What are three foods such that, when any two of them are paired together they taste good (e.g. strawberries and chocolate) but when all three are put together are bad?
A group of ~10 friends and I (who have little to no experience with psychedelics or any recreational drugs) are planning on taking Psilocybin together this summer. Does anyone know of any interesting experiments we can perform, or be a part of? Thanks!
Repeating my request for a 'Practically-a-book-review' of Random Critical Analysis' excellent work on healthcare costs, in case last time it got buried in the deluge of posts these things get and did not get Scott's attention. Will not repeat again.
I've been thinking about etiquette versus ethics recently.
Etiquette is a bit like ethics -- there's a list of things that you should do and a list of things that you shouldn't, and people who obey them are liked while people who disobey them are shunned. What's the difference? Well, ethics attempts to make some kind of claim to being objective about what's good and bad, while etiquette is acknowledged to be at least partially arbitrary.
But that's not the full story. A lot of etiquette is about not offending people (don't call your boss a big fatty). Other bits aren't necessarily about not offending people, but once the rule is established people feel disrespected if you don't obey the rule in their presence.
A lot of etiquette is about class signalling, too, which is why dining with the Queen requires a lot more attention to etiquette than eating at McDonald's. This has some value too, because if you can signal "Yes, I am a well-raised member of the upper class" then people are more likely to feel that they can safely invite you into their houses without worrying you'll abscond with their silverware.
A lot of etiquette, though, has dissolved over the past seventy years or so, because it was "old-fashioned" and "stuffy" and "stupid, pointless and arbitrary". Some of the old rules have disappeared entirely (e.g. don't wear a hat in an elevator in an apartment building), but other etiquette rules somehow made the jump into being ethical ones. Increasingly, the question of whether you should do or say something that might offend someone is treated as a moral question rather than one of etiquette.
Is Scott's advance deal with Substack still ongoing? I seem to remember reading that it would last a year and ACX recently passed its first birthday, but looking back, I don't see anything that explicitly gave a duration. I ask because last year I decided I wasn't going to subscribe but that I'd reevaluate the decision when it switched over to more of the money going to Scott.
Do people have strong feelings about testosterone replacement therapy? It sits on the edge between 'legit hormone replacement for guys who actual health issues' and 'lifestyle improvement' for some. There seems to be a decent amount of evidence that exogenous testosterone is not great for one's liver or cardiovascular system as we age, so I (as a prospective lifestyle user) have some concerns there. My impression is also that the hyperconservative American medical bureaucracy has cracked down on lifestyle prescriptions quite a bit too. Are lots of middle aged and older guys doing optional TRT for the rest of their lives? Is that medically possible/reasonably safe? (I have the same questions/concerns about HGH too).
It's kind of interesting how broad a category 'medicine' is- much of it is heart attacks and broken bones, of course, but in a rich country much of it is vaguely cyberpunk body modification for those aging. Hip or shoulder replacement, plastic surgery, TRT as mentioned, surgeries like ACL replacement or for SLAP tears that aren't emergencies but are really geared more towards preserving athleticism for those getting older.... We are slowly creeping towards our Gibsonesque future
I have had covid and hit that cytokine storm hard with full spectrum Cbd cannabis oil back in March ( that’s all I had that had an effective profile for limiting cytokines )
Something I find interesting: What's the worst part of your personality, in the sense that you judge yourself for it, but also with the restriction that it's not something that's actually causing anybody any harm?
Mine is something like "sitting around waiting for people to give me things", wish a dash of "rich people are genies". There's a story where Bill Gates' caddy for a golf game got along with him pretty well, and then found out later that Gates paid his student loans off (I don't know if the story is true). I sit around thinking about stuff like that happening to me fairly constantly.
What's worse is this is so deeply ingrained in me that my actual practical situation doesn't affect it at all. I'm not bad off right now; I'm doing well. But I'll still wake up from daydreams where a random very rich person decided to give me a Volvo or something, for no reason. It makes me feel leechy.
I doubt anyone else does this exact thing, but I do think there must be other examples of "thing about my personality I think is bad, even though it's not actually hurting anyone" and I'd be interested to hear them if anyone wants to share.
I have really intense dreams and nightmares two or three times a week. They leave my drained when I wake up, and I'm not as productive during the later day (which makes me stressed, which probably degrades my sleep, vicious circle style). I've had this problem for years. How do I decrease the intensity of my dreams?
Most googling tells me to meditate, and be mindful, and to stress less: I think I'm already doing this as far as possible (and notably the dreams remain a problem when I'm really relaxed, like during a relaxing vacation). The obvious parts of my sleep hygiene are also optimized as far as possible (darkness, no sounds, regular times, avoid screen time before bed, don't spend time in bed when not sleeping, etc.). I don't drink alcohol.
Sleep apnea might be the issue but it seems to be lots of time and effort to investigate it and not much to do to fix it. Is it worth looking into? How do I start: I can just record myself sleeping and check the breathing, right?
Cannabis is often mentioned. Does anyone know a good procedure here? I'm guessing I want to take some CBD oil just before sleep, starting small and increasing the dose?
I'm thinking about experimenting with sleep supplements: zink, chamomile, Melatonin, the entire kitchen sink. Suggestions for good places to start are taken with gratitude.
I'm trying to improve my scheduling/productivity/todo-list whatever. I'm getting confused trying to figure out which activities would be "best" to do.
For example, I think it sounds pretty obvious that I should first schedule whatever activity would provide me the most benefit, and after that schedule whatever activity would provide me the second most benefit, etc.
But then I think of things like exercising: I think that getting 1% stronger is just never going to be the best thing I can do in a given day, but if I _never_ do it, then I never get stronger.
Another example is something like learning first aid. I should learn first aid, but it just never seems to be enough of a priority compared to other tasks.
Ideally, I'm hoping that someone somewhere has created some sort of formula, where I can just plug in some numbers, and the formula will tell me which activities I should perform, how often, and for what amount of time. Is there some self-help book that deals with topics like this? I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel.
(If you're not interested in self improvement, just pretend that I asked this question about which EA causes to donate to.)
Anyone know anyone at Lancaster University that is interested in EA/rationalism? Was thinking about starting an EA society here but would like to do it with someone, not just on my own.
Is anyone else into cold water swimming? I live on the Mediterranean and I have continued swimming this winter and it is very satisfying. I've dug into what I can find online, and it seems like there are some health benefits. But I get a ringing in my ears when my body temperature drops too much. Does anyone know what would cause this? I am swimming breast stroke with head above water, so it is not from the cold in the ears. It definitely comes with the hypothermia. Do you think mild to moderate hypothermia is bad?
I have a pretty good memory, but I’m significantly worse at remembering people’s names. Characters from books? Fine! Only actual people. It’s super lame.
I’ve asked people I know for techniques, and I try to practice things like repeating their name three times in the first minute and associating it with something, but with my small sample it doesn’t seem to have helped.
Any ideas for what I should try next? I feel awful about not remembering people’s names, and it’s a modest handicap socially and at work.
What is your favorite niche strategy game or RPG and why? For this purpose we'll count Paradox games as niche but not Total War. But generally on the level of Slithering/Iceberg/Illwinter is what I am thinking about.
Currently I'm pretty into Shadows Of Forbidden Gods, an actual game inspired by infamous kickstarter vaporware That Which Sleeps. Basically playing an elder god trying to conquer the world. The UI is eh and it is still in early access but the concept is cool and some of the gods have great themeing.
Previously I was playing Star Dynasties, mostly so I could finally get a turn 3 win. The game is supposed to take 50-200 turns. The game needs at least 3-4 DLC or 2 major expansions to really have some meat on the, pretty good, bones.
I also spent quite a bit of time on Fields Of Glory 2, a classical turn based ancient world battle system. They released a Medieval sequel relatively recently but I haven't bought it yet. Their unit definition system is quite good and for a turn based game it feels very accurate to classical warfare. Basically if Total War is too arcadey, even the older games. For instance the limited value of flanking and the overly flexible freedom of movement of cavalry. I got into it because you can load the battles of the grand strategy-esque Field Of Glory: Empires into the original Field of Glory 2 to play them out instead of autoresolve.
For RPGs I am still a huge Grim Dawn fan, basically Diablo with many more options.
Currently most hyped for the release of Distant Worlds 2 and cautiously optimistic about Victoria 3.
So the recent classified thread made me think about my skills and how applicable/useful they are. I am not currently looking for a job, but I might be sometime in the next 5ish years, and I'm sort of curious about how easy such a job search might be and what I might do in the meantime to make it easier.
I have a masters degree in a biological science and I currently work as a data scientist/statistician/coder in a research lab. I work almost exclusively in R, although I have some experience in python.
My work is basically taking the data from collection/entry and doing all the QAQC/organization, conducting the statistical analyses, generating figures for publication, and co-authoring manuscripts/reports.
I consider myself to be fluent in R to the point that, the limits on what I can do with it are basically how well I understand the goal. If I know what it is we are trying to accomplish, I can do it in R (with the major limitation that I haven't learned Shiny/dashboards/apps yet, although I'm planning on tackling that soonish). My experience with Python leads me to believe that I would probably be at a similar level of fluency in less than a month if it was my primary work language over that period.
I consider myself to be mostly in the "data science" sphere, but when I see job postings under that phrase, they cover an _enormous_ range of skills and experience levels. Some of them seem border line trivial and some of them seem to be completely beyond my set of skills (for example, the data scientist position Scott linked seems solidly outside my skills to the point that, if that was the norm for the job title, I would most definitely not consider myself a data scientist).
Is the skill set of "statistical coder" generally useful outside of academia? What skills should I be attempting to gain if I wanted to make myself more attractive to the private sector?
Recently I started playing games made in the era of MSDOS. Partially because of nostalgia, partially because I was seeking inspiration for game development tutorials and it seemed to me that earlier games should be easier to imitate. Old games are often more difficult to play (every game a different UI), but were developed with nicer set of incentives (no micropayments, no DRM) and felt more diverse (first-person shooter was a genre, not a checkbox in the list of features). Anyway...
These are the games that I really enjoyed so far: Abuse; Bomberman / Dyna Blaster; Eye of the Beholder; Heretic; Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom; Legend of Kyrandia; WarCraft.
I was surprisingly disappointed by Populous, specifically Populous II. From my childhood I remembered it as an interesting and difficult game. But the problem is that there is a rather simple optimal strategy, and once you find it, all levels (well, at least the first 20 of them, I didn't play further) are quite easy and boring. Furthermore, the scoring is stupid, because it *penalizes* you for *winning quickly*. The goal at each level is to kill all enemy units, but the points are awarded for total units produced and total units killed (I think), so if you destroy your opponent quickly, you get few XP, but if the game stretches for long period of time in balance and then you succeed to win, you get many XP.
Does anyone know of good resources on the forgiveness of others, in particular the practical side (what it means, how to do it)? I'm most familiar with certain Christian and Buddhist teachings, but anything would help. Thanks!
(To clarify, this could be anything related to that bit in the Lord's Prayer where it says "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".)
Does anyone know of a through-the-wall heat pump whose capacity is suited for a 100-square-foot bedroom? I can't find any that small. Even one suited for 200 sq ft would be fine.
Has anybody had really bad experience with SAM-e? I have no family history of bipolar/mania and started taking SAM-e (initially 200 mg and then 400mg) with no side effects other than mild bloating but no positive effects also. 10th day, I ended up laughing in short bursts for an entire hour. I was not happy but really scared since I couldn't control couldn't control my laughter. I also had the urge to slap my head and legs but that was somewhat controllable. I discontinued SAM-e immediately.
Q1. Both my SO and I felt sick a few days ago (she was initially worse but recovered within a day. I was initially less-worse but had lingering fatigue for longer). She was COVID-negative, I didn't test. On a scale of 1-10, our symptoms were a 2. Normally, I'd chalk it up to allergies or common-cold, but the simultaneous onset is suspicious. Should we test again to be sure? Is it even likely to be COVID? We're 3x vaccinated and young-ish (late 30's/early 40's).
Q2. We're mostly acting like life was under Delta until pre-Omicron case-levels return. Hopefully in another 2-3 weeks. Purely based on hospitalization or death probabilities, this is not rational - we should go out and be normal. But we worry about long-covid. Should we be less worried about long-covid than we are right now? If paxlovid were more available+accessible, I'd lower my guard easily. I'd like to hear arguments why I should lower my guard anyway (or waiting until cases go back to pre-Omicron levels is just fine).
Throwing money at Fermat's Last Theorem. Setting up a conference instead of offering a prize.
"Then, quite suddenly, at the peak of his influence, Mr. Vaughn’s world fell apart. The reason was an audit of his foundation by the Internal Revenue Service.
It ran from 1988 to 1992 and accused the charity of major improprieties. In the interview, Mr. Vaughn called the audit “very unpleasant” and “extremely traumatic.” Ultimately, he said, the tax agency threatened to impose $15 million in fines and to incarcerate him and his wife, who was on the foundation’s board.
According to Mr. Vaughn, the root problem was the ignorance of the I.R.S. auditor, who felt that mathematical research was “a boondoggle.” In the end, Mr. Vaughn added, “We won every one of the charges,” but the Vaughns had nonetheless come to a turning point. The foundation decided to end its funding of basic mathematics."
Is there any point of using resources to create a omicron shot , when the r is so high ? At such a rate of transmission wouldn’t the entire population have had it anyway by the time it’s available ?
" I just finished reading C. A. Soper's : "The Evolution Of A Life Worth Living". It is basically a description of his theory that much of what we are is modulated by our knowing that we can kill ourselves. I am very impressed with Soper's ideas. The short quotes from the book below reminded me of Albert Camus describing how Sisyphus who was punished by the Greek gods for his many indiscretions by making him push a giant rock up a hill and when with great difficulty he finally makes it to the top the rock falls to the bottom and he starts all over again....forever. Interestingly Camus suggested that Sisyphus was content with the endless rock pushing as it is the "process" rather than the "completion" of the project that is most satisfying! Soper's description sounds familiar as he suggests : "Our daily pursuits are the end, the point, both the ‘this’ and the ‘it’ in the question that perhaps we all ask ourselves at times — “Is this it?” The answer is — Yes. This is it." Or the Nietzsche quote rings true: "He who has a why to live can bear most any how" Sounds like Sisyphus! I found the book fascinating. Here's the full quotes:
"For sure, some human activities also have some direct fitness value: we may still eat for nutrition, drink for hydration, copulate for conception. But these tasks, once basic biological routines, have been re-purposed. They have been turned primarily to recreational use. We not only have recreational sex; we have recreational eating, drinking, exercising, caring, and all the rest. Human satisfactions link to ancient animal instincts, but the links are indirect. They are evolutionary homologues, not equivalents — in the same way that, say, cats and dolphins both have tails: same origin, different purpose. Or perhaps as a better analogy, it is like the way the Land Rover was devised as a utility vehicle for farmers, but has morphed into a plaything. A modern Land Rover could still be useful on a farm if the need arose, but nowadays it is mainly driven for fun. So, our reasons for living don’t fall out of hifalutin existential philosophy. They are assembled on the ground, from what look to be regular workaday activities. Walk the dog… sort the recycling… go to church… drop by on Granddad…. It feels like just one thing after another. But these kinds of deeds are extraordinary in the context of life on earth because, strictly speaking, they are rarely vital for bodily subsistence. It is not out of direct fitness needs that we, say, prefer our coffee black, choose underwear of a particular style, and listen to Radio WXYZ. From a biological perspective, our lives look irrational. For any other animal, much of what we concern ourselves with would be an unfathomable waste of energy. Normally in nature, the rational thing to do, unless there is a pressing reason to do otherwise, is nothing. Left to its own devices, an animal’s default action is inaction — avoiding unnecessary disturbance. Hence penguins huddle, squirrels hibernate, and well-fed lions lounge. But we humans need purposeful goings-on in our lives — daily projects that feel worthwhile."
"Our daily pursuits are the end, the point, both the ‘this’ and the ‘it’ in the question that perhaps we all ask ourselves at times — “Is this it?” The answer is — Yes. This is it. And it needs to be good. Purpose in life is not an optional extra, a psychological cherry to pop on the cake after our more basic requirements have been sorted. It is not, in other words, the last item on a pyramid of needs of the sort famously proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Rather, a good enough reason to live has to be in place before we human beings will even take on the task of satisfying our other needs. Without a point to our lives, wherever on a supposed hierarchy we may be, we are exposed to the danger of willful death; or, if not that, then becoming overwhelmed by keepers (internal suicide stoppers), as our emergency defenses against self-destruction take over. Late in life, Maslow came to doubt his own theory. It is quite possible, he observed, for people seemingly to want for nothing and still be pathologically purposeless. At the other extreme, Victor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, gives first-hand testimony as to how humans can endure unimaginable privation. He explains with one of Nietzsche’s aphorisms: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Last open thread I suggested Scott questions about dreams if he has another readership survey because I believe frequency of remembering dreams and having lucid dreams might correlate with other measured traits.
Dreams are fascinating. Some think they contain symbolism. Others think they are random imaginations whose meaning is only a feeling imposed upon that randomness.
Nobody knows anything for a fact about dreams, which is why i think Scott should explore whether dreams and dreamers correlate with other traits.
Happy St. Brigid's Day to you all! One of the Three Patron Saints of Ireland along with Ss. Patrick and Columcille, today marks the (Irish) start of Spring.
I wonder why people like authors of that EEG study never explain why only intelligence is supposed to be damaged, but not body mass or height. And also why school bullying (which, of course cannot be solved by throwing money at it) obviously is out of question (p.s. i violated rules, oops)
Nature has a new meta analysis coming out against circumcision. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41443-021-00502-y It was an adversarial collaboration from SSC that cemented my belief that I should circumcize my future children. The bayenian in me wants to update my belief based on this new information, but if course it is paywalled. Has anyone read it, and is it a well constructed study? Is there new information that I should be considering that wasn't in the adversarial collaboration?
Payment oddity: My renewal came up and Substack said my card (Capital One Visa) was declined. So I gave current info for the same card and (Substack says) it got declined again. Gave up and paid the $100 by AmEx instead. But...why couldn't I pay with Visa? And why does *Substack* think payment was declined when the credit card's own app isn't aware of any declined payment attempts?
Is it just me having this issue? Is Capital One, or possibly Visa, secretly shadowbanning Substack or certain substacks? Or did Substack's payment processor merely have a random hiccup that somehow happened to hit me (twice) and it's all good again?
A popular streamer is outlining the kind of character/diplomacy mechanics he'd like to see integrated into warfare like planning the campaign, getting important characters to commit to joining a war, distributing gains, and picked CBs/wargoals.
His video is about CK3 but I would be interested in thoughts about this or similar systems in strategy games generally.
Alice regularly invited Bob to do something together. Bob usually (but not always) agrees, and they usually both enjoy the activity, but Bob doesn't ever invite Alice back. Should Alice continue inviting Bob?
I can think of situations where the answer is clearly (to me) "yes": for example, if Bob is a teenager and Alice is his mother. Are there situations where the answer is "no"? My intuition is that if Alice and Bob are friends then Bob is violating etiquette (and etiquette violations should be punished in some way), but it's unclear to me if this is a universally-accepted part of friendship etiquette.
I have reason elsewhere to dig out what George Bernard Shaw said about the Easter Rising in one of his appendices to "John Bull's Other Island", and though our opinions diverge on the matter, he makes me laugh because he has as little regard for the English as the Irish:
"From a battery planted at Trinity College (the Irish equivalent of Oxford University), and from a warship in the river Liffey, a bombardment was poured on the centre of the city which reduced more than a square mile of it to such a condition that when, in the following year, I was taken through Arras and Ypres to shew me what the German artillery had done to these cities in two and a half years, I laughed and said, “You should see what the British artillery did to my native city in a week.” It would not be true to say that not one stone was left upon another; for the marksmanship was so bad that the Post Office itself was left standing amid a waste of rubbish heaps; and enough scraps of wall were left for the British Army, which needed recruits, to cover with appeals to the Irish to remember Belgium lest the fate of Louvain should befall their own hearths and homes."
I do like the bit about the marksmanship of the British Army 😁 Okay, while I'm at it, another ding at the English, in regard to his character Broadbent in the play:
"Much as I like him, I object to be governed by him, or entangled in his political destiny. I therefore propose to give him a piece of my mind here, as an Irishman, full of the instinctive pity for those of my fellow-creatures who are only English."
" ‘When I say that I am an Irishman I mean that I was born in Ireland, and that my native language is the English of Swift and not the unspeakable jargon of the mid-XIX century London newspapers. My extraction is the extraction of most Englishmen, that is, I have no trace in me of the commercially imported North Spanish stream that passes for aboriginal Irish, I am a genuine typical Irishman of the Danish, Norman, Cromwellian and (of course) Scotch invasions. I am violently and arrogantly Protestant by family tradition; but let no English government therefore count on my allegiance. I am English enough to be an inveterate Republican and Home Ruler. It is true that my grandfather was an Orangeman; but then his sister was an abbess; and his uncle, I am proud to say, was hanged as a rebel. When I look round me on the hybrid cosmopolitans, slum poisoned or square pampered, who call themselves Englishmen today, and see them bullied by the Irish Protestant garrison as no Bengalee now lets himself be bullied by an Englishman; when I see the Irishman everywhere standing clearheaded, sane, hardily callous to the boyish sentimentalities, susceptibilities, and credulities that make the Englishman the dupe of every charlatan and the idolator of every numbskull, I perceive that Ireland is the only spot on earth which still produces the ideal Englishman of history. [...] England cannot do without its Irish and its Scots today because it cannot do without at least a little sanity."
"Think of the famous meeting between the Duke of Wellington, that intensely Irish Irishman, and Nelson, that intensely English Englishman. Wellington’s contemptuous disgust at Nelson’s theatricality as a professed hero, patriot, and rhapsode, a theatricality which in an Irishman would have been an insufferably vulgar affectation, was quite natural and inevitable. Wellington’s formula for that kind of thing was a wellknown Irish one: “Sir: dont be a damned fool.” It is the formula of all Irishmen for all Englishmen to this day. It is the formula of Larry Doyle for Tom Broadbent in my play, in spite of Doyle’s affection for Tom. Nelson’s genius, instead of producing intellectual keenness and scrupulousness, produced mere delirium. He was drunk with glory, exalted by his fervent faith in the sound British patriotism of the Almighty, nerved by the vulgarest anti-foreign prejudice, and apparently unchastened by any reflections on the fact that he had never had to fight a technically capable and properly equipped enemy except on land, where he had never been successful. Compare Wellington, who had to fight Napoleon’s armies, Napoleon’s marshals, and finally Napoleon himself, without one moment of illusion as to the human material he had to command, without one gush of the “Kiss me, Hardy" emotion which enabled Nelson to idolise his crews and his staff, without forgetting even in his dreams that the normal British officer of that time was an incapable amateur (as he still is) and the normal British soldier a never-do-well (he is now a depressed and respectable young man). No wonder Wellington became an accomplished comedian in the art of anti-climax scandalising the unfortunate Croker"
Recently while showering I was asking myself if all the changesbif the past years in my thinking, interacting and dealing towards and with other humans might actually be not only a result of me getting older or me being a parent since so and so long now. I was thinking about evolution of higher social animals and about the advantage for a group or tribe of having a longer term memory for all kinds of good and bad things like poisoness and delicious food, dangerous things like tsunamis, regions with rare but regular events like earthquakes asf. And I was thinking that I are less and less interested in technical details of a certain narrow problem but more and more in broad social problems, group thinking, long time effects asf. I find myself telling our kids stories and experiences pretty often in these days and started to do that at my employer as well. Surely, I've got pretty recognizable grey hair the past years and start to feel more and more like the silverback gorilla in the tribe. At the same time I see my other capabilities slightly degrade - guess the missing daily training is the main cause.
But what if evolution had blue-printed a second brain re-wiring (after the great teenage brain reconstruction) in a human life to re-configure the brain of (the rare surviving) elderly to help their group beeing cautious of e.g. poisones food, dangerous situations and even black swan like once-in-a-lifetime events. Science and rationalist community only learned in recent years how hard it is to teach individual and even more groups the most important lessons for surviving the daily dangerous live. It turns out more and more that we humans learn best by listening just to good, convincing stories told by gray hair grandparents like survivers calmly talking from their armchairs about all the thing they have seen in their long lives. As a kid I loved listening to stories of my grandfather about him living through the great depression, the second world war, multiple currency reforms and so forth. More and more I see myself sitting in the armchair one or two of my kids around me telling stories about my live to them and they love it.
Wondering if this might be programmed into both my kids brains (to love listening to stories and remembering so many details and facts over decades) and my brain - to tell about my past life and the small and large events, my views, learnings - and being less and less interested in nerdy, technical thing's I was obsessed about between 5 an 35 roughly.
Have you ever been a cog in an absurd, dysfunctional bureaucratic workplace?
I want to write a few paragraphs of comical fiction that describe how someone came to be in a job where, due to a series of bizarre bureaucratic technicalities, they essentially get paid massive amounts of money to do....whatever it is they want to do, with near-zero oversight or accountability, and zero risk of getting exposed.
Below is the bones of what i've come up with. I'm trying to balance absurdity with *some* realism, and welcome any input based on your experience with bureaucracy.
----
Scientist Len works for defence contractor, gets seconded to government laboratory to work on special sensitive project. Government pays Contractor who pays Len.
Len arrives at Gov Lab, finds out the Project Lead has gone AWOL and cannot be replaced due to internal hiring freeze. Left to work on project with one other person who is only there to calibrate and maintain equipment.
Without a Project Lead, Len reports to the Branch Manager, who knows that the project exists but is firewalled out of the details as per Gov policy. She wants Len to send her fortnightly updates, but content limited to the status of the project and whether or not a completion date is known. All technical reporting is to remain within the immediate project team.
Time passes and Len’s old Contractor Co. gets acquired by a big international company, EngTech. Len’s old boss gets absorbed and promoted into EngTech and still signs off on his payslips, but is too busy to inquire into Len’s work.
Len and his colleague in the lab decide they need a specialised component to advance the project, but the manufacturer says it will be 12 months until the component is fully developed from prototype. He informs the Branch Manager of the schedule update.
Several months later the Branch Manager is embroiled in a scandal from decades ago and is dismissed. The Board of Inquiry attempt to reach EngTech for information about Len’s project, but with Len’s former boss on vacation they resort to interviewing Len directly about the scope and schedule. Len convinces them the project is crucial and really just getting off the ground. He also points out that the Project Lead vacancy is not an issue and it can remain unfilled as a cost-saving measure.
Len goes on this way for years, with no technical oversight, a stream of lab assistants for colleagues, and a revolving-door of Managers far enough removed from the details as not to know or care about progress.
This study seems to indicate something quite odd. Synthesized spike protein in blood serum for up to 4 months post vaccine . Wtf . When has the vaccine antigen been found to be in circulation for so long with typical vaccines ? What could this mean ?
Tegan and Sara have a Substack now, which delights me no end
A food riddle a friend told me:
What are three foods such that, when any two of them are paired together they taste good (e.g. strawberries and chocolate) but when all three are put together are bad?
A group of ~10 friends and I (who have little to no experience with psychedelics or any recreational drugs) are planning on taking Psilocybin together this summer. Does anyone know of any interesting experiments we can perform, or be a part of? Thanks!
I tried to submit my paragraph for the ACX++ Grants on Friday the 28th (around early afternoon) but the Google form was no longer accepting responses. A few other folks reported the same issue: MTSnowbug, Daniel Golliher, Steve Scott and possibly Larry Baum (see https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/resubmit-and-summarize-your-proposals/comments#comment-4746702)
Did anyone else have this problem? Did we misread the instructions? Can we get a clarification and/or ruling from Scott? Thanks so much.
Repeating my request for a 'Practically-a-book-review' of Random Critical Analysis' excellent work on healthcare costs, in case last time it got buried in the deluge of posts these things get and did not get Scott's attention. Will not repeat again.
https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/why-conventional-wisdom-on-health-care-is-wrong-a-primer/
A friend of mine frequently posts links to antivaccination essays and papers on facebook, e.g.
1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357994624_Innate_Immune_Suppression_by_SARS-CoV-2_mRNA_Vaccinations_The_role_of_G-quadruplexes_exosomes_and_microRNAs
2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357778435_Official_mortality_data_for_England_suggest_systematic_miscategorisation_of_vaccine_status_and_uncertain_effectiveness_of_Covid-19_vaccination
Is there a go-to place for detailed responses to things like this? (in general, but also these two, in particular).
I've been thinking about etiquette versus ethics recently.
Etiquette is a bit like ethics -- there's a list of things that you should do and a list of things that you shouldn't, and people who obey them are liked while people who disobey them are shunned. What's the difference? Well, ethics attempts to make some kind of claim to being objective about what's good and bad, while etiquette is acknowledged to be at least partially arbitrary.
But that's not the full story. A lot of etiquette is about not offending people (don't call your boss a big fatty). Other bits aren't necessarily about not offending people, but once the rule is established people feel disrespected if you don't obey the rule in their presence.
A lot of etiquette is about class signalling, too, which is why dining with the Queen requires a lot more attention to etiquette than eating at McDonald's. This has some value too, because if you can signal "Yes, I am a well-raised member of the upper class" then people are more likely to feel that they can safely invite you into their houses without worrying you'll abscond with their silverware.
A lot of etiquette, though, has dissolved over the past seventy years or so, because it was "old-fashioned" and "stuffy" and "stupid, pointless and arbitrary". Some of the old rules have disappeared entirely (e.g. don't wear a hat in an elevator in an apartment building), but other etiquette rules somehow made the jump into being ethical ones. Increasingly, the question of whether you should do or say something that might offend someone is treated as a moral question rather than one of etiquette.
Is Scott's advance deal with Substack still ongoing? I seem to remember reading that it would last a year and ACX recently passed its first birthday, but looking back, I don't see anything that explicitly gave a duration. I ask because last year I decided I wasn't going to subscribe but that I'd reevaluate the decision when it switched over to more of the money going to Scott.
I'm taking Vyvanse for my ADHD, which works pretty well. Previously tried Modafinil, Ritalin and Adderall, which worked much worse.
Is there anything better than Vyvanse currently on the market, in terms of helping out with concentrating and getting work done?
Do people have strong feelings about testosterone replacement therapy? It sits on the edge between 'legit hormone replacement for guys who actual health issues' and 'lifestyle improvement' for some. There seems to be a decent amount of evidence that exogenous testosterone is not great for one's liver or cardiovascular system as we age, so I (as a prospective lifestyle user) have some concerns there. My impression is also that the hyperconservative American medical bureaucracy has cracked down on lifestyle prescriptions quite a bit too. Are lots of middle aged and older guys doing optional TRT for the rest of their lives? Is that medically possible/reasonably safe? (I have the same questions/concerns about HGH too).
It's kind of interesting how broad a category 'medicine' is- much of it is heart attacks and broken bones, of course, but in a rich country much of it is vaguely cyberpunk body modification for those aging. Hip or shoulder replacement, plastic surgery, TRT as mentioned, surgeries like ACL replacement or for SLAP tears that aren't emergencies but are really geared more towards preserving athleticism for those getting older.... We are slowly creeping towards our Gibsonesque future
Non-sequitur but I'm in Austin this weekend and the water tastes so much better than Seattle
Also I'm trying to tell my Dad about George Koval and the Dayton Project and he doesn't believe me but we'll get there
I have had covid and hit that cytokine storm hard with full spectrum Cbd cannabis oil back in March ( that’s all I had that had an effective profile for limiting cytokines )
So thrilled the science
Has got around to confirm it . https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abi6110?fbclid=IwAR3Zm0yde9e_mwPze13kob6INf-zZ9J-QTSBSoJYHzibv4OJM-cE_yoab4c&
Something I find interesting: What's the worst part of your personality, in the sense that you judge yourself for it, but also with the restriction that it's not something that's actually causing anybody any harm?
Mine is something like "sitting around waiting for people to give me things", wish a dash of "rich people are genies". There's a story where Bill Gates' caddy for a golf game got along with him pretty well, and then found out later that Gates paid his student loans off (I don't know if the story is true). I sit around thinking about stuff like that happening to me fairly constantly.
What's worse is this is so deeply ingrained in me that my actual practical situation doesn't affect it at all. I'm not bad off right now; I'm doing well. But I'll still wake up from daydreams where a random very rich person decided to give me a Volvo or something, for no reason. It makes me feel leechy.
I doubt anyone else does this exact thing, but I do think there must be other examples of "thing about my personality I think is bad, even though it's not actually hurting anyone" and I'd be interested to hear them if anyone wants to share.
I have really intense dreams and nightmares two or three times a week. They leave my drained when I wake up, and I'm not as productive during the later day (which makes me stressed, which probably degrades my sleep, vicious circle style). I've had this problem for years. How do I decrease the intensity of my dreams?
Most googling tells me to meditate, and be mindful, and to stress less: I think I'm already doing this as far as possible (and notably the dreams remain a problem when I'm really relaxed, like during a relaxing vacation). The obvious parts of my sleep hygiene are also optimized as far as possible (darkness, no sounds, regular times, avoid screen time before bed, don't spend time in bed when not sleeping, etc.). I don't drink alcohol.
I found this reddit thread which matches my situation but it's light on the specifics: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/f7p60z/how_to_treat_persistent_nightmares/
Sleep apnea might be the issue but it seems to be lots of time and effort to investigate it and not much to do to fix it. Is it worth looking into? How do I start: I can just record myself sleeping and check the breathing, right?
Cannabis is often mentioned. Does anyone know a good procedure here? I'm guessing I want to take some CBD oil just before sleep, starting small and increasing the dose?
I'm thinking about experimenting with sleep supplements: zink, chamomile, Melatonin, the entire kitchen sink. Suggestions for good places to start are taken with gratitude.
A warning if you go to the gym
https://nakedemperor.substack.com/p/law-of-unintended-consequences-series
I'm trying to improve my scheduling/productivity/todo-list whatever. I'm getting confused trying to figure out which activities would be "best" to do.
For example, I think it sounds pretty obvious that I should first schedule whatever activity would provide me the most benefit, and after that schedule whatever activity would provide me the second most benefit, etc.
But then I think of things like exercising: I think that getting 1% stronger is just never going to be the best thing I can do in a given day, but if I _never_ do it, then I never get stronger.
Another example is something like learning first aid. I should learn first aid, but it just never seems to be enough of a priority compared to other tasks.
Ideally, I'm hoping that someone somewhere has created some sort of formula, where I can just plug in some numbers, and the formula will tell me which activities I should perform, how often, and for what amount of time. Is there some self-help book that deals with topics like this? I don't want to have to reinvent the wheel.
(If you're not interested in self improvement, just pretend that I asked this question about which EA causes to donate to.)
Has anyone looked into psychological attachment theory (for infants) and knows if it's legit or not? Or something more nuanced?
if ACX keeps referencing the unofficial ACX fan bulletin does it become an official ACX fan bulletin
Those dating profiles got me thinking: is there an equivalent to 'bisexual', but for mono/poly?
Anyone know anyone at Lancaster University that is interested in EA/rationalism? Was thinking about starting an EA society here but would like to do it with someone, not just on my own.
Is anyone else into cold water swimming? I live on the Mediterranean and I have continued swimming this winter and it is very satisfying. I've dug into what I can find online, and it seems like there are some health benefits. But I get a ringing in my ears when my body temperature drops too much. Does anyone know what would cause this? I am swimming breast stroke with head above water, so it is not from the cold in the ears. It definitely comes with the hypothermia. Do you think mild to moderate hypothermia is bad?
I have a pretty good memory, but I’m significantly worse at remembering people’s names. Characters from books? Fine! Only actual people. It’s super lame.
I’ve asked people I know for techniques, and I try to practice things like repeating their name three times in the first minute and associating it with something, but with my small sample it doesn’t seem to have helped.
Any ideas for what I should try next? I feel awful about not remembering people’s names, and it’s a modest handicap socially and at work.
What is the best way to use money to increase how datable you are?
What is your favorite niche strategy game or RPG and why? For this purpose we'll count Paradox games as niche but not Total War. But generally on the level of Slithering/Iceberg/Illwinter is what I am thinking about.
Currently I'm pretty into Shadows Of Forbidden Gods, an actual game inspired by infamous kickstarter vaporware That Which Sleeps. Basically playing an elder god trying to conquer the world. The UI is eh and it is still in early access but the concept is cool and some of the gods have great themeing.
Previously I was playing Star Dynasties, mostly so I could finally get a turn 3 win. The game is supposed to take 50-200 turns. The game needs at least 3-4 DLC or 2 major expansions to really have some meat on the, pretty good, bones.
I also spent quite a bit of time on Fields Of Glory 2, a classical turn based ancient world battle system. They released a Medieval sequel relatively recently but I haven't bought it yet. Their unit definition system is quite good and for a turn based game it feels very accurate to classical warfare. Basically if Total War is too arcadey, even the older games. For instance the limited value of flanking and the overly flexible freedom of movement of cavalry. I got into it because you can load the battles of the grand strategy-esque Field Of Glory: Empires into the original Field of Glory 2 to play them out instead of autoresolve.
For RPGs I am still a huge Grim Dawn fan, basically Diablo with many more options.
Currently most hyped for the release of Distant Worlds 2 and cautiously optimistic about Victoria 3.
So the recent classified thread made me think about my skills and how applicable/useful they are. I am not currently looking for a job, but I might be sometime in the next 5ish years, and I'm sort of curious about how easy such a job search might be and what I might do in the meantime to make it easier.
I have a masters degree in a biological science and I currently work as a data scientist/statistician/coder in a research lab. I work almost exclusively in R, although I have some experience in python.
My work is basically taking the data from collection/entry and doing all the QAQC/organization, conducting the statistical analyses, generating figures for publication, and co-authoring manuscripts/reports.
I consider myself to be fluent in R to the point that, the limits on what I can do with it are basically how well I understand the goal. If I know what it is we are trying to accomplish, I can do it in R (with the major limitation that I haven't learned Shiny/dashboards/apps yet, although I'm planning on tackling that soonish). My experience with Python leads me to believe that I would probably be at a similar level of fluency in less than a month if it was my primary work language over that period.
I consider myself to be mostly in the "data science" sphere, but when I see job postings under that phrase, they cover an _enormous_ range of skills and experience levels. Some of them seem border line trivial and some of them seem to be completely beyond my set of skills (for example, the data scientist position Scott linked seems solidly outside my skills to the point that, if that was the norm for the job title, I would most definitely not consider myself a data scientist).
Is the skill set of "statistical coder" generally useful outside of academia? What skills should I be attempting to gain if I wanted to make myself more attractive to the private sector?
Recently I started playing games made in the era of MSDOS. Partially because of nostalgia, partially because I was seeking inspiration for game development tutorials and it seemed to me that earlier games should be easier to imitate. Old games are often more difficult to play (every game a different UI), but were developed with nicer set of incentives (no micropayments, no DRM) and felt more diverse (first-person shooter was a genre, not a checkbox in the list of features). Anyway...
These are the games that I really enjoyed so far: Abuse; Bomberman / Dyna Blaster; Eye of the Beholder; Heretic; Invasion of the Mutant Space Bats of Doom; Legend of Kyrandia; WarCraft.
I was surprisingly disappointed by Populous, specifically Populous II. From my childhood I remembered it as an interesting and difficult game. But the problem is that there is a rather simple optimal strategy, and once you find it, all levels (well, at least the first 20 of them, I didn't play further) are quite easy and boring. Furthermore, the scoring is stupid, because it *penalizes* you for *winning quickly*. The goal at each level is to kill all enemy units, but the points are awarded for total units produced and total units killed (I think), so if you destroy your opponent quickly, you get few XP, but if the game stretches for long period of time in balance and then you succeed to win, you get many XP.
Just wanted to share this tech-inspired banger of a song that hits just a liiiiitle too hard sometimes: https://open.spotify.com/track/25z6kpmIwkCUqk2IORrJ5v?si=17571eb43a234b68
Does anyone know of good resources on the forgiveness of others, in particular the practical side (what it means, how to do it)? I'm most familiar with certain Christian and Buddhist teachings, but anything would help. Thanks!
(To clarify, this could be anything related to that bit in the Lord's Prayer where it says "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us".)
For some reason on mobile (iphone, safari) I’m not getting an “expand comment” option, they’re just being forcibly truncated
Does anyone know of a through-the-wall heat pump whose capacity is suited for a 100-square-foot bedroom? I can't find any that small. Even one suited for 200 sq ft would be fine.
Has anybody had really bad experience with SAM-e? I have no family history of bipolar/mania and started taking SAM-e (initially 200 mg and then 400mg) with no side effects other than mild bloating but no positive effects also. 10th day, I ended up laughing in short bursts for an entire hour. I was not happy but really scared since I couldn't control couldn't control my laughter. I also had the urge to slap my head and legs but that was somewhat controllable. I discontinued SAM-e immediately.
Two questions:
Q1. Both my SO and I felt sick a few days ago (she was initially worse but recovered within a day. I was initially less-worse but had lingering fatigue for longer). She was COVID-negative, I didn't test. On a scale of 1-10, our symptoms were a 2. Normally, I'd chalk it up to allergies or common-cold, but the simultaneous onset is suspicious. Should we test again to be sure? Is it even likely to be COVID? We're 3x vaccinated and young-ish (late 30's/early 40's).
Q2. We're mostly acting like life was under Delta until pre-Omicron case-levels return. Hopefully in another 2-3 weeks. Purely based on hospitalization or death probabilities, this is not rational - we should go out and be normal. But we worry about long-covid. Should we be less worried about long-covid than we are right now? If paxlovid were more available+accessible, I'd lower my guard easily. I'd like to hear arguments why I should lower my guard anyway (or waiting until cases go back to pre-Omicron levels is just fine).
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/31/science/james-vaughn-fermat-theorem.html
Throwing money at Fermat's Last Theorem. Setting up a conference instead of offering a prize.
"Then, quite suddenly, at the peak of his influence, Mr. Vaughn’s world fell apart. The reason was an audit of his foundation by the Internal Revenue Service.
It ran from 1988 to 1992 and accused the charity of major improprieties. In the interview, Mr. Vaughn called the audit “very unpleasant” and “extremely traumatic.” Ultimately, he said, the tax agency threatened to impose $15 million in fines and to incarcerate him and his wife, who was on the foundation’s board.
According to Mr. Vaughn, the root problem was the ignorance of the I.R.S. auditor, who felt that mathematical research was “a boondoggle.” In the end, Mr. Vaughn added, “We won every one of the charges,” but the Vaughns had nonetheless come to a turning point. The foundation decided to end its funding of basic mathematics."
Is there any point of using resources to create a omicron shot , when the r is so high ? At such a rate of transmission wouldn’t the entire population have had it anyway by the time it’s available ?
" I just finished reading C. A. Soper's : "The Evolution Of A Life Worth Living". It is basically a description of his theory that much of what we are is modulated by our knowing that we can kill ourselves. I am very impressed with Soper's ideas. The short quotes from the book below reminded me of Albert Camus describing how Sisyphus who was punished by the Greek gods for his many indiscretions by making him push a giant rock up a hill and when with great difficulty he finally makes it to the top the rock falls to the bottom and he starts all over again....forever. Interestingly Camus suggested that Sisyphus was content with the endless rock pushing as it is the "process" rather than the "completion" of the project that is most satisfying! Soper's description sounds familiar as he suggests : "Our daily pursuits are the end, the point, both the ‘this’ and the ‘it’ in the question that perhaps we all ask ourselves at times — “Is this it?” The answer is — Yes. This is it." Or the Nietzsche quote rings true: "He who has a why to live can bear most any how" Sounds like Sisyphus! I found the book fascinating. Here's the full quotes:
"For sure, some human activities also have some direct fitness value: we may still eat for nutrition, drink for hydration, copulate for conception. But these tasks, once basic biological routines, have been re-purposed. They have been turned primarily to recreational use. We not only have recreational sex; we have recreational eating, drinking, exercising, caring, and all the rest. Human satisfactions link to ancient animal instincts, but the links are indirect. They are evolutionary homologues, not equivalents — in the same way that, say, cats and dolphins both have tails: same origin, different purpose. Or perhaps as a better analogy, it is like the way the Land Rover was devised as a utility vehicle for farmers, but has morphed into a plaything. A modern Land Rover could still be useful on a farm if the need arose, but nowadays it is mainly driven for fun. So, our reasons for living don’t fall out of hifalutin existential philosophy. They are assembled on the ground, from what look to be regular workaday activities. Walk the dog… sort the recycling… go to church… drop by on Granddad…. It feels like just one thing after another. But these kinds of deeds are extraordinary in the context of life on earth because, strictly speaking, they are rarely vital for bodily subsistence. It is not out of direct fitness needs that we, say, prefer our coffee black, choose underwear of a particular style, and listen to Radio WXYZ. From a biological perspective, our lives look irrational. For any other animal, much of what we concern ourselves with would be an unfathomable waste of energy. Normally in nature, the rational thing to do, unless there is a pressing reason to do otherwise, is nothing. Left to its own devices, an animal’s default action is inaction — avoiding unnecessary disturbance. Hence penguins huddle, squirrels hibernate, and well-fed lions lounge. But we humans need purposeful goings-on in our lives — daily projects that feel worthwhile."
"Our daily pursuits are the end, the point, both the ‘this’ and the ‘it’ in the question that perhaps we all ask ourselves at times — “Is this it?” The answer is — Yes. This is it. And it needs to be good. Purpose in life is not an optional extra, a psychological cherry to pop on the cake after our more basic requirements have been sorted. It is not, in other words, the last item on a pyramid of needs of the sort famously proposed by psychologist Abraham Maslow. Rather, a good enough reason to live has to be in place before we human beings will even take on the task of satisfying our other needs. Without a point to our lives, wherever on a supposed hierarchy we may be, we are exposed to the danger of willful death; or, if not that, then becoming overwhelmed by keepers (internal suicide stoppers), as our emergency defenses against self-destruction take over. Late in life, Maslow came to doubt his own theory. It is quite possible, he observed, for people seemingly to want for nothing and still be pathologically purposeless. At the other extreme, Victor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, gives first-hand testimony as to how humans can endure unimaginable privation. He explains with one of Nietzsche’s aphorisms: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Last open thread I suggested Scott questions about dreams if he has another readership survey because I believe frequency of remembering dreams and having lucid dreams might correlate with other measured traits.
Dreams are fascinating. Some think they contain symbolism. Others think they are random imaginations whose meaning is only a feeling imposed upon that randomness.
Nobody knows anything for a fact about dreams, which is why i think Scott should explore whether dreams and dreamers correlate with other traits.
Happy St. Brigid's Day to you all! One of the Three Patron Saints of Ireland along with Ss. Patrick and Columcille, today marks the (Irish) start of Spring.
https://blogs.transparent.com/irish/la-fheile-bride-la-%E2%80%98le-bride-1-feabhra/
For those of you of a different disposition, it is also Imbolc - your ewes should be coming into milk now for the lambing season 😀
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imbolc
Anois teach an Earraigh: https://www.irishpage.com/poems/spring.html
Gabhaim Molta Bríde: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dNRPcPpeI4
"Or if dating isn’t your style, how about a nice calculus textbook?"
I don't know which prospect terrifies me more - human relationships or mathematics!
I wonder why people like authors of that EEG study never explain why only intelligence is supposed to be damaged, but not body mass or height. And also why school bullying (which, of course cannot be solved by throwing money at it) obviously is out of question (p.s. i violated rules, oops)
Nature has a new meta analysis coming out against circumcision. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41443-021-00502-y It was an adversarial collaboration from SSC that cemented my belief that I should circumcize my future children. The bayenian in me wants to update my belief based on this new information, but if course it is paywalled. Has anyone read it, and is it a well constructed study? Is there new information that I should be considering that wasn't in the adversarial collaboration?
Are there any rationalist-compatible podcasts that focus on health, being an informed consumer of medical info, that sort of thing?
Payment oddity: My renewal came up and Substack said my card (Capital One Visa) was declined. So I gave current info for the same card and (Substack says) it got declined again. Gave up and paid the $100 by AmEx instead. But...why couldn't I pay with Visa? And why does *Substack* think payment was declined when the credit card's own app isn't aware of any declined payment attempts?
Is it just me having this issue? Is Capital One, or possibly Visa, secretly shadowbanning Substack or certain substacks? Or did Substack's payment processor merely have a random hiccup that somehow happened to hit me (twice) and it's all good again?
What's with the "give gift" link after some of the comments?
I know a lot of people here play Paradox games. What do you guys think of the ideas discussed in this video?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jltPHYJOZo&t=18s
A popular streamer is outlining the kind of character/diplomacy mechanics he'd like to see integrated into warfare like planning the campaign, getting important characters to commit to joining a war, distributing gains, and picked CBs/wargoals.
His video is about CK3 but I would be interested in thoughts about this or similar systems in strategy games generally.
Alice regularly invited Bob to do something together. Bob usually (but not always) agrees, and they usually both enjoy the activity, but Bob doesn't ever invite Alice back. Should Alice continue inviting Bob?
I can think of situations where the answer is clearly (to me) "yes": for example, if Bob is a teenager and Alice is his mother. Are there situations where the answer is "no"? My intuition is that if Alice and Bob are friends then Bob is violating etiquette (and etiquette violations should be punished in some way), but it's unclear to me if this is a universally-accepted part of friendship etiquette.
I have reason elsewhere to dig out what George Bernard Shaw said about the Easter Rising in one of his appendices to "John Bull's Other Island", and though our opinions diverge on the matter, he makes me laugh because he has as little regard for the English as the Irish:
http://www.ricorso.net/rx/library/authors/classic/Shaw_GB/John-Bull1.htm
"From a battery planted at Trinity College (the Irish equivalent of Oxford University), and from a warship in the river Liffey, a bombardment was poured on the centre of the city which reduced more than a square mile of it to such a condition that when, in the following year, I was taken through Arras and Ypres to shew me what the German artillery had done to these cities in two and a half years, I laughed and said, “You should see what the British artillery did to my native city in a week.” It would not be true to say that not one stone was left upon another; for the marksmanship was so bad that the Post Office itself was left standing amid a waste of rubbish heaps; and enough scraps of wall were left for the British Army, which needed recruits, to cover with appeals to the Irish to remember Belgium lest the fate of Louvain should befall their own hearths and homes."
I do like the bit about the marksmanship of the British Army 😁 Okay, while I'm at it, another ding at the English, in regard to his character Broadbent in the play:
"Much as I like him, I object to be governed by him, or entangled in his political destiny. I therefore propose to give him a piece of my mind here, as an Irishman, full of the instinctive pity for those of my fellow-creatures who are only English."
" ‘When I say that I am an Irishman I mean that I was born in Ireland, and that my native language is the English of Swift and not the unspeakable jargon of the mid-XIX century London newspapers. My extraction is the extraction of most Englishmen, that is, I have no trace in me of the commercially imported North Spanish stream that passes for aboriginal Irish, I am a genuine typical Irishman of the Danish, Norman, Cromwellian and (of course) Scotch invasions. I am violently and arrogantly Protestant by family tradition; but let no English government therefore count on my allegiance. I am English enough to be an inveterate Republican and Home Ruler. It is true that my grandfather was an Orangeman; but then his sister was an abbess; and his uncle, I am proud to say, was hanged as a rebel. When I look round me on the hybrid cosmopolitans, slum poisoned or square pampered, who call themselves Englishmen today, and see them bullied by the Irish Protestant garrison as no Bengalee now lets himself be bullied by an Englishman; when I see the Irishman everywhere standing clearheaded, sane, hardily callous to the boyish sentimentalities, susceptibilities, and credulities that make the Englishman the dupe of every charlatan and the idolator of every numbskull, I perceive that Ireland is the only spot on earth which still produces the ideal Englishman of history. [...] England cannot do without its Irish and its Scots today because it cannot do without at least a little sanity."
"Think of the famous meeting between the Duke of Wellington, that intensely Irish Irishman, and Nelson, that intensely English Englishman. Wellington’s contemptuous disgust at Nelson’s theatricality as a professed hero, patriot, and rhapsode, a theatricality which in an Irishman would have been an insufferably vulgar affectation, was quite natural and inevitable. Wellington’s formula for that kind of thing was a wellknown Irish one: “Sir: dont be a damned fool.” It is the formula of all Irishmen for all Englishmen to this day. It is the formula of Larry Doyle for Tom Broadbent in my play, in spite of Doyle’s affection for Tom. Nelson’s genius, instead of producing intellectual keenness and scrupulousness, produced mere delirium. He was drunk with glory, exalted by his fervent faith in the sound British patriotism of the Almighty, nerved by the vulgarest anti-foreign prejudice, and apparently unchastened by any reflections on the fact that he had never had to fight a technically capable and properly equipped enemy except on land, where he had never been successful. Compare Wellington, who had to fight Napoleon’s armies, Napoleon’s marshals, and finally Napoleon himself, without one moment of illusion as to the human material he had to command, without one gush of the “Kiss me, Hardy" emotion which enabled Nelson to idolise his crews and his staff, without forgetting even in his dreams that the normal British officer of that time was an incapable amateur (as he still is) and the normal British soldier a never-do-well (he is now a depressed and respectable young man). No wonder Wellington became an accomplished comedian in the art of anti-climax scandalising the unfortunate Croker"
I heard said so often and denied , yet here it is . https://sites.krieger.jhu.edu/iae/files/2022/01/A-Literature-Review-and-Meta-Analysis-of-the-Effects-of-Lockdowns-on-COVID-19-Mortality.pdf
Does anyone know what method Scott used to calculate gematria values for Unsong? I have 30 tabs open and I'm still getting misses.
Recently while showering I was asking myself if all the changesbif the past years in my thinking, interacting and dealing towards and with other humans might actually be not only a result of me getting older or me being a parent since so and so long now. I was thinking about evolution of higher social animals and about the advantage for a group or tribe of having a longer term memory for all kinds of good and bad things like poisoness and delicious food, dangerous things like tsunamis, regions with rare but regular events like earthquakes asf. And I was thinking that I are less and less interested in technical details of a certain narrow problem but more and more in broad social problems, group thinking, long time effects asf. I find myself telling our kids stories and experiences pretty often in these days and started to do that at my employer as well. Surely, I've got pretty recognizable grey hair the past years and start to feel more and more like the silverback gorilla in the tribe. At the same time I see my other capabilities slightly degrade - guess the missing daily training is the main cause.
But what if evolution had blue-printed a second brain re-wiring (after the great teenage brain reconstruction) in a human life to re-configure the brain of (the rare surviving) elderly to help their group beeing cautious of e.g. poisones food, dangerous situations and even black swan like once-in-a-lifetime events. Science and rationalist community only learned in recent years how hard it is to teach individual and even more groups the most important lessons for surviving the daily dangerous live. It turns out more and more that we humans learn best by listening just to good, convincing stories told by gray hair grandparents like survivers calmly talking from their armchairs about all the thing they have seen in their long lives. As a kid I loved listening to stories of my grandfather about him living through the great depression, the second world war, multiple currency reforms and so forth. More and more I see myself sitting in the armchair one or two of my kids around me telling stories about my live to them and they love it.
Wondering if this might be programmed into both my kids brains (to love listening to stories and remembering so many details and facts over decades) and my brain - to tell about my past life and the small and large events, my views, learnings - and being less and less interested in nerdy, technical thing's I was obsessed about between 5 an 35 roughly.
What do you think?
Have you ever been a cog in an absurd, dysfunctional bureaucratic workplace?
I want to write a few paragraphs of comical fiction that describe how someone came to be in a job where, due to a series of bizarre bureaucratic technicalities, they essentially get paid massive amounts of money to do....whatever it is they want to do, with near-zero oversight or accountability, and zero risk of getting exposed.
Below is the bones of what i've come up with. I'm trying to balance absurdity with *some* realism, and welcome any input based on your experience with bureaucracy.
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Scientist Len works for defence contractor, gets seconded to government laboratory to work on special sensitive project. Government pays Contractor who pays Len.
Len arrives at Gov Lab, finds out the Project Lead has gone AWOL and cannot be replaced due to internal hiring freeze. Left to work on project with one other person who is only there to calibrate and maintain equipment.
Without a Project Lead, Len reports to the Branch Manager, who knows that the project exists but is firewalled out of the details as per Gov policy. She wants Len to send her fortnightly updates, but content limited to the status of the project and whether or not a completion date is known. All technical reporting is to remain within the immediate project team.
Time passes and Len’s old Contractor Co. gets acquired by a big international company, EngTech. Len’s old boss gets absorbed and promoted into EngTech and still signs off on his payslips, but is too busy to inquire into Len’s work.
Len and his colleague in the lab decide they need a specialised component to advance the project, but the manufacturer says it will be 12 months until the component is fully developed from prototype. He informs the Branch Manager of the schedule update.
Several months later the Branch Manager is embroiled in a scandal from decades ago and is dismissed. The Board of Inquiry attempt to reach EngTech for information about Len’s project, but with Len’s former boss on vacation they resort to interviewing Len directly about the scope and schedule. Len convinces them the project is crucial and really just getting off the ground. He also points out that the Project Lead vacancy is not an issue and it can remain unfilled as a cost-saving measure.
Len goes on this way for years, with no technical oversight, a stream of lab assistants for colleagues, and a revolving-door of Managers far enough removed from the details as not to know or care about progress.
Should the vaccinated be concerned about this study
https://www.mdpi.com/1999-4915/13/10/2056/htm?fbclid=IwAR0SSl9oaJGc75eH5gW5jaj48WtmRyUUW0EvTpDgPimZ3mfDQxqzei8r0VQ
This study seems to indicate something quite odd. Synthesized spike protein in blood serum for up to 4 months post vaccine . Wtf . When has the vaccine antigen been found to be in circulation for so long with typical vaccines ? What could this mean ?
https://www.jimmunol.org/content/early/2021/10/11/jimmunol.2100637