Atvelonis's recent activity
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Comment on Why cheap waste management is key to stopping plastic pollution in ~enviro
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Comment on Which US regions are bowling alone?: The regional geography of social capital in ~society
Atvelonis LinkRobert Putnam's 1995 political science essay "Bowling Alone" centers social capital as a causative marker of democratic resilience. He summarizes social capital as "features of social organization...- Exemplary
Robert Putnam's 1995 political science essay "Bowling Alone" centers social capital as a causative marker of democratic resilience. He summarizes social capital as "features of social organization such as networks, norms, and social trust that facilitate coordination and cooperation for mutual benefit." Societies lacking high social capital experience "the absence or obliteration of traditions of independent civic engagement and a widespread tendency toward passive reliance on the state," which he identifies as weakening factors for democracies. By extension, societies with low social capital trend toward authoritarian governance and social inequality. Putnam expands on the concept in his 2000 book Bowling Alone.
"For a variety of reasons, life is easier in a community blessed with a substantial stock of social capital. In the first place, networks of civic engagement foster sturdy norms of generalized reciprocity and encourage the emergence of social trust. Such networks facilitate coordination and communication, amplify reputations, and thus allow dilemmas of collective action to be resolved. When economic and political negotiation is embedded in dense networks of social interaction, incentives for opportunism are reduced. At the same time, networks of civic engagement embody past success at collaboration, which can serve as a cultural template for future collaboration. Finally, dense networks of interaction probably broaden the participants’ sense of self, developing the “I” into the “we,” or (in the language of rational-choice theorists) enhancing the participants’ “taste” for collective benefits."
Putnam argues that the United States, "traditionally...considered unusually 'civic'," has experienced a decline in social capital since the 1950s. Example components in decline he identifies are: voter turnout and other direct political participation, trust in government as a result of wars and political scandals (he cautions against stopping one's analysis here), "church-related groups [...] school-service groups like parent-teacher associations, sports groups, professional societies, and literary societies" especially among women, and "sports clubs, labor unions, professional societies, fraternal groups, veterans’ groups, and service clubs" especially among men, as well as the "whimsical" and once surprisingly high metric of bowling league participation. He observes a general decrease in most forms of socially integrated civic participation ("secondary associations"), not just a shift in the popularity of specific organizations or activities, and this occurs across all educational demographics. Putnam also observes social decapitalization in informal settings, including "loosening bonds" among families and a decline in "social evenings [spent] with neighbors."
He contrasts the aforementioned highly socially connected civic organizations with looser "tertiary associations." These are membership organizations which do not explicitly or effectively foster deep and/or reciprocal social connections, including: [1] ideologically (rather than socially) oriented nonprofits, especially those on a national scale, and [2] small, individualistic "support groups" or interest groups which structurally lack mechanisms to enforce the participatory values of broad social contracts. He posits that the growth of tertiary associations is not a counterargument to the decline of social capital, but rather an example of it. Despite rising "social circumstances that foster associational involvement (higher education, middle age, and so on)," he observes that "nevertheless aggregate associational membership appears to be stagnant or declining."
[1] "For the vast majority of their members, the only act of membership consists in writing a check for dues or perhaps occasionally reading a newsletter. Few ever attend any meetings of such organizations, and most are unlikely ever (knowingly) to encounter any other member. The bond between any two members of the Sierra Club is less like the bond between any two members of a gardening club and more like the bond between any two Red Sox fans (or perhaps any two devoted Honda owners): they root for the same team and they share some of the same interests, but they are unaware of each other’s existence. Their ties, in short, are to common symbols, common leaders, and perhaps common ideals, but not to one another."
[2] "Small groups may not be fostering community as effectively as many of their proponents would like. Some small groups merely provide occasions for individuals to focus on themselves in the presence of others. The social contract binding members together asserts only the weakest of obligations. Come if you have time. Talk if you feel like it. Respect everyone’s opinion. Never criticize. Leave quietly if you become dissatisfied. . . . We can imagine that [these small groups] really substitute for families, neighborhoods, and broader community attachments that may demand lifelong commitments, when, in fact, they do not."
His commentary on "ties...to common symbols, common leaders, and perhaps common ideals, but not to one another" resonates with my experience of nonprofit organizing personally. The most morally rigorous, socially uplifting, invigorating, inspiring, etc. nonprofit groups I've worked with have been the ones structured somehow around civic empowerment and which emphasize personal connections even in professional and institutional contexts that typically feature impersonal corporate expectations. At the same time, I recognize why this shift toward tertiary associations might have occurred. For one, it's simply easier to sign up for an environmental mailing list and read a newsletter or send a CTA email once a while than to actively maintain the relationships involved with in-person meeting attendance (American culture is increasingly one of convenience). Also, laser-focused and corporatized nonprofits, especially lobbying groups, are probably more effective at accomplishing narrow missions than open-ended, deliberative secondary associations. For a culture obsessed with accomplishments at the expense of experiences, that model is just fine. Likewise, small hobbyist associations bring people together for a discrete purpose but demand no commitment/buy-in; if attendees have no reason to take ownership over some aspect of the group, it's not surprising that they may not come back or that these groups don't necessarily lead to long-term relationships. It's interesting to think about examples in my personal life of affinity or hobby organizations that feel like genuine relational communities: they're few and far between, and they feel like diamonds in the rough!
Putnam muses on some theories for these declines but is individually unsatisfied with them, including higher women's workforce participation; reduced residential stability; fewer marriages and children; lower real wages; replacement of local businesses with super-stores and online shopping; and presciently the "technological transformation of leisure," especially television, which "has made our communities (or, rather, what we experience as our communities) wider and shallower":
In the language of economics, electronic technology enables individual tastes to be satisfied more fully, but at the cost of the positive social externalities associated with more primitive forms of entertainment.
Algorithmic, demographically personalized social media feeds seem like an extraordinary extension of the VCR's individualization effect. If home television is considered substantially desocializing because it discourages physical congregation and shared cultural values, then hyperspecialized, LLM-enhanced brain addiction algorithms are surely magnitudes worse. Of course this is well known on Tildes. However, we might be more resistant to the comment that online forums are probably not social capital-forming substitutes for "meeting in a bowling alley—or even in a saloon." I think this is true, if nothing else because anonymity and geographic dispersion (like tertiary association memberships) do not produce interwoven social commitment. But in 2026 the primary foil to a web forum is social media. We perceive a gain in social capital by participating in specialized, polite forums like Tildes rather than, say, the Wild West of Reddit or Instagram; this is probably empirically provable, but not a substitute for the kind of neighborly social capital that produces a strong real-world democracy. This is because even the most excellent web forum is still ideologically self-selective, whereas our democracy is (by design) more demographically and intellectually diverse; increases in social cohesion within our Honest Society of Tildesites probably do not quite map onto corresponding increases in political society, even though they might foster some helpful ideas around social discourse. The microcosm is too small (though I love our community, we are disproportionately "chronically online"); we may better imagine Tildes as a supplement than a replacement.
Putnam also acknowledges that some changes to civic life that have eroded social capital might concurrently reduce social intolerance, "overt discrimination," and "inefficient cartelization" or corruption. The natural question is how to disentangle social trends that can increase social capital without concurrently restoring injustices.
1995 was 31 years ago. There has been a lot of discourse on social capital and related concepts since then! Anecdotally, I think most of the popular focus has been on rising economic inequality, mainline political polarization (especially federally), cell phone-based internet use (particularly algorithmic social media), and a perceived lack of accessible "third places [spaces]." @NaraVara made a good observation in February that "third spaces are all over the place, it’s the social structures that have atrophied." This aligns with Putnam's analysis of the rise of loose "tertiary associations" rather than tight "secondary associations." More third places per se are not exactly the concern so much as the social superstructure we have failed to maintain around them. Additionally, technical mechanisms that support a holistically equitable and practically democratic society (particularities of land use, transportation science, obscure taxation methods, invisible civil servant roles, etc.) are not widely understood or supported even among educated people in part because individuals are often incentivized against these mechanisms. For example, neighborhood zoning boards that restrict housing development to boost property values (and accidentally price out their own youths), which probably reduces long-term social bonds.
When James Fishkin describes the "trilemma" between "mass participation, deliberation, and political equality," he is partially commenting on the failure of any (?) existing democracy to create an environment properly conducive to generate maximum social capital. Specifically, we're looking for a solution to the trilemma that is stable (self-reinforcing). I admit I'm skeptical of the existence of such an easy equilibrium. It's tempting to seek a purely systemic answer to social decapitalization, although I think society has some ethics work to do too—most likely, the only way to achieve a perfectly stable, perfectly equitable democracy that maximizes social capital is to be socialized to believe that that is morally correct. We have challenges ahead to substitute violence for peace, vindictiveness for forgiveness, cruelty for kindness, and selfishness for altruism. (Perhaps more bound to philosophy and, yes, religion than many of my fellow system thinkers on Tildes want to deal with!)
Further questions on social capital
Putnam asks whether social capital adheres to a Newtonian ontology whereby it "is neither created nor destroyed, merely redistributed," much like energy/matter. I think this physicalist analogy is too zero-sum. From a graph theory perspective, consider a society of zero people or one person (nodes): it necessarily has zero social capital (no connections [edges] upon which to establish capital), and a society of two people necessarily has more than zero connections, and so more than zero capacity for capital to be established; thus it must be possible to "create" social capital out of nothing in societies based only on the size of the social network. More precise questions might be: (1) to what extent this production is proportional to the number of society members, (2) whether that node–network relationship is linear or... quadratic? (
1/2n^2) and (3) whether there exists some high-ish physical socio-neurological limit, or whether/at what population size (theoretical connection points) social capital plateaus. (4) Implicitly, we are also asking whether the size or complexity of a society can increase social capital whether or not all nodes share edges with all other nodes. If we axiomatically take philosophical and technological inventions throughout observed human history (things that developed/accelerated as the population did, maybe as a result of population growth) as proxy evidence that higher populations can but do not always necessarily make societies better (can increase social capital at least somewhat, sometimes), then the most interesting questions are (5) what the ideal population size is to maintain high social capital, (6) in what ways the development of philosophy and technology as components of social capital reflexively influences that ideal population size, and (7) to what extent population distribution and other communicative barriers diminish theoretical connection potential. Specifically, (8) are there any broadly applicable trends between the ideal population size/structure within a given environment and resultant social capital? That is, for a given culture, is there a way to optimally incentivize social network connections to maximize social capital? This seems mushy and impossible to prove. But if we can be somewhat confident, informally, that there are ways to maximize the absolute social capital within a society to some limit, then doing so might be the easiest and most universally productive first step. Addressing the distribution of social capital across civic engagement versus the workplace (the example Putnam gives) seems entirely subjective. Unfortunately, we come back to our axiom now: we were assuming that adopting certain philosophies and technologies could increase capital potential, but any example of social capital is only comprehensible within an applied framework of philosophy and technology. That is, you have to select your culture, tools, and lifestyle to define social capital to begin with, and if you change any of those, you change what it even means for social capital to exist.I'm not the first person to ask any of these questions. For example, there is some literature on the narrow practical question of ideal population size using the metric of economic (dollar) productivity and the constraint of environmental resources (brick, wood, sheep, stone, wheat, etc.). It's kind of possible to find an answer to this, but even in a somewhat quantifiable case, the subjective definitions of prosperity and inclusions or exclusions of various externalities mean there could be more than one. It's difficult to effectively separate cause and effect anywhere in the discussion of social capital. It might not be useful to describe it in economic terms, although I don't have a better alternative—it's just that this economic framing possibly leads us to treat social cohesion too much like a quantitative, controllable supply/demand equation when perhaps it's better understood as an emergent, subjective observation; and it might lead us to the folly of believing that we can or should necessarily control subjectivity, a.k.a. culture. Therefore, the concept of "achieving higher social capital" might not translate across temporalities even within what is nominally the same society, so even quantitative analyses like the one Putnam provides might be secretly incomprehensible because the cultural axioms in each temporality of comparison are different; like comparing apples to oranges. This is why his brief remark about how "a rounded assessment of changes in American social capital over the last quarter-century needs to count the costs as well as the benefits of community engagement" is so important. The question that arises from any attempt to balance the ideal cultural & lifestyle philosophy with the ideal democratic governance structure is to what extent and in what ways the society ought to accept the individual choice not to participate in the democratic system as legitimate. I find this question definitively unanswerable; all ideological positions appear to be contradictory in some way, although in the four centuries since the Enlightenment began, I think we are a little closer to a set of "good enough" positions.
Colin Woodard's 2026 article I've linked uses Putnam's essay as a baseline to analyze contemporary social capital in the United States on a regional (county-level) geographic basis. I'm interested in the maps here because they're very different than "The Map(s)" we often see (like recurring variations of population distribution and high-level political affiliations). Right away, the regional boundaries are insane. The area described as "Midlands" looks like a catastrophic gerrymander. Actually, they all do.
You can read more about the reasoning behind Woodard's regional boundaries in his summary "A Balkanized Federation" and the underlying methodology in his published academic paper "The American Nations model: An analytical tool for understanding the influence of U.S. regional cultures on health and the social and political determinants of health" (Woodard, Arena, and Pronk, 2025), which in turn is predicated on academic theory of "first effective settlement" by geographer Wilbur Zelinsky (see The Cultural Geography of the United States [1973], which was apparently influential in the field). I'm not familiar with this school of research and will have to take the article at face value! The citations seem rigorous.
"After examining several county-level Social Capital Indexes created by other researchers – including one developed by the American Enterprise Institute’s Scott Winship and another from sociologist Dean Kyne and political scientist Daniel P. Aldrich – we chose the one created by economists Anil Rupasingha of the American University of Sharjah, Stephen J. Goetz of Pennsylvania State University, and the University of Kentucky’s David Freshwater. It calculates a county’s social capital based on the density of ten types of associational institutions in the county – including bowling leagues, churches, sports clubs, civic organizations, and labor unions – plus turnout in previous presidential elections, the census return rate, and the number of non-profit organizations. We then used the data produced for this model by University of Texas Rio Grande Valley political scientists Dongkyu Kim, Mi Son Kim, and Natasha Altena McNeely for the year 2014, the most recent for which they had all of the required metrics."
The analysis produces a "Social Capital Index" with results about as atypical as the regional borders. It's not what I would have expected:
"But there’s still a clear county-level regional pattern, with the Midlands scoring well across its entire range, west of central Pennsylvania, Yankeedom strong in much of northern New England, the Western Reserve of Ohio, Wisconsin and Minnesota (but not in most of Michigan or Upstate New York) and El Norte performing badly almost everywhere save the Big Bend counties of South Texas. Far West is heterogenous, with strong scores in the upper Plains and northern mountain West, and quite poor scores in Utah (surprisingly), Nevada and northern Arizona."
"The Midlands has the highest reserves of social capital with an overall index score of -0.16 on their scale, followed by the Left Coast at -0.2 and Yankeedom at -0.26. The two regions founded by imperial Spain, El Norte and Spanish Caribbean, had very poor scores, -1.23 and 1.-01 respectively, as did New Netherland (-1.07) and First Nation, which was at the bottom of the list at -1.47. This is very similar to the spatial pattern we found for persistent poverty, which substantiates the Texas researcher’s finding that wealthy places tend to have more social capital."
"Three southern regions that often have among the worst metrics in whatever phenomenon we analyze — Greater Appalachia, Deep South and New France – are in the middle of the pack for social capital, as is the Far West. Tidewater, a region that’s rapidly transformed from an apartheid society to one of the wealthiest and most progressive of the “nations” over the past 60 years, had the fourth best score, just behind Yankeedom at -0.34. Hawaii, despite being aggressively communitarian, fared worse that the southern regions and Far West, with a score of -0.99."
Woodard also ran the social capital analysis only on rural counties in each of the cultural regions and only on urbanized counties (urban metropolitan area). He also analyzed the data for "associational density" (in the sense Putnam describes), distinguishing between secular-only and secular+religious associations; "political organizations," focusing on electoral data; and "non-movers," focusing on people with familial ties to a geography. Some takeaways in the article:
To summarize, across the various approaches and indices, three out of the four big communitarian regions — Midlands, Yankeedom and Left Coast – have the strongest social capital indices, whether looking at the cores of big cities or rural counties, associations or overall metrics. El Norte and Spanish Caribbean – very different regions that share a Spanish imperial legacy – have uniformly weak social capital, likely exacerbated by both the high proportions of newcomers and the relative lack of associations to foster cooperation.
The big, aggressively individualistic regions – Deep South and Greater Appalachia — present a mixed picture, with social capital scores buoyed by very high numbers of religious associations and decent numbers of other types of social capital-generating organizations. Greater Appalachia, for instance, has very high associational density driven by a huge number of churches, but more middling scores in other respects. Far West, the only large “passively individualistic” region, scores a bit worse, with fewer churches and very low social ties in its city cores, where an unusually large proportion of the region’s population lives.
Communitarian New Netherland, the densest and most diverse region on the continent, performs badly all the way around, as does very low-density First Nation, whose results are suggestive of a closely-bonded indigenous society distrustful and disengaged from wider American society, federal politics, and possibly the Far Western-dominated state it lies within. Another small communitarian region, the Hawaiian Islands of Greater Polynesia, has poor reserves of social capital, with lots of newcomers and few associations to build trust. As in other analyses we’ve performed, Tidewater presents a strong departure from its legacy cultural pattern, with quite high social capital driven by having lots of associations — secular or otherwise — and unusually high scores within its major metro counties.
It's an interesting methodology. I'm not sure I understand all the premises of the analysis, and I don't entirely see how the county-level social capital analysis actually supports the regional divisions used in the rest of the article. The author notes that "[t]he county-level affinity to the American Nations regional borders isn’t as stark as we see in a lot of our data, in part because, as the UT-Rio Grande Valley researchers showed in a 2020 paper in the Social Sciences Journal, social capital measured in this way is negatively impacted by urbanization and, depressingly, racial diversity, which tend to ding metropolitan areas, regardless of region." The regional data weights the county-level data per capita, which makes sense, but the regions are just so strange!
I was intrigued by the paper nonetheless and appreciate the thorough citations. I might dive deeper into the regional model because such odd divisions are fascinating to me. I'm sharing this with Tildes because I don't think I've ever seen anything like this on here!
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Which US regions are bowling alone?: The regional geography of social capital
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Comment on Does anyone have experience exchanging actual letters with a pen pal? in ~talk
Atvelonis Link ParentComfort in stillness, or silence, seems to be an element of overcoming that difficulty. Society conceives of idleness as an opportunity cost and defines “less-than-overload” as idle. On Tildes, we...Comfort in stillness, or silence, seems to be an element of overcoming that difficulty.
Society conceives of idleness as an opportunity cost and defines “less-than-overload” as idle. On Tildes, we talk about this as an effect of capitalistic work culture, which is useful but deflects the internal psychological component (also a learned behavior). We are discomforted by our own thoughts, annoyed with boredom, impatient, and unwilling to rectify perceived boredom with imagination or reflection. The progressive discourse rightly identifies social media as an enabler of this discomfort. I would clarify that social media “enables” an extant desire for constant activity, even as it also amplifies our dependence on itself; and said extant desire is learned through other or additional social practices. It’s encompassing.
Over years, I’ve accustomed myself to extended worship in the manner of Friends: contemplative, gathered listening (waiting) for teachings of the spirit. This could be several hours of focus punctuated by messages to consider. However, it is more of a lifestyle and worldview than an activity. My decision to accept simplicity puts me in a better position to engage in thoughtful life. Writing letters has become easier in that way. Of course I am still challenged by distraction, and there are other reasons it’s hard to write.
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Comment on Does anyone have experience exchanging actual letters with a pen pal? in ~talk
Atvelonis (edited )LinkI write physical letters to friends—just like they did in the dark ages! This is part of my ongoing effort to live in the real world. Handwritten letters are quaint, and personalizing the letter...I write physical letters to friends—just like they did in the dark ages! This is part of my ongoing effort to live in the real world. Handwritten letters are quaint, and personalizing the letter and envelope adds a touch that a digital version probably can't ever offer. I sometimes include small print-outs or clippings I think they'd like. Lacking the ability to re-read my past sent messages discourages me from excessively overanalyzing, which probably means more authentic and less awkward conversations on both ends. I keep all the letters I receive and have far more emotional attachment to them than any email derivative.
The idea of artificially simulating the time delay of a letter in the mail is so Tildes-coded. If you're trying to connect with far-off strangers, you might have more fun chatting with people at a nearby train station, international airport, or tourist site. If you hit it off, you can pitch the pen pal idea. Since they'd be visiting your country already, you might have quite a bit in common, so perhaps they'd be more interesting or diligent pen pals than folks trying it purely as a novelty.
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Comment on Third spaces: What do we want, and how do we get them? in ~life
Atvelonis (edited )LinkThis is a great discussion thread and I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments very much! It's probably futile to look for a specific "ideal" definition of a third place. That will have enough...- Exemplary
This is a great discussion thread and I've enjoyed reading everyone's comments very much!
It's probably futile to look for a specific "ideal" definition of a third place. That will have enough disclaimers and caveats as to defeat the purpose of being universal. Lived experience is subjective: everyone has different reasons to want a third place, and everyone experiences the same places differently.
We informally refer to the concept in negative ("something other than home [privacy] and work [capital]"), which tells us what the cultural impetus is, but if you're looking for a positive definition, start from the beginning: Oldenburg's 1989 book The Great Good Place originally articulated the concept of third places (he didn't use the term "third spaces"). The Wikipedia page on third places lists the characteristics he published:
- Open and inviting. You don’t need an invitation or appointment, and you can come and go as you please.
- Comfortable and informal. You feel that you belong there.
- Convenient. It’s close enough to visit often, ideally right in your own neighborhood.
- Unpretentious. Everyone is on the same level, there’s nothing fancy or fragile, and it’s not expensive.
- There are regulars. And often there’s a host who greets people as they arrive.
- Conversation is the main activity. Discussion, debate, and gossip are part of the mix.
- Laughter is frequent. The mood is light-hearted and playful. Joking and witty banter are encouraged.
I'd emphasize that these are principles; they are not, by themselves, atomic or clearly actionable. This is because they are subjective feelings and not immutable qualities per se. The implication is that these feelings are emergent rather than pre-defined. Therefore, you're not going to find a deterministic formula or algorithm to "recreate" third places in a consistent way across geographies, cultures, time periods, and other contexts.
What I think you're really asking is: "What deterministic algorithm can we follow to create the conditions for the feelings we associate with successful third places to arise?"
I'm getting into the weeds, but it's important to distinguish the construction of the environment of the third place from its realization (experience). Creating basic gathering spaces is essentially a solved problem: you need a physical space or medium, an incentive to use this space to gather, and people to use it. That could be a few logs arranged in a circle; the prerequisites are almost nonexistent. Centuries of urban planning, architecture, interior design, sociology, psychology, and other disciplines have taught us how to improve the incentives to use third spaces relative to other incentives in society (like incentives of absolute privacy at home, or incentives to earn money or status at work), which is why we might be tempted to think that third places are complex to build and operate (Greek agora, English public houses, Parisian cafés, etc.).
However, the brilliance of third places is that they elude strict categorization. Human community forms in unexpected ways. The most humble places can emergently attain this mythic status because of what they mean to us, not because of how they were constructed. All the self-evident (to you and I) types of third places present socially acceptable, easily replicable models: churches, coffee shops, assembly halls for dancing, public parks, etc. But I encourage you to look beyond the obvious ones to see my point. Abandoned piles of scrap metal, decaying buildings, and desolate architectural void spaces aren't paradigms of community that respectable society would try to replicate as third places (for many reasons!), but those can nevertheless become meaningful to wild teenagers, counter-cultural artists, and the like. The New York City subway wasn't meant to be a social space and yet it has developed a unique culture: specific commutes are a sort of transient-but-permanent third place. Tildes and other online communities might even be considered a kind of postmodern third space.
The practical question of how to build more "normal" third places for society proper, within the arbitrary limitations society has established for itself, is today a matter of revising policies around land use/zoning, property taxes, liability insurance, incorporation or fiscal sponsorship, and our culture of apathy/convenience, among other things. We have produced systems of regulation that make it relatively challenging to build the kinds of mainstream third places that best utilize our aforementioned centuries of expertise in incentives. This is boring—and expensive! Of course some rules are more reasonable than others.
If you want to make it systemically easier to create more third places, the lowest-hanging fruit is probably to relax restrictive use-based (Euclidean) zoning laws, pedestrianize town squares and central corridors, and implement other kinds of universal design in the built environment. This is because physical access is perhaps the most fundamental requirement of third places. Challenging the "formalization of fun"—the defensive bureaucracy society has established around organizational lawsuits and liability, especially in the USA—would reduce the costs of literally operating some third places, but this seems less actionable by laypeople. Broad cultural change, or incentivizing people to just spend more time in third places rather than at home or at work, is probably more easily influenced by the previous factors than through rhetorical persuasion.
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Comment on Wired vs. wireless mouse and keyboard? in ~tech
Atvelonis Link ParentHaha, thank you, but credit to Jane Austen! Her opening words to Pride and Prejudice (1813) inspired mine here.Haha, thank you, but credit to Jane Austen! Her opening words to Pride and Prejudice (1813) inspired mine here.
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Wired vs. wireless mouse and keyboard?
My keyboard is breathing its last, and my mouse probably isn't far behind, so I plan to replace them. I have a K70 (cherry MX) and some expensive light-up mouse. When I bought these ~10 years ago,...
My keyboard is breathing its last, and my mouse probably isn't far behind, so I plan to replace them. I have a K70 (cherry MX) and some expensive light-up mouse.
When I bought these ~10 years ago, it seemed a truth universally acknowledged that a person who used their desktop computer "seriously" for, oh, video games, must be in want of wired peripherals—and never wireless. Supposedly wireless latency was unbearable and device batteries died quickly.
Is this still true? (Was it ever?)
If not, I'd like to try a wireless mouse and keyboard. Cable management is a hassle. My AirPods have been excellent and I don't miss the tangles of old, so I imagine I wouldn't miss these either.
My computer is a workstation which I use for documents, spreadsheets, and video conferencing. Even as a relatively fast typer, I can't imagine wireless latency would exceed the speed between keystrokes. I occasionally play co-op video games games with friends, but nothing intense.
Is there some other drawback I'm missing?
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How do you keep your life organized? What tools & systems do you use?
Hi, Tilderites! I'm looking for a system and/or tool to better manage my tasks and to-do's. I'd like to become more productive & responsive. My current system is a mix of "mark as unread" for...
Hi, Tilderites! I'm looking for a system and/or tool to better manage my tasks and to-do's. I'd like to become more productive & responsive.
My current system is a mix of "mark as unread" for emails, physical "to-do" scribbles on post-it notes, reminders in my phone, and other digital notes. My problem is that once I add something to a task list, I inconsistently follow up on it. My other problem is that most of these tasks are unrelated, so mixing them together is confusing. My ultimate goal is to lighten my mental overhead without reducing productivity.
I need a clear, centralized place to commit to keeping all my atomic tasks outside my 9–5: my social life, family, volunteering, any freelance work, housekeeping, personal projects, and so on.
What tools do you use to stay organized? Do you have any advice for time management?
Extra preferences:
- I'd like to try tools designed for mobile and desktop.
- I love visual tools and benefit from something visually intuitive (but customizable). I love colors.
- Happy to pay for a productivity tool if it's effective.
- I'd like a "one-stop shop" because maintaining different task lists in different tools seems messy. I encapsulate all 9–5 work tasks in a ticket tracking system. That's fine for work, but I only want 2 task apps, not 5. And I'm not sure if an Agile-like system works so well for me in real life.
- I'm looking for something that can capture all my different categories or "tracks" of tasks without burying anything. I prefer to minimize context-switching, so I don't want everything to be visually mixed together; it'll distract me. But I want to make sure I don't forget a whole area of tasks. So this is partially a UI/UX question: what tools have the depth to do this?
- My calendar is neatly organized and color-coded. I rely on it to remember daily obligations. Perhaps I could tie a task management tool into my calendar better.
Maybe you can also offer advice on systems to maintain discipline and follow-up. My highly structured calendar is great and I mostly adhere to it. However, I haven't figured out how to utilize the calendar for oceans of teeny-tiny tasks, so I need something to complement it. In addition to a tool, I'm sure I could benefit from a new philosophical perspective or mental approach to staying tidy.
Thanks in advance! :)
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Comment on Naturally occurring nuclear reactor in ~science
Atvelonis LinkDr. David Ruzik, PhD describes the geological conditions necessary for a natural nuclear fission reactor to form underground. The example he talks about ran about two billion years ago in...Dr. David Ruzik, PhD describes the geological conditions necessary for a natural nuclear fission reactor to form underground. The example he talks about ran about two billion years ago in present-day Oklo, Gabon. I thought this was super interesting! I'd never considered that it was possible.
One of the doctor's takeaways: even though the reaction took place in an underground river, its radioactive byproducts didn't travel a long distance after the reaction. He suggests that this lack of dispersion by natural processes also applies to modern facilities. Anthropological nuclear waste is kept in solid, impermeable casks within small geographical areas—the implication is that it poses less risk of wide-area contamination than we might expect.
I was curious and looked up more literature. François Gauthier-Lafaye writes in the Comptes Rendus Physique that "the [natural] reactors are similar to spent commercial reactor fuel," so it's a useful analogue for waste management analysis. If I understand the paper correctly, scientific observations of surrounding geology apparently indicate that the more dangerous radioactive elements like uranium, plutonium, and thorium migrated distances on the "metric scale" (highly local, as opposed to the "kilometric scale" or higher), remaining mostly in the core area. The elements that dispersed tended to be less harmful ones.
Perhaps it's a reassurance for engineers that nature accidentally created an effective long-term nuclear waste containment vessel; their intentional solution of "borosilicate glass as an immobilization material" sealed in seismically inactive caverns with low host rock permeability ought to be similarly or more effective. Perhaps it's an increasingly moot point if we're only a few key breakthroughs away from nuclear fusion, although we've all been hearing that for a long time.
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Naturally occurring nuclear reactor
11 votes -
Comment on The era of the business idiot in ~tech
Atvelonis LinkI'm reminded of Jean Baudrillard's remarks in Simulacra and Simulations: In Baudrillard's paradigm of postmodern truth, the real is that which is true; the unreal is that which is untrue; and the...- Exemplary
Big companies build products sold by specious executives or managers to other specious executives, and thus the products themselves stop resembling things that solve problems so much as they resemble a solution.
I'm reminded of Jean Baudrillard's remarks in Simulacra and Simulations:
We are in a logic of simulation which has nothing to do with a logic of facts and an order of reasons. […] Facts no longer have any trajectory of their own, they arise at the intersection of the models; a single fact may even be engendered by all the models at once. […] Everything is metamorphosed into its inverse in order to be perpetuated in its purged form. Every form of power, every situation speaks of itself by denial, in order to attempt to escape, by simulation of death, its real agony.
In Baudrillard's paradigm of postmodern truth, the real is that which is true; the unreal is that which is untrue; and the hyperreal is that whose truth is vacuous because its premise is imagined.
We might see how a measured CEO creates a good product to solve a real problem; an incompetent CEO creates a bad product to solve a real problem; and a charlatan CEO creates a product to solve a problem that doesn't exist. Their products may not be "inherently" or visibly bad; that's what they pay employees to fix! They might even be useful to accomplish some set of tasks. But those tasks are only contrived so that they may be completed.
This is hardly new. Society has dealt with low-quality products since before Ea-nāṣir, and fraudulent business propositions certainly just as long. Wars have been fought over simulacra.
Zitron suggests that an increasing number of corporate leaders may sincerely and truly believe in the hyperreal causes they claim to champion—they've graduated from mere external deception into self-delusion. That's not new either, but in the past one couldn't sell a hyperreal product for long because business was predicated on some manipulation of real resources for real purposes. What's new is the scale of the hyperreal. Now, in a world where corporations choose to create and apply value arbitrarily, with few reference points to the real, society deludes itself accordingly.
In a horrible ouroboros, this effectively renders the hyperreal as real; the New Real. Truth may exist objectively, but it can only be appreciated subjectively.
In other words, our reference points shift such that our entire understanding of human purpose changes, and we can no longer imagine any other ideology. We may decry the change, although one could make the argument that we already live in some variation of the New Real; that some combination of language, mathematics, and abstraction have encouraged us to leave the "real" cycle of biological existence for the hyperreal supersocial, which we have accordingly defined as the real. Perhaps this change was the invention of imagery, or currency, or the stock market, or something microorganic I can't even comprehend.
In a post-real economy, trying to solve an otherwise "real" problem external to the system has no purpose. That would be specious. Rather, the goal is to solve problems inherent and exclusive to the arbitrarily constructed economy itself. These become the new "real" problems. But this epistemology is a simulacrum, or a reflection of the previous one, and therefore one may contrive a further hyperreal displacement of economy within it. Thus the ouroboros continues.
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Comment on Adding a puppy to our guardian dog team in ~life.pets
Atvelonis LinkI enjoyed this glimpse into farm life of a family in the mountains out west. It’s nice to see animals at work—guards dogs protecting alpacas against wolves (?)—though this video is just about...I enjoyed this glimpse into farm life of a family in the mountains out west. It’s nice to see animals at work—guards dogs protecting alpacas against wolves (?)—though this video is just about socializing the little one.
I was struck by the landscape. I’ve never been to Wyoming. It’s so unlike the place I live. The narrator felt rooted in sincerity and simplicity. I was reminded of how distant I am from that way of life.
My world of skyscrapers and traffic has its perks—employment (sometimes) and metropolitan luxuries. But I miss wide-open spaces. I miss the quiet. And I miss working with the earth. (Selfishly, I also miss being able to check out of the world’s problems, which is hard to do in the city.)
We get so caught up in our daily ways of life that we forget diverging experiences. Enclosed social capsules, cut off. I can’t believe how much time I spend on the internet and yet how little of it offers meaningful diversity. It seems like almost everyone I know is an engineer or a consultant or office worker, or maybe a librarian or teacher. But I haven’t had a conversation with a farmer in years.
I sometimes ride my bike up the river and wonder what it would be like to just keep going. Who would I would meet?
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Adding a puppy to our guardian dog team
4 votes -
Comment on A beskirted trip to IKEA in ~life.men
Atvelonis (edited )LinkI’m active in Scottish country dance and Scottish highland dance, so I often wear formal kilts in public (USA). I wear kilts in social dances, ceilidh parties, performances, competitions, and...I’m active in Scottish country dance and Scottish highland dance, so I often wear formal kilts in public (USA). I wear kilts in social dances, ceilidh parties, performances, competitions, and sometimes while traveling. A kilt is a pleated, woolen skirt traditionally patterned with a tartan and worn with a sporran and high socks. My kilts have about 8 yards of fabric, which provide the characteristic swish.
In my experience, people with Scottish and Irish heritage tend to recognize kilts as relatively male-coded, but this is becoming less consistent as more women have started performing highland dancing in kilts. Most people just see a colorful skirt. I live in a city and often walk through busy areas and sometimes visit restaurants.
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Passersby sometimes make remarks, mostly positive or excited, sometimes asking about my experience visiting Scotland/Ireland or telling me about their family history. There is an occasional nasty remark, but I am not embarrassed by the kilt because it is part of my life.
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Sometimes people ask me to dance for them, which I think is funny, and I am happy to do a highland step for their amusement and my own.
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A lot of people assume I play the bagpipes in a pipe band. I have a practice chanter at home, but I can’t say I’m any good at it.
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Sometimes little children loudly ask their parents what the kilt is, or why a man is wearing a skirt, which is mortifying to the parents.
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I get the highest quantity and most excited compliments from young people, especially young black women who love the look. Sometimes a guy will give me a fist bump “for the culture.” I love that because I feel the same way when I see people wearing their own cultural garments.
Personally, this garment is not strictly a fashion choice for me, it is part of a cultural tradition and something I try to respect. (Although I happen to think a well-fitted kilt looks elegant on men.) I know a little bit about the kilt-making process and I’m familiar with the tartans I wear, as well as general maintenance and care practices for the garment. In my opinion, if you’re wearing a formal kilt, it is good form to know the tartan—people will inquire about it. Of course it is an inanimate object at the end of the day.
I’m supposed to buy a utility kilt for a performance soon. A utility kilt is an informal kilt/skirt with many pockets, usually made of a synthetic material; aesthetically a solid color and not worn with a sporran. It has much less fabric so it has few pleats. It isn’t cultural per se and is something I might wear on a hike.
Kilts are breezy so they can be fine in the summer, but the formal ones (high yardage) get hot. Scotland has a relatively mild climate; by contrast they’re not so suitable in much of the US (hot+humid, or freezing). Since your knees are exposed, I know some people who wear long cloaks in the winter when walking outdoors. I don’t own a great kilt, but it has the same problem.
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Activities to do out of the house with an elderly relative?
Hello Tildutes! I have an elderly relative (91) who spends a lot of time alone in her house. I was thinking it would be nice to do an offbeat bonding activity in town somewhere to relax her. I’m...
Hello Tildutes!
I have an elderly relative (91) who spends a lot of time alone in her house. I was thinking it would be nice to do an offbeat bonding activity in town somewhere to relax her.
I’m looking for suggestions on things she might enjoy, ideally something interactive but low-stakes.
Requirements/notes:
- Something one can do in a place like Newark, Wilmington, or maybe Philadelphia.
- She can walk and stand (her cane helps), but not too fast or for too long. She would need to sit.
- She can see alright with her glasses and can hear you with hearing aids, but not from a distance.
- She is astute and can follow conversations just fine, thought it can take a moment for her to put together her thoughts.
- I’d like to get her out of the house—managing her own living space is stressful and she is more relaxed when she does not feel obliged to be hostly.
- I would like this to be calming or relaxing or refreshing for her. She has some obsessive/compulsive habits and I kind of want her to zen out more. Or just have fun—she’s often worrying.
Some ideas I had (input/feedback/additional suggestions welcome):
- Some sort of guided meditative or zen garden-type relaxation thing, but suitable for a kinda tired senior with OCD. I don’t know what to look for exactly. Maybe even something a little New Age. She is nominally Quaker and I would say a good-natured and open-minded person.
- She mentioned once that her dream job was to be an artist. I was thinking about an abstract painting session at a studio where they provide all the materials. Some way for her to let out her inner Jackson Pollock?
- I thought about a spa day. Do they have specialists who work with seniors? She has some aches and pains but is obviously fragile and extremely unused to being “treated.” She might have to overcome some… guilt (?) for being attended to.
- Some sort of guided cultural experience—but maybe more engaging than walking around a museum? She is well-traveled and remains interested in world cultures. She used to be a teacher of English and French, spent a considerable amount of time volunteering in Mexico (before it was developed), and seems to often appreciate learning about cultural things on Wikipedia or in magazines.
- She seems to be quite pleased with animals, at least cats and dogs. I considered going to a cat cafe but, having been in those before, I know the animals are not always accessible. Are puppy cafes a thing? Indoor petting zoos?
In contrast it would be unsuitable for us to play any sort of competitive game, or to do something requiring a lot of physical strength or dexterity, or anything that would be emotionally overwhelming.
If you have experiences of activities or programs that might be fulfilling to my relative, I would love to hear them!
My goal is mostly just for her to have a nice time for that day. If I can get her to be more relaxed generally, that’s great too.
Thank you!
19 votes -
How do you know where to start with prolific authors?
Hello Tildes! I often find myself intimidated by authors of great sagas, trilogies upon trilogies, and dozens of standalone novels. How do I know which book (or series) to read first? I've been...
Hello Tildes! I often find myself intimidated by authors of great sagas, trilogies upon trilogies, and dozens of standalone novels. How do I know which book (or series) to read first?
I've been recommended Terry Pratchett and Brandon Sanderson recently. I've read zero novels by either author. I've also been warned that there is a definitive best place in the canon to start, "and it's this one!" But then someone else interjects and says, "no, it's this one!" followed by passionate reasoning. Okay. If it is really worth starting somewhere in particular, where should I begin?
I'm unlikely to read an author's entire corpus. I just have too many books to read and not enough time. But I'm not opposed to reading longer series if they're really fun. I'd appreciate any input about these authors in particular and this problem in general. Thanks!
16 votes -
Conversational English in 1586
5 votes -
Comment on Underrated ways to change the world in ~life
Atvelonis LinkYou've shared a valuable and insightful article—thank you! I often think of this parable, taught to me at summer camp when I was 13 (I'll paraphrase): It's easy to become jaded with all the...You've shared a valuable and insightful article—thank you!
I often think of this parable, taught to me at summer camp when I was 13 (I'll paraphrase):
An old man walks along the beach just after a storm. Scattered across the wet sand are thousands, millions of starfish washed ashore by the powerful waves. They are slowly baking, soon to die, as the tide goes out and the sun rises.
The man sees a figure in the distance reach down and motion toward the sea. Then again, and again, and again. As he approaches, he sees that it's a young boy picking up starfish and hurling them as far as he can past the breakers.
The man asks, "Why do you labor so, on such an endless task? Do you not see how many starfish lie suffocating on the sand? You're wasting your time. You can't save them all—what you're doing doesn't matter."
Taken aback, the boy stops and puzzles over the statement for a moment. Then he bends down to grab another starfish, and with all his might flings it back into the sea.
He turns to the old man and says, "It mattered to that one."
It's easy to become jaded with all the troubles of the world. We are often overwhelmed and fall into apathy. But there's a better path, and it starts with seeing possibility in the little things. There's a democratic whiff to this: working also from the ground-up rather than just from the top-down.
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Comment on Maybe Bluesky has "won" in ~tech
Atvelonis Link ParentIt's hard work! How many people live in your neighborhood? Where do neighbors find themselves instead of civic meetings and events?It's hard work!
How many people live in your neighborhood?
Where do neighbors find themselves instead of civic meetings and events?
Thanks for sharing this piece, it's interesting to read about. I've heard similar high-level observations from environmental magazines for years. This article is full of scholarly citations but stops short of explaining the specific reasons why low- and middle-income countries haven't been able to solve this problem of waste collection and management.
From some cursory research, it seems like funding for infrastructure and operations is a consistent barrier. The logistics of literally devising, communicating, and orchestrating municipal systems also requires administrative expertise and extraordinary institutional communication. It's hard enough to manage institutions that have decades of experience and inertia; starting from scratch, it's no wonder that uptake is slow:
There's clearly a funding gap. And people are mainly incentivized to concern themselves with this problem only to the extent that it affects them directly, which presumably leads to inequitable implementation even within a particular country or region:
Because research, technology, and standards for disposal are developed by and for high-income contexts, they are too expensive or physically impractical to implement at scale, at speed in low-income countries:
This one is frustrating because these places first need supporting infrastructure that doesn't exist and can't easily be built. Doing so would require a lot of financial investment and might involve more hard-to-plan-for urban population growth, which would exacerbate the need for waste management. Garbage is also only one of many competing priorities for politicians. I see how it could get out of hand quickly.
One of the author's takeaways:
Zurbrügg, C. (2000) “Urban Solid Waste Management in Low-Income Countries of Asia How to Cope with the Garbage Crisis,” Asian Symposium on Programming Languages and Systems.
Some corroborating remarks from a researcher studying municipal service implementation in the Middle East:
Khatib, Imad. (2011). Municipal Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries: Future Challenges and Possible Opportunities. 10.5772/16438.
That author talks about formalizing systems of [Sustainable] Integrated Solid Waste Management ([S]-ISWM), which seems like it's come a long way as an academic framework in the last 25 years. I'm glad that researchers are paying attention to this part of the plastic pollution issue!
Batista, Marco. (2021). "A framework for sustainable and integrated municipal solid waste management: Barriers and critical factors to developing countries," Journal of Cleaner Production, Volume 312.
It's not clear to me if I can do much to help. Most environmental cleanup charities I know of focus exclusively on downstream waste disposal, like picking up visible trash rather than working with local governments to kickstart expanded municipal collection services to reduce upstream pollution. But I did find a few charities that I think have more of an upstream, logistical focus:
I often volunteer locally to pick up trash that's accumulated in parks and alleyways, but as the article says, that makes up a small portion of the unaddressed collection problem globally. I'll continue to do this because I think it's good to be responsible for your own community, even if it's kinda symbolic.