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”.

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?