sonjat

I think the thing that can't be talked about is that there are also different levels of grief. It is hard to talk about because any suggestion that one person's grief is worse than someone else's seems to trivialize their pain.

But the truth is there are levels to this. I grieved when I lost pets. The pain I felt was very real and deep, but it didn't really compare to the pain I felt when I lost my grandparents. I was very close to them, and I was devastated when they died. That pain, however, was not even close to the level of pain I felt when I lost my daughter. That is life-changing pain that one never recovers from.

So I like the idea of shattered glass because it allows for acknowledgement that all grief shatters us. Some grief, like perhaps a pet loss, might just break us into a few big glass pieces, relatively easy to glue back together. Other loss, like that of my daughter, shatters you into a million glass pieces. No amount of time or effort will put you back together. But you can take the pieces and shape something from them. That something can still be beautiful and have a good life, but it will never be the same thing as it was before.

I don't know enough about serious psychiatric disorders to comment on if the author is right or wrong, except that I think our society treats complex issues as if they can be solved with simple answers and I suspect that it is the same here. Involuntary treatment of any sort is problematic and ripe for abuse so it very much should be regarded with suspicion. On the other hand, there are many disorders that make someone a danger to themselves or others, or just unable to live unassisted. The problem is where to draw the line.

If someone has repeatedly shown violent tendencies, then I think some level of forced care is generally agreed on. But what if they have only muttered threats? And what distinguishes their threats from the kind of vague "I'm going to get you" that gets muttered often enough? What about things like hoarding disorder? Should they be forced into treatment? Although they might be endangering their own health, people make choices that are bad for their health all the time. Beyond that, they aren't necessarily posing a danger to anyone. Yet their condition causes, at a minimum, unsafe living conditions and destruction of property. The author mentions bipolar, but I think this is even difficult. Even in a state of mania, I think most bipolar people are still capable of making rational decisions. Do we remove their autonomy simply because we might disagree with their decisions and they have a diagnosis? But if their disease is causing problems making rational decisions, maybe someone stepping in would be appropriate? It is definitely a very tricky issue.

I don't know, there's a lot of red flags on his site.

"Slowed pace of aging by 31 years": How could one possibly quantify this accurately?

Depending on his body weight, a bench press of 240lbs isn't particularly notable or impressive.

Giving leg press numbers instead of something like deadlift or squat is a bit suspicious. Leg press is easy to cheat by limiting range of motion. Plus full body movements that require more stabilization would be a better measure if one is trying to prove they haven't aged.

Comparing strength numbers to an 18 year old is probably not the best metric, given that strength takes a certain amount of time to build. Not that there are good scientific papers on this but I think general consensus is it peaks mid 20s

You can try working on the Linux kernel, perhaps with the kernel janitors project (https://code.google.com/archive/p/kernel-janitors/ ). I recommend hanging out on the mailing list a little while to get some idea of what to do, as well as reading the wikis on that page.

The sad truth is that we just don't know how to treat addiction very well. We don't even define "success" well. Is it sober after 3 months? 6? 1 year? 5 years? 10? Does that still count if one has to continue to get treatment/go to meetings/take medication/etc.? There aren't a lot of good, consistent answers. AA isn't without its faults, but it is readily available, anonymous, and free (that's a big one -- too many anti-AA people are selling something).

I think men and women just prioritize different things. Men might be willing to "marry down" in terms of finances but are probably less willing to do so in terms of attractiveness. And as a woman with a high-paying job, I would argue the problem is not entirely with women. I couldn't care less how much a guy I date makes (that's the beauty of being able to fully provide for myself and my kids, I don't have to rely on any guy's money). Without exception, though, every guy I've gotten serious has had some level of insecurity around it. They might say they are OK with it, but eventually they will have some problems with it. To be fair, this might be because of societal expectations, but it isn't because I care what they make.

I can't speak towards how other people, particularly minorities or the disabled think, but, as a woman, I hate the unintentional "othering" of people trying to do the right thing. I am typically the only woman at work, and people will often correct others who use terms like "guys" with statements like "guys or girls". I understand that they are doing it with good intentions and don't get angry, but to me it just serves to drive home the point that I am different. I am not like the others.

I think I am arguing for a "balance of probabilities". If (to spout off random hypothetical) the punishment is something like a banning of someone from EA conferences, then there definitely needs to be evidence of their misconduct, but that level of evidence doesn't need to be the same as if they are looking at a criminal conviction. The point is balancing the need to protect the victim while not punishing the innocent is a difficult issue outside the criminal courtroom.

It's unclear if the issue is EA or how to handle misbehavior in organizations without formal structure or hierarchy. It isn't like a workplace, with reasonably well-defined boundaries, but something more akin to religion, where its influence bleeds over heavily into many aspects of ones life. As such, it is probably both more devastating when one is the victim of misconduct and also more difficult to police such misconduct. I am not really sure what the answer here is. "Believe all women" is a great slogan, but I am not a fan of a "guilty until proven innocent" (and I say this as a woman). OTOH, this isn't a criminal procedure and as such, one shouldn't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is preying on others to enforce some level of punishment. It's a tough problem.

As a woman who finally gave up on twoxchromosomes because I felt is was a bit too toxic I somewhat disagree on it not being toxic. It seemed determined to paint women as perpetual victims of toxic men. Ironically it also seemed determined to paint men as bad if they didn't protect women (yes, this is an exaggeration. No, not all and perhaps not even most posts/comments were this way. It just happened enough and it made me angry enough that I decided avoiding that subreddit was best for my mental health)

Really we need to start changing terminology. A great deal of these deaths are not overdoses in the sense that people took too much of a drug but poisonings in that people took something they did not intend to take. It might seem like a minor detail, but if helps drive home the point that even users who do not take opiods are at risk, it is worth doing.

Although I think it is hard to get firm numbers on this, a lot of other drugs are being cut with Fentanyl or outright substituted, including comparatively benign drugs like Xanax. There is a growing movement to classify a lot of fentanyl drug deaths as poisoning since it wasn't that the person took too much, it was that they were unaware that they were taking it at all. (Source: lost a daughter to what she thought was Xanax that was pure Fentanyl)

I think you are being overly negative. Being more concerned with problems we are most familiar with is natural and not at all a "character flaw". Caring more about people we personally know than strangers isn't any kind of moral failure. The world is full of suffering and problems, and it is simply impossible to give the same level of concern to all. So we focus on our inner circles. It isn't a "deep tribal impulse..satisfied only at the exclusion of others". It is simply that the world is very big with very big problems and no one, not even the kindest, most caring individual among us, can give equal weight to all problems and all suffering.

A wrapped squat is still a squat. Do heavy knee wraps allow you to squat more? Absolutely. But other than the weight being higher, you squat basically the same with or without wraps. So training in wraps will absolutely help your raw squat -- it isn't like the wraps take away all muscle stimulus from the squat.

That being said, I think most lifters hold off on doing wraps until close to a competition or when hitting near max. Wraps are painful and take a lot of work to put on if doing them tight, so it isn't something you do on every squat. Also, I think people over-estimate how much extra weight one can lift with wraps versus without. It varies from one lifter to the next, but I think the average might be around 10%.

Source -- powerlifter of 10+ years who trains both regular and wrapped squats all the time.

I get that being passionate about a job, bringing all your skills and all you have to a cause you believe in can create a fire. And isn't that a goal of life? To have a fire, a purpose? So kudos to her for finding that. That being said, a culture that demands that kind of hours is a culture that limits who will work there. Forget having young children. Forget having a time-consuming hobby outside of work. Forget even having a good social life. For some people, that is a worthwhile trade-off. For others, it isn't. Those others might be the very kind of people who could contribute a lot to your company, but they won't work there for long.

I think companies who encourage that kind of work environment are, to some degree, missing the forest for the trees. They get a lot of hours out of their employees, but they can only hire from a small section of the population. Potentially valuable employees are not available to such companies, and I think often this hurts the companies in the long run.

Part of growing as a software engineer is knowing when things really matter and when things don't. When I first started out, in my mind there was a "right" way to do things (my way of course) and a wrong way. Sure, the wrong way could work, but it was ugly and bad code (in my mind). I would fight constantly to ensure things were done the "right" way.

Then I ended up being in charge of new engineers. I would shoot down their ideas, and essentially force them to do it my way. Eventually I realized that I was hampering their growth for stuff that didn't matter as much as I was thinking, so I relaxed a lot in how I approached things.

My guess is that a lot of what you consider important isn't really that important -- particularly at Amazon, where your co-workers probably have a better idea of where the priorities are. Also keep in mind that even the best of software tends to accumulate technical debt and fixing that rarely bubbles up to a high priority. Which isn't to say you shouldn't push to fix issues you see (indeed, that is often why interns are hired -- to take care of the stuff that regular staff doesn't have time for), just that you shouldn't automatically assume you know more.

The cost in vaccines isn't just in getting them. One has to take off work (twice) to get them, have transportation to get them, and be able to handle being potentially stuck in bed for 1-2 days after the second vaccine. I believe the last is probably leading to the most vaccine hesitancy. If I don't have sick leave, worry that I will get fired if I call in and/or have to take care of small children, I will probably keep putting off getting the vaccine hoping to find some more convenient time. Yes, of course, it will be worse if they get covid, but I doubt the calculation is: "I will never get the vaccine and hope I don't get covid". I suspect it is more "I will get the vaccine as soon as I get a chance to have two free days to schedule it"