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Hello and welcome to the new spring 2023 thread, a few days later than I said I was going to. Just a note to people who may be looking around in your bookmarks, the current D&D feedback thread will be closing soon, as in probably by tomorrow. Please take a look if you wish to add your own voice. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4027877&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1 As a reminder, all of the rules for D&D apply in this thread. There is no need for american exceptionalism here. I would like to highlight this post from the last page of the old USCE because it could be effecting you, the shut-in goon. A big flaming stink posted:we have another latex chemical extravaganza In happier news, pickleball is coming. You can't stop it. Have any goons played it, or it just an op? I do know anyone who has actually played it. quote:But he said CityPickle had only a one-year commitment for the rink. “Our sense is that pickleball has real staying power and there is a deficit of opportunities in the city and this could become a longer-term thing, but we’re flexible,” he said. Still, he added, “right now we’re just looking forward to a great summer of pickleball.”
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Mar 27, 2023 09:22
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i demand constantly rotating thread titles or this has all been for naught
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Mar 27, 2023 09:40
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Kith posted:i demand constantly rotating thread titles or this has all been for naught I really will try to keep up, but sometimes I get lazy, or I forget. If a really good one gets there I would like to keep it.
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Mar 27, 2023 09:45
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This thread title is bad
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Mar 27, 2023 09:54
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My city replaced like 3/4ths the tennis courts with pickleball courts and they're slammed with players most sundays so I think it might be fun? Haven't tried it yet.
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Mar 27, 2023 10:42
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Dietrich posted:My city replaced like 3/4ths the tennis courts with pickleball courts and they're slammed with players most sundays so I think it might be fun? Haven't tried it yet. i find it wild that america has finally embraced pickleball. we played it in senior year gym (22 years ago) and i enjoyed it so much that i asked my gym teacher to let me take a few sets of paddles and balls home but i could never get anyone to play. wish i still had that stuff, it's vintage now
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Mar 27, 2023 10:54
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aBagorn posted:i find it wild that america has finally embraced pickleball. It's amazing it took us this long considering it's essentially slower and easier tennis.
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Mar 27, 2023 12:56
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Happy Spring. Tennis:Pickleball::Baseball:Rounders (except for the order in which they inspired each other) SourKraut posted:Don't worry, dilution is the solution to pollution! Of course we should do everything in our power to stop environmental contamination (because this poo poo adds up) but the toxicity is always in the dose. If somebody puts a vial of MegaCancer Serum in the Mississippi in St. Paul, a person in New Orleans doesn't need to worry because 90,000 gallons per second is a pretty good mixer. I sincerely doubt anybody in Philly has anything to worry about.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:14
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According to Nixonland, in the 60's Chicago officials actually did the math, and figured it'd take 5 tons of LSD to spike the city's water supply. Super villain plots are expensive in real life.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:21
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Overall it's probably good that they loudly announced the spill, but the limits of "people deserve full information" can bump up against the limits of "the information makes people do dumb things." Bottled water is an environmental problem in and of itself and on an individual level a waste of money. There are probably people in the city for whom buying the water was a financial strain, but they thought they had to for the health of their families. But I can't blame people for getting worked up. There is no such thing as "full information" in a case like this, because most people don't (and shouldn't have to) have a good understanding of environmental science, and getting a piece of information without the wider context is going to lead people in unproductive directions. Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 13:22
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God I just can't wait for "involved in the East Palestine derailment" to be a new buzz phrase.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:28
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Mellow Seas posted:Overall it's probably good that they loudly announced the spill, but the limits of "people deserve full information" can bump up against the limits of "the information makes people do dumb things." Bottled water is an environmental problem in and of itself and on an individual level a waste of money. There are probably people in the city for whom buying the water was a financial strain, but they thought they had to for the health of their families. Kinda feels like a symptom of the wider diagnosis of "People don't trust poo poo coming from those in power anymore". A few decades of skull loving anyone south of the 1% for an extra dollar has effects like that on a society. If there was a reservoir of trust from previous actions to draw on, individual events like this could be smoothed over and dealt with appropriately by those who do have a good understanding of environmental science. But that's not the society we live in. We live in "gently caress You Got Mine" given mortal form, and the people making these decisions like buying bottled water are doing the best they can with what is available to them.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:44
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Mellow Seas posted:But I can't blame people for getting worked up. There is no such thing as "full information" in a case like this, because most people don't (and shouldn't have to) have a good understanding of environmental science, and getting a piece of information without the wider context is going to lead people in unproductive directions. Even if you do have a good understanding, there isn't enough public information available to make decisions, aside from "water from the Delaware has not yet passed into the water supply". But it's hard to blame people for exercising caution in a political environment where we've firmly established that public health authorities are balancing practicality with health.
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Mar 27, 2023 13:52
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With all these chemical spills and train derailments happening lately, is this indicative of a bigger problem currently happening, or is it just frequency bias and the fact that these things are what people are paying attention to currently? It's kinda concerning that accidental environmental destruction from negligence is happening more often.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:09
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bird food bathtub posted:Kinda feels like a symptom of the wider diagnosis of "People don't trust poo poo coming from those in power anymore". A few decades of skull loving anyone south of the 1% for an extra dollar has effects like that on a society. If there was a reservoir of trust from previous actions to draw on, individual events like this could be smoothed over and dealt with appropriately by those who do have a good understanding of environmental science. We just went through something where the EPA said "there's not really any reason to think there's dioxins here," and everybody screamed "dioxins, dioxins!" until finally they tested and what do you know, there weren't any dioxins, except in the Indiana test that was basically intentionally designed to show dioxins because they stored the samples in a place teeming with dioxins. (What was up with that anyway?) People having no trust in public health and safety officials is not a good thing, even if you think it's coming from a good anti-capitalist place (which I'm frankly dubious about), and it's something that makes people retreat further towards individualism and paranoia instead of community. There should absolutely be a "reservoir of trust" established by the environmental transformation that this country has gone through over the last 60 years, because this place was a god drat dump and we've made gigantic improvements, more or less entirely because of government action. There is, like with crime issues, a tendency for people to "feel" like things are getting worse all the time when the long-term trend is massive improvement. Velocity Raptor posted:With all these chemical spills and train derailments happening lately, is this indicative of a bigger problem currently happening, or is it just frequency bias and the fact that these things are what people are paying attention to currently?
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Mar 27, 2023 14:16
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Pickelball is the official state sport of Washington State and was created in Bainbridge Island as a kid's game in 1965. Just about every school in the state has pickleball as part of their physical education course. It is probably the only physical sport where a couch potato can be within reach of the most talented jock with just a little practice.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:29
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Velocity Raptor posted:With all these chemical spills and train derailments happening lately, is this indicative of a bigger problem currently happening, or is it just frequency bias and the fact that these things are what people are paying attention to currently? In terms of derailments, we've been averaging three a day for over a decade, we're actually at a bit of a low right now though still around there, slightly up from last year but not a lot. We're at around half what we were in the 90s/2000s in terms of accidents per mile. Not sure how that translates to chemical spills specifically.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:56
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bird food bathtub posted:Kinda feels like a symptom of the wider diagnosis of "People don't trust poo poo coming from those in power anymore". A few decades of skull loving anyone south of the 1% for an extra dollar has effects like that on a society. If there was a reservoir of trust from previous actions to draw on, individual events like this could be smoothed over and dealt with appropriately by those who do have a good understanding of environmental science. But that's not the society we live in. We live in "gently caress You Got Mine" given mortal form, and the people making these decisions like buying bottled water are doing the best they can with what is available to them. This is kind of a long-standing problem with handling large-scale disasters where the population might need to temporarily change their behavior in a way that disrupts their lives. From the POV of pure public health and safety, if you're not really sure whether something needs a response or not, you'd probably want to opt on the safe side and warn people that a response is likely necessary. In theory, anyway. But in practice, there's a big worry that people will hate it if things turn out lucky and said response ended up being unnecessary. It's a big dilemma in severe weather forecasting, for example. If forecasters predict a severe storm is coming and urge the populace to take precautions, and then the winds change and the storm doesn't hit there or is a lot weaker than expected, people take that as meaning that the weather forecasting is unreliable. And the bigger the disruption is, the more reluctant officials can be to recommend that disruption. Nobody wants to recommend an evacuation only for the hurricane to turn on a dime and completely miss the area, but at the same time, a last-minute evacuation recommendation is useless.
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Mar 27, 2023 14:56
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Freakazoid_ posted:Pickelball is the official state sport of Washington State and was created in Bainbridge Island as a kid's game in 1965. I do fear that my lack of coordination, which is not just "pronounced" but "outlier" will make me no good at it, to the point where I don't really enjoy it, because that's what happened with cornhole.  I did enjoy tennis as a younger, healthier man, though.
Mellow Seas fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 15:06
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Main Paineframe posted:This is kind of a long-standing problem with handling large-scale disasters where the population might need to temporarily change their behavior in a way that disrupts their lives. Similar to this, but even stuff that proper precautions were taken and the crisis was properly mitigated to the point where no one was disrupted also causes people to think that the issue wasn't a big deal to begin with. We've seen this with the threat of acid rain in the 80s and 90s, and the Y2K bug. People all came together to address the issue and the result was a minor disruption for the general public with Y2K, and with acid rain, the threat being properly mitigated.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:08
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I've never heard of pickleball before and I'm not about to start now.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:08
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USCE: The Politics of Pickleball
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Mar 27, 2023 15:09
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aBagorn posted:i find it wild that america has finally embraced pickleball. My folks started playing pickleball before the pandemic and I would join sometimes. It was always being played by retired boomers, so much so that most game times were weekday afternoons (when non retired boomers would be working). In the last few years it's exploded so much so that the community centers offer it several times a day with wait-lists, there are outdoor courts replacing tennis courts and it is getting popular with younger non boomer people. Personally I play it over tennis because I had an accident a few years back (don't recommend getting hit by a car) and it's easier on my body (and also I can no longer serve or smash in tennis).
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Mar 27, 2023 15:25
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According to the WSJ's new poll, Americans are basically becoming a nation of hard-working feminist nihilists who don't value anything else. The only values that a solid majority of Americans still say is "very important" to them is "hard work" and "promoting equality between men and women." Religion, community involvement, patriotism, making money, businesses/schools promoting racial equality, promoting transgender acceptance in society, and promoting gender-neutral pronouns all have less than half of Americans considering them "very important" values. "Making money" is the only value that has grown in importance since 1998, but it still is only important to a minority of Americans. The only value that most Americans agreed on as one that unites the country is that economic opportunity and hard work can improve your life.  quote:Americans Pull Back From Values That Once Defined U.S., WSJ-NORC Poll Finds https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-pull-back-from-values-that-once-defined-u-s-wsj-norc-poll-finds-df8534cd Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:30 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 15:28
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:“I think patriotism encompasses being part of your community and helping other Americans,’’ said Mr. Williams, who said he coaches youth sports and volunteers with a group that provides security at protests and rallies. Oh boy.
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Mar 27, 2023 15:38
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I wonder if there was anything between 2019 and 2023 that would make Americans believe that getting deeply involved with their community wasn't worth the effort.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:03
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GoutPatrol posted:
Yeah, we’ve had this in Washington since the 60s. My grandparents would always set it up in their driveway on the 4th of July. It’s weird as gently caress seeing it pop up in trend pieces but we all know those writers just make poo poo up to meet a deadline anyway. Edit: Triskelli posted:USCE: The Politics of Pickleball Solkanar512 fucked around with this message at 16:10 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 16:06
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only 27% of americans valuing community is extremely grim
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Mar 27, 2023 16:14
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I grew up in Delaware and lived in Philly and, let me tell you, I'm not sure how anyone can tell the difference after a chemical spill. loving 30 years ago, if you flew into the Philadelphia airport, you'd get a good look at the Delaware river and it looked an oil slick on a wet road. Rainbow color swirls and all. It also loving stunk to high heaven. That river doesn't even resemble water and looks like you could walk on it. I'm not downplaying the spill, just saying it's weird to suddenly think that NOW the river is polluted so let's make a COVID-19 toilet paper run on all the bottled water. It's been disgusting toxic sludge for as long as I can remember.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:14
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lobster shirt posted:only 27% of americans valuing community is extremely grim Money circulates around the community and while that poll didn't demonstrated it well, it's obvious that money is the most important value to Americans, and by proxy the community. Zotix fucked around with this message at 16:25 on Mar 27, 2023 |
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Mar 27, 2023 16:22
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lobster shirt posted:only 27% of americans valuing community is extremely grim Look how many Americans live in soulless suburbs that could be anywhere in the US, they've probably never really experienced a "community" to value one in the first place. I didn't learn to value it until I moved out of the suburbs and lived somewhere that had a good local community that showed me what I had been missing out on, on the odd chance I ever have kids there's no way in hell I'd ever raise them in the suburbs.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:22
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The issue is a lot of cultural touchstones have been exploited and commercialized or worse, the big one being patriotism after 9/11. It's created a nation of skeptic individualists who are always looking for the catch. That's why they believe in hard work: that is the catch.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:36
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Mustang posted:Look how many Americans live in soulless suburbs that could be anywhere in the US, they've probably never really experienced a "community" to value one in the first place. Or they're trapped in rural hellholes where the "community" is christians and trumpsuckers.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:40
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It's less grim if you go look at the actual results. The shift was generally from "Very Important" to "Somewhat Important", it's not like everyone's out there saying "gently caress community" all of a sudden. And while "tolerance for others" may have dropped in importance compared to four years ago, it still had the second-most people ranking it very important. It really just seems like people are less likely to say "very important" in general. It's still worth noting due to the change from previous polls, but as the very end of the article (briefly!) notes, there's also a methodology change to be aware of. The 1998 and 2019 polls used live interviewers to call people, while the 2023 poll was an online poll, which the article generously says "might account for a small portion of the reported decline in importance of the American values tested". It doesn't link the previous polls, or the detailed crosstabs of this poll, so all we can really do is rely on what the writer cherrypicked anyway.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:40
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Byzantine posted:Or they're trapped in rural hellholes where the "community" is christians and trumpsuckers. Sometimes you take a good hard look at your community and realize the world would be a better place if your neighbors were suppressed.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:50
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I'm more distressed that so many people believe in the lie of hard work than I am in any decline of any other dubious personal value. Those were the only values they even bothered to ask about? I don't know how to feel about that. "Like I don't belong here," I guess.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:51
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BiggerBoat posted:I grew up in Delaware and lived in Philly and, let me tell you, I'm not sure how anyone can tell the difference after a chemical spill. loving 30 years ago, if you flew into the Philadelphia airport, you'd get a good look at the Delaware river and it looked an oil slick on a wet road. Rainbow color swirls and all. It also loving stunk to high heaven. That river doesn't even resemble water and looks like you could walk on it. I get your point, but it's a bit like how we used to make jokes about Boston Harbor being a literal septic tank in the early 80s: they've done a lot to clean up the Delaware in the intervening decades.
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Mar 27, 2023 16:51
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Main Paineframe posted:It's less grim if you go look at the actual results. "I'm not gonna read that, all of the above I guess" being a big part of what it is to be American is pretty accurately conveyed here. Maybe with a side order of "the news has been talking about X lately, if I mark 'uncertain' it'll make me seem in the know"
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Mar 27, 2023 16:59
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Water quality, from the James River to the Hudson to the Cheasapeake Bay has made large strides in the last 30 years. The mid to upper east coast has made huge strides to clean up their waterways, and you really can't compare how they were in the 90s to how they are now.
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Mar 27, 2023 17:03
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Veryslightlymad posted:I'm more distressed that so many people believe in the lie of hard work than I am in any decline of any other dubious personal value. Oh boy, there are a bunch of lies about hard work, though. A few of them: - That hard work is an unmitigated good that does not create its own personal and social ills - That hard work is always worthwhile - That hard work is a prerequisite for deserving respect - That one's financial status is a reflection of how hard they've worked - (The biggest, in the US) That hard work is consistently rewarded, or insulates you from disaster
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Mar 27, 2023 17:13
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