Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
Burnt out, over the hill autistic IT nerd and longtime SSC lurker
User ID: 3219
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7mo ago
Thank you very much, that's excellent news! A cursory search has led me to an unofficial plug-in to support remote save; I'll give it a try and see if I like it better than Joplin.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7mo ago
Damn. Speaking as a Joplin user who had never heard of Obsidian before, I really like the look of Obsidian and would love to use its additional functionality (compared to Joplin) but at $4 a month for non-local storage that's a no-go for me. A big part of my use case is the ability to make notes to myself on whatever device I have handy that I can encrypt end-to-end and automatically sync via WebDAV.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
7mo ago
"Intelligence Agencies create stories inside stories, each with its carefully constructed trail of evidence, in order to create false trails as diversions.”
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
I want to post an update on the status of my effortpost on the state of mental health care in my state. The first draft has weighed in at 8,202 words and, as trying to write the conclusion made clear to me, is heavy on legal and regulatory explanation. In fact, it is mostly a narrative of the impact of said legal and regulatory framework on our various clinics, seen through the lens of my own role in that, but light on outcomes, client stories and the like. While I can cram some of that into the conclusion, I'm planning on a rewrite that will try and flesh out how things have changed for our clients a little bit more than just the standard, "client care in these departments is suffering," and streamline the legal and narrative stuff, hopefully significantly. Or perhaps my perfectionism is getting the better of me. Either way, I'll find out as I get into the second draft. Stay tuned!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
Given that you're already curious, I'd definitely recommend it. The movie is what got me to read the book as well, and while I'd agree that the source material differs substantially from the movie, one of the things that I was able to better appreciate after reading the book is how well the movie does at both creating the strange atmosphere and conveying how deeply the MC (Keel) falls down the rabbit hole. I'm not a UFO/UAP buff or anything like that but my dad was so I'm familiar enough with the basics, but that book was my first exposure to the Esoteric explanation and I found it to be every bit as unnerving as the movie!
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
Interesting, thanks for the recommendation! My first exposure to the Esoteric case for UFOs/UAPs was reading The Mothman Prophecies for the first time but I've never shaken it since. The publicly released videos from the Navy have seemed more Esoteric than Explorer to me as well, though to be fair that might well be because my bias had already been established at that point.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
Thanks for the feedback, everyone, you've convinced me to write the post. October is a busy month for me so it may not be ready anytime in the next week but still, coming soon!
@AvocadoPanic, when I used the word horrendous I was thinking in terms of money spent versus the quality of the outcomes, not necessarily any other state or country.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
How interested would you be in an effortpost about the (horrendous) state of public mental health care in one of the worst states in the USA as told from the perspective of someone with 25+ years of employment experience in the field? I love it whenever Scott (PBUH) posts on these things and I find that it just whets my appetite to talk about it more but maybe that's just my inner geek coming out and that wouldn't be as interesting to most Mottizens. Regardless, it seems like a promising thing to post about and if there's significant interest then I'd be happy to do it but fair warning: it wouldn't be pretty and there would be lots of references to Moloch and not being able to have Nice Things.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
I'll add my voice to the split keyboard users. In my case, I tried out the OG M$ ergonomic keyboard as an experiment because being left-handed, my index finger had a nasty habit of trying to type keys meant for my right index finger. All these years later, I just inadvertently killed my M$ Natural 4000 and am strongly considering picking up a used version to keep me going
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
8mo ago
Erm, pardon me for quibbling, but my sense of the early internet was that it more consistently leaned libertarian, which is to say, pro-freedom, rather than straight left. The rise of social media in general and Facebook in particular is what made the move leftwards inevitable in my view, compounded by smartphones and the accompanying push notifications designed by the literal Devil himself.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9mo ago
I'd like to add my voice to those encouraging you to write. You're an excellent storyteller, with an eye for bringing out the humor and more colorful elements of your experience, and I think that I'd enjoy reading whatever stories you committed to writing. Because you're specifically asking, I'm really interested in the stories about where you've been and why, as well as the mischief you got into, the romances, and the other fascinating characters (Cowboy comes to mind) that you've met along the way.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9mo ago
Not at all, thanks for your reply. I'm happy to hear that your wife is actually on the hormonal IUD and I hope it works well for her! The side effects of all of the hormonal stuff are much better known and if my wife didn't have a seriously sensitive hormonal balance that was most definitely messed up whenever she tried hormone based BC, even the stuff specifically for women that had issues like hers, we wouldn't have gone down the copper IUD road to begin with.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9mo ago
Erm, this is strictly an anecdote, but my wife experienced several downsides over time from the copper (paragard) IUD. The most immediate downside was longer periods which progressed to chronic bleeding and endometriosis. The second was more frequent to chronic yeast infections. None of these were official side effects but internet wisdom said that they were in fact side effects and when she finally had it removed after a couple of especially painful episodes of dysmenorrhea the doctor acknowledged these as side effects from the copper IUD and indeed, these issues disappeared afterwards. If your wife ever starts experiencing any of these symptoms, I'd strongly encourage her to have it removed as it can and does get worse over time.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9mo ago
Hello again and thank you for sharing! Although my experience significantly differed in some key ways, (I was having an amazing trip on the best acid I'd ever had before things took a turn, for instance) I can really sympathize with what you went through. My sense at the time was essentially the blackest version of Hindu and Buddhist belief that I could contain; that existence itself is a deep, pervasive, and conscious lie that we believe, that our lives hold no greater meaning than what we personally instill them with, and that with said conscious belief in life we were actively participating in our own torture and suffering.
Yeah, I was a struggling, wangsty kid from the wrong side of the tracks coming to the end of his teen-aged years at the time. I'm happy to report that thanks to the actions of some friends and their families in key places at exactly the right time, I pulled out of it (probably narrowly avoiding inpatient mental hospitalization in the process) and got better! I'm grateful that your support network helped you out, too.
Muninn
"Dick Laurent is dead."
9mo ago
Hi there, delurking to say thanks for your comment--there's lots here that I identify with myself!
So, umm, would you mind saying more about the black nihilistic episode that you experienced? If not I totally understand, it's just, well, I actually took the cosmic black pill myself (and managed to come out the other side) what seems like a lifetime ago and I'm intensely interested in learning more about what it was like for you and having a conversation about that if you're open to it.
Haven't read Andromeda but completely agree on 12 Miles Below. I read the first one and ended up devouring the entire series several months back and I'm hoping there's more soon!
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