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[jaydub]

I guess its not surprising that the Japanese cultural obsession with cleanliness led to separating the polar opposite functions of eliminating and washing.  My dad spent the earlier years of his business career as one of Far East account managers for Boeing.  He told me that they shower before bathing, so you're not sitting in a stew of dirtiness.  With no personal experience in the matter, I don't know if he was being funny, or if that was old-fashioned or perhaps characteristic of some stratum within the culture; I think about the anecdote quite a bit when I do decide to take a bath myself.  Which is happening more frequently these days because its easier to ensure my hand stays dry.

[wombat]

Yes, you shower before taking a Japanese bath, or at least you clean yourself. In the old days it was by pouring a bucket of water over yourself, now you can still do that if you are old school, but there's usually also a handheld shower thingy. The bath is for soaking, not for cleaning yourself. The bath water is usually shared so you don't want to be soaking in other people's dirt.

[theinevitable]

Just made my winter break plans, and I am very excited. Going home for a week and a half, then meeting up with my old roommates in NYC for New Year's Eve debauchery. Then me and one of the guys are taking my car and taking our time heading out to St Louis-- we're thinking we'll check out Philly, Pittsburgh, maybe Detroit? Chicago? Indianapolis? Somewhere in Ohio? Then I'll be in St Louis for a week or so, then back to my parents' house for a bit before heading up to school. Probably setting myself up for way too much driving in winter conditions, but I think it'll be worth it.

I am feeling a lot of sympathy for every girl my old roommate ever dated, because they all complained that he was impossible to communicate with, and now I am having that experience. It is hard not to take it kind of personally when someone just never responds to your messages, you know? Obviously we are just not on the same friend-wavelength, because he emailed me wanting to coordinate our plans for visiting St Louis. I guess it's just one of those things where you have to deal with people on their terms.

I'm reading this crazy racist dude's plan for eliminating welfare as research for a paper and it's actually really compelling. It is all kinds of mind-bending and mind-enhancing to read something arguing for a policy you kind of like (universal unconditional income for all citizens) but for reasons you don't like (eliminating all other social supports) using reasoning you don't totally agree with. It's really interesting reading because although he claims to be a libertarian, there are some things he claims that seem pretty damn not-libertarian to me (for instance, that the government should be incentivizing marriage), and he states some things (poor people who make what seem like "bad decisions" are usually acting rationally in response to their limited opportunities) that I don't normally expect to hear from that side of the aisle.

On the other hand, I am reading more and more for this paper, and having a lot of thoughts, but the more I think the less of a thesis I have. The paper is due in a week. I guess at this point it's too late to turn back.

[wombat]

Gotta keep thinking till you come out the other side.

[Arachno-capitalist]

I'm reading this crazy racist dude's plan for eliminating welfare as research for a paper

Do yourself a favor and don't read The Bell Curve. I read that dribble cover to cover.

[jaydub]

Good God, whatever for? It was out of date the day it was published, unless you're looking for some nice race bait to drop in anonymous fora.

[jaydub]

Gotta keep thinking till you come out the other side.

"If you find yourself going through hell, don't stop walking"

[Arachno-capitalist]

Good God, whatever for? It was out of date the day it was published, unless you're looking for some nice race bait to drop in anonymous fora.

For the same reason I read Mein Kampf and The Little Red Book. I have a perverse interest in insanity and the idea that ink on page can inspire people to awful nonsense is intriguing to me. The Bell Curve was interesting from a stats point of view. It was like a case study in how data can be misused. 

[theinevitable]

How can you do such a shitty job insulating a house IN NEW JERSEY, that the pipes freeze every winter? Just got told we need to leave the faucet dripping any time it goes below freezing. Are you kidding?

[pmcd9]

That's what we do in Houston, but that's basically maybe twice a year. I was in New Jersey for 3 days one Dec. and I think it went above freeing maybe a couple of hours a day.

[theinevitable]

shitty landlords make me hate humanity. Seriously, how do you justify this? How much more do I have to pay a month for this guy to put some foam around the pipes or whatever?

ash and wombat responded to something silly I tweeted, and it only reminded me of the fact that you can get stuck in an internet bubble. There are things that I assume everyone knows about and is talking about, and then I realize literally no one I know in real life has that experience. Even people who ostensibly have some of the same interests as me are not clued into the exact same sources as me, and may have never heard about that thing that I think is a huge deal. I spend too much of my time reading what academics and journalists have to say about things, and i forget that almost nobody in real life is either of those things.
The internet consistently makes me feel like every person is somehow involved with writing or reporting. I honestly at one point felt anxiety about the fact that as a planner I would have to somehow be involved in journalism or book-writing. And then I caught myself and realized that no, actually, those people are not urban planners. They are urban affairs writers. The real urban planners on twitter are mostly people like me, tweeting random thoughts or reading other people's feeds. Most of the people in my classes have never heard of the things that I thought were really important, but they do know a lot more than me about technical things. Actually, yeah, there are certain concepts that it is troubling how few of my classmates have heard, and they are certainly not being taught in class.

In my grad classes I am really coming to appreciate the value of 1. my liberal arts education and 2. the four years I spent after college learning about random shit that interested me. Also realizing how much of "being smart" can be taking something you learned elsewhere and applying it in a new context.  Especially with regards to "critical thinking," I literally think to myself "what would that snarky guy on twitter think about this" or even "what would Ash think about this" and it leads me to insights.

PS:

Where have you gone?/
J-L-D-ee-ee/
a lonely TOUAMB turns its eyes to you/
oo-oo-oo

[theinevitable]

It is cold. Damn.

I did something wrong in the last 3 years and my leather winter boots completely dried out and got all cracked and nasty looking. I cleaned them and re-waterproofed them so hopefully they'll last the winter but DAMN they look awful. I am telling myself that I am not going to reward ruining my old boots by buying new ones. At least not until next winter, provided these don't fall apart or something.

[Carlos del Vaca]

People who can freakin' bite me, today:

• Whoever only allocated 30 GB on the C drive of this server. I need 26 GB to upgrade the OS, you twit.
• NatureBox customer service. 48 hours and they haven't responded to my help desk inquiry (aside from the system auto-acknowledgement e-mail). You suuuuuuuuuck
• Verizon, because my home network keeps losing packets.

That's all for now but I'm sure I'll think of more later. Happy Fuck You Friday, mofos.

[theinevitable]

UGHHH this statistics homework is so unhelpful. The assignment is to go through these output printouts from a statistical analysis and do a writeup of the data, but there is no explanation of any of the variables. So I'm writing sentences like "a model that additionally includes CENSUS_ASIAN and CENSUS_HISPANIC explains more variation of CENSUS_UNEMP than a model with only CENSUS_NONHISPWHITE." Are these percentages? number of people per 1000? 10,000? The final exam is apparently going to be all this kind of stuff, and I just find it so uninteresting and fruitless. Going through the class notes, there are examples of how to write understand a writeup, and examples of how to understand the computer output, but nothing about how to turn one into the other. Am I using this number, or that one? That one says adjusted, so maybe it's that one? OK, now I got "9.314." Is that a percentage? An actual number? Is it out of 100?

[theinevitable]

my professor sent me an email telling me he liked my comment on the class facebook page. It was nice to hear, but... you know... if only there were some easy function to let people know you like their facebook post.

I am the only person who ever posts anything there, so clearly I am setting myself up to be well-liked by my classmates.

Yesterday I went to a party in brooklyn and it was a very particular stereotype, but maybe not the one you're thinking of. It was a bunch of up-and-comers in fancy clothes drinking expensive liquor in a converted warehouse attic. If you went into there porch you were looking out at the Manhattan skyline.

It's really weird going to NYC and meeting people my age with very professional jobs. My designer friend from STL moved there, and his friends are all web designers for big media companies that I have heard of. Weird.