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> Luckily, all my friends are fellow techies who are upper-middle class, and can afford medication and therapy (and in one case, out-of-state long-term hospitalization.) But even with insurance, they're looking at many thousands of dollars of treatment.

Please understand that I am not anti-psychiatry at all. Your kid and their friends are best doing intensive therapy, and if necessary, sessions twice per week, outpatient. That is their best bet, health-wise. Because of taking Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) [SNRI] and Rexulti (brexpiprazole) for severe depression, I literally have suffered the worst thing imaginable, a drug side effect known as *akathisia*. In no exaggeration, it is worse than death. You have to move constantly, but it does not relieve the terror that you go through. You cannot physically relax at all. Your mind can only think haunting and terrorizing thoughts. It feels like you have been doused in gasoline, lit on fire, and you have been locked in a coffin. You literally survive moment-by-moment not to kill yourself. By the way, it is gruesomely painful from a perceptual standpoint. One time, when I was extremely sick, I went to the hospital and I had no idea whatsoever when I went to the emergency room that I was in sepsis along with diabetic ketoacidosis, due to being in the throes of akathisia. If you have it severely, it can cause violence and suicide. I had it severely and it lasted for about a year. I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological disease plus type 1 diabetes (autoimmune and insulin-dependent). I have been through really terrible things in my life due to my health but akathisia by far takes the cake. It is in no exaggeration worse than death.

Watch this video, this is what it is like every single day you suffer with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_iiy8ISvdY

This is a public PSA about akathisia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgvhAilA070

This is excerpts from Jordan Peterson (whom I do not agree with from a political standpoint) who is a psychologist who suffered from it due to benzodiazepines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIfllfH0k3I

My story has a lot of parallels to this story: https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story...

> It's past time the West reckons with our mental health crisis. Why is it that we're the wealthiest nations in the world, yet our kids are more stressed and depressed than kids in third-world countries? I think society will only become more and more unstable until we spend time seriously addressing that question and adjust our culture accordingly.

Like what? Do what Russia (along with the entire USSR) along with former Yugoslavia did to political dissidents?

Did you know that they used to put political dissidents in 4-point restraints and inject them repeatedly with Haldol, in order to induce severe akathisia as a torture method? If you did not appear "crazy" before coming in to some place like the Serbsky Institute in Moscow, you would appear absolutely "crazy" afterwards whenever you came out of there.

Have a read: https://fromthetrenchesworldreport.com/soviet-psychiatric-dr...

Also this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...

And just FYI, this effectively happened to me in America (although clearly I was not a political dissident). I got picked up by the police due to severe akathisia. I was forced to go to a medical hospital for "observation". I told the nurses that I could not have antipsychotics (which they give for agitation--although akathisia makes you extremely agitated) due to it invoking the akathisia and making it worse. About a week prior to this happening, I had just been diagnosed with akathisia. My world-renowned neurologist in movement disorders put a bunch of allergies in my medical record, including Haldol which he noted the reaction as "Akathisia". However, this particular hospital did not have access to my medical records (thank you "free market"). The nurses said that it was just an "adverse reaction" and therefore I was to receive it. They forced drugged me with antipsychotics and I had to move nonstop and I went really crazy. I was put in 4 point restraints and I was going so crazy that now I even know how to get those things off when they tie them extremely tightly.

Anyways, that was the last straw for me when it came to staying in the United States. I am a Croatian (European Union) citizen so I can live abroad in Europe. Nothing will convince me to live in the United States, even though I have been an American citizen my entire life. It is no longer my homeland. And just FYI, Russia Today did a whole propaganda documentary about people who ended up with akathisia (pretty much all of the people profiled in the documentary had it) consisting of Americans taking a bunch of pills. It is called OverPill: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5722_XclQkY

Russia Today (RT) has been sanctioned as a propaganda service by international journalism organisations for years.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty does not have this reputation unlike Russia Today.

This is obvious. Plus, Russia announced in the past 1-2 days that it was going to legalise mass graves. See Radio Free Europe publication: https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-mass-burials-regulations/3161...

In recent history (past 30 years), the vast majority of usage cases for mass graves pretty much have been for genocide.

Pay attention people and use your critical thinking skills. Stay off of social media: Russian propaganda is making claims that this is for COVID-19 which is pure BS!

In addition to this RT (Russia Today) along with Sputnik News apps need to be removed from app stores!

Yeah, it always does this if you are an FT subscriber when copying/pasting their articles.

This can be extremely annoying as a screenreader user. While FT is an extremely accessible newspaper, it can sometimes be more convenient to just copy/paste the article into a screenreader software.

The thing that the Purdue University President forgot to mention: Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, gender, pregnancy, or *national origin*.

Honestly, students need to understand that if they are perpetrating this violence (yes, harassment and intimidation, whether or not it is physical, is a form of violence) they will face severe disciplinary action. Also, they need to understand that they are breaking federal law.

Unfortunately, Purdue University likely will not be taking this as seriously as possible. There are so many other public universities that have better formal administrative policies towards this kind of behavior.

> Even SSRIs which are given out like candy can have severe side effects like GI bleeding.

SSRIs and SNRIs can cause akathisia. It happened to me, and it was by far the worst thing that happened to me ever in my life. I went through 6 months of nonstop hell with akathisia, and it was the worst 6 months of my life. Trust me, if you have severe akathisia, it is worse than death.

This is somebody who has akathisia from taking Effexor (an SNRI): https://youtu.be/W_iiy8ISvdY

This is a public service announcement from an akathisia advocacy group (known as Akathisia Alliance) about akathisia: https://youtu.be/VgvhAilA070

Here is an article from a mother whose son developed akathisia from taking an SSRI for about a week. (My story has a lot of common denominators to this one): https://www.madinamerica.com/2021/06/boy-interrupted-a-story...

I have my Ubuntu 18.04 looking like MacOS. The only thing limiting it from really feeling like a Mac is the touchpad.

You can see it here: https://ibb.co/H7khM7h

A good guide for starting out is here: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-macos-theme-on-ubuntu...

Yes. The canton-type system in Bosnia allowed this to happen. Also, the main negotiator for the United States during the Bosnian war in the 1990s, Richard Holbrooke, purportedly threatened the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat armies with an ultimatum about taking down Banja Luka (which became the capital of Republika Srpska--the Bosnian Serb entity of Bosnia), which the Bosniaks and the Bosnian Croat armies had no choice really but to comply. He had regrets and underwent turmoil about this, wishing that he did not put the ultimatum on them. It would have prevented the canton-type system, if they were successful.

I am personally Croatian American. I am culturally American but hold both US and Croatian citizenship. It's not just Serbia, it's the entire region that is has issues. Croatia is luckier than most, as it has the European Union going for it, along with its coastline. A lot of other countries in the Southeast Europe do not have much going for them, and you see this kind of stuff happening.

Plus, Russia is a key ally of the Serbs, and is trying to destabilize the region on purpose.

See this Twitter account for more info: https://twitter.com/jasminmuj

Amazon is going to get sued hardcore, guaranteed. The issue is that nobody had to die. Even kids’ summer camps in tornado prone zones have this figured out. The summer camp I went to had 2 rooms in the camp’s gym that were formal tornado shelters. The gym, with these tornado shelter rooms, were built in 2001. The entire camp (300+ people) could fit in these rooms. Everyone could technically sleep in there too, but obviously they would split us up into boys/girls rooms and the counselors would still be watching us the whole time.

The 2 rooms themselves were basically a 12” enclosure (including the ceilings). There were also concrete pillars in the room to reinforce the structure. During normal times we used them for various activities. But, at least during a couple of summers, we had to evacuate (from the cabins or wherever) there. The program staff (people in charge of the camp) were always monitoring the meteorological radar 24/7. This was in North Texas, which is tornado alley. The camp was an hour north of the Dallas/Ft. Worth metroplex.

Keep in mind that the open source projects being mentioned as examples on this press release only tend to affect people established as residents in the European Union.

For example, from the press release:

> “ An example of the benefits of open sourcing is eSignature, a set of free standards, tools and services that help public administrations and businesses accelerate the creation and verification of electronic signatures that are legally valid in all EU Member States.”

In order to use an eSignature, you need to have an eID (electronic ID) card from an EU member state, which is placed in a smart card reader. Some people in the EU do not have eID cards yet. Yes, some countries have apps that allow you to use an eSignature, but generally speaking, your eID is your best bet. Typically, your eID provides the highest authentication level, in terms of security, when dealing with EU or national (country) level services.

“This Way For the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen” by Tadeusz Borowski is a must read.

See: https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/09/12/the-world-of-tadeus...

Borowski was a political dissident imprisoned at Auschwitz, and he explained how anyone can normalize such an experience.

A new book with Tadeusz’s work has recently been published and translated into English called “Here in Our Auschwitz and Other Stories”.

You can view details here but it is also available on Amazon: https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300116908/here-our-ausch...

> I read most of the article, in which the author implies that defunding the police increases crime, and blames the people in charge of Oakland with this crime. Yet I recalled hearing that police budgets in Oakland were steady to up this year, despite the protests. What did I miss?

You missed the part about people linking together statistics, that are not necessarily related in any meaningful way, into a BS narrative or story. This is commonplace on various Substacks that people write. Also, I especially tend to find this from people with formal economics backgrounds and training.

I don’t have a copy that I can redistribute online.

However the repo is found via here: https://github.com/gretatuckute

Connectomes require not-so-accessible equipment such as fMRI or MRI machines. Nevertheless, the best way to visualize it in my opinion is via the Brainstorm package (created by University of Southern California) in MATLAB.

Honestly, the holy grail is really here and it is open sourced. It only requires EEG: https://direct.mit.edu/neco/article-abstract/33/4/967/97477/...

You can use FreeEEG32 with the prior link, which is coming out very soon (I spend a lot of time with the discord chat people who created this system): https://www.crowdsupply.com/neuroidss/freeeeg32

To use dry active electrodes (in lieu of wet electrodes—aka gel in your hair) with FreeEEG32, you can make your own EEG cap with dry electrodes—using this page to figure it out: https://hackaday.io/project/13285-openld-lucid-dreaming-rese...

I basically do the same, except I use a VR headset. I personally use a Valve Index headset with prescription lenses that are adapted to the VR headset, via a German company called VR Optician (no prescription required). I use Retinopsy VR Look usually for working. Retinopsy VR Look is not directly available in the Steam store (see: https://store.steampowered.com/app/750120/Retinopsy_VR__Look...) but you can get it in Viveport ( https://www.viveport.com/5445b338-0944-49a8-80ce-7c0f4ea7709...) and then import it into Steam. After that, you can delete Viveport.

I do this for another reason: severe convergence insufficiency. People in their 40s basically get convergence insufficiency and require prism lenses. But, mine is due to a rare neurological disease affecting my peripheral nervous system, which I have lived with since I was too young to read.

It’s quite offensive, as somebody who nearly died from sepsis (a couple of months ago), like the drug user in the article, but for different reasons. In my case it was from an infected portacath, that was carelessly flushed during routine maintenance and care.

Also, I cost more, on a per year basis, than the individual in the article, as I require an orphan drug and will for the rest of my life.

I am American but fortunately live abroad so I don’t have to put up with people writing BS narratives and stories that “link” arbitrary statistics together, which people with economics backgrounds tend to do. All in all, this is clickbait.

The solution to the “problem” in the article is houses, regardless of drug usage status.

This can be a sign of primary immunodeficiency: http://jmfworld.com/library/educational-materials/10-warning...

Regardless, you still should get checked out by an immunologist. Often, it is treatable with immunoglobulin.

While I do not have primary immunodeficiency, I have 2 rare immune mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, and I am on subcutaneous immunoglobulin as a treatment. I infuse it twice per week.

I have not had a respiratory infection since being on subcutaneous immunoglobulin, and it's been about 5 years since I started this therapy.

I also feel your pain. I cannot work in an office environment due to health reasons, but some reasons are not due to immunological issues.

We don't know if an omicron specific booster will actually work due to something called "Original Antigenic Sin". For more information, consult this: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08968...

If you are eligible for a booster, then you should get one ASAP. The original coronavirus vaccine antibodies present in your body will cross-react, to a certain degree, with omicron.

Yep. It probably will either be torrented or sold on the black market. That is what I expect to happen with my health data in general (I have never had an abortion or have been a Planned Parenthood patient. I am female, though.). I have 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system, and I am on an orphan drug, so I am extremely expensive.

Yep. Getting boosted (getting a booster) confers secondary immune response. The initial jabs only confer primary immune response.

See this for more info: https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Microbiology/Book%3A_...

Here is a relevant repository: https://github.com/deepmind/mathematics_conjectures

Extremely excited about this. I am wildly creative and talented from a mathematical standpoint. It's probably the best language I speak along with being the one that I am most proficient in. Mathematics basically comes to me as common sense.

The only thing that might throw me off is notation, which I have developed cheat sheets for. Using the cheat sheets, I verbalize the expression as plain English syntax in sequential order, linearizing it. This always clears up the confusion.

The above article was written in 2014, just FYI.

The point is that jabbed versus unjabbed takes precedence over the 3 above listed categories. If everyone who can be jabbed is; then the above 3 categories need not apply, even in the case of omicron. This is especially the case if a booster is given, creating secondary immune response to Sars-CoV-2.

Yes, there will be some immune escape but many of the antibodies that are acquired via boosters will cross react with omicron.

Your logic does not work. If people in a developed country would simply become vaccinated and boosted, then only the vaccinated or not condition would typically apply in mainstream society--and not the 3 other above conditions.

While all 4 are discriminatory, the first 3 are not inherently due to personal choices or preferences. People choose not to get vaccinated harming society as a whole--and make the other 3 above conditions come into play.

Can’t wait for the medical device hacks coming soon!

I recently was admitted to an American hospital due to sepsis for an extended period of time, when I was visiting family for a few months (fortunately I am insured in the United States even while abroad).

The hospital required the nurses to administer IV meds in a very peculiar way.

One week into my hospital stay, they started a new programme administering IV meds with code executed from the Electronic Health Record (Epic) to the pump. The pump would start as soon as the barcodes for the IV meds were scanned. The infusion rates were programmed into the electronic health record so the nurses didn’t have to manually program the pump.

A lot of countries have solved this problem. I am a dual US|EU (Croatian) citizen.

On the EU side, we have smart chip national ID cards that are being adopted EU-wide.

In Croatia, you can use those smart chip national ID cards for governmental affairs with a USB smart chip reader (for authentication) on the e-citizens portal.

Yeah, the models in this program are definitely the ones you want to use for figuring out things in this situation.

Ordinary Differential Equation model, Partial Differential Equation model, Finite Difference model, etc.

Some snakes in Africa also prefer dry river beds. I would not be surprised if that is the case for scorpions too.

It’s an easy source for getting water too. Not only that, coming worldwide via global warming:

Intense storms in Egypt unleashed a massive swarm of scorpions from their nests, stinging 450 people and killing 3: https://www.yahoo.com/news/intense-storms-egypt-unleashed-ma...

There are scammer epidemiologists. Dr. Eric Fiegl-Ding is one of them who also has a Twitter profile.

A good write up on him is here: https://www.thedailybeast.com/coronavirus-alarmist-eric-feig...

A good read on this is “Contrarian Doctors: The Pandemic is Over, Again”.

See: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-pandemic-is-over-again/

I knew that the pandemic was far from over with in the US even with the mass vaccination campaign being declared mostly a success this summer.

On a worldwide scale, given the rates plus the raw numbers in locales plus mobility within borders along with people crossing borders...it simply did not add up.

Plus, Americans are a very polarized group of people. (I say this as an American citizen living abroad who is also culturally American and has lived there the vast majority of her life.). Some counties in the United States had 25-30% vaccination rates at best right before the fall season. (I have not recently checked.)

But, I do recall reading that the US created a model (which of course is frequently being updated) for coronavirus spike protein mutations that would predict when the virus was statistically likely to evolve in such a way. I think it was a DARPA funded program or something like that. So, it’s not like this new “big news” came out of nowhere.

But, what is going on in the ascribed South African province in the above linked Tweet is unlikely to just be random coincidence. First, it is South Africa’s most populated province at around 15 million people. Second, it’s nearly summer in South Africa and it’s been hot there. Overall, we need people to investigate and for people to stop transmitting things that are not covered well and balanced, making many of us susceptible to confirmation bias.

But, stopping virus transmission altogether should have been our goal worldwide. Very few countries have succeeded. Yes, the WHO failed but so did the vast majority of the world’s countries.

See: Covid pandemic was preventable, says WHO-commissioned report: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/12/covid-pandemic...