I wouldn’t suggest anyone take this piece serious; you would be doing yourself a disservice. A strange thing I’ve noticed about street view. Whenever I show up to a new place that I’ve viewed on street view I remark on how different it feels from what I expected. Maybe I recognize the konbini on the corner and know that it marks the left turn I need to make. But never have I felt like street view was even close to actually being there.
> Not that it would have been logistically feasible back then, but I do sometimes ask myself if Pearl Harbor could have been prevented if enough Japanese statesmen had gone to vacation in New York.
Well we kind of know what the answer is. Toward the end of WW2 when the US was drawing up the list of cities to bomb, Kyoto got removed from the list at the insistence of the Secretary of War. He understood the cultural importance of the city, likely because he had travelled there. I’m surprised the author hadn’t read about it on Wikipedia.
But back to my point. Sitting and staring into my magic 13-inch rectangle starts to make me feel like…nothing. A formless gel of facts and trivia. Travel makes me feel like a human being again. Travel may not be education but I do think that, when done well, it is wisdom.
Aside from just plain bad luck, the things you list don't happen in isolation. Humans have fought bloody wars over land for as long as we've stood upright. Do you think we'll all neatly organize into the remaining habitable land?
I agree climate change could cause wars but I don't agree with the narrative that it will somehow cause 'worse' wars because... worse than what? We've managed to have terrible wars than wipe out whole peoples, and great power competition that almost destroyed civilisation in the 1960s without any climate change required. It's hard to see how things can really get much worse on that front
I’m inclined to agree. The goalposts will move once the time is right. I’ve already personally witnessed it happening; a company sells their AI-whatever strictly along the lines of staff augmentation and a force multiplier for employees. Not a year later and the marketing has shifted to cost optimization, efficiency, and better “uptime” over real employees.
The truth is that Netflix, Amazon, or any other company, honestly, would fire 99% of their workforce if it were possible, because they only care about profit – hell, they are companies, that's why they exist. At the same time, brands have to pretend they care about society, people having jobs, the climate, whatever, so they can't simply say: "Yeah, we exist to make money and we totally want to fire you guys as soon as possible." As you said, it's all masked as staff augmentation and other technical mumbo jumbo.
I think there is too much associating taste with quality. We can see it in many of these comments and in the post as well:
> And what I mean by taste here is simply the honed ability to distinguish mediocrity from excellence.
And I say, maybe. But more than quality I think taste is a way to discern what’s unique and novel. In my mind it doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to be “excellent” because, as the post mentions, everyone’s “excellent” may be different.
Why do I think this distinction is important? Because if taste is about seeing the nuances that make something interesting instead of what makes it “good” then getting to good taste promotes open minded exploration (healthy exploration) over status seeking.
I love this car already. It has character, a personality. It’s the friend who’s kind of a pain in the ass but someone you usually have a good time with.
Reminds me of the car I learned to drive manual on. It would only start when the drivers side door was open. So if you stalled the car the process was: open door, clutch in, start engine, clutch out and go, close door. You learned not to stall…
> There are no guardrails, no warning signs, and definitely no liability waivers - just you, the weather, and whatever route the sheep decided made sense.
I absolutely love places like this; places that treat you as a discerning, rational adult. The sense of being responsible for yourself feels freeing. It is an invitation for you to experience something entirely in your own way.
I feel the same way. I've hiked a few times at one of the locations in these photos with my 8 year old son (under close supervision). I think it's a great way to build a sense of responsibility and humility.
Unfortunately, that also makes it inherently more dangerous. Just a month ago, three tourists went missing at that location. [1]
Even as a jaded person I’m surprised how many people read this and immediately go to statements about hypocrisy, having no integrity, or bad leadership. Get a grip! Real life doesn’t always let you be a crusader. It’s called choosing your battles and it’s something that most of us have to do almost every day.
Nothing in this advice suggests being two-faced. Nothing suggests lying or being deceitful. What it does suggest is to try and do the least bad thing in a set of less-than-ideal circumstances, most of which are outside any of the rank-and-file’s control.
Edit to add: nothing says you have to publicly agree with an unpopular policy while disparaging it in private. Staying quiet is an option and probably the most sensible one.
> Not that it would have been logistically feasible back then, but I do sometimes ask myself if Pearl Harbor could have been prevented if enough Japanese statesmen had gone to vacation in New York.
Well we kind of know what the answer is. Toward the end of WW2 when the US was drawing up the list of cities to bomb, Kyoto got removed from the list at the insistence of the Secretary of War. He understood the cultural importance of the city, likely because he had travelled there. I’m surprised the author hadn’t read about it on Wikipedia.
But back to my point. Sitting and staring into my magic 13-inch rectangle starts to make me feel like…nothing. A formless gel of facts and trivia. Travel makes me feel like a human being again. Travel may not be education but I do think that, when done well, it is wisdom.
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