HN user
Destabilizing “the west” and preventing Ukraine from joining NATO. Look at the pandemic… Soon there will be toil about defensive measurements and expenses. The economy wont like a chronic war threat either. Putin just has to move Russia’s troops every now and then.
Unsatisfied niche btw.. There is effectively no dating app for kinksters, but a lot of people are into kink.
Idk. No one I knew was an outspoken racist in school. Especially these days, teenagers seem to be very aware of these issues. Regardless, it’s not the only thing pointed out here. With the original comment it paints a different story than outcry for the sake of outcry.
This article rubs me the wrong way. The headline isn’t well supported by its content, as the article drifts off to cheery picking counter arguments debunking lab-origin conspiracy theories. And a whole lot of questionable references to other idiotic conspiracy narratives.
Considering the natural origin hypothesis hasn’t been proven yet, mixing up skeptics with conspi nuts feels disingenuous, rhetorically targeting emotions and identity. I don’t think there is a huge overlap with those considering gain of function research as possible origin, with your typical death-by-5G, antivax flatearther, or climate denialist. Downright dismissing a lab origin, when really both ways are completely possible, feels patronizing and not scientific at all. I also don’t think someone who thinks about the FCS is likely to shoot a researcher on their way home. Or listens to Trumps bullshit, for that matter.
Not everyone thinks SARS2 is a bio weapon designed by Bill Gates. To me however, the mere possibility of a lab origin influences my opinion on gain of function research and legislation, and that should be the real discourse here IMO. Attributing this to China really is beside the point and realistically “impossible knowledge“ considering the extent of a possible liability issue at hand, anyway. The xenophobic attacks started right from the start, when Trump rallied against “the China virus” instead of taking action against its spread. No one, but Biontech and virologists were concerned about the genome of the virus back then.
"Single-use" may have been the wrong expression. I meant, I needed something that could break, be stolen, or tempered with at the airport, without me losing trust/access to my main work/digital life tool, and without me getting too sad about it.
I try the Macbooks' keyboards every time I see one in the store. Yes, it has been even worse, but the new ones feel clickity-clackity, like an ATM pad, to me too. No travel, and annoying high pitched noises. Feels weird to rest your fingers on those keys. Not even close to a Thinkpad keyboard, old or new. I could get used to it, but it is not a great input device. Not at all. Trackpad rocks of course, but so does the nipple, if you type a lot.
Standing desk doesn't help with the viewing angle and neck strain. Your upper body should be exactly the same as sitting well adjusted.
Keyboard is unmatched indeed, but my nipple mechanic is worn now and the trackpad is atrocious. I am not defending this machine, it is 10 years old, the CPU is a major limitation now. I bought it refurbished for 240€ in 2015, so I had a "single use" laptop for a trip... Became my main machine for years to follow. The low price point is one of the best features, as I am not constantly worried about it. Also the original spill resistance saved my ass two times. Oh yeah and SSD and RAM upgrade took me literally 5 minutes. Ridiculous. Almost disappointing as a DIY project.
Tho, I suspect it will perform much, much better cleaned, repaired and thermal-paste reapplied. But I wont open it, as long as I have no alternative set up.
(Also M1 + Linux, would be a no-brainer for me - best bang for the buck right now. I just fucking hate Apple OSs and the ecosystem. Oh and the keyboard too - feels as pleasant an ATM's number pad... Following Asahi closely, still.)
Jeez, I explicitly stated my comment was about "snappiness" only. Sure you can move the goalpost, if it makes you happy, but I am not trying to argue a 10 year old Thinkpad, or any laptop that age, is nicer than a recent Macbook. You win, tiger.
Lol. That's what I thought as well, but I couldn't really spell it. The reference fits perfectly.
Maybe. At least I can not switch off easily and those stories stay with me. I also don't like horror movies. Maybe it's more pleasant, or enjoyable, when you feel differently, or "less".
But would you agree, you don't need that story over and over dressed up differently? Some people have read/seen more than one of those stories.
Man's search for arbitrary meaning (through suffering and such).
I think that's feeding the delusion that life is somehow fair, or balanced, or something, when really life is just cruel sometimes. Maybe that's the appeal. I just cope with it differently, try to laugh it off.
You can't escape sadness. Life is fundamentally about suffering.
Yeah, no shit. That's why I try to not invite it unnecessarily.
I think people seek these stories because it helps them deal with their own sadness.
I doubt that. I think it's some form of morbid entertainment I don't need, as indicated by other commenters. Emotionality porn or something. Today the sad cancer story, tomorrow FetLife. (Just kidding; no kink-shaming intended.)
I assume most people will continue their life as if they are not going to die ultimately, afterwards. Or at least I am pretty sure there are plenty of people dying of stress-related disease, which at some point in their life read a sad story about death.
Also the abstract sadness, which comes with these stories is very different to what you experience when really sick and worried - when you disassociate (good) and take life by the day.
That's terrible ergonomics and you will grow a hunch. One day you will notice in the mirror and your consequent attempts to straighten your neck will fail. Laptops are such a legacy format, we only endure because we're denied power-/useful tablets, which would be much more flexible ergonomics-wise.
I have a ten year old X220 with an SSD upgrade.... I don't have to wait for anything really, either. Don't get me wrong, I know there is a difference, but... is it a 2000$ difference?
This is about snappiness only, I have no trouble finding workloads stressing this old i5 (e.g. 2k/4k videos), where an M1 would fly through. Personally, I just think snappiness alone is a bit forced argument to spent 2k$.
Gnome's accessibility feature "larger text" works a bit better than font scaling IMEx. With font scaling often some alignment and spacing seems odd. And you can toggle "larger text" with one click, if you make the accessibility menu permanent.
For real.
Tho, if organ donations were opt-out, or even no choice, and the infrastructure to match demand and supply would scale (it does not at the moment), we wouldn't need artificial organs to give this poor man this "high risk investment" and a chance to fight for his life.
Well, maybe in this particular case, an autologus transplant would be much better indeed, as I imagine cancer patients generally don't fare well with suppressed autoimmunity... Then again, no Repo Men visits.
I honestly don't understand why people seek that. Doesn't that sadness and devastation hang with you afterwards?
I gave it a try, but now I am trying to avoid these stories at all costs (thanks for the warning) and firmly believe everything important in life can be told with humor, as well.
1 in 5 people dies of cancer, and usually it sucks, no happy ending. I really, really don't see the need to bring more tragic death into your life than what's likely coming your way, anyway.
Do you "enjoy" the sadness and crying? (Honest question.)
I think that depth has been more widely recognized in neuro-biology before, but has fallen from grace in favor of a naive mechanistic enthusiasm at the beginning of that early neuroimagining euphoria.
You may look into constructivism, especially the biological foundation (e.g. the work of Maturana and Valera). It offers the (somewhat forgotten) hard science link to modern philosophy and psychology, like post-structualism/-modernism and systems theory.
As far as I know, it's not very popular, because it presents a little crisis and is "not very fun"... or at least that's what the criticism comes down to IMO. (I suspect, it's kinda similar to Gödel's assault, but much easier to dismiss.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_of_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_constructivism
True or not, great read and interesting idea.
The concept of “flattening an energy landscape” resonates a lot with me. I feel like the filter on which internal and external impressions make it into the consciousness varies in people, like an island's extend depending on sea levels. I always thought of it as a uniform, plane threshold, so the idea of a "rule based" filter of priors is inspiring to me. However, the article extends this to other things than just the "event horizon" of the unconsciousness, while my intuitive understanding relates more to the experience, but not quality, of cognition.
When I close my eyes, I can usually "see my brain thinking/sorting/searching" (closed eye hallucinations), a visual soup of (random) associations, patterns and transformations, and experience visual snow in dim light, most of the time. Although I got used to it, I do suffer from that "meta experience", when gravely exhausted and stressed - makes reality a bit unreal at times. According to wikipedia, closed eye hallucinations occur to most people only when tripping, so, assuming I am not psychotic, I guess the threshold/prior-filtering varies.
I had this as long as I can remember, but I fear smoking weed in my youth didn't help (HPPD). Not sure, if I should experiment with psychedelics... I see a possible benefit and great danger, too.
Possibly a heavy selection bias, don't you think?
Shrooms are illegal almost everywhere, or at least not very popular. I assume there is a very significant filter on which type of personalities seek these experiences (unlike e.g. trying alcohol or cannabis, as those are accessible and culturally integrated everywhere).
Also, maybe report back, if you don't mind. Would love to get a reality check, if it's just another fiction of self-improvement, or if others see the usefulness, as well.
Yeah, but as a monologue.
The thing with ADHD folks is, we constantly seek stimulation/neuronal excitement, so if we manage to do anything, we somehow tricked our brain into enthusiasm, or hit another strong motivator like anxiety, or shame. And working out productivity "hacks" itself is usually some spin-off from a much more pressing task, or self-entertainment. Everything feels super important and like the best idea ever; enthusiasm is the only way.
So naturally, we tend to share tricks and "habits" before they have proven effective - they just felt really important... - as they have not been tested against the boredom of every day. And not everyone in that community is self-meta yet, sees the patterns and gets a bit wary in face of those "good ideas".
Honestly, I think everyone can learn something from ADHD behavior, as we're just the essence of executive dysfunction and impulsivity, the deconstruction of "motivation" (egosyntonic task scheduling) and actionable impulse (actually switching tasks), the deep end of a spectrum. Usually people can relate to our problems, they are just not problems in their lives as much.
I can't vouch for the most recent episodes, as I haven't listened to them yet, and I don't mind those interview ones much. Otherwise most episodes had some insights and ideas, I found noteworthy, which resonated with me - and they are always only a few minutes long, even less when you, like me, increase playback speed to keep focus. Very ADHD friendly. Maybe just don't binge them all at once, but have the individual eps echo a bit.
To start somewhere (going by title here), maybe try those episodes about gotchas and pitfalls (lol, they kind of all are about that, regardless of title; the author knows, we tried all the "hacks" already...), about energy management, "Waiting for Inspiration", or the fresh start ones. I think I also liked the "Five Frameworks to Build Powerful Goals", but that one doesn't really demonstrate what I like about the podcast.
Hope there is something for you too <3
Edit on my original post: Jeez. Sorry for grammar and typos. I thing... I was still very tired. Awful.
Amen.
For those with poor executive functioning, or ADHD, I can really recommend the podcast "Hacking your ADHD": https://www.hackingyouradhd.com/podcast
Ironically, it's less focused on "productivity hacks", but rather a functional self-understanding why we "fuck up" and how to manage our limited brain resources and most importantly: Anticipation of willpower depletion/different moods and mindsets.
Personally, I thing the typical "productivity hacks" blog posts shared here, are quite toxic, as they rarely speak about resources, resting and regeneration, or ask why work anyway? Especially coming from the US, where people work much longer, have less time off. There is a flair of normalizing self-exploitation and walking a path towards burn-out and sickness, and I don't even think most of those blog post are authentic, long term success stories - just farming clicks and subscribers for the attention market. They are much like Instagram distorting self-expectations.
The ADHD community is a parody of the HN crowd in that regard, people share new "super effective" tricks and routines enthusiastically all the time. Finally we found the solution! But sober us knows these tricks will not stick for more than a week or two - and really, we shouldn't be online right now to begin with. The thing is, that improving daily task management is not to be thought of as a project, but am ongoing maintenance process. So in that community, there is also the sentiment of changing "routines" all the time, to keep them interesting and challenging.
So maybe, you even need come up with a new scheme every day. That's fine too. In any case, I dare you to not forget to evaluate your need for regeneration, day dreaming, sleep and pleasure, and anticipate different moods and mindsets you know will be present.
there is only one reason the media rejected the lab-leak hypothesis - it was forwarded by Trump
Nonsense. There is media outside the US, and no one really cared about that.
The problem has been that literally no one in charge had any interest to investigate. Obviously not China, but the US was involved in the gain of function research in Wuhan too; France/EU knew about the problems there.
And rightfully so, the first few weeks of media coverage were focused on other things than pointing fingers. Trump talking about blame, was seen as a distraction from the catastrophic handling of the pandemic by the administration - and there was clear evidence for that.
I think we will never know the origin of this virus, but we can prevent a possible lab leak in the future, outlaw gain of function research and internationally enforce lab safety standards on the highest political level.
Regardless of causation/correlation, that lab in Wuhan could have been the source of this pandemic, which killed 5.5 million so far and crippled the world economy for 2 years and counting: The french withdrew collaboration, because the lab wasn't meeting standards for the proposed risky research, and the exact gain of function seen in SARS2 was proposed to be researched there.
The possibility of a lab leak should not have existed in the first place. We can prevent a next pandemic of lab origin, now.
Cultural change. Stop pushing family life as this sacred self-fulfillment fantasy it is today, but instead promote other means of salvation.
Women's equal access to sterilization would be a big one. Easy and free availability of birth control and pregnancy termination other low-hanging fruits. Improving factual constraints, education and independence: Inviting self-determined life choices and a self-serving sense of purpose.
Enforcing parent's responsibility for their children. Punish neglect more harshly. Don't allow parents to make their children's attention footprint something everyone has to endure, because "children are precious!" entitlement; no free-riding. Don't collectivize the downsides of procreation.
Basically just undo the pro-natalism ideology, religious influence and propaganda.
You seriously underestimate the complexity of genetics and ontogenesis.
For example today we can already predict the color of the eyes and other phenotype from the DNA.
We could even do that, without knowing anything about DNA at all. Or predict tomorrows weather without satellites and computers.
I think you are a bit too enthusiastic about statistics, or too naive about complexity.
I think you would have to two scenarios at hand:
1. A completely genetically determined disease; a rare 100%-going-to-happen deal. (Which you would probably know about already, because your mother, or grandfather died from it...)
2. Some significant, but abstract risk modification.
With 1., you would know, you will get sick/die some time soon in the future, allowing you to live your life accordingly, die without regrets, prepared and so on. You can take that into consideration when planning for a family, taking job offers, procrastinating on the good life with work and retirement plans. Burn bright.
With 2., there is a very, very high chance lifestyle choice influence the stated risk, as obviously not everybody who got the polymorphism gets sick. So you can get your ass up, exercise, quit smoking and drinking, reduce stress, get regular check ups, ..., and avoid getting sick or reduce the impact/progression, in case you do.
I think, logically, knowing is always better than not knowing. But I understand how anxiety does tell a different story.
So, for about 1000$ I can sequence my DNA at home without giving the data away?