this brought a genuine laugh as I read it: "anyone who tries to introduce racial topics into the discussion will be severely discouraged using any means at hand, possibly by Guest Speaker And Relationship Counselor Rodney."
I find the tales of 'Rodney's' exploits as amusing as the next man but some of the fan service in the comments approaches the level of one of his most oft written proclivities.
People do the same for Doug DeMuro, whose sole claim to fame is using insurance payoff money to discover quirks and features. He's never ever thrown a woman down a set of stairs!
This is what good taverns used to provide. I had more mind-opening discussions at a VFW with a bartender named Muff and a crew of grizzled men of all ages than I ever did in college.
I blame "sports" bars plastered with TVs everywhere, microbreweries/gastropubs with horrendous acoustics where patrons only travel in packs, and people no longer being able to look up from their smartphones to acknowledge the presence of other sentient beings around them.
Whenever somebody actually does try to talk to me in a bar, they're invariably some combination of drunk, creepy, or more wrong than Cliff Clavin.
A sports bar is one thing, if you are going to see a game or something and that is your intent, at least you know what to expect. It's the TVs in non sports bars and restaurants that drive me nuts. That is some Harrison Bergeron shit.
Wealthy people send their children and sometimes with their nanny to Europe for an academic year, they enroll them in Catholic or private schools that practice discipline and high expectations, the children are enrolled in multiple sports of their choice, they have summer jobs at the club or the law firm or the hospital where they are exposed to and surrounded by successful roll models. Now this is not always true but in a lot of cases it is. They may have the latest electronic device but it is not their window into the world or a method of escape, it is just something they have, like hockey sticks, rowing oars, chess sets….
Nate, it is not about being king it is about setting goals and expectations for your children. IMHO over the last 30-40 years generations of young people have been bombarded with the idea that if they can have the latest $400 Niki's they can be an NBA Star or if they can have the latest i-Phone 64 they will be one of the cool kids... It is when they reach there teen years they find out it is for not and then you have homoside rates like they do in Chicago or DC or Philly... Look at the successful kids at Alabama or Georgia or any other power athletic schoool. The kids playing football or basket ball did not grow up in Hoover Alabama, or McLean Va or Buckhead, GA but what they did have was a two parent household that set expectations and boundries in a lot of cases. Just like the children of the upper middle class that I described above. It does not take a Harvard graduate to figure it out but the problem is that the powers at be do not want those children of the lower lower middle class to compete with their children so therefore they continue to sell a bill go goods to the lower classes that you have to have this or that to be a success. Children of the upper middle class have those things but they are just things . Nate, I come from one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the country at the time. Many of my piers became doctors, lawyers, investment bankers as well as car mechanics, hotel maids, and gas jockies. However I can not think of one that ended up dead in a drive by shooting or living on the street with a needle in his or her arm. But the one thing I can think of after all these years that was a given was that even if our parents did not have much they had expectations for us and set boundries.
Now to figure out where to buy one le$$ expenSive, most of my $ is earmarked for vehicle parts but I'd sure love to play hob with all those !%$!!#@! public TVs .
I've never seen the inside of an Elk/Rotary/Moose/Lions Lodge thing, but I can't imagine they have as many weirdos and malcontents hanging inside them as ACF does. I'm not really one to spend time in bars, but every time I'm ~forced inside~ invited to join a pal in one, the music is so loud you can't discuss _anything,_ not even the weather. Maybe my vocal cords just aren't toughened up from enough screaming to be heard over the speakers? Sounds like my friends and acquaintances don't frequent these so-called taverns.
The only bars worth a shit are places that cater to people who actually make things, who claim a stool on the way home from work, who aren't looking to get laid or impress anyone, and that greet anyone new through the door with skepticism if not suspicion.
Basically I've realized that Lawrence from Office Space is my spirit guide.
I'd say the same is true of college bars. I went to Texas A&M a good many years ago. my friends and I spent an ungodly sum of money drinking an ocean of Shiner Bock at a dive bar called Duddley's Draw. the best conversations invariably occurred in the middle of the afternoon after the day's classes, when the place was relatively quiet and you could talk at normal volume. I had many fascinating and occasionally random conversations with interesting people. I think it's got something to do with people who are willing and happy to drink during the day. it was an entirely different dynamic after dark, when the goal of 90 percent of the patrons was getting laid, getting in a fight, or both.
I cannot stand being in loud places any more. I put that down to age, although I'm a lot less annoyed by the open-pipe 347 Ford warming up in the garage next to me at MidO than I am by the incoherent yelling in an Applebees.
I stopped by a local dive bar on the way home from work last week to grab a quick beer only to learn that it has "re-branded" to cater to middle aged career women who like to make noise. I walked in, assessed the situation, and walked out.
I worked in an open floor plan office that had more women than men working there. I had also once visited an aviary. Aviary was considerably more quiet.
My wife and I enjoy bars, taverns, breweries and distilleries too much, probably, there being a good selection of all here in Colorado. The ones that have TVs will be loud if the Broncos or Avalanche are playing, whoops and cheers for the Avs of late, groans and swearing if it is the former. Anyway, she and I got into a rut of looking at our phones when it was too loud to talk much. Last week Santa brought us a backgammon board, knowing neither of us knew how to play, with a note to put away cell phones in any establishment that serves adult beverages. So far, so good!
Enthused about this 1st Principles idea. Any meeting in the Denver area (home to me) or around the Space Coast in FL (home to some family - I'm there 4 - 5 times/year), please count me in!
I vote FoCo because I don't want to drive through homeless encampments in Denver but I also recognize that's a real stretch for anyone in the Colorado Springs area or the western slope.
I sure as hell didn't understand radio waves when I was in 8th grade. With the exception of knowing what "AM" and "FM" stood for, which probably put me at least a standard deviation ahead of the average 8th grader. Even after earning an electrical engineering degree and spending over a decade working directly on radar and comm systems, I still feel borderline illiterate when it comes to RF.
Most people in my school barely got through electromagnetics. The professor curved all the exams so that a 50% was a C. I about fell out of my chair when he told us that was his policy. ICP was right. I can't be the only idiot in my (former) field, so I've pretty much concluded that everyone is either faking it or is too dumb to know they don't know anything.
I also recall explaining to a college buddy, a mechanical engineering major, how a four stroke engine works in similar detail to the discussion you had with your son. He's a project engineer at Honda now, which depresses me in multiple ways.
"What do people talk about at modern parties and gatherings? Nothing but bullshit. What's on Netflix. Food. Travel. Food and travel. Current events viewed through one's polarizing lens of choice."
And that's why trying to be social often feels more lonely than just keeping to yourself. Really looking forward to seeing where this First Principles thing is headed. I'm not one to meet up with strangers from the internet (for non-dating purposes, anyway), but for this I'd make an exception.
The funny thing is that prior to the Internet, meeting strangers was, well, the only way anything ever got done! But decades' worth of exposure to people's worst secret selves online has made all of us highly reluctant to ever wander outside of an approved bubble.
What I'm hoping is that we will create and expand a real-world group of acquaintances so that ten years from now you will know a lot more people than you currently do, and those will be largely high-value people.
I think another balancing act will be trying to maintain a White Pill atmosphere and avoiding the Black Pill gripe session. It's really easy to fall into the doomsday mindset when you organize a bunch of smarter than average, straight white dudes these days.
I've heard this feedback via email and Instagram as well.
Make no mistake, I intend for this to be focused on POSITIVE developments. If people want to have a beer or shot afterwards and talk about the other stuff, that's totally okay and probably even necessary -- but that's not our focus. You should leave feeling more optimistic than you arrived.
Not only that, but it's easy for groupthink to overtake the conversation, and a couple of strong personalities can quickly take things in weird directions. Just look at how the parts of the "Manosphere" that didn't get cancelled devolved into antisemitism and/or voluntarily-celibate religious zealotry.
This sort of thing also seems ripe for grifters to hitch their wagon to it. ACF has been refreshingly free of the sort of crap that plagues open discussion pretty much every else; I hope it can stay that way.
This is why we will have facilitators with a strict brief. It won't be perfect and mistakes will happen but this is not gonna be a tiki torch march or a gripe session about women or an antifa orgy.
"Nothing but bullshit. What's on Netflix. Food. Travel. Food and travel. Current events viewed through one's polarizing lens of choice."
It could be worse, imagine getting stuck next to a boob who natters on endlessly about vintage vehicles, how to resurrect/repair them and enjoy the crap out of using them instead of playing hobby car ...
"But decades' worth of exposure to people's worst secret selves online has made all of us highly reluctant to ever wander outside of an approved bubble. "
You're joking right ? .
I'da never met you nor the many others I have met in person after realizing there are others like me out there via the internet....
I was lucky and had a 7th grade science teacher who was a serious HAM radio operator. He offered enough extra credit to make a whole test irrelevant if you got your FCC novice or technician license, and had the local HAM club come after school to teach a class during winter, when activity busses ran but almost no sports had practice. I ended up getting a license and still have the high quality Yaesu 2M hand held. The local AARL club had a repeater to make simplex calls at a time when cell phones came in bags and required shoulder straps, and it was fun calling friends from the car at 12 years old. I also now can remain free from worry should FCC special agents descend on a race track where we’re using Baofengs.
Because the world is much smaller than we think it is, it turned out his son was an Ivy-league degree holding partner at the firm I worked at in a different city. That connection ended up being very helpful professionally.
My father (who went on to a BS in EE and then a much later MS in EE) built a radio system he could use to tap into and make phone calls with in his high school days. I think it operated via transmitting touch tone over his car based radio set to the receiver in his house that was hooked to the phone line and would then detect the touch tone signals and dial.
I probably have some of that wrong, but he knew enough to essentially build a cell phone in early 70s. I'm not sure I would have been able to cobble a system like that together at his age, or today despite having (forgotten) background in all that physics, math, etc.
Ha, sounds like your dad was a "phone phreaker." Guys would build "blue boxes" to replicate the tones and make free calls. Somebody even figured out that the whistles that came in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes perfectly replicated the 2600 Hz tone that caused the phone switch to open up a long distance line.
Phreaking eventually evolved into computer hacking. Jobs and Wozniak got their start building and selling blue boxes.
My degree program would have been a lot more stimulating had it been populated with guys doing stuff like that, as opposed to frat bros and dudes who skipped class because they were up all night playing Halo.
There was a Bell System technical journal article available in any large library that gave away the keys to the kingdom. A touch tone phone used a matrix of tones to identify each number on the keypad, one tone for the x position and one tone for the y for each key. The Bell switching network codes also worked on a two-tone matrix, just different frequencies than the home touch tone phones. The frequencies and the control codes were all in that journal article.
When I was in 8th grade I understood a little bit about radio waves but that was because my older brother and I attended a ham radio club every week at the JCC. It was run by an older guy who started teaching us about electronics from resistors up to superheterodyne circuits. I never got my Novice license beccause back then you needed to be able to do Morse code at 5 wpm or faster and while I could hack the theory, I couldn't get my speed on the key up. I still remember the light bulb going on when he explained how the tuner on a radio is a variable capacitor. Of course, back then there were still tube radios with tuners that you could actually see and connect its physical structure to its electronic function.
Do they still have ham radio clubs for kids or anything at all like that?
Not that I could find in our area. I used to work with a guy who was in a club that was mostly for Ford employees. Out of all the guys that I’ve talked to about the hobby, he was the most level-headed.
A lot of my interactions (albeit mostly online) were with people who both lamented the fact that their hobby was dying but kept the barrier to entry entirely too high to draw anyone in. I understand the need to gatekeep, but some of these guys went a bit overboard.
FWIW, I was pretty up front in my reasoning for taking up this hobby. I wanted to be able to understand the technology enough to communicate effectively in an emergency, communicate with friends while in the wilderness, and participate in the local SKYWARN net.
The fact that I didn’t have the time/interest to spend my time building radios seemed to put a lot of people off. The sad thing is that I’d actually love to do that, but I already have enough hobbies that I half-ass. It seemed a more effective use of time to learn how to communicate instead of trying to play Motorola Engineer circa 1963.
Well, I was in my school's HAM club starting in 5th grade, so I knew a bit about radio waves, and the type of modulation. And so on. It being a poor communist country, we studied theory a lot, because practice was expensive, and we were all broke.
Of course, that was a *looong* time ago. On the plus side, I don't have Netflix, I can't eat most foods (have to cook for myself), and my travel is severely limited. Not certain exactly where that leaves me ...
I'll be happy to help organize the Eastern Canadian chapter meeting. Prince Edward Island could be fun. It also has the advantage of being about the most remote, civilized place from most people in North America. Plus, it also offers the best Lobster and best fries.
I’ve been nearby, but not yet had the pleasure of visiting PEI. I had a boss that made an annual pilgrimage and golfed for two weeks solid. He raved about the island.
It’s a truly lovely place, full of wonderful people. They all seem to have figured out that they live in one of the greatest spots in the world, and take pleasure in that knowledge. They just seem to enjoy their lives, in a very middle class kind of way. Or at least what middle class used to mean a generation or two back. The only oddity is how many restaurants use frozen French fries, when they are all surrounded by potato fields.
Oh, and the soil, and the beautiful sandy beaches, are red!
I am tentatively quite interested! Right up my alley... Over-educated mid-30s jack-of-all-trades that works in a blue-collar trade-adjacent profession (hardware store manager) and know just enough about most trades to be dangerous. And a lot of other topics. Not so sure I could make the first, or every pow-wow but I am quite intrigued by the idea.
I also have a habit of overusing hyphens and commas.
Being far on the introverted side of the social spectrum this type of event will take me right out of my comfort zone but in the best way possible. Detroit is only a few hours away so count me in, assuming my schedule allows. And despite being a Trackday Club member I’d gladly pay the $100 attendance fee. I feel like I’ve already received my money’s worth from my initial subscription.
This is exciting. This is community. This is how businesses have been built, how people have gotten a hand up, and how a cohesive and unified middle class built a country that worked.
I'm looking forward to attending as and when possible. I sincerely hope it is a really big deal.
Sounds fantastically interesting, even though I would be totally clueless in most of the topics and awfully out of my depth in the rest! Still, the only real reason I'm not really considering showing up it the petty problem named "Atlantic Ocean" and time and financial problems associated with crossing it.
However, if you ever want to do one of these in Prague (and if you want it in Europe, you WANT it in Prague) I could help. I'm even a member of a club that would be almost perfect for such thing.
I'm more of a Frederick Forsyth man, so I would suggest a mix between George Smiley (whom I sadly only know from the films and not books – something I shall remedy) and Peter Miller, the RHD-Jag-driving freelance European journalist from the ODESSA file.
But yes, it could work! :)
Just my pet peeve as a Czech – we are not Eastern Europe, we are Central Europe. When I go to Vienna, I go a bit south and quite a bit east. Berlin is almost straight north. And if you go from Berlin to Vienna by train, you'll be going almost under my house :)
Which is also the reason why Prague is a good location for such a thing not only because I live here and because we have the Eccentric Club (a members-only bar that allows smoking and similar stuff, but also runs lectures on everything from psychology to arts to AI as well as little concerts, usually by some of the best people here), but also because it's quite easily reachable.
I went by the place at least once (I live less than two miles away), but to be honest, i didn't notice the clock. Will have look the next time I'm headed that way.
There's too much to see in Prague and even if you lived here for years, as I do, or even decades as the "natives" (I was born about 60 miles away), you could still spend the rest of your lifetime discovering things, from jewels of Middle Ages to myths and legends, to functionalism of the 1930s and brutalism of the 1970s. There isn't many cities in the world with such rich history and so many layers of architecture. Rome and Paris, maybe.
Though I’m an infrequent commenter here, I’m intrigued by the idea and am interested in attending, presuming the dates work. I suspect you’re not going to have a problem getting 20 people.
I've been wondering if a branch like this might grow off of the ACF tree. A way to interact with this group without buying a racecar??? Hell yes, I'm interested!
But I'll have to wait a bit...at least until you get west of the Rockies. Portland or Seattle would be ideal.
I'm humbled. Maybe I could do a session on maker stuff, 3D printing and lasers. I'm continually astounded that I can make dimensionally accurate things in my kitchen. Maybe combine it with someone that actually knows how to do CAD better than my kludgy method.
I'm very interested. For me the biggest issue is the travel, not the money. I've come to hate flying.
But I am curious as to what folks are thinking and what they think is worthwhile and real and achievable. All that stuff. Part of it is the engineer in me and part of it is the writer.
I do have a pretty strong understanding of the power grid btw, worked for PGT for a while and also for CalISO.
You can wait until we come around your way -- it's mean to be a traveling circus so people have a chance to do it without getting on a plane.
One topic I'd considered, if we had an author like you involved in a meeting: how comprehensive and logical of a fantastical world could a group build in a short meeting, the way Tom Clancy figured out parts of Red October with a naval board game?
Larry Bond, the co-author, created Harpoon as a board game. It was later developed into the video game series. It would not surprise me if there was an intermediate stage as they wrote together.
12 year old Harry thought Red Storm rising was the greatest novel ever written. I have re read it twice since then and it stands up. Tom Clancy gets a bad rap because he tries to write "humans" and have "character development" in his later novels.
The most recent Clancy I've read is Rainbow Six and the most recent one I remember seeing was The Bear and the Dragon? Which apparently I saw in a bookstore in the 2000s yet remember the title of for reasons unknown to me.
Yeah, not a master of prose. His plots were excellent and I loved how he brought multiple stories together to epic conclusion. I think Clear and Present Danger is my favourite of his.
I was a teenager when I last read RSR, but I’m inspired to pick it up again.
After I read and re-read Jack invitation, I was think back over the last 50 years and though of those time in a group or at work when things just clicked. like at a high school job at Long John Silvers when Friday evening rush came around and the 5 of us part timers would tell the Asst. Mgr to go to the back and have a smoke and beer and get our of our way, or when at a major government organization when our team would tackle a complex problem and the Division Director would occasionlly stick his head in the door, and want to take charge and we would tell him to not to mess things up and we would get back to him with the finished product in time for him to take credit. I think Jack's idea is great, count me in.... but DETROIT..... was the Southside of Chicago not available? :-)
Have you considered renting a private home? You and Bark could save on hotels, and a limited number of attendees could pay to stay on site, subidizing the rental fee.
For the adventurous you could even have it inside the city limits. $1,850 night. They'll host events up to 40 people but they charge extra for events. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9190394
It's called the Sanders Mansion, not sure if it has anything to do with the Sanders candy, cake and fudge company. Palmer Woods is probably as safe as any of the suburbs, there's limited access to the subdivision, private security and the DPD's 12th Precinct is right across Seven Mile Rd.
"Located in Historical Palmer Woods. 7 bedrooms, 11 beds. 6 full baths and 4 half baths, Swimming Pool, Whirlpool, Sauna, Rainfall Shower, Home Gym,3 Treadmills, English Pub, Billiard Parlor, Ballroom/Conference Room, Movie/Screening Room with 200 + inch screen. 10,000 sq feet Mansion, Private Security Patrol"
I agree with Brother Bark; this idea has serious potential.
Pretty intrigued in attending once this heads west, but also worried about missing out on the inaugural session. I will be pondering reasons both work and personal to be in that neck of the woods in the spring….
My Midwestern heart loves that this is something that would grow out of this region. I mean, I lived on the other side of the world in an exotic locale for years and still ended up coming back here. I can use my parents' house as a staging area for anywhere within a couple of hours of there, and Detroit is practically the next town. I'll figure out how to make attending this new not-a-cult a birthday present to myself, although I'm not sure what I could possibly contribute to the group. If there's anything I've excelled at in my life, it's underachieving.
The best part of this is having Rodney as the outward face of the group. I'm tempted to sign up just to see that in action.
this brought a genuine laugh as I read it: "anyone who tries to introduce racial topics into the discussion will be severely discouraged using any means at hand, possibly by Guest Speaker And Relationship Counselor Rodney."
I'd pay twice the admission fee just to see that.
I find the tales of 'Rodney's' exploits as amusing as the next man but some of the fan service in the comments approaches the level of one of his most oft written proclivities.
People do the same for Doug DeMuro, whose sole claim to fame is using insurance payoff money to discover quirks and features. He's never ever thrown a woman down a set of stairs!
This is what good taverns used to provide. I had more mind-opening discussions at a VFW with a bartender named Muff and a crew of grizzled men of all ages than I ever did in college.
I blame "sports" bars plastered with TVs everywhere, microbreweries/gastropubs with horrendous acoustics where patrons only travel in packs, and people no longer being able to look up from their smartphones to acknowledge the presence of other sentient beings around them.
Whenever somebody actually does try to talk to me in a bar, they're invariably some combination of drunk, creepy, or more wrong than Cliff Clavin.
A sports bar is one thing, if you are going to see a game or something and that is your intent, at least you know what to expect. It's the TVs in non sports bars and restaurants that drive me nuts. That is some Harrison Bergeron shit.
Orwell's note that the Inner Party can turn the telescreen off is SO APT.
Poor people are SURROUNDED by cheap flatscreens and omnipresent noise.
Wealthy people do "digital detox" and don't let their kids have iPads.
Wealthy people send their children and sometimes with their nanny to Europe for an academic year, they enroll them in Catholic or private schools that practice discipline and high expectations, the children are enrolled in multiple sports of their choice, they have summer jobs at the club or the law firm or the hospital where they are exposed to and surrounded by successful roll models. Now this is not always true but in a lot of cases it is. They may have the latest electronic device but it is not their window into the world or a method of escape, it is just something they have, like hockey sticks, rowing oars, chess sets….
"it's _good_ to be King"........
-Nate
Nate, it is not about being king it is about setting goals and expectations for your children. IMHO over the last 30-40 years generations of young people have been bombarded with the idea that if they can have the latest $400 Niki's they can be an NBA Star or if they can have the latest i-Phone 64 they will be one of the cool kids... It is when they reach there teen years they find out it is for not and then you have homoside rates like they do in Chicago or DC or Philly... Look at the successful kids at Alabama or Georgia or any other power athletic schoool. The kids playing football or basket ball did not grow up in Hoover Alabama, or McLean Va or Buckhead, GA but what they did have was a two parent household that set expectations and boundries in a lot of cases. Just like the children of the upper middle class that I described above. It does not take a Harvard graduate to figure it out but the problem is that the powers at be do not want those children of the lower lower middle class to compete with their children so therefore they continue to sell a bill go goods to the lower classes that you have to have this or that to be a success. Children of the upper middle class have those things but they are just things . Nate, I come from one of the poorest counties in one of the poorest states in the country at the time. Many of my piers became doctors, lawyers, investment bankers as well as car mechanics, hotel maids, and gas jockies. However I can not think of one that ended up dead in a drive by shooting or living on the street with a needle in his or her arm. But the one thing I can think of after all these years that was a given was that even if our parents did not have much they had expectations for us and set boundries.
I wonder if the Flipper antenna can be used to shut off those annoying public TV sets ? .
It's expen$ive but worth the $ if so .
I've not turned on the TV set in my house for close to 10 years now, I like the quietude .
I can always go elsewhere if I need noise .
-Nate
Yes it can, Nate. Already tested that out.
Now to figure out where to buy one le$$ expenSive, most of my $ is earmarked for vehicle parts but I'd sure love to play hob with all those !%$!!#@! public TVs .
-Nate
I've never seen the inside of an Elk/Rotary/Moose/Lions Lodge thing, but I can't imagine they have as many weirdos and malcontents hanging inside them as ACF does. I'm not really one to spend time in bars, but every time I'm ~forced inside~ invited to join a pal in one, the music is so loud you can't discuss _anything,_ not even the weather. Maybe my vocal cords just aren't toughened up from enough screaming to be heard over the speakers? Sounds like my friends and acquaintances don't frequent these so-called taverns.
The only bars worth a shit are places that cater to people who actually make things, who claim a stool on the way home from work, who aren't looking to get laid or impress anyone, and that greet anyone new through the door with skepticism if not suspicion.
Basically I've realized that Lawrence from Office Space is my spirit guide.
I'd say the same is true of college bars. I went to Texas A&M a good many years ago. my friends and I spent an ungodly sum of money drinking an ocean of Shiner Bock at a dive bar called Duddley's Draw. the best conversations invariably occurred in the middle of the afternoon after the day's classes, when the place was relatively quiet and you could talk at normal volume. I had many fascinating and occasionally random conversations with interesting people. I think it's got something to do with people who are willing and happy to drink during the day. it was an entirely different dynamic after dark, when the goal of 90 percent of the patrons was getting laid, getting in a fight, or both.
I cannot stand being in loud places any more. I put that down to age, although I'm a lot less annoyed by the open-pipe 347 Ford warming up in the garage next to me at MidO than I am by the incoherent yelling in an Applebees.
Downsides of having kids later in life:
Me: Why do they make so much noise?
Wife: They're children.
top ten relatable comments of 2022
I stopped by a local dive bar on the way home from work last week to grab a quick beer only to learn that it has "re-branded" to cater to middle aged career women who like to make noise. I walked in, assessed the situation, and walked out.
I worked in an open floor plan office that had more women than men working there. I had also once visited an aviary. Aviary was considerably more quiet.
My wife and I enjoy bars, taverns, breweries and distilleries too much, probably, there being a good selection of all here in Colorado. The ones that have TVs will be loud if the Broncos or Avalanche are playing, whoops and cheers for the Avs of late, groans and swearing if it is the former. Anyway, she and I got into a rut of looking at our phones when it was too loud to talk much. Last week Santa brought us a backgammon board, knowing neither of us knew how to play, with a note to put away cell phones in any establishment that serves adult beverages. So far, so good!
Enthused about this 1st Principles idea. Any meeting in the Denver area (home to me) or around the Space Coast in FL (home to some family - I'm there 4 - 5 times/year), please count me in!
I vote FoCo because I don't want to drive through homeless encampments in Denver but I also recognize that's a real stretch for anyone in the Colorado Springs area or the western slope.
Isn't the myth that the American Revolution was fomented in public houses?
I sure as hell didn't understand radio waves when I was in 8th grade. With the exception of knowing what "AM" and "FM" stood for, which probably put me at least a standard deviation ahead of the average 8th grader. Even after earning an electrical engineering degree and spending over a decade working directly on radar and comm systems, I still feel borderline illiterate when it comes to RF.
Most people in my school barely got through electromagnetics. The professor curved all the exams so that a 50% was a C. I about fell out of my chair when he told us that was his policy. ICP was right. I can't be the only idiot in my (former) field, so I've pretty much concluded that everyone is either faking it or is too dumb to know they don't know anything.
I also recall explaining to a college buddy, a mechanical engineering major, how a four stroke engine works in similar detail to the discussion you had with your son. He's a project engineer at Honda now, which depresses me in multiple ways.
"What do people talk about at modern parties and gatherings? Nothing but bullshit. What's on Netflix. Food. Travel. Food and travel. Current events viewed through one's polarizing lens of choice."
And that's why trying to be social often feels more lonely than just keeping to yourself. Really looking forward to seeing where this First Principles thing is headed. I'm not one to meet up with strangers from the internet (for non-dating purposes, anyway), but for this I'd make an exception.
The funny thing is that prior to the Internet, meeting strangers was, well, the only way anything ever got done! But decades' worth of exposure to people's worst secret selves online has made all of us highly reluctant to ever wander outside of an approved bubble.
What I'm hoping is that we will create and expand a real-world group of acquaintances so that ten years from now you will know a lot more people than you currently do, and those will be largely high-value people.
I think another balancing act will be trying to maintain a White Pill atmosphere and avoiding the Black Pill gripe session. It's really easy to fall into the doomsday mindset when you organize a bunch of smarter than average, straight white dudes these days.
I've heard this feedback via email and Instagram as well.
Make no mistake, I intend for this to be focused on POSITIVE developments. If people want to have a beer or shot afterwards and talk about the other stuff, that's totally okay and probably even necessary -- but that's not our focus. You should leave feeling more optimistic than you arrived.
Not only that, but it's easy for groupthink to overtake the conversation, and a couple of strong personalities can quickly take things in weird directions. Just look at how the parts of the "Manosphere" that didn't get cancelled devolved into antisemitism and/or voluntarily-celibate religious zealotry.
This sort of thing also seems ripe for grifters to hitch their wagon to it. ACF has been refreshingly free of the sort of crap that plagues open discussion pretty much every else; I hope it can stay that way.
This is why we will have facilitators with a strict brief. It won't be perfect and mistakes will happen but this is not gonna be a tiki torch march or a gripe session about women or an antifa orgy.
"Nothing but bullshit. What's on Netflix. Food. Travel. Food and travel. Current events viewed through one's polarizing lens of choice."
It could be worse, imagine getting stuck next to a boob who natters on endlessly about vintage vehicles, how to resurrect/repair them and enjoy the crap out of using them instead of playing hobby car ...
"But decades' worth of exposure to people's worst secret selves online has made all of us highly reluctant to ever wander outside of an approved bubble. "
You're joking right ? .
I'da never met you nor the many others I have met in person after realizing there are others like me out there via the internet....
-Nate
(edited 'cause I forgot to mention the internet)
I was lucky and had a 7th grade science teacher who was a serious HAM radio operator. He offered enough extra credit to make a whole test irrelevant if you got your FCC novice or technician license, and had the local HAM club come after school to teach a class during winter, when activity busses ran but almost no sports had practice. I ended up getting a license and still have the high quality Yaesu 2M hand held. The local AARL club had a repeater to make simplex calls at a time when cell phones came in bags and required shoulder straps, and it was fun calling friends from the car at 12 years old. I also now can remain free from worry should FCC special agents descend on a race track where we’re using Baofengs.
Because the world is much smaller than we think it is, it turned out his son was an Ivy-league degree holding partner at the firm I worked at in a different city. That connection ended up being very helpful professionally.
My father (who went on to a BS in EE and then a much later MS in EE) built a radio system he could use to tap into and make phone calls with in his high school days. I think it operated via transmitting touch tone over his car based radio set to the receiver in his house that was hooked to the phone line and would then detect the touch tone signals and dial.
I probably have some of that wrong, but he knew enough to essentially build a cell phone in early 70s. I'm not sure I would have been able to cobble a system like that together at his age, or today despite having (forgotten) background in all that physics, math, etc.
Ha, sounds like your dad was a "phone phreaker." Guys would build "blue boxes" to replicate the tones and make free calls. Somebody even figured out that the whistles that came in Cap'n Crunch cereal boxes perfectly replicated the 2600 Hz tone that caused the phone switch to open up a long distance line.
Phreaking eventually evolved into computer hacking. Jobs and Wozniak got their start building and selling blue boxes.
My degree program would have been a lot more stimulating had it been populated with guys doing stuff like that, as opposed to frat bros and dudes who skipped class because they were up all night playing Halo.
There was a Bell System technical journal article available in any large library that gave away the keys to the kingdom. A touch tone phone used a matrix of tones to identify each number on the keypad, one tone for the x position and one tone for the y for each key. The Bell switching network codes also worked on a two-tone matrix, just different frequencies than the home touch tone phones. The frequencies and the control codes were all in that journal article.
The Flipper Zero can generate DTMF although I had to explain it to the boy.
When I was in 8th grade I understood a little bit about radio waves but that was because my older brother and I attended a ham radio club every week at the JCC. It was run by an older guy who started teaching us about electronics from resistors up to superheterodyne circuits. I never got my Novice license beccause back then you needed to be able to do Morse code at 5 wpm or faster and while I could hack the theory, I couldn't get my speed on the key up. I still remember the light bulb going on when he explained how the tuner on a radio is a variable capacitor. Of course, back then there were still tube radios with tuners that you could actually see and connect its physical structure to its electronic function.
Do they still have ham radio clubs for kids or anything at all like that?
Not that I could find in our area. I used to work with a guy who was in a club that was mostly for Ford employees. Out of all the guys that I’ve talked to about the hobby, he was the most level-headed.
A lot of my interactions (albeit mostly online) were with people who both lamented the fact that their hobby was dying but kept the barrier to entry entirely too high to draw anyone in. I understand the need to gatekeep, but some of these guys went a bit overboard.
FWIW, I was pretty up front in my reasoning for taking up this hobby. I wanted to be able to understand the technology enough to communicate effectively in an emergency, communicate with friends while in the wilderness, and participate in the local SKYWARN net.
The fact that I didn’t have the time/interest to spend my time building radios seemed to put a lot of people off. The sad thing is that I’d actually love to do that, but I already have enough hobbies that I half-ass. It seemed a more effective use of time to learn how to communicate instead of trying to play Motorola Engineer circa 1963.
Well, I was in my school's HAM club starting in 5th grade, so I knew a bit about radio waves, and the type of modulation. And so on. It being a poor communist country, we studied theory a lot, because practice was expensive, and we were all broke.
Of course, that was a *looong* time ago. On the plus side, I don't have Netflix, I can't eat most foods (have to cook for myself), and my travel is severely limited. Not certain exactly where that leaves me ...
This is like me "programming" the Apple ][+ on paper, which I did for almost a year.
Count me in. If we don’t hang together, we’re going to hang separately.
I referenced this same quote during our chat.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SZOeDY_iFCg
Honeypot? Heh.
Count me in.
I'll be happy to help organize the Eastern Canadian chapter meeting. Prince Edward Island could be fun. It also has the advantage of being about the most remote, civilized place from most people in North America. Plus, it also offers the best Lobster and best fries.
I’ve been nearby, but not yet had the pleasure of visiting PEI. I had a boss that made an annual pilgrimage and golfed for two weeks solid. He raved about the island.
It’s a truly lovely place, full of wonderful people. They all seem to have figured out that they live in one of the greatest spots in the world, and take pleasure in that knowledge. They just seem to enjoy their lives, in a very middle class kind of way. Or at least what middle class used to mean a generation or two back. The only oddity is how many restaurants use frozen French fries, when they are all surrounded by potato fields.
Oh, and the soil, and the beautiful sandy beaches, are red!
I am tentatively quite interested! Right up my alley... Over-educated mid-30s jack-of-all-trades that works in a blue-collar trade-adjacent profession (hardware store manager) and know just enough about most trades to be dangerous. And a lot of other topics. Not so sure I could make the first, or every pow-wow but I am quite intrigued by the idea.
I also have a habit of overusing hyphens and commas.
Guess I’m going to find out if Detroit is lovely that time of year.
Springtime can indeed be lovely in southeastern Michigan.
Being far on the introverted side of the social spectrum this type of event will take me right out of my comfort zone but in the best way possible. Detroit is only a few hours away so count me in, assuming my schedule allows. And despite being a Trackday Club member I’d gladly pay the $100 attendance fee. I feel like I’ve already received my money’s worth from my initial subscription.
I'm absolutely willing to take more of your money.
This is exciting. This is community. This is how businesses have been built, how people have gotten a hand up, and how a cohesive and unified middle class built a country that worked.
I'm looking forward to attending as and when possible. I sincerely hope it is a really big deal.
Sounds fantastically interesting, even though I would be totally clueless in most of the topics and awfully out of my depth in the rest! Still, the only real reason I'm not really considering showing up it the petty problem named "Atlantic Ocean" and time and financial problems associated with crossing it.
However, if you ever want to do one of these in Prague (and if you want it in Europe, you WANT it in Prague) I could help. I'm even a member of a club that would be almost perfect for such thing.
Maybe I'll fly you over here once and then you can handle the Eastern European operation like George Smiley in the LeCarre books.
I'm more of a Frederick Forsyth man, so I would suggest a mix between George Smiley (whom I sadly only know from the films and not books – something I shall remedy) and Peter Miller, the RHD-Jag-driving freelance European journalist from the ODESSA file.
But yes, it could work! :)
Just my pet peeve as a Czech – we are not Eastern Europe, we are Central Europe. When I go to Vienna, I go a bit south and quite a bit east. Berlin is almost straight north. And if you go from Berlin to Vienna by train, you'll be going almost under my house :)
Which is also the reason why Prague is a good location for such a thing not only because I live here and because we have the Eccentric Club (a members-only bar that allows smoking and similar stuff, but also runs lectures on everything from psychology to arts to AI as well as little concerts, usually by some of the best people here), but also because it's quite easily reachable.
Have you ever seen the Hebrew clock that runs counter-clockwise in the old Jewish town hall?
I went by the place at least once (I live less than two miles away), but to be honest, i didn't notice the clock. Will have look the next time I'm headed that way.
There's too much to see in Prague and even if you lived here for years, as I do, or even decades as the "natives" (I was born about 60 miles away), you could still spend the rest of your lifetime discovering things, from jewels of Middle Ages to myths and legends, to functionalism of the 1930s and brutalism of the 1970s. There isn't many cities in the world with such rich history and so many layers of architecture. Rome and Paris, maybe.
Though I’m an infrequent commenter here, I’m intrigued by the idea and am interested in attending, presuming the dates work. I suspect you’re not going to have a problem getting 20 people.
I've been wondering if a branch like this might grow off of the ACF tree. A way to interact with this group without buying a racecar??? Hell yes, I'm interested!
But I'll have to wait a bit...at least until you get west of the Rockies. Portland or Seattle would be ideal.
Not a problem. Assuming the first meeting doesn't result in some sort of cataclysm, Bark and I will head West for the second one.
Perhaps we can convince Ronnie to make the trip, too?
I'm humbled. Maybe I could do a session on maker stuff, 3D printing and lasers. I'm continually astounded that I can make dimensionally accurate things in my kitchen. Maybe combine it with someone that actually knows how to do CAD better than my kludgy method.
I'm very interested. For me the biggest issue is the travel, not the money. I've come to hate flying.
But I am curious as to what folks are thinking and what they think is worthwhile and real and achievable. All that stuff. Part of it is the engineer in me and part of it is the writer.
I do have a pretty strong understanding of the power grid btw, worked for PGT for a while and also for CalISO.
You can wait until we come around your way -- it's mean to be a traveling circus so people have a chance to do it without getting on a plane.
One topic I'd considered, if we had an author like you involved in a meeting: how comprehensive and logical of a fantastical world could a group build in a short meeting, the way Tom Clancy figured out parts of Red October with a naval board game?
Depends on the group. Some folks get way too wrapped around the axle on world building
This is something that I'm actually well known for as an author. (the world building, not the wrapped around the axle part)
I knew Red Storm Rising was essentially wargame in novel form but hadn't realized Red October was.
I'll have to go find my Naval Press hardback (shouldn't admit to owning that) but Clancy refers to a computer program at some point.
Larry Bond, the co-author, created Harpoon as a board game. It was later developed into the video game series. It would not surprise me if there was an intermediate stage as they wrote together.
12 year old Harry thought Red Storm rising was the greatest novel ever written. I have re read it twice since then and it stands up. Tom Clancy gets a bad rap because he tries to write "humans" and have "character development" in his later novels.
Red Storm Rising is WICKED and it even told us about the stealth fighter!
I gave up on the "Ryanverse" when he became President. I was afraid in the next one the aliens would come. There was no other place to take it.
The most recent Clancy I've read is Rainbow Six and the most recent one I remember seeing was The Bear and the Dragon? Which apparently I saw in a bookstore in the 2000s yet remember the title of for reasons unknown to me.
Yeah, not a master of prose. His plots were excellent and I loved how he brought multiple stories together to epic conclusion. I think Clear and Present Danger is my favourite of his.
I was a teenager when I last read RSR, but I’m inspired to pick it up again.
Red Storm Rising was great, my favorite was Without Remorse. I was mightily disappointed at what they did with the movie.
After I read and re-read Jack invitation, I was think back over the last 50 years and though of those time in a group or at work when things just clicked. like at a high school job at Long John Silvers when Friday evening rush came around and the 5 of us part timers would tell the Asst. Mgr to go to the back and have a smoke and beer and get our of our way, or when at a major government organization when our team would tackle a complex problem and the Division Director would occasionlly stick his head in the door, and want to take charge and we would tell him to not to mess things up and we would get back to him with the finished product in time for him to take credit. I think Jack's idea is great, count me in.... but DETROIT..... was the Southside of Chicago not available? :-)
Think more suburban Detroit, which is NOT the baddest part of town!
Have you considered renting a private home? You and Bark could save on hotels, and a limited number of attendees could pay to stay on site, subidizing the rental fee.
For the adventurous you could even have it inside the city limits. $1,850 night. They'll host events up to 40 people but they charge extra for events. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/9190394
It's called the Sanders Mansion, not sure if it has anything to do with the Sanders candy, cake and fudge company. Palmer Woods is probably as safe as any of the suburbs, there's limited access to the subdivision, private security and the DPD's 12th Precinct is right across Seven Mile Rd.
"Located in Historical Palmer Woods. 7 bedrooms, 11 beds. 6 full baths and 4 half baths, Swimming Pool, Whirlpool, Sauna, Rainfall Shower, Home Gym,3 Treadmills, English Pub, Billiard Parlor, Ballroom/Conference Room, Movie/Screening Room with 200 + inch screen. 10,000 sq feet Mansion, Private Security Patrol"
I agree with Brother Bark; this idea has serious potential.
Pretty intrigued in attending once this heads west, but also worried about missing out on the inaugural session. I will be pondering reasons both work and personal to be in that neck of the woods in the spring….
My Midwestern heart loves that this is something that would grow out of this region. I mean, I lived on the other side of the world in an exotic locale for years and still ended up coming back here. I can use my parents' house as a staging area for anywhere within a couple of hours of there, and Detroit is practically the next town. I'll figure out how to make attending this new not-a-cult a birthday present to myself, although I'm not sure what I could possibly contribute to the group. If there's anything I've excelled at in my life, it's underachieving.
That's the best part of it -- you won't know what you're going to contribute until you get there, and it could change someone's life for the better.