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Joshua Aslan Smith

18:00

So yes I completely sympathize with spending/saving money for more important aspects of life

which is not something most of my friends understand. A lot of my online friends fritter their money away on games which I used to do when single, but when your married its not your (singular money) its your (plural) money and you have a responsibility to your partner you might not have had to yourself. Good to work on that ahead of time before marriage.

jadarnel27

Exactly! We started talking to each other about finances shortly after getting engaged. To set expectations, and start creating good habits early.

Thanks for the encouragement, @Joshua.

Joshua Aslan Smith

yep I always encourage those moving toward marriage since society writ large in the West (europe, usa) tends to take sarcastic view of it.

obviously marriage is not the solution for all of society's ills and there are wrong times to get married, but yeah.

Also a lot of people will tell you not to share finances, but my wife and I tried to keep separate bank accounts for our first year and it did much more harm then good. We both spent money on personal purchases assuming the other person had enough money to cover bills and neither of us ever really knew how much money we had as a couple

Metool

18:33

Reginald, Ronald, Roland. Beneforte.

Alex P

18:55

@JoshuaAslanSmith I feel like that's more a matter of pragmatism than cynicism. I mean, I'm married. But that's because I'm reasonably well-off. If you're poor, the modern marriage is daunting. Because there's always the chance you'll be stuck trying to support two adults on working wages that can barely support one. (There's middle-class cynicism about marriage, too, but I see a lot of late-20-year-olds settling down.)

(This is more scoped to the US, where the lowest wages are kinda awful and public welfare isn't very dependable.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

@alexp I was able to get married while working in restaurants its doable, but you have to have the right mindset. I could fill digital reams with my opinions about cultural opinions on marriage in the US.

Metool

@Metool @BESW Family established.

Joshua Aslan Smith

I just spent 30 minutes typing out an answer on history.se beta and then decided to delete because there are answers being posted with wikipedia links as valid sources

Alex P

19:11

@JoshuaAslanSmith So, in other words, you're giving up on it?

Joshua Aslan Smith

yes, in fact strolling through the other questions and their answers such as this one:

Q: Why did the US drop nuclear bombs on a weakened Japan?

Why did the United States drop two nuclear bombs on the Japanese mainland when it appeared that Japan was ready to surrender??

have made me not want to get involved

People's opinions and interpretations seem to take precedence over quoting those involved at the time

The top answer on that so far quotes eisenhower, but fails to quote anyone else involved notably those involved with planning and strategic decisions for the pacific theater

let alone quotations from the japanese on the issue

Alex P

The top answer was written May 1. Whereas the answer quoting Roosevelt was written August 30.

I think that's 90% of the cause right there.

I mean, that is a cultural problem -- a problem with "good enough."

Joshua Aslan Smith

true basically I want to make them watch a video that completely and succinctly sums up the history of the time (developed in response to Jon Stewart's blase response to the bombings on his show in 2011).

pjtv.com/s/HAYDI

@alexp I know the correct thing to do would be to invest the time to write a complete answer to these kinds of questions, but I feel I'd be challenging to many flawed assumptions and essentially yelling into a storm.

Alex P

I don't see that much flawed about that answer. It does actually state that Eisenhower's view is one of many, and explains the others.

I think "links to Wikipedia" is a shallow complaint because, honestly, for a casual reader that's better than giving them the name of a book they can't read easily anyway.

Or institutional paywall stuff like JSTOR.

It's important to make sure the Wikipedia article isn't crap, and is sourced appropriately itself.

Joshua Aslan Smith

19:26

he loses me on his third paragraph where he says "it is my opinion"

Alex P

And it's best for the person writing the answer to have actually read those sources. "Experts" and all that.

It is a natural evolution of that, though. Seriously. That's not a moral judgement.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@alexp Basically nobody who's anybody in a real field would consider anything on wikipedia as useable (even if it was true) because of the nature of the source.

I guess I feel history.se should be as objective as possible because of the nature of the material

Metool

19:39

5 hours ago, by Magician

To this day, the most hilarious D&D session I've ever run. Gelatinous cubes are kind of slow. Gelatinous cubes sliding down the stairs at an every increasing pace eventually overtake running adventurers... Who can then shout encouragements to their faster colleagues as they're taken for the ride.

Alex P

@JoshuaAslanSmith You don't cite it in an academic work, sure. It's damn useful to go look up quick information, and often has citations that point to useful works. Your complaint is analogous to saying a recipe website isn't useful for a professional chef.

It's by far better at being an actual encyclopedia than the books people used to use for this purpose.

There is flagrant vandalism there, too, but I'd say it's analogous to the nonsense in a 1990 Encyclopedia Britannica just by virtue of their research people using junk sources.

The difference is that you can often recognize the vandalism by its utter failure in emphasis and tone.

Sterno

19:57

Hey guys. Do any of you remember if one (or more) of the Chaosium versions of the Call of Cthulhu RPG had some comics in the back that jokingly mocked some aspects of the game, like "Don't read the books!"

I specifically remember some comics about it but can't remember if they were in the core book or not

And would such a question be off-topic on the site?

(I'm assuming so)

Aaron

It's not exactly off topic I just don't think anyone is active. @Sterno

Sterno

Kind of falls into the "Identify this Game" category, and I know some sites disallow that

If I do ask it, do you have any tag suggestions?

Zachiel

20:26

Hello @Sterno

@Sterno We have system-recognition questions and we're ok with them, But I don't know if yours would be a sys-rec.

3 hours later…

Alex P

23:21

What's up, folks?

Metool

@AlexP Slowly going insane.

Phil

only slowly? Your lucky :op

Alex P

I'm reading a blog where if you're a total jackass to the author, she will edit your comment to include your registration e-mail address and IP. Trying to figure out how I feel about this, given Internet anonymity culture. I think overall I'm okay with it.

Phil

But who defines what a jackass is?

Alex P

The person who owns the site.

Since that's who knows your e-mail and can edit posts.

Phil

23:31

in theory it sounds OK, but I could easily see it being abused by someone who just didn't like criticism for example

Alex P

Yeah, I mean, my thought was kinda "Where do you draw the line?" But, well, you are aware that you're giving away your e-mail address when you sign up to post.

So presumably you already have to decide whether you think the author is gonna abuse it or not before you post.

Doubly so if you know the comments are filtered.

Phil

As long as it is also made completely clear that their policy is to reveal your details based on whether they think you are a jackass or not...

Alex P

It's certainly a violation of trust, potentially.

Hence the "Hmm..." moment.

Hello, Dave!