WaxedChewbacca

Imagine paying taxes your entire adult life, and then in an honest-to-God life-and-death emergency concerning your children, the police not only aren't doing their jobs, but actively prevent you from trying to save your own child.

Then, imagine watching as mass media hide the atrocity of normal police service being turned inside-out with the police essentially serving as accomplices to the murderer, and instead use the tragedy to advocate the restrictions of rights. That is, the press hides the abuses of the state while trying to restrict the ability of normal people to defend themselves against the state.

Let's go look at the actual data. Here's the Florida measurement station that has the highest rate of sea level rise that I could find: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station....

> The relative sea level trend is 5.95 millimeters/year with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 0.89 mm/yr based on monthly mean sea level data from 1990 to 2021 which is equivalent to a change of 1.95 feet in 100 years.

The press doesn't like to talk about actual measurements, because doing so destroys their scary stories.

This is not good. The problem here is essentially social, or we might call it antisocial -- people simply not caring about the living beings around them. That can't actually be solved with technology, but you can definitely create technology to detect loud sounds and ticket people. This simultaneously enriches the state and helps tighten the noose of surveillance and control, while doing nothing about the root issue.

* Despite how it appears, this comment was not actually modded down -- it has been pre-censored by HN, allegedly to help preserve curiosity.

It seems as though the problem is primarily fear and/or aversion. The mind is kind of like a cavern of echoes, and you can choose to add power to, or dampen, the echoes. Are you able to think of something that will bring up a wholesome feeling, like kindness toward an animal, or a baby, or gratitude toward a mentor? If so, you can use it to dampen the fear pattern.

When the fear pattern arises again, realize as quickly as possible that it has come back. Stop it, i.e., do not walk down a road in imagination related to the fears, imagining painful outcomes or whatever. In other words, gently stop the thought and drop it. Relax tension in the body, especially in the head. Smile. And bring up the wholesome feeling, however is appropriate for you. This dampens the fear echo. Each time you do these steps, you are taking energy away from this habit of your brain. Every time you do it correctly, you're taking a step toward not being bothered by this concern.

This technique will work, but please just try it and try to do it diligently, giving it provisional belief. In the meantime, try to do your assignments, watching for your fear to decrease.

* This message pre-censored by HN, allegedly to preserve curiosity.

This is misleading. Let's look at the actual charts of nearby measuring stations.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... 3.36mm/year, flat since the 1950s.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... 5.37mm/year, very new station, but still looks flat.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... 4.78mm/year, flat since the 1970s.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... Further away station, 4.74mm/year, flat since the 1920s.

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.... Further away station, 2.61mm/year, flat since the 1930s.

Climate alarmism about rising seas is battered into our heads every single day without fail, but when we go to check the data, what we see is very slow rates of rise, and totally flat charts going back as far as the 1850s. Where is the acceleration? Where is the upward curvature in the charts? Where is all that glacier meltwater going?

Please, stop helping to fan the flames of irrational fear.

* This message pre-censored by HN in the interest of protecting curiosity.

Don't try to raise funds. Don't consider it a win to get funding from some investor. Find some way to make money from the beginning without introducing some adversarial entity into your system that turns the CEO from your friend into the agent of investors. It is cool to run the equivalent of a lemonade stand. If you can do that, keep making it a little bigger and better. Make money the old-fashioned way -- don't hope to be acquired.

* This message pre-censored by HN in order to preserve curiosity.

I can buy this, but it might practically be a distinction without a difference. If social media is an amplifier, we have to be careful what we're amplifying. Most people have no regular practice for the cultivation of wholesome solace. The result seems unsurprising.

I think this article is useful and insightful, but it's missing a big piece that I think is important to emphasize: being woke and looking to others to supply feelings of validity are kind of the same thing. That's one way to diagnose wokeness.

Genuine feelings of justified self esteem do not come from outside oneself. They come from 1) knowing what is good and 2) living according to one's knowledge of what is good. Another way of saying this is, not only do you need to have a somewhat accurate compass to know which way to go, you also need to actually go the way you know you should go. These things together give you the justified approval of your own conscience, to some degree (incomplete approval because you don't have perfect knowledge of what is good, and you don't do it perfectly anyway because you're not a saint)

The woke fail catastrophically at this kind of stuff. They don't have any deliberate self-cultivation practice that helps them understand what is good. Not knowing what is good, they often err in favor of what feels good at the moment. They have (correct, justified) dislike/disapproval of themselves. They project their badness onto others. When others don't make the same mistake of seeing their own badness in everyone else, the woke mistake themselves for specially enlightened for being able to see the world's badness.

In a way, I think I actually do walk around feeling valid. But the feelings of others are not involved in that estimation. I am a very flawed person, a scruffy wild animal raised by other wild animals, a child raised by children who were themselves raised by children, with no adults in sight no matter how far back one looks, but I have found a process for gradually making myself better, and I am dragging myself down that path for my benefit and everyone else's benefit -- so what else would anyone ask of me? My ability to want the best for others and to do what I know is correct even when no one is looking is steadily growing. I have the justified approval of my own conscience telling me I am OK, no matter what others say.

I don't look to others to tell me I am OK. I don't want their praise. I'm the only one who knows enough to judge, anyway. I will either be happy from living up to my own expectations of myself, or put myself in misery by failing to do that. It is up to me alone.

What kind of self-improvement process am I talking about? Stuff like prayer and meditation. It doesn't matter what it's called, as long as you're gradually training your neurons and synapses and whatever other brain stuff to be more kind, compassionate, joyful in the well being of others, equanimous, generous, grateful, etc. There were good reasons to dislike religion, but I think at this point we have to wonder if we didn't throw out the baby with the bathwater when we discarded religion. The woke may serve to remind us that religion, despite its flaws, was providing great benefit.

Here's how I like to practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCiVBvptZyk https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

Mental health is a broad topic. Using medication for some mental health issues could be appropriate.

But I think medication is fundamentally the wrong approach for many common mental health issues like anxiety, sadness, loneliness, etc. If we think of the mind as a kind of garden, or more abstractly as a whirling complex system, we have to think about how to tend and cultivate the system to produce good results. Many people have no intentional system of cultivation, so it seems unsurprising that their mind garden has a lot of weeds and not very many healthy fruits.

My favorite method of mental cultivation is this: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

Or, if you want a short version to get the gist of the practice, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCiVBvptZyk

@dang: I was delayed, but not prevented, from posting this message. Presumably it's hidden from all users who don't turn on showdead. Are you able to provide a brief explanation of how this helps preserve curiosity on HN? If not, would you mind knocking it off? Thanks.

I recently encountered this thing, which I'd never seen before: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#valid-e-ma...

The original standard for email addresses seems to be so bad that it's just being scrapped and ignored. I think I'm OK with this.

When people say there are problems with the world, they almost always really mean problems with the human world, i.e., bad behavior and suffering within the human realm. Well, the bricks of the human realm are made of humans. So if you want to make the human world better, you have to make humans better. And the one human you have the most control over is you. But it's rare to find an activist who has put in significant effort on themselves. We have a tendency to want to go out and fix things out there when really the most beneficial thing we could do is stop going out and start going in, fixing the problems within, stopping serving as a repeater and amplifier for harm and suffering.

If you want to work on yourself, this is the way I advocate: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

Nah. Or check your own eye for beams before speculating about motes in the eyes of others. "All progress depends on the unreasonable man."

Invasion Of Human Bodies By Thetans (Disembodied Spirits Of Aliens Killed In A Volcano 75M Years Ago By The Galactic Dictator Xenu) Is Doable, But Time Is Short, Scientologists Warn

Please quit spamming climate fear propaganda/pornography.

Eh, the people of Paris might win against the globalists, you mean. The people of Paris might elect someone who seems to have the interests of Parisians in mind. It's eerily reminiscent of Trump in 2016... an outsider wants to do a bunch of stuff that the average person considers totally obvious common sense, and the leftist media is uniform in its opposition, terrified that local people might succeed in electing the person who promises to do what local people actually want.

I reiterate the advice I gave in the other thread. It sounds as if a lot of your anxiety is due to being unsure whether what you're doing is OK. That anxiety can be alleviated if you establish more certainty about your direction by learning to recognize the goodness in yourself and cultivating it so that it gets bigger and stronger and shines through into your life more brightly.

Do you see what I mean? If, when I walk down the street, I have a strong feeling of kindness for everyone I see, a feeling that naturally makes me have a big genuine smile, do you think it bothers me if people think I have bad posture, or don't approve of my clothes, or whatever else? Having a daily practice where I make contact with my goodness and do something to help it grow gives me certainty that my direction is good. If other people still think badly of me for some superficial reason, it just seems like they're blind to what's important, and overly concerned with trifles.

Hi, sorry about your suffering. I think this is a hard thing to diagnose or make a prescription for, so everyone will be just telling you whatever has been good for them -- that's what I'm going to do.

I'm a little worried from your description that you might be aversive to some stuff that might be helpful. If a big part of the problem is an unruly mind that would benefit from training, it seems to me that you might have a choice between the easy way and the hard way, where the hard way actually is the easy way, i.e., bite the bullet and pay a bit now, or end up paying a lot more over the course of many years. I can't tell if that's the case... it's just something you have to evaluate.

If you think that's possible, here's the stuff I recommend: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

I've done that method for a few years, and all negative feelings like anger, sadness, anxiety, etc, have been greatly attenuated, whereas positive stuff like kindness, joy, and equanimity have greatly increased. The method simply trains the mind to be untroubled.

As with everything, I think it's a mix of a lot of things, and we don't know which factors predominate. Partly it's because I'm getting older. Partly it's because I simply don't know of anything good that comes from drinking. I also have a meditation practice, and I notice that drinking has a negative effect on it.

One strategy for continuing to get social value out of extremely moderate drinking is: _go fancy_. Learn to make fancy drinks. Care about flavors and ingredients and all that. Drink less. Spend more time enjoying less alcohol.

One thing that concerns me a little about your description of your experience is that it sounds as if you might be self-regulating, and drinking even a little bit causes the regulation system to fail, at which point suffering arises in the form of sadness or anger. This is not a terrible situation, but as you age, the firewall will inevitably degrade, and you may find yourself unable to keep the bad stuff at bay.

But if there's nothing bad behind the firewall, it will be OK when the firewall degrades. You can decrease the amount of stuff in your mind that the world needs to be protected from through something like meditation practice. Here's how I do it: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

I'm glad the author is introspecting, but I think this is a bit of a misdiagnosis, or maybe an incomplete prescription. First, being boring to others is nothing to worry about -- let them attend to their own likes and dislikes -- it's not your job to thrill anyone. But the author seems to be using boring to describe being limited by fears of various kinds. Well, that's right, it's not good to be bullied and caged by fear. But it's not enough to just say you should banish fear -- you need the stuff that will banish it. You do that via, for lack of a better term, spiritual cultivation, i.e., you learn to recognize the goodness in yourself and protect and nurture it consistently so that it can grow large and strong. Fear and many other unhelpful states of mind cannot exist in the presence of your goodness, if it's strong enough.

Here's my favorite method of self-cultivation: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

Do you think HN provides more benefit to its users by hiding this comment from everyone except the brave who enable showdead?

Practically speaking, it seems to be a bunch of tiny balls kind of like Legos in that they like to stick to others in various ways according to their types. According to the rules of matter and physics we get a bunch of emergent phenomena, basically contraptions made out of the Lego-balls. That's animals. But there's something else funny about it... it's not just a bunch of wild contraptions getting made by tumbling Lego-balls in the dryer for a long time. There's also knowing. It's not the Lego-balls doing the knowing, but certain very complicated configurations of the Lego-balls seem to be needed for the knowing to happen. So there's a vast physics playground, and contraptions are curling up out of the muck, and via their unusual configurations (made by evolution out of necessity to try to keep the contraptions functional in the merciless, remorseless physics playground), knowing arises, to whatever extent the configuration of the contraption allows. If one were to try to zoom out and see the whole progression I think it might look like a mind constructing itself, gradually rising up out of an unbelievable, incomprehensible mass of bloodshed and suffering, to be shining and bright, boundlessly kind, compassionate, joyful, and balanced, like a perfectly clear eye to watch what happens in the playground as if it was a flower in a process of endless blooming, clearly knowing that everything that happens is perfect.

People will be abused to the extent they allow. I'm never going to buy this stuff. No wifi in my oven, either. No cameras in my TV. Manufacturers, know that if you put inappropriate computers in the product, I'm not going to buy it. Keep it simple and minimal and you will get my money.

A creepy and arrogant suggestion that's actually a sterling example of the main problem over on the non-"conspiracy theory" side: the assumption that they are correct combined with a complete unwillingness to talk about specific topics and specific objectively existing artifacts. Pretending to be nice and reasonable as a cover for intellectual dishonesty and ignorance of the arguments on the other side. Have you read Peter Duesberg's "Inventing the AIDS Virus?" No? It'll take you 10s to find the PDF. Engage with that, and then we'll have something to talk about. Don't just look down your nose like I'm crazy while refusing to listen.

No, I can't agree. This stuff is not symbolic. The conflict is over nothing less than paramount human issues like bodily autonomy. This virus is simply not very dangerous to the vast majority of people, and those people who make close contact with reality have figured out that masking doesn't make any practical difference, so they do the minimum required not to be scolded. Those people that the left typically looks down upon for lacking a fancy education, those are the people who actually make this world work. They are out in reality; the NPR listeners are in the bubble.

Being forced to do silly things is not a trivial issue. If superstition and unfalsifiable claims of harm reign, there is no limit to how bad things can get.

I think you should very closely examine whether or not it makes any sense. Put aside for the moment whether or not doing stuff like that could be dangerous to you legally. What is the goal? To temporarily disrupt computer systems based solely on whether they're supposed to be affiliated with the Russian government? What is the point?

I'm glad you're at least thinking whether DDoS could be wrong. I've never encountered a situation where DDoSers were the good guys.

This is how it goes with the woke. A company can deliberately make itself incredibly overtly racist and sexist, and they'll still be sued for not doing enough. There's no way to win when you try to cooperate with the woke. You just have to reject racism and sexism totally and shun anyone who threatens to infect the company with that mentality. Google has the cancer and this is just one of the many symptoms that will plague it.

Meanwhile, back in reality, ivermectin is associated with 70%-ish reductions in hospitalization and death. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz4adJXLHgA

The NY Post did its scoop in November before the election, and Twitter promptly suppressed the NY Post and the story based on their "hacked materials" policy. This was complete BS -- no one seriously thought that the materials were hacked. It was a pretense. But they got away with it. It was genuine election interference.

But that's just Big Tech. Surely the other reputable news organizations would set things straight. Nope. All the organizations that most HN users seem to think are trustworthy and reputable, i.e. the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, BBC, CNN, NPR, etc -- they all helped bury the story.

The NY Post's story has been comprehensively vindicated, but there's been no reckoning as far as I can tell against the organizations that hid the truth. HN users go back again and again to those same sources, quote from those sources, get their understanding of the world from those same sources.

The idea that "homelessness" is about a lack of homes is a dumb idea that just won't die. Those who promote it endlessly simply will not go out in the world and use their own senses to determine for themselves that it isn't true. Here's how you do it: go out and talk to the "homeless" and keep notes as to whether homelessness is probably that person's primary problem. The results: upwards of 90% of those surveyed will have some other main problem, and it will almost certainly be addiction, mental illness, or both.

All of a sudden, it stops being a mystery why "homelessness" is a perennial problem: because we're misusing the term "homeless" for two of the most intractable problems in the human world. Calling those people "the homeless" is like calling cancer patients "the hairless".

When I lived in a different place, I went on long walks. I started buying little care packages to give to those who were suffering out on the street. I gave an older woman a package and she was grateful and we had a nice exchange. The next time I tried, she almost attacked me. Think her primary problem is lack of a home? Lack of a home is just one symptom of her real problems.

I'm sorry you're suffering. What you're going through is part of the human condition and nothing wrong with you. I'm glad you're thinking in terms of how to change yourself to be comfortable, rather than seeking advice on how to fix the world to be comfortable for you, which is not really possible.

I have done a simple practice for many years that alleviates all kinds of suffering, loneliness being just one common kind. It's described well in this book: https://library.dhammasukha.org/uploads/1/2/8/6/12865490/the...

The basic idea is this. You have to train the mind, a bit like how you'd train a puppy, except of course that you have a lot more material that needs to be configured, so it requires more patience. When the mind comes and disturbs you about something (usually with the intent to help you be a successful animal), you do some very simple steps to soothe the mind about that issue and reduce the likelihood of the mind bothering you about that again. In this way, you gradually get more and more peace and happiness that seems to come out of you, not in dependence on worldly circumstances.

May you be well, happy, and peaceful.

My leading contender is KeePassXC. https://keepassxc.org

If it's the case that I just have a stone-age opinion because I was raised in rural Georgia by evangelicals or something, why not demonstrate understanding of my point, and then go on to explain why it's obsolete?

> There's a very good reason we have a tradition of choosing exactly one person to grow old with. Are you able to explain it in your own words?