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'Wild West' mentality lingers in modern populations of US mountain regions
- 2trill2spill 6y ago> Now, well into the 21st century, researchers led by the University of Cambridge have detected remnants of the pioneer personality in US populations of once inhospitable mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. As a person who was born and raised in the Midwest[1], just where are these mountainous regions they speak of in the Midwest? There's the black hills[2] and that's pretty much it. I wonder what definition of the Midwest the University of Cambridge is using, cause it sounds like they are talking about the intermountain west[3], not the midwest. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midwestern_United_States [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hills https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hills [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_West https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermountain_West
- reaperducer 6y agoThat pretty much sums up the quality of any of the thousands of attempts by British people to dissect and understand the United States. See also: Almost every single BBC News report ever filed.
- falcolas 6y agoAs someone who lives in this "Intermountain West", I've never heard of the "Intermountain West" term before your post. It seems like a term that someone came up with, but it's never caught on. I've typically heard of us referred to as the Western US (as opposed to the West Coast).
- 2trill2spill 6y agoI hadn't heard of the term either until moving to Utah, I noticed quite a few orgs/business with the term intermountain in it, like intermountain healthcare. But when I was living in the midwest we just referred to the mountain region as "out west".
- jakeva 6y agoI'm from Utah, my parents ran a business with the word 'intermountain' in it but I remember thinking it was a strange word. And (aside from intermountain healthcare, which I doubt I would have remembered without your comment) I don't think it's a word I've heard or seen used otherwise.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- rjsw 6y agoThe term is used for regional sporting organizations.
- reaperducer 6y agoAs someone who lives in this "Intermountain West", I've never heard of the "Intermountain West" term before your post I'm not from the area, but once I started visiting and doing business in Utah, I found it was pretty common. Once I became familiar with it, I noticed it more and more.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoI could see it as East of the Sierras in California continuing across the midwest. The economic and cultural differences crossing from the western coastal strip in California to east of the Sierras are mind-boggling.
- meristem 6y agoI am most familiar with this term in the context of detailed weather forecast discussions.
- 2trill2spill 6y agoMaybe that's why I've heard the term so much recently as I just started getting into weather, and weather forecasting, particularly snow.
- kipchak 6y agoIt sounds like they're talking about the Rockies to me as well. I think the thought is perhaps everything between California and Oklahoma = Midwest.
- Kalium 6y agoSounds about right, and I've corrected that same error in Europeans before. That's the kind of error someone with a limited understanding of American history or culture would make. It's an easy mistake to make, looking at a map and knowing the name without knowing about the Northwest Ordinance
- rosseloh 6y ago>perhaps everything between California and Oklahoma = Midwest If you're right and that's the definition some people use, I'm not surprised they're confused. Considering I see most people using "midwest" referring to places like Ohio and Michigan. I've always preferred "Great Plains" when trying to describe my general location to folks online. You say "I live in the midwest" and everyone seems to assume you're in Ohio or Indiana or thereabouts. Nope, I'm in South Dakota. America's a big place, y'all. The middle of Colorado is where I draw the line - west of there you're not Midwest or Great Plains, you're in The West.
- XaspR8d 6y agoYeah I try to avoid "midwest" at all, except when being vague is a goal. The distinction between "Great Lakes" & "Great Plains" seems quite useful both geographically and culturally and "midwest" seems to just splotch right over that boundary. I agree with your western boundary, though I'd probably just call it "The Rockies" myself, and let Nevadans and Utahns get absorbed either into "West Coast" or "Southwest" as they personally desire. This system does create some problems for e.g. Missouri & Arkansas, which are in the confluence of 3-4 other regions, and you have to accept that Pennsylvania and New York get cut in half, but it's what my brain has settled on.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
- baddox 6y agoHow about the Ozarks? They may not be the most visually impressive mountains, but I would at least consider the St. Francois Mountains in southern Missouri to be part of the Midwest.
- chrisco255 6y agoThe Ozarks extend into Arkansas, and I would say that's sort of where the south meets the Midwest. The people from the Ozarks, from my touring of the area in Arkansas, with the strong folk music tradition and the diet, remind me more of Appalachia than out West.
- clairity 6y agoi would consider all of the ozarks part of the south, splitting missouri roughly in half between south and midwest. eastern oklahoma and even (rural) eastern texas is more south than southwest too.
- Ancapistani 6y agoThat’s because our ancestors came from Appalachia - and before that, from the Shenandoah Valley, and before that, from Scotland. It’s interesting to me to look around and see so much of my local culture influenced by our largely shared Scottish ancestry while simultaneously realizing that so few people here really know much about it.
- 2trill2spill 6y agoThe Ozarks are awesome but I wouldn't consider them mountains just big hills. The St Francois mountains for example are only 1700 feet above sea level. Minnesota also has many points above 2000 feet that are awesome but again I wouldn't consider them Mountains either. There's no official definition of a mountain however so its all in the eye of the beholder.
- crocodiletears 6y agoPretty sure 'midwest' has taken over as a more polite version of 'flyover country' in the minds of many in our more uhh elite institutions. I'm sure we're not worth distinguishing. Outside of the cities, we're all just barbarian backwaters.
- RobRivera 6y agoIts more fun rolling as a barb anyways.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoYeah the problem with that is all the rich people seem to have plenty of time on their hands to tell you how to live your life.
- remarkEon 6y agoYeah but the best part of being a mountain barbarian or a midwesterner is you get to ignore them while you live rent free in their heads.
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThe problem with ignoring them is that left to their own devices they'll outlaw your way of life directly or indirectly.
- vikramkr 6y agoIt's from a UK institution. I'd be surprised if the average member of that institution could distinguish US cities either. I assure you that people in coastal US cities are fully capable of distinguishing the mountainy place where there's legal weed from the flat place where there's corn. As a former midwesterner though, wouldn't feel confident about assuring you of anything more than that. Except during election season. For like 3 weeks everyone suddenly becomes an expert on Iowa and Ohio. An old but relevant meme titled "how non-Americans see america": https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/051/807/26e.jpg_large https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/051/807/26e...
- nickpinkston 6y agoThey could be referring to some like Appalachia too? That does include the bottom of Ohio near the WV / KY / PA borders (where I grew). I'd believe that these rural places could have the "pioneer personality" they're describing.
- viridian 6y agoThe Appalachian mountains are present in Southeastern Ohio. The hollers don't just magically appear when you cross the river over from Marietta to Parkersburg.
- AndyMcConachie 6y ago"'Wild West' mentality" You mean like genocide? Because that's probably the most important 'mentality' developed in the Wild West. Unless of course we're talking about the Hollywood version of the Wild West. This article is a pile of American exceptionalist BS.
- mas3god 6y agoYes all the settlers were "genocidal" and its totally not a personality study of people live in the mountain states.
- briandear 6y ago> This article is a pile of American exceptionalist BS. Written by British people.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoAmerica has an exceptionally large amount of immigrants from everywhere in the world (America gains from brain drain elsewhere). This has an effect on culture. Not a very surprising finding on the face of it.
- dang 6y agoCan you please not take HN threads into ideological or nationalistic (or regional) flamewar? We already had to ask you this once recently. Even if you're right, this is the worst way to bring it up, unless you want everyone to get even more rigid in their pre-existing views and even angrier about them. What good does that do? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- chmod600 6y agoThis reads like the scientific version of a stereotype. Maybe kind of interesting, but extremely prone to misinterpetation, over-generalization, and potentially prejudice.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoCertainly prone to those kinds of things, but I think there are interesting questions that can only be answered by this kind of analysis. (For example, it seems plausibly related to why American gun culture is so much stronger and more popular than in other countries, even those with comparably permissive gun ownership laws.)
- chmod600 6y agoI'm skepical of putting a scientific veneer over such analysis. If that's the point you'd like to make, go ahead and make it, but leave science out of it.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y agoI'm not sure what you mean. Why shouldn't the methods of science be used to tackle these kinds of questions?
- chmod600 6y agoBecause they lead to a false sense of certainty and inappropriately appeal to authority. These questions are complex. The premises and framing are critical. The surrounding evidence that's not measured is probably much more important than whatever the scientist is able to actually measure. All living beings, including humans, are a mix of strengths and weaknesses in careful balance. If a martian scientist were to look at humans they would probably say something like: "Not very strong, not very fast, eats a lot, no armor, horns, or poison. Can't fly. We predict that wolves will hunt them to extinction in a few decades." But obviously the martians didn't measure our brains. Evolution of living beings tends to create these exceptions that throw off simpistic analysis. What are you forgetting to measure that will completely throw off your conclusions?
- briga 6y agoThe early settlers of North American were in some sense selected by personality. It must have taken a certain sort of risk-taking personality to give up everything and climb aboard a crowded rickety passenger ship for a month-long journey to a vast and mostly uninhabited land. The people who arrived in America and decided to take it one step further by moving away from the crowded cities of the east into the vast and dangerous interior of the continent must have been a special breed. You can still see some of these early mountain towns today--some are practically unchanged from what they looked like 100 years ago.
- winphone1974 6y agoSo I moved to Calgary, AB, Canada around 2000 along with a huge number of other Canadians and people from around the world primarily as economic migrants. The city has changed dramatically since then but I noticed that it attracted a lot of people with a similar pioneer style attitude; you had to be willing to move far away from your family mostly for your job, and the companies here had a very western "DIY" approach as well as something to prove to the more established Eastern "genteel". Some of this is gone now but many people and organizations still display it regularly.
- briga 6y agoMoving across the country ain't what it used to be--now pretty much anyone with money for an airplane ticket can do it with little to no risk. Calgary is a very cosmopolitan and modern city today, but I imagine it was pretty wild pre-1900. Alberta is still in its early stages of development, so you can definitely still find pockets of the Western mentality left
- sandworm101 6y ago>> Alberta is still in its early stages of development WTF? Early stages? The highways have been paved. The electrical lines have been run. Modern military bases. Highspeed internet. Cellphone coverage. Universal healthcare. Universities. Alberta is well past the "early stages" of development.
- kyleblarson 6y agoI live in a mountain town and it's literally 'Wild West': http://northwesttraveladvisor.com/northwest-vacation/western-towns.html http://northwesttraveladvisor.com/northwest-vacation/western...
- munificent 6y agoWinthrop is very cute, but it's Old West vibe was entirely manufactured in the 60s. There's no real history there, just kitsch. It's the Mild West.
- mikestew 6y agoWinthrop is about as literally Wild West as Leavenworth, WA [0] is literally Bavarian. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leavenworth%2C_Washington https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leavenworth%2C_Washington (As explanation, both towns decided to become a "theme town", for lack of a better phrase, around the same time in the 60s-70s. Winthrop was inspired by Leavenworth, which in turn was arguably inspired by Solvang, CA.)
- kyleblarson 6y agoObviously it was manufactured, but get outside of town a few miles and you are in real ranch country and it's very much the west. The prius and audi driving west siders don't usually see that side of things.
- supernova87a 6y agoWell, to whatever extent this is true, I'd like to know -- 1) Whether this is something very special to the US, versus happens in every country, and is a fact of life in remote / non-city areas, and 2) Does this call for a certain approach to how to effectively govern or design public policy if there is a east/west or city/suburban vs. rural social divide? Attitudes in themselves are not a problem. Inability to have people agree on almost anything to move forward with government and economic life because there is a permanent divide in social/political climate is. If a married couple cannot agree on finances, friends, raising kids, etc. ever, it's not pleasant for anyone.
- 082349872349872 6y agoThe actual article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x Paywalled, so I haven't checked my question 3) Do people from the University of Cambridge underestimate self-segregation due to US population mobility? (FWIW, local politics in my country does anecdotally skew rural/right urban/left, but we fortunately have many other different divisions whose axes are uncorrelated with that particular one. I firmly believe having more than two major parties helps immensely on this front.) Incidentally, my ultra-low-dimensional model after 2016 was "how far away does a US voter live from the largest city in their watershed?" It remains to be seen if this simplistic metric predicts anything useful in 2020.
- rbartelme 6y agoCode and Data on OSF: https://osf.io/y2mdw/ https://osf.io/y2mdw/ It's a bit funny that this is "open science framework"...when the code sets the wd with absolute paths, and the R packages are not explicitly versioned. I wish more scientists would start using Docker to make their work environments reproducible.
- sjy 6y agoThe co-authors Gosling and Potter have U.S. affiliations (you can click their names in the above paywalled URL).
- 6y ago
- arminiusreturns 6y agoCan anecdotally confirm. Sometimes it quite annoys me that those personality traits are so embedded in myself though, because it seems to constantly be a headbutting of cultures that so many Americans on the coastal big cities just don't get or approve of, and love to condescendingly talk about that kind of personality as lesser or barbarous in some way. I love the mountains and freedom they offered me, the lessons they taught me, and the beauty and solitude from an exhausting world they provided. After the war when I became an atheist, I would tell others in the community when they asked me to go to church that the mountains are my church. All that said, I doubt it will last. There is a huge influx of people (not just retirees, but refugees from the coastal cities) who would be considered rich into mountain communities, driving out the locals by prices and changing the demographic hugely. I keep a close eye on land for sale and land parcels that used to be huge are starting to be divided into 5 acre parcels and sold off... I can already see the distant future of this, turning mountain towns into you have to be rich towns like Aspen, and it makes me very sad. I can't wait till we have independent space travel, which is when I believe the frontier spirit will be reborn again. Humanity will need it then again! Alas, I probably won't live that long.
- mbostleman 6y agoSame here. I moved to eastern Idaho 3 years ago from a lifetime in northern Ohio (born and raised). Oddly I immediately felt more at home here and still do. It just fits me and seems to be the opposite of the industrial / Motor City region of the Midwest. Of course, the coastal elitism that you're referring to is aimed at Midwesterners too, but I think my clash was with the collectivism of the unionized blue collar culture.
- eanzenberg 6y agoThat’s the one constant with population growth. The remote parts of the world won’t be so remote as time goes on. On your point about space travel, it doesn’t even have to be that far. The moon or mars aren’t that terribly far on conventional rockets. If we could terraform mars for our arrival, though, that would be cool. Maybe this unlocks another explosion of population growth, similar to the industrial revolution and improvements in medicine?
- 6y ago
- phobosanomaly 6y agoIn many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. As a result, people have to learn to repair things, make things, use a gun, do first aid, lay shingles, hang drywall, pour concrete, solder pipe, weld, change oil, replace an alternator, lay PVC pipe, etc. People in the community learn emergency medicine and how to manage a structure or brush fire by volunteering with the local volunteer fire/EMS, because that's the only show in town. Roads wash out in the rainy season, so 4x4 is an absolute necessity. People learn to gauge sand you can drive through in 2x4, sand you can drive through in 4x4 and sand you just can't drive through by eyeballing it. I grew up in a very remote part of the California desert and everyone was like that. It's just what you have to do to get by because you keep finding yourself in situations where you need to call on these types of skills, and if you're living out there you have a lot of free time without interruption or distraction to learn the skills. Lots of people moved out from the city, and over the years they picked up a lot of those skills and became extremely self-sufficient.
- pnathan 6y ago> In many parts of the United States when you call 911, you're lucky if anyone shows up within an hour. It's a couple hours to get to a Wal-Mart or a store. It's difficult to get anyone to drive 40 minutes outside the nearest town and navigate unmarked dirt roads to do basic plumbing or home repairs. That's pretty far out; I think that's pretty extreme. At least in Idaho/WA IMO (different geography and settlement pattern, prolly). But your point is still valid for the bulk of rural US - you just gotta know how to deal, because the cavalry is a ways out and expensive.
- halbritt 6y agoI lived in the Santa Cruz Mountains for a while and had a tolerable commute into San Jose. A 911 call would yield a response no sooner than 30 minutes. So, not very far out at all, but definitely a set of circumstances that encouraged self-reliance.
- abeppu 6y ago> However, "openness to experience" is much higher, and the most pronounced personality trait in mountain dwellers. > "Openness is a strong predictor of residential mobility," said Götz. "A willingness to move your life in pursuit of goals such as economic affluence and personal freedom drove many original North American frontier settlers." > those who left their early mountain home are still consistently less agreeable, conscientious and extravert, although no such effects were observed for neuroticism and openness. I have difficulty reconciling these statements. - mountain dwellers have higher openness to experience - openness to experience is a predictor for residential mobility - but the people who move away from mountain regions _don't_ have higher openness to experience (but stay disagreeable, unconscientious and introverted)? I would have expected the selection bias to show up in the other direction: I would expect the people who stay put to have lower openness to experience, and the people who move to have higher openness to experience.
- aaron695 6y agoAbsolutely. You'd expect mountain people to be conservative. They can't afford to take more risks. Not sure if you'd expect liberal people to seed the place and conservative genetics to evolve. Or conservative genetics to seed the place and stay strong.
- antiterra 6y agoSource article (not free): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x Article with more information: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mountain-peaks-seem-to-shape-personality-traits-in-the-american-west/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/mountain-peaks-se...
- bookmarkable 6y agoI would love to see this type of study on Florida.
- nullc 6y agoFlorida is almost entirely flat, so you aren't going to be able to correlate much against "elevation relative to the surrounding region". :)
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoThat would just be a proxy study on people from the wealthy urban parts of the northeast.
- samatman 6y agoHe didn't mean that Florida, he meant the other one.
- pnw_hazor 6y agoI graduated HS from a mountain town in NE Washington and recently have been developing a property/homestead out there again. My wife usually remarks how nice the people are out there in the wild west compared to here in Seattle. Politics is polarized out there too -- with old timers and hippies clashing readily. But, nobody lets it get in the way of being friendly and helpful. One friend remarked that it is because people need each other more so politics is kept in better perspective. Some counties in NE Washington have formally recognized the "Code of the West". "The Code of the West was first chronicled by the famous western writer, Zane Grey. The men and women who came to this part of the country during the westward expansion of the United States were bound by an unwritten code of conduct. The values of integrity and self-reliance guided their decisions, actions and interactions. In keeping with that spirit, we offer this information to help citizens of Ferry County who wish to follow in the footsteps of those rugged individualists by living outside city and town limits." [PDF]: https://www.ferry-county.com/PDF_Files/Commissioners/Code_of_the_West_Doc.pdf https://www.ferry-county.com/PDF_Files/Commissioners/Code_of...
- throwaway0a5e 6y agoMy rule of thumb is that if the weather isn't crap a substantial portion of the year than the people are probably crap. Then you take the binary result of that and multiply by the distance to the nearest few luxury European car dealerships to get just how crappy/not crappy the people are. It's actually quite accurate regardless of local population density.
- bjt 6y agoHaving grown up in Utah, and living there now, I agree with the assessment of self reliance being emphasized much more here than other places I've lived (England, California). When thinking about causality though, it seems to me like a mistake to leave out the Mormon influence. It's not just Utah, but Mormons founded many towns in Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, and Nevada as well. Distrust of the federal government was frequently and explicitly taught by church leaders into the early 1900s.
- jariel 6y agoThe one thing that stands out is 'lower conscientiousness'. I would have thought being on the frontier, the #1 thing you needed was that. Very strict discipline, responsibility etc. - it could be this is more of a 'farmer trait' and less so a 'mountain' trait.
- Terr_ 6y ago> 'Wild West' mentality Not to be confused with a set of beliefs (some false) about a mythologized period of history that was almost propagandized by early television media.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- golemotron 6y agoI'm trying to understand why this article is on phys.org.
- blueyes 6y agoI grew up in a mountainous area of the US, and can confirm the presence of these personality traits, although it's hard for me to evaluate if they are more or less prevalent than in the coastal city where I now live (hello, mobility!). It's so hard to see into the lives of others, especially of enough of them to get a representative sample. For those interested in the history of the European settlement of the US, I would suggest the book Albion's Seed: https://b-ok.cc/book/1242050/e88335 https://b-ok.cc/book/1242050/e88335 The relevant part of the book is about the Scots-Irish settlers who came from the Borderlands. Those "Borderers," or Rievers, are historically combative, individualistic, and distrustful of government. They settled large parts of Appalachia, and from there they helped to clear the forests of the midwest and mine the Rockies. Think Daniel Boone. Think Alamo. They like to think they are independent and they like to fight. The repercussions on US politics are huge. It's hard to tell from the article through the link what the authors are asserting. While the conditions in the mountains may cultivate certain characteristics, they also attract certain populations. So this could be as simple as: mountain people settle in the mountains.
- x87678r 6y agoI read somewhere in the real wild west people were very collectivist as they had to rely on the whole village to work together to survive. The rugged individualist is a myth. I can't find the link though, anyone have similar stories?
- sudosteph 6y agoMy whole family is from Appalachian parts of NC, and even though I consider myself a "city person" (born and raised in Charlotte) - the traits from the article do match up pretty well with my personal big 5 traits. The agreeableness thing is interesting, because that's one of those traits where I've always heard there is a pretty significant difference on average between men and women (with women tending to score higher). Anecdotally, I think this could be the factor to explain a family trend, that I'm told is not uncommon in the region. The women in my family tend to do really well for themselves by going after non-traditionally female career paths and doing well - despite super modest backgrounds. My great-grandma went from working at a mill to building and running a modest mobile home park, great-aunt got a scholarship and became a doctor way back in 60s, my mom got a full scholarship and moved out of the mountains to start her own own business in a male-dominated field. Meanwhile the male side includes - a hobo, taxi-driver, mining/odd jobs, and another close family member who has been on the run from the law for dealing drugs for many years now.
- scottlocklin 6y agoUrban WEIRD[0] weasels trying to understand normal humans really is something to see. It's as if they're studying some bizarre carnivorous plant or cannibalistic space aliens from the Planet Koozebane. "Such rugged terrain likely favored those who closely guarded their resources and distrusted strangers, as well as those who engaged in risky explorations to secure food and territory." I'm pretty sure New Yorkers or San Francisco residents are more likely to distrust strangers and not share than mountain people. "These traits may have distilled over time into an individualism characterized by toughness and self-reliance that lies at the heart of the American frontier ethos" Yeah, or the fact that the guy who lives in the mountains can't call the building superintendent to change his lightbulb might have something to do with them having slightly more self reliance. I didn't grow up in the mountains, but I did grow up poor: it has much the same effect. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychology#WEIRD_bias
- dreamcompiler 6y agoI'm one of these "mountain people" so I see a lot of what's true in this article, but there's also a flip side: Mountain people look out for each other on the mountain. I've never lived in a place before where there's such a strong sense of helping out one's neighbors as there is here in the mountains of NM. We plow each others' driveways when it snows; we help older neighbors run errands; we respond to 911 calls by volunteering at the local fire department. It's a nice feeling of both community and privacy at the same time.
- boring_twenties 6y ago> mountainous territory, particularly in the Midwest. I suppose I'm nitpicking here, but this is an oxymoron. The Midwest doesn't have any mountains.
- viridian 6y agoThe Appalachian mountains are present in Southeastern Ohio. The hollers don't just magically appear when you cross the river over from Marietta to Parkersburg.
- boring_twenties 6y agoOK, fine. But clearly this article is trying, and failing, to refer to the actual Mountain West, not the Appalachian foothills. It reminds me of one of those joke "US maps for New Yorkers" where half the country is New Jersey.
- FpUser 6y agoI was born in Siberia region of former USSR. There I would do ungodly amount of things myself. To the point that I got really sick of doing those. When I immigrated to Canada one of the things I've come to immensely enjoy is the ability not to do everything myself. Well a bit later I've also discovered that you basically have to check everything unless you want it f..ed up royally. The apogee was reached when one of the electricians I hired to change my power switch for water heater did the job and no electricity was flowing to said heater. He was doing this and that and finally said that he is giving up. This got me mad and I checked the wiring myself. Are you ready for this ? ... He screwed both of the 2 outgoing wires to a grounding plate that happened to have 2 threaded holed completely ignoring everything else that was there.
- growlist 6y agoHard times make strong men: and they seriously needed to perform an academic study to prove this? Nice work if you can get the grant money... And I await the counter-study, i.e. on the detachment from the realities of life of the average urban Cambridge University psychology researcher.
- doukdouk 6y agoSome thoughts on whether hard times make strong men: https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-part-i-war-at-the-dawn-of-civilization/ https://acoup.blog/2020/01/17/collections-the-fremen-mirage-...