searabbit

The just-world fallacy - the belief that the world is fundamentally fair and people deserve their circumstances. People who lucked out in life tend to believe this for the reasons you said.

That’s me some mornings. I wake up, do my morning routine - SYKE! It was a dream and I’m still asleep. Repeat like 5 infuriating times.

If that was my whole life right now, I’m at least glad I’m not aware of it. That would be hell.

that’s how life was in those cultures

What are “those cultures”? Because the person you replied to only mentioned GoT and that’s not a real culture.

I think we agree for the most part. I also didn’t mean to imply reading literature = intelligent because I also don’t believe that. The people I described are people in my life who I believe are incredibly intelligent, just not academic.

On my last point, it’s my realist take. I have EDS (excessive daytime sleepiness), so even if I really really believe I will enjoy a tougher read, sometimes I can’t stay awake long enough to get through a page. During those periods, I’ll take the easier self help or scifi book to keep me going. But yeah, challenging ourselves is part of the joy. When I was a struggling college student, I became very depressed for a while, and I distinctly remember picking up a philosophy book at the city library and reading an excerpt about hedonism and eudaimonism which changed my outlook for the better. The idea that we need both short term pleasures and long-term purpose to feel happy/fulfilled helped me work through the challenges, making sure I still went out and had fun in between, which now I look back on with some sense of fondness and pride. I see reading a tough book that interests me in the same way.

for his essays, there is an excellent anthology available from Penguin, ‘The World-Ending Fire’.

Awesome! I’ll add that to my reading list :)

I love this comment and I’ll look into Wendell Berry since I haven’t heard of him before.

To add on, I’ve met a lot of otherwise smart people (smart as in curious and skeptical to not accept things at face value) who frustratingly have no interest in literature to flesh out their own philosophies about the world.

They’ll go on a rant about this or that and I’ll chime in to say, for example, “oh are you talking about prisoners dilemma?” or “you’re basically describing nihilism” or “well, that person likely disagreed with you because you are using different definitions of the same word/concept” and they’ll look at me with an expression of ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about and I don’t care.’ I’d be so happy to explain things or recommend what to research to engage with topics they’re clearly passionate about, but it’s sad to see the curiosity end so soon when so many people have collectively devoted lifetimes on expanding the ideas they think they just invented.

So I won’t comment on what makes someone intelligent (because you’ll never find me calling the people I described unintelligent), but if you want to improve your own, I emphatically agree on reading literature, even fantasy like Tolkien, whatever you enjoy.

I’ve never met someone who decided to write a history book as a hobby. Just wanted to say that’s awesome, hopefully you can make it accessible online to other history buffs who may enjoy it!

A 2023 state law prohibited drivers from parking within the 20 feet of curb space approaching an intersection, a practice known in traffic safety circles as “daylighting” the corners.

But the law didn’t come with any funding to mark those spaces off-limits, leaving it up to cities and other local governments to pay for the work out of their own budgets. As a result, many haven’t — Oakland officials said last fall that they don’t have the staff or funding to implement the law, with just two employees responsible for street-painting work throughout the city.

Berkeley has become one of the first cities in California to finish painting its curbs to comply with the law, City Manager Paul Buddenhagen wrote in a memo this week, after public works staff and a contractor applied the treatment at nearly 1,700 intersections.

So California passed this law and Berkeley is patting themselves on the back for actually following through 3 years later when the law actually became enforceable. A lot of CA cities (definitely parts of LA) already had this law in place like decades ago, so Berkeley is just trying to take credit for the party they showed up late to.

Lyft already has this feature, it’s called women+

I don’t think this issue is reflective of American gender wars in particular. I can think of dozens of countries I’d be way more terrified of being in a car alone with an unknown man as a woman. I’ve never had a bad encounter with any uber drivers in the US, but I have heard directly from drivers that drunk riders can be a fucking menace, so I don’t mind if female drivers would rather take their chances with drunk women vs drunk men.