• 0 Posts
  • 114 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

help-circle
  • Requiring someone to provide evidence to back up a claim is not the same as taking a position that the claim isn’t true. This is the root component of the burden of proof and the stance many people have towards a god claim: they aren’t convinced the god exists due to a lack of evidence provided by the person claiming the god does exist. Until there’s actual evidence it’s rational and reasonable to withhold judgement.

    The unicorn (or other mythological beings) are used as a similar case to illustrate to a theist that they have the same kind of attitude towards the idea of a unicorn existing as an atheist does to any gods. They’re both neat concepts, but without evidence showing they actually exist, they’re nothing more than an idea for stories and art.






  • Our US city (pop 180k, metro 600k) is just about to lose the last downtown grocery store.

    Generations of city councils have allowed (or encouraged!) the demolition of all housing in the city core to replace it with parking lots.

    There’s almost no one left downtown so the city itself is dying. It’s just kind of rotting away. There’s currently at least some effort to reverse the trend, but the vice grip that car oriented everything has on people is terrifying to politicians.







  • It’s still early days on them being in a position to afford a place, and in the US healthcare is a fucking abomination, so it’s going to take some real effort to reach a point of independence.

    We’re in no hurry to move anyone out. It’s still early enough that we planet of time to wire in work on skills and such. I’m mostly worried about the general attitude more than individual skills though. His sense of what it takes to keep yourself afloat in the world and little open desire to achieve independence is just worrying at this point. Likely I’m being too worried at this stage, but I’d rather turn the ship in a positive direction earlier and easier rather than later and with more difficulty.




  • I’m well aware of how hard it is to get to anything resembling a healthy independent living situation in the US these days. It’s completely stacked against everyone not already in wealthy starting positions. We have other kids working to build more than a hardscrabble financial situation and we’re more than happy to help as we can.

    We’ll help this kid too. What I’m not interested in doing is providing them a roof, food, clothes, doing their dishes, and paying for their hobbies for the rest of my life. This is an intelligent, capable, and healthy young man. The issue is the attitude we’re seeing that he doesn’t seem to see what it takes to be an independent adult, even if he’s still relying on some help while he builds up the resources to get by in this incredibly shitty society we’ve allowed to accrete over generations.

    Yes, the economy was way better when I was a young adult. I also had some fortunate happenings (bought a house in a stable local market going into the 2008 banks fraud crash) and unfortunate ones (graduated college right into the Dot Com Bubble burst. 3 months of work, then layoffs into years of dead job markets, yay!). I am extremely scared for my childrens’ futures because of how anti-humanist the US has become. Letting this kid in question fuck around for a few years while I take care of everything for him and hope my next heart attack (that’s one of the unfortunate issues) doesn’t kill me before he figures out how to be an independent and self sufficient adult isn’t something that I feel will serve either one of us in a positive way.


  • I’ve got a kid who is nearly out of school. There’s a real sense that his idea of the future is eternal summer vacation at his parents’ house earning just enough money to hang out with friends. It’s a struggle to decide how to deter that pattern of behavior. As parents we want to be able to do anything for our kids, but we also need to do what’s best for them, not just what they want.

    The kid is going to learn a lot about what we do to keep the house in reasonable order and stocked for life. We’ve been trying to teach that as we go, but it doesn’t always seem to sink in.


  • The major roads are already nigh impossible to walk across. Finding a way to raise the speed just makes it harder to be a pedestrian in yet more places.

    I, too, love the idea of networked autonomous swarm agents behaving in an even more efficient setup. The problem is that if the only focus is on moving cars faster at the cost of people’s comfort, access, energy, and walkable anything we lose out on reasons to ever be outside of the car at all.

    More cars and faster cars in our cities makes the city worse, even if they’re self driving.



  • I love to use trains to get around. I don’t need to do the work of driving, which puts every aspect of safety, navigation, and stress on me the whole trip. On the train I can sleep, do computer work, eat in a relaxed space, or talk with my kids without having to yell in each other’s ears to be heard.

    Driving is a huge energy, stress, and time sink. It’s a plague upon our society. I’d rather have a train style space, but at least a self driving car would give a few of the benefits of the train. It’s a over technical inefficient and halfway there option compared to real transit, but it’s better than making me do it all myself.

    I don’t usually speed much. It barely saves much time at the cost.of safety and mental stress. I’m also often tusing trains that usually go much faster than a car anyway, and sometimes up to 200+ mph. A self driving car (or any reasonable car) can’t even begin to touch real transit.