boidperson

Extremely unique property in El Mirage, CA. The 1945 multi-use property has 1bd, 1ba, 828sqft. But, it was the site of a plane crash and it comes with the original wreckage. Apparently, it's a popular site for music videos and film projects, too. Reduced $25k to $310k (Zillow est. $313,800, and they hardly ever go higher). There's some potential here. Everything you will see is included in the sale, too.

there's this thing where you posit a person looking at modern art and saying something like "i could have made that", in an implied criticism of the work, and some other person, who we are supposed to agree with or think is making a good point, saying something like "then why don't you?". there are many variants of this i've seen.

and postulating what Strawman Who Doesn’t Like Modern Art 'actually means' by saying "i could make that" is an exercise in futility, because i haven’t actually seen someone unironically voice that opinion. i don't know that it's something anyone has said in real life, and if they had i wouldn’t know what they meant.

but. if i were the person in that situation and i had said that, i know what i would have meant by it. and it would be, specifically, 'any work of visual art that looks like something i could have made is bad, because i haven't developed any skills in this area, and should not be put in prominent display in a museum or the like. that place should go to art that is good instead'

and so if someone asked me why i didn't make something like it would be rather missing the point of what i meant. i meant that it's bad. why would i want to make something like it, except as a practice piece on the way to making something good instead.

how are you supposed to have managed this with no experience??

Between September 1999 and February 2000, Lebed made hundreds of thousands of dollars from a computer in his bedroom in Cedar Grove, New Jersey, using pump and dump by posting in internet chat rooms and message boards, encouraging people to buy penny stocks he already owned, thus, according to the SEC, artificially raising the price of the stock. Between September 1999 and February 2000, his smallest one-day gain was US$12,000, while his biggest was $74,000.[4] Lebed became the first minor prosecuted by the SEC.[5][6] In 2001, Lebed and the SEC negotiated an out-of-court settlement in which Lebed forfeited $285,000 in profit and interest he had made on 11 trades without admitting any wrongdoing, allowing him to keep close to half a million dollars.[7]

when we look at the world we see common patterns of demographic transition across many societies, driven by economic and cultural change in response to technological shifts and other factors.

paranoid conspiracy theories of "white replacement" never seem to engage with this reality, and obsess over delusions from the 1800s driven by the fear of the teeming colored hordes.

it's bizarre to hear this stuff in a world where Japan and China are each losing a million people a year and India's birthrate appears to be on the verge of dropping below replacement level.

people have the freedom to live the lives they want to live, and it turns out that for most people that involves not having six children!

or that you're more likely to fall out of a tree youve climbed many times before rather than one you havent touched.

this doesn't mean it's sensible to resolve to only shower in other people's houses, or only climb trees you're not climbing.

if you care about the role of malicious intentionality in this case then the obvious fact remains that you're more likely to be in danger from a serial killer in your city than one in a city on the other side of the world. but from this fact does not follow that you should leave this city for that one, because this fact arises from the simple fact that you're more likely to interact with things you're interacting with.

hence, you're also far more likely to engage in mutually fulfilling, joyful, respectful, healing, and deeply meaningful long term relationships with people you are close to with than strangers you pass on the street.

The statistical reality that one is more likely to be hurt by the people they're closest to does not necessarily logically point to some dark dismal truth about human relationships, but is simply an artifact of those people being the ones with whom you interact the most. It's part of the nature of a local reality formed by a network of causal relations.

From this does not follow that social isolation is correct, any more than the notion that one should avoid eating food because food might be contaminated. Yes, eating is risky, but also necessary to live well, and there are some tried and true techniques to minimize that risk to almost nil. Yes, engagement with social connection is risky, but even though most violence is done in interactions between close relations, it's also true that the vast majority of social interactions between close relations are nurturing and fulfilling, and only a small proportion overall is harmful. And there are reliable ways to minimize that risk too.

yes, that small proportion of sexual violence has an outsized impact, and yes, we should take steps to minimize it. I'm obviously not saying that we shouldn't take serious steps to minimize familial sexual violence, and there are a lot of meaningful critiques of the nuclear family model that i won't get into here.

but to take the statistical fact that "most abusive violence occurs within close social bonds" and conclude that the problem is intimate connection itself rather than specific toxic patterns, is not actually as rational as it seems and is, again, akin to saying that because people get food poisoning when eating food, that food itself is the problem rather than specific pathogens that can be successfully defended against.

Especially getting into this worry about causing harm to the people closest to you because of the population level statistics is sort of putting the epistemic cart before the horse. you know the real specifics of your relationship dynamics far better than a statistical average does.

I'm not trying to come across as mean or shitty about this, i'm just pushing back on the rationalizing of this mindset in a way i hope is helpful. cause ive been in places w similar dynamics.

Existence is risky, and engagement with the world is risky. it can be tempting to try to isolate oneself completely. but that straight up doesn't work. there's no way to cut off all possibility of harm by cutting off all connections without also severing the connections one needs to live well. And there are wiser, more skillful means of minimizing the risk of harm without also cutting off the positive.