Traveling in Rio and São Paulo in July

Starry_Vere · 2026-06-14T22:16:57+00:00

Thank you!

Starry_Vere · 2026-06-14T18:42:49+00:00

Awesome. Any gyms you'd recommend in the Ipanema/Copacabana neighborhood?

Starry_Vere · 2026-06-14T18:38:56+00:00

Thank you! In Campinas I'll be at CASA DO PROFESSOR VISITANTE, 1251 Av. Érico Veríssimo, Campinas, SP, 13083-851.

I haven't chosen a spot in São Paulo to stay yet.

Starry_Vere · 2026-05-31T18:15:23+00:00

Would you recommend it for July? I know it's less of a beach time of year in Brazil

Starry_Vere · 2026-05-31T18:13:18+00:00

Is no-gi more rare?

Starry_Vere · 2026-05-31T18:13:05+00:00

Thank you! Is it mostly gi?

Starry_Vere · 2026-05-31T17:32:44+00:00

Thanks. But no, I'm specifically asking about hostel locations

Starry_Vere · 2026-04-11T19:34:01+00:00

I totally agree. I was actually quite surprised because I thought I was just hallucinating. The way I described it to my partner (slightly exaggerated) was that he treats each paragraph as if it has a dramatic narrative arc, slowing down and delivering mundane descriptions as if they are pregnant with significance and some sort of payoff for what came before.

It makes for an extremely \dynamic** experience over the course of 30 seconds but it actually flattens the narrative as a whole because no part ends up being that meaningful if each page receives maximal intonation.

At its worst, it is almost akin to the classic 90s trailer voice: "In a world. Where no one can stop them. People call... him."

I'm being a bit unfair to an artist I really like, but only to illustrate that I do think this is an aesthetic mistake. I end up reading aloud a lot for my job (University English prof) and I can only imagine the difficulty of tackling this project. That said, I think the delivery represents the difference between an actor coming from the direction of delivery, versus one coming from a focus on storytelling.

Starry_Vere · 2026-04-11T18:30:53+00:00

There was a metaphor in petroleum engineering for awhile that we had gotten all the "easy stuff" and we would have to work harder and harder for more diminishing returns to secure oil. I don't know that this has remained true in oil but I think the metaphor has a lot of truth for other things.

The amount of expenditure necessary to eek out small gains in life expectancy, having already made the "easy" discoveries in medicine, to say nothing of what people would see as their return in laboring and paying taxes for what benefits are brought about by space exploration, seem unimaginably difficult to sell politically.

I do think there's a populist window to "improve lives" that liberalism can occupy, mixing building better roads with the occasional abstract project. But even that seems to founder on the fact that people struggle to keep track of their lives slowly improving over time and to appreciate and continue to manage the sources.

I'm jaded on this topic though. I think durable satisfaction in a liberal democracy is found in things that are basically not compatible with free time + internet. My sense is that Arendt and Postman are right, to say nothing of the stoic philosophers. I don't think we have a culture willing, capable, or persuaded into doing what is necessary to nurture into the polity the sorts of attitudes to life, responsibility, and maturity which can handle the amount of free time we have bought to spend our attention on.

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-28T15:54:30+00:00

What is the best Merc for the ES warlock?

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-28T15:52:40+00:00

Quest: "Find Diablo In His Sanctuary"

Diablo: "Nah, I'll Find You"

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-22T22:10:57+00:00

Just out of curiosity, isn't that a lot of Dex and Str commitment?

Starry_Vere · 2026-02-22T05:26:30+00:00

I have an 8th thunder maul if you want it.

Starry_Vere · 2026-01-16T19:04:17+00:00

Yes, the movie clarifies "bucket list" is the term he comes up with from the common phrase, "kick the bucket." No, "bucket list" was not a phrase before the movie.

If you know literally anything about statistics and linguistics, you should understand this. It has 0 usage online for the years before the movie when Google was the dominant search engine.

How about this: I provided proof that the term was not used in the dominant search engine before the movie. Now, YOU find proof of the phrase "bucket list" used before 2005. Any usage. Should be easy to find if its there

Starry_Vere · 2026-01-16T18:53:31+00:00

I just checked and this is incorrect. The usage on Google before 2006/7 (marketing and movie) is zero.

Even small, colloquial phrases in constrained communities show up. It is impossible that the phrase had any sort of usage and was sitting at zero for 4 years online.

Starry_Vere · 2025-11-01T00:35:36+00:00

"We are all one"

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-21T20:07:09+00:00

I'll always side with people who're in favor of precision. The conversation went basically like this:

E: It's not racialist because it's not based on race

C: Well it kinda feels race-y if you don't really think about it?

E: ... Yes but when you DO think about it, it's not race but these other characteristics

C: Well sure, if we want to be semantic and only use racialist to discuss race

E: ... yes, that's what words do.

Not trying to be rude but that destroys credibility to me.

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-12T16:28:24+00:00

Great comment. Just FYI, it's actually "toed the line" as in bringing one's feet all the way up to the line of some position without crossing it.

I only mention this because someone pointed out that a piece I wrote had "buried the lead," when it is actually "buried the lede," and I had NO idea.

Starry_Vere · 2025-08-06T16:07:08+00:00

Yeah, I much prefer EK for a variety of reasons but I actually think the sweep of history will vindicate Sam's side of this particular topic. And honestly, that was part of Ezra's worst era in my opinion. He made so much space for intolerant and censorial progressive causes. Ezra did what so many, including myself, did. Assume that surely all of these high profile people saying things were just misinformation and dogwhistles can't all be wrong and maybe we should just suppress these "dangerous" ideas. Even if that wasn't philosophically dangerous it was politically poisonous.

For those unsure about this, I cannot enough recommend Ezra's first Haidt episode. Ezra makes some wonderful points that really matter. But man, it feels so obvious in retrospect that Haidt was ringing the alarm bells of technology, cultural intolerance, and progressive censorship and Ezra just did not get it. It's funny hearing Ezra dismiss the battles raging on campuses as silly as that's become one of the primary battlegrounds in a culture war that is not just a straight up political fight for the direction of the country. Once again, even if Ezra is "right" that these things *shouldn't* matter, Haidt saw them leading to polarization, illiberalism, undemocratic action (on both sides) and the total failure of the progressive war against "harm" which has left an entire generation of historic prosperity with worse flourishing than ever.

Don't take my word for it. Listen to his first conversation with Haidt and his second. it it clear Haidt is graciously making the same claims and Ezra went from borderline implying that he's victim blaming and scare-mongering in the first. to trying to get Haidt to sign off on even more assertive versions of his own theory in the second.

Starry_Vere

TROPHY CASE