• 9 Posts
  • 355 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 4th, 2023

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  • In this case, I think using the term racist here is diluting the term and causing confusion. I think it’s better to us the anthropological term here of tribal, at least in your first and last paragraphs. If everyone is racist then I have trouble not considering that a normal part of being human. It seems like railing against people who breath or something. If we’re biologically programmed to be this way, then we need to stop trying to claim people are bad for their biology, and at best we’re now going to say there’s an acceptable and normal level of racism on the spectrum that everyone is on.

    I don’t think that’s a great framing, and avoiding that framing in my mind means not claiming that everyone is racist.




  • If you made an argument, I could perhaps put some thought into it. My argument is simply that Russia isn’t paying our taxes, and is a different country, so there’s no comparison I can think of.

    People living in an area paying taxes for that school have every right to be on the school board - it’s a direct application of “no taxation without representation” in which kind of implied in the US is the right to run for the office and be elected to the office. We fought a revolution over taxes and representation. So, not - I put some thought into this and think I just won the debate right there.



  • To clarify here - do you think that people should be forced to leave school boards as soon as their kids graduate? Do they end up eligible again if their kids have grandkids? Is this limited to people with kids going to that specific school? Also, does paying school taxes not make you have some skin in the game?

    And what about just input on the society you live in? It seems to me the solution in your example would be to have younger people run for / contest the school board.


  • Do you also buy the Vance line that people who don’t have kids should not vote because they don’t have skin in the game? At what age are you too old (or need to have kids by) to be concerned about the future? And regardless of “the future” at least some policy’s are about right now. Like the abortion bans or getting rid of Medicare or social security, or raising taxes or regulation of sources of heat or stoves etc… These matter to people till they die ffs.




  • First I don’t see an issue with a “store brand” if it does what you need.

    Secondly - who is the name brand for say a power strip or a USB hub or USB C charger or cables? Or do you buy monster audio cables? SD card reader? Microfiber cloth? What about regular bath towels?

    Somewhat more controversial - what about things that are inherently disposable like latex gloves or laundry detergent?

    I went from all free and clear from Sam’s club which took up space and got me like 120 packets for 20 dollars to these detergent sheets which are much smaller and got 300 for 7 dollars. You use the same number of sheets as you would packets. The clothes come out the same.

    But yes, try searching for something like an electric lighter for candles on both sites and tell me the “quality non knock off” on Amazon. 90 percent are on temu also for less.


  • I mean, most people don’t think ease of changing a light bulb (that they never have to do) is a deal breaker for a car. I haven’t had to change a headlight since they went to LEDs. My last car that was 7 years of owning it.

    I think we should insist on making things repairable, but should focus on the things that come up frequently.

    Because everything is a tradeoff, things like how often it is likely to need repair, how much the car costs, functionality of the car day to day, looks, gas mileage, heck a lot of stuff will come before a once a decade thing that you’re either going to pay a shop to do or trade before it’s an issue.




  • If you buy your phone unlocked, you can get Red Pocket which is extremely cheap for service compared to most post paid plans. You can get ~5gb data and unlimited everything else for 20 a month on AT&T. And then if you go to Europe you can just buy a cheap Sim while there and pop it in.

    If you’re not picky about the phone, I have gotten sub 300 USD phones for the last 2, first lasted 4 years and I’m about 6 months into the second. Honestly there’s not much I feel like I’m missing, except spending way more money.





  • I have always felt that kids will get out of education what they put in/their interest in actually learning. I also think there is some benefits to learning how to manage technology de jure as it’s likely to come up when they’re out of high school too.

    I kind of disagree with some of the points about learning more just talking to an AI, both because I tend to get wrong answers or important missed context in my AI testing, but also because I think I needed to learn some stuff I wasn’t interested in personally.

    Today I don’t really have much opportunity to interact with classes beyond the great courses and linked in learning, and unfortunately much of the newer content is more like a YouTube curated Playlist than a traditional course. They are mostly superficial overviews more intended for entertainment than learning details.

    YouTube on the other hand is all over the map and you have to know what to search for.

    I think some value of the experiment is the part where it got the kids to review their notification settings to suppress things they weren’t interested in. Personally I think having phones in airplane mode / off during class is probably the best plan. Do the notifications during study hall, lunch, bus ride, and other free time.