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Adraghast

487 karma · joined March 9, 2022

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Adraghast··on Knitters got knotted in a purity spiral (2020)
White Fragility is an awful book. Even as baby's first guide to thinking about how you treat POC, it's a net negative and that role would be better filled by something like Ibram Kendi's books. Still fluffy and lightweight, but at least not as harmfully neurotic.

That being said, you've hit on the actual shortcoming of "woke culture" these handwringing articles miss. It's admirable, not outrageous, that white people becoming conscious of racism feel compelled to do whatever they can about it. But most people (in the US at least) are so depoliticized that their ability to effect systemic change is virtually nil. The project of rebuilding the necessary political capacity is hard, boring work and we probably won't live long enough to see its fruits. If you want gratification, making some rando on the internet bend the knee is much easier.

One definitely gets the impression from critics like the author that they're less interested in seeing that energy redirected than in it dissipating entirely.

Adraghast··on I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
"You're not wrong, you're just being an asshole."

No, it's not very fair he's been able to coast through most of his adult life by scrounging up links to things that elder millennial nerds find neat, but taking swipes at a person who's been going through turmoil for a few years (apparently eight, but it's been coming across in his writing for at least the past two) does nothing to change that.

Telling kids to clear their plates because there are children starving in Africa doesn't actually help feed those children.

Adraghast··on I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
> Post the demise of RSS it's one of the few places I check in on directly every few days.

What do you mean by this? I saw the announcement in my RSS reader before seeing it here.

> What are your other favorites that might help me fill the gap?

I actually just purged a lot of my media consumption for "burnout" related reasons of my own, but can second some of the recommendations Jason included at the end of the post like Colossal and Open Culture. He also posted this a couple years back:

https://kottke.org/18/04/blogging-is-most-certainly-not-dead

Adraghast··on Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies
"God is dead. God is dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of the deed?"
Adraghast··on Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies
The headline gave me the same initial thought. I assume the experiment controlled for this, but so much of the mindfulness stuff is associated with self-optimizing hustle culture types that it seemed obvious to me it would correlate with higher-than-baseline selfish behavior.
Adraghast··on Emerging evidence that mindfulness can sometimes increase selfish tendencies
This would line up with a broader trend I've noticed and would be interested in reading more about: the use of pop psychology to justify antisocial behavior.

Ten years ago, telling a distressed friend you don't feel like hearing about their problems would be incredibly rude. Now you can find NYT articles explaining how to couch the same sentiment in more acceptable terms like, "I don't have the bandwidth to perform that kind of emotional labor right now."

Same thing here. Telling a person you wronged to "get over it" is unacceptable. Telling them that you've been working on letting go of negative feelings about the past and being more mindful of the present, and you hope they can do the same? Well if anyone has a problem with that, you don't need that kind of energy in your life!

Adraghast··on Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal
Similarly, I went out to dinner Friday and could not scan the QR code to view the menu because I decided to leave my phone in the car. I asked for a a physical menu and was told they literally do not have them anymore. Had to hunch over my friend's phone instead.
Adraghast··on Feeling uncomfortable when leaving phone at home shouldn't be normal
> And I couldn't use a phone because my hands were full

Sorry, but you could have used a phone.

Adraghast··on “Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t” crosses citizen science with environmentalism
Go to Chicago.
Adraghast··on Half Baked
> This post feels like shallow, Malcolm Gladwellish, wrap-a-simple-idea-with-a-random-narrative stuff.

You've identified Seth Godin's entire schtick. The man is the godfather of vapid "give me your email address in exchange for a free ebook where I teach you to how to become a billionaire" hucksters and is not worthy of respect.

Adraghast··on Teen mental health is plummeting and social media is a major contributing cause [pdf]
Swaths of the United States didn't start popping pills and drinking themselves to death over the past couple decades because they got bummed out by social media.
Adraghast··on Why is every consumer startup selling me what I already own for 10x the price?
He picked bad examples by going with the dirt cheap Walmart-grade brands, but the general idea is valid. Closer comparisons would be what you find at Target.

Bombas are fine, but you're paying Darn Tough prices for Target quality.

I haven't tried Tommy John, but a similar player in that space is MeUndies. They're fine too, but you're paying Ex Officio prices for, you guessed it, Target quality.

MVMT watches? Literally $15 AliExpress watches for Seiko prices.

Made In cookware? On par with Costco's Kirkland stuff, but closer to the price of All-Clad.

Could spend half the day doing this. Ritual vitamins, Greats sneakers, Jack Erwin dress shoes, Burrow furniture, Native deodorant, Quip toothbrushes, Bevel razors, et al. Not even sex toys are immune thanks to Maude.

What separates these from legacy brands is just that: they're not legacy. They've got slick, responsive websites that used bold colors and geometric sans-serif fonts until around 2019 when they switched to soft pastels and didone fonts. They donate to a charitable cause with every purchase. They accept Apple Pay.

The market segment that this appeals to is the middle of the Venn diagram of millennial yuppies who: 1) consider themselves appreciative of premium, well-designed goods (i.e. not Hanes socks) 2) consider themselves too savvy to waste money on overpriced luxury goods (i.e. Pantherella socks) 3) aren't inclined to figure out which products actually have good price-to-quality ratios (e.g. Darn Tough socks)

So they default to the ones that have been marketed to them where they are, like via ads on tech podcasts and NYC subways (e.g. Bombas).

Adraghast··on Why is every consumer startup selling me what I already own for 10x the price?
Did the post make you so angry because you've invested a lot of your identity into the things you own?
Adraghast··on Ask HN: How can I learn macroeconomics properly?
I'm curious why you became a "professional investor" instead of following your own advice.

> Are you better than them?

Are you?

Adraghast··on Ask HN: Have TV ads changed?
Many public places have TVs playing for the benefit of patrons/employees.
Adraghast··on Nearly the hottest place on Earth, India swelters under intense heat wave
> He's American, so he probably thinks China is inherently a bad place where stupid things happen.

Without speaking to the book’s Eurocentrism, I can confirm this is not true. KSR has said in interviews he believes China is the world’s best hope at mitigating climate change because the United States is too politically decayed to accomplish anything at that scale.

Adraghast··on Is everything falling apart?
It’s apropos you forgot the Silent Generation between them!
Adraghast··on US egg factory roasts alive 5.3M chickens in avian flu cull
> The goal is not avoiding chicken cruelty, is stopping a outbreak virus and saving millions of domestic birds and wildlife.

People are not automatons who must follow a single goal at the expense of all other considerations.

> I'm more than open to discusse any ideas about how to do this task while making happy also the cruelty animal crew.

Yeah, you’re totally operating in good faith.

The answer is nitrogen poisoning by the way.

Adraghast··on Report: 90% of nurses considering leaving the profession in the next year
“All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.”
Adraghast··on Internet spring cleaning: How to delete Instagram, Facebook and other accounts
I want to reconnect to someone I went to high school with. What steps would you suggest I follow to do so?
Adraghast··on Why didn't our ancient ancestors get cavities?
True but irrelevant. Cavities begin showing up in the historical record several millennia before the advent of candy and soda.
Adraghast··on Brooklyn Public Library offers access to banned ebooks to teens across the U.S
I just checked the NYPL catalog and found The Turner Diaries, Camp of the Saints and Mein Kampf to be available. Just three examples, but I find it hard to imagine what else they’d refuse to carry if those are fine.

Is there a particular book you have in mind that “Park Slope progressives” would find too objectionable for libraries to loan out?

Adraghast··on Crypto, the Left and Technofeudalism
What is this in response to? Do you think Yanis Varoufakis is unfamiliar with undergrad-tier “communism has failed every time” bromides?
Adraghast··on Ask HN: How do you find credible information online?
Define what you mean by radical.
Adraghast··on How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
I’d say any of the top three levels of Maslow’s hierarchy. A hobby that helps you achieve feelings of self-actualization, esteem, and belonging is great.

Things get hairy at that second level. If you feel psychologically unsafe in your day-to-day life, there’s something wrong - either with your environment or the way you perceive it - that a tunnel can’t fix.

Adraghast··on How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
> In the update[1] he says it's calming and makes him feel safe. He's happier after doing it.

That makes it more concerning, not less. A quirky hobby stops being quirky when it starts filling a psychological need. Fast forward three months and dude might not want to ever leave his tunnel. Why would he? He feels calm and safe there.

Adraghast··on How can I get my boyfriend to stop digging his tunnel?
The typical HN user is very hostile to the idea of someone telling them they can’t or shouldn’t do something.
Adraghast··on Largest subreddit for Amazon workers has banned any mention of unions
Which ones?
Adraghast··on Leaked Game Boy emulators for Switch were made by Nintendo, experts suggest
> all of the NES, SNES, and N64 Mario games are on there

Super Mario RPG isn’t.

Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 6, Mega Man X, TMNT. I’d even pay a couple bucks to waste an hour playing Bart’s Nightmare again.

Pokémon is a nonentity.

It’d be a hell of a nostalgia trip to play Rampage, IronSword, Monster Party, Linus Spacehead, Treasure Island Dizzy, Super Robinhood, or Boomerang Kid.

Adraghast··on Welcome 2030 You'll Own Nothing Have No Privacy and Life Has Never Been Crueler
It’s telling how your libertarian astroturfing site accepts conservation groups’ numbers re: increasing/stable polar bear populations, but not the same groups’ estimates those populations will drop by 30% within two decades due to ice loss. It’s the kind of thing you’d expect them to try to disprove… if they weren’t just a libertarian astroturfing site.

The bad faith is also comically obvious when deaths from national disasters is your chosen metric, as if more better mitigation and response efforts disprove either the increasing occurrence of severe weather events or that they’re caused by changing climate.

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