domain:alakasa.substack.com
TK-421
1hr ago
If this sounds a lot like a religion, then that's because it should. Marxism undoubtedly shares many structural features with traditional religions in its fundamentals.
Are there many other mass political / economic systems that don't share structural features with traditional religions like offering meaning and purpose to varying degrees? Is Marxism a significant outlier?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
I suppose it's going to appear differently on different feeds, true enough.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1hr ago
charlesf
1hr ago
I think they should just be honest. Record the records, slap an * on it and explain in the notes. Assuming strong evidence; I've no idea what a sufficient level of suspicion would be to noteworthy though.
I’ve been thinking about a very similar topic to this one recently; the actual % of frauds in cheaters in every field, not just sports.
A man near me made a career in a certain field, climbing the ranks until he got to the top of the local version of this institution. It’s a public profession, and he was briefly in the news, so I want to stay vague to not compound his problems. His profession requires a 4 year degree and some professional certs, and advancing up the ranks generally demanded a masters, then a doctorate at the top. Not always, some get away with a master’s, but most of the people in the role around the nation have one. Turns out he didn’t actually have a phd, or a masters. He just self-studied the material while pretending to be in a program for the amount of time it would have normally taken. He’d worked in the doctorate level roll for over a decade before someone hired a PI to investigate the guy for some reason, and it all fell apart.
It seems like it was a lot easier to fake it in the past, before the internet. There were also fewer examples to make people suspicious. I wonder just how many people have to one extent or another “faked it”: PEDs in sports, fake degrees, fake job histories/references etc. Fake martial arts history or military claims were one of the first ones to really get exposed by the internet. I know more than one person who financed the launch of their successful, life-defining business with the profits of criminal enterprise, usually selling drugs. Is this even the same category? There’s also the currently hot trend of getting real advanced degrees and positions using fake (or plagiarized) scholarship.
Who knows how many skeletons are out there in how many closets. I think we are alive in a particularly fruitful time for discovering these stories.
yunyun333
1hr ago
That's right below a headline about the hostages on my page.
'You're my life, my hero': Hostages reunite with families after two years
Corvos
2hr ago
The Oxford Handbook of Psychiatry, 4th edition
An interesting read, as long as it's not compulsory. I find it interesting that it has a new section 'to reflect changing cultural attitudes around gender dysphoria' but once you get into the more usual boring disorders it will tell you the gender incidence and relative ratio with bracing honesty.
Pathological fire-setting/pyromania: Multiple episodes of deliberate, purposeful fire-setting, leading to property damage, legal consequences, and injury or loss of life. Rare in children; more common in male adolescents, particularly those with poor social skills and learning difficulties
Kleptomania: Failure to resist impulses to steal items that are not needed for their personal use or monetary value. Usually women, mean age 36yrs, mean duration of illness 16yrs (often childhood onset). ~5% of stealing in the United States (USA).
chooky
2hr ago
Wake me up if Israel/Palestine stop killing each other for more than a few months! I think this is a case where Trump's approach of steamrolling Israel into accepting his terms worked well and good for him, but it also seems way too easy to be real. Also, it is somewhat difficult to evaluate Israel outside of the context of Ukraine, on which there has been no progress toward a peace that doesnt just reward Russia's initial invasion.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
2hr ago
Thanks for looking at the numbers. I guess I was extrapolating from Zimbabwe, which actually did see like 90% of the white population emigrate. Although the most recent stats I've seen actually show growth within the last couple years.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2hr ago
I found it odd (perhaps naïvely so) to see headlines, notably the BBC, focused not on the release Israeli hostages, but on the Palestinians: "Palestinians celebrate return of detainees freed by Israel"
Another doctor here? Good, please unlurk yourself! That's a genuine request. We're up to 5 and change, depending on how you count med students who may or may not be hiking naked in Alaska.
When I was a first year in med school, staring at the sheer amount of knowledge I was supposed to cram into my brain, I would get too anxious and stressed out to even concentrate enough to study. So my girlfriend suggested I take some of her Xanax, which calmed me down enough that I could hit the books. The next day though I would have forgotten everything because as you know (and I had not yet learned at the time) benzos fuck with your hippocampus and it's harder to form memories. I did this three times before I recognized the pattern enough to bother googling it. So uh, don't do that.
Evidence that pharmacology should be shoved into the first year syllabus haha. You'd have been better off drinking alcohol to steady your nerves, since (paradoxically) alcohol increases reteograde memory retention, while hampering it anterograde (at reasonable doses).
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06305-w
For anyone else reading: don't do this.
What ended up working out for me was getting plenty of daily exercise. I was basically trying to study for 14 hours a day, then I'd watch a movie to unwind, then go to bed. Cutting that back to 13 hours of trying to study and one hour of exercise in the morning made me a lot less stressed out.
I'm in awe. I couldn't study for 12 hours a day if my life depended on it, even on medication. I feel utterly burnt out after 4-6 hours of actual study (not just sitting there with the book open, or procrastinating, as I'm doing now). This was true even before I had a job. Well, apparently that has been enough so far, and I try to keep up the habit.
The worst thing you can do is not talk to your friends and colleagues about this.
I did. I still feel bad about it, my dad is always stressed when he hears of such episodes, and he's the old-fashioned type of doctor who believes I don't need stimulants because ADHD isn't a real condition. He loves me, so I look past that. They know, they care, but they're a continent away.
Friends? They get it, sometimes. I had a good buddy who was a bit older and burdened with kids, he passed the exam during the previous window, so I suppose I have no excuse.
Now, the thing that tends to stress me out the most is parenting. I am fully confident at times that I am fucking up my kids and they're going to need a lot of therapy in their mid-20s when they realize how much damaged my wife and I caused. But, and maybe this makes me look silly, I find the sycophantic nature of ChatGPT as well as its always available-ness is perfect for stopping me from spiraling.
I suppose it's my turn to reassure you, though I have no kids of my own. Donald Winnicot was on to something when he came up with the concept of the "good enough mother" (and father).
Once you're past levels of effort above outright neglect, the returns to additional parental effort decline steeply or become outright flat. Parenting is not a video game where grinding extra hours levels your kid up faster. When it comes to variance in life outcomes, heredity is king, non-parental environment is queen, and “parenting” (once you’ve cleared the bar of “not abuse or neglect”) is a minor courtier at best.
https://www.nature.com/articles/ng.3285
I have seen a full writeup somewhere, but I've lost it. I can look harder later.
In other words, you don't have to worry too hard. You've done the important things, like giving them your genes, amassing wealth, not abusing them (I hope, but feel free to disabuse me if you disagree) etc.
They're good genes! You're a doctor, hardworking, and probably more conscientious than is good for you. In all fairness, so were my parents, but you can't help some things. I turned out okay. I love my parents despite their minor failings, and I'm sure your kids will love you too. If you’re worried you’re messing up, that’s actually evidence you’re not the type who would really mess up.
Anyway: physician, heal thyself and so forth.
Thank you, I mean it. I've been through worse, both in terms of academic load and blindness. I'll live, and if I ever become a consultant, I will dedicate my life to involuntarily commiting some of the exam-designers. Oh, and if your kids end up needing therapy, I'll offer a steep discount as a professional courtesy.
roystgnr
2hr ago
I'm just glancing at numbers, but it looks like white emigration from South Africa is about 2% per year, as opposed to around 40% per year for the pieds-noirs during 2 years of "suitcase or the coffin". South African white emigration has been slow enough that fertility has kept their population pretty steady over the past few decades in spite of it.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
2hr ago
Of course, there's another reason why the Nobel committee would be adverse towards granting Trump Nobel right now - there's already a precedent of giving an US president a Nobel for practically nothing (sure, sure, cease-fire and all that, but it's still uncertain how well it holds and the decisionmaking process had already been going on for quite a period at that time) and then getting a lot of flack for it. For American conservatives, certainly, this might seem unfair with Obama and Trump being considered the opposites, but for practical purposes the rest of the world does often tend to consider them to belong to the same category - American presidents.
Some have also pointed out that the Machado decision is generally well in line with other recent Nobel Peace Price decisions - four out of five last years have seen the NPP being at least in part awarded to dissidents from American enemy countries (Dmitry Muratov from Russia in 2021, Ales Bialiatski from Belarus in 2022, Narges Mohammadi from Iran in 2023, Machado now.)
OracleOutlook
Fiat justitia ruat caelum
2hr ago
I found it really confusing on mixing up shame and guilt together. Rumi is ashamed of being half demon but she's not guilty the same way the guy who sold out his family for a comfortable life.
JarJarJedi
2hr ago
From where I stand, it all just feels like racketeering by H&R Block et al. to extort fees year after year.
Now that's mostly the case, but the roots of this system were actually in minimizing governmental intrusion into private life. In order to calculate your taxes for you, the government has to be aware of a lot of things you are doing. Now, you would say this is true anyway, and you'd be right. But the way the system was designed initially, that wasn't the case - the government was supposed to know what you report to them, and no more. That, of course, went out of the window long ago, but the system remained. Thus the idiotic situation where the government has all the data about you and your business (unless you take special steps to hide it, which are mostly illegal by now) but they are now allowed to use this data to calculate your taxes, so you have to do it by yourself. Then they will be allowed to use the same data to catch you if you're cheating. For me, as a software developer often dealing with, by now, decades-old code, this is a common situation - the system started with one set of assumptions in mind, they changed, but rebuilding the whole system from scratch is too inconvenient, so now everything works in weirdest ways that make no sense anymore.
wsgy
2hr ago
When I was a first year in med school, staring at the sheer amount of knowledge I was supposed to cram into my brain, I would get too anxious and stressed out to even concentrate enough to study. So my girlfriend suggested I take some of her Xanax, which calmed me down enough that I could hit the books. The next day though I would have forgotten everything because as you know (and I had not yet learned at the time) benzos fuck with your hippocampus and it's harder to form memories. I did this three times before I recognized the pattern enough to bother googling it. So uh, don't do that.
What ended up working out for me was getting plenty of daily exercise. I was basically trying to study for 14 hours a day, then I'd watch a movie to unwind, then go to bed. Cutting that back to 13 hours of trying to study and one hour of exercise in the morning made me a lot less stressed out. And of course commiserating with people in the same boat as me. The worst thing you can do is not talk to your friends and colleagues about this.
Now, the thing that tends to stress me out the most is parenting. I am fully confident at times that I am fucking up my kids and they're going to need a lot of therapy in their mid-20s when they realize how much damaged my wife and I caused. But, and maybe this makes me look silly, I find the sycophantic nature of ChatGPT as well as its always available-ness is perfect for stopping me from spiraling.
Anyway: physician, heal thyself and so forth.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
3hr ago
It would be nice if it was the social media digital id thing all the five eyes countries are currently doing to try to ensnare the US and enforce their social media policies.
TIRM
3hr ago
Israel is continuing to oppress Christians
Can we please proactively provide evidence for inflammatory claims? Or at least a clear explanation of what manner of oppression is occurring?
I know public proselytizing is illegal in Israel. I suppose the claimed oppression is something far harsher than that.
Laura Ingalls Wilder would be amazing. I basically grew up with her Little House book series (the first proper novel sized book I ever read was her Little House in the Big Woods). A few years ago I read the recently published Pioneer Girl which I'd strongly recommend to anyone who wants to get a good idea of what it was like living in the then desolate American Midwest in the 1870s.
I even spent a fair amount of time cataloging her family tree and learning about them from other sources on the internet. For instance Charles Ingalls was a Freemason, which was of course good to see. I'd have liked to have had the chance to meet some of her descendants today but unfortunately the whole line has died out, even including her sisters' descendants.
wemptronics
3hr ago
Such individuals are often consumed by powerful manias to the point of self-ruin, or else they become condemned to inaction, paralyzed with fear over not being able to fulfill the momentous duties they have placed upon themselves.
What names come to mind?
gattsuru
3hr ago
Which invites the obvious question: what will the next Current Thing™ be? ... Playing the game on Easy Mode, and the answer might be that something which was a secondary issue for the last two years now jumps forward to become the pack leader in the Pareto distribution.
Immigration is the duh example, and I'd expect that we'll continue to see a parade of real and imagined oversteps by the Trump admin, along with real and imagined bad behaviors by protestors or state governments in response.
On this side, I think you're going to see trans stuff become much more prominent, quickly. Republicans see a lot of options as 80-20 issues, and a large part of the Dem activist branch isn't willing to Sister Souljah even the clearest nutjobs. But a lot of the political activists have very strong opinions and/or investments in this matter, they've got a massive amount of logistical and big corp support, and there's a lot of things that look like low-hanging fruit to social conservatives that are either hard problems or unacceptable compromises to even moderate Dems.
From the other direction, I expect that we'll have a Mass Casuality Gun Incident (a la Los Vegas) or targeted assassination (... that Dems care about, a la Giffords), and gun control will show up as a major political discussion again. There's a lot of Dems and self-described moderates that are absolutely sure they've got a vast majority of the population on their side, here, and they just need the right salience/terms, and while some of that reflects badly-run poll manipulation and huffing their own farts, it genuinely is a space that a lot of Republicans shoot their own feet.
In this light, do any of you have candidates in mind for dark horse black swan events which could dominate the discourse for the next two years or so?
Serious domestic infrastructure attacks by a coordinated and uncaught adversary. We've seen them in warfront environments, a few nutjobs using them for publicity, and a few dry runs (aka Metcalf) by uncaught (and thus presumably serious) actors, and maybe some arguable cases (aka Florida Oranges), but there's Moore's Law of Mad Science reasons to suspect it to hit in the next ten years. It's bad when 'someone kills dozens at multiple subway stations and gets away with it' is the optimistic version of the problem, but the pessimistic one is much worse, and either version will have obvious direct culture war ramifications as increasingly broad conspiracy theories drop. More critically, it will also have a ton of 'obvious' and wildly contradictory solutions with large-scale impact on the innocent.
BurdensomeCount
Unable to escape TheMotte's cycle of Samsara...
3hr ago
Scott once noticed that the best place in the middle east to be an Arab outside the oil rich states is Israel. Smart Palestinians should be arguing to the world that the just punishment for Israel's actions is that they must annex all of Gaza and the West Bank, make everyone living there full citizens of Israel and provide them with the same access to resources as they do to any other Israeli citizen right now.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
In Classical philosophy, this question is generally framed as "should the philosopher engage in political life", where he can maximally help his city but at the cost of cultivating wisdom. The simple answer is generally no, because the best way the wise man can help others is making them wiser, and some of those he teaches will go out and help the city themselves (and much better than if they didn't have his teaching).
Firing tank shells into Churches, backing jihadists in Syria and occupying Christian territory.
This interview with Tucker is a good intro
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