My impression (as someone who is not an economist) is that a lot of it is linked to not-too-distant history: the typical “go-to” strategies for deflation under the prevalent monetarist ideas (i.e. economic school of thought about influencing the economy by controlling the amount of money in circulation) weren’t effective in combatting deflation in a few cases in Japan and the US in the early 1990s and early 2000s.

So perhaps it causes such panic because it exposes the weaknesses in the economic models that we see dominating modern politics. Inflation may be perceived as more manageable because it acts according to what the models say will happen, more or less, which makes it more controllable. It seems that may be less true for deflation.

I mean, Hitler at least seemed to be coming at things from a place of misguided patriotism.

Man, I feel gross just writing that out, but I think it’s true — I think I respect Hitler more than Trump.

Your comment fills me with a deep dread that causes me to feel like saying something to discourage you from this path. Alas, it’s not your preparation that is causing that feeling, but the grim circumstances that necessitate this kind of planning.

It’s difficult being on the other side of the world and completely unable to do anything than just watch as America descends deeper into fascism. However, I’m glad that I am not in the impossible position of making the decisions you’re making. I’m sorry that you are.

Good luck, I hope you don’t die. And I hope that people like you are able to claw back democracy from the fascists

This reminds me of an excellent episode of Dark Net Diaries, “Jeremy from Marketing”. https://pca.st/episode/52252c9e-e4a8-42f6-85f5-f162ec3f6b40

I used to do this, because it didn’t seem to cause any issues — until it did, and I lost a lot of data.

Friends tell me that seeing Kneecap live was incredible

Any recommendations for punk electronic music? I’ve been wanting to get into making electronic music because disability means that’s a more accessible genre for me than playing traditional instruments, but it’s daunting to get into a new genre

Edit: this accessibility thing is also why electronic music, as a genre, has so much potential to be punk, which I find very cool

I’m sorry that you find this relatable. Unfortunately, I do too. It seems pretty unlikely that your parents aren’t your real parents, but regardless, it’s valid and okay to wish that you had different parents.

I don’t necessarily wish that I had different parents, but more that I wish my parents were different people when they had me. That probably doesn’t make much sense, but what I mean is that I am estranged from my parents because it wasn’t possible to have an emotionally safe relationship with them. My mom in particular tried her best, but she was pretty messed up from abuse that she suffered as a child. I often wonder how things could’ve been different if she’d been able to get a bunch of therapy and find a supportive community before she had kids.

Like I say, it’s okay to feel wistful, just try not to ruminate too much. The key thing to remember is that you deserve good parents, and it’s reasonable to feel grief if that’s not something you have; I’ve found that trying to force myself to not feel hurt by the unfairness can just make the sadness more intrusive.

Having shitty parents is a pretty tough disadvantage, and certainly I often wonder how many of my mental health problems are attributable to my childhood. Your background doesn’t need to define you though. I know many people who, like me, became properly estranged from their parents, and felt liberated afterwards. It sucks that I had to go no contact with them, but after I had the freedom to build a life of my own, it was a healthy step. I also know many who were able to build a healthier relationship with their parents as adults — basically what I tried to do, but it worked out well for them.

The point that I’m trying to make is that you’re not defined by your parents. Not now and not ever. Just never forget that you deserve love, care and respect, especially from your family. I’ve found this is a key thing for avoiding the wistfulness spiral into a deeper depression. If your blood family isn’t able or willing to give you the support you need to thrive, then take it from me that family isn’t just something you have by blood, but it can be something you build, and that found family is valid.

For a while, I was subscribed as a patron to Elisabeth Bik’s Patroeon. She’s a microbiologist turned “Science Integrity Specialist” which means she investigates and exposes scientific fraud. Despite doing work that’s essential to science, she has struggled to get funding because there’s a weird stigma around what she does; It’s not uncommon to hear scientists speak of people like her negatively, because they perceive anti-fraud work as being harmful to public trust in science (which is obviously absurd, because surely recognising that auditing the integrity of research is necessary for building and maintaining trust in science).

Anyway, I mention this because it’s one of the most dystopian things I’ve directly experienced in recent years. A lot of scientists and other academics I know are struggling financially, even though they’re better funded than she is, so I can imagine that it’s even worse for her. How fucked up is it for scientific researchers to have to rely on patrons like me (especially when people like me are also struggling with rising living costs).

Thanks for that, I appreciate it.

I feel like they probably would taste nice. Maybe composting them would be better

It does mean something to them, but not in a way that will stop you from getting laid off; what it means is that after laying you off, they’ll quickly come to regret it and scramble to try to fill the knowledge gap they now have. I know a few people who were called up by the company basically begging them to help. A couple of people I know were able to leverage this to get a short term position contracting (at exorbitantly higher rates than their salary way), and a few others instead just cackled in schadenfreude.

You’re probably due for some more water. Humans bodies are very high maintenance and ideally need water multiple times per day

This comment brought to you by the fact that your comment prompted me to remember to hydrate

I feel that. Something that I found helpful was to pair up tasks. So like, if there was a task that I wanted to do that was causing me stress, but it was relatively low priority compared to stuff on my actual to-do list, I’d allow myself to do one of the important-to-me tasks for every actually-important task that I got done.

It didn’t help much with the problem of actually getting the tasks on my to-do lists done (though I think that battle is a never ending quest for anyone with ADHD), but it meant that on a day where I did get some stuff done, I got to chip away at the list of stuff that had been stressing me out as well as the big Tasks. Occasionally, I found that this helped me to build momentum

Noted, thank you

Never heard of it, but you and the other person who replied to you have made me decide to check it out.

I was talking about this recently with someone (read: ranting as they nodded sympathetically) and I finished up by saying “what’s the point of ‘smart’ tech if the humans who use it are steadily disempowered and ultimately, made less smart?”

I’ve recently been dabbling in HomeAssistant and learning how to set things up properly feels like it’s been making me more smart.

You have picked a weird hill to die on. I wonder if that is also in New York.

I’ve heard a lot of people say that llm code can be a timesaver, but only if you’re already proficient enough with the programming language that you can see at a glance what the generated code does. Otherwise, the experience is much like your own.

A lot of them went into academia, the poor fuckers. My old university tutor comes to mind as the best of what they can hope for from that path. He did relatively well for himself as a scientist, but I reckon he was a far better scientist than what his level of prestige in that area would suggest.

There’s one paper he published that was met with little fanfare, but then a few years later, someone else published more or less the same research that massively blew up. This wasn’t a case of plagiarism (as far as I can tell), nor a conscious attempt to replicate my tutor’s research. The general research climate at the time is a plausible explanation (perhaps my tutor was ahead of the times by a few years), but this doesn’t feel sufficient to explain it. I think it’s mostly that the author of this new paper is someone who is extremely ambitious in a manner where they seem to place a lot of value on gaining respect and prestige. I’ve spoken to people who worked in that other scientists lab and apparently they can be quite vicious in how they act within their research community (though I am confident that there’s no personal beef between this researcher and my old tutor — they had presented at the same conference, but had had no interactions and seemed to be largely unaware of the other’s existence). Apparently this researcher does good science, but gives the vibe that they care more for climbing up the ranks than for doing good science; they can be quite nasty in how they respond to people whose work disrupts their own theories.

I suspect that it’s a case of priorities. My tutor also does good research, but part of why he left such an impact on me was that he has such earnest care in his teaching roles. He works at a pretty prestigious university, and there are plenty of tutors there who do the bare minimum teaching necessary to get access to perks like fancy formal dinners, and the prestige of being a tutor — tutors who seem to regard their students as inconvenient obstacles to what they really care about. It highlights to me a sad problem in what we tend to value in the sciences, and academia more generally: the people who add the most to the growth of human knowledge are often the people who the history books will not care to remember.