domain:savenshine.com
Corvos
4hr ago
There is a sentiment I’ve heard many times from Americans abroad which boils down to, “don’t worry, I’m American, it’s fine to be informal”.
It’s well-meant but often comes off as demanding unearned intimacy, or worse as, “I’m not interested in playing your silly provincial status games”.
SomethingMusic
4hr ago
My new head cannon is that Harry Potter's wealth comes from his parents both having taken level term life policies and used Voldemort to have a legitimate insurance claim. Voldemort spend the next 10 years trying to get his payout from Harry Potter. The unreleased book Harry Potter and the Insurance Claims Adjuster is about the lawsuit and encroaching poverty as Harry Potter is faced with ever increasing lawyers' fees.
Corvos
4hr ago
There was probably a scholarship boy hanging from a bannister by his underwear
Snape, I think. I can’t remember the flashback well but I think it’s implied that child!Snape comes from the bad end of town.
ThenElection
4hr ago
I don't think it's enough to say they were in economically dire straits, but in the Half-Blood Prince, Narcissa is portrayed trying to sell some trinkets.
I'd have liked an angle where the Malfoys turn to Voldemort out of economic desperation.
Corvos
4hr ago
Yes, the Malfoys were evil aristos parleying old money and social status for influence.
ThenElection
4hr ago
False stereotype: beautiful people are dumb and evil, ugly people are smart and have hearts of gold.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4hr ago
Society requires that basic necessities be cheaper than skilled/intellectual work - if they aren’t cheap, society doesn’t function and everyone has to be a subsistence farmer.
The requirement is that the cost of the basic necessities for a person is less than their pay. This says little, however, about the pay of those providing the basic necessities. And it is certainly not true that that work is particularly resistant to automation -- the work that remains perhaps is, but that's purely survivorship bias. We provide a lot more necessities with a lot fewer people (farmers especially) than we did in the past.
stuckinbathroom
5hr ago
weasels and malfoys were the two types of old money with no money
Uh, since when did the Malfoys have no money? They were famously generationally wealthy, as evidenced by Lucius Malfoy purchasing a new Nimbus 2001 for each member of the Slytherin Quidditch team in Chamber of Secrets
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
The evolutionary drive to form families is the sexual drive. There is no other drive.
Yes there is. Adoption is common enough. Some people- not all- really enjoy raising children and want to do so desperately.
Corvos
5hr ago
I agree with pretty much everything here. I don’t think you can avoid politicising “how much is your work worth”, especially because liquid market conditions are something that has to be actively created and maintained through legal systems, economic systems, transport systems etc.
DoctorMonarch
5hr ago
Is the poem "Ozymandias" familiar to you? If so, did you first encounter it in one place, but it became more memorable later in a different circumstance?
Corvos
5hr ago
Sorry, I’m thinking out load and so not always clearly. What I mean is that I physically can’t spend more than my total salary on basic necessities. Society requires that basic necessities be cheaper than skilled/intellectual work - if they aren’t cheap, society doesn’t function and everyone has to be a subsistence farmer.
The more fundamental the work, the more we have to drive the price down for our civilisation to remain functional. More physical work is resistant to automation is various ways (robots can’t interact with complex objects / human environments so no robot nurses, truckers, shelf stackers etc.) and the end result is that you have many low-paid physical labourers who notice that they are being paid badly for doing very necessary jobs while others are being paid better for sending emails. Before, of course, these jobs were done by peasants and slaves, so you had the same problem.
I can’t see a better solution but it always causes problems for social cohesion imo.
hydroacetylene
5hr ago
I mean it’s entirely possible that a slightly larger trivially small fraction of the population in Oklahoma supports themselves non capitalistically; realistically all of his geographical examples are better explained as urban vs rural though, and the class neighborhood difference is probably false.
DuplexFields
Ask me how the FairTax proposal works. All four Political Compass quadrants should love it.
5hr ago
Malfoy’s mates Crabbe and Goyle - lower class or lower middle class? Servants of House Malfoy? As an American, all I can tell is they’re somewhere between soccer hooligans and Alfred Pennyworth.
Corvos
5hr ago
Plus Korea places heavy emphasis on seniority, so when the men get a real job all the women are on top of them.
Jiro
5hr ago
You're moving the goalposts. The question was whether the school was making an active decision, not if the decision was good. I would agree that if the school "helps the kid" get chemo, the school is making an active decision there.
Corvos
5hr ago
An interesting article. Comparing this to Astral Codex, I can’t help wondering if Lorien is where Scott has been investing the majority of his time and intellect.
I think he’s mostly played out on normal essays. I could pretty much boil his late output down to EA is good, AI is not so good, and Everything is Fine. I don’t demand constant contrarianism for the sake of it but there’s a self-satisfaction bordering on incuriosity in his recent stuff that I don’t like much. Moving to California seems like it was good for his life but bad for his brain.
faceh
5hr ago
A group chat that has competent people who are tied in with various industries and specialties in various fields.
And a highly curated twitter feed or set of twitter feeds for other competent people in various fields.
The first one is hard to find, for sure.
The second one takes some effort, because you have to filter out brainless pundits, grifters, kooks, and the occasional psy-op, and identify people with consistently correct analysis or at least an actual mastery of the facts.
Right now there's a LOT of people online who offers 'newsletters' and paid writing (usually via substack) where their whole game is that THEY comb through all the new of the day and analyze it and summarize it to their particular audience. If you found a good one that might suit your needs. But also consider how that person is choosing to present any given issue, and what they might be choosing to exclude.
Ultimately though, accept that you can't keep up, and your own sanity is probably better served by deliberately taking breaks from the firehose. News will happen in the interim, you will hear about it, but it won't take you long to catch up on the stories that ACTUALLY mattered later, rather than trying to identify meaningful stories as they happen.
The crazier the world gets, I assert, the more critical to ensure your own mental peace.
Oopz
5hr ago
You can’t.
Please tell me how sure you are of this
I am very suspicious of this (newly popular) health trend
Maybe I should have clarified but in all of those spaces/topics that I have stated there is always going to be stuff that is true and stuff that is false. I am not saying everything in these spaces/topics are true. IN FACT I am saying because I frequent these space/topics in a certain detached way I can see the flaws in these spaces/topics that other people cannot; especially those who attach themselves fully to one or two subjects.
Bill Gates and Trump have ridiculous diets, Steve Jobs had a ridiculous diet in the other direction, and Jordan Peterson has a yet more ridiculous diet. Yet all top in their respective fields.
Bill, Trump, Steve and Jordan all have star signs, heights, looks, productivity habits, personalities, social connections, family, IQ, motivations, clothes, voice, technologies, genetics, epigenetics, education, money, random events in their lives etc that contribute to their success as well as their eating habits.
I am not asking for people to validate me on the truthfulness on any one of these topics. That's a me problem. I am asking for a way to arrange such a vast amount of information in a way that I can stay up to date with new findings and eventually use this information to improve my life and the life of others.
I understand that this is a big ask. So I'm not expecting someone to just give me a fully baked working procedure. I am just asking for some initial ideas or first steps or even just guesses on how they would attempt to do this.
And if this question doesn't belong here please help me and try to think of a place that might be more receptive to a question like this.
Tophattingson
6hr ago
Harry Potter's adoptive parents are an overtly negative stereotype of the Tory-supporting upper middle class, as would have been understood when the series began in the 90s.
It probably has to do with money.
In poor countries, people will dance for you. In rich countries, they won't. I actually much prefer the detachment of the French waiter who is too good for my filthy American dollars.
In the Third World, I always feel like a leaky sack of money more than a human.
Edit: Thinking about this some more, Latin Americans really do seem to have a friendly and positive attitude.
Dursleys were middle class social climbers (the most universally despised class). weasels and malfoys were the two types of old money with no money (and fathers who had to stoop to taking govt sinecures as welfare, or in shady business with The Wrong Sort ("directly in business" being the most disreputable part of course)). Hermione was the acceptable kind of rising middle class (dentist, daughter in higher education, probably going into non-profit work). Harry was the ideal form of old money, with a good pedigree on the father's side, fresh blood of undeniable quality from the mother's side, and the money still there (and nobody asks where it came from because it obviously wasn't from anything as tasteless as working for it). Goblins were the international finance class obvs.
Harry is the classic storybook prince who grew up noble living in a pig pen and instantly takes to the ways of his people through pure blood memory.
I'm not sure we even saw anyone who was legitimately from the lower orders except a few parodies like hagrid and the house gnomes, maybe the bus driver? There was probably a scholarship boy hanging from a bannister by his underwear that nobody bothered to mention because it would be gauche to bring attention to it.
I love that Americans can look at the same scene through an entirely different colour spectrum, and all the flashing red bits just look gray to them.
People from big countries and open spaces seem to be more open and positive than people in more cramped conditions.
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