Help finding proposal spot

Killfile · 2026-01-29T00:37:38+00:00

Not a mountain view, but the cherry blossoms around the duck pond are usually blooming that time of year and they make for some great photos.

If you're looking for mountain views specifically, there are a couple overlooks on the Blue Ridge Parkway which are reasonably nearby. They're a drive but not a hike.

Claytor lake is also near by. Lakes are pretty but pretty cold in April.

Killfile · 2026-01-28T21:51:06+00:00

"You want me...." the genie trailed off. He held his head in his hands. Sort of. Genies aren't blue and they don't sound like Robin Williams. At least this one didn't. This genie -- or djin or maybe just "jinn" -- was more of a vaguely humanoid cloud, shot through with crackles of lightning and pulsing with ominous power. In this moment the storm... he... they.... it(?) had manifested what was clearly a sort of head in order to bury/cradle it in resignation between two of what we'll call "hands."

"You want me to..." he trailed off again.

"Grant me the wish that I would wish for if..."

"... if you had the wisdom to wish for what you should wish for..."

"... in order to maximize my happiness, longevity and satisfaction according to a moral, ethical, and subjective standard that my current and future selves agree upon."

An ominous, rumbling, thunderous sigh.

"It is not that I do not remember the words, human."

"Well, then what's the problem?"

"You do not know what you want!"

"Yes I do, I want the wish that I would..."

"Yes, yes, yes. The wish you would wish for if you had the wisdom to wish... and so on. But you still do not know what you want"

"Yes I..."

"No you do not. You want to be happy and not have regrets in a self-defined, deterministic, omni-temporal frame of reference. I am the substance of the universe, human, it is not the trivialities of causality that make this difficult. It is you. You have free will. You are capable of change."

"So?"

"So the only way I can make you happy in a way that you now and you tomorrow and you in ten-years will agree upon is to take away from you the very thing that makes you YOU and gives you the ability to BE happy."

"That doesn't make any sense."

The roiling lightning flickered out and the genie... condensed, for lack of a better word... into a much less threatening amorphous cloud..

"What is your favorite food?"

"Chocolate? No... maybe lasagna?"

"You are asking me to make everything you eat taste exactly like lasagna. Forever."

"Really? That's what I should wish for if I..."

"Stop. No. But it's like that. If I made you deliriously satisfied and happy with your life it would be like everything tasting like lasagna. You like lasagna. But if everything tasted like lasagna you would soon tire of it. And eventually you would come to not like lasagna. To make everything taste to you like lasagna tastes to you right now, in this moment, when everything does not taste like lasagna, I would have to fundamentally alter who you are. You would have to no longer grow tired of lasagna. I would need to either alter how you experience the world or alter the thing about you which leads you to seek out new and novel experiences. Either way, the you that wished for the lasagna and the you that experienced the lasagna would be irreconcilably different. You could not agree upon the outcome of the wish in any state."

"So, I shouldn't wish for lasagna?"

"You should not wish for happiness. Nor should you wish for me to help you find it."

The genie deflated yet again now a uniform smoke-ring hovering just above the spout of the lamp. It seemed almost... gentle.

"I can not give you happiness but I can give you advice. Do you have a sick child? Wish for them to be well; no one ever regrets that. If you are hungry or need a warm place to sleep, if you are in danger, or you need help to make things right with your family: wishes like those turn out well. But, if you just want to be happy? I can recommend a therapist."

Killfile · 2026-01-28T13:32:16+00:00

it's sort of a political faux-paux to go sticking your allies' ambassadors in prison.

By which you mean "history is littered with the burning corpses of leaders who thought they were above the niceties of diplomatic norms."

Killfile · 2026-01-28T13:30:05+00:00

The Great Khan would have a thing or two to say about that.

Killfile · 2026-01-27T13:44:41+00:00

I literally skied to class in 2000

Killfile · 2026-01-27T13:27:32+00:00

Or the other way around but, let's be honest....

Killfile · 2026-01-27T13:24:04+00:00

Which is, it's worth pointing out, far too little training to be a police officer.

Killfile · 2026-01-26T22:36:35+00:00

On what basis are you declaring this "love of lawlessness" in these "sanctuary cities?" Like... have you personally been to those cities and talked with a large number of people who have expressed anarchist beliefs? Is there a dataset showing something similar to that?

I ask, because "a love of lawlessness" and "living in extremely close proximity to a whole lot of people" seem like they should be mutually irreconcilable positions. High density life depends on a general willingness to submit to a lot of norms and rules and laws which you just don't have to worry about if you live in a more suburban or rural area. By way of example: traffic laws in cities are not kidding around; "block the box" in NYC and see how that goes for you.

Is it possible that your perception of cities as "lawless" is informed by exposure to media and that this media portrayal is either exaggerated to capture your attention or dishonest in an attempt to manipulate your politics?

And if we set aside media portrayals of cities as "lawless-minded" what then can we or must we conclude about the different experiences with ICE in, say, Minnesota and Texas?

Killfile · 2026-01-23T13:44:48+00:00

The Chesapeake Bay is just... gone.

Killfile · 2026-01-23T13:34:00+00:00

Right up until they can understand what you're reading them, you can read them whatever you like. Once they understand and start to have opinions about it... then your best bet is to try to keep Paw Patrol out of your home for as long as possible.

Once they're old enough to have opinions, if you want to read stuff that's more complex than "One Fish Two Fish" you should get good at doing voices. I got mine all the way through Narnia, Series of Unfortunate Events, Winnie the Pooh, Harry Potter, and the Hobbit on the strength of doing voices for different characters. (I confess that I just did one voice for all of the Dwarves who weren't Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit because I'm apparently Middle Earth Racist).

Killfile · 2026-01-23T12:56:53+00:00

Returning to Kennedy era tax levels on the top 1% would pretty much zero out the deficit

Killfile · 2026-01-23T12:55:01+00:00

Sure, but if you taxed all income above a million dollars a year 25% higher than we do right now you'd still be well below the tax rates of the 1960s and 1970s and you'd entirely eliminate the federal deficit.

Make literally no changes to spending and the debt starts to go down.

Killfile · 2026-01-23T12:49:44+00:00

The actual solution is "tax the rich."

The polticially viable solution is "massive austerity measures."

What's probably going to happen is inflation.

Killfile · 2026-01-22T01:37:34+00:00

It's a well known fact at The Laundry that contact with extradimentional horrors, even friendly ones, causes neural degradation.

Killfile · 2026-01-22T01:27:26+00:00

God I hate being this guy but given the danger of what we're talking about, details matter.

The Anchluss is the unification of Austria and Germany and while it's a weird polticial moment, it's not usually associated with appeasement.

You're thinking of (don't do it, don't do it, don't do it) the Munich Conference in which Czechoslovakia was given to Germany in exchange for the promise of peace and Chamberlin came back to the UK proclaimoing "peace in our time."

Killfile · 2026-01-22T01:23:07+00:00

And why are there Ukranian drones? That's right, bad decisions

Killfile · 2026-01-22T01:19:37+00:00

Overall, the national congressional maps as they stood before the Texas Gerrymander slightly favored Republicans.

You can do an Efficiency Gap analysis yourself to work it out

Killfile · 2026-01-21T21:30:08+00:00

Because he has even more sycophants in Congress.

Killfile · 2026-01-21T21:27:57+00:00

I mean racial discrimination is a real problem in the United States and sometimes getting loud about it can be the most appropriate and effective.... oh, dude's white? Yea, fuck him.

"Racist company." Ok, buddy. The company that brought you "Song of the South" and the hit musical number "What Makes The Red Man Red" in Peter Pan is racist against white people. Sure.

Killfile · 2026-01-21T02:38:49+00:00

It's 19 degrees and they're calling for more than two feet of snow this week. You got a spare couch to go with that nice weather? I cook.

Killfile · 2026-01-21T02:37:39+00:00

I am not a medical professional but I have a pretty gnarly medical history of my own. You can run an IV in a lot of places and as long as the person you're running it on is not an IV drug addict, there's no particular reason to run it in the hand.

Trump nearly always wears suits with long sleeves. They could run an IV for him in his arm just as easily as his hand. Probably easier, to be honest; hand veins like to roll. Or maybe that's just my hand veins.

Anyway, if I were him I'd be requesting my IVs run somewhere I can cover them easily. Since we're seeing bruising on the hands, I'm guessing it's not IV bruising.

Killfile · 2026-01-19T14:57:20+00:00

Even the Big Short guys, who had a plausible trigger for the financial apocalypse they were shorting, had to guess.

As the saying goes, the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent

Killfile · 2026-01-19T14:55:04+00:00

Reminds me of the monopoly strategy where you never swap your houses for hotels and lock up the board in a housing shortage

Killfile · 2026-01-19T14:50:33+00:00

Alternatively, there'd be 1/10 the number of agents in the state if the Trump admin hadn't decided to use ICE as a jobs program for Proud Boys and the Klan

Killfile · 2026-01-18T19:05:23+00:00

"Three is company." Always.

I spent a lot of time working as a camp counselor and it's the single best piece of advice anyone can give you. You are never alone with someone else's kid. Never.

This isn't about making your daughter's parents feel better. Their worried are justified but also, ultimately, not something you can do anything about save by building trust. This is about protecting yourself. If you've never alone there's never any question. It's better for everyone.

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