mcphilip

Highly recommend the author of this post, or any other psychonauts, to read Cosmic Trigger by Robert Anton Wilson. He recounts a period of several years in his life where his psychonautic explorations left him believing he was in contact with an alien intelligence.

He wrestles with trying to find scientific explanations and whether that’s important or not since the experience deeply impacted him regardless of its cause.

I don’t personally dabble in hallucinogenics, but I’m always fascinated by what bubbles up from the brain given various stimuli.

Glad I’m not the only one who thought of L-space.

It’d be interesting to see if you could get something like GPT-3 to heavily weigh a given author’s corpus when generating output and see what it spits out for “Detritus and Carrot walked into a dwarf bar...”

The Power of Nightmares - Curtis traces back the history of leaders abandoning the approach of holding on to power through a shared vision of a better tomorrow that people can rally around. Curtis using the rise of suicide bombing as an example of a powerful nightmare that leaders can use to gain and keep power by convincing the people that their leadership is the only thing holding back the abyss.

My enjoyment of his films comes from appreciating his attempt to thread a narrative through a complex series of events and images. The linked New Yorker article makes it clear that he’s well versed in the postmodern rejection of grand narratives, but it doesn’t stop him from trying.

I find his films thought provoking, but I look to them for truth with the same skepticism I have for reading some Nietzsche — I never look for one source to get everything right, I just hope to learn something in the process.

I get that the settlement plumbing constraints led to stock halts, but still trying to figure out why $DOGE stopped being tradable a few hours ago*

Edit, removed some tin foil.

*I don’t use RH so it could be back by the time you read this comment.

Absolutely, but funny how often the fallacy plays out time and time again.

No provider wants the cesspool to be pinned on them. I get that emotionally, but this is nuts. Obviously they have the right to make these moves, but god knows what happens when the new administration starts reflecting on the role played by Big Tech in this mess. Washing hands long after infection, so to speak.

What happens when congress uses these moves as evidence that Big Tech acknowledges the need to take responsibility for harmful content and then expects the same moves made for much smaller stakes?

I’m not saying it will be impossible to access, just harder for Average Joe who doesn’t understand App Store versus WWW.

It’s fascinating, if somewhat terrifying, watching communication channels breakdown for millions of people.

Glad I downloaded it yesterday since this was obviously an unrealistic deadline. It’s getting harder and harder to keep tabs on both sides now. Things have really fragmented in the past 24 hours: lots of posts on MeWe, Telegram, Gab, etc, looking for the “best” communication channel.

Big tech is so desperate to score points with the new administration as soon as Trumpism is in its death throes (hopefully). As much as I hate the content on things like Parker, this makes me sick. I get why they want the kid gloves treatment from the Biden administration, but scrambling to ban content after the Capitol was stormed is about as noble as resigning days before the inauguration. But like it’s been said, “Never let a crises go to waste”.

Good overview of what’s known so far about the situation:

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/austin-based-solarwin...

I spent a good 5 or 6 years reading philosophy and psychology in my spare time. I don’t claim a formal understanding of the subject that would come close to what you would get from a college degree, but I do feel like I understand the zeitgeist a lot clearer than before.

I preface with that to say that my recommendation is to pick and chose which parts are of interest to you and then dive in further to the source material. If you take the approach that you must start at Aristotle, you run the risk of burning out before getting to areas that might be life changing to study.

I got my start by grabbing all of the “Introducing...” [1] series of graphic novels about subjects I commonly heard referenced but didn’t understand. From there, I dove into the underlying texts of everything I found interesting.

Again, I didn’t gain an academic understanding of the subject, but I came away with a wildly different worldview than when I started. Life’s too short to be an expert at everything, but that doesn’t have to stop you from exploring on your own.

[1] e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Introducing-Postmodernism-Graphic-Gui...

These books have some pretty deep illustrations, not just cartoon drawings of the subjects. One favorite of mine was a scene showing Monet painting haystacks, frustrated that a worker had left a ladder on one he was studying — I think the implication was Monet wasn’t _really_ trying to capture impressions of the haystacks as they appeared throughout the days and seasons, just his preferred impression.

yeah, I’m seeing event bridge errors and am unable to load cloudwatch log groups. happy short staff day!

I’ve been feeling the physical symptoms I associate with depression, but not the changes to cognition. I feel like I’m wearing an iron mask, if that makes any sense. Really heavy head with what feels like a layer of numbness between me and my surroundings. I have an appointment to talk about it with a doctor next week since I don’t want to spiral into something worse.

It’s odd to me that I’m not having the cognitive changes I associate with depression, like inability to focus or an overwhelming sense of dread. I’m surprised that things haven’t spiraled cognitively after 7 months of WFH and social distancing. I’m grateful to have a super energetic dog that needs walking twice a day, at least.

I usually use throw aways when talking about this kind of thing, but am trying to get better at doing my part to raise awareness of mental health issues in this field.

What have people found are the best ways to help normalize dealing with mental health issues in our industry?

It actually is an interesting topic to look at the history of Blood Libel and see the Satanic Panic and QAnon as the evolved/remixed version with different actors.

I think with the advent of the internet, things are shifting away from ritual murder to sexual exploitation of minors as the big fear, but “that group of people you don’t like is out to get your children” is quite the enduring narrative.

I do have some hope that the more extreme conspiracies pass in time and don’t permanently damage the psyche of those involved. Growing up in the Bible Belt during the Satanic Panic, I was legit afraid of being caught and sacrificed by satanists after a friend’s dad had us watch a movie about the “Pagan Invasion”. Satanists out to kidnap kids for ritual sacrifice was a Big Fucking Deal that many people actually believed —- Paradise Lost is a good documentary from that wave of hysteria.

I know of very few people that are terrified of satanists any longer.

I got pooperhole.com after a few refreshes

I think ideally it should be up to the employee to return when they feel safe.

That being said, I look forward to going back to the office. It’ll be nice to see people again —- few people bother to turn on their video on zoom anymore for anything other than one-on-ones, myself included, and that is starting to feel alienating to me. I don’t think it’s wise having a policy that you must have video enabled, though, it’s nice being able to sprawl out on the couch and get comfortable for a particularly long, boring meeting.

Edit: to address the actual contents of the article, I think below is a better read that doesn’t reduce people’s concerns about remote working to wanting to save sandwhich shops:

https://marker.medium.com/remote-work-is-killing-the-hidden-...

I assume you’re being sarcastic but I’ll give a datapoint anyways. Small home in Austin, ~1400 square feet, costs a little over $200/month in the summer and I keep it a nice cool 71 degrees 24/7. Low to mid $100s the rest of the year. I don’t have any notable shade coverage, either.

Same here, I haven’t used Instacart in months and my account was locked on July 12th from bad login attempts.

I wonder if a lot of people sent test amounts to see if it worked or not. 5000 people sending $10 adds up fast.

I suspected some sort of internal tool was used to target prominent users but I’m still curious why there were thousands of unverified accounts tweeting the same scam. Searching for that bitcoin address pulled up tons of accounts tweeting it shortly before that term was blocked. Are there really that many trolls out there, or was a very large set of accounts hacked?

I’d be surprised if Twitter didn’t have some internal tool like this but I’d expect it to only be accessible over a VPN that few had access to.

There was at least one masterpiece of educational software in the early 80s: Robot Odyssey. I think it was just too hard and obscure at the time to get much recognition, but I was thrilled to see a write up about its influence in Silicon Valley some years later in the Salon article “The Hardest Computer Game of All Time”

https://slate.com/technology/2014/01/robot-odyssey-the-harde...

Scheduled AWS lamda using the Mechanical Turk HITRequest API to get some random person to post to the site once a day. Shouldn’t cost more than a dime a day.

> This is anecdotal and it might come across as bitter and tonedeaf as someone who is not in a STEM job and cant see the bigger picture very well. Im a diesel engine tech who repairs those big trucks carrying food and shit tickets to grocery stores. the fact that ANY market is completely detached from whats actually happening to Americans is frustrating.

Thanks for posting this comment. I know it sounds trite, but I’m sending well wishes your way, hoping you and your loved ones make it through this crisis as minimally impacted as possible.

I think you likely see the big picture better than others. The economy is absolutely crushed. That the markets go up must be especially frustrating to those not able to partake in any gains. My take on the market is that it will go up on good or bad news for the moment. Going up on good news is self explanatory, going up on bad news could be related to speculation that the Fed and Congress will pump even more money into the economy —- the wealthy expect to be propped up by the government as they were in the great financial crisis.

My cynical take on this is that the rich expect to get richer, no matter the outcome, and are investing accordingly. My question is how much, if any, social unrest this will lead to.

I expect my reply to be buried in the flood of others, but I enjoyed the essay because of the various responses it provokes internally:

1. Optimistic response.

Right on! More influential VCs need to beat the drum of rebuilding the American Dream and the manufacturing base in spite of there being less potential return than shoveling more money into ad tech. We clearly have the talent to build things again, what we need to work on now is the incentives for talented people to take long term risks instead of joining a FAANG or a hedge fund.

2. Cynical response.

The American Dream has absolutely been crushed. We need triage in the short term, not thought leaders writing about the wonderful opportunities ahead of us in rebuilding after the COVID crisis subsides. Those sitting on large amounts of capital should make mass donations to things like food banks across the country because there is a massive risk of millions of people falling into long term poverty in the immediate future. The short term must be about helping those in desperate need. Long term planning can come later.

3. Response as a father

I hope others read this essay and get inspired about taking more risks in building a better future. As for me, I’m a sole provider for my family and must focus my career on making enough money to support those that depend on me.

I could go on, but you get the idea. A good essay is thought provoking in spite of bits and pieces being easily criticizable.

I’ve been wondering if something will act as a catalyst for social unrest, starting on a small scale, and wonder if the PPP could be a tipping point. There have already been reports of LLCs formed just to get free money for the wealthy and well-connected:

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/how-stop-business-l...

I hope the above article is either wrong or misleading, but I do worry a tipping point could be hit that gets people out in the streets in numbers far larger than what was seen in Michigan.

I sense a growing distress at how bleak the situation is in places like here in Austin where relatively few deaths have been reported but countless people with livelihoods ruined.

Hopefully I’m wrong, but even having started prepping earlier than most for this lockdown, I’m still surprised every day how much worse things are getting than I imagined.

I’ve been following the coronavirus news since mid January, spending hours a day on twitter and reddit looking at virus and financial news. There are days I take a break from it all, but overall I feel like I want to bear witness to the events as much as possible. I firmly believe the outbreak and the economic devastation are the most important events of my lifetime and it’s worth staying informed no matter how grim the news.

I don’t recommend everyone do the same, and I definitely don’t pass on all shear weight of all that’s going on to my wife, but someone’s got to try and keep up with the zeitgeist and make informed decision for the sake of my family. My hunch is we’re in for some bad socioeconomic times, worse than most are predicting, and I’m trying to do due diligence spotting trends as they start happening.

Ideally I’ll look back at this post and laugh at all the wasted energy chasing the impossibly fast news cycle...

One thing I’ve been doing is creating a list of predictions about where we are headed in order to be able to look back and evaluate whether I was able to process the firehouse of news into consequences. At least that part is fun.

But will your friends get haircuts, manicures, massages, etc every day when the quarantine lifts? Pent up demand only helps certain industries, unfortunately. Imagine being a hair dresser with a stack of bills from the shutdown and no big boost to income after the quarantine lifts to help pay things off.

Rough times ahead for many, sadly.