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PaperclipPerfector  10d ago (text post)   2925 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 16, 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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What is the most enjoyable conspiracy / new age belief to hold? I don’t mean convincing or beneficial, but just pure fun. Like, if beliefs were games or desserts, which belief would you buy to enjoy for an overindulgent weekend?

Enclosed Earth—the planet is not just flat, it's entirely contained within an artificial dome that displays a fake universe. Neatly gets around some of the problems with a simple flat Earth. Plus you get an entirely new boogeyman, the Dome-builders, and the various space agencies and militaries of the world may be in contact with them or may just be terrified of them. The best part is, what's outside the dome could be literally anything, you can go any direction you want, since all our evidence about the universe is faked.

Similarly, the Inverse Hollow Earth. We live on the hollow inside of a sphere. When we look up into space, we're looking into the interior of the sphere. Distances are inversed or light naturally curves or something like that to make it look like there's a vast universe within this hollow sphere. But since we live on the inside surface, the "underground" rocks are actually the outside of the sphere, which just extends outward forever, like scientists claim "space" does.

The US government maintains a time travel base on Mars. They bring future Presidents to the base to show them their future to guide and/or control them.

Inverse hollow Earth is the best one because, as a simple coordinate transformation, it's 100% correct.

If you take conspiracy theories seriously, there is nothing "enjoyable" there. Who is supposed to enjoy that they (whoever "they" are) are deceiving the mankind for decades and centuries with no end in sight for nefarious gains and getting away with it?

World where conspiracy theorists are right is nightmare fuel.

(Exceptions might be various "forbidden technology" conspiracies, claiming that free energy is kept secret by Big Oil and miracle cures for all diseases are suppressed by Big Pharma. This universe, if real, would be awesome - just break into these secret vaults and Star Trek utopia is here.)

This explains the temporary success of Qanon - this was rare conspiracy that claimed that good guys are out there fighting the good fight.

  1. Tartaria
  2. The existence of tulpas

Tartaria

Tartaria is the perfect product of late Soviet and post-Soviet decay and disappointment.

"No, we are not decrepit shithole that is laughingstock of the world! We wuz khans, and tsars, and sultans, and pharaohs, the whole world once belonged to Great Russian Tartarian Horde!"

The fact it is, beyond all expectations, gaining fans in the West, is significant.

tulpas

Nothing mysterious about self induced schizophrenia, and, seen from the outside, nothing particularly enjoyable either.

edit: link

Does anyone have a good budget office chair recommendation? My current chair is a piece of shit and I want to replace it with something more ergonomic with (ideally) a mesh back. Would like to keep it under 200 USD if possible, cause whatever I get I'm likely to get for my partner as well.

I got my swivel chair from JYSK (https://jysk.ie/). It was a model called Dalmose which appears to have been discontinued, although they have others that are similar. It only cost me €60. My girlfriend uses it more than I do as she's fully remote and she's always found it very comfortable. Mesh back like you requested.

Would like to keep it under 200 USD if possible

If you can double your budget, you could probably find a used Aeron that will last you years.

If you have the patience and willingness to deal with Facebook marketplace you could get a used herman miller mirra at this price point.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08XTSHLD4

I like this one a lot though it's $230.

Previously I was using a similar one for about $180 but it fell apart after about a year, so I got another one and that also fell apart after a year.

Well, I can be $30 flexible. How long have you been using this one?

Year and a half and it still feels like new. Really pleasant chair. Feels great, glides smoothly in all the places you'd want it to.

Looks like you can save $10 by getting the white version but I'd recommend against that. Keeping it pristine would be a nightmare. Or maybe that's less of a problem for you; I get regular visits in my home office from hordes of children with all kinds of crazy things smeared on their hands and faces.

Well, no kids yet but I've got two cats. I think I'd prefer the black version anyway, so ultimately it's moot. :P

Thank you for the rec!

He registered through the CBP One application in Mexico and was detained in San Diego when

OK so I get why he fled Venezuela. His life was in danger and he fled a dictatorial regime. Good for him. But then there's a bit of a gap. Once he got to Mexico, what exactly he was fleeing so urgently that he needed to get to San Diego without an entry visa? And, in fact, how exactly he ended up in San Diego? I am pretty sure if you just walk to the border and tell the agents "please let me in, I am a soccer coach from Venezuela and thus must get to San Diego urgently!" that's not going to work. When I was not a US citizen, each time I entered the US I had to get a visa and it was checked. I don't hear any mention of any visas in this story. How did it happen?

There is a quirk in United States immigration law. It is illegal to enter the United States without authorization, however, anyone physically present in the United States can apply for asylum. The fact that somebody applied for asylum does not retroactively make their unauthorized entry into the US legal. Even if they do have some level of protection from removal, they are still an illegal immigrant.

No. There will be plenty more “innocents” lost in this initiative. All roadblocks should be removed or run over.

His last name is Araujo. He isn’t American and he doesn’t belong here.

How is his name relevant?

We all know why. His name is as American as the name “Muhammad” is German or French - that is, not at all.

Your first post was low effort culture warring, but "We all know why" is piling consensus-building on top. No, we do not all "know why." We can certainly infer your meaning, but if you wanted to make an argument that anyone with a non-Anglo name is not American and has no right to be here, you should have actually made that argument, not simply asserted it with a "We all know."

Your record is a terrible one of randomly attacking the ethnic group of the day. Whether you are trolling or just a sincere and dedicated ethnonationalist who hates everyone and rotates between targets, you've accumulated half a dozen warnings, two tempbans, and a strong suspicion that you're just another shit-stirring alt.

Two week ban, probably permanent next time.

The idea that a Spanish surname might disqualify someone from being American is kinda funny when the Americas looked like this in 1800

The Germans and French are ethnic groups. Americans are not. You could argue that Araujo isn't Anglo-American, but then neither are African Americans and they've been there since the beginning too.

What are the bounds of American names? Is "Drumpf" an American name? Would Araujo "Americanizing" his name make him belong here?

So only pure Anglo-Saxons could be Americans? I am afraid that this ship sailed long ago (it was 1850's sailing ship that brought Irish, Germans and other European riffraff).

What is an American, in your book?

What is an American, in your book?

Legal category (comprising about 340M by now, about 4.1% of humanity).

If you have paper issued by proper authority following proper procedure that says you are an American, you are one.

Make it anything else, and you open door you really do not want to be opened (no matter how personally strong and tough you are and how many guns do you own).

No, those are citizens of the United States of America. USians (derogatory), not Americans.

Americans are a distinct people, a distinct ethnicity, and a coherent nation of people who share language and ancestry.

To ourselves and out posterity, and Araujo isn't included in that.

@grognard just got banned for this. Make your meaning clear and plain and do not appeal to an imaginary consensus. You are allowed to argue things like "Everyone with a Hispanic name should be deported," but you actually have to state your argument and make your case, not just handwave at it because you aren't willing to type out what you really mean.

"Asking grognard to explain and justify his belief of why Araujo is a name that doesn't belong in America" is not necessarily the same as "baiting grognard to be racist", unless, of course, grognard's justification really is racist.

Okay. I wasn't sure which way to read your comment, but nonetheless, a low effort "You know what he meant" isn't much better.

Any suggestions for unique, interesting things to do in New York City over an extended April weekend? This will be my fourth time in the city, so no need for touristy things. I do not enjoy fancy restaurants, but love food and will eat pretty much anything.

I've already scoured both Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura for sights and eats, but wonder what didn't make the list that Mottizens know about.

This was about 10 years ago so Im not sure they're still doing them, but I went on a hard hat tour through the unrestored parts of Ellis Island that was really cool, especially if you like creepy old abandoned hospitals.

I wonder if the Staten Island boat graveyard still is a thing, if that sort of thing is your thing.

What's the current bro-science on loading during exercise to manage injuries? Particularly explosive vs slow controlled lifting, etc?

The common wisdom I've seen has always been that explosive lifts are more dangerous and lead to more injuries, and that they should be especially avoided when managing an injury. A lot of people avoid the olympic lifts altogether to avoid injury, or if they do them they them with extreme caution.

But my personal experience has been that I injure myself much more often with slow lifts, like the classic powerlifts, and that when managing an injury explosive lifting (at reasonable intensity/tempo/etc) is much less stressful on injuries than slow controlled tempos.

As I'm adjusting my lifting around knocks picked up in BJJ on a weekly basis, I'm curious what the current consensus is.

I think you have the consensus correct. For rehabbing injuries I believe the consensus is isometric or eccentric exercises at 80% of 1RM. But the consensus hasn't served me very well. Slow, controlled exercise is always how I have injured myself too.

Personally, I have started to do concentric-only exercise for my current injured area (not explosive though) and it seems to be working better than the eccentric-only regime my PT had me on. Concentric-only and steady pace, not "extra slow" and not fast or explosive, using a bit of momentum generated from non-injured body parts indeed, seems to be way less stress on your tendons than "slow, eccentric, force being generated primarily from the injured body part".

It could be that you and I are just using too much load on slow exercises because explosive movements might inherently limit your load a bit more, so perhaps the time integrated/accumulated force is higher when training at the same rate of perceived effort in slow exercises vs. explosive ones, thus you get injuries on slow exercises more than explosive ones. Whereas with the explosive exercises at least you're still getting high peak forces to trigger adaptations but the accumulated force isn't too much. It is sort of against common sense though, I mean slow/controlled just sounds safer and better than explosive but my experience is more in line with yours than with the consensus so I don't know what to think.

Explosive usually has less eccentric loading, depending on what it is you're doing that is explosive. Wonder if that is a factor too.

It could be that you and I are just using too much load on slow exercises

I suspect this might be the culprit. How/when are you hurting yourself on slow controlled movements? Are you pushing reps to failure (or close to it)? Are you sure your form was still good when you injured yourself?

I'm only doing slow and controlled now, and my injury rate has been much better. But I stop (and reduce weight before continuing) the moment I feel my form slipping, which happens far earlier than failing a rep.

Interesting, yeah I'd say when going to failure mostly. I don't think my form is the issue necessarily, but perhaps I'm not great at identifying subtle slipping of form. Regardless, I think you make a good point that it's best to stop much earlier than failing a rep.

I got a new phone recently. Not a great one, it's a downgrade on my previous phone in several areas and the march of enshittification in phone design is clearly continuing at pace.

But that topic has been done to death and I wanted to ask something else of the community. What uncommon or interesting things can you do with a modern smartphone?

It occurred to me as I was transferring everything over that I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago. I can emulate more games consoles now, and I grudgingly use some of the digital wallet features, but otherwise all the years of development doesn't seem to have changed anything at all. Are there cool features or applications that I'm missing out on?

Improved cameras as pretty useful to me.

I have a google pixel 8 pro and I've been using the camera extensively and it works as telescope too, lol

Does it really, or does it lie about what it sees?

It occurred to me as I was transferring everything over that I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago. I can emulate more games consoles now, and I grudgingly use some of the digital wallet features, but otherwise all the years of development doesn't seem to have changed anything at all. Are there cool features or applications that I'm missing out on?

I have been trying to find the same since past year and my conclusion is, not much. There are some interesting apps I use on daily basis that might be of interest-

  • QuickCursor - It just adds the ability to whip out a cursor when you perform a simple swipe at the bottom end of the screen. Very basic functionality but intutive to use and something that has defintely improved my user experience
  • NFC based automation - Triggers a preconfigured task when a certain, already mapped NFC tag is swiped. for example scanning a NFC tag attached to your washing machine that sets a reminder when the clothes have been washed
  • Swipe based gallery cleaners - left to delete, right to keep
  • URLChecker - Let's you set the app to open or delete any trackers when opening a URL. Would only appeal to people concerned about privacy.
  • Task automation(ifttt/tasker) - Fully featured task automater can make your life quite easy. For example, when unplugged from your car's bluetooth turn on wifi and connect to home network(vice versa). Opens out tons of possibility in a Phone.
  • SMS Organizer - Automatically sorts your messages according to the type of message(personal/financial information/promotions(spam))
  • Buzzkill - Good notification management app
  • P!n -> Tool to pin text to remember on notifications

I think we have hit the saturation level on what a smartphone can do with the current app based UI design and just improving software wouldn't work. I find app based design very constricting since to chain different abilities of what a phone can do needs to be packaged as an app and then what is the point of having just another app on your phone. I see a lot of potential in new innovation regarding how we interact with our mobile to unlock new age functionality rather than bringing new ideas to current ecosystem. Something like this for example - https://sxmo.org/

On saturday I was out with my wife and she asked me if I could identify a bird that was close. I didn't know, so I picked up my phone, took a picture, used the Google Lens AI search (not sure how to call that feature) selected the bird in the picture, and it IDed the bird immediately, I had the answer within seconds. That felt close to the experience that ads make the latest "AI features" on phones to be. It has to be said though that this was probably the most perfect use of that feature I've had; I've had this phone for 9 months I think and there was never a better use for it.

Google lens is amazing. I was up in the Tokyo Tower recently and zoomed into far away buildings and could immediately ID them and what they are. Feels like a superpower.

That reminds me of https://xkcd.com/1425/

Google lens is pretty cool. I use it a lot to translate other languages writing to English a lot. Very useful for streetsigns and storefronts etc. AI searching of images is pretty good too like described above. Most modern phones will also transcribe your voicemails and send them to you as a text; I think you have to set this up, I don't remember it being default. Modern phone cameras are also very good at correcting the mistakes of amateurs, which I appreciate.

My wife uses it for identifying plants. Every spring we have a bunch of stuff start sprouting up in the garden and she's not sure what's a weed that needs to be plucked and what's a flower that survived/seeded from last year that we might as well keep. But the phone knows, even when they're tiny little sprouts with a couple of leaves.

It's good enough to tell similar but distinct varieties of flowers apart too. It can tell a Mr Lincoln from a Papa Meilland or a Don Juan, and most florists can't do that.

It's good enough to tell similar but distinct varieties of flowers apart too.

In my experience, Google Lens generally can't, but apps like Flora Incognita (which instructs you to take images of the leaves, the flower, the stem, the bark, ect.) can. Flora Incognita also tells you a certainty percentage, which is really helpful.

In my garden, Google Lens has an almost comical inability to distinguish my carrots from yarrow - and it won't warn you that it's less than 50% sure. If you only feed it flower pictures, flora Incognita has trouble as well, but tells you it's less than 40% sure until you take pictures of the leaves and stem.

There's an app for Android called Physics Toolbox that basically allows you to directly read and plot data from all the phone's many sensors. It effectively makes the phone into a tricorder and you can gather information about acceleration, angular velocity, magnetic bearing, GPS position, temperature, pressure, ambient light, noise levels, audio spectral analysis, magnetic field vectors, all kinds of fun stuff.

Agree. There aren't a lot.

The last 2 years have been especially lame. For me, ZFold3 (2021) was the last 'special' phone.

But, ones I use daily are:

  1. Folding phones - I had the Samsung folds and it isn't a gimmick. The huge screens make a difference. I loved being able to point the point at any angle, rest it on a surface and take photos of myself without needing to ask a bystander.

  2. Remote trigger - specifically, the ability to press the samsung stylus buttons to take a photo. They enshittified this one though. The S25 stylus lost this feature and the ZFold 5 doesn't allow you to store the stylus inside. This paired well with folding phones because I can place the phone where ever, and take a photo from the button on the stylus.

  3. Better GPS & fitness tracking - I put them together because they're usually used hand-in-hand with the smartwatch. GPS is just better (agressive) now. I use it for skiing and it tells me my top speed, tracks my runs and all the standard fitness stuff down to the second. Eats your battery really fast though.

  4. Location based actions - Auto switching my ringtone/vibrate/notification profiles between work & home locations.

  5. Picture in picture - Not exactly new. But now stable in all new phones. I can have a floating window playing youtube on my phone 24x7 without affecting the smoothness of the phone.

As I type this, they're all minor.

I has a OnePlus 3T in 2017. It was a substantial improvement on every aspect of my previous smartphone experience. Between the 3T in 2017 and the S25 in 2025, Not that much has changed.

There is AI stuff ofc:

  • Better camera post-processing
  • Google Lens
  • Google Translate
  • Insane image editing (removing objects, moving people within the scene)

But for some reason that feels like its own thing.

Location based actions - Auto switching my ringtone/vibrate/notification profiles between work & home locations.

You listed a lot of good points, but I want to highlight this one because it can be a real game changer for people who aren't doing it and the amount of effort required is minimal. Some of that you just do through settings (and remember you can search your settings, which is good because they keep shuffling where things go) but for a more robust solution grab tasker and start organising!

I have barely changed how I use a smartphone since I bought my very first over a decade ago

I have the same feeling. But for me, something else changed: the phone takes on more and more additional duties. Within the last two hardware generations, I've completely stopped bringing my DSLR camera and my outdoor GPS unit (for mountaineering).

Modern smartphone camera sensors and lenses are decent (when compared to compact cameras), and modern camera software is - frankly - completely insane. The combination of the two now easily beats my skill level on a DSLR camera that has orders of magnitude more sensor area, lens diameter and aperture diameter. I'm generally a software skeptic (progress in software development over the last 10 years has resulted in very little "real" value being created), but camera software amazes me. Instead of taking a still image, phones now always capture a short video instead and distill the final image in post - a mostly automatic process that results in sharp, correctly lighted and color balanced shot.

Replacing the GPS unit was more trivial. OLED displays are more readable in the sun, the GPS chips got a bit faster, and again, the quality of the software/data got orders of magnitude better (the free offline geo-data available today is vastly better than the commercial data of a few years ago). Route planning and terrain analysis also got so much better. Used to take a PC and skill and experience, now everybody can do it on the phone with 30 minutes of instructions. Also, if you have the right smartwatch, you won't be taking a device out of your pocket at all anymore.

Modern smartphone camera sensors and lenses are decent (when compared to compact cameras), and modern camera software is - frankly - completely insane. The combination of the two now easily beats my skill level on a DSLR camera that has orders of magnitude more sensor area, lens diameter and aperture diameter. I'm generally a software skeptic (progress in software development over the last 10 years has resulted in very little "real" value being created), but camera software amazes me. Instead of taking a still image, phones now always capture a short video instead and distill the final image in post - a mostly automatic process that results in sharp, correctly lighted and color balanced shot.

I've gone the other direction and bought a real camera a while ago. I got fed up with the overcooked processing phones do, the extremely limited choice of focal lengths (wide and ultrawide unless you buy an expensive and huge phone with a "portrait" lens) and the bad image shake. Most importantly, the ergonomics of taking photos on a phone are shit tier compared to any halfway decent camera that has a viewfinder and where the body has been designed for the task of taking photos. I don't see phones getting better in ergonomics or focal lengths as improving those would make them directly unappealing to 90% of the market and 99% of the influencer market: people who want a sleek looking device for using social media.

Of course I'd also hate to use an old style massive and heavy DSLR. Luckily there have been good lightweight mirrorless cameras on the market for over a decade.

One thing is certain: Phones have killed the compact camera market for good except for hipsters who want a retro looking toy that also happens to function as a camera and a few rare holdouts. For casual snapshots of groups of friends etc. phones are great.

For casual snapshots of groups of friends etc. phones are great.

To be honest, I mostly take photos of my kids, and sometimes of people climbing/skiing. Both situations can have challenging lighting and object that don't stop moving around. The phone software has been absolutely amazing at eliminating motion blur and/or underexposed images, something I've previously struggled with even at 1/120s. And yeah, I often miss having the tele lens, but I've gotten used to moving in to take the shot - or with having a shot of nice landscape that has some action in it.

Most importantly, the ergonomics of taking photos on a phone are shit tier compared to any halfway decent camera that has a viewfinder and where the body has been designed for the task of taking photos.

True. Getting a phone with a hardware shutter button is absolutely essential. The rest can't be helped, I think.

I've gone the other direction and bought a real camera a while ago. I got fed up with the overcooked processing phones do.

I know what you mean. The good thing is you can turn that off - either feature by feature, or all of it. Or use an alternative camera app if you want to set exposure and ISO yourself (and those apps aways only produce traditional stills), export un-edited stills from the short videos the main camera app takes before it starts AI-editing them, or tell it do AI-slopification by default but also always save RAW images. At least that's the state of the art on Google Phones.

Luckily there have been good lightweight mirrorless cameras on the market for over a decade.

I'm sure for many use-cases a modern mirrorless takes far superior pictures, especially when used by a experienced photographer. But the AI has been amazing for normies.

Getting a phone with a hardware shutter button is absolutely essential

The Volume Down button works for this on pretty much all recent phones.

I'm sure for many use-cases a modern mirrorless takes far superior pictures, especially when used by a experienced photographer. But the AI has been amazing for normies.

Image quality is largely a red herring. It's been plenty good enough for common uses for quite some time now.

The real difference is about the actual experience of taking photos and the range and types of photos you're able to take. A phone fundamentally has the same limitations as compact cameras do except with much worse user interface. It just isn't going to work for any small subjects that aren't right in front of you or anything distant.

Image quality is largely a red herring.

I disagree. I'd call full page images in an A4 photo book and 14"-20" framed pictures a "standard use case" for high quality photos. If I take my DSLR in medium-challenging lighting conditions, a large number of shots won't have the image quality to be printed at those dimensions. Sharpness/blurriness, insufficient exposure, ISO-noise, ect. will be a problem in a percentage of shots - and often, in the most interesting shots, of course.

I'd call full page images in an A4 photo book and 14"-20" framed pictures a "standard use case" for high quality photos.

That may be standard for some segment of hardcore photography enthusiasts but the actual standard for almost all people who take photos is computer / tablet / phone screens, meaning 2 - 4 MP. For that extremely common scenario phone image quality is most of the time perfectly fine (as evidenced by how many people are happy with it) and any issues are more due to forced overcooking by the phone algorithms.

I know a fair few photographers as well as being a hobbyist myself but I don't know a single person who's printed a large size photo in years. It's all viewed on screen.

I've been thinking along the same lines recently. All this power, and nothing to do with it.

I plan to leverage more translate technology this summer while traveling internationally.

Unique capabilities tend to be locked behind high-quality paid apps at the least it seems like. I have a digital reference for knot tying which is really awesome. It shows you a progression of how to tie a not, classifies them based on usage, and let's your rotate and adjust the view. Great for camping with a bunch of other idiot nerds.

PDF scanning has gotten great.

Someone went ahead and built the application I've dreamed about making myself for 3 years for managing trips. It's not the way I would have done it, and it needs some serious work in the desktop/web UX department, but even the free version is nice. I'll admit this is just a fancy spreadsheet so it's not a true net-new capability.

knot tying

That is a great app. I just bought it, and I'll use it a lot, but I still want to complain about this class of thing in general. That is, monetizing publicly available info for mobile formats. If I didn't have a stash of Googlebux about to expire, I'd have passed on principle.

On a PC, if you wanted to look up how to tie an Alpine Butterfly, you'd quickly search it on Google or Perplexity. If some site was selling a tutorial for $5 you'd automatically move on to the next available free one, because we don't live in an age where the Mountaineering Guild gatekeeps access to the secret knowledge of rope folding, and it's near trivial to put up a site with the instructions for free. It bothers me a bit that developers get away with selling the same thing as a mobile app simply because of the added annoyance of trying to do it with a small screen + thumbs.

Yes, the presentation here is excellent. The UI is near-perfect, but also, I bet I could have Claude vibe-code me one with little effort.

I think this is more about the incredibly nice interactive UI than gatekeeping the actual knowledge of how to tie a knot.

I have no problem searching whatever arbitrary thing I want on my phone, or indeed typing paragraphs of text: if all this app did was present pretty text instructions I'd have no interest, it's easy to get those text instructions to my phone any time I want for free. But I want to learn knot-tying and don't really understand it, and this seems like a significant improvement for learning.

If you think that sort of thing is easy to code through AI, you're welcome to throw an open-source and free version of it up somewhere, you'd be helping out rope enthusiasts everywhere and making a convincing case that the developers aren't doing anything important. I suspect the easy-to-code version of that app loses a lot in usability though.

Scanning and OCR is a good one I forgot. As @Ioper mentions, it's been good for a long time, but the advances in OCR in particular are pushing things like translation forwards.

One new app I have got on my phone now is https://recipekeeperonline.com/, one of those paywalled apps you mention. It's allowing me to digitize my entire cookbook collection, and it really is pretty impressive how well it converts a huge number of different recipe formats into pretty perfect ingredient lists and steps, without any involvement from me

Wasn't Pdf scanning just fine as far back as in 2015?

It seems to me that major advances have been in the cameras and the video/photo processing. If you don't care about that then there is little to no functional difference between the current phones and phones from 2013.

In my experience, you could always convert a picture into a .pdf, but faithfully and easily converting a physical page into a properly formatted, clear .pdf is a much more recent innovation.

Regional Japan 10 years ago was very difficult to get around without knowing the language. Now with Google Translate (for conversation) and AR translation of text you can go about your day pretty frictionless. Remarkable difference between the two travel experiences.

Esims are very convenient too.

Not a smartphone invention but AI was a fantastic help.

What's the state of research into the physiological/psychological effects of race-mixing?

The last good look into this question I've come across was Emil Kirkegaard's blog post, which covered the overrepresentation of certain psychological and behavioral risk patterns in mixed-race adolescents. I haven't seen anything else on this subject from the HBD crowd, but I might be missing something. I'm particularly curious about research into differences between first-generation mixes with total racial heterozygosity and later-generation mixed people with greater homozygosity, seems like there could be some interesting differences there.

I very much doubt that any two humans alive today are distant enough genetically that their offspring will be biologically better or worse off purely by dint of being mixed-race. We aren't talking about Neanderthals or Denisovans here, where hybrids appear to have been less fit and many of their genes were disproportionately selected against over time.

There are clearly psychological differences (presumably with genetic correlates) associated with the kind of person who is more likely to marry outside their race, as well as environmental factors i.e. how mixed children are treated by their peers growing up, and these seem sufficient to explain whatever characteristics might at first glance seem to be the results of the mixing itself.

Emil Kirkegaard's blog post

Page not found. This one?

Yep, thanks.

There's something subtly absurd about the use of the term "race-mixing" that gave me a chuckle there, nice

Otherwise this seems like a super super broad question. Are you asking about the psychological impact of doing a race-mix with someone, or the typical profile of a person who's inclined to racemix, or traits over-represented in their resultant offspring, or...?

Since it's a super-broad question, I'll toss in a couple of unscientific observations I find interesting.

First, in biracial people with one SSA-descended parent and one Euro-descended parent - those with a white dad are practically a different ethny to those with a white mum. This isn't hyperbole -I can very reliably discern white-dad from white-mum biracials with about the same accuracy I can discern western and southern Africans, say. And it's interesting because the world at large doesn't seem to put much stock in this distinction - I can't imagine environmental effects can plausibly account for the difference, rather it's because white men who shack up with black women tend to be very different in profile from white women who get knocked up by black men.

White-dad biracials are more upwardly mobile, competent, typically identify more with the white part of their ancestry once the dad is still present, and don't seem particularly blighted as a group. White-mum biracials are cut from different cloth entirely

I'm curious if there are other bi-racial pairings whose offspring differ greatly based on which parent is which ethnicity. I could see Jewish-Christian matches showing some interesting patterns, dependent on country. Arab-Euro matches might also have an interesting assymetry

I'm interested in the potential somatic effects of distant admixture, independent of parental selection effects. Partly because I'm biracial myself (white dad, black mom), partly because I predict that it'll become a hot button topic in the near future. Opposition to miscegenation is still quite gauche in the right-wing zeitgeist, but I don't see it staying that way for long.

You may be interested in long lasting endogamous mixed race groups around the world, eg cape coloreds.

I'm biracial myself (white dad, black mom)

Slay, king. I genuinely had no idea while writing this, and wasn't trying to do some weird suck-up thing about the better outcomes for black-mum biracials. Do you agree on the possibility of reliably discerning white-mum and black-mum biracials?

A few further guesses here, for perfect stereotype accuracy - it'd be amazing if you let me know the accuracy of any of this, also feel free to tell me to fuck off. I'll limit myself to stuff that shouldn't be immediately inferable from the racial fact of their marriage (eg your folks are relatively open-minded, and your dad's overall less racist than your mum - no shit)

1)your mum's a bit nerdy and 2)benignly snobbish. 3) She's experienced at least one incident of serious depression 4) Your dad is quite a kind guy

I see the logic behind the other three but what does the depression have to do with it?

Rock music and alternative subcultures

Bear in mind the parents of @Eupraxia paired off in the past

Lots of the black girls who might view white guys as suitable mates, especially in the past when music was more racially segregated, were into goth/grunge/punk/metal/emo/scene - interest in all these genres is also associated with common mental illnesses, particularly depression, and creativity generally

I have noticed a difference, yea. WMBF kids tend to be able to pass for white more often, and if not they don't look especially "black" either. I fall into the latter category, my brother's more the former. As for your stereotypes:

  1. Very true
  2. Nope
  3. Don't know, but I'd guess not
  4. True enough

2/4 - I'd call that a misfire for my stereotyping. In my defence, I wrote that yesterday in the pub, it being St Patrick's day.

The appearance thing is something I'd noticed too, that WMBF tend to look like they have more euro ancestry. It's super interesting to me, though I disagree with @hydroacetylene that this is because white men pair off with black women who have more euro admixture. If the white man in question were all about lighter-skinned women, he could just.... pair off with literally any other race if woman instead. It would be strange to go to an Italian restaurant, and pick the least Italian dish they serve; I'd simply choose another restaurant if that were my preference.

My hypothesis is that it's not anything to do with different ratios of euro to SSA inheritance, but rather something psychological to do with identity development and the relationship this has specifically to fathers - men and women both tend to more influenced by the surface "tag" component of their father's identity than their mothers. Biracial people generally have some control over how black or white they appear - hairstyle, makeup, clothes, tanning habits, overall habitus My guess is WMBF biracial people tend more to view both of their inheritances as equally integrated, and their self-presentation reflects this

If the white man in question were all about lighter-skinned women, he could just.... pair off with literally any other race if woman instead

This assumes he specifically wanted a black woman, or had no non-appearance based reasons for his decision. It also boils the differences down to ‘light skin’ when in reality there’s a raft of features in which literally any race of women is generally more attractive to men than negros- hair, for example.

Eh, tastes vary and, while distributions differ, there are attractive women of every race. Personally (anecdata doesn't count etc I know) I've met women with very Bantoid features, dark skin etc whom I was attracted to and thought beautiful. Certainly for me personally it's not an aesthetic malus, pragmatic considerations aside.

I'd think it likelier that the white man in question just likes black women, rather than making the best of things. Women are pretty good at sniffing out genuine interest, better than men, and I'd imagine the black women in question (given that she's described as "nerdy" AKA intelligent) could discern if the level of interest were up to standard or not

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, dunno

WMBF tend to look like they have more euro ancestry

I like your theory for this much better than mine, but I do have my own:

"Momma's baby, daddy's maybe" is an eons-old problem, and combining the lower certainty of paternity with the (typically) higher violence of males suggests there's been a long history of some nasty evolutionary selection pressure for kids to resemble their dads more than their moms. Infanticide in non-human primates and many non-primate mammals isn't uncommon, even many human "civilizations" took our damn time before deciding to punish it, and before agriculture it may have been a common form of birth control in tough times.

I'd guess even a couple million years of this would mostly affect which genes control appearance (or mediate other genes controlling appearance? there's not that much Y chromosome...), though, not habits. My interracial marriage is N=1, but while my kids look much more (75/25?) like me than like my wife, their personalities are maybe 55/45 on average and no more than 40/60 in one case.

WMBF kids tend to be able to pass for white more often, and if not they don't look especially "black" either.

Because white men are high status and less-subsaharan-looking women tend to be more attractive.

Are we considering Jewish-Christian bi-racial??

Actually I'd greatly respect the chutzpah of someone with, say, half Croatian and half Ashkenazi parentage who declared themselves biracial on that basis

Depends who you ask I guess

Inter-ethnic might be a better term

It would be fascinating to compare children from monoracial monocultural relationships, inter-cultural but monoracial relationships, children from inter-racial but monocultural relationships, and children from parents of different races and cultures. So the difference between I marry a white girl from my high school, I marry an Amish girl, I marry a Black girl from my high school, and I marry a Chinese girl from China.

But that's probably too specific to get a good sample data from anywhere.

I wouldn't say the challenge would be sample size so much as a robust criterion for people of different races who share a culture. Seems like a dialect vs language problem; ie the boundaries would be pretty arbitrary. And also, you'd clearly have personality confounders in eg a black American who says they share a culture with white Americans vs a black American who would deny same

What is the longest golden age that we know of? We have the five good emperors of Rome around 80 years. The Pax Britannica was around 50-80 years. Pax americana - 1944-1969 - 25 years and probably something like 1986-2001.

Why 1986?

Well the Soviets were dying and the reaganomics were kicking into gear. And in 1987 Married With Children launched. And that is the peak US possible.

Not OP but that was at least classically held to be the initial softening of the Iron Curtain/major arms treaties plus some economic improvement

You are using the terms in a narrower sense than normal. The Pax Romana is traditionally defined from the ascension Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, 206 years. The Pax Britannica from the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the start of World War I in 1914, 99 years. And the Pax Americana from the end of World War II in 1945 until the Current Year, 80 years and counting.

Especially good periods seem to last about a decade; the Roaring Twenties can be dated from the end of World War I in 1918 to the start of the Great Depression in 1929, while the 90s range from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 to September 11, 2001. Not sure how to date the 50s, though.

The Pax Romana is traditionally defined from the ascension Augustus in 27 BC to the death of Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD, 206 years.

This period includes a major civil war in AD 69. I agree that you could argue for Domitian as a sixth small-g good Emperor on top of the five capital-G Good Emperors.

It's an interesting question to me: where does violence in transition of power become a concern for individual subjects/citizens?

Provided that law and order doesn't break down, it makes no difference to me if the Bidens or Clintons or a few of their followers get the axe.

It's an interesting question to me: where does violence in transition of power become a concern for individual subjects/citizens?

If the violence involves large-scale troop movements, it is generally bad for the civilian population of the areas fought over. The Year of Four Emperors involved two multi-legion battles.

Depends on the political system perhaps. In general I think killing politicians would trickle down to the ordinary citizens via higher stakes for anything political. More cheating, more violence, more social pressure.

The same can also happen in reverse (bottom to top) and arguably is here. You are more able to contemplate the killing of (enemy?) politicians with broad equinamity because citizen-level politics has become more fraught.

I disagree, I actually think the reverse is true: we are all less able to contemplate the killing of politicians with equanimity because of political polarization.

JFK's assassination is, even in most conspiracy theories, only ever alleged to be marginally important to the course of US Government policy. JFK might not have gone into Vietnam quite the way LBJ did, but he still would have fought the Cold War. Kill HW and replace him with Dukakis, or Clinton and replace him with Dole, and the changes expected would be mostly marginal.

Kill Trump, and replace him even with another Republican and we're in a very different place right now.

To put it another way: if all politicians are within a few degrees of agreement on every issue, then the question of who is in charge is mostly a matter of personal ambition, and two politicians killing each other over personal ambition doesn't really impact me, even if I find it horrifying. If party politics is fraught, then who is in charge has policy implications, which will impact the average person's life.

Fair point, well made. I'm not sure if I agree or not but I'll think on it.

I'm not entirely sure if it's true or not either over time. There were lots of very destructive wars of succession throughout the middle ages that featured virtually no political disagreement between the factions. Arguably in WWI, the combatant governments were all closer to each other in politics in August 1914 than they were to any of their successor state governments 20 years later, and certainly it impacted the populace.

But at one end you have some platonic ideal, which would be something like an ideologically-identical VP killing the POTUS and assuming the presidency. As long as the violence is limited to the POTUS, it would have no impact on me, and shouldn't end a golden age.

The 50s began on August 15, 1945, and ended on October 6, 1973. They got an extra 20 years out of that especially good period, and it was not merely "especially good" but exceptional, because the Americans were the only real winner in a major global-but-off-continent conflict (the Second European Civil War).

Calling it “European” is an understatement, but at least it describes a useful subset of the theaters.

“Civil War,” on the other hand, is completely off base. The opponents weren’t a unified state before, during or after the war. I can’t tell if you’re joking or just being contrarian.

To steelman the “European Civil War” concept, the monarchies of Europe involved in WWI were basically cousins from the same elite family.

As for WWII being similar, a case could be made that the onerous restrictions on Germany were basically a continuation of the same war but without bullets.

(Not that I believe either.)

Dynastic relations had long since ceased to matter in European statecraft by the time WWI broke out, and only the tsar had final say in kicking the war off(Britain entered due to parliament and in Germany and Austria powerful generals were pushing for war). The monarchs were also cousins due to recent intermarriage and not because they were part of the same clan.

If I had to draw the lines such that independence wars were separate, I’d look for something like participation in government—“no taxation without representation,” right? Confederates had served in the same military, sent Congressmen to the same assemblies, and otherwise participated in American institutions.

Honestly, I’m willing to class independence wars as civil wars. The American Revolution apparently counts.

I don’t know enough about Korea to speak with confidence. Did either government claim continuity with a previous controlling government? I see one source claiming that the initial border skirmishes counted as civil war. What makes you say that it “doesn’t feel strange”?

What is the significance of October 6, 1973? Googling gives me the Yom Kippur war, which is irrelevant to what was largely a US domestic phenomenon.

I think the "fifties" end with the rise of large-scale resistance to the Vietnam draft, which was somewhat earlier. The "sixties" are generally accepted to have begun in 1968 and continued into the 1970's, and 1968 is also about the right date for the end of the "fifties" by my definition.

What is the significance of October 6, 1973?

This, it was rather big deal at the time.

The New Kingdom of Egypt, which lasted for 500 years, is often considered a golden age. China has also experienced multiple 100-200 year long periods of relative material prosperity and cultural productivity during the Han, Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties. The Gupta Empire, called the golden age of India, lasted over 300 years, and the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan lasted 268 years.

I would also add the Joseon Dynasty to that list, seeing that it lasted for 505 years (1392 to 1897) and was probably the most technocratic, bureaucratic state in East Asia with a lot of checks on royal power. Kings were expected to answer to the public whenever a disaster occurred, issuing formal requests for critique, and early on in Joseon history an oral petition system for grievances was established - a drum was placed in front of the royal palace to be struck if someone had a complaint, and this allowed ordinary illiterate citizens to personally appeal to the king once other forms of redress had failed. The lowest class (nobi) were allowed maternity and paternity leave, and there was even a society for the disabled, the myeongtongsi. There was a system of three offices specifically meant to police the kings and the officials for corruption and inefficiency, and often they gained more power than the monarchy itself. A lot of technology and advancement was invented during Joseon as well, the most famous of those being Hangul, but "[i]n the first half of the 15th century, around 62 major accomplishments were made in various scientific fields. Of these, 29 came from Korea alone compared to 5 from China and 28 from the rest of the world". It certainly fits the definition of a Korean golden age.

With regards to China, you're missing out on the obvious Zhou Dynasty, which lasted for a mind-boggling 790 years (1046 BC to 256 BC) with an impressive level of imperial continuity. Though this depends on how you define "golden age" since the Zhou kings had lost much power by the Warring States period.

EDIT: added more

I think the possibly most interesting aspect of Hangul was that it was primarily a product of the King himself, with great opposition from the powerful bureaucracy, and was subsequently discarded for classist reasons and then re-embraced hundreds of years later due to it's value.

It feels like a made up story about a wise benevolent monarch but isn't.

It sort of parallels the Cherokee alphabet, which was invented by a single (illiterate)man who refused to believe his elder’s explanation that the white man’s writing was sorcery- and needed to stage live demonstrations to prove that his system actually worked.

There's a reason why King Sejong is the most beloved monarch in Korea, and he did even more than that - not only did he invent Hangul in an attempt to improve literacy, he also hugely supported and encouraged many other technological advancements. Most notably, he established a royal scientific institute called the Hall of Worthies meant to house Joseon's greatest minds, and offered a series of grants and scholarships to incentivise bright young scholars to attend. At one point he appointed Jang Yeong-sil, a nobi, as court technician. Jang would go on to make one of the world's first standardised rain gauges (the cheugugi), which would get used all over Korea, as well as a self-striking water clock. Upon Sejong's request, he also made a faster and more efficient form of metal movable type called gabinja in 1434, a number of years before Gutenberg developed the technology in the Western world.

Sejong also ordered that one thousand copies of farmers' handbooks be printed so as to improve agricultural output, and he also published the Nongsa jikseol, which was a compilation of farming techniques conducive to Korea's environment that documented the best planting methods and soil treatment and so on for each region. In addition, he was the king who granted the nobi class parental leave, and did strangely democratic things like poll the public on reforms such as new tax systems. It really does sound like fiction about a benevolent monarch, except it's real.

Regarding Hangul's use over the years, Sejong actually did manage to get it into popular culture if I remember correctly. Hangul continued to be used among the peasantry throughout the years in applications such as popular fiction, apart from a short-lived period in 1504 when it was banned by the monarch Yeonsangun of Joseon, an infamous tyrant who did so because people wrote letters in Hangul criticising him. That ban did not last for long, and eventually Yeonsangun was dethroned via coup, exiled to Gangwha Island (where he soon died) and his sons were forced to commit suicide. Later in 1506 King Jungjong abolished the ministry related to Hangul research, but Hangul saw a resurgence in the late 16th century and novels written in the Korean alphabet became a major genre of literature. I'd say Sejong largely accomplished his goal.

Joseon in general was a shockingly scholarly society. I visited South Korea recently and went to the National Museum, and 90% of what I saw from Joseon was just books on top of books on top of books, with the occasional world map and astronomical chart thrown in. They were dedicated record-keepers, and the Annals of the Joseon Dynasty are the longest continuous record of a single dynasty in the world, stretching from 1392 to 1865. This scholarly focus even affected their art to the point that there was an entire genre of folding screens (chaekgeori) which just consisted of still-life paintings of bookshelves - honestly that part of the museum is wild.

EDIT: wording

Woah, do you know how this society got rich enough to afford all of this? Sounds actually quite amazing. Even better in some respects than the modern world.

The Korean Peninsula is rich in resources and difficult to invade.

Depends on definition of "golden age". Time of peace? Time of prosperity for average person? Time of great scientific/literary/art creative genius?

Why do you remove the years 1969-1985 and 2001+? They were good years for many people, peaceful years for most Americans. Vietnam and GWOT were largely minor, political concerns and individual tragedies. Put another way: for my part of Eastern Pennsylvania the last time an invading army got anywhere near threatening was around the 4th of July 1863. The sending of local boys overseas, while occasionally tragic for individual families, never seriously depopulated the young men.

During the Pax Romana or the Five Good Emperors there were border wars, pirates, provincial revolts, etc. But if you lived in certain parts of the empire, things were good and peaceful. Rome wasn't sacked for a long time in between.

So I guess I'm asking how do you define a golden age?

If it's continuous rule without notable wars, I would guess one of the Chinese dynasties had solid staying power.

I would say a golden age is mostly constantly increasing prosperity for the commoner, political stability in the hinterlands and well lack of bad things for big enough parts of the population. A feeling of predictability and security.

I exclude the 70s and early 80s because of the oil embargo, inflation, formation of the rust belt, decay of the urban cores and the start of the cost disease. Not that those processes stopped but the winning the cold war dividends and the IT revolution were so massive that they masked them.

And the USA changed after 9/11. The follies of Iraq and Afghanistan, the Enron and Worldcom scandals, dotcom bust, then the financial crisis - the times were turbulent. In a way after 9/11 the Americans never really felt secure as a whole.

I would argue that ripples like the oil embargo, the rust belt, Vietnam, 9/11 and the GWOT, the great recession, etc. happened in Ming China or the Pax Romana or Victorian England and we mostly don't remember them, we might not even have the written accounts or data to know about them or how important they felt at the time.

I would define a Golden Age, and this might be a values thing, as peace and prosperity combined with high cultural production that has stood the test of time.

Peace can be defined as lack of invasion or the threat of invasion. Sticky point: what level of violence in the transition of power qualifies as a Civil War? And what constitutes core vs periphery? There were probably prosperous provincial cities in Rome that were safe from much of the political violence in the Capital, and were safe enough from invasion for long enough that they had longer safety than Rome itself.

Prosperity can be defined as lack of poverty, Henry IV's "I want there to be no peasant in my realm so poor that he will not have a chicken in his pot every Sunday." [Sticking Point: defining poverty, and the importance of growth vs stagnation and upward or downward mobility]

Cultural Production includes great architecture, literature, philosophy, religion.

So, what are you reading?

Still going through my backlog.

Taking another run at Infinite Jest. I've DNF'd it repeatedly, unfortunately. I feel like it might be just the limit of "big challenging book to prove a point." Which has given it its bro-lit reputation. DFW was a really brilliant writer, but it's just sooooooo long.

My wife is going to harass me to read The Kennedy Women, because she's long been a Kennedy fan. Good chance I'll write it up here if I get a chance.

Before bed I'm reading a couple stories from Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, I've never gotten into Doyle and figure it's something I ought to check off my list.

You should absolutely read Infinite Jest. It's not that long, once you get immersed in it. But this takes time. And because of the "fractal" way in which the book is written, you'll be somewhat confused and out of it for the first 300 or so pages. You just have to push on, and the book will open up to you.

Just started, City of Brass of the Daevabad trilogy. I'm curious!

In non fiction I'm reading Meditations on the Tarot and looking to start The Interior Castle soon.

The novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith recommended in last week's fun thread lol. I'm enjoying it. Anakin does want the prestige of being on the Jedi Council, but he's genuinely pissed that he is not granted the rank of Master, which he desperately wants because that would give him restricted library access that he thinks could help him figure out his premonitions.

I'll probably read Storm of Steel later this week, unless I need levity, in which case I'll re-read the fanfic Seventh Horcrux by EmeraldAshes, in which Harry Potter has all the memories, power, paranoia, bigotry, arrogance and other personality of Voldemort but it's very much a comedy.

The novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith recommended in last week's fun thread lol. I'm enjoying it. Anakin does want the prestige of being on the Jedi Council, but he's genuinely pissed that he is not granted the rank of Master, which he desperately wants because that would give him restricted library access that he thinks could help him figure out his premonitions.

This sounds kinda cool. I'm gonna try reading it too. I've had a bit of a craving for some Star Wars material in the last few weeks, and the games seem a bit crappy (Jedi Survivor, SW Outlaws). Maybe a novel will hit the spot.

I once read the Darth Plagueis novel. It was surprisingly good.

As I noted when I recommended the novelization in the other thread, I'd very much suggest picking up the whole Dark Lord trilogy, not just ROTS. There's more exploration of the political friction between Palpatine and the Jedi Council, the ground front of the attack on Coruscant gets a proper setpiece, Anakin and Obi-Wan get some quality adventuring time, the cat-and-mouse of the Jedi coming this close to discovering Darth Sidious, I could go on and on and on. And that's just sticking to Labyrinth of Evil! Seriously consider the whole set.

Will take a look!

Have you read the OG novels by Timothy Zahn (Heir To The Empire etc)? They hold up really well imo.

I read part of the Thrawn trilogy. The main character was a blue skinned Chiss. I liked Plagueis more though.

I finally finished A Memory Called Empire. As requested by @netstack, I come bearing a report. The basic premise of the book is that the heroine is a fresh ambassador from her small independent mining station to their neighboring large militaristic empire. She gets sent when the empire sends word that they need a new ambassador as soon as they can manage, but doesn't say why. Her government surmises that most likely the old ambassador died and the empire doesn't wish to say that, and sends her both to represent their people's interests and to figure out what happened to the old ambassador. To prepare her for the job they implant her brain with a machine that contains the prior ambassador's personality and memories, albeit 15 years out of date (the last time he visited home). Once she gets there she sets about trying to cut through the court intrigue and figure out what the hell actually happened, and if it's something her people need to be concerned about as the threat of annexation always looms large with this neighbor.

Overall, I enjoyed the book quite a bit. The person who lent me this book described it as "space opera, not hard sci-fi", and while it's not super hard sci-fi I wouldn't quite call it space opera (e.g. Star Wars) either. The book does touch on interesting sci-fi themes, such as how the aforementioned personality transfer machines might impact a society. And I really enjoyed the depiction of the foreign culture as it relates to their smaller neighbor. The empire's culture has a considerable influence on the heroine's home, and one of the reasons she was eager for the diplomatic assignment was because she was basically a weeb for this culture. But when she gets there she finds the reality of being immersed in a foreign culture very different from the fantasy, and often feels lost and overwhelmed as she tries to acclimate and play politics with people who consider her a barbarian. The cultural differences were really well done and one of the strong points of the book for me. There are times characters from both side of the divide are shocked at how people from the other side do it. For example: the station dwellers cremate their dead and use their ashes to fertilize crops, while the empire embalms and buries their dead. Both sides are shocked at the way the other side does it, and consider it to be awful that they treat their dead in such a way.

I also thought the characters were well done, with all the leads you spend time with being very likeable. The plot is enjoyable as well, although it took a bit to hook me (one reason why it took me over a month to read this book). Once it did find its stride I quite enjoyed it, but just be aware it's a bit of a slow burn at first. The book ends with hooks for a sequel (and there is indeed a sequel), but it's well done so that the story of this book doesn't feel incomplete. You could stop here and get a satisfying story, which is something I appreciate about the book.

There are only two complaints which come to mind. One is that the book has beginning-of-chapter quotes a la Dune or Foundation, but it overdoes them. They aren't short and sweet like in those other books, but are about a page of quotes each chapter which range from irrelevant (as far as I could tell) to very relevant. Additionally, as the action ramps up it's clear that some of these quotes are referring to the ongoing plot (e.g. news broadcasts and the like), but it's not clear when in the plot they necessarily refer to. They have dates on the quotes, but as I had no idea what date it was supposed to be in the narrative I couldn't place them. My other complaint is that for most of the book, it seemed like there was going to be no obligatory romance story. There was no sign of affection between the protagonist and anyone else, and I thought that was actually kind of nice. I think a lot of writers treat a romance plot as a box they have to check, rather than something which naturally arises from the story, and I was glad to see that this book was eschewing that trend. But no... in the eleventh hour, it turns out not only do we have a romance, but a lesbian romance. I audibly sighed when I got to this point and said "of course she did", because I was kind of bracing for that when I had read the author is a lesbian. It's not a deal-breaker, but it is kind of annoying, moreso because it really does come out of left field IMO. And of course I had been enjoying the lack of a romance plot, so it was unfortunate that this derailed an aspect of the book I liked.

In the end, neither of my complaints are super serious. Those things did annoy me some, but they don't make it a bad book by any means. It's more that it's an 8/10 book instead of a 9/10 book because of my complaints. I definitely recommend reading this book if you're into sci-fi. I'm not sure it deserves the Hugo award it got (I guess I'd need to read the others that came out that year), but it is quite good and worth your time.

I have this on my shelf for after I finish Absolution Gap. Thank you for the review! It sounds like something I’ll really enjoy.

I liked the first a lot! The sequel was definitely a lot more meh but the first one was riveting.

I liked it. The sequel is a little more lesbian, but still alright.

Finished Orbán: Europe's New Strongman. Felt like I learned a lot from it, and it was accessibly written.

On to Kiki de Montparnasse, a comic book I picked up on a whim in a charity shop several years ago. Only about thirty pages in, don't really know what it's about yet.

Long Live Evil: Time of Iron Book I. It's a fun fish out of water trope where the twist is that the MC is a terminal cancer patient transported into a fantasy realm from books she enjoyed with her sister and where she inhabits the body of a villainess that is to be executed the next day.

I've started on way too many books. The over abundance of choice and lack of focus is making me spend less time on reading. :/ Having a hard time deciding what's most important to get through. It's all nonfiction stuff at the moment.

Baridan's Ass IRL

Pretty much!

Today I've started on yet another new book, but this time it's a fiction book that's fun to read. This might help me bring more joy to the thought of reading again - at least that's what I'm telling myself. :)

I cut down from 5 reading projects down to 2 and it's helped velocity enormously.

Worst case, do the "snowball" algorithm and finish what you're closest to finishing.

Good advice. It was nonsensical to think I could switch between 5-10 books. Gonna try to pick out the two most important ones.

Would you say there has been a trend towards naming events based on the date when they occured (J6, 10-7)? And if so, what do you think of it?

This is historically much more common in east asia and the arab world, the western world seems to have picked it up more widely after 11 Sept 2001. I think one of the reasons it was historically more prevalent in these cultures is that simply referening a date is a very neutral way of referencing an event without using a name that itself contains some judgement about the event. Consider the US Civil War vs the War of Northern Aggression. Now imagine your culture goes back another 2000 years and has dozens of these that some people are still upset about centuries later. Date-names allow some discussion of the event without immediately starting a fight by referencing "The Hopeless Rebellion of the Foolish People" or w/e the winners of that conflict called it.

Downthread the Jan 6 events are referenced. This is a good example.

Nah. When I was looking for information about your Civil War suggestion, there were a surprising number following the style. I think it’s a fad.

Two possibilities come to mind:

1/ The global coverage of media. We don't need to name things more descriptively because "we" all know what happened on those dates.

2/ Following the trend established by 9/11 - it was such an unprecedented event that it's not surprising it got named differently to other catastrophes.

I’ve noticed the same. I think it’s somewhat negative because it doesn’t tell future historians what happened that day. But I do like that it also makes it hard to spin. The events of January 6 can be a riot, insurrection, protest, or a bunch of Karens whining.

The trend has been going for a little while, 2069 years and a day at least to my estimation.

I don't know if there's an earlier example of an event referred to by when it happened instead of what happened that stuck to popular culture, but yesterday was the Ides of March, infamously the day of Julius Caesar's assassination.

It's better than calling things Black [day of the week]

I mean look at this shit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Monday

Who knows what someone is talking about when they say Black Monday?

They mean the bad guys from Yakuza 3. Nothing else is possible.

And how many Bloody Sundays have there been?

Right off the top of my head there's 1/30/1972 in Derry, and 1/9/1905 in St. Petersburg.

Wikipedia gives me 21 more of them!!

Talk about a case of the Mondays.

Yes and I hate it. There's only 365 days in a year, and so especially with these examples (which are blown out of proportion on purpose) it's so obviously a technique to imply they're earth shattering events that will own a day for the rest of human existence.

Getting overloaded with low quality info on the state of anti-aging products. What actually works for what? Senolytics? Memory thingies? Else?

To what extent does the rise of Silicon Valley represent a replacement elite?

Periodically – usually whenever I read some indignant think-piece about how Big Tech is enabling the barbarian hordes of the populist right to destroy all that is Good and Holy – I ask myself if the increasing influence of Silicon Valley and associated industries represents an incipient shift in America’s ruling class. Rage-bait aside, I think its a worthwhile question. Changes in technology, economic, and socio-political organization are usually accompanied by some sort of shift in societal elites; when enough of these changes happen rapidly, we call it a revolution. I don’t know whether future historians will describe our own era as revolutionary, but it seems possible.

To answer this question, we first have to define the established ruling class. I hope to bypass the heated debates that topic inevitably prompts by sticking to some very broad and well-documented generalities.

  1. From the end of the Civil War, the economic powerhouse of the country was in the North-East, [where industrial and financial capital was concentrated] (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022516/how-new-york-became-center-american-finance.asp).

  2. The executive bureaucracy, since approximately the Progressive Era, has been dominated by technocrats characterized by an emphasis on formal educational credentials and, often, [association with elite educational institutions] (https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickhess/2024/11/01/is-the-ivy-league-really-a-pipeline-to-political-power/).

  3. Ownership of the most influential nation-wide news media, whether broadcast or print, has been consolidated in the greater New York metropolitan area since the beginning of the twentieth century.

Taking those things together, I think you have a decent outline of an established American elite. Silicon Valley represents a potential challenge to all those actors. The growth of the tech sector potentially threatens established financial elites; the new media has established media practically in a full-blown panic attack, and the fear of under-credentialed STEMlord barbarians at the gate lurks in the background of practically every discussion about “institutions.”

I’m asking if anyone has actually done any real research on this topic, beyond the sort of casual “wordcels vs shape rotators” framework. How do Silicon Valley types differ educationally, demographically, ideologically? To what extent are they merging with versus competing with the current establishment? Etc I know [the Scholars Stage] (https://scholars-stage.org/the-silicon-valley-canon-on-the-paideia-of-the-american-tech-elite/) has done a little, but I’m looking for anything else anyone’s aware of, either research and analysis or just straight-up raw data.

Why is Ireland seemingly the only island nation without a stereotype of eating fish? Like the British have fish and chips, that Japanese have sushi, etc.

In addition to their historical lack of access to their own fisheries, the fact that Ireland remains relatively underpopulated to this day as a result of the Great Famine meant that there wasn't the kind of Malthusian pressure to exploit every available food source that existed in places like Japan. However, certain kinds of seaweed (dulse and Irish moss) are considered part of the traditional Irish diet and are seeing a resurgence in popularity nowadays alongside other more quotidian sorts of fish and shellfish.

Eating fish on Fridays was a big thing in Ireland until quite recently.

As a Cajun traditional Catholic, I am well aware of fish on Fridays, and that Ireland was big into Catholicism until very recently.

My question was more ‘why isn’t Ireland known for at least a few fish dishes the way every other coastal population is?’.

The English don’t really eat fish either. Fish and chips is an imported dish from Spain, possibly/probably Jewish:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/the-surprising-jewish-history-behind-fish-n-chips/amp/

(For contrast)

https://forward.com/yiddish-world/551553/no-british-fish-and-chips-is-not-a-jewish-invention/

Fish and chips is also much less common that stereotype has it. Growing up I ate far more Sunday roasts, beef stews, pheasant, toad-in-the-hole, bangers-and-mash and shepherd’s pie than fish-and-chips. But fish and chips is unique, popular and has a high profit margin so it became the British dish internationally.

The English don’t really eat fish either

Aside from the posts below pointing out that these stories are mostly pro-immigrant propaganda, there are loads of traditional English dishes for fish that aren't deep-fried cod. The thing is, British food is not particularly popular worldwide; few people could name more than 10 British dishes.

This also kind of answers the Irish question: what Irish food of any kind can people name? Potatoes, Guinness, and Beef stew (with potatoes and Guinness) are about the limit of it. It's historically a small and poor nation, long a part of Britain anyway with little time to develop their own cuisine.

In all seriousness, can you name some? I’d be interested.

As a Brit I barely ate fish growing up, and when I did it was basically just cod. I had fish pie occasionally but that’s just cod in a pie. And fish fingers which is cod in the shape of fingers. I suppose we had whitebait.

There’s kedgeree and various French things but I don’t count them as British food.

various French things but I don’t count them as British food

one problem with this is that once you get past the iconic dishes, you're left with a lot of simple preparations that have commonalities all over Europe, or dishes that have murky origins and aren't wholly any one country's to claim. There are fish stews and preparations for baked, steamed, smoked, and fried fish that all have origins in the UK but can also be found in many other nations. Kipper is perhaps the most British of the smoked fish, although you'll find preserved Herring in much of Scandinavia and the low countries as well.

Tartar sauce, for example, is obviously derived from the French sauce tartare, but the British preparation as served with fish is very much unique from the French approach.

Fish pie itself is definitely one Britain can claim, and is often much more than just cod. One ingredient you'll find in both fish pies and tartar sauce that is uniquely British is hard boiled egg (sounds odd but offers a nice textural contrast). Stargazy pie is another well known fish pie dish, although it's odd appearance doesn't present it well

'Potted' fish, whether crab or many other types of fish, is British but again not only practiced here. Other shellfish preparations for the likes of whelks and cockles are typical of British seafood. One shellfish dish that might not seem overly British is prawn cocktail; the US has plenty of shrimp cocktail recipes, and prawns served with a cocktail like sauce isn't especially British, but the prawn cocktail you would order on a pub menu would undoubtedly be British in origin.

Thank you, that’s very interesting. FWIW I would classify ‘French stuff’ as the kind of thing my Francophile grandmother used to make: white fish as a vehicle for sauce, essentially.

Fish and chips is probably less common in the British diet than stereotype would have it, but it's still a very stereotypical British dish. Likewise I'm sure Irishmen wouldn't turn their noses up at a nice piece of Salmon, but my question was why the Irish aren't known for it. They're seemingly the only coastal people who don't have a stereotypical fish dish- most Americans can easily list some Irish dishes, but they won't come up with any that are seafood. It'll be 'corned beef and cabbage, potatoes, soda bread' and an equivalent for Britain would probably start with fish and chips, for Japan with sushi, for Hawaii might start with luau food but would certainly include fish, etc.

Fair replies all (including those below). I’m biased because I never liked fish and chips much and everyone abroad acts as if it’s the only thing we ever learned to make.

I would say the vast majority of inland food is mutton pork or beef based. Boil in the bag puddings similar to haggis, mutton and dumplings, stews, that sort of thing. Lots of game. Thus the scornful French nickname ‘les rosbifs’.

There were jellied eel and kippers and cockles and things, but I think they were given outsize proportion because they were eaten in ports, and mostly by the poor.

For most of English history a full English breakfast was considered to be kettled fish and some other gross shit, the recent changes are more present in our minds - living in current year - but broadly speaking if you ask a person from a random year in the last 1000, they'd think of English as fish-eaters, I think. Edit: Also Kippers

I'm 90% sure that's a myth made up for the usual "did you know you have refugees to thank for everything?" propaganda. (I'm not kidding, they literally had a pro-refugee ad with a talking plate of fish and chips lecturing someone about the jews)

Historically if you lived in Derbyshire you probably weren't eating much fish, but anyone on the coast had it as a major part of their diet. Herring, sole, mackerel, river eel, etc. usually smoked, salted, or jellied unless you were getting it right off the boat.
Shellfish weren't as popular among the rich as in France, iirc, but steamed mussels and cockles were very common.

Portuguese traders spread fried fish and fried foods generally to most of the world at the same time, and my suspicion is that the explosion of trade just coincided with oils and fats becoming cheap enough to cook food in (and the growth of restaurants where it's more practical)

I found this Reddit thread, including this second-to-top answer:

Historically because the English owned the waters, so you couldn’t legally fish as everything was exported.

There’s also the religious aspect where fish was seen as something just to be eaten on Fridays when red meat isn’t allowed.

And also we produce cheap and good quality meat.

Thanks, that’s reasonable. I guess it’s interesting why fish on Friday led to fish being despised as opposed to the development of fish dishes people still like on non-Fridays, as in lots of other Catholic countries(Italy, southern Louisiana, Portugal), but poor fish availability is probably part of it.

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