I was curious if that would work on ethernet cable! I’ve seen it done on coax, wasn’t sure if it would work well enough on UTP to be useful outside a lab setting. Cheap too. Cool!

Wire tracker maybe? You might want a higher quality version than that particular one if the cable run is long, one of the reviews suggest that the distance is limited.

That’s what I did, but it was the late 1990s so things were a bit different. Married with a kid, single-income household on the salary of a high school dropout. Fortunately for me the software industry was easy to get into back then and housing was cheaper. Funds were tight for a decade or so, but it’s gone well.

My kids all moved out in the past 5 years, skipped college and are living on their own with livable wages from jobs they like, more or less, and homes they own; one with kids, one renting their own place with a life-partner. Not having student loans helps, as does living in the forsaken US midwest where housing costs aren’t terrible (the tradeoff being that entertainment options can be more limited than closer to the coasts. A decent one bedroom apartment in a safe area is like $900, mortgage on a somewhat crappy medium-sized house like $1200, provided you got in on those sweet 3% mortgages).

There was a plan? Someone could have told me about that 40 years ago!

Seriously though, yeah, I guess. Not completely a traditional plan since I skipped the whole university and singles life part and instead went right to work, got married and had kids (which turned out great, kids all moved on to do their own stuff by the time I was 40, so now I have money and health at the same time, which would be pretty cool if I had some time).

TBH neither my partner nor I give a flying fuck about traditional anything, we just kinda do what sounds like fun and isn’t too likely to fuck things up for future us. Not a whole lot of long-term planning going on over here.

No, I agree that allegiance is a behavioral motivator, but I think it is distinct from loyalty and that people tend to conflate the concepts (similar to how people sometimes conflate or confuse infer/imply and borrow/lend).

Loyalty, a behavior, can be observed; allegiance, a commitment (maybe supported by emotion, maybe not), cannot.

loyalty is earned

For me, it’s not even that. Loyalty is not owed, nor is it earned. It is nothing more than a description of behavior.

Think of it this way: I always do my grocery shopping at Target instead of Walmart, even if I see that something is slightly cheaper at Walmart I’ll still most likely go to Target for it. Some might see that and say, “Look, he has loyalty to Target”, assuming that I shop at Target because I am loyal to that brand. But that’s backwards. Really it is that I can be described as ‘loyal’ because I consistently go to that brand. ‘Loyalty’ is a description of the behavior, not the cause of the behavior.

it can be used against you

Only if you have bought into the coercive bullshit that ‘loyalty’ is itself a reason to do something. Employee or customer loyalty is nothing more than an observation that people consistently support the company. That loyal behavior is seen because those people consistently have reasons to support the company. If you observe that people are loyally supporting your company, that is because they have reasons to do so (for example, you might be paying them to show up and do shit. Or maybe they think the shit they are doing is important or fun).

People who want something from you for less than it is worth will try to convince you that loyalty is something you owe them or that they have earned from you because if you believe the lie that loyalty is a reason for action that makes it easier to get you to give them something for free.

IMO acting out of loyalty is never good. That is a backwards application of the concept intended to make you to act against your own interests.

Some people like to flip the idea of loyalty around from a description of behavior to a reason for behavior as a method of manipulating other people.

Like, if people see me consistently supporting my friends even when that is difficult they might think I’m ‘loyal’, but that’s backwards. I’m not supporting them because I am loyal, I support them because I like them and want them to succeed (and hopefully they’ll support me too). If someone wants loyalty from me, that’s an immediate red flag that tells me they either don’t understand why I do things, or they don’t care and just want me to do whatever they want.

Plus he’s just fun to listen to!

all of humanity’s radio communications have traveled about 200 light years from Earth

Also interesting is that because the energy of those signals is spreading out as they move away from their point of origin they become less detectable as they travel. Most signals would fall below practical detection limits before making it halfway to the nearest star. At the extreme, the Arecibo Message, transmitted with a ridiculous ERP, will be detectable to reasonably sized receivers for tens of thousands of light years, assuming they are located along the path of the beam.

Tom Paris and the Cochrane have entered the chat

Does Singer explore how the limits of one’s knowledge about the impacts of their actions might play into the decisions?

Like, I could send $5 to some overseas charity, but I don’t have a good way to know how that money is being used. Conversely, I could use it locally myself to reduce suffering in a way I can verify.

It seems to me that morally I should prioritize actions I know will reduce suffering over actions that may reduce suffering but that I cannot verify. Verification is important because immoral actors exist, so I can’t just assume that moral actions that I delegate to other actors will be carried out. Since it’s easier to have good knowledge about local actions (in particular those I execute personally), this would tend to favor local actions.

The grasslands are underappreciated in my view (good for me, fewer people out there using them!)

I have spent a lot of time out in the Bessey Ranger District near Halsey Nebraska. It’s a nice mix of hand-planted forest and prairie in the sandhills area. Great place to go for a variety of camping options, and really excellent for stargazing because it’s one of the darkest places in the US. I’ve spent many deep-black nights laying on top of my vehicle parked on top of a tall hill listening to the breeze in the grass while watching meteor showers and satellites (saw the ISS go over once, amazing sight!).

The landscape ranges from impenetrably dense forest to wide-open rolling native prairie. You can drive miles of trails (best in a moderate clearance 4x4, and informed by the Motor Vehicle Use Map loaded into the Avenza mobile app) to see seemingly endless interesting areas, and in most places you can pull off the side of the road and set up camp. We are getting into a good time of year to see big puffball mushrooms out there (edible if you like mushrooms).

The other national forest areas in Nebraska are similar, though the forest at Bessey is unique, being the largest hand-planted forest in the US. Also there was a large fire there (last year I think), so it’s a good time to see the recovery process and compare the recently burned areas to the unburned.

National parks are great, but also look for national forests and grasslands, state parks and forests, conservation areas, and BLM land.

National forests/grasslands are my favorite because they are free and well documented. Unfortunately I live in the midwest, so it’s a long-ass drive to the nearest ones, so for short trips I’m usually going to state-owned facilities (also great, but usually not as big or free to use).

As a hobby you can usually practice at home and then take on the road, try some stargazing and sky photography! With a little work most modern phones can do pretty fun astrophotography (not amazing, but interesting enough to make for some fun times, and maybe of interest if you like lenses and shit).

optometry school … focus on the things

heh.

Let’s see… Woodworking, car repair/restoration, home improvement (from redecoration to remodels), kayaking, camping, mild 4x4 offroad stuff, hiking, latte art, playing a banjo very poorly, 3D printing, coding for microcontrollers, coding dumb games, gardening, making my garage shop nicer, book binding, painting (as in walls, not that artistic stuff), making bread, diagraming the nightmare of 100-year-old wiring in my house (planning a rewire), occasional motorcycle rides. Probably some other things I’ve forgotten about.

If you’ll have free time for a while still you could maybe find an easy job to do. If you don’t really need the income there are a lot of things that can be fun.

Coffee shops can be pretty cool, depending on the business there are some interesting things to learn, and it’s generally low-pressure work if you’re not a complete idiot.

If you like cats and dogs animal shelters usually are happy to have volunteers. You’d probably be cleaning up shit a lot of the time, but that’s not hard and you can balance it by giving the critters much-needed and appreciated attention. You can also volunteer to do things like bottle-feeding baby animals, that tends to take a lot of time so shelters are frequently looking for volunteers.