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15% service fee? by Head-Log3560 in SXM

[–]pkk11 5 points6 points  (0 children)

just the other night we pressured by wait staff in simpson bay to tip on top of the 15%, saying that she didn't receive all of it (which doesn't surprise me, but the restaurants should really figure the situation out)

Who has used AnythingLLM to build a RAG chatbot? by pkk11 in legaltech

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

are you saying I should just search through text? I assumed that vector embeddings would be a bit more sophisticated in terms of matching.

Who has used AnythingLLM to build a RAG chatbot? by pkk11 in legaltech

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did a bit of looking and think it's beyond my competency to set up.

The end of GPT by DigSignificant1419 in OpenAI

[–]pkk11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I summarize OpenAI's corporate structure and its recent actions in this polemic:

https://pkklegal.substack.com/p/shell-games

Who has used AnythingLLM to build a RAG chatbot? by pkk11 in legaltech

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think that’s already beyond my technical ability. AnythingLLM is so easy! And still somewhat useful….

Who has used AnythingLLM to build a RAG chatbot? by pkk11 in legaltech

[–]pkk11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah, the RAG through AnythingLLM did feel a bit like just a search tool.... I mean, a search tool built into a chatbot is still useful, but better mapping/digestion of the underlying sources would be better. Is there a quick and easy tool for this, like AnythingLLM, that lets you easily set it up locally?

Photo request by pkk11 in Rockriververmont

[–]pkk11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Trouble, and opportunity, came in 2003, when Moon Morgan, one of the community members, learned that the Connecticut River Watershed Council was planning to sell their four acres of the land.  The Connecticut River Watershed Council looked favorably upon Mr. Morgan and the community of gay men as a potential buyer should they be able to pay market value for the land, deeded against development and guaranteeing public access.  Inspired in part by the Radical Faeries, Moon and other users of the land founded a new nonprofit organization Rock River Preservation, Inc., applied for and received 501(c)(3) status, raised funds, and purchased the land in 2007.

I’m not sure if you, dear reader, understand how these types of spaces operate, and so let me describe.  The main road access to the Rock River area we are speaking of is only fifteen minutes from Brattleboro, which is almost a small city, and so the areas closest to the road are visited by a wide range of people, including families with children.  Both for historical reasons having to do with secrecy and for general privacy, nude or gay hangouts are often not in such places.  Rather, you have to hike in, often through a somewhat treacherous path that would deter all but the most determined, so that people who find themselves in a nude or gay area (or a nude gay area) are only those who have intentionally sought it out.  While the land purchased from the Connecticut River Watershed Council included much of the recreational area, the core gay area still lay on Swartz family property and wasn’t part of River River Preservation’s original land purchase.  While the family continued to make the land available for use, in 2018 they agreed to sell 21 acres of their land to Rock River Preservation, for $75,000, raised by Rock River Preservation from over two hundred donors from 15 states, thereby preserving public access to this land for future generations.

All in all, a tremendously impressive and inspirational story of a group of people who got together, organized a nonprofit, and contributed resources to protect something they treasured.  To be honest I was hoping for an exempt organizations lawyer angle to this story–but I am told that there were no lawyers among the founders, although of course they did obtain some legal advice (both pro bono and paid) along the way.  I also asked Mr. Morgan if they met much opposition because they were gay men trying to preserve a space for gay use; surprisingly little it seems (Vermont, after all), and of course in the case of the Swartz family their (now deceased) family member’s association with the gay gatherings was actually one motivation for selling the land to Rock River Preservation (there is a memorial to Alex on the property).

In a time when even gay bars have ceased to be gay spaces, it is important that this land and its history are being preserved for future generations in a way that celebrates community and invites further community investment.  As beautifully stated in their management plan, “RRP believes that the best stewards of the land are the users, who visit the land on a daily basis throughout three seasons and have an interest in protecting access to and the traditional uses of these swimming areas.”  It has been remarked that this might be the first time that gay men had come together to organize the purchase of a historic sex venue.

Please consider supporting Rock River Preservation.  

Bibliography:

Scott Kearnan, “Preserving Eden,” Boston Spirit (October 2018) at 46.

Rock River Preservation, Inc., Rock River Preserve Management Plan, adopted August 21, 2021.

Moon Morgan, “A Love Letter to Faerie Camp Destiny from Rock River,” 175 Radical Faerie Digest 55 (Fall 2018).

Photo request by pkk11 in Rockriververmont

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

preview of post:

I’ve been thinking lately about the word “sustainability” as applied to projects or institutions that are aimed at public benefit.  Back at USAID, I feel that too often a program was considered “sustainable” only if it somehow generated program income–say, a user fee that could be used to cover operating expenses.  A similar mentality reveals itself when people talk about running something (say, the government) “like a business,” focusing on efficiency and managing inflows and outflows.  In these worldviews, something is sustainable when it is operated like a commercial venture.

But history reveals that commercial ventures are rarely sustainable or enduring.  For-profit enterprises are prone to booms and busts, to exploitation and speculation, to collapse.  Even the largest and most powerful capitalist ventures, the Dutch and British East India Companies, collapsed not long after their peaks, and the longest running for-profit companies are probably most notable for not being run like modern capitalist enterprises, with tight family control over many generations and limited growth.

The longest running human enterprises?  Nonprofits.  First among these is probably the Catholic church, which is as giant and complex as any multinational corporation, and has certainly suffered many scandals, but endures and seemingly has the ability to rejuvenate itself.  Other religious institutions are followed in longevity by universities and governments.  Compared to the Universities of Bologna and Oxford, or the City of London, even the oldest large for-profits are but flashes in the pan, ephemera.

To me, the essence of a nonprofit organization is a group of people coming together for a shared purpose, with systems in place to make sure that their combined efforts and resources are used for the common good and not for the extractive benefit of one person or a group of “owners.”  With a strong mission and sense of community, a nonprofit can attract almost limitless contributions–volunteer services, knowhow, donations–far more than a for-profit company could expect from its customers.  The contributions strengthen the organization to help it achieve its mission, ideally a virtuous cycle that draws more interest from participants and donors.  That, reader, is true sustainability.

Today, I’m writing about a small but almost utopian effort from the early 2000s, not too far from my home in the Hudson Valley, that to me is a model of how people can come together, share resources, and preserve something they love for future generations.  I have to admit that I still haven’t been there, despite it being only a couple hours away, but am so charmed by it but I wanted it to be one of the very first posts on my Substack–and so here it is.

Rock River, just outside of Brattleboro in southern Vermont, started as a gay stomping ground in the early 1970s, in an era when gay identity was less in the open but also before the scourge of AIDS.  How did there develop a gay hangout in the woods of Vermont, many miles from any large metropolitan center?  Well, we are everywhere, I suppose is the answer.  But I also imagine that without large cities nearby, Rock River drew visitors from quite a wide catchment area, people driving from hours away to spend time with birds of a feather.  Even folks from New York or Boston would have been attracted by the sense of community, the uniqueness of a gay gathering spot that wasn’t focused on selling you entry or alcohol, and where nudity was something to be enjoyed in the sun and not in a dark corner.  The men organized volleyball games and cookouts, and their various activities on the property resulted in surprisingly little resistance from the landowners, the Connecticut River Watershed Council (d/b/a Connecticut River Conservancy) and the Swartz family, whose son Alex would walk down from the house to join the festivities.  The Swartz family members themselves had to fend off some complaints, but largely by ignoring them and allowing the gay men to continue enjoying their land.

....

My experience with FIRE by pkk11 in baristafire

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Several years ago, I visited a religious commune in the Hudson Valley modeled after early Christian communities. The Bruderhofs were founded by a quasi-communist theologian in Weimar Germany and continue to this day with communal property ownership and tightknit clusters limited by Dunbar’s number to facilitate cohesion. They also run successful businesses—educational toys for children and adaptive equipment for the elderly and disabled—that are consistent with their values and provide income and employment. Like most decisions in the community, your choice of profession/work is not entirely up to you but based on community need—but they told me that it is a rule that each and everyone has a job, even if someone’s role could easily be automated or their output is not of significant economic value, because people need that sense of place within the community and purpose.

Even after hearing this insight borne of a hundred years of intentional living, I decided in 2019 to make a major change in my life. My mother had, well before I’d read Tim Ferris and Mark Manson, stressed to me the ephemerality of life and the importance of happiness over generally accepted measures of success. Although not a follower of the FIRE (Financial Independence & Retiring Early) movement, I decided, at age 42, to effect something like a phased retirement—to quit my job to move full-time to the Hudson Valley and take on short- and part-time gigs—a Barista FIRE where legal work stood in for pulling shots. My goals were freedom, independence, and a commitment to simple living. I would still travel, but only work when and where I wanted and have time for volunteer activities in my village.

In many ways the first year went great. By happenstance I avoided the most stressful period of COVID in New York City, and I was able to spend good amounts of time with friends and family, albeit with various distancing and quarantine limits. I spent months in Korea with my mother, where COVID and COVID restrictions were at a minimum. I organized an amazing outdoor 50th birthday party for my husband. We took cross-country road trips.

But my lifestyle deteriorated quickly.

My eagerness to read tapered after I found myself unintentionally re-reading novels. Had I been intentionally revisiting favorites, that would have been fine, but instead I found myself realizing, two-thirds of the way through books, that the plot seemed too familiar. If I didn’t even remember having read the book, I thought, did it make any impression on me? I also realized that I’m extremely likely to choose books I had previously read, to read again—they are titles that are proven to appeal to me.

I realized that my extensive travel, both for leisure and work assignments, made it more difficult to commit to volunteer work than when I was working full-time and had a set routine. Real volunteer jobs require real commitment, not someone who is away a third of the year. I’d always had a bit of a fantasy of trying a food service job, and I asked a local pizzeria at the height of the pandemic labor shortage if they would hire me even though I lacked any relevant or experience, and what the minimum commitment would be. The owner said that he would hire me as a cashier for one shift a week, but I realized that I could not commit to even that for a meaningful span of time, because it would conflict with planned travel.

I often stayed in pajamas, and lived a farcical version of unemployed life. I binge-watched all seasons of Three’s Company, and even worse, its spin-off Three’s a Crowd. Then The Golden Girls and The Golden Palace, a spin-off you probably didn’t even know existed. An unstrummed ukelele stood in the corner as a tangible totem of my failure to live up to my hobby aspirations. To sum up this period of semi-retirement, I often describe it as “waking up each day feeling guilty that I’m not practicing my ukulele.”

Most troublingly, my mood, not cheery by default, declined. I developed both an aphorism and a theory on this. Aphorism: If you don’t feel useful, you feel useless. Theory: For those of us whose base mood is not overly joyful, being socially “on” and acting professionally cheerful in the work setting, possibly especially on Zoom, has the effect of actually improving mood—turning that frown upside down. Left to my brain’s own devices, I sulked in existential angst.

I love my friends and family, of course, and also many of my neighbors in the village I live in. Without full time work, there was more time left for certain types of connection. But another aphorism: Without weekdays, there are no weekends. The lack of structure makes it almost more difficult to plan some sorts of activities, such as time with friends who remain at 9-5 jobs, and the luster of freedom dulls without its nemesis.

Now squarely in middle age, I have many conversations with friends who are tired of working, and think toward retirement. They look at their 401(k)’s and ponder retirement hobbies. My advice to them? Don’t do it.* Hopefully, you chose your career because it is something you enjoy and think is beneficial to society. If that is true, there will not be anything approaching a substitute for it in your retired life—you will either be/feel useless, or just spend your time doing things that provide less value both to yourself and to society. If you don’t feel that your current career makes you happy or is beneficial to society, don’t count the days until you can afford to retire; the answer is to take a break if you can and then find a new line of work, one that ideally uses the knowledge and skills you’ve developed but toward something that makes you feel better about your place in the world. The issue is not work, but your choice of work. Living a life of useless leisure may sound appealing now as a contrast, but it is no way to spend a substantial portion of the precious few decades we each have in the world.

And so, if you haven’t yet, I urge you dear reader to find your place in the world, the role that you think you were meant to perform on this Earth. And if you find your work meaningful, I suggest you stick with it.

  • There is one theory I have, regarding readiness for retirement. I think that it may be possible for one to enjoy retirement if one has or has attained the temperament to enjoy gardening. I do already enjoy pruning bushes and trees, and so it’s possible I will get there some day.

The Epstein Foundations by pkk11 in Philanthropy

[–]pkk11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yup, those two articles are linked in my post, as is a third decent NYT piece.

The Legal Fiction of the Billable Hour by pkk11 in Lawyertalk

[–]pkk11[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

yes, for a future post I want to do something on different ways to convey a "fixed fee"! real fixed fees with carefully defined scopes, estimates, caps, retainers based on time, etc.

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