actionablefiber

It's increasingly a pet theory of mine that the uncontrolled concentration of wealth into the hands of the richest, their subsequent existential ennui, and their disconnect from reality owing to media consolidation and algorithmic content feeds have basically created a world where the superrich are in a "post-game" mentality. There are no further material comforts to obtain. They just want to feel anything at all and the only way to do that is by bringing about the end of the world.

We had a perfectly functioning economy prior to car domination and all the alternatives have progressed by incredible leaps and bounds in the time since as well.

I've been to two funerals in as many years for personal friends who died when drivers killed them with their cars. I'll make sure to throw in a good word for "emergent freedoms" and "the progress of civilization" at the next funeral I end up at.

I think it's important to think of Excel as a tool for modelling reality and not a tool for changing it. IMO Excel should not be producing data feeds that other tools expect real time access to, nor should it make API calls that mutate state on other platforms.

A lot of sitcom tropes involve behaviors that are repulsive in real life.

My family (parents, siblings) are asking me "How did our T-mobile phone bill balloon so much in the past decade?" and I can point to the slow creep and the plan changes they made that (without them knowing or anyone telling them) un-grandfathered them out of a favorable promotional plan. For instance my sister needed to increase her data cap about a few months before they moved our data to unlimited. It pushed her out of the promo and now the family plan costs $35/mo extra even though her line is getting the exact same things as mine, which is still on the promo pricing.

Then I tell them they'd be better served by switching to an MVNO offering significantly better rates and they come back and tell me they're locked in for a while because they just financed new devices.

I'm souring on the ways we create systems where you have to be super savvy and walk on eggshells with how you use the service and utter the right incantations or else you get hosed.

SBF didn't have anyone bigger to flip on.

Tons of people who get degrees in technical fields work outside that field. There are many people who have have spent at least part of their studies or career in hard science, SWE, IT, management consulting, law or finance before switching to something else in that list to improve their work/life balance, to make more money, to find employment more easily, or simply because learning the field and cracking its puzzles is engaging work for them no matter the exact technical field it's in.

> It tries to make you 'competitive' so hard.

I've found that it's really what you make of it. My city has a bunch of cycling subcultures - social slow rolls, fast road riding, sightseeing and exploration, commuting and errand-running - and different people like to see and talk about different types of rides and sometimes dabble in different subcultures, but generally people care way more about seeing the rides, and whatever fun banter or background context you add when you post it, than analyzing your speed and elevation.

I really love the social aspect of Strava because I'm friends with all the other people I follow on it. In some way I think it is more intimate than traditional social media. You could get a better picture of my life and how I spend my time from seeing my physical displacements during the day than by seeing the super filtered Instagram stuff that I only choose to share when I'm having a good time and doing something interesting.

Overall, I eat out less, but "drink out" more and never get more than one drink at the establishment. I can't claim to be able to uniquely isolate any of my behavior to fees because a lot has changed in my life. Before covid I was a student and now an FTE, I was shy and lonely and now I have an active social life, I lived in a very big city and now live in a big city, but I can tell you I get an ick about going out, and when I'm proposing to go out I am mindful of costs and fees and propose places that I consider to be cheaper and more forthright about pricing.

I'd like to believe this is true but in my metropolitan area, it's quite common to see e.g. a covid recovery fee, inflation recovery fee, iniative 82 service fee, and autograt when you are checking out. It's extremely bad for price transparency but the practice seems very popular among merchants who are betting that customers will still show up as long as the menu prices appear low.

> Why not go even further? Itemize the marginal cost of maintaining your property's parking lot for those customers who visit your business by car?

Aka... charge for parking? I mean? This is pretty common? I've always found it annoying that stores will validate parking for motorists but if I choose to take public transit or bikeshare, I don't get any corresponding debate.

It is sort of like claiming Netflix is a membership-selling company that happens to run a streaming service.

Though you could make this argument for gyms, which are notorious for selling a lot of memberships to people who lack/lose the motivation to use them.

Uber Pool is back after a pandemic-induced hiatus. The main draw isn't the potential for an interesting conversation but the fact that it's cheaper.

For the sake of your local dogs I wish you many more boring calls where you have nothing to contribute.