239 karma · joined November 5, 2012
Source for original tariffs: https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-canada-mexic...
Source for continued original, but no new tariffs: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-tariffs-trade-war-sto...
You can't protect against random medical emergencies.
And since it's randomly/incredibly hyper-relevant, I'll plug this petition to save a Florida St sidewalk garden: https://chng.it/frXFyYNYKh
"Those born to working-class families invariably score far better at tests of gauging others' feelings than scions of the rich, or professional classes. In a way it's hardly surprising. After all, this is what being "powerful" is largely about: not having to pay a lot of attention to what those around one are thinking and feeling. The powerful employ others to do that for them." https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/26/caring...
Nordic countries? Canada/UK? Though they are socialist, not communist.
Suffering, in and of itself, isn't a skill. You will endure iff you want to endure. That is, if the perceived benefits of enduring outweigh the pain.
I've suffered through multi-week hikes with blisters and a too-heavy pack because I loved the views, the remoteness, the self-reliance and asceticism. And also because there were no good alternatives, because bailing midway would have been a different kind of emotional and logistical pain.
I've also bailed on things. Not a ton of them but always with good reason. I quit a job I hated after trying to suck it up for too long. I quit my college sports team after barely getting played for two years. I left a long-term relationship when I realized my partner wasn't treating me well.
I don't think of those bails as failures. They just didn't work out, and I'm happier without those things in my life. In fact I'm proud of myself for putting aside my pride and fear of being a 'quitter' in order to pull the plug on them. The hikes I suffered through aren't successes, either. With experience I've gotten better at preparing and packing, so even longer and more challenging hikes are easier for me now. Better views and more comfort is where it's at. No need to suffer just for the sake of suffering.
- an ex-Googler with friends at Stripe
I also know several teachers who rock climb though of course there are plenty of techies too.
Friday's weather was an exception and I'm glad you were able to enjoy it!
But my quality of life went way up once I bit the bullet and got a car. Skiing, surfing, and hiking all became way easier. I was already occasionally renting cars to do those things, but the friction of picking up/returning the cars and the marginal cost of each trip were big drags. Now I don't think twice about a 1-2 week long backpacking trip, where previously I would have been dissuaded by that expensive rental car sitting unused in the parking lot.
I'm not sure why you think there would be a deeper bureaucracy. UBI would be way easier to administer than the current mishmash of welfare programs since there's no need to determine who qualifies or to what extent - everyone gets the same thing.
Definitely get an instructor for your first few attempts. They'll be able to push you and help you catch whitewater waves which will give you an idea if you actually enjoy this thing. Then if you want to be able to actually surf, I highly recommend spending at least 1, preferably 2 weeks at a surf camp with good instructors. A lot of surf camps just hire 18 year old Australian kids or whatever who just want to travel and surf, and while they're great surfers they aren't great instructors. I went to School of the World in Costa Rica and the instructors there are permanent, this is their career, they care about it and they're good at it. They had me catching my first green waves very consistently with help, and progressing from a 9' board to a 6'7 board. After a week and a half there, I was able to go back home and actually catch green waves (inconsistently) on my own for the first time, and build my skills to consistently catching those waves. Getting feedback and being in the water every day helps you improve exponentially.
It's even harder to redefine yourself when you used to be good at whatever it was you lost, because you know just how much time and effort it took to get there. It can seem impossible to achieve the same level of mastery of anything else.
It's been almost 5 years since I quit and, while I've picked up new hobbies that I enjoy, I still haven't found anything that inspires the passion I used to have for my sport.
I stayed with 2 families in France that way, and got to label wine bottles at a local domaine (vineyard), drink their wine at dinner, shovel horse manure at a farm, harvest honey, ran to the boulangerie for bread, went shopping at the local supermarket, got shown around a spectacular nearby castle and a monastery carved into a cliff that I'd never heard of, ate cheese and charcuterie at their favourite restaurants, they made an effort to cook traditional food like raclette and canneles for me to try.... really I can't rave about the experience enough.
Many of us would love to move back to Toronto 'eventually', for family reasons and because it's a great city overall, but for now the money and opportunities in the States are too good. In SF I'm making 2-3x what I'd make in Toronto and get to work on a globally-relevant system. And 80% of my social network is here now, too.
Unfortunately I'm not optimistic about a similar service doing well in North America. The main advantage BlaBlaCar has in Europe is geography. Cities in North America are more scattered. Also, French culture is much more open to hitchhiking, which BlaBlaCar feels like a natural extension to. And European road tolls are far more expensive than in North America, giving drivers a much larger incentive to take some ridesharers with them. For example, on a long weekend roadtrip along the Cote d'Azur my French friend and I racked up close to 200 Euros in tolls, but happily made almost half of that back by picking up BlaBlaCar passengers at various convenient points along the way.