Coming from a construction family, this is THE problem with building right now. Material costs going up by an order of magnitude during COVID times (and not really recovering) was rough, but it doesn't hold a candle to the dumpster fire that is regulation.
Permits for everything (some permits are good, some are SO bad), mandates for things that increase cost for marginal/no gains in the finished product, and a ton of red tape/money going to people not involved in the actual work or the quality of the end product. If I, as a builder, have to go through all that bullshit for each house I build, the sane response is that I'm only building expensive houses that take more time but end up being similar $/hr for me, because I end up saving money and time dealing with the regulators.
I have a friend who builds temporary structures for events. He was telling me that a fire marshal insisted there be a sprinkler insistence installed in the tent over the swimming pool...
> You've (collectively) already fallen for it by allowing the government to develop a standing army (and not just any standing army, but possibly the most capable in the world of crushing any dissent even if it happens halfway across the globe).
The military is a non-factor in this, for a lot of reasons. Here are a few:
- What percentage of our armed forces will take their oath to the constitution (not the government) seriously, and will desert/change sides when asked to murder their own people? I expect a lot, but even if zero of them bailed, that's the least of the issues with trying to fight your own citizens...
- What good is all of that military hardware against yourself? Tanks, jets, drones, missiles... sure, you can turn major cities to glass but then what the hell do you even rule over? The US military is great at crushing dissent across the globe because the collateral damage has been deemed acceptable (by us, because we're not THERE). If you start doing any of that shit here, public sentiment will turn on you fast and you'll make millions of domestic enemies instantly.
- The US has 400 million people (ish) and just as many guns (again, ish). The US military is like 2 million, including reserves. Say 90% of people refuse to fight, well that still makes it 40 million vs 2 million. Those odds SUCK. And that's without anyone refusing orders and bailing to the other side (bring some of the hardware with ya!).
- This wouldn't be a traditional war, it would look like all the wars (ahem, military actions) that the US lost and continues to lose. Vietnam. Afghanistan. Our military keeps taking an L to dudes with 40 year old surplus rifles and busted Toyota trucks. Because that style of warfare is asymmetric and HARD to do without creating new enemies at every turn.
There is no version of a civil war that ends well for an established US government trying to subjugate its people BECAUSE of the 2nd amendment. Either rule over piles of glowing, radioactive rubble, or face the reality that it's open season on anything in a uniform and you're outnumbered 200:1 BUT you don't even know who you're fighting until you're already getting shot at. That's the intent of the 2nd, the US military doesn't actually pose a threat to its people because it simply can't win.
That being said... the US government knows all of this, and is just boiling the frog instead. Small oversteps over a long period of time add up to some real nonsense, and I'm not sure your average American has the balls to stand up, say "enough is enough", and push back. Old us threw the damn tea into the ocean (in front of the bastards!), current us will go on an angry rant on X while ordering Doordash. There will be more governmental overreach, there will be more boiling the frog, and who knows how it'll end. But the US military isn't remotely a factor.
Could you just remove vowels and hit 99.9% of profanity in all languages? Ditto for removing their 0-9 equivalents, if you're really worried about it. Quick out of the box support for that via being able to define a custom alphabet.
Well until we figure out a way to remove pattern matching from humans... use GUIDs if that's an issue. Removing vowels fixes "spelling almost all bad words explicitly", though I'm open to being proven wrong with fun new swears in exotic (to me) languages :)
The problem of "pick any N symbols that don't make any profanity in any language across all time" isn't what this is solving, nor should it have to. Take the same concept but use whitelisted words to build the token if you're that adverse to computer generated, fill in the blank naughty words. Keep "pen" and "island", among other things, off that list ;)
What subsidizing? I built my house, I had to pay someone to dig into the street to hook up to the gas lines and then fix the road. Then I had to pay the gas company to install a meter and turn on service at my new address. And finally, they send me a bill every month for the gas I use.
Having that gas hookup saves me a ton of hassle during the winter months when, inevitably, power goes out and I need to keep my place warm for a day or two (or more, though rarely) while I wait for service to be restored. My neighbors appreciate it as well, as they can come get warm in front of my gas fireplace and cook on my gas range.
I have yet to see a downside of having gas as an option, it's only helped ESPECIALLY given the geographic realities of where I live (feet of snow overnight, subzero temps for weeks/months). Ironically the pushbacks against people who are PRO gas proves how insular the anti-gas crowd is, because apparently they can't imagine a reason someone would NEED that as an option
As a WA resident, we also see weeks of subzero temperatures every year. And we've had power outages that can last a few days (if you're lucky) to multiple weeks (rare but not unheard of). Knowing that I have natural gas as a backup source of heating my house is great, and I've had to use it multiple times already in the last 3 years.
Having a backup method of ensuring my pipes don't freeze and my family is (mostly) comfortable is great. But if you're an electricity purist who hates cheap, available natural gas for some reason, enjoy sitting in the cold while your house destroys itself. Or spend thousands of dollars more on a device that BURNS GAS to run your electric furnace anyway
Which should lead you to conclude that I, in fact, don't live in or around Seattle? Contrary to what our governor would have you believe, there's a lot more to WA state than King county.
Not that any of this matters to the conversation about gas, my points still stand. Last winter we hit -10F, and there were power outages, so having gas meant having heat when it was extremely cold.
What about if the gas lines have cold-related outages ?
Ultimately you need to be ready to be self-sufficient. I live in a cold climate and run my house on a heat pump, with an oil furnace backup, AND a wood stove with plenty of wood as a third layer.
Hacker News is a discussion forum. Not only that, but it's one where the culture is defined by a contrarian-yet-intellectual spirit. It's the last place anyone should come to share opinions without expecting a response, likely a critical one.
> It's the last place anyone should come to share opinions without expecting a response, likely a critical one.
Sure, but this topic is "special" in the sense that the response GP is complaining about is about the most uncritical, non-contrarian, obvious possible one. If you view conversations as a multiplayer gradient descent, then making an accusation - even an implied and/or non-specific - of racism, sexism, bigotry and associated "sins", is like making a huge sinkhole on the optimization surface: a very deep local minimum, nearly impossible to walk out of.
It's so easy for anyone to do this, and the effect is both immediate and so obvious, that when someone does that, it's hard not to see it as a deliberate attempt at shutting down the conversation. It's equivalent of someone pulling a gun in the middle of what the other person thought was friendly sparring.
So free speech to express any opinion but not free speech to respond to opinions expressed?
99% of the time that someone decries the "death of free speech", it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
Just because you can say something doesn't mean you should. And if you do say something that is stupid or is harmful to others, you should expect push back. If you have no defense for that push back, it's a clear sign that you should either re-evaluate your opinion or express yourself in a more thoughtful manner.
This is a lesson that most people learn in grade school. But one of the big issues today is that a lot of people believe that others not accepting their opinion is a form of persecution. They are so self-centered that criticism of what they say is taken as an insult to them personally. Criticism of these people lead to no moments of self-reflection and no moments of personal growth.
The big question for me is how do we move past this moment without a large number of people realizing that they are acting like spoiled children. Speech is as free as it's ever been. What's different is an entitlement behind expressing opinions that destroys any meaningful discussion.
> it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
Or, in actuality, it mostly means they’re tired of people stripping all of the nuance away from their ideas, casting them in the most extreme light, and then deriding them as hateful and bigoted without any critical thought.
I understand the person you originally were responding to, because I feel much the same way. I used to be able to engage in conversations with random people about the world, and while this still happens occasionally, most people either self-censor or blatantly straw man you to score points.
The types of deeply nuanced, sometimes multiple day/week long conversations and debates I used to see on IRC in my youth have ceased to exist online, and can really only be had in person now with close friends who will not immediately act in bad faith.
This sounds more like the medium/channels that you use for discussion have changed. The type of people who had internet and knew how to use something like IRC 20-30 years ago is a pretty distinct sub-group of people vs the general population. And the atmosphere in specific chat rooms is very different than current large social media platforms.
I would also chalk a lot of it up to you changing over the last few decades. All of us have a habit of being nostalgic for things past. But a lot of that nostalgia isn't because things were better, it was because we were in better health, were not as jaded to the world, and monotony of life had not yet kicked in. When you were growing up you also didn't have to take full responsibility for what you said and a lot of times didn't understand the implications of what you were saying.
Providing an existential proof that a claim is not universally true is not “stripping the nuance off”, it’s called rational argumentation.
Lol wtf is up with people these days thinking that they have zero responsibility for the precision or correctness of the words that they use in discourse to ensure that they are saying exactly what they mean? Grow up and stop making excuses for your lack of self-awareness.
Indeed. My wife, whom i consider relatively open-minded in today's society, is somewhat offput by the fact that I engage with and consider 'conservatives' friends. There is a pervasive and insidious association with disagreement with 'evil' or 'wrong' in society today. People who espouse themselves as tolerant, are not. Any opposition to a held belief is considered 'wrong', inherently.
This attitude is destroying society. There is no place for nuance in general discourse anymore. It bothers me greatly. I have no solution, only an ability to despair.
I wouldn't consider your wife that open minded if she is off put by you engaging with "conservative" friends. There is nothing off putting about that.
But if your "conservative" friends happen to drop openly misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic things inappropriately into casual conversation - she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say.
> But if your "conservative" friends happen to drop openly misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic things inappropriately into casual conversation
The problem is that today, unlike a decade or two earlier, the conversation on-line (and increasingly off-line) is dominated by people who will happily choose to call anything they feel like as "misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic", using it to invalidate what others have said wholesale (and in some contexts, also make an implied threat).
You are, I assume unintentionally, doing that too, this very moment: the problem with calling something "misogynist", "racist" or "bigoted" is that it's an asymmetric superweapon - once you say, or even vaguely suggest, that I'm saying something racist, it's impossible for me to argue my way out: any attempt of proving it's not is considered an admission of guilt. "Kafkatrap", I believe, used to be a term for this.
There are severe consequences to being seen as a misogynist or a racist or a bigot. There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles. No third party wants to challenge the accusation either, because it carries a risk of becoming seen as guilty by association.
> she might be justified in feeling a little off put since she is probably worried that you also hold similar hurtful views but are more careful with what you say
And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink. There is no way one can prove whether or not a person is nice, or is a wrongthinking racist bigot who's just being careful with what they say. By finding reasons to assume the latter, one is not only making their own life worse, but also that other person's, and their combined social circle.
He said his wife felt off put by him engaging with them. I said that was wrong, but also put forward a hypothetical situation where her feelings would be justified. That is not the same at all as saying "they are misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic".
> There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being a misogynist or a racist or a bigot, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles.
That's just how accusations work. I can just as easily say: "There are no consequences whatsoever for accusing someone of being woke, for any reason whatsoever, including just for shits and giggles."
> And herein lies another problem: fear of people secretly committing wrongthink.
Well I would be concerned if my partner had misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts. Because those are not the thoughts of a kind, secure, and empathetic person (the type of person who I wish to share my life with). But you may have different morals where having misogynist, racist, and/or xenophobic thoughts is not an issue.
Really, I think it's just a consequence of living so long in what I consider an echo chamber. It's jarring to move back out of a huge, exceedingly left/liberal metro area into a much more politically mixed area.
And yeah, as an immigrant, certain conservatives have absolutely espoused views that are... antagonistic towards her family, even though they didn't know it at the time. You're basically on the money with your last sentence. It's really more of an apprehension that my political views are shifting (or I hid them) as a result of hanging out with those who hold contrary views.
1) Other ideologies are not immune to having people with such views, so I'm not sure why to single out conservatives for those kind of worries.
2) A truly open mind might be open to 'racist' viewpoints, such as blacks are more likely to suffer from sickle cell anemia and this trait is inferior to whites in regions without mosquitoes. That's just a straight up racist viewpoint (by the dictionary definition) coupled with the assertion whites legit have a characteristic here that is racially superior in places without malaria. I wonder how many other biological traits like this, of any 'race' (to the extent such a concept exists), we've thrown aside because scientists are just too scared to investigate it.
I only "singled out" conservatives because I was replying to a comment that specifically mentioned conservatives. I didn't think it would be relevant or useful to generalize or list the stereotypical flaws of every political belief system.
I'm really struggling to follow what you're trying to say in your second point. Honestly, if I'm hanging out with a friend of my wife and she starts going into "racially superior" traits of whites vs blacks - I'm going to either look to change the conversation or excuse myself to grab a beer because that's a strangely detailed and long example to get into.
That's certainly your choice to bow out. My wife is a different race from me, one that has a significantly different composition and cultural background than mine. We spend a lot of time comparing our physical and cultural differences and how they are superior in different situations, and I feel like I learned a lot from it. It's unfortunate others aren't able to appreciate diversity in this way.
I'm pretty sure the person you replied to said nothing about their friends being misogynist/racist/xenophobic. The only thing we know is they were conservative, so your statement "I only singled out..." is a complete sidestep from your process conservative -> "If your conservative friends happen to drop misogynistic/racist/xenophobic ..."
When literally the only thing we know is the person's political ideology and you go straight to talking about if they were saying racist stuff we all know what the implication is, and we all know it was said in a weird way to create plausible deniability that just maybe it wasn't being made.
> The only thing we know is they were conservative
Well no, that's not true. We also know that his wife was "off put" by him engaging with them. And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversation (much like you are doing right now on a discussion about free speech), I would certainly bow out because it's irrelevant and weird.
>Well no, that's not true. We also know that his wife was "off put" by him engaging with them.
No being off put was a description about the wife not them. All we know about them is they were conservative.
>And if you re-read my rely, you'll see that I specifically mention her being "off put" 3 different times because that was the main part that I was replying to.
There was no mention of xenophobia/racism/etc that was entirely your introduction.
>And if someone tried to shoehorn a long winded discussion about "racial superiority" into an unrelated conversatio
My guy, racism was your introduction, why did YOU shoehorn it in. Don't get upset you brought up racism and now you have to deal with replies including the subject you roped in.
What's pretty telling is that after I mention racism in passing, and you immediately jump in to say "a truly open mind would be open to racist view points". Then you go on giving examples of what you think are "racially superior" genes, as if this helps argue that conservatives being racist is an incorrect stereotype.
What's telling is that when I even number something as an entirely separate point and explicitly state in reference to talking about an "open mind" you immediately go back into your rant about "conservatives" stereotype no matter that point was entirely devoted to open minds and not about conservatives.
> 99% of the time that someone decries the "death of free speech", it boils down to them not wanting to hear criticism for expressing ignorant or hateful ideas.
OP hasn’t made any claims (that I can see) that they wish to avoid criticism for their ignorant and hateful ideas, and you’re slinging shade at them. Maybe they’re in the 99%, but… maybe they’re in the 1%. You can’t be too upset when people react to you negatively - if you say something harmful to others, you should expect pushback too.
I think you seriously misread my comment if you thought that everything I talked about was a direct reply to the parent comment and specifically about the person who posted it.
I was not upset or objecting to push back. I was, as people often do in replies to non-substantive comments, using it as an opportunity to expand on what I previously posted.
"But one of the big issues today is that a lot of people believe that others not accepting their opinion is a form of persecution. They are so self-centered that criticism of what they say is taken as an insult to them personally. Criticism of these people lead to no moments of self-reflection and no moment"
Well under oath in court, DeSantis General Counsel Ryan Newman defined woke as: “the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them”
> What do you think is wrong with the belief that there are systemic injustices in American society that should be addressed?
Nothing. What's wrong here is you making a sleight of hand (also known as "Motte-and-bailey"): whatever someone said in a court, under oath or not, about the definition of a word, has zero relevance to what the word means in regular conversation. It has even less authority than a dictionary, which tries to be generally descriptive, because it's just making an operational definition for the purposes of the court case.
I imagine you understand perfectly well the meaning of "woke" GP used, and you surely realize it is close to how this word is understood in general by those who don't subscribe to this particular group of ideologies - otherwise you wouldn't have to try and substitute an alternative meaning, from some court case no less, that just happens to be maximally inoffensive and agreeable, and also very much not the thing people are talking about.
> I imagine you understand perfectly well the meaning of "woke" GP used, and you surely realize it is close to how this word is understood in general by those who don't subscribe to this particular group of ideologies
To the best of my understanding, "woke" is now used by people to signal pretty much anything that they don't agree with. It's more frequently used when the subject matter is a black, gay, trans, women, or minority rights. But it's current usage is so incredibly broad, it is pretty much meaningless beyond "liberal nonsense I don't approve of". Hell even M&Ms, sidewalks being shoveled before roads, and not wanting to expose your kids to gas fumes (I can keep going with dozens of additional absurd things...) are all now called "woke".
Do you have a better definition than the one above? Because the fact that you fail to offer a counter-definition is pretty damn telling.
I'd just as well say "jimbokum"'s post has zero relevance to what the word means in conversation.
Which is not to say he wasn't making a worthwhile observation - that those who complain the loudest about wokeism/cancel culture arguably share quite a bit in common with those they perceive as being the primary promoters. Certainly it's always struck me that a lot people on both sides of the debate really are exceedingly thin-skinned (or at least worry excessively that those they feel they're trying to protect are thin-skinned).
Not arguing about facts and opinions, just about who was more "harmed" by the other parties speech. Not that the arguments presented are dumb and ridiculous, or even ridiculing a person for holding those views. But an attempt to litigate harms based on their individual identities.
(The label "white panther" I find pretty funny and a good example of battling bad speech with counter speech.)
Somebody is dead and somebody else is alleged to have killed them and you're asking someone on the other side of the world about injustice in this specific case?
Apparently only the top-level GP is allowed to push back on what other people say or do, but when the OP you're replying to exercises their right to free speech to do the same, it's the end of the world.
It's not the end of the world, I was just poking fun at a goofball who didn't see the irony in his kneejerk response. I'm a free speech absolutist, so I support his right to say whatever the heck he wants. That's how I know he's a goofy dude, I read a bunch of his replies in this thread and he CONTINUES to put his foot in his mouth.
Also, this hyperbolic style of response (end of the world, racism, xenophobia, the other million examples in the thread) is part of what the OP was saying is a problem today. Nuance in dialog seems to be lost, and the second someone disagrees instead of coming back with a well reasoned response, it's "oh so you YEARN for the days when minorities weren't even considered human?!" and the conversation ends.
That's boring. Strive to be less boring. It's not comfortable but it's worthwhile.
I built my house 4 years ago (with liberal use of subcontractors), and one of the things I knew I'd want is ethernet everywhere. So I ran the wire, bought a big patch panel, and now every room in my house has 2-4 ports for whatever I might want.
As a bonus, if I (or the next guy) wanted to have a landline phone, it's in the same closet and it can be patched to anywhere in the house by swapping a single wire.
Given the opportunity, even after the house is complete, it's a very useful thing to do.
Running 2-4 Ethernet cables to each room is a must and cheap. Kitchen islands, garages, you name it. Between different devices, multiple Vlans, being able to run PoE equipment, it’s indispensable. Helps avoid a lot of small switches.
Security cameras if they are your thing should ideally be poe and avoid wifi.
There are some good Ethernet to HDMI adapters as well so prewiring ceilings with a double run for projector plus Ethernet doesn’t hurt.
"By December 2019, the group's aspirations became reality, raising over $250,000 to complete the purchase of Coffee Caye, a 1.2-acre, uninhabited island off the coast of Belize"
"And I don't know about you," says Mayer, "but I certainly can't afford to buy an island on my own!"
Again, best of luck to them. They had to crowdfund $250,000 for the tiny piece of land, they're a LONG way from being able to do anything ambitious with it. That takes DEEP pockets that they themselves admitted to not having.
It'll be a fun little campsite for a few years though, until it's underwater. Then it's just a heck of a story to tell at the bar.
Yep. Sounds like most of the investors have spent the cost of a mid range Caribbean holiday for a permanent spot to pitch a tent or build a hut alongside other people that think it's a fun idea. If you see it in that context rather than as an investment, its quite good fun.
It's been a while since this was a "covid countermeasure", but how about food curfews! Government mandated intermittent fasting between the hours of 8pm and 8am :)
Permits for everything (some permits are good, some are SO bad), mandates for things that increase cost for marginal/no gains in the finished product, and a ton of red tape/money going to people not involved in the actual work or the quality of the end product. If I, as a builder, have to go through all that bullshit for each house I build, the sane response is that I'm only building expensive houses that take more time but end up being similar $/hr for me, because I end up saving money and time dealing with the regulators.