pezzana

> Some people will say that this essay is a missed opportunity: “How can you write this essay without mentioning crypto even once?”

Or money, for that matter. If beliefs are network effects, then money sits at the base layer of that network.

So not only does Bitcoin (the "crypto" protocol most resistant to centralization) occupy an unusual position in the universe of software networks, but it it's deep, deep down in the base layer of shared beliefs due to the monetary aspect.

This attitude is a major reason why public education is so utterly messed up in the US. All of the social and mental work that should be done elsewhere is simply not done. Time after time, the schools (and police) are called on as the last line of defense for a failing society.

It's not working. The additional strain on schools has turned the mission of public education into a series of brush fires in which staff and administrators just lurch from one crisis to another. The unequal way that education gets funded means that some districts see much more of this than others. But the problem is spreading.

Teachers are not trained to function as warehousers for youth. Nor are they given the resources to serve the role you and far too many parents want them to serve.

When the schools fail there is literally nothing behind them. They're the end of the line. This is the point where all the chickens come home to roost and society starts to fail, one kid at a time. The pandemic should be a wake up call. It doesn't look like it will be.

> ... It's been a couple months and I have achieved nothing. Not a single PR merged. ...

There's a lot to be said for getting into a rhythm of picking an issue, solving it, and merging it. Doing it a few times can be a real confidence booster.

What's the reason behind having no PRs merged? Did you create them, only to have them rejected? Have you not completed the work for any? Is there nobody to review them?

Also, just how big are the issues in your tracker?

I'm going to assume that everything is in place to get a PR merged. Given that, try to find a way to shave off an issue from a larger issue. Go for the smallest possible unit of work that might be useful. Then focus on getting that one PR merged. Rinse and repeat.

> Searching my inbox, I found an email from April 16, 2020 where I told someone who’d me asked that the lab-leak hypothesis seemed entirely plausible to me, that in fact I couldn’t understand why it wasn’t being investigated more, but that I was hesitant to blog about these matters. As I wrote seven months ago, I now see my lack of courage as having been a personal failing. Obviously, I’m just a quantum computing theorist, not a biologist, so I don’t have to have any opinion at all about the origin of COVID-19 … but I did, and I didn’t share it only because of the likelihood that I’d be called an idiot on social media. Having now read Chan and Ridley, though, I think I’d take being called an idiot for this book review more as a positive signal about my courage than as a negative signal about my reasoning skills!

The groupthink around the lab leak hypothesis, and especially that letter signed by scientists in the early days of the pandemic, has done a lot of damage. The problem is that is isn't just this topic. About a dozen other topics have become minefields of politics and mind control masquerading as science. We only see the idiocy of this approach in the case of the lab leak because the consensus has crumbled.

Hopefully, this won't be the last wall to fall under its own weight.

> You could argue that it doesn't matter that much where the internet's content is hosted. And whilst that's true to some degree a truly self-controlled personal website differs a lot from a social media site in the details.

The author goes on to list four factors that favor blogs over "social media." He's missing one though - building your own brand vs. building someone else's. When you engage with Twitter, Facebook, and the like, you're building those brands mainly. When you write your own blog, you're 100% building your own brand. This is an asset that you own and, barring very unusual circumstances, can't be taken away.

It's up to you to make something with that asset, which can be extremely valuable for a number of reasons.

The crux of the author's idea seems to be this:

> Intellectual loneliness is a challenge that many people feel, but nobody talks about. It’s built on a paradox where you feel alive when you’re learning on the Internet but soul-crushed when you try to talk about those same ideas with friends and family.

The author doesn't say, but it would be very illuminating to know, what happens when the author meets with the authors of the books and internet works they admire so much? Do they hit it off instantly? Or does the whole thing feel disappointing in the end?

Also, I don't see the "paradox" in preferring the Internet. It's part of a pattern when you zoom out a bit.

> 2021 was not too kind to me. I discovered that I not only have OCD but OCPD, a personality disorder.

Then later...

> I simply have to accept that there is nothing out there for me. That I will be miserable as long as I continue to work in tech, and that nothing will ever bring me joy in this space ever again. And I have the C++ committee to thank for this.

It sounds like the author has made a self-diagnosis, and is not currently seeking treatment with a licensed therapist. There is no language around addressing the disorder, and plenty of blaming external forces.

If so, it might be worth exploring the option of therapy.

One would be to stop sending groups of people to that station.

Whether or not that's "realistic" is another question. It really depends on what's at stake, which is not clear yet. But the point is that governments around the world may face a very similar question in the weeks ahead.

> All staff members preparing to depart to the station had to undergo a PCR test in Belgium two hours before leaving for South Africa, take a PCR test five days after their arrival in Cape Town, where they also had to quarantine for ten days. Another test was required when leaving Cape Town for Antarctica and another PCR test had to be undergone five days after arrival.

This is clear evidence that the current paradigm for dealing with the pandemic is ineffective at best.

> ... It may sound strange but I almost feel I have to ask for permission to move on. Like it's not real unless I share it with someone else.

Why not do that? Share it with someone else.

> The central bank considers it important “to use these new technologies and latest-generation payments infrastructure as valuable options to advance financial inclusion in the country,” the administration of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in a tweet late Wednesday.

Inclusion may be a consideration, but I suspect the real motivation is to allow the Bank of Mexico to more directly manipulate the real economy by disintermediating private banks. Instead of private banks holding an account at the Bank of Mexico with the private sector holding accounts at a private bank, the private sector would hold its money in a token created by the central bank. Private banks would then become custodians of the token because the average person is incapable of managing cryptographic keys.

To "inject" money into the economy, the central bank need only issue more tokens and credit them to each citizen directly. This avoids the many plumbing issues of government transfers we witnessed during 2020-2021.

In other words, CBDCs are a necessary development along the path to Universal Basic Income.