EgoEimi's recent activity
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Comment on Why I recommend against Brave in ~tech
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Comment on San Francisco jails are packed for the first time in decades in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentI feel very badly whenever I see someone lying in the street here in SF. It looks a miserable existence, but it makes me wonder how much worse it might be in a shelter. I've always pondered about...I feel very badly whenever I see someone lying in the street here in SF. It looks a miserable existence, but it makes me wonder how much worse it might be in a shelter.
I've always pondered about the possibility of having 'tiers' of homeless shelters.
Decently behaved, high-functioning individuals—willing to maintain hygiene, respectful and communicative with their case workers—should be diverted to shelters that offer more privacy, privileges, and comforts.
Low-functioning individuals, however, should be separated into hyper-durable, easy-to-clean shelters designed with security and surveillance in mind — essentially prison. The other month, a shelter worker in SF got shot in the face:
It wasn’t the first time violence broke out at the facility at 833 Bryant St. According to her mother, Drakes previously expressed concerns over violent incidents, including a pit bull attack and people bringing guns into the building.
“That place has been having problems for a long time that she’s been complaining about, but nothing changes,” Denise Price Drakes told The Standard.
...
“They need security, guards, metal detectors. They don’t have any of those things,” she said.
(833 Bryant St. is a modern and nice facility too with private rooms.)
A friend of mine, desperate for money, took a job with a temp agency. One of his temp jobs was cleaning rooms at an SRO that the city contracted as transitional housing or some shelter, I forget. He showed me photos he took at that job: the rooms were horrific. Trash piled up. Walls were smeared with... I do not want to imagine.
I think that the prospect of being mixed in with the general shelter population and being exposed to individuals who are violent and antisocial likely deters many from seeking shelter and then other services.
Incarcerating the worst of the worst offenders—the shelter workers know who they are—and removing them from the general homeless population would likely greatly improve the quality and thereby desirability of shelters and services. But right now, a general population shelter sounds like hell on earth.
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Comment on San Francisco jails are packed for the first time in decades in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentProp 13 is California's original sin. It divided society into four classes: Old middle class, bought their homes before the 2000s and enjoying unsustainably low property taxes. Their children live...California has some serious public policy issues.
Prop 13 is California's original sin. It divided society into four classes:
- Old middle class, bought their homes before the 2000s and enjoying unsustainably low property taxes. Their children live at home even into adulthood and hope to inherit.
- The working poor, forever renters in shared housing or get lucky in lottery for the few subsidized homes.
- The professional class, renting their own places or share nice rentals. They're too affluent to be eligible for subsidies, but they're too poor to buy a home. They eventually move up enough in their career to buy a home or they leave California.
- The wealthy who can afford market-rate homes (and property taxes). These are professionals who are mature and successful in their careers (managerial or executive), successful entrepreneurs or early-stage startup employees who cashed out, or inherited wealth (their parents were old middle class but made smart/lucky real estate investments before/during the boom).
Everything feels like a bandaid solution slapped on Prop 13 which made the real estate market and California's economy completely illogical.
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Comment on Refurbished Playdate for $179, new price at $229 after March 25th in ~games
EgoEimi Link ParentThe value proposition of the $199 Playdate was never clear to me. The Nintendo Switch Lite also costs $199 and offers 4,900 games, including expensive popular blockbuster games that all your...The value proposition of the $199 Playdate was never clear to me. The Nintendo Switch Lite also costs $199 and offers 4,900 games, including expensive popular blockbuster games that all your friends are playing and cheap quirky indie games. And then everyone has a smartphone, and there are bajillions of cheap quirky indie mobile games in the Android and iOS app stores.
I feel that they should:
- Have a cheap, basic sub-$100 version that make parents go, "oh why not, I'll just buy this: this is way cheaper than a PS5 or an iPad, hopefully it'll keep my 6-year old amused."
- Have a premium $200+ version for Millennials and Gen Xers with Gameboy nostalgia and disposable income.
- Have PC and mobile emulators so they can reach more audiences, who can then maybe convinced to buy a Playdate for a dedicated hardware experience.
I feel that in its current form, the Playdate feels like a figment of nostalgia thought up by Gen X hipsters in a Portland dive bar, and it struggles to garner attention and interest from the indie game dev community. I've been hanging around the GDC indie devs this week, and everyone is focused on using Unity or Godot to develop desktop and AR/VR games.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of March 17 in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentRepublicans have figured out how to break Democrats' pluralistic coalition. It was always a tenuous and awkward alliance between liberals and minority moderates and conservatives. But Republicans...nonwhite voters who identify as “conservative” or “moderate” have been voting more and more like their white ideological counterparts over the past few elections. So, the electorate is polarizing less on race and more on ideology.
Republicans have figured out how to break Democrats' pluralistic coalition. It was always a tenuous and awkward alliance between liberals and minority moderates and conservatives. But Republicans have been using immigration and social issues to wedge minority moderates and conservatives away from Democrats.
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Comment on Swedish companies join forces to steer children away from gang crime – dozens of big businesses from IKEA to Spotify back youth job initiatives as country grapples with epidemic of violence in ~life
EgoEimi LinkI think it's interesting that Sweden's crime rate is sharply increasing despite Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia have the strongest social safety nets in the world. The education system is...I think it's interesting that Sweden's crime rate is sharply increasing despite Sweden and the rest of Scandinavia have the strongest social safety nets in the world. The education system is excellent, and childcare is heavily subsidized to the point of being almost free. So the issue is unlikely to be merely economic.
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Comment on The real problem with toilet paper: Where it comes from in ~enviro
EgoEimi LinkI just learned that the average American uses 140 rolls a year?! That's 11.7 rolls a month. That sounds grotesque to me. I go through 2 a month at home. A 30-pack of TP from Costco sets me up for...I just learned that the average American uses 140 rolls a year?! That's 11.7 rolls a month. That sounds grotesque to me.
I go through 2 a month at home. A 30-pack of TP from Costco sets me up for most of the year. I eat a high fiber diet, so my wiping needs are usually, ahem, minimal. Factoring my use of TP outside of home, I'm probably using 3~4 rolls a month. (Though I usually do my business at home right after morning coffee and rarely outside.) I can't fathom using nearly 2/5ths of a roll of TP per day.
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Comment on The Sims 1 music is...different in ~games
EgoEimi (edited )Link ParentFactually the Sims game itself is (or was meant to be) an intentional satire, subversion, and interrogation of consumerism and materialism. Its creator, Will Wright, lost his home and all his...Parts of the style being different from how music is used in some games today is simply a product of the time when the game was created, not some conscious subversion.
Factually the Sims game itself is (or was meant to be) an intentional satire, subversion, and interrogation of consumerism and materialism. Its creator, Will Wright, lost his home and all his material possessions in a ferocious fire that devastated the Berkeley hills, destroyed thousands of homes, and killed 25 people in 1991, 9 years before The Sims' release. The experience of rebuilding his home and life from the ground up got him thinking about his attachment to possessions and inspired him to create The Sims.
Given that sound is an important aspect of game design, something that would not be lost on a master game designer like Will Wright, it would be inconceivable if Wright's conscious satirical intentions around the non-sound aspects of the game did not also touch its sound design.
In Will Wright's interview with Berkeleyside:
Will Wright’s home was one of the first to burn in the Oakland-Berkeley Firestorm...
The process of assessing his losses and material needs after his home burned down set Wright to thinking about the value of possessions and the promise they hold of fulfillment. Having always been passionate about architecture, he began to develop an idea for a game where players would simulate daily activities in a suburban household, including building a home from scratch: The Sims was born.
Wright discovered that the loss of his possessions did not overly affect him. “The interesting part was to find out that I wasn’t really that attached to much,” he says. “I started assessing my material needs: a toothbrush, underwear, a car, a house… I was surprised how I didn’t miss stuff. The fact we got out and none of our family was hurt seemed so much more important.”
The Sims had its genesis right there, as Wright went through his inventory of needs — as he “tried to reacquire a life”.
“I started to wonder about all the things we have and how we purchased them for a reason. Why do we need x or y or z? Why do we think something will make me happier? It almost came down to Maslow’s pyramid of needs,” he says.
The Firestorm made Wright step back from his life and ask himself “what is life made up of”, he says. “Rarely do you do that in your real life. When something like this happens, you get a big picture. Where do I want to live? What sort of things do I need to buy? You see your life almost as a project in process. When you’re embedded in your day-to-day life you don’t get that perspective.”
Wright looked at time studies — such as John Robinson and Geoffrey Godby’s Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans use Their Time. He also immersed himself in analyses of shopping behavior. The insights he gleaned, combined with his fascination with architecture and living spaces, led to the blueprint for The Sims — a game whose focus is building spaces and simulating the daily habits of people who live in them.
So ants were on his mind when Wright went back up to the site of his razed home in the hills. “The only life form that had survived was ants,” he says. “They had been deep in the ground so they had survived the heat. I was tuned in to ants, I guess. I watched as they came up and carried off the dead ants on the surface — they were feeding off their dead comrades.”
In his interview with the New York Times:
“I never really thought of The Sims as inherently optimistic,” Wright, 65, said. “I always thought of The Sims as slightly sarcastically nostalgic for a past that never really existed.”
The Sims was a satirical take on American consumerism. Wright echoed the grandiose claims of postwar advertising in the game’s furniture catalog, which offered Sims toasters and chairs that promised to change their lives. There was often a correlation between the price paid for an item and how much it would improve a Sim’s mood.
“You buy all these things,” he explained. “Fridges and TVs. And all these things promise to make you happy. But at some point they all start breaking down. They become hidden time bombs.”
Sim autonomy was originally too good, so it got dumbed down. Though the sims appeared stupid, it was intentional: Wright wanted to make players feel superficially powerful but then subvert that feeling.
Each disaster was carefully engineered. “In early versions of the game, the autonomy was too good,” Wright said. “Almost anything the player did was worse than the Sims running on autopilot.” So he infused his simulation with a little chaos to make players feel like anything could happen. Even guinea pigs, introduced as low-maintenance pets, might accidentally bite a character and leave them with a deadly disease.
Wright wanted players to feel like they were gods controlling stupid ants when, in reality, they were actually ants pretending to be gods. Even the cheat codes that could change the moods of Sims or instantly increase funds were intentionally included by developers to make players feel like they were breaking the game.
Ants are a poignant metaphor for Wright, who pulled The Sims through a grueling seven-year development process after the Oakland-Berkeley firestorm in 1991 destroyed most of his belongings.
“When I returned to the ashes of my house, I noticed that the only things still alive were ants,” said Wright, whose insect simulator SimAnt was published that year. “They had burrowed deep into the ground to survive the fire and were living off the dead carcasses of what they could forage.”
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Comment on The Sims 1 music is...different in ~games
EgoEimi LinkI've always found The Sims 1's soundtrack to be uniquely distinctive for a video game soundtrack. It doesn't sound like a video game soundtrack. It actually sounds like a television show...I've always found The Sims 1's soundtrack to be uniquely distinctive for a video game soundtrack.
It doesn't sound like a video game soundtrack. It actually sounds like a television show soundtrack. You're not playing a video game: you're directing a TV show with Sims as your actors.
And that TV show celebrates and satirizes the late 20th century American Dream and hyperconsumerism. It blends together the mundane and the zany: you're pushing your little Sims to work and earn money so you can discard old, working things for newer, shinier things and build a bigger, fancier house yet there's no win condition: life simply goes on.
The Sims was released in year 2000, at the tail end of the golden age of a TV show that also celebrated and satirized the American Dream and Americana: The Simpsons. I wonder if a decade of The Simpsons leading up to The Sims ever influenced its design. Compare The Sims track "Groceries" (which plays in the game's 'shopping' mode) to the scene where Mr. Burns goes on an extravagant, self-indulging shopping spree.
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The Sims 1 music is...different
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
EgoEimi Link ParentI feel that it can't be work culture overreach. China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have even more overreaching workaholic work cultures that are incredibly hierarchal and demand near absolute...I feel that it can't be work culture overreach. China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan have even more overreaching workaholic work cultures that are incredibly hierarchal and demand near absolute loyalty from workers. Their on-the-go convenience food culture and ecosystems are even more convenient, expansive in offerings, and ubiquitous than the US'. The US might have pioneered modern convenience food, but East Asia has perfected it and taken it to dazzling heights: you can get anything anywhere anytime. Modern US convenience food culture is downright inconvenient in comparison.
Yet their populations are much healthier and slimmer.
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Comment on Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and US influencers bash seed oils, baffling nutrition scientists in ~food
EgoEimi LinkWhether or not seed oils are unhealthy, it seems to me like a marginal issue to elevate, considering that seed oils are readily consumed in Europe and East Asia too; and rates of obesity and heart...Whether or not seed oils are unhealthy, it seems to me like a marginal issue to elevate, considering that seed oils are readily consumed in Europe and East Asia too; and rates of obesity and heart disease are lower there.
I'd boil America's health problems down to:
- Sedentary lifestyle.
- Food culture.
Americans prefer big portions, high-sugar and high-fat foods. On-the-go mobile lifestyles push Americans toward eating out rather than cooking at home.
- McDonalds actually offered decent salads. But they stopped selling them due to... lack of demand.
- I think people blame food companies too much. They're just giving people what they want. When former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to ban oversized soda sizes, people revolted.
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Comment on When it comes to USA's future, I'm failing to see any positive outcomes. Please help me. in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentHis book Hillbilly Elegy has hit #1 NYT, Amazon, and Kindle Bestsellers, has 118,000 reviews on Amazon, and has a film adaptation. He is very popular and has incredible Republican mindshare. He's...His book Hillbilly Elegy has hit #1 NYT, Amazon, and Kindle Bestsellers, has 118,000 reviews on Amazon, and has a film adaptation. He is very popular and has incredible Republican mindshare.
He's definitely not an afterthought VP pick like Kamala was. (Kamala's book, The Truths We Hold, has a mere 7,600 reviews on Amazon. I don't think any of my Democrat friends have even bothered to read it.) He's the future torchbearer of the GOP.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 17 in ~society
EgoEimi LinkTrump's 'flood the zone' strategy as designed by Stephen Bannon is working well. It has scattered and disoriented the Democrats worrying about myriad relatively minor issues—renaming the Gulf of...Trump's 'flood the zone' strategy as designed by Stephen Bannon is working well. It has scattered and disoriented the Democrats worrying about myriad relatively minor issues—renaming the Gulf of Mexico, buying Greenland, taking over the Kennedy Center chair, dismantling DEI, trans passports and sports participation, immigration, establishing the Faith Office—while he guns for the all-existential issue: consolidating power and authority, perhaps to permanently reshape American government.
Stephen Bannon said,
"The media can only—because they're dumb and they're lazy—they can only focus on one thing at a time... And all we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things, they'll bite on one, and we'll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover. But we've got to start with muzzle velocity. So it's got to start, and it's got to hammer."
In other news, dancers are protesting Trump's takeover of the JFK center by... performing a... modern dance choreography.
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Comment on Breakfast for eight billion in ~enviro
EgoEimi Link ParentAnother essay from this same publication is We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It. Thomas Jefferson was one of the wealthiest Americans, yet four of his six children died young, and his wife...I believe that possibly the greatest tragedy of the human condition is our inability to conceive of the tragedies of the past.
Another essay from this same publication is We Live Like Royalty and Don't Know It.
Thomas Jefferson was one of the wealthiest Americans, yet four of his six children died young, and his wife Martha died at the young age of 33.
Past eras were extremely cruel. There is a certain romanticism about the past that both the left and the right experience. Many people feel entitled to a vision of a past that never existed. Even dreams of affordable postwar home ownership forget how small and basic homes were and how little our grandparents owned.
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Comment on Is this a coup? in ~society
EgoEimi LinkIt's sad that many Americans don't see or care. I've always found it amusing that a native-born American actually can know literally nothing about how the US government works (or should work) and...It's sad that many Americans don't see or care.
I've always found it amusing that a native-born American actually can know literally nothing about how the US government works (or should work) and still vote. With America's anti-intellectual culture and a voting system that codifies "ignorance is as good as knowledge", this moment always seemed inevitable.
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Comment on The American physicians are healing themselves with Ozempic in ~health
EgoEimi Link ParentI think that's because our culture — presuming you're in the West — values agency and self-control. I see the use of semaglutide as biohacking for modern food culture that our brains simply have...But I don't know, it just...............feels wrong?
I think that's because our culture — presuming you're in the West — values agency and self-control.
I see the use of semaglutide as biohacking for modern food culture that our brains simply have not evolved to handle; many people cannot exercise enough agency, they are defeated. For millennia our ancestors lived in lean times: hunger was plenty, nutrition was scarce, and they had to be extremely physically active to acquire nutrition, so their brains told them to eat single possible calorie because they needed it. Now we live in a time when we can Doordash an entire cake to our front door and the most physical activity we have to do is walk from the couch to the front door.
A complete restaurant meal — entree, side, drink(s), maybe dessert — can blow past 2000 calories easily. Looking at the Cheesecake Factory's nutritional guide (just because theirs is the most detailed): their Pasta Carbonara with Chicken has 2160 calories. Add in a drink (300 for a cocktail) and a slice of plain cheesecake (830) and you're looking at a meal of 3290 calories. I have been to a Cheesecake Factory and have witnessed people do this.
I try to budget 400~600 calories for breakfast and lunch (each) and then 800~1200 for dinner, depending on the day's physical activity. I also run 4~6 miles a day and bike everywhere, not owning a car. It's not super difficult per se, but I find myself frequently tempted by delicious-looking calorie bomb goodies everywhere I look.
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Comment on Weekly US politics news and updates thread - week of February 3 in ~society
EgoEimi Link ParentAt first I was aghast and appalled. But after some thought and consideration, I have come to conclude that Trump is actually correct here. South Africa has a new land seizure law that allows the...At first I was aghast and appalled. But after some thought and consideration, I have come to conclude that Trump is actually correct here.
South Africa has a new land seizure law that allows the government to seize land... without compensation. But ostensibly in the name of justice and equity!
The new law allows for expropriation without compensation only in circumstances where it is "just and equitable and in the public interest" to do so.
This includes if the property is not being used and there's no intention to either develop or make money from it or when it poses a risk to people.South Africa is rife with unashamedly naked corruption, so the legal-political systems to determine what is just and equitable seizure are untrustworthy: this law will undoubtedly be abused. This is akin to the Trump administration saying it'll deport illegal immigrants — but just the bad ones.
A growing far-left party proudly sings the song, "Kill the Boer". Supporters say it doesn't mean literally kill white people, that it's just an anti-apartheid song. But that comes off as a moat-and-bailey-like maneuver: I'm sure there are plenty of young supporters for whom the historical context is irrelevant and interpret it literally.
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Comment on At what age do you consider someone to be an adult? in ~talk
EgoEimi (edited )Link ParentI imagine that life lived closely in tune with nature is very, very physically challenging, dangerous, and totally not Disney-esque. Such rituals may have culturally evolved as tools to help make...I imagine that life lived closely in tune with nature is very, very physically challenging, dangerous, and totally not Disney-esque.
Such rituals may have culturally evolved as tools to help make their participants feel prepared for the challenges of life in nature. If you can psychologically survive a glove of bullet ants, anything the Amazon throws at you can feel manageable.
The industrial world has isolated us from those dangers and challenges. Gender roles are largely diminished and irrelevant: everyone is reduced to units of labor to be educated, trained, and employed within massive industrial apparatuses. Our rites of passage — matriculation — prepare us for lives of intellectual labor, not hunting or subsistence agriculture and gathering.
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Comment on At what age do you consider someone to be an adult? in ~talk
EgoEimi Link ParentSome countries, like Germany, will hold high-risk violent juveniles in juvenile detention facilities up until the age of 25 because by then their prefrontal cortexes and executive decision making...Some countries, like Germany, will hold high-risk violent juveniles in juvenile detention facilities up until the age of 25 because by then their prefrontal cortexes and executive decision making will have fully developed, greatly reducing recidivism.
At the age of 25 impulsivity just drops off the cliff.
Indeed: browser engines are insanely complex and vast.
Just look at the many, many modern web features that need to be built. Omitting any (non-experimental) feature is non-optional because it'll break the web experience for the user.
The first web browser was invented in 1990. Since then there have been 35 years of nonstop, intense innovation and development to catch up on. A lot of features have been deprecated, but there are still tons of legacy features to implement.
Building a layout renderer that can render modern HTML and CSS (after they have been 'rendered' by JS) into their correct appearance is a grand challenge in itself. Once that is accomplished, there is only 99.8% of the mountain left to climb.
There are only 3 serious browser engines, maybe soon to be only 2, because it'd take monumental engineering resources to create a viable competitor. And after all that effort and money, you get an engine that—at best—does exactly what the existing engines do.