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Stanford’s war on social life

palladiummag.com

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Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#121

Post by selectodude »

hyperbovine wrote: post #111
dougmccune wrote: post #15

I spent 3 years living in one of the co-ops briefly mentioned in the article ("In 2013, the administration took over the student-run anarchist house and painted over the old murals."). I wouldn't call it an "anarchist house" but it sure as hell was a lot of fun to live there. I painted some of those murals that are now apparently gone. We built a giant illegal loft in our room to make it two stories (which we would d…

Meanwhile, the coop system at Berkeley is alive and well.

Same with UCLA. Those places were a total whirlwind.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#124

Post by jackcosgrove »

Sometimes it feels like we're living in the second Victorian age. Living sanitized lives and speaking sanitized language, with recurring bouts of moral panic.

Even in the early 00s when I was in college everything seemed to have become lamer than it was just a decade prior. 20th century libertinism peaked in the 70s and has been in retreat since then.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#125

Post by mathogre »

It is a sad, soulless world in which we live today. I went to an otherwise anonymous state college on the east coast in the latter 1970s. One of the fun things I remember was picking up lunch from McDonalds using my former roommate's Ford Pinto. If you're not familiar with the Pinto, look it up. It was a "great" car. Yeah.

Driving to McDonalds was fun and exciting! This Pinto was a 4 speed manual, where the shifter could easily be lifted out of the drive shaft tunnel. But that was trivial in comparison to the fact the brakes were limited to the parking brake. The drive to MickyD's was five to ten miles, including travel on a highway. You plan your stops. A real emergency would be bad, but regular driving was merely interesting. When I got back to my former roommate's house, we enjoyed a great lunch! The drive was fun.

I'm saddened by what Stanford has become. I look at the list of companies founded by Stanford Alumni, and am duly impressed. I look at what the "edges" of the Stanford population is today, and see the end of Stanford dominance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_founded_by_S...

Here are your choices about life. It's wobbling on two wheels until you get it right or depending on training wheels and helmets to keep you safe. It's taking risks or saying, "Mommy, may I?" Mommy's gonna say, "No, honey, I don't want you to get hurt or for you to hurt anyone else."

Training wheels and Mommy's protection?

Fuck that.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#126

Post by sanj »

whymauri wrote: post #118
sanj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was wonderful to read. I lived in a similar beautiful mess, but it still exists! https://pika.mit.edu/

my favorite pika stories are about Pi Kappa Alpha brothers from the South showing up and being extremely confused about the naked people

My favorite story is about the attempt to recreate cold fusion, resulting in a Nova special referring to it as “a secret physics society”.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7GPA_JZxT5w

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#127

Post by mint2 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #35

“Stanford's new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat's vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting.” This is true at MIT as well. Ca…

> a peek into the bureaucrat's vision for America

It’s not the bureaucrats vision. That attributes the individuals happily working myopically in their pigeonholes with far to much omniscience.

Second, it’s not a future tense vision of America. It’s come to pass with single family zoning and rampant HOAs and sterile “luxury” high rises.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#128

Post by tzs »

woodruffw wrote: post #74
zdragnar wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a quiet but persistent thought pattern that outdoor / nature activities- hiking, camping, etc- are endemically white and that any attempt to organize around it without making overt, aggressive attempts to include minorities is a sign of white supremacy. This is the main thrust of the "anti-racist" movement. If you aren't talking about being inclusive in every aspect of any social interaction you partake in,…

Nature activities are "endemically white"? Is this a serious comment? Even if we buy into the ridiculous naturalistic fallacy here, it's completely ahistorical: our modern history is primarily the history of white countries colonizing and industrializing nonwhite countries and alienating them from nature in the process. Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers, in its rede…

> Suburban white America is arguably even more alienated from nature than city dwellers.

I doubt that. Suburban people are more likely to have cars, making it easier to get to get to more natural places.

For nature activities that need equipment I would expect suburban people are more likely to own such equipment because they have bigger houses with more room to keep things. City people are more likely to need to rent such things, adding more hassle to getting away to nature.

Re: Stanford’s war on social life

#129

Post by fastball »

mint2 wrote: post #127
mensetmanusman wrote: post #35

“Stanford's new social order offers a peek into the bureaucrat's vision for America. It is a world without risk, genuine difference, or the kind of group connection that makes teenage boys want to rent bulldozers and build islands. It is a world largely without unencumbered joy; without the kind of cultural specificity that makes college, or the rest of life, particularly interesting.” This is true at MIT as well. Ca…

> a peek into the bureaucrat's vision for America It’s not the bureaucrats vision. That attributes the individuals happily working myopically in their pigeonholes with far to much omniscience. Second, it’s not a future tense vision of America. It’s come to pass with single family zoning and rampant HOAs and sterile “luxury” high rises.

I'm a big YIMBY but the source of this problem is not NIMBYism.
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