PsylentKnight

I mean, the scale is totally different now

95% of all mammal biomass on earth is now humans and livestock

In absolute terms, mammal biomass has increased by about 10x compared to 100,000 years ago. ALL of that increase can be accounted for by humans and livestocks, because the biomass of wild mammals has fallen in that same time period

https://ourworldindata.org/wild-mammals-birds-biomass

Here we come to the difference between need and want

It's a weather condition that isn't typical for the city and therefore not properly prepared for. Stuff like that happens. People die during "heat waves" (even average summer temperatures are much higher in Texas) in European cities because no one has AC

?

There are many cities that people consider to be "top-tier" that have much worse traffic than Austin

https://www.usnews.com/news/cities/articles/10-cities-with-t...

A lot of those cities have half-way decent public transit so you kind of have the option to not deal with traffic, but yeah. Having lived in both cities, traffic in Austin doesn't hold a candle to traffic in Boston

Yeah, LCOL areas are LCOL for a reason. The HCOL areas are HCOL because that's where everyone wants to live because that's where all the good jobs are

The financially optimal move is to make your money in a HCOL area and then move to a LCOL area

Ok, give an example where anarchy didn’t immediately descend into the tyranny of structurelessness

No animal wants to die. It sounds uncomfortable, but so is aging. As aging people always say, "it's better than the alternative"

Neighbors can and do do things that impinge on your life. Such as, playing loud music when you’re trying to sleep

(I have nothing to add to the HOA discussion, just saying that “live and let live” has limits)

I own it, but I haven’t read it haha

One day

Fictions... that allow you to have clean running water, own personal property and get an education? If you want to see what life looks like without a government, just look at Haiti. Gangs fill the power vacuum when the government loses its monopoly on violence

We can figure out how to better preserve our brains and/or put them in less squishy vehicles. That’s the only real path I see to significantly extending our lifespans, but who knows

I think Sanfranciscodefaultism is fairly reasonable considering what website we’re on. But yeah there’s like 5 “Bay Areas” even in the US

Do you have any recommendations for sociology books for laypeople?

Community in the US was largely centered around the church. I think it is an uphill battle getting a large group of people to get together and hang out multiple times a week when they don’t have a very compelling reason outside of the socialization itself to do so (i.e. the threat of eternal damnation)

I’m looking for a TV and it seems like dumb ones simply aren’t available anymore

Seems like the only options are:

1. Buy a smart TV and not connect it to the internet and/or physically neuter it by unplugging the Wifi/Bluetooth module. I wish there was more info about this out there as I assume there are some models that don’t allow this

2. Buy a projector. I’ve been using a cheap $80 projector for a few years due to space constraints in the apartment I was living in. Now that I’m in a larger apartment, I wanted to buy a TV. But all this has me wondering whether I should just buy a better projector

It does have the “drawback” that it can only be used after sunset (assuming you don’t have a basement or blackout curtains or something). But I find that this provides a natural hard cap to the screen time that everyone is trying so hard to cut back on

Is it that you’re holding back against weaker opponents, or that you’re more excited and engaged when you’re playing against someone that forces you closer to the edge of your ability?

True. But I think you can agree that the (now) archaic language and cultural context that would have been common knowledge back then gives an extra layer of difficulty over the already poetic/literary nature of the work

Watching Shakespeare has a similar feel to me as watching cartoons in Spanish as an intermediate Spanish learner. I can understand a lot of it. But I have to use so much of my brain power interpreting the language and get so distracted by unfamiliar phrases or words that I can't really get immersed in the story

I don't know, I guess it's just not for me. I think the 1700/1800's are about as far back as I can go

Sure, but the archaic language can obscure the awesome idea. "Why are you Romeo?" may sound less poetic to modern ears, but isn't that how people back then would have parsed it - just as easily as everyday language, because it was their everyday language?

I feel like in a way we're losing Shakespeare's intended effect, because we insist on using a "language" that isn't used anymore. Yes, I understand that it's considered the same language, but a language isn't really one thing, it's more of a spectrum without sharp edges. Shakespeare is much closer in time to Middle English (which is considered a different language) than he is to our time

I mean, even the most famous line in all of Shakespeare, "wherefore art thou Romeo" is frequently misunderstood because many people reasonably assume "wherefore" means something like "where". Yes, you can figure it out from context, but the context is in the same archaic language. Very possible to untangle all that while you're reading it and perhaps it's a good mental exercise. But it can be really tough to keep up when you're watching in the form it was meant to be enjoyed in, a play

I have heard that Shakespeare is much easier and more enjoyable for non-English speakers, because they get modern translations and we do not

Linguist John McWhorter says that Shakespeare is often an "the Emperor has no clothes" situation. No one wants to admit to themselves or others that they don't understand it, and the people who think they understand it are often misunderstanding a lot of it

I think a lot of the reason this generation is starting to become very pro-train is because of how fucking awful airports are

> It's long been the case that the best way to learn something is to teach something

Which is pretty unfortunate for those that want to learn. I used to enjoy writing documentation at work, it was my favorite part of the job. And it did feel like it benefited me more than it benefited all the people that were (or weren't) reading my documentation. Now I can't really justify spending much time on docmentation when LLM's can do it in a fraction of the time and it's "good enough"

Based on previous posts I've seen about this, IIRC the timing seems to imply that it has more to do with them being hammered with AI slop than it does with the Azure transition. Who really knows though

As someone who knows anything about Texas cities, I assure you that parking space is not an issue in Dallas

And animals have evolved perceptibly in my lifetime, they still don't believe in evolution. I grew up in a culture of Jesus Freaks. The way they place faith above evidence and logic is so disturbing and irritating to me

I think the counterargument would be that the web sucks in large part because of the way it’s been shaped by Google. Most of the hyperwordy blogspam is driven by sites trying to optimize their SEO for Google. So websites like Kagi could potentially push the underlying web in a positive direction

Every time I resize my window now, the output is completely garbled. I often have to ask it to repeat itself just so I can see what it just said. This isn’t a new thing, but it feels like it’s gotten worse. This is on Windows

I agree that it’s a pretty different experience for fiction, where the subjective experience is everything and the narrator can color your experience a lot.

For nonfiction, I think the two mediums are virtually the same depending on the density of the book. Most differences come down to the fact that you’re more susceptible to distraction. Most nonfiction books are light and repetitive enough that I don’t think it’s a big deal

It’s losing favor because it’s lacking in a lot of ways. The most exhorted virtue in the church is faith, which is just another word for irrationality. So the church often ends up in conflict with reality or even its own doctrine

Its more difficult to maintain this when everyone has a device in their pocket that allows them to access information and people outside their church bubble

Thats gonna be a no from me dog. I don’t expect anyone to read something I didn’t read myself