Astral Codex Ten

Salt Lake City

13 min read

Salt Lake City

Article

Salt Lake City is a recurring place in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 12 times across 12 issues between August 23, 2021 and April 01, 2026. The archive places it in contexts such as “SALT LAKE CITY, UT ( RSVP )”; “The Salt Lake City meetup group reports that COVID may have spread at their meetup”; “helping run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City”. It most often appears alongside Austin, Berlin, Boston.

Metadata

  • Category: Places
  • Mention count: 12
  • Issue count: 12
  • First seen: August 23, 2021
  • Last seen: April 01, 2026

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Meetups Everywhere 2021: Times And Places
August 23, 2021 · Original source
SALT LAKE CITY, UT (RSVP) Contact: Ross Richey, wearenotsaved[at]gmail[dot]com Time: 3:00 PM, Saturday, August 28 Location: Liberty Park, open area NE of Chargepoint Station Coordinates: https://w3w.co/origin.reader.decks
Inline links: RSVP, https://w3w.co/origin.reader.decks
[Meetup COVID alerts: I’ve been informed that someone at the Salt Lake City meetup may have had COVID. Please let me know if you have any other information about COVID at meetups and I will list it here.]
Open Thread 188
September 05, 2021 · Original source
1: The Salt Lake City meetup group reports that COVID may have spread at their meetup. A few people there are reporting symptoms, and at least one person tested positive. If you attended, please take actions appropriate to a likely COVID exposure, like self-quarantining or getting tested (MicroCovid says that vaccinated people who attend an outdoor meetup with a known case have a 2% chance of getting sick, but since several people are reporting symptoms maybe it’s higher than that). If anyone knows of any other meetup where COVID might have spread, please let me know. I’ll list any alerts like this on open threads - but since those take a while to get up, I’ll also mention them on the top of the meetups post as soon as I hear about them. Remember, please only attend meetups if you’re fully vaccinated and don’t have any recent COVID exposure or symptoms.
Inline links: a 2% chance, on the top of the meetups post
Biography of Jason Shea, 44th US President
April 13, 2022 · Original source
In 2004, as his mayoral term expired, Shea - now in his mid-50s - ran for Senate and won. He gained popularity from a series of successful projects - including helping run the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and made friends in the diplomatic corps for his interest in (and encyclopedic knowledge of foreign affairs). In 2007, despite being a freshman Senator, he decided to run for President.
LA and San Diego Meetups This Weekend
October 06, 2022 · Original source
Also coming up this weekend are meetups in Boise, Austin, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, Toulouse, Cologne, Rome, Hatten, Poznan, St. Louis, Rochester (NY), Seattle, Mumbai, and Oklahoma City. You can find times and places here.
Inline links: here
Spring Meetups Everywhere 2024
March 30, 2024 · Original source
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, USA Contact: Adam Contact Info: adam[dot]r[dot]isom[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Saturday, April 27th, 3:00 PM Location: Liberty Park, west side, near Chargepoint Station, we'll be on the grass in a circle of chairs Changed due to weather, new location is 828 E Logan Ave, Salt Lake City Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85GCP4MM+P3 Group Link: email me and I'll add you to the mailing list and send you a discord invite
Inline links: https://plus.codes/85GCP4MM+P3
Highlights From The Comments On Mentally Ill Homeless People
July 18, 2024 · Original source
See my review of Revolt Of The Public. As I tried to say in the first part of the post, this is reasonable and sympathetic. But if people keep not listening to your demands, then learning more about the specifics might help you understand why. There’s a dynamic in gun control debates, where the anti-gun side says “YOU NEED TO BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS, YOU KNOW, THE ONES THAT COMMIT ALL THE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS”. Then Congress wants to look tough, so they ban some poorly-defined set of guns. Then the Supreme Court strikes it down, which Congress could easily have predicted but they were so fixated on looking tough that they didn’t bother double-checking it was constitutional. Then they pass some much weaker bill, and a hobbyist discovers that if you add such-and-such a 3D printed part to a legal gun, it becomes exactly like whatever category of guns they banned. Then someone commits another school shooting, and the anti-gun people come back with “WHY DIDN’T YOU BAN THE BAD ASSAULT GUNS? I THOUGHT WE TOLD YOU TO BE TOUGH! WHY CAN’T ANYONE EVER BE TOUGH ON GUNS?” I don’t know if the anti-gun people are doing anything wrong here exactly, I just know they’re going to be constantly confused and disappointed, and that anyone else who tries the same strategy will get the same results. Realistically, my excuse for writing the post was that I read this and this article by Freddie deBoer which assume that there is some clearly-defined thing called “involuntary treatment” and that the kindest option for the mentally ill and everyone else is to lift some kind of law preventing us from delivering it. Even if it’s permissible for the average person to just say “less homeless crime, please”, I feel like at the point where you’re a public intellectual leading the public discussion, you have some responsibility to start talking specifics. 2. Specific Comments And Responses Shako (blog) writes: I agree with your point in the post. I’ll add though that a policy that is adjacent to this is be “cruel and draconian” to the subset of homeless who commit anti-social crimes. If we removed the subset of criminals from west coast homelessness the problem would be still visible but far far less concerning to those of us who live among it. This is where I land too, but I think it’s very hard. If a homeless person stabs someone, then I think most places (I don’t know if this includes SF), they get prosecuted under general anti-stabbing laws, which the police mostly have enough resources to investigate. If someone just gets in people’s face a lot and screams and litters, then what? Most of the time, police won’t be around to see this. Most of the time, the victim won’t go through the trouble of pressing charges. If they did, it would be he said, she said. Even if the government puts in the effort to actually try the case, screaming at people and littering is probably a couple-month sentence at most. Eledex tells a related story in Part 3 here. A group of homeless people took up residence in an empty lot next to his house, harassed him, set things on fire, etc. This is much worse than the average homeless person just bothering tourists, but when he called the police, they never followed up. I assume if they had tried, the homeless people’s public defender could have said something like “are you sure these homeless people are the same ones who set fire to your stuff?”, Eledex would have said “they’re the homeless people camping on the lot where it happened, but I don’t, like, recognize them or anything”, the public defender would have said “well how do you know those people didn’t leave and some new homeless people came on to the lot?” and everyone would admit they couldn’t prove that. So the normal criminal system might not be set up to deal with these kinds of issues, which I think is why there’s so much demand for some extreme law that criminalizes the entire concept of being this sort of person. But I do worry that if police don’t have the resources to deal with normal crimes, then whoever is charged with enforcing the new extreme law won’t have enough resources to do it well either - and that any society capable of enforcing the new extreme law would also be capable of solving this through normal policing. Humphrey Appleby writes: Can we look at what other places do? What is eg Salt Lake City’s solution? (Possibly, export the homeless to SF). What about Zurich? Singapore? Edinburgh? The US in general and SF in particular seems to have this problem unusually bad, so one could reasonably look elsewhere for ideas. I talk a little more about this at https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-san-fransicko, but I think most places' solutions are a combination of: 1. Cheaper housing so that more people can afford homes 2. Cheaper housing so that the government has an easier time giving free homes to people who can't afford their own 3. Homeless shelters 4. Frequent bad weather, forcing the homeless to use the homeless shelters at least sometime, which gets their foot in the door 5. Laws requiring the homeless to use the homeless shelters, which I am much less against when the homeless shelters exist. Doktor Zum writes: At one point, there were something like 600,000 Americans in long-term psychiatric institutions, and that was in a less populous America. Start by locking up 600K and then lock up more. Ah, but where do you put them? The 50 states are dotted with the creepy and picturesque ruins of all the old mental asylums--you can't put them there! It's true that the current government (states, local and federal) are totally incapable of building and running a vast network of psychiatric hospitals, but don't we want government to do things like build nuclear power plants and also lots of housing? If I'm making an argument for cheaper housing and you say "government can't/won't ever allow more building," am I supposed to say that you have won the argument? Unless we want to embrace full anarcho-capitalism, we have to believe that it is possible to have a government that can do things that it did in the 1950s like (a) apprehend and detain the severely mentally ill, (b) back and create lots of nuclear power plants, and (c) build abundant housing and infrastructure. People say “we had giant institutions once, so we can do it again”. This is basically true, but with some missed subtlety. The 600,000 people in the old institutions included: Demented old people (eg Alzheimers)
Inline links: my review of Revolt Of The Public, this, this, blog, here, https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-san-fransicko
Meetups Everywhere 2024: Times & Places
August 29, 2024 · Original source
Contact: James P Contact Info: jonbenettleilax[at]gmail[dot]com Time: Sunday, October 20th, 12:00 PM Location: Commonwealth Coffee and Bakery (Jones St), 203 E Jones Ave Ste 101, San Antonio, TX 78215. Meet in the outdoor enclave abutting the cafe. I should have a sign setup, and I will have nametags. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+9X Group Link: https://lesswrongsa.dry.ai/ Notes: All are welcome! Utah SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH, USA Contact: Adam Contact Info: adam[dot]r[dot]isom[a t]gmail[d ot]com Time: Saturday, October 12th, 03:00 PM Location: We'll be on the west side of Liberty Park, near the ChargePoint station, in a circle of chairs on the lawn Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+VJ Group Link: There's a mailing list and a Discord server, I can get you on both at the meetup
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+9X, https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+VJ
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2025: Times & Places
March 25, 2025 · Original source
Contact: Joe Brenton Contact Info: joe[period]brenton[a t]yahoo[period]com Time: Sunday, May 04th, 01:00 PM Location: Retrospect Coffee Bar 3709 La Branch St, Houston, TX 77004. We'll be in the back covered patio area with picnic tables. Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76X6PJPF+4R Group Link: https://discord.gg/Dzm [remove this bit] EPAscpS Utah SALT LAKE CITY Contact: Adam Contact Info: adamisom[a t]hey[period]com Time: Saturday, April 12th, 03:00 PM Location: We'll be in the usual location at Liberty Park--west side, near the ChargePoint station, in a circle of chairs under a big tree Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+MF Group Link: email me for a Discord invite and/or to be added to the email list
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76X6PJPF+4R, https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+MF
The Other COVID Reckoning
May 21, 2025 · Original source
Maybe it’s because they were mostly old people? Old people have already lived a long life, nobody can get too surprised about them dying. But although only a small fraction of COVID deaths were young people, a small fraction of a large number can still be large: the pandemic killed 250,000 <65-year-old Americans, wiping out enough non-seniors to populate Salt Lake City. More military-age young men died in COVID than in Iraq/Afghanistan. Even the old people were somebody’s spouse or parent or grandparent; many should have had a good 5 - 10 years left.
Meetups Everywhere 2025: Times and Places
August 29, 2025 · Original source
Contact: James P Contact Info: jonbenettleilax[a t]gmail[period]com Time: Sunday, October 5th, 1:00 PM Location: 203 E Jones Ave Ste 101, San Antonio, TX 78215, USA Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+CV Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/CEPoFETJXADdriPGt Utah SALT LAKE CITY Contact: Ross Contact Info: adamisom[a t]hey[period]com Time: Saturday, October 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Liberty Park, near the ChargePoint station Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+MF Group Link: there's a mailing list and Discord, please ask at the meetup! :)
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+CV, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/CEPoFETJXADdriPGt, https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+MF
Open Thread 402
October 06, 2025 · Original source
1: Meetups this week include Austin, Berlin, Canberra, Jakarta, Salt Lake City, Tel Aviv, and others - see the meetup post for more information.
Inline links: the meetup post
Meetups Everywhere Spring 2026: Times & Places
April 01, 2026 · Original source
Contact: James P Contact Info: jonbenettleilax[@]gmail[.]com Time: Sunday, April 12th, 1:00 PM Location: 203 E Jones Ave Ste 101, San Antonio, TX 78215, USA Coordinates: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+CV Group Link: https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/CEPoFETJXADdriPGt Utah SALT LAKE CITY Contact: Ross Contact Info: wearenotsaved[@]gmail[.]com Time: Saturday, April 11th, 3:00 PM Location: Liberty Park West Side Near the Chargepoint charging station Coordinates: https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+VJ
Inline links: https://plus.codes/76X3CGP9+CV, https://www.lesswrong.com/groups/CEPoFETJXADdriPGt, https://plus.codes/85GCP4WF+VJ