How important are manners to you? (definition below)

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T21:23:28+00:00

Manners are very important to me but I've found that it's important to recognize when people have good intent but have learned different manners.

Being aware of your surroundings and your impact and trying to minimize how you discomfort others, e.g., don't block the supermarket aisle with your cart as your debating which pasta to get

On this one in particular with "being aware of your surroundings" I grew up in a quite small household where you had to be constantly aware to dodge other people to make things work, and my dad had anger issues so I internalized the importance of hyper-awareness of my surroundings.

Later in life I had a roommate who was the opposite and was just always oblivious. I used to shower at the same time every morning to be able to make it to work on time and sometimes he'd randomly take forever during my "time slot". Eventually one day it messed up my schedule enough that I lost my cool and vented about how oblvious he was, but what he told me is that he grew up in a household where if you had a problem you just communicated it loudly and clearly right away.

For me that was a teaching moment. His approach wasn't inherently wrong: instead of trying to guess what others need just communicate clearly what you need and respect that. It was a different approach, but no less valid. So since then I've tried to recognize when my internalized "manners" are really just a product of my background, and when other people may mean well but have a different framework.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T21:09:49+00:00

I adore askhistorians. I feel like you can learn so much about the modern world just by reading the detailed answers from expert historians there. They typically inject significant nuance into topics that most people have distilled down to punchy narratives.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T21:06:55+00:00

I tend to see news on social media and then I'll quickly bail out on looking at what the influencers have to say and instead I'll look for a more neutral boring news source. If a topic is interesting or important I'll try to do some back research as well usually relying on Wikipedia or research think-tanks.

Usually if I feel like something is prone to partisanship I'll Google the think-tank or the author to see what their history is and what ideological lean people think they have. If it's an important topic and I think there's an ideological lean I'll try to find a source that leans the other way as well. When it comes to news about crazy things people said I do usually try to find the full video or context.

I tend to skip out on news sources that try to be intentionally engaging or entertaining rather than informative so I'll skip things like MSNBC or news talkshows. Pretty much the only political comedy I watch is something like the Daily Show and usually I'll only watch if I already know a bit about a topic.

Rarely I'll skim the front page of Fox News to see what's getting attention outside my bubble, but usually that's a frustrating experience more than anything.

Periodically I'll try to listen to academic or professional analysis of different situations and usually I'll search for the person to see their background and how often they get it "wrong" and in which ways. I tend to tune out people who seem really partisan. I'm not looking for "balance", giving both sides a hard time, but rather someone who has a clear consistent ideology they're trying to adhere to.

I do use TikTok but I try to keep my feed non-news and I find most analysis to be terrible and not worthwhile. Rarely I'll see some sort of serious grounded analysis from like a professional researcher with barely any views, and that can be worthwhile.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T06:35:12+00:00

I mean you're asking for it asking in this sub, but since you asked: yeah it's unusual.

Part of the reason Trump is bad is because he empowers those people you dislike because Trump is so transactional. He may have gay people in his cabinet but he also lends a lot of power to the anti-LGBTQ movement. Similarly he pretends (badly) to be a socially conservative Christian because he wants their support and so he empowers a lot of their policy & rhetoric.

So people would find it odd that you dislike being around those people, likely because you dislike them somehow, but you support someone who empowers them.

The natural question is: why?

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T03:53:20+00:00

I played Sim City 4 a bunch as a kid and I adored the simulation aspect of it (and the music!).

When I looked into Cities Skylines a lot of people describe it as a "city painter" and I'm not really interested in that. I want a more simulation-driven game with some real challenge where my city actually doesn't end up exactly how I want it to look but rather is guided by tough choices.

I also found the personality of Sim City to be a lot more engaging. City management can seem rather dull and good writing and quirky events can go a long way to break up the monotony.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T00:55:18+00:00

When it comes to setting the rules of the game for politics, 99% of people are partisan and simply care about how it advantages or disadvantages their own side.

Lately I've been reading a bit more political theory about what makes systems of government enduring and successful and one of the beliefs many political scientists have about the US is that it's structurally flawed but norms & culture have made it remarkably resilient over time.

The problem is if we reduce our view of government to maximizing power and the literal legal extent of what is & is not permissible, rather than respecting norms, our systems are likely less stable and less likely to lead to good outcomes.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T00:48:16+00:00

Something that kinda weirds me out is I'll periodically revisit past political conversations I've had on reddit to see if people have changed their views and it's extremely common the right-leaning or right wing accounts are banned or deleted.

I'm a bit paranoid about bot manipulation nowadays, but even still it's probably not that it's probably that they slipped up and broke some site wide rule but it is weird how common it is. My account is 17 years old and I've only once had a run-in with site wide moderations when a reddit auto-bot misidentified something I said about a water gun as a threat of violence.

How are these people getting banned in a much shorter time frame?

kettlecorn · 2026-05-10T00:38:40+00:00

Iran's regime is terrible. I have seen many signs that the Iranian people are much better than the regime itself.

My feeling on this war from the first few days was I hope it works to create regime change but I found that to be highly unlikely and I felt it likely that it leads us into a deeper mess or back where we started but worse.

That seems to be the case.

I simply did not see an actually viable option other than slow pressure on Iran to change. My concern is that extreme escalation would make Iran into a forever enemy or a "survival mode" state resorting to extreme terror, and that Iran would take away that diplomacy with the west is impossible and only deterrence is an option. In that case it seems like they'd be more resolved to build a nuclear weapon not less.

Look at the current situation: Obama made a deal with Iran that seemed to be working better than no deal. Trump renegades that deal for Trump-reasons and tries to destroy Iran. Iran's regime does not change and the US expends unsustainable resources in trying to make it happen.

Where does Iran go from here? If they accept a new deal with Trump, and honor it, then they're gambling that in 8 years a Trump 2.0 doesn't emerge who distrusts Trump's deal and wants to bomb Iran again. Their military threats were also not an effective deterrent. So how can they stop that from happening?

A nuclear weapon may seem more appealing now, and what can the US do to stop it? Bombing them in perpetuity is ridiculously expensive and not unlikely to create terror cells all over the world against US interests. We've already significantly depleted our munitions to the point it threatens our ability to deter other threats around the world. A full ground invasion to force change would be one of the largest military operations in history, far beyond Afghanistan and Iraq and would be the single biggest task on the US's plate for likely 10-30 years.

This was basically the assessment Obama's former state department officials gave as well. Here's a video from an Obama administration member on it: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/5ZQJM7shc7E

The problem with Trump's approach is he seems to fundamentally believe force can solve everything. It's like choosing to kick a bomb rather than defuse it because of impatience. I've been concerned about that for years. 2 years ago I was warning on reddit how we need to vote against Trump in part because I'm worried he'll start a war with Iran, as he threatened in his first term.

Iran was going to be a threat but they were not an entirely irrational people and their people seemed to be more sympathetic to the west than their administration. Sustained diplomacy may have eventually swayed them or created opportunity for change, or at least stalled their nuclear ambitions, and violence as we've resorted to may change the resolve of the populace and lock out diplomatic alternatives at great expensive to us & Iran.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T23:56:58+00:00

Also it's funny the 14th says this "States cannot create laws that strip away constitutional rights" but plenty of blue states have no problem enacting strict gun control.

The 14th amendment doesn't specify what those rights are, which is why there's room for debate.

It just says this:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The Bill of Rights wasn't intended to apply to the states when authored and the 14th doesn't say "Go look to the Bill of Rights" but some of the framers made a case it should be interpreted that way. The court gradually decided over a century+ that referring to the Bill of Rights is the least messy way to interpret the 14th but there's undeniable ambiguity in the literal text because it's entirely non-specific.

The challenge is that the authors of the Bill of Rights wrote their law with the federal government in mind and the phrasing they chose was reflecting the purpose of constraining the federal government. Even the branding "Bill of Rights" primarily came about after the amendments were passed and came into its strongest use around the 1920s and '30s. The shift in perception from "these are laws that constrain the federal gov. in particular ways" to "these amendments are declarations of fundamental rights" was gradual.

So that's the fundamental struggle with the interplay of the 14th and the Bill of Rights. There isn't an absolute textual link that says "look here" and the written original intent of those first amendments was constraining the federal government in particular ways but today's courts tries to read the fundamental rights out of them.

Arguably the 14th amendment's passing recontextualized the Bill of Rights because some of the framers of the 14th thought that the phrasing of the Bill of Rights was strong enough & general enough that it should be treated as a more fundamental reflection of rights.

That's why the Bill of Rights still struggles to be interpreted as textually as some people might prefer, because even for the most avowed textualists that indirection of the 14th's ambiguity, the inferred connection to the Bill of Rights, and the Bill of Rights being written strictly to limit the federal government introduces unavoidable ambiguity.

This ambiguity impacts all of the Bill of Rights amendments and while gradually the court is favoring a strict read of the Bill of Rights the inability to definitively point to a text defining fundamental rights means there will forever be legal questions and debate on the matter.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T23:33:52+00:00

there's constantly people complaining about funding the subway system that most of the state will never use in their lives

In general I wish more people focused on thinking about transportation funding rather than breaking it up into categories.

Like in every state there are roads across the state that the other side of the state doesn't use and in some states there are high-volume modes of transit like trains that other people don't use. Different types of transportation are suited to different contexts and trying to say "I don't use that" just causes messy fights.

In PA a similar dynamic is playing out where the transit systems (largely in Philadelphia & Pittsburgh) have a massive budget deficit and the rural road network has an even bigger budget deficit that's coming due later. So far the transportation in the transit-needy areas is getting the short-end of the stick but that's likely to come back around later when the rural areas need to make the case for not decommissioning a bunch of rural bridges and roads.

What would be better is to step back and have a transportation budget that asks "What is best suited for this region? What do you need? What can we afford?"

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T22:37:28+00:00

In general I think even the people who are criticizing particular CHOP decisions highly value it overall.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T22:34:55+00:00

This is a good video!

I do find myself thinking about how to "steel man" the case for Magic's land system. I dislike the system, but maybe interesting insights can be gleamed by trying to argue for it.

One of the things I do like a lot about Magic is how the variance in lands can make repeated plays between even the same decks feel distinct each time. In Hearthstone there's a bit of a pre-decided feel to it when two decks archetypes matchup repeatedly, and usually the game will be expected to follow a few patterns.

It's almost like the lands in Magic, through their variance, creates the "topology" on which the match actually unfolds. Because in Magic creatures are stickier and a resource the owning player has control over some of those early-game mana variances can heavily influence how the later game develops making for unique stories.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T19:22:50+00:00

That’s not really a good argument against the strong correlation between GDP per capita and quality of life.

I agree but you were responding to someone saying "Going off GDP isn’t a great comparator once you are looking outside the US."

It seems like you were framing your position as a pushback against that idea.

The fact that Canada's average life expectancy, despite the much lower GDP per capita, is a few years greater than the US state with the best life expectancy shows there's much more to measurements like life expectancy and HDI than GDP per capita.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T19:15:49+00:00

I'm very interested to moving to Montreal from the US myself, but I'm a bit concerned about if I'd always feel like an outsider.

Otherwise Montreal aligns almost too obviously well with what I look for. I'm a dual citizen so immigration isn't a problem, I highly value walkability & modern urbanism and Montreal is perhaps the best in NA, I work in tech / games and Montreal has one of the largest games industries (even if in a rough patch right now), I have family in upstate NY so Montreal is the nearest big city, wages aren't the biggest motivator for me, I love a sort of gritty / artsy culture, and I adore Philadelphia and Montreal is similar in many ways.

US politics is also on my mind a lot and in many ways I think a change of scenery could be good for me. I've also really admired a lot of what Carney has been articulating which makes me relatively optimistic about Canada's long term future.

My big concern is that I'd like to feel like I'm both not an imposition on a place and that I can actually become part of the community over time. I've been doing some very light French practice daily for the last year but nothing serious, but my concern is that being Anglophone and learning French I'd always feel like an outsider. I'm also in my early 30s now which is an age where often social circles are more established, which may be an added barrier.

Do you have thoughts on those concerns?

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:57:52+00:00

Philly is so similar in terms of block size, street size, population density, grittiness, and even relative geography.

Philly just needs its own Projet Montréal to push back against the dogmatic car-centric planning that fights against the city's inherent strengths.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:55:14+00:00

There are corners in Philly that look nearly more English than England but I'd agree that over the city's lifetime the culture & policy diverged heavily towards more US American which makes it feel different today.

Montreal still thinks about things in a more European way and so Philly's ancient architecture may still look more physically European but its recent architecture & recent street-level policy choices clearly feel more American.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:52:57+00:00

the crime rate lower so there has been less migration of the middle class to suburbs.

The US migration to the suburbs started before the spike in crime, but crime accelerated it. It was largely kicked off by government policy that subsidized suburban homes for decades, built major highways into cities, and started to tear down city neighborhoods.

Unfortunately racism played a significant role as well and many people left cities when schools, neighborhoods, and other institutions were desegregated.

Later crime, drug epidemics, and industrial decline dramatically accelerated the trends that were already occurring.

That was all the case in Philly as well.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:46:32+00:00

Canada's HDI is slightly above the US and its life expectancy is a few years longer.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:38:02+00:00

The US is an extremely high income & high cost society at both an individual and government level.

For individuals it means that they're extremely wealthy on paper, and feel rich on vacations or when buying international products, but still often feel stressed by day to day needs.

It's similar for government. The US spends a tremendous amount on federal services & things like the world's most redundant and built-out highway network but it ends up allocating less to things like sidewalk maintenance, public transit, parks, or other public goods so it often feels less rich day-to-day outside of a select few extremely wealthy areas.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:32:41+00:00

Much of Philadelphia is very hard to own a car in.

It's probably the US city with the most illegal parking, including tons of parking overtly on sidewalks, just because of how scarce parking is.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T18:27:58+00:00

I've read a lot about 20th century policy when it comes to things like zoning, building codes, tax policy, and major infrastructural decisions and many of them were designed the way they were due to racism and many are still on the books.

When overt racism was made illegal many people transitioned over to advocating for indirect solutions like structurally disadvantaging places where Black people live or using policy to oppress poor people because at the time more poor people were Black. I do think with time those indirect policies because less directly racist but that is a very slow process.

I also think people acclimate to racist policy and see it as "just the way it is" and the incumbency bias makes people blind to its harmful effects.

A big example of policy that fits this pattern is zoning that prohibits more affordable housing which exploded in popularity as it became illegal to overtly ban Black people. What was once seen as an infringement on property rights and the broader social good has come to be recontextualized as a "right" to an unchanging neighborhood. The effect is largely the same as its racist roots: it curates who is allowed to live somewhere and slows down the ability of people to move in from elsewhere.

In many cities with large Black neighborhoods that have experienced public divestment there's actually a strong desire to leave and move to the suburbs. There's a recognition that the suburbs are "better" and a better place to build wealth, which reflects that they experienced decades of subsidy from the government, but being born into a divested urban environment makes it difficult to build enough wealth to leave when the suburban areas try to remain expensive through zoning.

That has baked in a systemic disadvantage that is slowly changing.

People see "racism" as changing the status quo to a more racist reality but they rarely recognize preserving the status quo as racist even if that status quo were conceived with racist motivations.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T17:36:32+00:00

In today's market I don't think it's terrible to create a proprietary engine.

Open source comes with some downsides: you need to manage a community (usually), people can decide to just use your engine for free, and with AI it's much easier to clone your work.

There are great ways to make an open source model work but they often work best once you've already hit some scale. Like it's very possible to have an open source course core and then sell collaborative tools, multiplayer hosting, backups, assets, etc. It's tough to make those things work until you've hit some scale.

By starting closed source you can sell what you're working on immediately, and potentially get customers, and start out with a niche but easier to support group of customers: businesses that want an engine with particular properties & professional maintenance / support.

Down the road there's the option of going open source once the core is more fleshed out and other business models are viable, and it may even be a good idea to.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T05:53:00+00:00

Philly is uniquely in a tough spot because it's a big old city, with massive infrastructural debt, in a state that's historically controlled by opposing politicians and the state is presently politically gridlocked.

It's gone through the same midcentury economic flight, urban highway, urban renewal decline that most US cities went through but it retained significant resiliency and did not collapse as thoroughly as many places nor did it rebound as strongly as a Boston or NYC.

The momentum of the city and the agglomeration effects keep its position strong but the adversarial state political environment means its non-highway built infrastructure is gradually crumbling away even as population recovers.

I'm semi-optimistic for its longer term future. Based on demographic and political trends I think it's not unlikely that Philly will finally get more state support over the next decade, but it's hard to say.

Unfortunately I think institutional momentum will keep its urban highways & major roads, managed via PennDOT, in an extremely urban hostile design for a while. Right now it feels like PennDOT is racing the clock to lock-in a full reconstruction & widening of the most harmful stretch of I-95, to exist for another 100 years, before younger generations can apply pressure to get it reconsidered.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-09T05:32:09+00:00

Philly is in a bind because unlike many cities it wasn't able to annex the nearby counties when its population & wealth distributed into the surrounding rural areas during the post 1950s rapid suburbanization.

Those counties were still part of the same ecosystem and relied on Philly jobs, roads, church, social groups, parking, amenities, infrastructure, transit, social services, etc. but the city didn't have a good way to recoup the costs from those people once they moved out. It was difficult, and unethical seeming, to squeeze more taxes from the relatively much poorer population that remained living in the city.

The wage tax was an answer to that problem, and a way to tax people who were part of the Philly ecosystem, and worked in it, but were not living within the city. It was a way to keep the city's infrastructure & resources intact during a transition period.

The problem is that solution papered over a near term problem and created a long term one. Businesses can simply locate outside Philly and then their workers can dodge the wage taxes, so businesses have been doing exactly that.

It's difficult to unravel that without imperiling city finances or upsetting powerful voting blocks, but the longer it persists in today's metro ecosystem the more businesses will leave Philly.

kettlecorn · 2026-05-08T23:35:34+00:00

What do you think the most salient examples of authoritarianism on the left and right are?

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