wrongdonf

If I were in academia I would be putting my career chips on ISR. It’s bursting with potential.

I remember in 2015 when I first saw that go-kart wasm demo. It was exciting. But that was such a long time ago and we are only now starting to see webgpu roll out. I’m really looking forward to the new golden age of wasm and webgpu.

Recently it was shown that the chemical ISRIB can “undo” traumatic brain injury. It turns out that when you get a concussion, the mechanical stress results in a metabolic self defense mechanism being triggered. Everyone thought the neurons were dying but they were just themselves latent. ISRIB interferes with this defense mechanism, turning the neurons back on.

And it turns out that this metabolic defense mechanism is triggered in many scenarios, not just concussion.

I became involved in a group of people who were interested in taking ISRIB. We engaged in an effort to synthesize it, and along the way we dredged the internet for any information we could find about other people who had taken ISRIB — the molecule has been known about for a long time. There are a handful of plausible stories, and it appeared that ISRIB would have no effect in one person and be life changing for another, both seemingly healthy. The common pattern was increased intelligence, an insatiable appetite for new and novel information and a marked reduction in the amount of sleep needed to function.

We eventually came into contact with a group of Russians. They had already synthesized it and taken it. They reported the same effects from the accounts we had found. They also reported, surprisingly, the development of a tolerance among those who took it repeatedly. One person had an episode of very realistic hallucinations, dreams that seemed real. Another person gave it to his grandmother who was sick with dementia. She became lucid again but died a day or two later. We speculated that one of the reasons cells turn themselves off is because they are too dysfunctional to operate — so turning them back on brings the benefit of having that signal again in the case of neurons but also revives any dangerous behavior that was being suppressed. We acquired ISRIB from the Russians and the first person to get it didn’t notice an effect although he didn’t take much. At this point I fell out of contact because I was having a medical emergency from experimenting with a totally unrelated compound. It nearly killed me, I spent weeks in the asylum and still have lingering effects. After that my shulgin itch became satisfied permanently.

One interesting thing about cognitive diseases that are metabolically rooted like schizophrenia, dementia, etc is that there are simple ways to coax the cells into metabolizing carbohydrates correctly again, as this article demonstrates. There is also another kind of chemical completely that can be used for energy, beta hydroxy butyrate, totally bypassing the problem. The field of metabolic restoration is the next big thing for sure.

I’ve been playing morrowind on openmw since 2013. It’s such a fantastic project. It’s a stable and clean way to experience morrowind, but half the enjoyment is in the community surrounding it. The video updates have been a cherished ritual for me for many years now. And the website has a very thoughtful atmosphere with the strider lurking overhead. It’s honestly been an important part of my life. And this of course was all preceded by my original fascination with morrowind, which is certainly one of the finest video games ever made despite its user-hostile qualities. The soundtrack has never been equaled. The game was made in a time when video games weren’t a billion dollar industry and where the nature of the game reflected the nature of the people who made it — and morrowind was made by a band of intellectuals, idealists and pioneers. It simply does not happen that way anymore in mainstream games.

A massive number of people believe that the configuration of the stars or other celestial bodies will influence the outcome of their lives. They also believe that humans have achieved mastery of this celestial language. Millions of people believe very strongly that a divine force keeps track of the bad and good things that each person does, and will make each balance the other through happenstance. People really believe that. And the most shocking thing is that there are people who know about this and dont appreciate the fact that the world is an ocean of insanity that dashes all good things against the rocks. I know this for a fact because there was considerable surprise at the sudden popularity of “flat earthers.” Anyone who has any sense would not be surprised because this is tame stuff compared to religion, karma, horoscopes and all the other nonsense that preoccupies a terrifying number of people. Flat earth has echos of logic or at least the superficial appearance of sanity. I almost welcome it. But anyway I have been saying for many years that the dogma that has infected the liberal camp is very similar to the dogma that made Christianity so infamous. They are very similar: kernels of truth that deflect criticism of moral dogma that fuels a race to the bottom which ultimately results in hilarious contortions of the human condition and mental gymnastics that resist enlightenment no matter how blinding. The mistake is that people associate dogma with religion. The only true association is with stupid people. Soon wokeness and it’s dogma will be uncool and abandoned just like religion but the dogma will not die with wokeness.

And what scenario do you imagine when you imagine confronting dogma? You probably imagine painstaking effort being put into conveying reason to the afflicted. It’s always the same pensive expression on the face of that person. And that effort is always met by bulging veins up the neck and forehead. For all of history it has been pensive wincing at bulging veins and slamming fists. And the epiphany that I have had is that it is completely a fools errand to engage in that exchange. No matter how perfectly you do it, they won’t understand.

For crimes they committed 10 years ago?

“Studies showed reduction of blood pressure and headaches in those using the micro biome regimen.”

What the hell?

I contracted psychiatric illnesses after an acute stress event. There is a case report of a mans schizophrenia disappearing after having his bone marrow killed during cancer treatment.

The human brain does not process all things equally. It does not take the chain of integrations, leading from input of data to output of some opinion or intuition, as far as it might unless it sees fit, regardless of what you want. I had thought about this right-to-die issue many times. But in the first few seconds of being in the position of needing to die, an new understanding washed over me, new angles and insights, and a decade of contemplation was overturned. When the need to die is not emotional but totally objective, one assesses his options rationally and weighs the different methods against each other in a pragmatic way. As I looked at each path I might take, new details filled in that I had never thought of before. Each method of suicide is different, has a different risk of going wrong, a different outcome in the case of going wrong. And each is different for the burden left to those who have to clean up. But what difference does any of it make if you are ultimately going to die? When you enter into this situation you are playing a game where becoming a lifelong vegetable is a possibility — this is a nightmare scenario. When its you, it becomes real to you and you understand that vegetables can be lucid, have the capacity for immense suffering and are kept alive against their will possibly for decades. Many people read that and arrogantly say “well if I just shoot myself in the head then that’s not a problem.” But did that person know that shooting yourself in the temple might only destroy the part of the brain responsible for executive function, rendering you a vegetable? The proper way is to shoot yourself with the barrel against the back of the mouth so that the brain stem is destroyed and there is no possibility of living. That is the terrifying realization that comes to you when it’s your turn: this is like anything else, it’s a practical undertaking where there are details and things to go wrong and the only way to ensure a good result is to do it many times or be in the hands of an expert, neither of which are on the table. It’s a lot of stress.

The ultimate goal is to avoid suffering, and that includes being comfortable during a successful attempt, not just avoiding the I-have-no-mouth of being a vegetable. When it’s your turn, you all of a sudden realize that the brain remains active during and after the process of dying. And sure enough you will find the inconvenient fact buried: nobody is really dead until they are thoroughly dead. The idea of binary life/death only proliferated because for most of history science wasn’t around to illuminate the issue. You realize that people who are clinically dead are the most powerless, voiceless group of people in history and that their needs have been completely hidden or ignored even in the age of modern medicine, and that this weird and unfortunate situation has intersected with your story now and has completely fucked you over. You are tasked with cobbling together some kind of system that not only intelligently avoids the vegetable outcome, not only confronts the subtleties of what it really means to die and avoiding whatever strange things happen in the space between, but also performs flawlessly with an extremely low probability of failure. Because when it’s your skin that’s what you’ll want.

And of course this is the perfect situation for some kind of solution to have been developed. We often benefit from things that were developed over hundreds of years of trial and error. To realize you are at the bottom rung of that process is unpleasant. And you won’t until it becomes real to you.

The number of people who have a rational need for death, beyond and kind of doubt, is small at any given moment. It’s a minority group. Easy to sweep under the rug especially when the average person is not imaginative or able to think empathetically or creatively. Not able to understand until it’s them. I guess I’m guilty of that!

I love a dutch programmer

I was suffering from super bad bipolar episodes and a general mental health crisis recently when I came across a documentary about Cromwell. It was so inspiring to see someone struggle with the same problems and overcome them, accomplish such great things, and do it all before it was even recognized as a legitimate illness. I really came back from the brink thanks to that coincidence.

I was there. I have been following spacex for a decade. I watched all the most important launches on livestream. I watched the first dragon cargo mission launch live. But this was the first time actually being present at the launch. Despite all my experience, it was totally unexpected. I had no idea how surreal it feels to watch something that big float slowly towards the sky. The sound physically shakes you. It was one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen.

It’s really not surprising. You’re almost sure to be eating pesticides or weird chemicals even if you go fully organic. You can’t get it off by rinsing or washing. Plus, as has just become clear recently, carbohydrates are highly inflammatory, and inflammation plays a key role in cancer, heart disease, psychiatric disease and almost every other modern malady. It turns out that when you go from eating few carbs to zero carbs, tons of health problems, all centered around inflammation, go away. Carnivore is a miracle for allergies and skin problems. It’s really one of the biggest medical/diet revolutions that’s currently in the pipes. Certainly so when it comes to bang for buck.

A huge number of diehard carnivores are decades long vegans. Because vegans are the most health conscious people on the planet. This includes Paul saladino, The Godfather of carnivore.

Another leader in the diet realm is Sean baker, a surgeon, who runs meatrx.com. That website contains a large repository of video testimony from people who have done the carnivore diet. There are hundreds and hundreds of them, each one making eyebrow raising claims. They include remission of asthma, arthritis, MS, anxiety, depression, chronic skin rash, brain fog and many many more things. That repository will convert literally anyone to a carnivore believer. There is even one guy who measured his CAC before and after, and his CAC was significantly lower after. This not only goes against the prediction of mainstream medicine, it is something that is thought to be impossible under any circumstances whatsoever. Carnivore is insanely OP. People get ripped, shredded without ever going to the gym. They become slim and metabolically healthy. Men’s testosterone go up. Couples that have been trying to get pregnant for years are able to get pregnant. I’ve watched hundreds of those videos and it’s case closed in my mind. It’s the healthiest diet we know of.

That being said, it sucks. I tried it and I couldn’t do it. Not eating any of the foods you like fucking sucks. And the adjustment period is brutal, with nausea and watery stools. Electrolytes are a constant problem. Once you get past the one month mark it’s supposed to level out, but I’ve never been tough enough to last a month.

We are getting to the point where compression is so good, you aren’t actually hearing the other person. Wild

Yes

Exactly, nobody should be doing that, it’s a weird edge case that never happens in any case and also Tesla’s are getting rid of their lead acid batteries anyway so good luck to this guy and his lawsuit...

I can’t help but be upset and concerned that when the phrase AI ethics is used, it is a reference to the effort to make sure that AIs are, for lack of a better term, politically correct. It is my genuine belief that mining out algorithm space will continue to produce results that are surprising, unexpected and not forecasted by “experts,” and that soon we will strike a very regrettable vein. In my best judgement, the threat of increasingly sophisticated AIs disrupting the economy, geopolitical stability and our very way of life is something that should be given respect.

I’ve lost a close friend to heroin. But the vast majority or Vietnam soldiers who were doing heroin overseas stopped using without issue after coming home — an inconvenient truth for the chemical-centric model of addiction. In reality, it’s deep emotional pain or psychological distress that makes the difference between a person who gets addicted to drugs and a person who doesn’t, basically. Like everything else that is touched by dogma and epidemiology, this fact has been lost.

No, I moved on to other projects.

I have watched every single video in this series. To be honest, it was a disappointment. There are a few cool videos, but most of it is very surface level. You won’t get any deep or thorough insights into what makes good characters, stories etc. I would suggest you pick up some books on story telling and the rest will do itself, if you are a programmer.

“In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Federal Power Act, which charged the Federal Power Commission with overseeing interstate electricity sales. By not crossing state lines, Texas utilities avoided being subjected to federal rules.”

That’s pretty much all it says.

About a year ago I was driving through Nebraska and got caught in a blizzard. I had never even seen snow before. I was on a back road in the middle of nowhere with a quarter tank. If there hadn’t been a whiteout, it would have been flatness as far as the eye could see. The wind was sucking the heat out of the car so quickly that it was only 70F with the heat on full blast recirculating. Called 911 and they told me they can’t get anyone to me, good luck. Most awkward goodbye of my life. The nearest town was 20 miles away on a road made out of ice with ditches on either side. I accepted death and just kept creeping forward. Was saved by a farmer and had a panic attack the next morning long after the danger had passed...

I often wondered how people can go their whole lives not knowing how to deal with weather that is so common. Even in Sweden the military had to create a training program for Swedes that forgot how to stay safe in cold weather without access to heated buildings. Even the Swedes don’t know how to do it because they’re only cold for 5 minutes between buildings. If the polar vortex decided to descend like this onto California or Texas in a serious way, not a wimpy 0F but -30F, thousands would perish. And the crazy thing is that surviving those temps is trivial, you just need some key knowledge and equipment.

I love ikea. In the 90s and naughts it was a symbol of progress and its products complemented the sheik style that was so popular at the time. And it was commonly said to be cheap, and contributed to a new style of ephemeral living that was the precursor to modern tech nomadism and living by wire so to speak. Fresh euro-style industrialized in American fashion. But recently IKEA hasn’t seemed very cheap to me. And the throwing away of the olde ways has now progressed to a point where AGI can no longer be written off completely and with that comes the feeling that we may soon have thrown away too much.

PSA: I watched a video and I got PTSD.

I used to casually browse a subreddit called watch people die. In 2016 I watched a video on that subreddit that gave me ptsd. At that point in time I had watched probably hundreds of intensely graphic videos, and the total pieces of intensely violent media I had consumed probably numbered in the thousands. I had been into it since 2008. I did it because of morbid curiosity.

At first I scrolled through the comments and noticed something very unusual: very emphatic comments warning people that videos can give you ptsd. Most videos have comments where people talk about how “I couldn’t even finish it” or whatever, so I brushed it off. After watching the video I immediately knew something was wrong. My body felt strange. My mind was in a state of hyper-tension or vigilance. It’s very difficult to describe. I also noticed that my libido would come and go in waves. I would go from not feeling any sexual feelings to being more horny than I’ve ever been in my life. I knew that something deep inside of me had been deeply affected. I went to sleep without much trouble. When I woke up I went into the bathroom to brush my teeth. I felt something coming over me. A sensation of panic. It surprised me because it was out of the blue and I’ve never felt something like that before. I then entered a full blown panic attack, which rocked me so hard that I fled the bathroom and threw myself on the couch. It passed, but I was drowning in anxiety and a sensation of doom. At this point I knew that I may have permanently fucked myself. I was scared. but I still had to go to work. I spent the next few weeks forcing myself through each workday while being suffocated by an overwhelming sensation of doom, anxiety and panic. It was the toughest thing I’ve ever done. But I got through it.

I noticed many things that I later learned are indicative of ptsd: having your eyes lock up, feeling ready to fly off the handle at the slightest provocation, an intense desire to subdue the anxiety with alcohol and drugs. I would walk down the street like an insane person, ready to rage on anyone who even looked at me wrong, and I had no history of anything like this.

I never had bad nightmares or trouble getting to or staying asleep, so I think I had some kind of light beer ptsd. But it was hell on earth. Everything I had heard about veterans losing their jobs and killing themselves all of a sudden made so much sense. Take it from me: ptsd is one of the worst things that can happen to you. And I didn’t even have full blown ptsd.

I got help from a few therapists, and they informed me that if my symptoms persisted more than a month or something, I would technically have ptsd. Other than that, the therapists were basically of no help whatsoever. The symptoms lasted well beyond three months.

As time went on, the symptoms got better. They seem to have stabilized now. If I’m distracted, I feel normal. But if my mind is idle then my thoughts always go back to it and with those thoughts comes the anxiety. Long drives can be uncomfortable. I’m at a state now where I’m in the clear: the symptoms are weak enough that they don’t threaten my ability to work and bathe and etc. and my ability to recognize and cope with the symptoms has increased a lot too. But it still bothers me sometimes and I am keeping my eye out for breakthrough treatments. Sgb and mdma look promising.

A thought can either be in your mind or not. When I’m feeling symptoms, it’s almost like the memories are somewhere in my mind, lurking. But other times they aren’t around. It’s like they have a life of their own. It’s something you don’t have control over.

The best coping mechanism I’ve found so far is meditation sort of. I think that part of ptsd is that your mind is fighting to block the memories and their emotional consequences. So when I feel symptoms I let my mind be open to any and all thoughts or memories. I totally relinquish control of my own thoughts and whatever comes into my mind, I allow it to come and then I watch it pass on. Opening the mind and simply observing the thoughts. This dramatically reduces the severity of my symptoms and often leads my mind to organically become preoccupied with something else.

It’s strange to think that a video can be so dangerous. But they can be. I was a grizzled veteran of gore videos and I thought surely that if they damaged the mind, I would have noticed a long time ago. Some videos, especially high definition ones, can for sure fuck you up. If you have children, don’t allow them access to the internet unfiltered. I saw this video on Reddit for Christ sake.

It says right in the article that the content moderators have full medical benefits