tuckerm

For anyone reading this thread that can’t turn on their speakers to check right now:

Beethoven’s 5th: Judge Judy intro Beethoven’s 6th: Fantasia

It’s a reference to Paul, from the Bible (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_the_Apostle#Names). He was known as Saul when he was Jewish, and then later went by Paul after he converted to Christianity. The phrase “Saul to Paul” is often used to refer to someone who converted to Christianity, as opposed to being born a Christian. But it is also sometimes used more generally to mean something that turned around or improved. Like, if you want to say “glow up” but you also want to make it clear that you think Christians are better than Jews.

Ironically, the person who said it was Mormon, and most Christians do not consider Mormons to count as Christian.

I once heard someone use the phrase “Saul to Paul” in front of one of my Jewish neighbors and I wanted to just shrink down to the size of a molecule so that I could float away.

Slightly. Not in a terrible, life-altering kind of way, but just enough to make me think, “Oh, that’s what that’s like.”

I live in condo building and the average resident here is very old, very religious, and very conservative. No joke, several Lyft drivers have asked me, “So, is this a retirement home? I always thought this was a retirement home.” When I moved in as a 26 year old guy with long hair and a ponytail, I did not fit the vibe.

I was changing my bicycle tire in the parking garage and a woman stormed up to me, absolutely convinced that I did not belong there. She said that I needed to be a resident to be in there (so, assuming I wasn’t one), then started grilling me about what unit I lived in, how long I’d been there, etc. She must have thought I was stealing the bike, but taking a few minutes to change the tire first; you know, as one does.

It was an irritating but short exchange, and she left quickly. But it still put me in a mood for like half an hour afterwards. And it got me thinking: if you’re a minority, you probably get that all the time. Like, you don’t even have time to cool down from the last exchange before someone does it to you again.

I don’t think it’s so clear what some of the money is going to. From the article:

the package includes $3.5 billion for “essential wartime procurement” […] and a $5.2 billion grant for air defenses. The ministry said the $5.2 billion for air defenses “will significantly strengthen critical systems such as Iron Dome…"

With Hezbollah launching rockets towards civilians, I am in favor of strengthening the Iron Dome. But it sounds like that $3.5 billion could be to resupply Israel for their attacks on Gaza, thereby enabling new ones.

The Princess Bride, with In Bruges being a fairly close second. But I think The Princess Bride stays permanently at number 1 for me.

You need some kind of special coin – no, I’m not sure where to get one – and then you go to this hotel right here. Then you go to the bar and ask.

That was a great explanation.

I remember hearing an interview with John Boehner on NPR (former Republican Speaker of the House) a few years ago. He was talking about the government shutdown that happened shortly after far right wing was elected in 2010. Apparently, a few of them barged into his office after the shutdown and demanded to know why the government had actually shut down.

And Boehner was like, “Um…you said you wanted it to?”

And the right wingers said, “Well we didn’t think it would work!”

These are irresponsible people who think they should just get to play games in life.

This headline is easy to read wrong – my brain grouped the subject of this headline the other way at first. I read, “Marjorie rages at (Mike and calls to fund government)” rather than “Marjorie (rages at Mike) and (calls to fund government).”

Two reasons:

1. I live in Utah, where the Mormons are, and they get very offended by swearing. Although there are some ways in which I will definitely not accommodate their religious beliefs, I also think it’s healthy to meet other people at their comfort level (if it’s reasonable to do so). On the one hand, I understand the idea that we shouldn’t have to change who we are in order to make other people comfortable. On the other hand, I do think that if you take that idea too far, it can be a kind of antisocial behavior. When in Rome, as they say.
2. It has more impact if you don’t do it often. Think about a Quentin Tarantino movie. By the time Samuel L. Jackson has said “fuck” for the 157th time, you’re just used to it. The word doesn’t even stand out anymore. But now consider the end of The Princess Bride, which has one swear word in the entire movie: “I want my father back you son of a bitch.” WHA-BAM! Hits like a freight train every time!

For the follow-up questions, kind of the same answer to both of them. I feel like not swearing – or, swearing less – requires me to be more precise when I’m criticizing something. Instead of just saying that something was “like shit”, I have to give a more specific criticism. So that’s the change that it has made, and no, it hasn’t stopped me from expressing something.

“What schools are nearby?”

“Is the walk in humidor full or partial?”

“Can the windows be taken out for moving in large furniture? I own Salvador Dali’s favorite piano.”

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Man, I had forgotten how much the “purity” of stars like Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson was talked about. It didn’t even seem weird at the time. (Although I was a little kid, so I probably just couldn’t notice the hypocrisy.)

A quote FTA:

“Wokeness is dead,” gloated right-wing commentator Richard Hanania on X back in March, over a video clip of Sweeney in a black dress with a plunging neckline, her breasts at the center of the frame. Hanania’s logic was obscure, but it seemed to go something like this: Sweeney’s prominently displayed chest was somehow inextricably opposed to the progressive ethos currently fashionable in popular culture.

This whole issue that this article is describing is a perfect example of why it’s impossible to argue against the right on their own terms. Their process is like this:

1. Have a very loosely defined set of ideals. You can believe anything at any time. Have more of a vibe than a set of principles.
2. Invent an enemy. This enemy should be vaguely defined; it is everything and nothing at the same time. For example, wokeism.
3. Because your enemy is whatever you want it to be, and because your values are whatever you want them to be, you alone get to decide when you’ve won. You can declare victory at any time, for any reason. This conveniently fits your insecurity-based need to feel like a winner.

I don’t know, unfortunately. This reminded me that I used to occasionally read product reviews on epinions.com, which was apparently was taken offline in 2018. It was basically what you’re describing. Another proprietary website bites the dust and loses all content. :(

I heard about neodb.social recently, which is for entertainment media and is popular in China (although you can post in any language). Seems like we need something like that, but without specific product types in mind.

I remember seeing this on the news a few years ago. If I remember right, they were interviewing a design firm that does interior design for fast food and fast casual restaurants, and they were talking about all of this. I was really surprised at how candid they were being, since you would think that they would want this to be an industry secret.

The high stools with no back, the music that is too loud, the lights that are a little too bright and kind of hanging down in your field of view: all intentional, so that you’re just ever so slightly uncomfortable and you leave a few minutes sooner.

I’m certainly close right now. I bought a laptop from System76 in December (the Pangolin). It has not, any any point, worked acceptably. First the USB ports would frequently disconnect and reconnect. Then the trackpad started freaking out, registering constant false clicks and not letting the cursor move.

The first time I sent it in, they shipped me back someone else’s computer.

When I did get my own laptop back, I found that the trackpad issue hadn’t been fixed. Then it stopped waking up after being suspended.

So I sent it in again, and got no updates from them for 30 days. They said their usual turnaround time was 7-10 days. And the first time I sent it in, it took them about a week to send it back. Well, to send a computer back. So something was wrong here.

On top of that, the support ticket has a “Last Updated” timestamp, and it kept changing every couple of days. I asked them for details, and only received generic “sorry this is taking a while, we’re working on it” responses. I specifically wanted to know why the “last updated” timestamp was changing every few days, because of course I’m imagining that they’ve shipped my computer to someone else.

I finally responded in all caps, asking where my computer was for that unexplained month, and why the timestamp kept changing. The support agent replied:

Your computer was at our warehouse waiting to be worked on.

Bless up,

(Support agent name)

Bless up? Fucking asshole.

I always want to be patient with those working in customer support. It’s difficult and often thankless job. I know how unfair it is when a customer blows up at someone in customer service, not to mention how unhelpful it is. And usually the customer is yelling at someone with no power to fix the situation. But this System76 thing is getting ridiculous. They’re literally just not responding to emails and dodging questions when they do respond.

If it’s a new book and one that I think other people may be interested in borrowing, I’ll get the hardcover for the extra protection.

However, there’s a used paperback store down the street from me that has a whole bunch of heavily used paperbacks for like $1 each, and those have definitely been dominating my collection lately. Sometimes I’ll just pick up a dozen of them. That little store is one of those treasure troves of unexpected things, even though when you find one of those treasures, you might need to flip the pages carefully to prevent it from falling apart.

A couple of atheism/philosophy channels that helped me focus on the positive aspects of my secular worldview, instead of merely being not theistic:

• Genetically Modified Skeptic
• Alex O’Connor

Made major improvements to my home cooking routine:

• Adam Ragusea. His podcast, which he stopped doing this year, is also worth a listen.
• Rainbow Plant Life. Vegan.
• Derek Sarno. Also vegan.

Culture & current events:

• Joan Westenberg. She just started a YouTube channel a couple days ago, but I’ve been subscribing to her newsletter for a few months and it’s great. Give her a follow on Mastodon, too: https://mastodon.social/@Daojoan
• Maggie Mae Fish Only just found this one, but seems well thought-out.
• Tara Mooknee Same here.

It was during “outdoor school,” a week long thing you did in sixth grade (age 12) at my school. You stayed in these really cool cabins that were like 100 years old and spent the week learning about nature. It was fun. Very classic summer camp type of environment.

Also, other schools from the area did it at the same time, so there were a bunch of unfamiliar kids there. Two of the kids in my cabin were from another school, and they perfectly fit the stereotype of “edgy, bad 90s kid.” Super baggy JNCO jeans, spiked hair with a ton of gel, etc. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, watch any teen show from the 90s. They’re in it. Oh, and they said everything was lame. And gay. The cabins were gay, nature was gay, the camp was gay, your glasses were gay. You were definitely gay. That’s why you thought outdoor school was fun: because you were gay. The JNCO jeans kids were way too cool for outdoor school.

I should mention that I was a huge nerd. I mean, I still am, but I was, too. JNCO jeans kids were way cooler than me.

For the whole week, we kept hearing about “the night hike,” which was when you would go on a hike, by yourself, in the dark. The camp really played up the night hike, like it was going to be this big coming of age moment for us. You need to be responsible on The Night Hike. You need to stay sharp on The Night Hike. You’ll be a man after The Night Hike.

On the last day, it’s time for the night hike. Each cabin walked as a group up a hill. At the top, you would then walk back down a trail on the other side of the hill, one person at a time, waiting about a minute after the previous person had gone. I happened to be after the two JNCO jeans kids. (Yes, the night hike was gay.)

When it’s my turn to walk down, I realize that this much-hyped coming of age moment is going to be…no big deal whatsoever. The trail is a very gradual slope with a few turns. It’s paved, for Pete’s sake. You could even see the lights from the cabins after the second turn. And the moon was bright enough that I wouldn’t even need my flashlight. This pivotal moment wasn’t going to be pivotal at all.

After less than a minute, I heard someone on the trail in front of me say, “H-hey, who’s there?” It’s one of the JNCO jeans kids. He’s just kind of standing there on the trail. He didn’t get very far.

“Um, it’s Tucker, from the cabin,” I said.

“Oh, cool,” he replied. “Um, I guess you’re walking faster than me.” He said that like I had caught up to him, which I guess is easy to do when the other person is frozen. “Want to walk down together?” His tone was way different from what it had been the rest of the week.

“Sure,” I said.

I don’t remember what we talked about. Probably what school we went to and that kind of thing. The whole walk only took about five minutes total, so it’s not like we talked about much. But I remember thinking to myself, “The guy that talked tough this whole week…it’s because he wasn’t.”

So yeah, The Night Hike. Ended up learning a thing.

This is a hard question. I think that we would be better off if more people adopted secular worldviews. But throughout history? I don’t think we can simply say “what if there were no religions” – we’d have to be completely different creatures for it to have gone that way. But I do think we’d be better off if we were that kind of creature.

It’s interesting that every group of people, basically ever, has started a religion. I’m no anthropologist, but as far as I know, every civilization to have ever existed has formed one. Forming a religion is as natural as forming a language. Clearly, it’s a thing we do. Lacking an explanation for our questions, from “what are rainbows?” to “what happens when we die?” we will apparently just fill something in. Everyone did it.

For us to have not formed religions, we’d have to be more comfortable with uncertainty. We’d need to have been better at accepting that we don’t know some things, and we can doggedly look for answers, but we shouldn’t insist that we know something before we really do. And I think our species kind of sucks at that.

If we were better at accepting uncertainty while still pursuing answers, we’d all be better off. And maybe, as a side effect of that, we wouldn’t have formed religions.

When Og and Bog saw the sun come over the hill one morning, and Og was like, “Hey Bog, how do you think that happens?” Bog should’ve said, “I don’t know. Maybe someday, someone will know.” Instead, Bog went off on some real bullshit, and now here we are.