“Budgets are shock absorbers for money stress”
I have and will in the future continue to extoll the benefits of YNAB and managing a budget in general. While people often view budgets as this constraining thing preventing them from using their money for what they want, the entire opposite is true. Budgets are just shock absorbers for money stress. If you handle your budget correctly, you should assign the money you have into the categories you want to use it for. You plan ahead for things you know you’ll have to pay for. But you also prepare for the known unknowns. Meaning, you don’t know when your car will break, what it will be, or how bad it’s going to be. But you can be sure it’ll happen in some point in the future, and you can estimate, roughly, how much it’s going to cost. So let’s say you even did that but your car broke and it costs more than you thought. Well, because you assigned your money to categories according to how you want to spend it, you have money assigned to less important, more quality of life categories, or you have a lot of money in important categories that you can be fairly sure you won’t need in the immediate future. You can take that to cover the extra cost of that car repair. The result is: you suffered a setback but you properly prepared for it and you know exactly where it hit, how much, and how it will affect the rest of Continue Reading →
Posted in No Category and tagged Advice, Thoughts, YNAB by Eran with comments disabled.
The Nürnberg Defense of Gaming
As far as I know, this idea is a very common one (even if not commonly called that) but I was still surprised that no one did a write up of it (that I could find). So, here it is, with my thoughts. Known also as “That’s what my character would do!”, the Nürnberg Defense of Gaming is used by players who defend their own fun of playing an asshole over the fun of other players who would like to not have to suffer assholes. Just like you know who (or who you think used that defense before). While I’m all in favor of people investing in their character’s… character, when you are playing a roleplaying game, you are playing a social game. As another axiom of TTRPGs says, “The only way to play wrong is if someone isn’t having fun”. So, if you are playing in any way that makes any other player miserable, it’s up to you to change. That’s basically it. I was thinking of what else I can say about it but it pretty much boils down to this simple rule: If you’re playing in a way (including your character’s mannerisms) that makes someone else at the table miserable or ruining their fun, then you’re the asshole and you’re playing wrong. If you don’t agree, prepare to be ejected from your group some time in the future.
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The Loss of Honor
Responding to an episode of Simon Sinek’s podcast again… We are missing a lot without honor. I agree that honor is about maintaining moral standards and gentleperson-like behavior. And many religious people who claim to have moral standards rarely have honor. Honor is not necessarily about being of service or being necessary but it’s definitely about not being a harm to society and being a standup citizen. I think the problem we have with the IDF today as opposed to all that we hear from the US army about people being professional, wanting to be there, and being very honorable and easily sacrificing for each other and the greater good, is that in the IDF, we claim to have high moral standards but the soldiers themselves, from what we see in the news, are very dishonorable. Which is funny in a country where one of the most celebrated movies with one of the most celebrated songs is one about honor.
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19 Years
This blog has been up for 19 years counting last Monday. Of course, avid readers remember that I had a blog before this which I made in high school so I’ve been blogging closer to 25 years. This years has been… a thing. I’m just tired about everything. For many reasons. I’m sure you can relate to at least some.
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The Power of a Dog
by Rudyard Kipling and Eran Arbel I love and despise the original song for what it means and I always come back to it.However, despite it still being very strong, I find that it has aged very badly in several respects.So, here’s my riff on it. There is sorrow enough in the natural wayFrom the assholes and dipshits that fill our day;And when we are certain of sorrow in store,Why do we always arrange for more?Fellow Humans, I bid you bewareOf giving your heart to a dog to tear. Adopt a pup and you will recieveLove so strong, undying, that you cannot concieve.With a dog in your life, it’s hard to burn outWhen you can always see, joy in a snoutNevertheless it is hardly fairTo risk your heart for a dog to tear. When those precious years, far too little,Are growing shorter and slower, it’llBe hard to be happy, when that little pupper,Now a tired senior, eating a last supper.Then you will find, that you need to bearThat you’ve given your heart to a dog to tear. When the creature you nurtured, played with its paws,Who greeted you daily, morning, evening, because,When the body runs its course, and will is depleted,You have to let go, father time undefeated.Allow the vet, the final dose, to administerFor you have given your heart to a dog to tear. We’ve sorrow enough, happiness rare,Car crashes, wars, disease, and despair.Our love, like theirs, is the grip of a vice,Once it attaches, it stays there for Continue Reading →
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The Fourth Step of Enshittification
We already know that AI is ruining the internet and if this trend continues, it’ll turn into a vacuous space with 90% bots posting shit and then replying to each other with other shit. But even without AI in the mix, After watching Jenny Nicholson’s video on the Star Wars Hotel I have become painfully aware of the fourth step of Enshittification. After pandering to the investors at the expense of business partners and actual users of the platform, corporations create groundbreaking, disruptive bullshit NERPS that are only there to entice more investors to invest more so they can grow their market share and capitalization without actually releasing anything that people actually want.I think that’s what all this AI bullshit is doing now, just like the Metaverse bullshit last year or the crypto-nft-blockchain bullshit two years ago. They’re just riding the wave of what’s hot in the industry so speculating assholes with too much money and too little sense give them a higher evaluation and a year or two from now it’ll all fizzle out with nothing to show for it except some die hard fans who’ll swear by it, some gullibles who lost their money, and C-Suite dipshits retiring with a golden parachute.
Posted in Humanity, Practice, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with 2 comments.
Cause and Effect is Learned
Simon Sinek’s guests always have interesting insights about society and practice and Dr. Michael Muthukrishna is no different. What caught me most about this episode is what he said about the most basic function of human fourth-dimensional thinking. I thought the ability to see a series of events and expect the next is just something you get used to. It’s how you teach your automatic motor functions to catch a ball when it’s thrown to you. Apparently, it’s a much more learned phenomenon and not something just inherent to the human existence. I did, in the past, work for an auto-safety initiative in teaching young drivers how to be better faster. The most important thing on that curriculum is the biggest difference between new drivers and experienced ones is the depth and breadth of fourth-dimensional thinking. I explained to them how an experienced driver looks a lot further ahead, takes in the situation, and expects where dangers and obstacles could come from, adjusting their driving accordingly. This also explains the person looking at me as I was riding my bike towards them and their dog blocking the entire road and only clearing some space for me when I stopped and gave them a questioning look.
Posted in Humanity, Thinking Out Loud by Eran with comments disabled.