There's an older game called Kohan you could check out. Click speed is not super important compared to positioning and company builds. Doubt there's a multiplayer scene, but I haven't played in forever.
Also check out Beyond All Reason, it's a modern Total Annihilation where you're essentially trying to automate economy and production and the game provides a lot of tools to do that.
Stormlight Archives are his latest and greatest. I'd recommend those if you were a wheel of time fan, or you could start with Mistborn. They're set in the same universe but it's not really necessary to have that background.
That's incorrect. Essentially all decent paying jobs in the US take care of most or all of the healthcare cost you're referring to. That is especially true for eg software developers who earn six figures at the median.
To balance a proper comparison if you're going to include the EU taxes re healthcare, you would have to inflate US wages even higher to account for the benefit that employees receive (money that otherwise would be available for labor competition in the form of salary), which is often a large sum of money given the cost of US healthcare.
US healthcare per capita is typically 100% (double) more expensive than in Western Europe. It's about 130% more expensive versus Britain. It's 200%+ more expensive versus Italy.
A software developer earning $125,000 - $150,000 per year is receiving a minimum of an additional 10% equivalent of their salary in the form of healthcare coverage. More likely 15-20% these days. The cost to put a small family on a good health plan will easily run you $20,000+ per year.
you might want to check the stats for the claims in your first paragraph, unless "decent job" in this case is top 5%. Only 49% of Americans have employer sponsored health plans and most of those are not entirely paid for by the employer. and only 91% of Americans are insured.
My family healthcare coverage at my "decent paying job" at a software company in the US cost me about $13,000 out of pocket in 2018 including employee premium and medical cost before reaching deductible. I would certainly consider that to be an additional tax when comparing against the EU tax rates that include healthcare.
Real estate transactions are public records. Companies monitor for sales and market to the new buyers. The same happens when you start a company. The company registration is a public record.
Seriously. I can't believe the mail doesn't violate some kind of FTC regulation about impersonating your mortgage lender. So many of the mailpieces were designed in such a way that I almost believed it was coming from the lender and not some third party company that wants me to buy a warranty.
FWIW, I've had a similar experience. So I was curious who sold my information and did some digging (was it my realtor, insurance agent, or title agent?). I asked each of them, they all denied it, but told me:
When you buy a house, all your info is public information on your county's website (most up to date counties). Unfortunately, I don't think you can stop them from publishing that information and having bots scrape that data to send you junk mail.
Most counties redact your name from their public website. But they don’t actually need that anyway. Your credit report has the address of the house and how much you owe on the mortgage.
And the credit agencies will sell your info to anyone.
There are also call center programs that call specifically to fill in those details. You answer, they ask who they are speaking to, then click, they're gone.
> Most counties redact your name from their public website.
In what state? Dallas County (TX) and Broward County (FL) don't. Nor does New Jersey (we have a unified system for all 22 counties). In Dallas County I can even see the names of everyone who owned a property for the previous five years as well.
In California I’ve never found a county that lists the property owner online. The only way to get the owner is to go to the county recorders office and look it up there.
Califironia has a law against state and local government displaying name and address of elected officials (and maybe some others?). California counties have decided it's easier to just not show any names on online property taz records than figure out who is an elected official.
Large, secured loans are recorded in public ledgers by law. I believe the motivation was to prevent people from going around and securing multiple loans with the same asset, before credit-scoring agencies existed.
> Large, secured loans are recorded in public ledgers by law.
That's not true of “large, secured loans” in general.
OTOH, it is true of certain real property interests, including those of both owners and secured lenders; this is about the size of a secured loan, it's about clarity of title to real estate.
There is some value in a public record of whom owns what land. Minimally it would create stronger property rights where things can’t be sold twice over like they are in other countries. One might also want to know if the owners are foreign entities.
The purpose of a timeout for toddlers / small children is to have a negative (but not harmful) consequence they understand so they can make a choice as to whether to continue a certain behavior or not. There are very few appropriate negative consequences available that a toddler will understand.
Punishment does have its place in behavioral training but is not the first or even third method to rely on. Parents should be first prioritizing on rewarding positive behaviors.
The criminal justice system is a terrible example of punishment used effectively. Punishment in behavioral training is best used in a very tight feedback loop (immediately after action, not after 5 years of court cases) and reliably.
> The purpose of a timeout for toddlers / small children is to have a negative (but not harmful) consequence they understand...
Looks like we disagree.
In general I am opposed to punishment (obviously one cannot be absolute on such a matter) but in particular: the younger the child the less agency and less ability to connect cause and effect, so I consider punishment pretty much ineffective for toddler ages.
But society is a huge parallel processing system so my opinion need not be universal.
I see timeouts as a chance for emotional thinking to subside and return to more rational thoughts. They intervene during undesired behaviors, and provide a place to complete the behavior (tantrum).
I completely agree regarding the criminal justice system.
This is entirely opposite of my experience. We do timeouts for harmful things (like hitting newborn baby brother, running into the street) or if he is having a tantrum and isn't cooling down.
We have had great success with positive parenting (I think there is a book of that same name). Instead of timeouts we focus on calming and identifying emotions. It is empowering for children to be able to self-identity overwhelming emotions and handle them appropriately, which is a skill more adults would learn as well (myself included!)
Simple tricks are to tie physical actions to images to help them calm down. "Smell the flowers" then "blow out the candles" instead of "take deep breaths". We ask him to identify his emotion: "Are you frustrated?" "No, I'm sad!" Leading to a chat about the source of the reaction and not just deal with just the physical event.
Instead of a timeout we ask if he wants to go calm his body then come back when he is ready. Our 4 year old has been saying things like "I need to go calm my body!" when he gets upset, which is amazing. If he is in a situation in which he needs to be removed actively we don't treat it like punishment we say "let's go calm our bodies before coming back."
Having a GOAL to the timeout gives your child agency and helps them navigate emotions.
Presumably they're now in school and have bitten, hit, scratched, pushed, or otherwise physically harmed others (most kids do particularly in the transition from parallel to cooperative play; greed is a very strong instinct). What's your spin on that? You just suggest that the child removes themselves if they feel like it?
I'm not hippy dippy over here, just applying empathy and learning to time-outs. Instead of punishments for bad actions they are a chance for him to communicate what's wrong and a chance to teach him how to handle his emotions. It is a long ass road for sure, and I certain don't leave him to handle physical situations himself. It is only occasionally he gets upset about something and notices he needs to calm himself down. Most of the time, he needs guidance.
His preschool is actually where most of these techniques come from and they spend a bunch of time identifying feelings and keeping things positive/productive and do things like have the kids jump on a mini-trampoline to burn off excess energy.
If he is hitting someone, I immediately move him away and try to work him through talking/breathing/etc. Most really bad situations can be avoided by putting him in a position to succeed. That just means stuff like don't keep him out until 11pm and don't drag him around unhappily if we can help it. He is only 4 but we try to respect his personhood - he doesn't make the rules but we consider his wants/dislikes and warn him when we know he is going to need to do something he won't like. In turn, he tends to behave better in those situations - he has been on a 13 hour flight with no drama. In his life, has only required a kicking/screaming drag away response maybe once or twice. A lot of that is simply avoiding those situations before they develop.
All kids push boundaries so we try not to set fake goalposts, (i.e. No cake for you if you do this! But then give him the cake anyway.) We only threaten things we are willing to go through with, even if they mean shittiness for everyone. We've left stores before we wanted to, left dinners early and left parties early to avoid meltdowns. While it sucks, those are big events that prove we aren't making empty threats but informing him of real boundaries. When we know we can't uphold something we simply don't threaten it.
He also has a younger brother (2 yrs) and of course they fight over toys often. The progression goes from: "Did you ask or just grab? Can you share/take turns?" If the younger one is grabbing from him (which is more common): "Can you trade/offer him an alternative toy? Can you ask him to wait instead of fighting for it?" If none of that works, I take the toy away for a while and say "that's the rule". It's great to blame the "rules" because they can't argue against them.
I'd say the difference is that "timeouts" are putting the kid in a corner to cool down vs. taking them aside to actively calm them down. I think when most people say timeouts they are talking about separating the child and letting them stew for a while.
We ran into this problem. Our oldest would just hit him again 5 minutes after the timeout. It got to the point where she would hit him, say "timeout!" and go to her timeout spot. She hated the timeout (she cried during it), but she decided it was worth it.
She basically took every chance she could to hurt him. If she was walking by him, she would purposefully step on his fingers. Or hip check him. Or smack him on top of his head.
We tried pretty much everything, and nothing worked. Ultimately she grew out of the behavior after about 8 months.
We did the timeout when our 2 yr old first hit new baby and it reduce the behavior short term, but we also had our 2 year old start holding the newborn (with assistance) while giving a lot of praise. That replacement of the negative behavior with the positive really helped the 2yr old's attitude towards new baby.
I'm curious as a future parent: How old was she, and how do you think she would have responded with an explaination of what was going on: She's jealous because she sees the baby getting more attention than she is, and explaining when she was a baby, she got just as much attention and that you love them both equally.
She was about 2 and a half when they were born. To be more specific, we actually had twins. And she only did it to one of them. Explaining things are what we tried first - its always our first goto - explain, redirect, etc.
When we tried to explain things, she would mostly just ignore our words and change the subject. There was even a period of time where even mentioning "baby" would cause her to yell "NO BABY!".
BTW, you might have heard of the "terrible twos". But the "threenager" stage was much worse for us.
Some of the defiance is kinda funny, depending upon your sense of humor. Like when my wife said "I hope when you get older you call mommy to tell her how much you love her", and she said "I'm going to call you to tell you how much I don't love you."
It's a lot better now, but she has always been pretty persistent and strong willed. At the end of the day, you get what you get. We have some friends with the most amazingly behaved first child that didn't care for our kid's behavior and some of the stuff we just let her do. Then their second kid was more like ours and after that they had more sympathy.
Worked first time to stop a child running on to the road for me, never needed to repeat it. Other kids in my care have learnt without that necessity, thankfully.
Often timeouts work because it separates the kid from the stimulus and gives them an opportunity to cool off and let their conscious mind reassert itself over their emotions. Not necessarily because they think of it as a negative consequence to be avoided.
Often when young kids do harmful things they are not really "thinking" in that moment. Sometimes it is hard for them to even recognize it as something "they did" as opposed to something that happened to them. Strong emotions, to a little kid, are things that happen to them, not things they do. They don't understand why they do things, sometimes.
The heart of raising a young kid to behave properly is teaching them to understand and manage their emotions. We tell our kid, "you feel angry, and that's ok. It's ok to feel angry. However, you're still responsible for how you behave." And we give her appropriate options for dealing with feeling angry. One of the tools we've taught her is a cooling off period, but we don't label it a "time out" like a punishment. As she has gotten older, she gives them to herself sometimes!
Some kids are distraught when separated from the family, others are quite content. IME timeout can be far more emotionally damaging than smacking. A well timed smack is a punishment for action; a "timeout" appears to be a desire for separation originating with the little-person's most loved-ones. A short-cut to the brain telling it that a behaviour is unwanted (smack) vs. an emotionally loaded action telling them [seemingly] their loved ones don't want them around.
I've smacked and ended self-destructive behaviour immediately and permanently (with ongoing reinforcement); done timeout and simply made a child distraught and supremely insecure.
Horses for courses, as they say. [That is, people vary and what works for one person will not work for another.]
Slight aside, isn't all correction for "harmful things" just at different levels of harm? I don't for example correct my children's "poor manners" in putting their elbows on the table because I don't consider it harmful in any substantial way; presumably my parents found it harmful enough to chastise me over otherwise why would they do so. My presumption is that they felt I'd be somewhat excluded by polite society for failing to adopt societal norms of table manners.
I don’t have kids but when I get really angry and step away from the situation I often get into a loop and my emotions spin out of control.
Say I’m really angry at my wife. If she leaves me alone after an argument I might go crazy for hours, throwing things at the wall, and cursing for a long time. It’s like my brain gets into an infinite loop and without new stimulus, I am just stuck there.
What works better is if she try to talks to me maybe 10 minutes after the incident. I don’t want to get into a loop and want to get out but can only do it with help or some new stimulus.
Does this happen with kids? I remember this happening when I was sent to my room as a child, but I’m bipolar so maybe it’s just me.
If you are angry for hours maybe try going to exercise or meditate(fixing this issue is actually one of the goals of meditation) or something, but that is above my pay grade.
With my kid, he sometimes does not cool down during a tantrum until he goes in his room for timeout for a few minutes, and he is always measurably calmer after timeout. The recommended timeout time is 1 minute per year of age - it's not like they're abandoned for hours.
With my kids they are always allowed to "get some space" if they want to, but we never force isolation on them (we may suggest it, and often that suggestion is accepted, but it's clear that we're available to talk if they want to).
Definitely 37signals inspired us in many of the things we do. I'd say half of our team have read their books and regularly read their blog!
Recruitment and marketing are definitely a good side effect, but as @znq mentioned earlier, we built the guide in the first place for onboarding our own team members, then we thought sharing it publicly would benefit the community.
Also check out Beyond All Reason, it's a modern Total Annihilation where you're essentially trying to automate economy and production and the game provides a lot of tools to do that.