Month: December 2024

Head Cracks

Chill Regular-ass Post

That’s part of it, but not the major reason. Most don’t intervene because the crackhead is unpredictable and has far less to lose than anyone who will step in. A meth fiend will shank you because it amuses them. Or because they think you are Bigfoot.

They are manic stabby dream crack fiend. And a stab or two is all it takes to really ruin you life. Hence, it doesn’t pay to intervene for most.

Kaos

Chill Regular-ass Post

I took this moral alignment test and got about what I expected, Chaotic Neutral:

I know these aren’t all that scientific. However, this does describe me pretty exactly. In fact, if I had to write a description of myself (particularly of my relation to groups; I’ve made nearly identical statements on this blog) it’s pretty darn close to what I’d say.

I think it’s a misunderstanding to claim that to us “good and evil are irrelevant” — it’s just that we do not allow anyone else to define what good and evil is. For us, it is immanent.

“Chaotic Neutral people are often extremely difficult to deal with.” You don’t say….

Chill Links

Social Security measure passes Senate, sending it to Biden.

The Ghosts in the Machine. Spotify’s plot against musicians. Fuck Spotify and fuck you if you use it.

The Global Hunt for Putin’s ‘Sleeper Agents.’

Women show fewer manipulative traits in gender-equal countries. In less equal societies, women score higher on Machiavellianism, possibly due to greater reliance on manipulative strategies to navigate challenging environments.

A new psychological study has shown that when people know they are under surveillance it generates an automatic response of heightened awareness of being watched, with implications for public mental health.

How Did We End Up with Such a Bad Health-Care System?

Bait-and-Switch. Scummy stuff like this seems more common these days.

Health insurers limit coverage of prosthetic limbs, questioning their medical necessity.

Chill Quote

Skinner became convinced that this principle explained human behavior almost in its entirety. You believe that you are free, and that you make choices, and you have a complex human mind that is selecting what to pay attention to -but it’s all a myth. You and your sense of focus are simply the sum total of all the reinforcements you have experienced in your life. Human beings, he believed, have no minds —not in the sense that you are a person with free will making your own choices. You can be reprogrammed in any way that a clever designer wants. Years later, the designers of Instagram asked: If we reinforce our users for taking selfies — if we give them hearts and likes — will they start to do it obsessively, just like the pigeon will obsessively hold out its left wing to get extra seed? They took Skinner’s core techniques, and applied them to a billion people.

Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention — and How to Think Deeply Again by Johann Hari

Bridging

Chill Rant

People are so pointlessly concerned about burning bridges, even when they themselves get mistreated.

I will burn the bridge and the damn entire town too when someone treats me poorly or gets on my bad side. I do not give a fuck. This policy has served me very well in life, by the way, even before I had a boatload of money.

Accepting abuse meekly just invites more abuse, whether you’re talking in your personal or professional life. And I refuse. I endured that for too many years.

Diction

Chill Clowns, Culture

I’m also so glad my partner does not use social media. The last commenter is correct; social media has absolutely destroyed women and their mental health, far worse than men. Many of them are incredibly addicted to it, much more severely than any men accused of being addicted to porn or gambling or other such things.

If I were dating now I’d work very hard to find a woman who does not use social media, or uses it for less than an hour or two a week. Otherwise they are probably too far gone to save. Especially for women, social media reminds me of the Blight in A Fire Upon the Deep – a near-omniscient alien intelligence that effortlessly enslaves entire worlds and civilizations. It has been incredibly sad to see this occur.

(And yes, I recognize that Reddit is a form of social media — but it does not appear to be nearly as toxic and cognitively hazardous as those such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the like.)

Reserve

Chill Science

If every person in the world spent 30 days without human contact in a sterilized space, would it be possible to eradicate the flu or other diseases?

Nope. Nearly all viruses and bacteria that infect humans have non-human reservoirs, with only a few exceptions. In addition, some viruses are resident in human DNA and can re-emerge from your genome itself with no outside vector and no infection present.

Viruses are with us forever, likely1. Harmful bacteria might be more capable of being eliminated fully.

  1. Absent a whole lot of genetic engineering.