Blitzed through "Finding Avalon: The Quest of a Chaosbringer" book 1 and 2 today. It's an isekai about a top player in an MMO being sent to a world a lot like but not perfectly like the MMO. It's too slow, but I found it reasonably enjoyable. They spent a lot of time focusing on technical aspects of grinding other with people, and there's a decent amount of character intrigue because it's obvious there's stuff going on and things aren't going the same way they did in the game.
I won't say it was unique or memorable, it's popcorn. Fun to snack on.
I won't say it was unique or memorable, it's popcorn. Fun to snack on.
I almost never see lots of carpeting in airports. Just looks like it's everywhere in this one.
Pretty much anytime that I go into an airport anywhere the main walkways are all tiled.
Pretty much anytime that I go into an airport anywhere the main walkways are all tiled.
I feel like the guy who sold Vancouver airport carpet could sell fish a vacation in Arizona.
In the good times you can argue the homeless want to be homeless and base responses on that, but I tend to believe many homeless right now have been driven to it by conditions they had no control over. It's been a slow burn.
When I went to college you could get a 2 bedroom place for 350 a month. Today good luck renting the same place for less than 1500. Meanwhile, minimum wage went from 10/hr to 15/hr. People are scrambling for university education no matter the cost because they know behind the rat race is a rising tide that will drown the losers.
When I went to college you could get a 2 bedroom place for 350 a month. Today good luck renting the same place for less than 1500. Meanwhile, minimum wage went from 10/hr to 15/hr. People are scrambling for university education no matter the cost because they know behind the rat race is a rising tide that will drown the losers.
It has always seemed to me that people get things backwards.
Because someone could predict what you'd do then you have no free will? So the only way to manifest free will would be to be totally irrational in a way that exhibits quantum randomness? That is absurd. Freely choosing to make understandable choices is still freedom. You aren't only free by embracing raw chaos.
Of course we make choices about how to act and also how to understand the world that informs how we act, and you can take siblings from the same family raised the same and see them go off and live their lives in completely different ways based on their own choices. I'm one of 6 kids, and none of us live remotely similar lives today because despite the many similarities of our upbringing nonetheless led us to different conclusions regarding life and how to live.
Ironically, even our beliefs about free will affect how we live our lives, and a person who believes he or she has a choice will act differently than a person who does not believe she or he has a choice. It changes our choices, because we are making choices and manifesting our will thereby.
A laplaces demon who knows everything and has an infinitely precise model of the universe may be able to predict your choice, but again -- understanding and predicting a choice one makes does not mean you aren't nonetheless free to make that choice. It just means your choice is predictable by someone who understands you well enough.
On the other hand, we don't have models about ourselves that are necessarily so accurate. Every decade of my life I find I've done things I didn't expect, and came to believe things I didn't expect, and often it wasn't changes in the material conditions I faced that changed me. Decisions upon decisions bring about changes in a person and after a million decisions a different outcome becomes an emergent property. What can you call that besides free will, the constant decisions as to how to think, how to be, how to perceive the world? I think Aristotle said "we are what we continually do, virtue then is a habit" -- how else do we come upon such habits but by choice?
Because someone could predict what you'd do then you have no free will? So the only way to manifest free will would be to be totally irrational in a way that exhibits quantum randomness? That is absurd. Freely choosing to make understandable choices is still freedom. You aren't only free by embracing raw chaos.
Of course we make choices about how to act and also how to understand the world that informs how we act, and you can take siblings from the same family raised the same and see them go off and live their lives in completely different ways based on their own choices. I'm one of 6 kids, and none of us live remotely similar lives today because despite the many similarities of our upbringing nonetheless led us to different conclusions regarding life and how to live.
Ironically, even our beliefs about free will affect how we live our lives, and a person who believes he or she has a choice will act differently than a person who does not believe she or he has a choice. It changes our choices, because we are making choices and manifesting our will thereby.
A laplaces demon who knows everything and has an infinitely precise model of the universe may be able to predict your choice, but again -- understanding and predicting a choice one makes does not mean you aren't nonetheless free to make that choice. It just means your choice is predictable by someone who understands you well enough.
On the other hand, we don't have models about ourselves that are necessarily so accurate. Every decade of my life I find I've done things I didn't expect, and came to believe things I didn't expect, and often it wasn't changes in the material conditions I faced that changed me. Decisions upon decisions bring about changes in a person and after a million decisions a different outcome becomes an emergent property. What can you call that besides free will, the constant decisions as to how to think, how to be, how to perceive the world? I think Aristotle said "we are what we continually do, virtue then is a habit" -- how else do we come upon such habits but by choice?
Got a long trip ahead of me today, mostly on planes. I've got more power infrastructure in my right pocket than 1905 and more computing power than 1965 in my left.
There's a TV show that was on YTV back in the day late at night called "the buzz", and the big black guy mista Mo always did fake profiles on people who were horrible, like a guy who snuck into the special Olympics. And he always goes something like "am I a hero? Yes."
Yeah for those who don't understand the Canadian political system, the governor general is the representative of royalty. He or she and grants Royal assent to whatever bills has been voted on by the Parliament and the Senate.
Although the governor general is typically selected by the prime minister, it isn't supposed to be an overtly political position. The governor general is representative of the king, not of the most populous party in the House of Commons.
Although the governor general is typically selected by the prime minister, it isn't supposed to be an overtly political position. The governor general is representative of the king, not of the most populous party in the House of Commons.
It isn't unreasonable for him to teach mechanics and dynamics since I think he's trained as a mechanical engineer, but he shows his ignorance once he starts dipping into the social sciences.
Dangerhair builds time machine
"Hi guys I came back because I'm gay like you!"
Immediately killed for being gay and a foreigner
(This story is of course fiction because dangerhairs will never build anything notable)
"Hi guys I came back because I'm gay like you!"
Immediately killed for being gay and a foreigner
(This story is of course fiction because dangerhairs will never build anything notable)
The really funny thing is where now they are blaming El nino on climate change, earthquakes, solar eclipses, and all of these things have perfectly rational explanations other than invisible gases in the air...
I think it is 2-fold: they're retarded, and they think we're even dumber than they are.
There is a door for a filter and drain on the front, but the pump itself isn't accessible at all and the debris made it past the filter. It's a front loader.
I was looking and the number of vehicles with 300,000km asking over 10k and sometimes over 20k was like "what?"
Then I looked at the price of new vehicles and it was like "holy shit...."
I think it all goes back to 2008 in two ways
First, cash for clunkers meant that they took a bunch of viable low end used vehicles and destroyed them. I've been thinking lately about that phrase "the wealth of nations" and I can't help but think that part of that wealth is the accumulated stuff that has already been manufactured and just needs to be maintained. A bunch of used cars on the road might not seem like a big deal, but those are all tools that somebody can go out and use to make their life better. Destruction of those tools is the destruction of the wealth of the nation, even if they aren't wonderful luxury cars that everyone wants to be driving around in.
The way that the government burecrats focus on GDP can be easily refuted. Think about a scenario where your grandfather bequeathed to you a piece of land. The land was completely undeveloped, had nothing on it. You chop down some trees on it, and with artisanal skill alone build a house on that property. Then you pass it off to your kids, and they have built up even greater artisanal skill and so they keep the household there, but dig up rock and build a giant castle, a mansion made out of stone. And maybe the quarry on your property that they used to get the stone for the castle it turns into a fine little lake, and a generation or two later, the same family is living there, maybe they are planning food and living off that food, and maybe some eagles dropped some fish into the lake and they spawned and now you can fish in that lake, and you have a property with a house and a castle and some farmland and lake, that was nothing before. What is the GDP of this piece of land? Well the answer is zero. In spite of the fact that it went from being a completely undeveloped piece of land to a highly developed piece of land no money ever changed hands and so the GDP is zero. Now would you say that that family with a GDP of zero has less wealth than a family renting an apartment in the ghetto? The family in the ghetto likely has a GDP of several thousand dollars, maybe $20,000 maybe more, money is coming in and going out, so according to the economist the family with the castle is doing terribly and the family in the ghetto is much richer. But who would choose to live in the ghetto when they could choose to live in the castle?
Second thing that 2008 did is driving interest rates down to basically nothing. That's why people are willing to take out 84 months loans on a car, because it's 84 months at basically no interest. Let's see if people are quite so excited to take on such a commitment with 10% annual interest rates, or 20%. The availability of money made it easier to borrow more, and made it easier to borrow longer. As a result every shit box suddenly became a lot more expensive.
I didn't realize how bad it was in North America until someone showed me some of the used car market in europe. You can still get a shitbox car for a thousand Euros there. The sort of thing you'd brag about driving? Probably not. But it's Wheels, and that can change a lot...
Then I looked at the price of new vehicles and it was like "holy shit...."
I think it all goes back to 2008 in two ways
First, cash for clunkers meant that they took a bunch of viable low end used vehicles and destroyed them. I've been thinking lately about that phrase "the wealth of nations" and I can't help but think that part of that wealth is the accumulated stuff that has already been manufactured and just needs to be maintained. A bunch of used cars on the road might not seem like a big deal, but those are all tools that somebody can go out and use to make their life better. Destruction of those tools is the destruction of the wealth of the nation, even if they aren't wonderful luxury cars that everyone wants to be driving around in.
The way that the government burecrats focus on GDP can be easily refuted. Think about a scenario where your grandfather bequeathed to you a piece of land. The land was completely undeveloped, had nothing on it. You chop down some trees on it, and with artisanal skill alone build a house on that property. Then you pass it off to your kids, and they have built up even greater artisanal skill and so they keep the household there, but dig up rock and build a giant castle, a mansion made out of stone. And maybe the quarry on your property that they used to get the stone for the castle it turns into a fine little lake, and a generation or two later, the same family is living there, maybe they are planning food and living off that food, and maybe some eagles dropped some fish into the lake and they spawned and now you can fish in that lake, and you have a property with a house and a castle and some farmland and lake, that was nothing before. What is the GDP of this piece of land? Well the answer is zero. In spite of the fact that it went from being a completely undeveloped piece of land to a highly developed piece of land no money ever changed hands and so the GDP is zero. Now would you say that that family with a GDP of zero has less wealth than a family renting an apartment in the ghetto? The family in the ghetto likely has a GDP of several thousand dollars, maybe $20,000 maybe more, money is coming in and going out, so according to the economist the family with the castle is doing terribly and the family in the ghetto is much richer. But who would choose to live in the ghetto when they could choose to live in the castle?
Second thing that 2008 did is driving interest rates down to basically nothing. That's why people are willing to take out 84 months loans on a car, because it's 84 months at basically no interest. Let's see if people are quite so excited to take on such a commitment with 10% annual interest rates, or 20%. The availability of money made it easier to borrow more, and made it easier to borrow longer. As a result every shit box suddenly became a lot more expensive.
I didn't realize how bad it was in North America until someone showed me some of the used car market in europe. You can still get a shitbox car for a thousand Euros there. The sort of thing you'd brag about driving? Probably not. But it's Wheels, and that can change a lot...
I lucked out that the brake work I needed to do wasn't so bad.
But you're right, I bet a lot of stuff that should be insignificant results in people buying new cars -- or washers.
But you're right, I bet a lot of stuff that should be insignificant results in people buying new cars -- or washers.