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Poor in Tech

megelison.com

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Re: Poor in Tech

#791

Post by cookieswumchorr »

sidlls wrote: post #335
cookieswumchorr wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in my experience at the gym, you don't need to communicate with anyone at all. you take the free equipment, you lift, you make sure to put everything in its place, you shower and go home. wtf?

Direct communication isn't required to create a hostile environment. Sly looks, offhand remarks overheard while trying to do an exercise, etc.--they pile up. And poor people especially are conditioned to be mindful of this sort of thing. It's often dangerous (as in, an altercation that can become physical might occur) not to be when in public.

poor people also tend to be accustomed to harsh environments (bad neighbourhood, bad school etc) so mindful, maybe yes, but actually stressed to the level that you leave and miss out on smth you have the right to, I don't know...

Re: Poor in Tech

#792

Post by lambdatronics »

Jumping across the class divide in the US can definitely engender culture shock.

I'm reminded of a passage by Barack Obama:

"We have to figure out how to live together, and we have to figure out if we can do this free of caste systems and the inevitable conflict that the kind of social stratification that has existed for most of human history creates. That genie is out. We’re past the time in which some peasant in a feudal system is starving and looks up on the palace and there’s a king somewhere, and the peasant thinks, Yeah, that’s okay. Now all those peasants have phones and they can see how the lord of the manor is eating, and some of them are going to say, “Why him instead of me?” The willingness to accept one’s fate or lot in life because of your skin color or gender or religion or sexual orientation—that you are going to accept being less than someone else—that’s over."

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/11/why-obama-...

Re: Poor in Tech

#793

Post by inb4_cancelled »

the_lonely_road wrote: post #360
inb4_cancelled wrote: post #331

So I opened the About on the website and I can't quite put my finger on it, but the author is exactly who I imagined her to be after finishing the article. I agree that her coworkers are mostly jerks, but it sounds like she too may not be the most pleasant person to keep around.

I stormed back to the website, arms filled with pitchforks ready to hand out, and was completely let down by the most tame About Me section my mind could have possibly summoned. I know you say you cant put your finger on it but can you elaborate a little bit? For those of you too lazy to click through to it here is the text (followed by a bunch of photos of her in different fancy outfits/settings): Meg Elison: Author…

She's also a morbidly obese feminist who uses bright colored lipstick and wears fancy outfits. That's who I expected.

Re: Poor in Tech

#794

Post by tpoacher »

dang wrote: post #689
dang wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a case of the contrarian dynamic: an initial wave of objections to the article, followed by a wave of objections to the objections. The latter get upvoted, and so we end up with a top comment saying "I can't believe the comments in this thread" or (as in the current example) "the comments here are so $bad_somehow". Recent explanation here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27145616 . More: https://hn.algol…

Replies are welcome, but I've collapsed this subthread to prevent the page from going too far off topic. Sorry—I know that my comment is just as off topic. But it has an educational function (at least under optimistic assumptions) and that requires people seeing it.

I loved your aphorism in the linked thread about "Negativity about negativity is not positive. It's an idempotent operation."

It's gone straight to my anki quotes collection. :)

Re: Poor in Tech

#795

Post by tpoacher »

metalforever wrote: post #509
strken wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some ways it's a laundry list of ways rich people in the Bay Area act like wankers, which is interesting, but also quite irritatingly stereotypical. There are plenty who don't refuse to talk to the cleaning staff, lecture others on their choice of tampon, or snob fat people at the gym. I don't want people from outside the bubble (e.g. me, three years ago) to read this and think they'll be surrounded by wall-to-wal…

I came from a family of coal miners and moved to the bay for a tech job. The second paragraph is more of the truth than I think people want to admit. People are nice, but they are also wankers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with them a lot of the time, it’s just they are extremely, extremely naive and sometimes in their naive ness and lack of perspective say incredibly offensive things. You have to shrug it of…

Much of this comes down to 'theory of mind' though. I wouldn't be surprised if someone in that group misguidedly said the same about you, and that you'd be utterly shocked to hear it. At the end of the day, I feel a good number of these problems have more to do with poor communication rather than tribalism.

And as Scott Adams likes to say, you can't fix what you don't talk about. So perhaps shrugging things off is not as noble as you think it is, because that makes you complicit in perpetuating that problem.

One of my most mature and eye-opening moments was when I realised that if someone mistreats you, but they seem unaware of it, and you don't tell them this is the case, then when they do it a second time and you get pissed off, you are in fact the asshole in this scenario, not them. Because if you implode a year later when it has happend for the Nth time, and you call them an asshole for having done it N times, they will very reasonably be upset you didn't trust them enough to set that boundary from day 1 when it first happened, but simply assumed they were naturally an asshole and not worth your time. Whereas if you immediate point your boundaries as soon as they're crossed, this leads to respect and mutual understanding, because you care enough about the engagement to set respectful rules for it. I have never met anyone since who didn't appreciate me setting clear, reasonable, respectful boundaries as soon as they crossed a line. Not only that, this tends to lead to people feeling more comfortable to share their own boundaries, which has more than once shown me my own stupidity when dealing with people, and I was more than grateful for them letting me know in a respectful manner.

Re: Poor in Tech

#796

Post by buescher »

BeetleB wrote: post #774
buescher wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't apologize and please don't be annoyed. Like I told "sokoloff", I was you. I get it. "In this house we buy used cars for cash and drive them until the wheels come off." So of course I enjoy this topic. Let's look at your numbers. Say you bought two new Civics around 2003 for $28K total. Your maintenance & repairs should not be any higher for a new Civic than for any used car I can imagine. Let's assume ga…

> Per car, you saved $467/year or $39/month. > That's another $139/year over 18 years or $12/month > Yeah, that's not nothing, but it's not the TONS OF MONEY that always gets mentioned in these discussions. It's not tons of money, but as you said, it's not nothing. Saving over $50/mo is definitely very significant for me (I must have grown up poor). As I do keep track of all my finances, I know that most of my saving…

Well, you brought up the Civic cost in 2003. A new Corolla is a benchmark for frugality: few cars, new or used, beat it for total cost of ownership. (with some assumptions: 15,000 miles/year etc). Note I don't own one and probably never will. The Civic is a little less frugal but similar.

It's fine that you like spending money on cars and prefer to spend more for a larger, more comfortable car. You're not minimizing your costs by buying used - you're just avoiding spending even more money. Also remember, up front cost is not TCO. Let's look at Edmunds' numbers instead of ancecdotes: a five year old base Accord has a five year TCO of $29,110. A new base Corolla has a five year TCO of $25,679. There's your "over $50/month". Fifty bucks is fifty bucks right?

Re: Poor in Tech

#797

Post by ludamad »

BluePen8 wrote: post #783
ludamad wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own a house in that city? If so, you would suddenly have a ton of house ownership problems your friends can't relate to. It is those sorts of things I am referring to I can't help that one of my most active chats right now is speculative investing, and it simply is not a game for e.g. people with high rate debt Then what about making someone feel shitty for describing your day? That you took a day off due to s…

I don't actually have that much overlap with my friends in the first place. We just have a select few common interests and enjoy each other's company. I have a different circle of friends for most interests, there's not even any overlap between the ones I online game with or dirtbike with. Hell there's not even overlap between the dirtbike friends and street riding friends. I have interests that aren't shared with an…

It doesn't have to be a problem, however sharing fewer interests is what I meant by 'gradual drift'. Someone I share 0 interests with that also doesn't just enjoy my company I will eventually interact less and less with. If you keep multiple diverse friend groups, you're definitely less prone to this issue

Re: Poor in Tech

#798

Post by kyawzazaw »

Haruiko wrote: post #772
kyawzazaw wrote: post #762

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know who they are, of course. And birthday and their sons and daughters birthdays. That's how we give gifts. We know who they are and where they are as well - we wouldn't hire them without knowing that. They couldn't relate - my bad day would be related to losing a few points on a foreign exam or if my favorite restaurant was overbooked.

I can't relate to your examples as well :D

Okay. So that's the reason I didn't want to burden more of the people that work at our homes.

They shouldn't have to share our burden in addition to the work they are doing and potentially feel bad.

Re: Poor in Tech

#799

Post by BeetleB »

buescher wrote: post #796
BeetleB wrote: post #774

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per car, you saved $467/year or $39/month. > That's another $139/year over 18 years or $12/month > Yeah, that's not nothing, but it's not the TONS OF MONEY that always gets mentioned in these discussions. It's not tons of money, but as you said, it's not nothing. Saving over $50/mo is definitely very significant for me (I must have grown up poor). As I do keep track of all my finances, I know that most of my saving…

Well, you brought up the Civic cost in 2003. A new Corolla is a benchmark for frugality: few cars, new or used, beat it for total cost of ownership. (with some assumptions: 15,000 miles/year etc). Note I don't own one and probably never will. The Civic is a little less frugal but similar. It's fine that you like spending money on cars and prefer to spend more for a larger, more comfortable car. You're not minimizing…

Yes, it does seem we're responding to different points.

As for Edmund's TCO vs anecdotal data from my side: I can understand your viewing it that way, but of course, I'm not going to discard almost 15 years of personal data I've collected :-) I think one of the problems I've always had with the TCO is it simply has no numbers for my use case (buying older cars but with low miles).

The other problem is that whenever I look at the TCO numbers, they seem absurd. I just looked up the numbers for my wife's newer car, which was almost new when bought, and the Edmund's numbers are bordering on absurd. We had $3500 in maintenance + repairs over 4 years (and really it's $3000, as $500 was for an extra set of tires just for snow - not really a repair or maintenance). Edmunds estimate, for that vehicle, for the same span of years is $6200 - over double the reality. I've not had $6200 of repairs in a 4 year period even for my very old, used cars. We're not stingy on repairs and maintenance - we follow the recommended schedule. In fact, her car had two expensive repairs that are probably not common for her model, and I would think the amount we spent on it is above the norm.

And she drives her car more than 15K/year.

This is why for me, having actual, real data vs some weird aggregate from a web site is more meaningful. Edmunds may be good at the depreciation amount, but I question where they get the maintenance/repairs estimate.

Re: Poor in Tech

#800

Post by buescher »

BeetleB wrote: post #799
buescher wrote: post #796

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you brought up the Civic cost in 2003. A new Corolla is a benchmark for frugality: few cars, new or used, beat it for total cost of ownership. (with some assumptions: 15,000 miles/year etc). Note I don't own one and probably never will. The Civic is a little less frugal but similar. It's fine that you like spending money on cars and prefer to spend more for a larger, more comfortable car. You're not minimizing…

Yes, it does seem we're responding to different points. As for Edmund's TCO vs anecdotal data from my side: I can understand your viewing it that way, but of course, I'm not going to discard almost 15 years of personal data I've collected :-) I think one of the problems I've always had with the TCO is it simply has no numbers for my use case (buying older cars but with low miles). The other problem is that whenever I…

I agree you should take Edmunds' numbers with a grain of salt - they tend to be extremely pessimistic about European cars, for example. They probably also figure on your replacing tires, batteries, etc with OEM. They don't say but they might be taking repair costs somewhere else off the distribution than the mean or median to produce a budgetary number.

Also, are you going by age or by model year? Understand that the TCO they give is for the next five years, as if you bought that model year used now.

You could just have a car whose repair costs vary a lot.

The problem with your data, given your use case, is that you can't really compare it to anything but more of your data. I'm sure if we could see how the sausage gets made there'd be plenty to criticize on Edmunds' TCO calculator but it at least provides a way to compare different new and used cars, and it breaks down the numbers in ways that allow you to work with them a little - or compare them to experience - if you are skeptical. It's also not too hard to do a similar model for comparision for different use cases (driving only 5k miles per year brings your TCO on a reliable older car way down, for example) - you'll have your own estimates for each line item instead of their data - if you want to compare against their numbers as a benchmark.

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