NaraVara's recent activity
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Comment on ‘House burping’ is a cold reality in Germany. Americans are warming to it. in ~life.home_improvement
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Comment on A 24-year-old Frenchman shows up at hospital with a World War I shell lodged in his rectum in ~news
NaraVara Link“Un coup à un million, doc. Un coup à un million.““Un coup à un million, doc. Un coup à un million.“
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Comment on US Democrats determined to squander advantage on Department of Homeland Security funding in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentYeah it seems like they actually played it well and forced Republicans to have to negotiate over the thing in question without being able to take the rest of the government hostage. It usually...Yeah it seems like they actually played it well and forced Republicans to have to negotiate over the thing in question without being able to take the rest of the government hostage.
It usually goes the other way where Republicans can hold the government (which they want to destroy anyway) hostage and Dems have to save it. This is a reversal where the one part of the government the Republicans do care about, the police state, is the only thing we need to worry about.
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Comment on Catherine O’Hara - legendary actress dead at 71 in ~movies
NaraVara Link ParentShe elevated everything she was in, even when the thing she was in was already fantastic.She elevated everything she was in, even when the thing she was in was already fantastic.
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Comment on US Democrats determined to squander advantage on Department of Homeland Security funding in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentI’m not sure how comparing how Republicans operated while they controlled the house with how Dems operate when they control nothing is instructive here. What leverage does he imagine a minority...I’m not sure how comparing how Republicans operated while they controlled the house with how Dems operate when they control nothing is instructive here. What leverage does he imagine a minority party with no control over any branch of government has?
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Catherine O’Hara - legendary actress dead at 71
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Comment on Listing for GOG Galaxy developer cites Linux as “next major frontier” in ~games
NaraVara Link ParentI think it gets a bit complicated on the Mac because of the different architectures involved. But since GoG specializes in old games whatever performance hit they’d get from having to run it...I think it gets a bit complicated on the Mac because of the different architectures involved. But since GoG specializes in old games whatever performance hit they’d get from having to run it through a baked in emulator would probably be negligible.
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Comment on I grew up with Alex Pretti. The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by US federal agents was my childhood best friend. in ~society
NaraVara LinkSarah Jeong’s post promoting this is a good summary for why to read it On Saturday, theverge.com's creative director @kristenradtke.bsky.social carefully watched a video of a shooting in...Sarah Jeong’s post promoting this is a good summary for why to read it
On Saturday, theverge.com's creative director @kristenradtke.bsky.social carefully watched a video of a shooting in Minneapolis, twice. Hours later, she found out that the man who was killed was her childhood best friend.
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I grew up with Alex Pretti. The kind-hearted ICU nurse shot by US federal agents was my childhood best friend.
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Comment on Youtube channel recommendations 2026 in ~tech
NaraVara LinkI was gonna direct link to all these but decided it’s way too much hassle to get links for each thing. I’ll probably keep adding to things as I go over the day, but this is a start. History and...I was gonna direct link to all these but decided it’s way too much hassle to get links for each thing. I’ll probably keep adding to things as I go over the day, but this is a start.
History and Geopolitics:
- Odd Compass: Is primarily focused on Indian history videos. He’s been out of it and doing other projects lately though.
- Kings and Generals
- Mandatory Funday: Military stuff mostly, but also veers into sketch comedy a lot
- Task & Purpose: Geopolitics and military news geared towards service members.
- Cappy Army: Basically the same as Task & Purpose. In fact he was the one who started Task & Purpose before that magazine fired him.
Cooking
These first two have heavy overlap with the previous one ha.
- Townsends is a channel for people who like to do extremely detailed historical reenactments of period-accurate 18th century cooking and lifestyle content. Lots of interesting historical recipes and context about the times to make sense of them.
- Tasting History with Max Mueller is similar, but less hardcore about the reenactment and more on the recipes and brief lectures about historical events.
- Binging with Babish is more traditional cooking but there’s a lot of gimmicky themes like recipes from movies or TV shows.
- Adam Raguesa: more cooking, very scientifically based. You’d like this if you liked Alton Brown.
- Emmy Made in Japan: Mostly fun recipes and trying out exotic fruits or snacks.
- J. Kenji Lopez-Alt
- How to Drink: Specifically for cocktails and mixology
- Food Wishes
- Internet Shaquille: This is listed as cooking but it’s really more like “home economics.” He also veers into some hobby and lifestyle content as well.
- Krishnashok: More food science than cooking, specific focus on Indian cuisine and culture.
Sketch Comedy
- Julie Nolke
- MightyKeef: Gaming related comedy sketches. Some light gaming news.
- CalebCity
- LongBeachGriffy
- ProZD: He actually mostly doesn’t do short sketches anymore and he is probbaly a better fit for the next section. But I’m not really interested in his other content, I subscribe to hear more about the adventures of Lamp-Chan and Sosuke-Bosuke.
- Krazam: You’ll think it’s funny if you work in tech or consulting. Otherwise you probably won’t get it.
- BigJahh
- Kai Lentit: Similar to Krazam but more specifically tech/engineering
- Andrew Rousso: If you don’t like that rapid-cut, one guy plays every role with a silly hat to differentiate characters, type of comedy you won’t like this. It seems geared for TikTok but I don’t use TikTok.
- Caitlyn Reilly
- Ian Kung
- Alexis Gay
- TroyinLA
- Ryan George
Game Streamers and Gaming
These are basically all Starcraft personalities, some of whom have branched out and others haven’t.
- Day[9]: Random games, good thoughts on game design and the design side of the games industry
- ZombieGrub: StarCraft and RTS
- Tasteless: Starcraft
- PiG: Starcraft
- JMCrofts: For fighting games
- Sajam: Also fighting games
- Maximilian Dood: Mainly fighting games but also other gaming
- VaatiVidya: Souls games. Also not really a streamer more of a story-teller
- VideoGameDunkey: Game reviews, funny
- T90Official: Age of Empires commentator/streamer
- SummoningSalt: Speedrunning
Lifestyle/Culture
This is sort of an “Other” category for things that don’t really fit anywhere else.
- Anna Akana: Some academic studies, some lighthearted therapy/life advice. Mostly delivered in the form of chuckle-worthy sketches. I find the ditzy/bimbo affect she puts on while citing academic journals charming.
- The Modern Rogue: The initial premise was basically what skills and knowledge would a “rogue” in the modern day need. They’ve since branched out but there’s interesting stuff to learn here.
- Adam Savage: If you liked Mythbusters you’ll like this. Not much else to say.
- ArtLust: Art and culture criticism. She gets a little over-fixated on politics for my tastes, largely because I already agree with her so heavily it just starts to feel like “Okay yeah I get it.”
- Contrapoints
- Vlogbrothers
- CGPGrey
- Nerdwriter1
Learning Stuff:
- ChubbyEmu: Just does deep dives on specific medical case studies.
- VedantaSociety: Lectures about Hinduism/Advaita Vedanta
- Ocean Keltoi: Lectures about Heathenry/Neopaganism
- TheStraightPipes: Car reviews
- SavageGeese: Car reviews
- mkbhd: Tech reviews
- LinusTechTips: Tech reviews
- Takes by Jamelle Bouie: He’s probably the best columnist working right now
Music and Performing Arts
- Raadhakalpa Dance Company: Modern traditional Indian dance
- Ronobir Lahiri: Indian classical arrangements of modern pop songs
- NS Wageshan: Indian classical
- Postmodern Jukebox: Songs done in different styles, like a Motown version of a Taylor Swift song. It’s fun!
- MAJ (My Analog Journal): Background radio
- LoFi Girl: The legend
- CouLou’s Vinyl Cafe
- Whole Tone FM
- Blue Note Japan
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Comment on Federal officers kill another citizen in Minneapolis, National Guard activated in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentFixating on the guns as some sort of talisman that accomplishes resistance and self defense all on its own has always been deeply unserious lifestyle marketing. The “well organized” is the key...I was never a great believer in well organized militias rising up against a tyrannical government, given that tyrannical government has weapons that make small-arms useless.
Fixating on the guns as some sort of talisman that accomplishes resistance and self defense all on its own has always been deeply unserious lifestyle marketing. The “well organized” is the key element of being effective. If you’re in a sufficiently thorny situation guns certainly are a tool in the toolkit, but they can only be turned to pro-social uses if they’re part of a broader civic/community self defense group. Otherwise you’re just some random dude who is going to commit suicide by cop.
Gun nuts get all fixated on what kind of kit to have and their bug out bags and having $5,000 worth of accessories hanging off their rifles and it’s all just consumerist slop. The organizational capacity and thick community networks are what actually buttress a resistance. Keeping people fed and supplied, being able to provide financial support and legal protections for people targeted by the regime (or who survive its victims), being present to watch and record what’s going on as Minnesotans have done. That’s the real shit, and it’s all coming way upstream of any kind of shooting battle.
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Comment on Federal officers kill another citizen in Minneapolis, National Guard activated in ~society
NaraVara (edited )Link ParentMany times have I been to the gun range across from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center where all the DHS LEOs have to go to do training hours (they used to do a lot of GroupOns). It’s...Because there hasn't been an organization like ICE in my lifetime, I have no idea what their protocols are like, but being a trained Range Safety Officer does not mean this individual had any experience or proficiency with encountering firearms operationally.
Many times have I been to the gun range across from the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center where all the DHS LEOs have to go to do training hours (they used to do a lot of GroupOns).
It’s pretty bleak man. It was profoundly concerning for me to learn that my prior experience of playing a lot of Duck Hunt and Time Crisis as a kid has somehow made me a better marksman than the median CBP or ICE dude. But more than that, people are just wildly cavalier about waving their guns around, leaving their service weapons unsecured, etc.
And this was all during the Obama administration. Literally everything has gotten worse since then.
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentNot really. What makes republics resilient is that power is distributed across so many different places that becoming stupid needs to happen at a societal scale rather than just being dependent on...In a monarchy, that sort of thing happens once every 40 years or so, the adult lifespan of a ruler. In a liberal democracy, it happens every four years.
Not really. What makes republics resilient is that power is distributed across so many different places that becoming stupid needs to happen at a societal scale rather than just being dependent on an individual’s virtues. We can have a moronic President but the bureaucracy is mostly a self-sustaining machine as long as it’s adequately resourced and doesn’t have the executive actively trying to sledgehammer it. And the judiciary and legislature also have significant powers to check that executive if he goes off the rails.
Our problem right now is that the entire institutional framework, formal and informal (informal being the media, religious/cultural institutions, and business communities) have ALL shirked their responsibilities to sustain our nation and society. It’s a society-wide spiritual rot that got us here not just the Orange Man. He’s a symptom of a disease that’s been festering since the reaction to the civil rights movement.
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara (edited )Link ParentCost of covering distance isn’t usually the biggest part of the price. The train can go 200km or it can go 400km, what’s the difference? It’s the cost of unloading it and getting it to market once...Cost of covering distance isn’t usually the biggest part of the price. The train can go 200km or it can go 400km, what’s the difference? It’s the cost of unloading it and getting it to market once it gets to the right city where the costs pile up. So if the shopkeepers and warehouse people and short haul trucks can have lower wages then basically everything can be cheaper even if it has to go a “long way” (by European standards).
If the wage and last mile transport cost differences are wide enough you can imagine it being more expensive to sell something that had to go from Rotterdam to its own outlying suburb than from Rotterdam to Lisbon.
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentYou don’t know who you’re talking to right now. And it doesn’t actually look like you’re addressing anything I’m saying specifically. I don’t think we’re in the realm of very serious people if...- Exemplary
Very serious people spend decades getting good at this stuff and then get told by people who've never touched the field that obviously everything they're saying is wrong and its just insulting. Economics IS NOT nearly as sound or agreed upon as something like medicine or physics but its impossible to even start the discussion when someone's understanding is more akin to "yeah 4 elements, earth/wind/fire/water".
You don’t know who you’re talking to right now. And it doesn’t actually look like you’re addressing anything I’m saying specifically.
The problem is that their wealth is tied up in their business one way or another because it comes from investments. Taxing that business/destroying it will lead to knock on effects for the average person.
I don’t think we’re in the realm of very serious people if we’re framing taxation as setting money on fire and transferring assets as “destroying them.” It sounds more like we’re in the realm of a specific sort of libertarian economist clichés.
For one thing, there’s a lot of space on the laffer curve between a 2% confiscatory tax on people with more than some threshold of wealth and too much to be worth continuing to own assets. Secondly:
It literally will not. The vast majority of wealth for the top of the curve is tied up in investments. You will be taxing those investments, so they will need to pull money from those investments, so those investments start to fail. It's massive knock on effects that will essentially destroy "productivity" for a certain definition of the word. A lot of higher level economics is about long term certainty and this nukes it.
What do you think happens to a share of Amazon when Jeff Bezos is compelled to sell it to raise cash that is then transferred to the government? An asset has been transferred from one billionaire to another, or to an equity holder who isn’t quite rich enough to be subjected to the tax. And then some other amount of money has been put on the government’s books where it goes into government spending.
Where in this cycle has an investment been destroyed? Where has investment been “pulled out” of anything? Assets have been transferred, ideally distributed so they are in the hands of a broader base of shareholders who can exercise say over corporate governance rather than having too-big-to-fail platform monopolists being nearly solely controlled by their founders who have gone mad with power.
The investment only disappears if they move their money into assets that can’t be taxed. That’s either going to mean hiding it or parking it somewhere it can’t be valued or liquidated, using accounting flim-flam to claim it isn’t worth anything or has negative real value, or “consuming” it either directly or as charitable donations. THAT’S the actual contention to the concept, and it might be a concern if you care a lot about funding anything with the money, but we’re not. And most of the dodges can be addressed if it’s aimed at just the 700 richest people in the country and you can literally assign each of them a full time case manager.
The “you have to be business friendly or AliExpress will replace Amazon” line is genuinely crazy because China literally fired Jack Ma from his own company and imposed a regulatory crackdown on AliBaba because he said a mildly critical thing about Chinese regulators once! Multimillionaires in China occasionally get disappeared for weeks or more on selectively enforced tax evasion accusations based on whether they’ve pissed off the wrong party official. And Americans wet their beds over whether a small progressive tax on capital gains will mean the next great capitalist will go to China instead?
Just deeply unserious people. Your link doesn’t even address the actual arguments because it assumes this is a tax meant to raise revenue for some kind of program. It is not. It is literally meant to be confiscatory in a way that engenders political momentum and shifts in the culture of obscene wealth and the balance of power in corporate governance. But it is, of course, easy for Billionnaires endowed Econ departments and think-tanks to flood the zone with mendacious papers designed to define the “two sides” of the “debate” in a way that is the academic equivalent of “It is too late, I have already depicted you as the raging soyjack and myself as the Chad.”
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentIt shouldn’t. I said it’s changing the distribution of economic gains. I didn’t say distribution of existing wealth. The point of the tax is to be punitive. It is literally meant to be a soft cap...but really this feels like one hell of a goal post shift
It shouldn’t. I said it’s changing the distribution of economic gains. I didn’t say distribution of existing wealth. The point of the tax is to be punitive. It is literally meant to be a soft cap on pursuit of wealth beyond a certain point. It’s not about moving the money directly, but compressing the distribution by curtailing the drive for being so acquisitive.
The difficulties people tend to cite are basically irrelevant because it’s essentially micro-targeted at less than a thousand people. You don’t need to care about accurately valuing anything or making sure it’s covering every edge case. You don’t even need to worry about ease of administration because there are so few people and so much money that you can literally hire a dedicated lawyer and investigator per person subjected to the tax.
It won’t fix things by itself, but it will force money out of being locked up in weird vanity project boondoggles and into actually productive areas subject to competition.
Also nobody is “stuck” on a “wealth tax” or even any specific definition of what that means. It’s just a very direct and intuitive way to raise money and close obvious tax dodges that rich people can do. People will agree with other proposals as well!
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Comment on Actual underrated films of the 2020s so far in ~movies
NaraVara LinkI’ll put The Green Knight on the list. Few movies I’ve seen over the past 10 years have left me with so many tantalizing questions, so much evocative imagery. As a story it’s sort of a bridge...I’ll put The Green Knight on the list. Few movies I’ve seen over the past 10 years have left me with so many tantalizing questions, so much evocative imagery. As a story it’s sort of a bridge between the wildly different worldviews and ways of thinking of the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds all at once.
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Comment on Make everything okay in ~life
NaraVara LinkThis is unironically how a lot of people seem to think therapy works.This is unironically how a lot of people seem to think therapy works.
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentI’m not talking about owning things, I’m talking about how the entire technology industry has evolved into a gambit to blitz scale to gain dominant market power and then leverage logistical...I’m not talking about owning things, I’m talking about how the entire technology industry has evolved into a gambit to blitz scale to gain dominant market power and then leverage logistical advantages to act as gatekeeper and leech all the surplus out of every other leg of the entire value chain. It’s been absolutely noxious for society and the economy.
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Comment on We are witnessing the self-immolation of a superpower in ~society
NaraVara Link ParentIt’s not about migrating the money, it’s about diminishing their political influence and market power. THAT is what conditions the entire ecosystem.It’s not about migrating the money, it’s about diminishing their political influence and market power. THAT is what conditions the entire ecosystem.
I live in DC, which is very humid, and do this regularly in summer and winter. Even though I have an HVAC forced air system things like dust and mildew and pollen still linger. You gotta air the place out and then vacuum to keep it smelling fresh.
Also my dog sheds a lot, so the airflow from the housewide breeze ends up collecting all the fur into specific corners of the house. It’s a good way to determine where in the house you don’t get good air circulation!