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veen  ·  112 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: December 6, 2023

I just realized I hadn’t updated y’all on the fact that I’ve been effectively free of any long covid symptoms for at least a month now. Yesterday I rode a bike for 5 miles and my heart rate stayed under 120 for the first time in what felt like forever.

veen  ·  225 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 16, 2023

Man, this month’s expensive. Now that I have a bunch of free time to fix things in the house and pick up slash revive hobbies, I’m on a spending spree.

The big one is that I bought my first car today. The intersection between “EV with a decent range & fastcharging”, “small and relatively affordable car”, and “actually a good car” turns out to be very small, but we found it in the Peugeot e-208 / Opel Corsa-e. They’re both the same Stellantis car under the hood, the difference is purely in the design. We liked both to drive but the French make some weird ass interior choices. After a year of weird ass interior choices from Volkswagen we opted for the car where the buttons are actually where you expect them to be.

Last week I ordered a new aquarium! After picking up the hobby as a bit of escapism towards nature during lockdowns, I’ve been maintaining a nano tank for a while now. I always wanted a bigger one, especially since we now live in a bigger house, but didn’t get around to it. Now I’m redoing the home office I have the perfect spot for it. I went with a 48 gallon tank from Oase.

I haven’t decided yet on what to fill it with - except one thing. It occurred to me that a tank this big means I have a lot of room for dope, unnecessary follies, so I set myself the challenge to get a 3D printed rollercoaster part for the fishes and plants to weave through as part of the aquascape. My first idea was to make a 3D file and send it off to a print shop, but kleinbl00 convinced me that it’s a better (and much more fun) path to learn some 3D modeling and printing. I always have a hard time denying myself the opportunity to learn a new skill, so the printer came in the mail today. Can’t wait to tinker with that tomorrow!

    Geography, Business decisions, social choices and the general development of the United States over the past 100 years have created an environment in which the utility of the automobile is fundamentally unmatched.

And what a shame that is. I would kill for L.A. weather with Dutch urban topography and bicycle infrastructure. The past few months of 'I am physically unable to move outside of my neighborhood without a car' have really reminded me of how much I hate car-dependancy and commuting by car, even if the former is a nearly traffic-free 15 minute drive. It's interesting how the one mode of transportation that requires a license, some modicum of skill and permanent engaged attention is the one that's championed for giving people freedom when I feel so much more free and present when cycling or on a comfortable train ride. I get why, but it's still a shame that there is no room for alternatives for the large swathes of people who don't want to or can't drive.

veen  ·  323 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 10, 2023

I've succesfully gone through the stages of grief around my current job and have moved on to active job hunting. The way my brain works, is that I am now legitimately spending every fleeting moment and thought on the problem of what I want my next step to be. Reaching out to friends / ex-colleagues / work acquaintances and thinking out loud helps a lot, but it also spurs more thinking and reflecting and pondering.

Meanwhile, I've lost any and all motivation to work. I knew I need that inner motivation to work, but I didn't know I needed it this much. I now realise I've been lucky for always having had some kind of motivation for the past decade, so it is jarring to have absolutely none of it and to feel so adrift. Fortunately I really don't have a lot on my plate at work. I can just do a bit of quiet quitting and I doubt anybody will notice or care. Especially since my conversation with HR last week went like "yeah, you're one of our high performers, so we get it if you want to leave. We'd love to keep you ofc but it's best if you just take your time to figure things out".

veen  ·  337 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 26, 2023

Things are going down south at a rapid pace at work due to corporate overlords making certain decisions. I'm angry and disappointed but I'm pretty dure these decisions won't be reverted despite 70-80% opposition from my colleagues. Or put another way, I feel like it's naive not to start looking around for something else when everything that made working here great is on the balance.

Any advice is much appreciated. At least the job market's good...

veen  ·  666 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 1, 2022

At a cool conference today. Love that I'm now finally at the point where conferences interesting not because of the talks and booths but because of meeting the right niche of people.

Work is still brutal (by my standards). Had a meeting yesterday that, had it reached a different conclusion, could be the end of my team altogether. The idea for the short/medium term now is to seriously reorganise, in the sense that any work that can be easily offloaded to others will be offloaded to others so that I can breathe and grow again.

Our mortgage is aaaalllllmost done. It got approved, but we had to fix a few mistakes in the final offer and thus need to re-sign it. Funny how it's a lot of effort to get through their system, but once you're through it's apparently no issue to change a tonne here or there. Effectively, that last hurdle is done and we will have a house in two months. (_In this economy? Yes. Send help. eeeeeee_)

veen  ·  687 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 11, 2022

In the past few months, my team of data specialists has suddenly shrunk from the 5 to 7 FTE range it's been for years down to now, effectively, 1.6 FTE of which I'm 1 FTE. Two people left, one was a recent hire that wasn't a match and the other was donezo with the high work pace. One colleague is now completely out because of long covid. The other two and myself all are now senior enough that we want to move to project management roles. They largely succeeded in doing so. I did not because of various reasons (covid, bad luck, mostly). We're hiring, but every hire we want to do is scrutinized by the Big Conglomerate that has bought us two years ago. They're looking to start wringing money out of us and it'll be ugggly.

So I have not been okay the past days, knowing that I will probably bear the brunt of whatever work we've committed to, knowing that it will be extra hard to let go of the slightly-more-difficult-than-junior work that I'm sick and tired of doing, knowing that there's a recession on the way, knowing that whatever ambitions I had for this year in all likelihood will bite the dust. I'm debating again whether I should jump ship, but I still haven't found a place that has the potential that I feel still, barely, exists where I'm at here. Maybe I need to look harder.

veen  ·  960 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 11, 2021

Celebrated vaxxed life yesterday by finally experiencing one of the things I missed most in the past two years, which is to go on a badass rollercoaster. Pure bliss that I unironically loved every second of.

I actually bought the action photo for once because it so perfectly captured the moment.

veen  ·  967 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 4, 2021

Greetings from a rainy, chilly campsite in the French Alsace!

It's good to have some time off. The weather is a letdown but we had a great few day's camping with the SO's parents out here, followed by a bunch of cultural visits to the loveliest of villages along the wine route, passe sanitaire ready but hardly needed. This region really surprised me with how beautiful it is.

Yesterday we visited the Humanist Library of Selestat which had some incredibly cool renaissance pieces on display from Erasmus and Martin Luther. It also had this i-cant-believe-its-not-a-fairytale chainbound book:

We go home in a few days, and now that I and most of my friends are almost or entirely vaxxed and Delta fairly under control, I'm cautiously hoping for a back to normal time ahead.

veen  ·  1016 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 16, 2021

Nothing hit me as hard the past weeks as Bo’s new special.

It’s not particularly funny. It’s painful, actually, to watch Bo’s mental health decline over a year of social isolation, trying to write jokes for an audience of none, publically wrestling with his self-esteem, fully self-aware of it all. The reason it does me so much, the reason those songs made me bawl my goddamn eyes out half a dozen times the past week, is that it both captures and capstones the past sixteen months.

It captures the weird getting-adjusted phase in the beginning. The annoyances of socially distanced life. The time distortion, the feeling of numbness that has been layered over the outside world. The dark months of despair. Grappling with the realization that your pandemic self is so much like your old self, too much like your old self, the self you thought you had left behind. Dealing with the realization that the rest of the world’s problems haven’t gone away. Having to deal with a planet that’s still going to hell, the clock that still marches on. That there’s that not much to say, or joke. And much like the pandemic, the ending feels just around the corner, but it drags on longer than you expect.

I watched this while it was still uncertain when I’d be in line for vaccination. Over here they announce between zero and two birthyears each day that then become eligible to book a vaccination appointment. My guess at the time of watching the special was that they’d do another (random) pause and that I'd get my shot somewhere in July.

_We were overdue, but it’ll be over soon._ That line was maybe the first time I’d allow myself to feel, to accept the end of this pandemic. The deep yearning for it all to be over that I had been bottling up for the past year was finally let loose. The weight of it all lifting ever so slightly up felt like such a relief, such a bittersweet relief considering how hard it has been and continues to be for so many people.

This past Sunday my year was finally up. Instead of waiting another two and a half weeks, we found a slot for next Sunday in a village an hour plus drive away, with the second shot just before our summer holiday. I couldn't be more thankful.

The survey my employer did ended up at 25% considering leaving, in a non-anonymous survey. So that 40% feels very true. I expect it to rip at the end of the year, when we’ve had a few months of normal life and people realize they don’t like the old normal anymore or simply have seen greener pastures. I’ve already noticed a few coworkers intentionally moving away from the office, buying homes and creating 90+ minute commutes. Doable, but definitely not 5-day-office-doable.

That third point on high productivity masking exhaustion is also something I’m seeing firsthand. What used to be 15% commute wasted time is now 15% extra projects and meetings. The people who started with us straight outta college are the most fucked, as they entered the workplace in a time where work-life boundaries were at its loosest, so they never taught themselves to let go of work in the evenings. I’m actively preventing exhaustion by setting the expectation of working a day less each week, and I know I’m not the only one because half of all 2021 team year-plans had some form “taking a step back to take care of ourselves” in it.

veen  ·  1163 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 20, 2021

Life's never been as isolated as now. We're almost not seeing any people, only a few we walk with in the park. Afraid that February and March will be the darkest part of this crisis. Finding solace and escape in books, in what we watch, in video games, and most of all in each other. I cannot imagine how life must be for the lonely out there.

We also had a bit of a medical scare recently, and my work prospects suddenly changed last week. We'll be fine, but both put me off balance - I feel like my buffers are at critically low levels. I'm debating whether I should take my concerns about how to move forward professionaly the coming months to my colleagues, or get someone outside of it to guide me.

veen  ·  1234 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: A return

Dude, congrats on finishing Lambda! Welcome to the illustrious Club of Coders. (It's mostly stuffy and could use more deodorant, but the pay's good.)

What're you coding in? What field or topic? How are you staying fit these days?

veen  ·  1317 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: August 19, 2020

Off camping. Just the two of us, a tent, some books and decent weather most of the time. Some room to breathe, think, do nothing, reflect on life and read.

veen  ·  1394 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 3, 2020

Took this week off to take a well-needed break and to work on my academic paper. Finally saw my parents who I haven’t seen since early February. BBQ’ed with my gf’s family which was almost as if nothing had happened. Banal in a way that I quite longed for. We didn’t really hold onto the distancing; we figured after months of not seeing anyone, sitting outside and them being careful too, risks are pretty low.

I’m still running and after getting new Nikes have been going very fast for my doing. Did a 40 minute 6k today without really going for that, so I’m very pleased. I did however drop under 150lbs for the first time today. So if y’all have lactose-free ways of getting phat lemme know.

veen  ·  1408 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 20, 2020

Fuck everything about last week. A Pyrrhic victory over my task manager, redlining leading to unhappiness leading to more redlining.

But I managed to unwind this weekend. Took a deep breath, said hard no's to some people, and let go of the high expectations I had of myself. This week's been going great and my long weekend starts with a national holiday tomorrow.

Time to play with the NI M32 I got myself, to keep up with the new daily piano practice the GF and I are doing, keep running (7th week in a row of 3x per week!). And, best of all, start working on the next version of my academic paper, which has not been rejected but has received 3 thorough peer reviews. I have until the end of June to fix their comments and am one big step closer to being able to call myself Scientist.

veen  ·  1520 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski Craft Fair v2.0 - January 29, 2020

I finally got Native Instruments Komplete 12 in the mail. So I figured I'd install it in a bit. However, for reasons unknown to me it takes NI a good hour or six to unzip 200GB of files from one USB3.0 disk to another and run a few updates, so I'm hoping it'll be installed before I go to bed today. (-_-')

I'm itching to get to play with it. Over the weekend I've been watching a bunch of tutorials on the various tools that are in it and I am very impressed by the possibilities alone.

Other than that, I've had another D&D session the other day. Surprising absolutely no-one, I love to make maps for my battles and locations.

veen  ·  1697 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Hubski, what are you working on?

Finally working on my academic paper again. Wanna send it later today for the last reviews before we send it out for real peer reviews.

veen  ·  1758 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 5, 2019

Back home again! Had a wonderful time with kb, his family and bootz. Many good conversations, hikes and foods were had. (Except Hot Tamales. What the hell is wrong with you people.) To top it off, I was welcomed by my family when I arrived and was handed a beautiful card with an ultrasound on it. I’m gonna be an uncle for the first time! So happy for my big sister.

I did get hit with the jetlag hammer pretty hard on the way back here - haven’t had a proper night’s rest or productive day yet, coffee be damned. But that has to be up there on the list of first-worldliest of problems to have. I can’t complain, especially with a romantic weekend in Cologne coming up. I booked us a hotel room in a beautifully repurposed old water tower, which by the looks of it is going to be totally awesome.

veen  ·  1819 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 3, 2019

Good stuph, bad stuff. Late to the party but I'm in a sharing mood. And procrastinating, but more on that later.

On the good side: I booked my tickets to go see kleinbl00, blackbootz and ButterflyEffect in May. Which is a few days after demure visits here. Already stoked.

Speaking of tickets - I'm gonna see Andrew Bird. It's been a bucket list kinda thing ever since thenewgreen (I think it was you?) raved about his live shows here.

May also has Ascension Day, which marks the one year anniversary of the first date with my now-girlfriend. I couldn't be happier about how things are going between us. Part of me was worried that things would be petering out by now, that it would become stale or boring. I feel blessed that it's anything but. Which goes to show that there's always a part of myself worrying, and that that's not a part that I need to listen to all the time. Anyway, tomorrow we're going on a double date with a friend of hers, and on Sunday we're gonna visit her grandpa together. Last week we went to the Efteling with her ex-roommates/bffs, which was a lot of fun.

Met up with one of the professors who's coauthoring my academic paper. We went over it together, deciding what to do where. Now I just need to rewrite some parts and get my LaTeX up to snuff and it's close to being submitted. Slow burn, that one, but it's still going.

D&D was a lot of fun this week; we did a small campaign with someone else DMing as my regular DM takes some time off to focus on his internship. Everyone made new, fun characters, and I just love how creative and enthusiastic our group is. Our party has a were-raccoon, a judge and I play a deep gnome portal/rift janitor.

There's some cool things coming up at work. I have a call this Monday about potentially doing some consulting about / research into electric vehicles for Cape Verde. I'm working on a new data analysis tool for municipal transportation services, and we've already sold it twice on the promise alone.

On the bad side: I'm working my ass off and have to deliver an online, interactive tool by Monday. Because that's when it'll be presented at the Dutch Consulate in NYC by my colleagues. Despite us hiring someone local to do the data acquisition, they didn't do their job properly until last week, which meant that I could only start yesterday morning on something that we usually plan at least three weeks for. So here I am, on a Friday fuckin' evening, working on this thing and writing while PostGIS is doing it's thing. Which was also a bitch, because apparently it's 1996 and the default working memory is 4MB, which I only realized this afternoon, after it struggled to run geo-analysis on half a million parcel points and another half million footprints for 19 hours while ArcGIS did the same thing in 2 goddamn minutes.

It's also been too busy for our datateam for too long. The good news is that we're finally adding someone to the team specifically to alleviate us, but I wish they would be here already, dammit. On the upside; I've never made more money for the company than in the past month or two, so I have proof that I can be highly profitable if need be. But I'd rather focus on my strenghts, which are decidedly more in product development, which doesn't happen when a dozen or so projects call for my attention.

Another thing that's been gnawing at me is that my dad recently fell and broke his arm. In the first week that he started his new job, which after years of temporary gigs seemed to finally be something where he could stay until retirement. He's on a lot of pain meds and doesn't sleep well, and I just have not been able to clear a weekend to travel over there and visit him. Easter will be the next time to visit, but that feels so far away. Ugh.

My weight's been going down - I've lost 4 lbs since Christmas literally without trying, and with not a lot of physical exercise too. Hit a new, semi-worrying low today. Any tips to gain weight?

veen  ·  1912 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 2, 2019

Happy new year Pubski! Figured last year's idea to write myself a letter begged for a followup.

---LEAVE IT IN 2018---

There's a beautiful painting someone posted here about a year ago (that I can't find right now), depicting someone facing a vast empty plain after ascending many carved out stairs. 2018 was the year for me that I finally broke free from the predefined life that is college, out into the open. In more than a few ways, I've realized that I am not the same person anymore as I was when I was a student. My priorities and context have slowly but steadily shifted away into something else, something better, and 2018 was when I realized this slow process is almost complete and that I don't feel the urge to go back.

It's also a year in which I have felt less like an individual and much more like one person at the intersection of a a dozen or so social circles. No man is an island - I tried for many years, but I'm so much happier embedded in a community, in a relationship, in the company of friends and family where I can simply be myself and feel welcome and appreciated. After almost two decades of struggling with feelings of loneliness, I think I've been able to leave a significant part of that behind.

---BRING IT IN 2019---

Considering that I started my real first jobbyjob out of college, I feel like there's a long list of things I learned this first year that I want to bring along. Some things that stood out were that I realized that I'm a very goal-oriented person in the workplace. I genuinely expected others to be on the same level as myself and was surprised to learn this was not the case. It probably helped that I read the book Essentialism earlier this year, which crystallized a bunch of ideas I've had about my work ethos.

This year I was also confronted with my own loyalty. I want to be the person other people can depend on. If I commit to something, I will make sure I deliver come hell or high water. At the same time, my work requires me to shift priorities on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, so it's quite the balancing act. Sometimes that means I can't deliver and I have to disappoint the very people I committed to not disappointing. 2018 was the year I dropped the ball a handful of times, and I've started to learn not to resort to shame but to show tenacity instead.

On a personal level I have found someone in 2018 that I grew to adore. I've rarely felt more appreciated, valued and understood than I've felt with her this year, and I dearly hope to stuff the box of 2019 so full of moments like that that it'll be hard to put a lid on it.

veen  ·  1926 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: December 19, 2018

Year's coming to a close for me - last day at the office today, sone wrap up from home tomorrow and our bigass company Christmas party on Friday. Everyone can bring along their +1's, there's a hotel booked for all of us and we're supposedly dining on a boat with plenty of booze.

I asked my RPS to save the date a long time ago. She also went along to our little family weekend last week - my parents are married for 30 years so we spent the weekend on a cold and windy island in December, because why not. It was great, we played some board games and the dogs got to go to the beach for the first time. Gf and I had one of those precious talk-until-3AM-nights-talking-about-what matters that life sometimes gifts me with. Through no fault of her own, it was the first time sister got to meet my girlfriend. They went along well with each other and I feel all the happier because of it.

I for one am looking forward to Christmas. For both of us it's our first Christmas with someone, so it feels extra special. And I can rent an electric car through work for cheapsies so it's gonna be like a mini electric roadtrip those Christmas days.

veen  ·  1999 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Weekly Photo Challenge: Patterns

veen  ·  2003 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 3, 2018

October already? Jeebus.

I'm coordinating a project that we do for the European Commission at work. It's a consortium of 7 parties in 5 European countries, trying to collaborate on one big model, basically. What I expected to happen is that we would do our (relatively small) part in this, figure out how to get it to work in the bigger picture and be done with it.

What is instead happinging at the moment, in no small part because the timeframe for this project is streched out over two years, is lots of bickering over who has to do what. It probably sounds naive, but I did not expect these kinds of politics. My colleague slash mentor has a lot more experience and he assures me it's par for the course. I'd much prefer a normal collaboration based on what's reasonable and fair, but that seems remote at the moment. I'm leaning into my Machiavellian side and am trying to gain leverage over the others, whilst using my colleague as checks and balances. I'm learning on the job, let's put it like that.

Speaking of learning: I just came back from a two-day PostGIS/SQL course. It's very cool to be able to query things in a few lines that would have cost me multiple complex geoprocessing steps with the default tools. I'm hoping I can also start using it as an alternative to my usual Python + Pandas combo for exploring (non-spatial) big datasets.

At the very least I can now finally debate the open source crowd with some experience. I think open source can be great, but there's a special kind of contempt among some people for anything that isn't open source and it's neither rational nor productive.

veen  ·  2031 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: September 5, 2018

    "What separates the most productive people from everyone else is that they make course corrections every week to gradually get better at everything they do."

Just started reading my third productivity-related book this week. It's funny - the busier I am, the more I gravitate towards reading books. (I know I'm too busy when I don't have the energy left to read.) As a result, I've started using Instapaper as a means to read more articles with more focus, I'm experimenting with reducing my caffeine intake and I'm thinking of trying to delegate more in my working life. Hashtag neversettle.

Part of my foray into the trite-filled swamp that is management books was spurred by a progress meeting I had last week with my superior. (It's one of those half-yearly review meetings where my progress as an employee is discussed. There's a name for that but it slips my mind.)

We had a lovely conversation about my productivity and what I do to manage it. I explained some of my system - a constellation of devices, Markdown files, todo lists and Outlook rules - and she was impressed enough that she wants me to mentor a guy that started one month after me. He's a sweet fella but he's been missing deadlines and pulling allnighters to compensate. I don't think he has much of a system at all, and I always enjoy discussing these kinds of things so I'm actually looking forward to helping him.

veen  ·  2122 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 6, 2018  ·  

You do forget that Europe, in general, doesn't know AC is a thing. Plus, humidity. I'd take hot LA over lukewarm London any day.

veen  ·  2122 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 6, 2018

As I said in the book thread, Johann Hari's point in Lost Connctions is that the more disconnected we are from normal and human cravings like a stable income, friends & community, a sense of purpose and meaningful work, the likelier it is that we become depressed and anxious.

Which made me reflect on how disconnected I feel from the things I value.

Leading to the wonderful conclusion that I don't.

It's been a long and uphill battle to get here. I haven't forgotten that five, ten years ago I did feel alone and directionless. And I still have more than enough flaws that I'm working on. But that a book on disconnection cheers me up instead of resonating with my problems speaks volumes to me.

veen  ·  2144 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 25th Sporadic Quotes Jubilee

WHOO another good use for my newfangled notes system!

——

Recently noted and good:

“Perfectionism may look good in his shiny shoes but he’s a little bit of an asshole and no one invites him to their pool parties.” - Ze Frank

“Traveling is like flirting with life. It’s like saying, ‘I would stay and love you, but I have to go.’ “ - Lisa St Aubin de Téran

“The best way to overcome it [the fear of death]—so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.

An individual human existence should be like a river: small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly, and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being.

The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue. And if, with the decay of vitality, weariness increases, the thought of rest will not be unwelcome. I should wish to die while still at work, knowing that others will carry on what I can no longer do and content in the thought that what was possible has been done.” - Betrand Russel

——

Less recent, but great:

“Just because you’re winning a game doesn’t mean it’s a good game.” - Seth Godin

“Only live with what you've done, and try in the future to only do what you're happy to live with. That's the whole game, soak, that's all there is." - Carl Marsalis In Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan

“The more polarized an issue gets, the more its consequences become secondary to the desire to have your camp win.” - Lilliana Mason

“Civilizations die from suicide, not from murder.” - Toynbee

veen  ·  2171 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why do young men worship Professor Jordan Peterson?

If I may quote myself from the latest book thread:

    12 Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson. No, I did not read this because of the lobster thing, mostly because I didn't even know that was a thing until today. I did find that a weird and unconvincing part, but that doesn't really matter in the context of the book itself. It reads, and should be read, entirely as a long Sunday sermon buy a pastor who goes on unscientific tangents every now and then. Meaning, science and I disagree with most of what he says, but there are pieces of advice in there that are just what some people need at some moment in their life, which is what redeems it. I would not recommend the book, but might send some passages to people some day.

Peterson wrote, basically, a book-length Hallmark card. If it sounds true enough, people will find meaning in it.

veen  ·  2188 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Landless Americans are the new Serf Class

I was tempted to go all “ well, actually...” on this, but I think the questions raised are much more interesting to discuss than the answer proposed. Can the trend of an increasingly unequal, speculative and unreachable housing market be reversed, and how? Can (and should) we give everyone the home they want in the city they want it in?

I don’t have a good answer, although it will surprise nobody that I tend to favor dense urban transit/bike-friendly/walkable places. Personally, I feel blessed to be able to rent in the city I wanted to live in. The housing market here is not as awful LA, but some places are getting there with a market dominated by rich and older people. I know more than a few people who spend over half their dual income on rent and utilities and have no wiggle room to save up for a down payment. Housing was the issue during the recent local elections; the good places have become unaffordable for most while the mediocre places are now priced at what the good places were. I’m more and more convinced that this apparently untenable situation will have to break soon, but markets are always unreasonable for a much longer time than they should, so I can just as easily see this going on for much longer. I sure hope not though...