lots of people who could be convinced to go vegetarian by marketing, and this turned out not to be the case. In other words they were high on their own supply.

I think oatly has a similar issue but manages to at least make enough sales to stay in business off of the lactose intolerant.

I drink a gallon of dairy milk a week and nearly always have oat milk in the pantry for coffee when I run out of milk. I prefer dairy, but I'm fine with oat or almond, and I can't not have milk on hand.

Plant based milks are fairly popular and much more successful than meat alternatives.

https://foodinstitute.com/focus/deep-dive-the-state-of-alternative-milk/.

According to the National Consumer Panel, 41% of U.S. households purchased plant-based milk in 2022, with a repeat purchase rate of 76%.

Many people especially in my experience (non vegans, non lactose intolerants) prefer plant milk in coffee over dairy.

Makes sense. I tried meat-based milk and didn't like it at all.

meat-based milk

It's fucking milk

They're not that much more expensive where I am than the meat equivalents, and i find the taste for a lot of dishes is pretty good, and don't care about the healthiness of my food. So I could easily see new vegetarians (who still want their sausage rolls and cottage pies) going for it.

Institutions facing internal pressure from vegan activists demanding "mandatory meatless Mondays" and the like (plus external threats from Climate Social Responsibility Rating Agencies that suddenly seem to have control over literally everything).
I linked an activist plan for banning meat recently, and they literally said this was step 2 (after "we're just asking for vegan options, not trying to force anyone, why are you resisting bigot?).

If sexual and then racial grievances hadn't overwhelmed everything else for the last decade, I suspect we would have seen more vegan activism in colleges and tech pushing them to buy this stuff. We may still if it becomes the Next Big Thing after renaming birds for black-trans-palestinians dies down. But hopefully the companies will have burned through their VC money by then.

I linked a lesswrong activist plan for banning meat recently, and they literally said this was step 2 (after "we're just asking for vegan options, not trying to force anyone, why are you resisting bigot?).

Could you link it again? I tried to find it on your personal page, but gave up on page 21.

No, they’re not, and there’s far, far more money in being unpronounceable food additive number umpteen than in being a substitute food aimed at a minority.

Do you live in an area where most of the people you meet, work with, and/or live near are ideologically similar to you?

If you do - do you feel like this is better for your life than the alternative?

If you do not - do you wish to eventually? Or do you feel it doesn't matter, or even find that undesirable?

I live in a deep purple area. This means blue with fleks of red thrown in in a Bob Ross style. I'd argue that there is actually a high percentage of "closet Trumpers" in my area mainly because I can cite about two dozen of them who have "come out" to me this election cycle.

I would definitely like to move somewhere more deeply red. In fact, I have my list built. What keeps me from doing it is that I worry about it enabling me to go too deep into a RETVRN mindset. To be specific, Northern Idaho around the Post Falls area is a pretty hardcore Catholic Conservative area. The FSSP has a parish in Post Falls (which is kind of an extension of Coeur D'Alene). A big part of me looks at this and sees an outdoors oriented recreation culture, a state that will be deep Red for the forseeable future (and a highly libertarian Red at that), a for real Catholic community (not the neutered cultural Catholicism of the Northeast), but with the lack of potential for urbanization that might ruin it with enough emmigration. I'd love to go there right fucking now.

But, in ten years, am I a neo-luddite homeschooling 10 kids with equal parts of my portfolio in physical gold in my basement and crypto? Can I no longer watch college football because the crowdshots send me into a frenzy because they look like Gomorrah? Is my hypothetical future TradeWife (minimum 10 years my junior) afraid of going to the grocery store on her own because of the impure leers she gets from young unmarried men, despite the fact that her wardrobe is primarily ankle length utility skirts?

You can see I'm being humorous here, but the wondering concern is real. The big coastal urban centers are already a no-go (I fled from one years ago). But the "American Redoubt" concepts, while compelling, also seem to me to be reactionary to such a degree as to be inviting more gradual takeover by the PMC. I don't necessarily like the world, but I feel like I have to stay in it to help save it....maybe?

I don't and I physically can't. I'm too contrarian. At uni I became conservative, at a megachurch picnic I'm a bleeding heart liberal. It's in my nature. Even on the same issue, I'll always reflect the anti consensus over time.

But now you're on The Motte, where everybody is too contrarian. If you're finally following the herd here then clearly you're just not metacontrarian enough. Tsk.

Nope! NYC is very captured by Blue Tribe. Most of the ones I meet IRL are NPC-level, spewing mindless hatred. The Motte is probably the only place where I can at least sometimes have reasonable debates with reasonable Blue Tribe-rs that isn't immediately drowned out by mindless shouting.

Better for life? That's a tricky question. It could be thought of as bad that so many people seem to hate your guts if you lean Red. But on the other hand, it means you have an automatic connection with anyone else who does too. It feels like it makes things more fun in a way. In theory it could be good for debates, but I meet very few blues who are intelligent and knowledgeable enough to debate issues and actually have the temperament for it.

Will I move somewhere eventually where most people are more ideologically similar to me? Beats me. As I've gotten older, I've gotten less willing to make big pronouncements for the future, since I have no idea what my situation will be or how I'll feel 5 years from now. I don't think there's been any point in my life where I could have made accurate predictions that far out, so there's not much point in trying.

Naturally, all bets are off if something really out there happens, like an actual national divorce with states and regions breaking away from the United States, or actual secret police hunting down ideological dissidents for long sentences in reeducation camps. I still don't think anything along those lines is really likely to happen in my lifetime, but I no longer dismiss the possibility out of hand. Maybe like 5 or 10 percent chance.

NYC is surely ‘blue tribe’ but it’s also probably the intellectual center of the weird/very online dissident right in the US.

It does indeed have the thing where, yeah the overall culture is super blue tribe, but there's just so many people overall that, no matter what weird thing you're into, you can find some other people into it. So it's not that bad, but still, you can't help but notice that most random people you meet will be somewhere between mildly and rabidly against my political opinions.

I do sometimes wonder if, along FiveHour's point, I may be just too contrarian and independent overall, or at least not quite rabidly red enough, to really fit in in a deep red area.

My neighbors fly confederate flags. I certainly prefer this to pride flags, and consider this a worthy anti-theft device for the neighborhood, even as I, prejudiced against Yankees, grudgingly admit that actually winning the war of northern aggression would have been a bad thing.

The area I live is pretty split down the middle. It's quite nice actually. There is a general understanding that it's bad manners to bring up politics with people you don't know well.

Here as well. Even the public school teachers are mixed.

Where I live, I have no idea what ideologically most of people are, though since it is quite red area, I have my suspicions, but I don't know about each person specifically.

Ideally, I do not mind living around people who disagree with me on ideology, provided the disagreement is not too far. If somebody thinks we need to raise taxes and spend the money on public works projects like building a park, maybe I disagree but I'm fine living with them around me. If somebody thinks enforcing laws is racist and we should cut the police budget and use the money to distribute free drugs to drug addicts and perform gender transitions to kindergarten children - I'd rather live in a place far, far away from that person. It probably will be hard for me to draw the line per policy, but usually such things come in a package, and having lived with the results of applying that package to day-to-day life, I'd rather not go through that again.

Assume that you are Bioware executive - which will worry you more - that I have Dragon Age Veilguard pirated for 72 hours or that I haven't bother actually running it after I downloaded it?

Context: I adored bioware up until the launch of Mass Effect 2 (I disliked the party and character driven aspect compared to the knowledge quest of the first part), though that ME3 was too full of fanservice and had too shitty ending and haven't been seriously invested in them.

Also it is not about the wokeness, just that woke in the last 2-3 years pattern matches way too accurate to cringe and mediocrity.

I adored bioware up until the launch of Mass Effect 2 (I disliked the party and character driven aspect compared to the knowledge quest of the first part), though that ME3 was too full of fanservice and had too shitty ending and haven't been seriously invested in them.

Presumably you also are familiar with Shamus Young's analysis/Let's Plays on this subject?

You mean the attempt to use every pejorative in the dictionary over the ~40ish articles to show how much he hates it? I loved ME2 and it is most replayed game from ME series for me. Gameplay was vastly improved compared to ME1.

You mean the attempt to use every pejorative in the dictionary over the ~40ish articles to show how much he hates it?

No, he means the attempt to show how much the writing changed in a way which made the second game (and especially the third) not appeal to people who loved the style of the first. He didn't hate the games, far from it. He loved the first game, and he loved parts of both of the second two (where they kept the tone of the original). He even agrees with you that the gameplay got better in ME2.

Shamus Young’s review of Arkham City broke that game for me unfortunately. Once he’s pointed out all the ways that the story doesn’t really make sense, it’s hard to un-see.

Shamus Young's Mass Effect retrospective is a genuine treasure. He puts his finger on exactly what went wrong with the series, in a way I never was able to do myself. The only real area where I disagreed with him was that I thought the gameplay, as well as the story, took a sharp step back in Mass Effect 2.

Yup. He managed to wrap in word what I felt war wrong brilliantly.

Damn. The guy has died. May he rest in peace.

Also it is not about the wokeness, just that woke in the last 2-3 years pattern matches way too accurate to cringe and mediocrity.

As far as woke and cringe goes, it’s as woke and cringe as BG3 (which is to say very), but if you found that passable it’s not really worse.

Modern Anglo video game writers (whether the Brits, Americans and Irish who write for Larian or the Canadians and Americans who write for BioWare) are essentially incapable of nuance or subtlety or of any good writing.

People make fun of modern literary fiction and prestige writing in general, often for good reason, but literally anyone who has written even a moderately well-reviewed (non-musical) play or lit fic novel or non-superhero movie in the last 10 years could deliver a better script than any modern AAA video game.

Game writers can’t write. That’s because studios hire DnD nerds who have no interest or knowledge of actual literature, have either never read the greats or dismiss them out of hand, and basically don’t understand what makes storytelling good or powerful in any way.

As far as the writing in Veilguard goes, it’s not worse than countless other recent AAA RPGs and games in general (which again, is not to say it’s “good”), but has provoked a big reaction online because Bioware has been ‘woke’ for 15 years now, had been the subject of long lasting hardcore RPG fan hatred dating back to Dragon Age Origins being calls ‘dumbed down’ and ‘consolized’ by Codex grognards back in 2008, the Mass Effect 3 ending controversy, and other things long predating Gamergate.

Modern American writers of this kind of fiction appear unable to conceive of a world that does not have the same social dynamics as 21st century urban California.

There's also the shit pacing. Look, I understand that BG3 is an early access, multi-year-spanning project, but hot damn does the story have such an awkward and spasmodic flow to it. Act 1 is good, act 2 starts off barren and then builds up into this bizarre crescendo that (vibes-wise) could pass as the end of the game, and then spits you out into act 3 which is completely anticlimactic because it feels like you were just at Mordor but now you're back at Tom Bombadil's.

I hold the opinion that they should have figured out a way to swap 2 and 3.

Yup, pretty much. Would have felt better undeniably.

I never realized how massive the cultural gap between me and most of 'nerd culture' was until I saw how widely praised BG3's writing was among people who seemed trustworthy and tried the game for myself. There was nothing truly terrible, but if that's the peak of AAA wRPG writing then even the upper echelons of Chinese webnovels or Japanese RPGmaker hentai games are probably a closer point of comparison than modern litfic. (I'm not really joking, play Demons Roots)

I wouldn't call Demons Roots a hentai game, it's more of a regular RPGM game with two very unappealing small hentai games awkwardly bolted onto it to entice horny gamers to check it out.

Game writers can’t write. That’s because studios hire DnD nerds who have no interest or knowledge of actual literature, have either never read the greats or dismiss them out of hand, and basically don’t understand what makes storytelling good or powerful in any way.

But isn't this the opposite of what happened? Writing started going downhill the moment they stopped hiring nerds for writing positions and started hiring creative writing and English graduates with "geeky" popular culture interests.

To me it seems like there is an issue of people being hired who don't have interests outside of videogames/anime/etc, which makes the writing and it's influences very incestous. The influences aren't history or literary greats but previous videogames and TV shows, which makes everything extremely shallow and derivative.

I think that’s not clear at all. Firstly, the great majority of “classic” games before professional writers were also terribly, awfully written, even if they were terribly, awfully written in a slightly different way to games today. Secondly many of the great games were written by people who were nerds, sure, but had an amateur interest at least in good storytelling and / or screenwriting.

One of the problems in games (especially at Bioware and Sony Santa Monica) is that they had a big pipeline of writers promoted from QA, or games journalism, or level design, or other teams in the business to game writing, and were only then revealed to be bad writers. They don’t have a screenwriting background where you cover basic stuff that’s relevant to writing halfway decent dialogue.

I feel like a big part of the problem with modern games is that they just try too hard to be novels or movies. I miss the old minimalist approach that was more about establishing a tone and the outline of a plot, and letting you fill in the rest with your imagination, than about spelling out every freaking detail.

I realize that this was largely due to technical limitations, but some people just need enforced discipline.

Firstly, the great majority of “classic” games before professional writers were also terribly, awfully written...

I don't agree with your thesis that games have always been poorly written. Obviously individual works vary, but on the whole story driven games like RPGs used to be written pretty well.

For every Planescape Torment there were literally a thousand 90s games with terrible writing, including many RPGs, come on.

How many RPGs were even published in the 90s? Particularly if you're excluding Japanese games where the localization decisions would play a huge role in perception of writing quality.

No, I don't agree that was the case.

Most point and click adventures had decent and enjoyable stories (since they were carried or buried by them), RPGs were hit or miss because they had a tendency to rely on D&D clichés, but unless you're referring to some B-list stuff, this seems flatly wrong.

I'm in the same boat. And the second thing, not playing it, is connected to the first part. If it were a great game, from a studio that hadn't shat its pants repeatedly over the last decade or more, you'd want to play this new game, and you'd be willing to pay to play it too. In that case they could pay up for Denuvo and profit a lot from millions of sales. There's always a market for a great RPG.

Assume that you are Bioware executive - which will worry you more - that I have Dragon Age Veilguard pirated for 72 hours or that I haven't bother actually running it after I downloaded it?

Presumably, the executive is more worried about you not giving them money than not playing a game they probably don't even care about.

Squeezing maximum revenue out of minimum productivity is the name of their game. The pursuit of "efficiency" started in an intelligent place--"if 39 drops of solder is sufficient for these cans, then 40 is a waste"--but not everyone is smart enough to grasp the difference between cutting fat, and cutting flesh. It's often a lot more complicated than "how many drops of solder," and "being a trusted brand for the foreseeable future" is what (long) shareholders want--not what MBAs are trained to deliver. The modal executive doesn't care if the company goes out of business, the modal executive cares about KPIs. If the company goes out of business, "I made the numbers go up" is how the executive gets a new job.

Boeing, Intel, etc. are in trouble because they became pay pigs for MBAs instead of contenting themselves with keeping up their status as the best actual producers of important goods in their respective industries. Video game companies are much the same.

What structural intervention would you make to reverse the MBA-ization of essential industries?

The pursuit of "efficiency" started in an intelligent place--"if 39 drops of solder is sufficient for these cans, then 40 is a waste"--but not everyone is smart enough to grasp the difference between cutting fat, and cutting flesh.

I don't know about video games, but I think this point is often misunderstood.

Rockefeller didn't start by asking for 39 drops of solder. He asked for 38. When that wasn't enough, he asked for 39.

By the same token, Elon Musk is known to cut all the fat and some of the flesh. Only by cutting live tissue can you be sure that all the fat is truly gone. If you haven't experienced at least some problems due to cutting too many people, then you haven't cut deeply enough.

We've been talking about Musk's management ability, and to prove I'm not sucking his dick I started thinking about the failure modes that will eventually break his personal control of his companies.
His cutting is vulnerable to Yellowstoning, where managers deliberately hurt performance or use cuts as an excuse to avoid responsibility. Right now Musk can personally show up at the office with an audit team to instantly fire a guy he suspects of doing that. But as the org expands and the hierarchies deepen and interlink, internal politics will hurt his ability to excise a bad actor who's spent all his time schmoozing with management.

Worse, his harsh strategies incentivize internal politicking and backchannel dealing among management to mutually reinforce their positions. It's like overusing an anti-parasite drench on a flock: you're accelerating resistance buildup.
(Even worse, the kind of internal politics most effective at subversion through parallel management cadres is the bioleninism of the party that's made him a priority target and allocated massive resources to seizing his companies. I'm expecting some manufactured hysteria along the lines of "Elon Musk Fired LGBT Rocket Scientist Whistleblower For Supporting Environmental Justice Over Rocket Noise Harming Endangered Birds: Harris Administration pledges to arrest him for hate crimes." And if that sounds crazy to anyone, they're nuts for forgetting the exact same scenario played out with Timnet Gebru and google)

I don't know about video games, but I think this point is often misunderstood.

Rockefeller didn't start by asking for 39 drops of solder. He asked for 38. When that wasn't enough, he asked for 39.

Yeah, that's explained right up front in the linked article.

Only by cutting live tissue can you be sure that all the fat is truly gone. If you haven't experienced at least some problems due to cutting too many people, then you haven't cut deeply enough.

That's certainly the MBA way. It is my growing suspicion, however, that if you've successfully cut all the fat, you have deprived your organization of something essential to its lasting and meaningful success--maybe it's a margin of error, maybe it's "play in the joints," I've seen many metaphors and probably none entirely captures the phenomenon, but it seems clear to me that corporate hyper-efficiency is objectionably likely to generate short-term numbers-go-up at long term expense to the organization, its people, and even often the general public.

Yeah, that's explained right up front in the linked article.

You can't expect someone to read an article as table stakes for engaging with your comment. Same for those who link youtube videos.

Surely expecting to read the first paragraph of an article isn’t too much…

This is the motte. Asking someone to read a 10k word article is table stakes, just don't link "video essays"

I can never find it when this discussion comes up, but years ago there was a great video by someone about the importance of corporate culture and how it destroyed Bioware after the EA acquisition. Bioware had a culture of "we want to make video games, and to do that we need to make money". EA has a culture of "we want to make money, and to do that we need to make games". Those two approaches to the video game business are very different, and are going to produce very different results. And, even if you assume the best intentions of all involved, the corporate culture of the parent can't help but influence the subsidiary over time.

And that's what happened to Bioware. Ever since the EA acquisition they have steadily lost that drive to make great games first and foremost. And it shows in their output. Opinions vary, but for me the last game they made which was good was Dragon Age Original in 2008. Ever since then it's been mediocre or bad games coming from a studio that no longer knows how to prioritize quality.

You're thinking of the Pele of complaining about videogames, Bob Case, AKA MrBTongue. Specifically his video "A Tale of Two Companies". He also did a bit of writing for Shamus Young's blog, Twenty-Sided.

Yeah, that's exactly it! Thank you for pointing me towards it again, I had completely failed at finding it myself.

Boeing, Intel, etc. are in trouble because they became pay pigs for MBAs instead of contenting themselves with keeping up their status as the best actual producers of important goods in their respective industries.

The MBAs are easy to blame. It’s far harder for big legacy American companies to blame old, entrenched corporate bureaucracies (and in the case of cars and planes, highly overpaid unionized workforces strongly resistant to automation) full of overpaid workers unable to compete with hungry Chinese companies staffed by ambitious people with nothing to lose (and state-backing, but that’s really a pointless insult because all these big companies are hugely supported by the US taxpayer).

I think there is a lot of truth to what you say, but that part of (say) Intel's or Boeing's problems seems less applicable to the question of what video game companies are doing.

Entrenched corporate bureaucratic interests are just kind of part of the American landscape.

You've succinctly explained my major issues with how the game industry handles/ruins popular IPs and blows up game studios' reputations with the hopes of making quick money at the expense of gaining loyal customers. Which also happens in other industries, but probably to a lesser degree.

Right now I think Rockstar is the only game company that has retained an impeccable reputation for the sheer quality of every product. And they've got a stranglehold on a global, multi-billion dollar market because of it. (EDIT: I forgot Valve, but they currently have a reputation for rarely releasing games, these days)

And even that came under threat from releasing a poorly-done remaster of their previous games.

It also has a reputation for crunch, burnout, and generally being a miserable company to work for, but honestly that seems necessary for achieving greatness in this competitive industry.

If you tried to distill a GTA game down to its minimal elements, a naive person would probably say "You can steal cars, drive them around a huge map, shoot bystanders, fight the cops, and enjoy a story full of 'colorful' characters and crude humor. Also you can bang hookers."

And then you try to make a game that meets that minimal description and you get the Saints Row series. Which really only gained popularity when it took off in its own direction by leaning into absurdity, parody, and optimizing for 'fun.'

And, of course, recently blew up its goodwill with a shitty attempt to reboot that series. Nobody even TALKS about it anymore.

Probably because some MBAs tried to distill Saints Row down AND take it in a stupid direction.

Surely there are other game companies with impeccable reputations, right? From Software is extremely respected, for instance; I would also put Nintendo in the running for mostly having very well made games put out for their main IPs (maybe not Pokemon, but I don't care about Pokemon). Perhaps also Remedy Entertainment, maybe a little lesser known.

It does make me realize how many IPs on this page have had at least one serious misstep, though.

How about Atlus? MegaTen/Persona?

From Software

Could count it. Demon Souls came out in 2009, and every game since then appears to have been a banger and financially successful. They get points for being prolific in that period, vs. Rockstar.

I would also put Nintendo in the running for mostly having very well made games put out for their main IPs

Also fair. I'd literally put them in a class of their own. I want to read a book that explains how they have such high levels of quality control for even the silliest of their game releases.

It does make me realize how many IPs on this page have had at least one serious misstep, though.

Now I'm trying to think of any IPs or studios that had a horrible sequel that trashed the series' reputation, only to come roaring back with a later entry.

Maybe Resident Evil? I know that it allegedly fell off after RE5 (the last one I played) but Village was well-regarded and popular.

Now I'm trying to think of any IPs or studios that had a horrible sequel that trashed the series' reputation, only to come roaring back with a later entry.

Final Fantasy XIV might count here. In that case it was the same game which came back, but it came back in a big way.

Heroes of Might and Magic, perhaps? 5 is considered much better than 4 (I think. I mostly know 3). Hm. There's got to be better examples out there.

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