Day: June 27, 2023, 4:42 PM

Hill Yeah

Chill Regular-ass Post

Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House in my book (heh) has the best opening para of any novel:

“No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill House, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for eighty years and might stand for eighty more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone.”

Let’s see ChatGPT do that. Yeah, right. What a fucking barnburner of a start.

Tay Time

Chill Uncategorized

This is such a great thread. Read it; it’s worth it.

It articulates something I’ve been attempting to express for a while about the neoliberalization and Taylorization of the human mind and spirit. When I’ve asserted things like that people should be able to find romance at work, should be able to have sex just for fun, should be able to act as more than robots in public life, and should be able to just enjoy things in general, even some of my friends have pushed back.

But though they are my friends, they are wrong. Life is more than what your boss thinks of you and how sweet that 4% raise is gonna be. At least it should be. And it could be if we made it that way.

None of Sense

Chill Regular-ass Post

This Alex Tabarrok nonsense is the stupidest fucking thing I’ve read recently.

It’s obviously false and the first commenter ably refutes it. In terms economists use to lie about it, I make far more than my grandfather did at the same age. My grandmother did not work, and at one point they owned three houses (none of them for renting out), four cars, a nice boat and raised three kids on a single salary.

The reality once you leave the economist fantasia is that I could not afford to do this even though I make “more” than he did. Not even close. If I tried to simultaneously own three homes, raise three kids, have four cars, all while having other nice things, I’d be bankrupt in mere months.

By the way, my grandfather was not considered rich and was in fact not rich by the standards of the time. For the 1960s and 1970s, this was considered upper middle class. Doing well, but certainly not that abnormal for someone with a college degree in a STEM field (he was a traffic engineer).

Now, you’d probably need to make what, $700,000 a year or more to do what he did? It depends on the COL in an area, but in most that’s what it’d be.

Tabarrok is a fool.

Spanner

Chill Uncategorized

Exactly. I’m trying to get better at Spanish because we’re in an area where Spanish is pretty heavily used, and I’m in my own fucking country! And that’s great. I love going out and hearing half a dozen different languages.

I’ll never be a fluent Spanish speaker tbh — because I don’t really like talking to people that much. But being able to understand it and read the language matters too. Also, I try to learn like a dozen languages at once and though I have a big fucking brain, that puts some boundaries on any progress in any particular language. But I’m having fun.

Declown Please

Chill Uncategorized

The weird liberal austerity nonsense is going to torpedo any chances of actual improvement. Degrowth is a clown world belief. Take away any good food, travel, drinks, air conditioning and the ability to do anything fun — well, why even bother living then?

This must be resisted. It’s not the path.