HN user
A wise legalization might help with access & harm-reduction... but legalizations are sometimes bungled.
In the SF bay area – & plenty of other regions around the world – the criminal enforcement against hallucinogens is, de facto, a very low priority as long as you're not flagrantly endangering or inconveniencing others.
Oregon had gone with a broader decriminalization as of February 1, 2021, but rolled that back in 2024: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Oregon_Ballot_Measure_110
Note that 'DMT' isn't a shortened name for '5-MeO-DMT'. While related, 'DMT' and '5-MeO-DMT' are different compounds, with different effects:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-MeO-DMT#Effects
https://qualiacomputing.com/2020/07/01/5-meo-dmt-vs-nn-dmt-t...
Yes, some allegations against Epstein himself on other occasions include girls who appeared as young, by witnesses' estimations, as 11-12.
But the specific allegation against Massachusetts-based Minsky involved a woman who 1st met Epstein at age 16, and may not have met Minsky until she was 17.
In the Massachusetts of MIT, Harvard, & Martha's Vineyard, the age of consent is 16.
So while coerced sex, or prostitution, remains illegal there no matter the age, mere consensual sex with a 16-17 year-old is NOT "statutory rape" in Massachusetts. Not in that "blue" state, nor the 30 other U.S. states with the same age-of-consent, nor in Canada. Sleazy for those much older, sure, but not the "statutory rape" you're claiming.
That's not what I see when I click on that link! Just in case we're seeing different page-versions, what does a frozen copy of the Wikipedia page from a third site show? Also "16":
In they were in Massachusetts, Minsky might have asked, "Are you here willingly, and how old are you?" And he could have received the reply, "Absolutely, I'm having the time of my life with Jeffrey and all the famous people he introduces me to, and I'm 16."
And the sex might then have seemed consensual and legal to Minsky, because even now in 2019, the age of consent in Massachusetts is 16.
There are lots of opportunities for career second chances in the US – probably more so than most other regions, according to the preponderance of reports I've seen from people with experiences in multiple cultures/countries.
If you perceive otherwise, then it is very possible that you are encountering one or both of the following:
1. A highly-local expectation, in your particular community/family/friend-groups. You may need to move.
2. A hyper-local expectation, in your own mind. It might be justified by the particular path through experiences you've had, but now become self-reinforcing & self-defeating. To see counterexamples, against human tendencies for confirmation-bias and negativity, you may have to deeply consider that you might be wrong, and that your sampling of the possibility space has been unrepresentative.
Of course insights from drugs may not always be fully reliable, but what drug did you take, and did you try taking more?
Almost everything gets better with practice. Memorization experts have often used visio-spatial 'memory palaces', imaginary places they can fill with items to remember. Simply trying to use that technique might help build visual recall flexibility.
Perhaps it'd separately be worth trying a sensory-deprivation soak-tank?
I've never intentionally had fenugreek, and my diet is simple enough that I doubt it could be a hidden ingredient in anything I eat.
I figured roughly that. But is there anything I can do to enable any metabolism of these compounds, or otherwise neutralize them? (Can some people metabolize them better? Would the right skin microbiome help? Etc...)
I'd love to have spicy food more often – but 2-4 days after a spicy dish, I can usually smell the pepper/byproducts coming out of my skin as a particular, somewhat unpleasant body odor. The odor can remain detectable even immediately after a shower. Red curry/chili-peppers seem the worst trigger. Only time (and maybe a good sweat) eventually clear it.
Does anyone know the chemical mechanisms causing this, and whether any other foods, combined with or after the spicy meal, could help more-quickly neutralize this lagged skin odor?
Many have made practical, technical recommendations about your computer issues.
But it sounds like stress/panic may be the real issue. (Your concerns and plans are all-over-the-map.)
You should seek someone local and friendly to talk to. They will be better at assessing the whole situation and providing a calm outside perspective. Ideally, this would also be someone who could provide a couch to crash on, if your current rent/residence proves financially unsustainable.
Your health and sanity are your "most urgent debts". Nothing else matters if those aren't in place. You may have to delay or step away from the kind of solo-contracting that's led you to a stressful situation. Taking simpler work, in a larger or more-traditional team/project, may help restore a more balanced outlook.
Good luck. You can survive a lot, if you take things logically, one-at-a-time.
You reminded me: I switched years ago to SLS-free toothpaste (Biotene), because that's supposed to help. And for many reasons, I now eat way less sugar and sugary drinks. Maybe because of those changes, or just age, I get canker sores much less frequently. When I was younger, it was maybe 2-3 times a year, and sometimes 2 at once. Now I go a year or two between single, smaller ulcers. Good luck!
Some such sores, if occasional, may just be canker sores:
http://www.healthline.com/health/canker-sores
I've noted a correlation with: stress or lack of sleep; candy binges; eating scratchy foods like say popcorn.
If you mean, go into an office with others, no – not until symptoms have started to recede, 2-3 days after the realization "I've got a cold".
For as long as there are residual symptoms – nasal draining, coughing – I try to be extra vigilant about hand-washing and hand contact with shared surfaces.
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."
Honoring commitments is important, but so is adjusting to new information, even if it's only new information about your own productivity and mental state, or the revealed imbalance in critical-path-tasks and hourly commitments between partners.
OP may need more time away from the project, or may need more teammates with the right tech skills to help on current-bottlenecks.
Maybe knowing that 10 paying customers are lined up would help, as motivation and improved confidence in the partner's ability to equally contribute. (Maybe it's allow recruiting more technical help.) But maybe more people waiting for the completion would only add to the pressure and anxiety; he'll have to think about that.
I strongly suspect a major part of the problem is that OP has no peer technical help on the critical-path – all his partner can do is ask, "is it done yet?" That's a broken team.
From the description of your situation, there's no single-step answer.
Phase 1 has to be to recover some balance & perspective: take a week off, and if/when you resume work, cap your working hours to a more traditional schedule to allow variety and recharge time in your days/weeks.
Phase 2 is to use the balance/perspective/distance to evaluate whether the partnership/team is right, the development goals are reasonable, and the schedule expectations realistic. Abandonment of a project that hasn't matched original hopes is always an option.
If you choose re-dedication to the same project, be sure you know what will be different. You likely need a technical collaborator, for both mutual-review and task-sharing, far more than any amount of 'encouragement' from someone whose skills aren't applicable or even yet needed.
Maybe you've heard the expression, "it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission"?
Being rigorous about permission-in-advance can result in an involved, costly process that often reaches dead-ends and unthinking default ass-covering "no"s.
On the other hand, being bold and then waiting for objections can achieve much more. And by the pragmatism of common-law, and the rough precedents of DMCA takedown procedures, it's plausibly legally defensible! Or at least in practice not too risky.
Most complainants don't want a legal battle, just a prompt fix-upon-request. And some may even be unofficially indifferent to non-profit reproduction, as long as they don't have to go on-record giving permission. In that way, they reserve the right to object at any arbitrary later date, without incurring any negotiation/legal overhead in the meantime.
If you're on the brink of homelessness, there's something amiss that's deeper than will be fixed by a "startup accelerator" gig, "crowdfunding campaign", or desperation lowball contract to build an "app MVP".
Your resume is scattered in tone and content, and inconsistently formatted: it's a bad audition for a detail-oriented solo-web-dev project. Your prior HN posts suggest a roller coaster of cash problems plus unrealistic hopes over just the last 30 days.
This suggests to me you're a bit too panicked to be planning properly. You may need someone friendly or professional to talk to, locally, as much or more than a job.
You should be seeking stability in your living and working situation above all else, so that you can regain perspective. That means avoiding solo freelancing, long-shot startup ideas, or quick money-raisers. Seek a simpler job, where you go into an office and are surrounded by a larger collaborating team, and your minimal basic needs are met. Do that for at least 6 months to a year to regain a non-panicked perspective.
The delusion that many people are actually one person recurs in mental illness, there's probably even a name for it.
Coupled with insecurity, it might lead to paranoia and feelings of persecution by a powerful puppet-master. Here it seems paired with grandiose delusions, perhaps because the person is otherwise intelligent & high-functioning, or using drugs which create a sense of invulnerability. Either way, there are strong indicators of mental illness.
I would put joking (or trolling) as-if-mentally-ill as a second-place possibility, and teen-daydreams as a third-place possibility. But maybe all three in different proportions.
Honestly, the answer is internet addiction.
most sprays are gentle
If you say so. Last spray setup I saw was a garden hose with a pistol-nozzle at the end (in Indonesia, no paper provided). Even assuming some other more-gentle delivery mechanism, the geometries make it seem likely some of the 'rinse' will drip back onto the nozzle, higher areas of the toiler, and other parts of the lower body. Paper allows precision.
check with your hand
Yuck! Even though hands get a wash later, the paper approach has as its goal: hand never contacts feces, toilet/black water, or rectum area.
•leaving dried fecal matter in your rectum*
If you're wiping fresh feces with proper paper, there isn't any visible fecal matter when finished.
Perhaps there's trace residue below visual perception. If so, it's not obvious that a gentle rinse with water alone would be any better at removing/sterilizing that. (A powerful rinse might help: but we've ruled that out to prevent splatter. A rinse with soapy water might help: but that doesn't seem to be the standard. Extra physical wiping with damp tissue might help, so that's sometimes done if there's a fresh-water source within reach.)
As a North American who enjoys discussing taboo subjects clinically and honestly, and in the interest of cultural understanding, I would explain it as:
Cleanliness standards for the hands are much higher than for the rectum area. For hands, not just water but soap is expected, after any work with biologically-suspect materials or surfaces (raw foods, places of illness, bathroom visits).
But for "down below," the paper-wipe is considered sufficient, with usual assumptions about clothing, bathing schedule, etc. The paper enables wiping until there's no trace (on the white paper) of any feces. The seated toilet (less common in other regions) helped spread open the rear cheeks; after standing any surfaces that were only-paper-wiped seem very nearly 'retracted' so as to not even be in contact with underwear. Within 12-24 hours, a full-body bathe and freshly-cleaned clothes are likely.
Still, those with predictable bowel movements may time them so they immediately precede a daily shower. In many bathrooms the sink is close enough to allow wetting toilet paper for part of the cleanup, and prepackaged moistened wipes are rising in popularity, and have long been used for messy-baby-cleanup.
Turning things around and looking at rinse-cultures, I'm probably not alone among North Americans in wondering:
(1) Doesn't the spray get droplets of feces-water mix everywhere? (Supposedly ideal bathroom hygiene is to close the toilet lid before flushing, to avoid sending a mist of toilet water into the air. Any forced-water rinsing seems to guarantee a mixed-mist reaches everywhere, including parts of the buttocks and legs far from the rectum that are never contaminated by paper-wiping.)
(2) Short of absolutely drenching yourself with multiple power rinses, how do you know you're "done" - that none of the remaining dampness is still fecal-contaminated water? (White paper provides a visual completion indicator.)
(3) My very rough impression is that fecally-transmitted diseases (typhoid, hepatitis, cholera, anything diarrhea-causing, etc.) are more prevalent in rinse-cultures. Are you sure that "a lot of South Asian countries" should be the "ideal way to wash" model, as opposed to the other way around? (North American practice would change very fast if there were evidence paper-wiping was insufficient to protect health.)
You're now afraid you're not as great as you've always thought (and they've always told you).
By procrastinating, you avoid an honest reckoning of your talents and testing of your limits. You can hold onto the idea of a certain kind of perfection, in yourself and your potential work product, a little longer... and then scramble to do something half-assed at the last minute.
If others then accept your results, you get the thrill of almost-failing but can still entertain the idea you're so great you don't need to put in sustained, honest effort. The essential-you still has the power to get away with things that others can't! (You were probably very good at deceiving your parents and other authority figures as a child.)
If your results are crappy, well, they're crappy only because of the procrastination. The "real you" still has boundless potential and "could be changing the world", it's 'just' the procrastination that's a problem. You're already punishing yourself about that with your internal narrative, and perhaps you even secretly hope others will finally give you negative attention, too -- both for the thrill of actual-failure and the hope of a confrontation that might force improvement.
You do have some awareness of the cycle you're in, and have tried a number of things... but not with consistent follow-through or sustained improvement.
As a single 21-year-old making $130K, you could afford elective psychotherapy. It'd help with rooting out the reasons you enjoy procrastination, and with the follow-through on changing habits. (Much of the advice here is good... but will you have a sustained relationship with the suggesters that helps evaluate progress over months/years? For a price, a therapist can provide that.)
You might also eventually want a more competitive and intimate work environment, someplace where you can't "bullshit your way through most stuff", because others would notice and/or real project failure would follow, rather than just continual muddling-through. (This doesn't necessarily mean over-the-shoulder monitoring or no entertaining diversions... but high-enough demands and close-enough collaboration that clock-killing shirking can't survive.)
Good luck, and be happy you're not this guy:
I do believe that chrismasgift probably needs help after hitting a rough patch, as can happen to anyone. But there's enough vagueness/disconnection in the info given to be concerned that the help needed may be more than just another paying gig.
To christmasgift, I would again suggest being sure to have a deep conversation, with someone who knows you well or is an expert counsellor, to understand how things reached this point. To those offering work, I would suggest checking references.
Whether this is a rough streak of bad luck for an earnest and talented person, or something else, such considered steps will help all involved.
I wish you luck, but there are warning flags in your appeal.
Do you have someone to talk to about the "some reason" that your other leads/gigs/contacts have gone cold?
If you have unexplained weight loss and are concerned about a change in your ability to focus, you should consult with a medical professional about your health concerns, and provide them with far more context. You might also (though not nearly as advisable) seek information from sites and discussion communities specifically dedicated to similar health concerns.
This thread is followup for a story about primary/K-12 school student achievement, and not a good place to get personalized health advice.
Good luck.