Man, I really enjoyed Sam, until he started doing things that I thought were unnecessarily risky (or in some cases plain inconsiderate). That said, ballsy MF. Solo sailors remind me of free solo climbers. Their risk assessment/acceptance is so far off normal it's almost alien.
I haven't watched all his videos especially the more recent ones but there have definitely been some wtf moments for me too. And yeah he's not ignorant at all it's pretty funny to watch him verbally run through an accurate & extremely alarming assessment of the dangers of something and then go like eh it'll probably be fine.
"Well we're going to take an unplotted shortcut here through the uh, <<checking notes>> graveyard of the atlantic, according to the charts it's 7 feet deep and we have a 6.5 foot draft so fingers crossed the charts are up to date" type shit.
IIRC he has some very serious chronic health stuff and that may have something to do with it. I don't love the risky sails when he has a passenger though. But also who the fuck am I, a weekend lake sailor, to judge. At this point he's got to be among the most experienced solo sailors on the planet. I feel a similar way about slocum or the pardeys and they are more his peers than I am.
If you find this story interesting, definitely recommend reading about Robin Lee Graham. In 1965 at the age of 16 he started a solo sail around the world.
He ended up writing a book and they made a movie. Highly recommend.
I was at SXSW in ~2009. Got a free ticket to the interactive track. Was my first conference, and I was mostly disappointed that it just seemed to be a way for adults with salaries to get paid to go on a trip and party.
I do remember stumbling into the middle of a fascinating session on interface design for cars though, explaining the importance of having something tactile that driver can understand without taking their focus off the road. Nuts to see how the industry eschewed that wisdom in the decades to come.
In my experience with RAND they always reminded me of a resource extraction company. Think oil and gas, but their trade was government contracts.
Add in a couple of big names to justify the cost, staff it with jr people/post grads, shine it up with some fancy graphics and quant-ish formulas and poof, a million dollar study.
Of all the FFRDC beltway bandit think tanks, they felt the most like an MBA consultant shop. Lots of overhead, questionable return on investment. While they do have history and prestige, I'm not convinced anything they deliver is uniquely insightful.
While there are a fair share disposable/modern style abandoned houses, there are also these incredible traditional style properties.
While I understand some of the underlying reasons, I'm still shocked that they are just allowed to sit there falling apart. Part of me wants to spec out deconstruct/container/ship to the US for for rebuild.
Obviously it's not economically feasible, but some of them are that interesting.
I think it really comes to what is common in place and what is not. Like Detroit had plenty of homes. And many of them were left to rot. As they had no value or even negative value.
It is same all around the world in these dying communities. They might be exotic from outside, but there is just too many of them in those places.
If you are interested in buying an abandoned home in the Japan countryside highly recommend the YouTube channel Tokyo Llama. He's spent the last four years renovating a beautiful traditional style Japanese house and property about an hour outside of Tokyo. He talks about the renovation aspects, taxes, paperwork process, and the pros and cons of doing this with a family. Lots of videos the watch.
Unless you're Japanese or half-Japanese I wouldn't really recommend that - The Japanese culture is known for being a closed sort where people from anywhere else in the world are only always considered "visitors" and never ever one of their own.
this seems to be an internet trope because it's completely wrong in reality or completely lacking in nuance? the japanese usually have some kind of decorum when interacting with people they are not familiar with but once you get through that layer you'll find they are actually individuals with preferences and they can be friendly or unfriendly just like anyone else in the world.
i wonder if those who simply spout things like this expect to be treated as an insider on first meet? is this the same sort of people who also go to places like paris or stockholm and wonder why those sort of people are unfriendly too? "why don't these people smile at strangers" and "why is restaurant service so poor?". i see this opinion a lot and i just don't get where this is coming from.
Please stop extrapolating your anecdotal personal experience. Japanese people are eccentric (at least relatively to the rest of the world cultures); and anyone living there will have to consider that nuance when dealing with them.
That being said, your odds of getting into trouble in Japan are close to nil. It's a quiet safe and friendly environment.
My experience with Japanese people have been largely positive. But again, you have to take their eccentricity into a large context to reconcile their behavior with your expectations.
I find a lot of people that say something like this, especially Americans, they totally ignore the colonial history and how poorly the Japanese were (and still are) treated by Americans and other outsiders.
They may be closed off, I don’t know. But I don’t think it’s some cultural trait.
You mean they ignore the seven or so years that the Americans were in charge of Japan after the Japanese state went on a 30 year rampage through East Asia and the Pacific where Americans have supposedly treated the Japanese poorly during that time?
Never heard of this before - regarding colonial history and treatment towards other races, please refer to the WW2 diaries of the imperial Japanese army for how they treated civilians in China, Korea and (to some extent) America.
Ian from Forgotten Weapons is arguably one of the most famous gun enthusiasts out there, and it's his video that is linked in this thread. The very fact that "gun Jesus" is excited about this platform says a lot.
He does note that a small portion of the gun enthusiasts population will hate it, but goes on to note why he thinks their fears are misplaced.
Also, its been stated a few times in this thread, but this platform isn't trying to be a gun for all things. Specifically it's a bedside gun, that stays loaded and out, that mitigates some of the risk of leaving it in that condition (kids, theft, etc.). It's competition is trigger locks, safes, lock boxes, and just hiding it somewhere.
I'm unconvinced the electronics are appropriately tamper proof, and will remain unconvinced until some real experts get their hands on it. Ian mentions that as well, and is looking forward to a real security audit by experts in that field.
All on all, seemed like a pretty reasonable take on everything.
My concern is that laws would be put in place to force people to use smart guns outside of home defense situations.
There's also the concern that smart guns could be prohibitively expensive compared to regular guns for many people; especially if they already own a gun for concealed carry.
Was lobster.rs ways invite only? I thought I remembered having an account a long time ago...but my email isn't registered when I go to reset my PW. Because it's a much smaller community it does suffer from low comment counts on posts. Comments are the best part of HN.
Invite only to write, open to read. But the main trick is tracking the invite tree - if the person that invited you gets banned, you get banned too (or need to appeal to have your “branch” of the invite tree adopted by someone else).
