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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2937 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 19, 2025

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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Could I get some copy-editing / a vibe check on this letter to my representative in a ~200kPop city?

[Greeting with correct title]

I'm a resident of [City name] [correct district]; I'm very grateful that the City Council is taking the auto noise problem seriously, but I have some concerns about the bill that's being introduced to address it.

The current version[link] of the proposed noise ordinance would limit “first offense” fines for all classes of auto noise to just $50. At the city council meeting, it was claimed that this would empower [XXPD] by bypassing the current state-wide “fix-it ticket” policy, which currently allows nuisance auto owners to indefinitely dodge accountability for intentional engine noise.

However, my neighborhood is currently plagued by stereo speaker noise, and it looks like the existing county-level noise ordinance[link] provides in [§XXX] and [§YYY] for fining the operators of loud car stereos up to $500 per day, without any kind of “first offense” limitation.

At the direction of [City]'s representatives with [the online portal for reporting all issues, including noise], I have already tried calling the police about the stereo noise issues in my neighborhood, several times; but the noise is still occurring every day.

If [XXPD] is already struggling to enforce the law less than a mile away from a “$500 maximum fine for loud stereo” sign, I'm very concerned about the current bill stripping away 90% of the deterrent potential for stereo speaker noise.

Unlike a loud muffler (which could plausibly be “broken”), there is no excuse for blasting loud stereo music in city limits. Buying, installing, and then cranking up the volume on those systems is a very intentional act, and I would be very surprised to hear that [XXPD] is obligated to issue “fix-it tickets” when no plausible mechanical problem exists — is that really the reason [XXPD] has not been prosecuting stereo noise?

If not, I'd ask that we find some way to empower enforcement efforts that doesn't involve surrendering 90% of our deterrent power for so-called “first-time” stereo noise offenders.

  • The proposed bill as-written seems to drastically lower the maximum penalties; could it simply be re-written to make those prescriptions into minimums, instead — at least when it comes to speaker noise?
  • If [City] still has a contract with Flock, could we get some audio LPR cameras on key intersections in the nuisance neighborhoods, particularly at the [intersection that affects me the most]?

Thank you for your time,
--
[name]
Residential Address: […]
Mailing Address: […]

Can someone point me to the top discussion here on the H1B drama ("Groypers", Vivek's comment, deportation of legal Indian immigrants, etc.) that happened on X around Christmas?

Meta question: whatever happened to "The Best Of" summaries?

Is the placebo effect real or just response bias? Ie, you give someone a sugar pill, tell them it will relieve their pain, and absolutely nothing physiological changes but when responding they're more likely to feel socially compelled to say there was some small reduction even if there wasn't, or they're more likely to pay attention and notice small improvements that happen randomly. Or is there an actual physiological change that happens (presumably downstream of their mental state expecting such a change and then the brain altering something to reduce pain response).

My understanding is that an awful lot of studies are hopelessly confounded by response bias and just kind of shrug because there's not much they can do about it. Are there any good papers that directly try to measure physiological effects of placebo and/or disentangle response bias from real improvements?

literalbanana from twitter has a more developed version of this argument against the way people interpret the placebo effect here: https://carcinisation.com/2024/11/13/a-case-against-the-placebo-effect/

I think that most measured 'placebo effect's in studies are of this type, but there's also a thing where people claim to feel medicine working in ways it actually isn't, or feel herbal remedies work, that was closer to the origin of the idea of the placebo effect and isn't just bad statistics or a simple trick

What's a normie-friendly example of official "fact-checking" being an obvious farce? I've run into a few too many people IRL bemoaning the loss of Facebook's official fact-checkers, and my urge to retort is rising.

Why didn’t the US in WWII drop the A bombs on less populated parts of Japan. Wouldn’t the show of force have the same effect without killing as many people?

No it would not have.

Compare someone punching a hole into a wall to someone punching a hole in your face.

The first may be impressive, but you don't feel it. And having seen but not felt the display of force, you might get funny ideas about being able to mitigate or prevent the damage. You might even be right about those. The second has you gagging on blood and teeth and your body screams at you to not experience that again.

Someone who knows the matter better than me, please contradict. But that's how I see it.

So I read the local power co-op's plan for "local resiliency to prevent the Climate Catastrophe through public utility solar." And then I did a bunch of math with PVwatts and the state grid data and wrote a whole essay about why it doesn't make any sense, and it's obviously just smearing around a few million in federal and state subsidies to local party members. (Surprise surprise, the landowner's "farm" has a Land Acknowledgement on her website, but she doesn't seem to be giving any of the lease money from the utility to the natives whose Unceded land she's grant-farming.)

But what's the point in posting it on the local boards? This isn't how things work. Nobody's going to be convinced, all it's going to do is paint a giant target on my back. Worst case, it will put me in the company of the guy who got sued for exposing county government corruption with foia requests, or the guy who got fucking prosecuted for talking about a ballot initiative on the radio, because speaking in public counted as making an Unreported Campaign Contribution under state law.

I guess the question is how do you guys deal with this shit? What do you do with the autistic urge to check the numbers of looting racketeers and go "umm excuse me, I think you made a math mistake in the section on 'Confronting The Whiteness of Wanting Reliable Electricity', yes, down in paragraph 7."
I wasted about six hours last night when I could have been sleeping doing math that nobody will ever see because nobody cares. Judging by their shoddy work, that's about how long the project managers spent on their federal grant proposal too, which made them several million dollars richer. Surely there's a way to just stop caring about all this.

Did something happen to reduce the amount of spam email that gets sent? I've been getting a flood of spam mail for almost 20 years (ever since giving my email address to McDonald's) but in the last few years, it has slowly declined to the point that I now have only received 9 spam email in the last month. Has something changed to reduce the amount of spam, or is my email address just slowly disappearing from lists of active email addresses from years of not clicking on links in spam emails?

TL;DR, strongly suspect it's the coalition of big players that has been steadily increasing their requirements to accept mail, culminating with DMARC enforcement almost a year ago.

It is my understanding that major email providers now have blacklists of known spam senders, so that, if you would get an email from such a sender, the email never even shows up in your spam folder, but instead is silently deleted. (Legitimate websites, such as Questionable Questing, sometimes have trouble getting themselves removed from these blacklists.)

The big players are slowly moving to effective whiteallow lists. It's already the case that most isps block outbound port 25 traffic by default. Then, if you get that unblocked, you need them to modify your pointer record to pass the spamhaus DNSBL, which requires static IP and a business class isp contact. This is table stakes. Then, it's all about meeting security and finally reputational requirements, but even that is IMO inching from "trust but verify" to "distrust until proven". Though if spam really is declining then this may ease.

Re: hbd, are there tests where black score higher than whites? I'd think visual acuity and color discrimination (color blobs, no pun intended; is there literature regarding it?). I mean those tests than not centered about some highly specific black culture and also those that also would be similarly remote from preindustrial societies as IQ tests.

Don't think there's any real test measurement but anecdotally West Africans seem unsually good at language acquisition. Obviously a cultural component as well, but the widespread beliefs about the difficulty of adult language acquisition don't seem to apply to the Nigerian touts at shady Japanese nightclubs who are capable of pestering potential customers in Chinese/Japanese/Korean as well as every major western language.

Sailer has written about this.

They react to surprise dangers better. White people are likely to look and freeze up while black people start running.

In general the pattern seems to be that they are better at spur of the moment improvisation while whites need to build and execute a plan.

You can argue it's cultural since there hasn't been enough proper study to prove a biological aspect.

It sorta makes senses. In Africa, the biggest danger was ambush predators. In Europe (especially Northern Europe) the biggest danger was starving in the harsh winter.

His req was "remote from preindustrial societies", which this isn't.

Blacks also afaik hit motoric child developmental milestones significantly faster, which are almost 100% biological, but again that's very relevant for preindustrial societies.

Are there any programming languages where spaces can be used to override operator precedence instead (or in addition) of parentheses? E.g. x=1+ ab; // ab evaluates first x=1+a *b; // addition evaulates first

https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/wiki/Whitespace-FAQ#strong-spaces

Thanks!

And I thought that how Python uses whitespace was controversial! Are you looking for people with ropes and torches to come to your home?

I haven't seen one. You'd need to write the parser to specifically take notice of whitespace like that and it's so unusual in a programming language that the designer would have needed to be very insistent on it.

Something mathematical like Maple or MatLab might support it. It's basically implementing a math shorthand to avoid parentheses.

If you were going to form a trust tomorrow to protect your hard earned generational wealth, how would you go about it? Any particular states, firms, or tools you'd recommend? Any advice?

The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners is the global trade association for people who do high-end work in this area, although they appear to be more active in the Commonwealth than the US. If you have more than a million or two to play with, I would look for a STEP member lawyer based on location and interests.

If you are actually rich, never work with a bank trust department. They charge a percentage, which works out as more than what a lawyer would charge on an hourly basis once you are into the millions, and still give the actual work to a paralegal regardless of how much you are paying.

Robert Barnes, https://www.barneslawllp.com/ is know here for some of his more long shot political cases and commentary, but his main job is as a tax lawyer. I think he does this sort of thing, it's probably worth sending his firm an email. You should at least get a referral.

What advantages do trusts have?

The trust is eternal so it escapes inheritance taxes. The fact that it's not technically the property of the person receiving the benefit provides some protection against lawsuits, liabilities, certain government actions, etc.

Not much. The biggest reason to use them is to avoid probate. So you have a revokable trust, and then when you die it goes to the trustee(s) more easily. But it is still very much taxable if above the $13 million limit.

To avoid inheritance taxes, there might be other things you can do. For example, you can give up to $19,000 a year tax free each year that doesn't count towards your estate tax. And when you die, give your money to your grandchildre instead of your kids, so that you only pay estate taxes every other generation.

There's probably more you can do, but there aren't nearly as many loopholes as people think, at least for the minor gentry.

I've got things set up to avoid probate with ToD deeds & orders (except the worthless junk cars, annoyingly), but I guess that would be a lot more complicated with billion-dollar estates where you might want to break up properties and change your will every time there's a new grandchild.
Not that anyone with under 27 million needs to think about this in the first place, as long as they're married.

Oh boy. As you may know, I'm an attorney, and before I proceed I want to give some general disclaimers. First, I'm not your attorney and none of what I'm about to say should be taken as legal advice. I don't know your exact situation or even the state in which you reside, so I'm not in a position to give specific advice. As for my qualifications, I had my own practice between November 2019 and May 2023 and I did estate planning and administration work, but not exclusively. This work was in Pennsylvania, which does not have ToD deeds. For a decade, includign when I had my own practice, I did oil and gas title work. While this may not seem like it has much to do with estate planning, a large part of it was dealing with the consequences of poor estate planning and figure out how to clean everything up. I did this in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. OH and WV have ToD deeds, but I didn't see them much, for reasons I will make clear below. I currently do litigation in PA and WV primarily and still do estate work very occasionally, but it's more of a side gig where someone will ask me about a will and I'll do it through my firm or a coworker's friend will ask them and I'll get it because I'm one of the three people here who have done that kind of work. I don't mess around with anything that involves the Federal Estate Tax or the word "irrevocable", but I've been to plenty of seminars involving this kind of stuff so I have a decent working knowledge. Basically, I know enough about it to know that it's a liability minefield I don't want to get involved in.

With that out of the way, I'd generally recommend against ToD designations for real estate. Certain charlatans like Suze Orman try to convince everybody that probate is the worst thing in the world and is to be avoided at all costs, but that's not necessarily true. One of the most common questions I was asked when I did estate planning is a variation of the following question I actually got a call about a couple months ago: A woman's husband recently died. She had three children, including a 36-year-old unmarried son who was living with her. She already had a will that left the house to the son, but asked me about possibly conveying the house to the son. Her intention was to avoid the 4.5% inheritance tax.

My answer was an immediate and unequivocal "no". Her plan would only work if her son stayed in the house and continued to live there indefinitely after her death, and he continued to be a responsible single guy in good health with no financial difficulties. The most obvious issue, though, was the tax issue. If the son continues to live in the house after she dies then it's not a problem. But the woman is only in her 60s; she could easily live another 20 or even 30 years. Suppose the son buys his own house in the meantime. When his mother dies, he now owns a house that he doesn't live in. If he sells it, he takes a short-term capital gain that is taxed as regular income since he isn't entitled to a homestead exemption. To make matters worse, the capital gain is on the entire sale price, since he got the house for free. On the other hand, if he inherits the house in that situation and wants to sell it, he can take advantage of the step-up in basis and only pay capital gains tax on the difference between the sale price and the market value at the time of death, which is likely to be zero. He'd still have to pay inheritance tax, but this is only 4.5% as opposed to the 20%+ he'd be paying in capital gains tax.

Beyond tax considerations, though, this woman would risk dealing with what I call the five Ds:

  • Death: If her son dies before she does, the beneficiaries of his estate will become the owners of the property. The woman probably assumes that she'll outlive her son and even if she doesn't, he'd leave his estate either to her or another family member, but he could leave it to anyone. It could end up in the hands of a charity or an ex-girlfriend who is disinclined to let this woman keep living there for free.

  • Divorce: If her son were to get married, the house could be an asset subject to distribution in any subsequent divorce proceeding.

  • Disability: If her son becomes disabled, owning a significant asset will affect his eligibility for SSDI, Medicaid, and various other benefits.

  • Debt: If the son were to file for bankruptcy, the house would be an asset subject to distribution to creditors. Chapter 13 bankruptcy allows debtors to protect equity in a home by entering into a payment plan instead of liquidating the estate. The catch is that the payment plan has to raise at least as much money as the creditors would get in a Chapter 7. This realistically isn't an issue, since most people filing for bankruptcy don't own their houses free and clear; they've already mortgaged them to the hilt. If the house isn't complete shit it probably forces him into a 100% plan, which could be unfeasible depending on the amount of debt. Worst case scenario he's forced to sell the house to cover the debt. On the other hand, if he doesn't own the house it's likely a no-asset Chapter 7 or a straightforward Chapter 13.

  • Dumb: People do dumb things all the time. He could mortgage the house to buy a boat and leave her vulnerable if he can't make the payments. He could neglect to pay property taxes. He could try to save a little money by not insuring the property. He could decide to rent out an extra bedroom to a hobo. Those examples are downright idiotic, but even well-intentioned gestures can fit this category. Say he wants to do some kitchen renovations. His mother thinks he's just paying for them, but in reality he took out a home equity loan. Six months later he loses his job and can't make the payments. Now she's looking at foreclosure as the result of actions she had no control over.

ToD deeds were created as an attempt to mitigate the effects of the five Ds. By creating a revocable future interest in the property instead of an irrevocable present interest, the beneficiary can't really do anything to affect the property while the grantor is still living. Sounds good, but this creates its own problems; by taking assets out of probate, any issues must be dealt with outside of the probate process. Probate isn't a boogeyman. It's a process specifically put in place to deal with these kinds of issues. Wills allow you the flexibility to provide precise instructions regarding your intentions, and allow you to appoint an executor to ensure that these instructions are carried out. Probate courts provide a forum to resolve any issues that arise. Outside of probate court and it's centralized process; you're out of luck. Just a few issues I can think of the top of my head, using the above case as an example:

  • Instead of conveying the house outright, the woman executes a ToD deed naming her son as the beneficiary. Several years later, the son becomes disabled and cannot work, and relies on government benefits. The mother then dies. The son now has an asset that cuts off his eligibility. Hod the house been transferred by will, she could have created a provision that created a testementary trust in the event that any named beneficiary were receiving benefits at the time of her death, and the trustee would have been able to ensure that the house would remain property of the trust for the son's benefit and that he could continue living there and receiving benefits.

  • The woman executes a ToD deed conveying the house to her son and two other children in equal proportion upon her death, at which time the house is worth $300,000. Two of the children want to sell the house and get their $100,000 share. But the son, who is still living there, doesn't want to sell, and correctly claims that as part owner he has the right to the premises. He further refuses to buy out his sisters' interests. If the sisters want anything out of the deal, they'll have to file a partition action, which will cost 5 figures and could take years to resolve. They're also unlikely to get their full shares, since the son will be able to claim any mortgage payments, taxes, repairs, insurance, or any other allowable expense he made towards the house over the course of his time living there. The house will be sold at auction, invariable resulting in a lower sale price than could be had if it were properly marketed. A will could expressly include buyout provisions (I usually included these if a child was living in the family home), expressly direct the executor to sell (though he could sell to the son), or give any number of other guidelines. Even in the absence of these, this is a dispute the probate court would be able to resolve before title ever transfers. It could get complicated, but nowhere near as complicated as a partition.

  • The son gets married and has a child. The woman executes a ToD deed naming the son as beneficiary and the child as contingent benificiary. The son predeceases the woman. The woman then dies while the child is still a minor. The mother is still alive. The mother now has to petition a court to establish a legal guardian for the child's estate, so that the real property can be managed for the child's benefit until she is of legal majority. This is a complicated and expensive procedure. If the guardian wishes to sell the house to use the money for the child's ongoing support, they need to get a court order. If they sell the house and get the cash, they're required to invest the money and only spend the interest; if they need to dip into the principal, they need a court order. They need to file an annual accounting with the court. It's a complicated process. On the other hand, and will would contain automatic trust provisions for the event that a minor had to inherit a major asset. The trustee could be named in advance, and the trust set up shortly after death without court involvement. The trustee doesn't need court approval to do anything, and the accounting requirements are much looser.

  • The woman executes a ToD deed with her three children as beneficiaries in equal proportion. The house is the only item of value in the estate. Shortly after the woman's death, the children sell the house to a third party. They do not consult an attorney because they believe that since they aren't opening an estate and there's only one asset they don't need to. A year later, a man claiming to be a creditor of the woman calls the son, asking about the money he is owed. After the son tells him that his mother passed and no estate was opened, the man discovers the ToD deed and subsequent sale to the third party. He then sues all three of the woman's children for their pro-rata share of the debt. If the woman had a will, or died intestate, the estate would have been advertised and the creditor would have had a chance to make a claim. The executor could have settled the matter out of the proceeds of the sale before the money was distributed.

These are just a few things I can think of off the top of my head. The point is, DIY estate planning is a bad idea. I talked to a lot of people, smart people, who thought they were doing something really smart by avoiding paying a lawyer to have a proper estate plan done. These people usually ended up doing things that would cost their estates significantly more than the most expensive estate planning lawyer in the area would charge. A couple thousand bucks may sound like a lot, but you have no idea how easy it is to spend that much when an estate goes haywire. People who tell horror stories about probate are usually referring to instances where something got fucked up and the matter was held up or needed to be litigated. These are unfortunate circumstances, but in no case was there some easy self-help fix that could have avoided the situation. Please, consult with an attorney as soon as you can.

None of that's an issue, and both I and my father already have wills as backup anyway. But unless we die in the same accident there shouldn't be anything for the executor to do.

I started reading Kafka's The Trial yesterday, and I was reminded of Jonathan Franzen's Ten Rules for Novelists:

  1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.

  2. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.

  3. Never use the word then as a conjunction—we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.

  4. Write in third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.

  5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

  6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.

  7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.

  8. It’s doubtful that anyone with an Internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.

  9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.

  10. You have to love before you can be relentless.

I disagree with a lot of this, but #8 jumped out at me. I have ~65k words of an unfinished novel that I want to finish in February. I've been writing it in Google Docs specifically so that I can work on it on my phone on the train. Ideally, I would like to work on it on my laptop with the internet disconnected, to avoid distraction. I understand that you can work on a Google Docs document offline, and the document will sync automatically as soon as you reconnect. My question is, can anyone recommend a piece of software that will prevent my computer from connecting to the internet for a fixed period of time? The workflow I'm envisioning is, I get home from work, sit down at my laptop, disconnect the Internet and set this up such that I can't reconnect for an hour or ninety minutes or whatever. If this piece of software could also block me from opening certain applications (e.g. Steam, VLC) during the period as well, that would be even better.

Never use the word then as a conjunction—we have and for this purpose. Substituting then is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many ands on the page.

This reminds me of the newspaper thing where editors insist on writing “said” unless it absolutely doesn’t fit, because of inside baseball type complaints when journalists use other words (“he added”, “she recalled”, “he protested”, “she described”). The result is that in many modern “prestige” newspapers every article is just an endless series of “he said……he said….he said….he said…” with no switching it up, no texture, just dull repetition.

How Not to Write a Novel:

Published authors use the word "said" almost exclusively when they wish to indicate that a particular character is saying something. "Said" is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible.

Many unpublished authors, however, become uncomfortable with the repetition of the word "said" and try to improve the technology of dialogue by substituting any verb that has ever been associated with speech or language.

A particularly egregious version of this occurs when an author conflates a stage direction with the desire to avoid the word "said" and instead of writing "You and what army,” he said, thrusting out his jaw or he asked, quirking a brow, produces something like "Hello,” he thrusted or "Are you going to finish that?” he quirked. The only thing any of this does, though, is draw attention to the unconventional verb, which reminds the reader that there is an author, who is struggling mightily to avoid the word "said".

There are of course exceptions: "asked" is used for questions, "shouted" is used for a character who is doing so, and there will occasionally be a good reason to use a word other than "said" for plain speech. But spicing things up with "importuned," "vociferated", or "clamored" will sabotage any attempt to make conversation sound real.

Published authors use the word "said" almost exclusively when they wish to indicate that a particular character is saying something. "Said" is a convention so firmly established that readers for the most part do not even see it. This helps to make the dialogue realistic by keeping its superstructure invisible.

A very convenient justification, but one belied by the fact that people very much do notice it. The structure is not invisible. The best way is just to limit usage of the word ‘said’ through sentence structure; much of the time it is redundant.

Consider:

I arrived at the party, said hello to the host and quickly found my friend. Charles said that he was angry and frustrated. It wasn’t merely the weather, he said, but the dour tone of the whole occasion that dampened even the faintest prospect of a pleasant evening.

Versus

I arrived at the party, greeted the host and quickly found my friend. Charles was angry and frustrated, not merely by the weather, but by the dour tone of the whole occasion…

Most writers of even poor prose are capable of this. The problem is much more pronounced in journalism, which adopts this rule more zealously than necessary (to put it mildly). An article about a president’s speech will say:

President Smith said Tuesday that he expected the economy to resume growing this year. Speaking at the White House, Smith said….Smith said…Smith said…the President said…the President said…he said…

Dull, dull, dull. “He added”, “he argued”, “he expanded”, he clarified” - many of these actually add useful descriptive context and break up the said monotony, which contrary to the quote actually is very noticeable.

“Vociferated” is indeed horrific, but it’s the bailey in this argument.

The How Not to Write a Novel example is referring to the use of "said" in speech tags for directly quoted dialogue, not when summarising a series of interactions in narration. There's a separate passage in the book in which they specifically encourage writers to summarise incidental dialogue much like your second example, rather than quoting it directly. The example they gave is something to the effect of:

Making her excuses, Sarah sat down to lunch with Jane.

as opposed to

"Sorry I'm late," Sarah said. "Traffic was mental."

"Don't worry about it," Jane said. "I've only been waiting five minutes."

"Oh, that's not too bad," Sarah said.

Personally, I can't recall ever reading a book which I thought was too boring and monotonous specifically because the writer failed to use enough synonyms for "said". Maybe you're talking primarily about journalism, but I think if I read a novel which featured the speech tag Joe expanded, I would probably roll my eyes. It strikes me as part of a register which is inappropriate for most fiction.

I agree, but the example was about journalism, to be clear, where the tags are a useful way of structuring a story for additional clarity. With directly quoted dialogue I think it’s a matter of writer’s preference / style, there are certainly novels with huge amounts of dialogue, bordering on a script in some cases, that I quite enjoy.

Fair enough. Offhand I can't recall an instance in which I thought a piece of journalism was sapped of interest by overuse of the word "said" but I'll keep an eye out for it in future.

Because I have too much time on my hands, I re-read one of my favourite pieces of journalism: "Shattered Glass" by Buzz Bissinger. Out of 45 speech tags, I count 30 "saids".

Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup? I would think the simplest way to heed that advice is to get a machine that can't connect to the internet and write on that using some offline word processor (e.g. Scrivener). Maybe back it up on a USB drive occasionally if you feel the need.

In most places you can get refurbished office PC's for cheap that should be up for the task. An old laptop with a broken WiFi card could also work.

Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup?

I'm not. My first preference is to write at home on my laptop disconnected from the internet, but I'll also need to write on my phone during my commute.

When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.

Is it devalued? Maybe. But it's hard to write a novel that takes the reader's time and intelligence seriously if you don't do some research. At the very least a wiki lookup or asking an LLM doesn't hurt.

The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than The Metamorphosis.

Absolute nonsense of the "sounds deep, makes no sense if you think twice about it" variety. If your work is "pure" invention, then I struggle to see how it can be autobiographical. I expect most objections to be quibbling about what counts as pure invention.

I interpreted the bit about autobiographical fiction as mostly a joke.

Cold Turkey is the best I know: the kinds of blocks you can do are sophisticated and flexible, and so are the ways you can implement those blocks.

Sadly, it doesn't work on Linux. I have LeechBlock but what I really want is the opposite: to unblock things for the next X time and then have them block automatically.

I use Self-Control, which lets you block websites for a length of time. You can block all websites but allow a whitelist, or block only a few websites. That doesn't prevent all internet connection though, just browser use.

My question is, can anyone recommend a piece of software that will prevent my computer from connecting to the internet for a fixed period of time? The workflow I'm envisioning is, I get home from work, sit down at my laptop, disconnect the Internet and set this up such that I can't reconnect for an hour or ninety minutes or whatever.

This is easy on Linux or MacOS with a short command line script. Run the script, it kills the wifi or locks down the firewall, and undoes that step 90 minutes later. You can't undo it unless you have admin rights and remember the command to undo everything without using the internet.

So maybe consider getting an old macbook/Linux laptop and keep the setup bare-bones. Comes with the bonus of far fewer distractions, too.

You could also run the same thing on your router directly, taking the whole house offline. It probably supports scheduled internet disconnects out of the box and you can find that option in the web GUI, but most routers run Linux anyway and you just need to get access to run your own scripts.

I've forgotten the name of a writer, whom I think was introduced to via The Motte: The webpage that was linked to was a long piece on female physical attractiveness to men, with good examples of convergence in art (e.g., depictions of fertility goddesses) and less persuasive evidence from porn and sex dolls. The author also had an argument that almost no homes should be built with attached garages, and a zoning scheme that would purportedly accommodate everyone having a SFH with a detached garage. (He was much more persuasive that attached garages generally make facades ugly than that attached garages are a net negative. Part of the argument was that cars don't strictly need to be stored indoors, and other things could be stored in a shed. However, most of the things you would store in a garage are things that are designed to be used outdoors, but would benefit from being stored indoors, and cars are far and away both the most expensive of these things and the most likely to be resold to fund their replacement - if you can park in a garage, you should.) Anyone recognize this description?

Shielding your car from precipitation and sunlight at least is generally a good idea and contributes to the longevity of the framework. And if you go as far as to build a garage for that purpose, it should be used for that purpose, and not as a shed, I'd say. If you also need a shed, then get one built.

Multiple people have linked it, but no one has yet pointed out that the author is a female (cis I believe)

Could be lying, but I don't believe she is.

This certainly makes the complaints that she's 'mansplaining' quite hilarious!

In retrospect I probably should have guessed from the handwriting font used in a lot of the posts.

Bro what

It's more apparent in her essay on why the red pill is wrong, and she calls herself a female writer at the end.

It does make me question how accurate the beauty myth essay is, though, since it's apparently written by a (very unusual) woman and not a man.

The critique that the redpill turns men into emotionally annihilated performing monkeys to satisfy women’s dark urges isn’t new (there was some MRA vs PUA drama back in the day), but it’s well made.

Every time I see that blog post, I get irrationally angry.

The author has bad taste and a myopic, illiterate understanding of art and aesthetics, especially in relation to female beauty. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about mythology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, female archetypes.

The section on love/fertility goddesses should be a massive red flag. There is no engagement with the mythology surrounding the goddess figures he writes about. And any extrapolation of beauty standards from these mythological figures, without first a correct understanding of the mythos of said figures, is wholly meaningless, surface-level. And you cannot write about sexual archetypes and not mention Camille Paglia. The section on male gaze is laughable. No feminist theory was consulted in writing the piece. No Freud either, nothing. I am asking for the very basics here.

I hate the picture spam. It is dishonest

The author has bad taste and a myopic, illiterate understanding of art and aesthetics, especially in relation to female beauty. There is a fundamental lack of knowledge about mythology, anthropology, psychology, symbolism, female archetypes.

What is a better interpretation of these pieces of art?

I think that the blog post is great, and has a lot of insight. It's overly long and belabors its points sometimes, but is much more right than wrong imo. I think that the things you're describing as "the very basics" are completely extraneous and I have no idea why on earth you're demanding these irrelevant digressions.

I enjoyed the first few paragraphs as I leapfrogged the weird AI pics mixed with what looked like Flashman illustrations. Then he started using lovedolls as evidence for what all men want, then wouldn't stop with the lovedolls already. By the time he got to the picture of I think peak Tyra Banks along with a few other supermodels in their prime wearing lingerie and his caption was "Not really what men want" I felt certain either I am an extreme outlier (because I want) or he was blinded by his own biases for thicc. Admittedly I have not finished reading, and probably will later

Yeah, that was confusing. Those women have ideal 0.7 hip/breast to waist ratios. Men very much want that.

But, of course, what men really want is the impossible 0.6 hip/breast to waist ratio of anime dolls. Sadly, hyperreal does seem to dominate over real in terms of male (and female) desire.

I think 0.7 is actually the sweet spot and 0.6 is considered less attractive.

It's interesting that the attractiveness ratings go from 17 to 69.

One of the things the author does which is kind of bad from is that he will switch between two meanings of "not what men want". Sometimes he seems to mean "men find this repulsive" (as in the case of many fashion models), and sometimes he seems to mean "this isn't most men's ideal woman". In the second case, someone can not look like the average man's ideal woman and still be attractive to many men (both because men are not insistent on getting their ideal, but also because men's individual preferences vary so that some men's ideal woman does look like that).

sometimes he seems to mean "this isn't most men's ideal woman". In the second case, someone can not look like the average man's ideal woman and still be attractive to many men (both because men are not insistent on getting their ideal, but also because men's individual preferences vary so that some men's ideal woman does look like that).

It's explained at the end of the article: the goal is to move into a niche where demand exceeds supply. You can have a body that 15% of men find appealing and 40% of women have or you can have a body that 40% of men find appealing and 15% of women have. Unless you have The One in your sights or have a Groucho Marx approach to mate selection ("I won't date any man that finds my gravity-defying anime tiddies attractive") it's better to have the latter body, simply because now you have seven times more men to choose from and can get to be picky.

It is a really bad post. If I was going to try to annoy the majority of posters here, I would call it mansplaining, but that really is what it is. It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive, and are all out here starving themselves trying to be as skinny as coke era Kate Moss because they’re too stupid to understand that men like the slim thick build with big tits (something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry, almost entirely driven by female demand - ie not husbands demanding their wives get surgery). If anything, it’s men who seem more confused about what women like.

I concur that it's a bad post, but it mostly just seems bad by virtue of the poster clearly taking his own preferences and doing mental gymnastics to argue that the whole world would be better off if it catered to them. It does meet the baseline definition of mansplaining, because his fundamental claim to authority rests on him being a man - but unlike with the typical callout targets, there is actually nothing particularly fallacious about the idea that ceteris paribus a man would be more likely to be well-equipped to explain what men find attractive. He just happens to give a bad explanation anyway, against the odds.

The statement that women in general don't know what men find attractive rings true to me, just based on everything I have heard from female friends and romantic partners over the years. You should not make the mistake of confusing this statement for something like "women have a hard time attracting men", because both the former and the negation of the latter can be (and, I'd argue, are) true simultaneously. Men, as a group, have low standards. Some individual men have very low standards, and moreover the low-standards ones are scattered surprisingly widely across the distribution of men by quality of women. Also, increasingly, the preferences of men are such that the quality of the partner they get matters far less to them than the guaranteed and the potential costs of engaging in partner selection. That is, these men prefer a woman who barely passes their standards and throws herself at them for free over one who is far more attractive to them but would have to be wooed/won over (with the attendant cost in time, "emotional labour", money and preference falsification in other domains, risk of heartbreak and threat of social consequences) every time.

As a result, the easiest success strategy for women starts looking something like 1. pick a man; 2. make sure you pass some minimum attractiveness threshold (which can be done by optimising for a very wrong model of male attraction as long as it's not completely insane); 3. hit on him as obviously as your intra-gender social constraints will allow; 4. guard him from any competition. If you follow this strategy, it may seem to you that your optimisation at step 2 did a lot of work, step 3 was just necessary because men are dense, and step 4 is insurance because men are so fickle that they would cheat on a 10 with a 6 for novelty, and that your success therefore means you had a good grasp of men's preferences. In reality, at step 2 you probably optimised in some direction that barely managed to have positive dot product, made it to 6/10, and steps 3 and 4 were the decisive ones because a 6/10 in the hand is worth more than a 10/10 in the (Australian) bush, gympies and all.

(You can benchmark actual ability to judge men's preferences by trying to predict their ranking of the attractiveness of classmates (if they feel safe to share with you), actresses, or fictional characters. I have been in fairly unfiltered mixed company sharing those, and men's rankings never fail to surprise even women who know them well.)

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

I actually am much more willing to believe this than I would've been in the past. As I've gotten to know my wife better and better over the course of our marriage, it is shocking the number of times she'll say something which shows that she (or her friends sometimes) doesn't really understand men. My takeaway has been that women do not actually understand men as well as they think they do. It wouldn't surprise me to find that women don't have a very good idea of what men find attractive either.

For what it's worth, some here claim the author is female, and I've seen her referred to as "her" in essays she re-tweeted.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive,

Men are belittled for not knowing what women find interesting in dating app pictures (ie not the stereotypical photo of a man with a large fish he caught). Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention, while only a smattering of men will ever be considered worthy of female attention. Thus men have an incentive to try to understand women, which diesn't exist vice versa.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid

Women generally don’t want to get laid, they want commitment from a good man who treats them well. Kudos to circus freaks who find that, but ‘had sex’ does not necessarily indicate it.

Why would only men not know what women like, while women would have insight into preferences of both genders?

Because I think being attractive to men is simpler than being hot to women because men care more about physical features alone while women care about both physical features and more intangible but easily perceived qualities like a sense of presence and charisma, for which being hot is often necessary but not usually sufficient. If that’s misandry I do apologize.

Say you ask the average relatively attractive woman to wear the outfit she thinks men will like the most - she will probably know what it is. Will the average man know the inverse? It’s not that women don’t care about men’s style, either. Men just don’t seem to think about it.

If anything it is the opposite: a literal hairy pigwoman can get laid, thus showing women do not need to know anything about men to get their attention

Since most women have little interest in maximizing the number of sexual partners they have, whether they could find ‘someone’ to fuck is irrelevant. What matters is finding someone good, who will commit, who is nice and who is attractive (in various ways), and that is very much as competitive for women as finding a good partner is for men.

It starts from a strange premise that women don’t know what men find attractive

Do they? If they do, I think the most charitable explanation is that they prioritize other evaluations of their appearance:

  • evaluation by other women, who rate fashionable outfits higher than they rate attractive ones and who downrate women that exploit their attractiveness to the fullest, branding them pick-mes/sluts
  • deliberately lowering the amount of male attention they receive. Back when my wife was my GF I asked her to get a bodycon knit dress, because she had the right figure to rock it (still does). She bought one (nothing racy: long sleeves, knee length, crew neck) and wore it just once, because sudden lulls in conversation when she entered the office really upset her. Her friend would wear the same model in a different color to the same workplace with no regrets

It's fine, you can always annoy us. The lesson of ‘mansplaining’ is that women find correct information threatening.

something rather incongruent with the huge implant industry

Not huge enough, evidently. He probably thinks it should be near-universal, personal interest well considered, given that it’s like 3 points of attractiveness for little effort.

He doesn’t really cover the issues with implants which is that rupturing is an issue, they have to be replaced every 10 years for life (expensive, time consuming, recovery process, inherent risk of anaesthesia), and the initial cost is quite high for many young women, plus you want to shop around to find someone good.

Most people also aren’t relentlessly focused on maximizing their hotness, which is why plenty of people don’t care about style, don’t go to the gym, are overweight etc.

Jesus Christ, I had no idea how shitty they were. All the sales-talk about "helping you achieve the feminine curves you desire" followed by dropping the "hardened scar tissue and breast deflation" stuff is surreal.

The cost/benefit of those things is far higher, especially for women. Men don't care if women have no style, don't go to the gym, and are (slightly) overweight.

You’re typical minding when you say most people know this. People’s opinions bounce off random shit they hear (eg, lies by men reassuring their wives), they can’t cut through it with a sharp intellect like yours.

I'm just a single data point, but I definitely

  • ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors
  • encourage my wife to go to the gym and take time of out of my work schedule so she can go
  • avoid buying too much junk food so we can both stay relatively thin

because I'm not attracted to fat, frumpy, flabby women, but maybe your point was about guys looking for a quick hookup?

We're talking about sexual attractiveness (or "maximizing hotness"), so yes, kind of. You want your wife to be healthy and active and balanced, which is understandable, but that has little relevance to attractiveness.

ask my wife to change when she wears clashing/unseasonal patterns or colors

This behaviour strikes me as rare, for combining two seemingly incompatible elements: the traditionally male role of leading/commanding, and the traditionally female role of giving attention and care to aesthetic things.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't think the combination is as rare as you think. Middle and upper middle class "alphas" or "chads" tend to be masculine leaders while also dressing well and requiring their girlfriends/spouses to do the same. Think of the top salesmen in a sales department or C-suite executives. I suppose the key is that they are probably not interested in women's fashion for its own sake, but only insofar as their woman's raiment can be used to reflect her man's high status and good taste (if I'm honest, this is also partially why I do it, I guess).

What would you imagine drives that demand for boob jobs, if women's wants are indeed the driving force (maybe they are, I'll take your word for it)? Women imagining this is what men want them to look like? Personal self-consciousness before the judgment of other women? Or something else?

Mainly the fear of aging, I guess.

And yet, as an older man with older contemporaries, I feel as if the small breasted women are now the ones not, in Brando's words, "playing soccer with (their) tits."

It ties into intrasexual competition which is ultimately derived from opposite sex attraction but in practice sublimated beyond a broader layer of activity best described as posturing. Men and women both do this in different ways, throughout their lives. Being a man with a small dick is bad, imagine if everybody knew you had a small dick, including other men.

Whoah whoah whoah, who have you been talking to? If it was Ingrid, don't believe a word, plus we dated in the winter time, so there's that.

No feminist theory was consulted in writing the piece. No Freud either, nothing.

I cannot tell if you're serious or sarcastic.

I would suggest if he's serious it's not an unreasonable point. Straw(wo) manning a view isn't a compelling argument for any but the already devout. There are, as well, a gamut of feminist views, from the pathological (Andrea Dworkin) to the clear minded but currently criticized (Germaine Greer) to Ms. Male Gaze herself (Laura Mulvey). He didn't need to write a treatise but not even naming any of these people suggests he just has an idea of what Womyn TM think. I agree the author should read a few books of Camille Paglia's.

https://www.jsanilac.com/essays/

Thanks

It's this guy.

Thanks

https://www.jsanilac.com/dispelling-beauty-lies/?ref=jsanilac.com

This guy, I think.

Thanks

Why on earth is a detached garage a good idea? Just complicates electrical service and makes the house insulation less efficient.
I really regret having so many shitty outbuildings, but it's optimal for property tax purposes. The only one I wouldn't rather be connected to the house is the wood shed.

Unless the house has a very wide and/or particular facade, attached garages are ugly. (And, if you have a large enough lot that you can spare the outdoor area, the indoor area might be put to better use.) In every other way, attached garages are superior, though he believes that most garages are unnecessary and detached garages are a lesser evil, more precisely.

This is a typical suburban street in the Pittsburgh area. Every house has an attached garage (technically an integral garage, but whatever). The garages on the downhill side of the street aren't visible, and the garages on the uphill side are below the grade of the main level. This is more a consequence of topography than anything else, but the whole problem is solved in flat areas by designing neighborhoods with alleys in the rear where you can have a garage and a place to put out the garbage and not have to worry about aesthetics.

And no, cars don't have to be stored outside, but it's still better to garage them. It was 3° this morning but my car was 55° when I left for work. It's also snowed about every other day since Christmas and I don't have to spent 10 minutes clearing my car before work, when I'm least in the mood to do so. I don't roast in the summer. I don't have to worry about punk kids trying door handles. When a storm rolls in and branches are blowing around I don't have to worry about them hitting my car. And blocking in a garage isn't the answer. Aesthetically speaking, you're probably not going to be able to match the existing exterior, so you either find something "close enough" or use something totally different; either way, it screams "this used to be a garage". And since most fire codes prohibit running ductwork in garages you have to retrofit it for HVAC. It's also probably not insulated so now you have that to deal with.

Tell that to the author!

An attached garage lets you enter your house directly after getting out of your car, which is rather practical whenever it rains/snows, or whenever you need to wipe your feet.

This has nothing to do with attached garages and everything to do with garages being the most prominent part of house facades. The latter is indeed bad, but an attached garage is neither necessary nor sufficient for this to happen.

There's also a section on other ways to utilize the interior space. I disagree that attached garages are a net negative, but the argument is not purely aesthetic.

There being other ways to utilize the interior space is only a benefit if you're actually going to use it. I already have a basement I don't really use for anything; I'm not parking my car outside so I have more wasted interior space.

If we're arguing against garages, period, that's one thing. Detached garages are still a utilization of interior space, though, so they don't get a pass there.

I think this has to do with the lots getting narrower and narrower in the US. You can no longer build your house next to a garage without violating various bylaws about setbacks. Look at "Walter White's house", a two-car garage takes up literally half the frontage. You would need to replace the house with a two-storey one to be able to get rid of the garage on its façade and even then it would be a squeeze: the lot is 72 feet wide, with two 6-foot side setbacks it's just 60 feet, a nice two-storey house is 40 feet wide, which leaves just enough space for an attached two-car garage that doesn't crowd the facade.

Front setbacks are bullshit, no doubt about it. However even in this case, plenty of Mista White's neighbors are parking their cars further back. Seems it should be trivially possible to put a garage where that car is and move the main house closer to the curb to compensate. There's no windows on the side facade of the house anyway. I am not aware of setback requirements treating houses and garages differently, but I may be unaware.

Are lots getting narrower in the US? It is my impression that they are getting wider.

I have seen US houses built on agglomerations of four 25′×110′ lots. Obviously, a 25-foot-wide lot would have approximately zero buildable area under most modern zoning codes (example). But such a lot was perfectly buildable back when the lot was originally laid out, one or two hundred years ago.

This video I watched says they are: https://youtube.com/watch?v=b8wnnFUazOY

I think you’re both right but looking at different time periods. Two story houses built on deep, narrow lots were the rule throughout much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in what were often called the “streetcar suburbs.” As the name suggests, residents originally relied primarily on public transportation and so didn’t need lots large enough to accommodate stables, carriage houses, or garages. That changed during the post-war era, when modern suburban neighborhoods with their one story houses on relatively large lots became the norm. Most newer subdivisions these days seem to contain relatively large houses on lots that are smaller than those of the 1950s but wider than those of the 1910s (though not necessarily much larger in terms of total square footage).

The wider your roads, the more the logic of efficient land use pushes you towards deep, narrow lots (in order to get as many square feet of lot per square foot of road as possible). Nathan Lewis points out that the US has had very wide roads by international standards since before the invention of the car, and therefore deeper and narrower lots for most of the late C19/early C20.

After car ownership became widespread, the US avoided the problems of wide roads and deep, narrow lots by insisting on lots which are incredibly large for the size of the house. Levittown mostly consisted of 800 sq ft houses (not counting the garage) on 6000 sq ft lots.

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That article appears to have been written by someone who doesn’t work with his hands… or drive a nice car, for that matter. (Actually, since this is a female author…)

You put the nice car in the garage so you don’t have to spend a bunch of time brushing off the car when it snows. If it’s a ragtop, you don’t have to worry about vandals slicing it open; if it’s a truck with a tonneau cover, you don’t have to worry about leaving it open lest the tweakers break it open to see all the nothing inside.

You also have a garage so that you have room to do things to maintain the house. Need to paint a door, or space to marshal furniture, or maintain the car? You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for, and dedicated shop areas are even rarer than garages are.

Detached garages are still ugly for the same reasons attached ones are, but if your lot’s on an incline there’s usually no place to put one. With an attached garage that’s not a concern, obviously.

Oh yeah, and you can just put another storey on top of an attached garage. Sometimes you can even fit two floors, so you have rooms on the second storey with a better view.

You can’t do that if you don’t have a clear workshop… which is what the people in those pictures with their cars outside are using their garage for,

I like attached garages but realistically speaking 3/4 of garages I've seen open in my neighborhood are stacked floor to ceiling, wall to wall with various garbage. Only about a quarter are usable shop spaces, gyms, etc.

Also, even if you don't have a particularly nice car or live where it snows, your car is probably better off not sitting in the sun all the time.

Also it's really nice not to have to go outside to get a tool from the garage.

Glad to know I'm politically unbiased and want to punch nrx architecture nerds in the face just as much as /r/yimby-communist ones.
I'd love to have a giant shed extension on my house instead of having to haul everything out to the workshop(s) in the rain. Even better if it's like a portcullis defending my house from the barbarians on the street. Having a two car garage was the only thing I liked about living in Texas.

How do you know he's a NRXer?

What’s up with Nasim Taleb? I read Black Swan recently and found it generally insightful. But the guy constantly boomerposts on twitter and gets into pretty stupid arguments calling people racist for mentioning IQ

Taleb is just another example of the corrupting influence of Twitter. Read his books when he publishes and ignore anything else

He is a boomer (well, he was born in 1960, the 46-64 baby boom was mostly an American phenomenon) and he is very argumentative.

Re: IQ 1. He did have a sample of people working for him, where all IQ scores were above 115 and the highest scores didn't reliably correlate with increased short and medium term success. 2. Lebanon scores 82, which he takes as a personal insult, and he points out that the Lebanese diaspora having plenty of very successful people.

The low national IQ score matches up well enough with the low PISA score and unfortunate economy. With any country getting a bad score, I think plenty of times it could be reasonably be said that it's somewhat depressed by malnutrition/trauma. Also different subpopulations could have very different scores. Looking at lists of successful people in the Lebanese diaspora on wiki, it's pretty Maronite, and not particularly Orthodox or Muslim and very little Druze (with apologies to Casey Kasem). Given IQs from Syria, Egypt and Saudi Arabia range from 74-76 and Jordan is 80, if we assume the Lebanese Muslims are closer to those numbers, the Maronite average IQ could be anywhere from 86-96. Also, brain drain can be a bitch.

He's kinda like Elon or Trump: a savant in some ways, a complete fuckwit in others.

The problem with Taleb is that his contributions to society are fairly minor. There's no reason to tolerate him since he hasn't had an interesting idea in years. In 2025, he's just a pimple on the ass of Twitter.

So, what are you reading?

Still on The Wisdom of Insecurity and other things.

Just started Starship Troopers. I wanted to read something fun, and I'm enjoy it so far.

Just finished the Odyssey. This read, I thought a lot about connections to other epics, like Milton or the Ramayana. What do the differences tell us about the cultures that produced them?

I picked up Gaiman's Sandman series. I'm on to volume 4 now. It might be that I'm not used to horror or comics or horror comics, but the first two volumes (A Doll's House and the process of getting the tools back) struck me as witchy and atmospheric, but pretty uninteresting plot wise. On the other hand, the self-contained stories in Dream Country like The Dream of One Thousand Cats were great. Though, given recent news, having the author in Dream Country repeatedly rape his imprisoned muse for story ideas is a liiiitle...well...you know...

If you want a really interesting comparison to fit in with those three (particularly assuming you've read the Iliad), I would recommend adding The Song of Roland.

Still on Master and Commander as my falling asleep book.

I'm quite enjoying it and didn't expect it to be so positive, but I guess it being written in the 70's inured it against cynicism.

Last week I finished Katalin Street by Magda Szabó. It was pretty good, though I doubt I'll read it again. On Thursday I started Boy Parts by Eliza Clark and it was so compulsively readable I had it finished by Saturday. It touches on a wealth of CW topics: female violence, the male gaze, false accusations of rape, whether there's any meaningful difference between fetish art and porn. Ultimately ends up feeling a bit like an extremely online, gender-flipped version of American Psycho. Very impressive, especially for a debut from such a young writer, even if I did feel like Clark was pulling her punches slightly.

Started The Trial by Kafka last night.

"The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties," by Christopher Caldwell, which argues that both the Great Society and Reaganism were misguided. Caldwell seems scrupulous, so I'm enjoying it.

Between Two Fires

A knight in ex communicatio and a bugger priest team up to escort a loli with visions of angels across plague-stricken mids 1300s France. Shenanigans of demonic and mundane nature ensue.

I'm only about a third of the way through. This could have functioned as a straight historical fiction novel but it leans fairly into the supernatural. The character dynamics of the main trio are carrying it so far.

The White Knight Syndrome, which is an interesting read so far, even if it hasn't magically transformed me into someone other than Don Quixote...

Natural Right and History by Leo Strauss for philosophy book club. Generally enjoying it, but I feel like he makes some dubious assumptions about things. Also working through Judas by Amos Oz and the last few hours of Solaris.

Favorite line of poetry or prose? For cleverness, beauty, or metaphor.

Our torments also may in length of time
Become our Elements, these piercing Fires As soft as now severe, our temper chang'd
Into their temper; which must needs remove
The sensible of pain.

Milton's Paradise Lost, Book 2.

It's an interesting choice for sure, given the context in the poem. What do you love about those lines?

Very nice.

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought

I summon up remembrance of things past,

I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought,

And with old woes new wail my dear time’s waste:

Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow,

For precious friends hid in death’s dateless night,

And weep afresh love’s long since cancell’d woe,

And moan the expense of many a vanish’d sight:

Then can I grieve at grievances foregone,

And heavily from woe to woe tell o’er

The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan,

Which I new pay as if not paid before.

But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,

All losses are restor’d and sorrows end.

Almost certainly not what you're looking for, but I have been having a lot of fun using a combination of ChatGPT and SunoAI to write song lyrics that are hyper-specific to me and people I know and inside jokes between us. My brother had a negative encounter with some random guy in a monster truck who hates electric vehicles and had to make it known, so I made a song about him, and one of the parts the AI generatred was

His dog ran off, his ex did too,

Guess they got tired of his dumb tattoo.

("Diesel Forever" misspelled on his arm...)

Which made me laugh way too much and is now one of my favorite lines in a song.

"War is good business, invest your son."

That line was incredibly influential to teenaged me.

"Mejor los indios".

What is this from?

Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy.

Context: It's a graffity that shows up after our protagonists succesfully hunted down a large group of indians, took their scalps and arrived as heroes in Chihuahaha, which had offered a bounty for this purpose. They then proceed to party so hard that the townspeople end up wishing for the Indians instead of the Gringos.

I find it hilarious.

"With a car you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.

I love poetry, but this just cracks me up.

That entire post is one of the greatest things 4chan ever produced.

"I always wonder why birds choose to stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on the earth, then I ask myself the same question."

-Harun Yahya

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra just for you.

The Tiger - Nael

The tiger

He destroyed his cage

Yes

YES

The tiger is out

One of the few poems that reliably induce frisson in me. I felt it again just reading it.

This isn't what you asked, but some of my favorite poems are:

Ulysses, The Present Crisis, Lepanto, The White Man's Burden, Recessional, various hymns (to be clear, this is not an endorsement of every sentiment found therein),

From Virgil's Georgics:

Poor creatures that we are, the best days of our lives
are first to fly

We were riding through frozen fields in a wagon at dawn. A red wing rose in the darkness.

And suddenly a hare ran across the road. One of us pointed to it with his hand.

That was long ago. Today neither of them is alive, Not the hare, nor the man who made the gesture.

O my love, where are they, where are they going The flash of a hand, streak of movement, rustle of pebbles. I ask not out of sorrow, but in wonder.

  • Czelaw Milosz, Encounter 1936

“There can be no doubt that gods have appeared, not only in ancient times but even late in history; they feasted with us and fought at our sides. But what good is the splendor of bygone banquets to a starving man? What good is the clinking of gold that a poor man hears through the wall of time? The gods must be called.”

  • Ernst Jünger, Eumeswil

I first saw this on Calling the Gods on Arya Akasha By Curwen Ares Rolinson

To the Motte, Seeking your sage wisdom, I come back asking for advice on how to make an LDR work.

Duration:

  • Best case - 4 months (with visiting)

  • Worst case - 7 months (with month long visit)

  • Medium case - 4 months without visiting

Time Delta: EST vs GMT+4:00, so 9 hours.

Overall sentiments: We want to make it work even though it's painful given its a new/fresh relationship and we know each other for roughly 4 months. (Things progressed very fast)

I am aware of the common pitfalls, failure modes, ways to make it work. But what are some unknowns and lesser known tips or pitfalls?

One that comes to mind is that undercommunication is a common failure mode, but so is overcommunication. Couples tend to overcompensate for the distance, but as a result overwhelm each other with their constant digital presence, which ultimately harms the relationship. I'm not sure exactly how to pull this off given my girl wanted almost constant communication while she was here and was very needy.

Another failure mode seems to be doing an LDR at all. Things would have picked up just fine once the partner was back and resulted in a healthy relationship, but going through an LDR results in the potential relationships failure due to the challenges it brings. I don't think this is a good strategy if things are already serious.

What are the signs you know it will work? How to make it work? Give me all your LDR knowledge.

For a second there I was like "what do you mean, make a low dynamic range work?"

I'm not sure exactly how to pull this off given my girl wanted almost constant communication while she was here and was very needy.

Discuss this in detail before she leaves. Set realistic expectations. I was in the exact situation 15 years ago, we didn't discuss that, and as a result still get stress flash-backs when I hear the classic Skype ringtone.

While I'm not a relationship expert, I've had an LDR which eventually fell apart because we were poorly suited to one another; chemistry was great but values and interests didn't align. I've also been married (with kids) for more than a decade to my current partner.

The reason your relationship will or won't work is going to have more to do with your compatability and commitment to each other than any strategy you might have for dealing with physical separation. It sounds like you care about making it work, so do the things you would do in a regular relationship: work to be the best person you can be, listen, make time, and try to maintain mutual friends. This last one is huge; no one really seems to think about how your girl is much less likely to drop you if you're friends with her friends.

Just bear in mind that if this isn't a good match, there's probably nothing you can do to keep it going, and that's really OK. At this stage in your relationship part of the point is for each one of you to try to tell whether it's a good match, and that's not easy to be confident about until you've known someone for over a year. This isn't just true of girlfriends, it's true of coworkers, employees, neighbors, and just about anyone you might know. Enjoy it while it lasts, and good luck that the two of you are right for each other!

Not sure how prone you would be to cheating but really avoiding even the first step that would lead to that process is key.

Specified date nights is big, but then occasional phone calls when you're free and walking somewhere. That can help alleviate her stress if she's an anxious texter and you aren't a big one.

Possible to play a game with her at the same time? Could be anything - animal crossing for instance

Playing a game is a great suggestion, it offers a pleasant distraction and a shared focus for something external to the relationship. Having nothing but updates on how each other's life is going can get a bit monotonous so building up some shared activities will help prevent falling into that.

Her being more eager to text/call you are good signs, the opposite is not. As long as you do not appear needy, you should be fine for a while. I turn off girls routinely over the phone and on text because I overgame them or go to the opposite end. As long as you are able to not care too much about the worst-case scenario, you should be fine as caring too much always leads to you being needy.

I don't think this is a good strategy if things are already serious.

I have never had a relationship. Those who I learnt from, yareally in particular mentioned that if you have friends with benefits who you meet once a week or more, then she will eventually fall in love with you, conversely if you are not around a girl physically, keeping attraction alive is hard. In your case, you already are doing fine. Refrain from texting her obsessively.

You can try having communication be centred around calling instead of texting since texts can eat up far more time, and convey way less and you can always just be a notification whereas calls let you be yourself far more.

Lastly, be ready to walk away, 4 years ago I was given the same advice here and I ignored it which led to my now infamous post about that one girl and learning pickup. You seem like a fairly upstanding guy so you should be fine but in case you think it is going sideways, be willing to walk away knowing you can always recreate special things.

What are the signs you know it will work?

Her investing more in you is the only visible sign. In every interaction, one person invests more than the other. I completely ignored this and thought that texting more meant more windows to make a girl like me, instead, I should have texted less, and not cared too much about her at all.

Clear commitment to a shared future helps. Seven months apart is not that long in light of years of marriage. My husband and spend several months apart while engaged, and I know married couples who spend a few years working in different states (and even countries).

Does anything prevent the two of you from getting engaged?

Set aside a regular daily time slot for video calls. Discuss in advance and in person how you plan to sext: just watching each other masturbate, doing it to the same video, connected sex toys or JOI.

Suggestions for a fast CAS for Linux? I know there's a bunch of good free stuff for Linux that has shoddy/no Windows support.

(Main use-case is arithmetic with nested loops, to sum over cases for a combinatorial problem. Mathematica is ~3x the speed of Maxima on Windows.)

Premature optimization is the root of all evil.

Especially if your problem parallelizes, the answer may be "whatever is easiest for you to write in" plus one or more honking cloud VMs. Consider also writing it in whatever is easiest for you, then having an LLM port it to something else.

If you don't need speed for iteratively developing, it really may be best to not care about speed, then let the thing run for a few weeks.

I've spent a good chunk of the last year running it. Speed actually is limiting, unless I were to rent OoMs more compute than what I own (which I'd rather not; it's for a hobby, not a job).

Hm, interesting. Care to share the code, via post or DM?

You say "CAS" but also "arithmetic". What's the story there? If it's heavy symbolics, I have one set of advice; numerics, another.

Does Julia count?

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