domain:open.substack.com
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
7hr ago
I appreciate the advice!
My most recent ex gave me a taste for brioche buns, dipping in clotted cream with a drizzle of honey. Absolutely divine. Unfortunately, I've had an uphill struggle finding such extra thick cream anywhere nearby, so the availability can vary even within in the UK. She doesn't live all that far, just a few towns away.
sarker
It isn't happening, and if it is, it's a bad thing
7hr ago
A king has far, far more virtues to live up to and a far heavier burden to carry than a peasant.
And yet people regularly murder each other to become king and rarely murder each other to become a peasant.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
7hr ago
How do I get prescription stimulants without a prescription?
You need to know a guy who knows a guy. Or peruse the Dark Net, I suppose. If you were in college or uni, you'd probably know someone pawning off their pills.
If I had enough conscientiousness to be able to get a prescription, I wouldn't need the stimulants
I managed to get a prescription, and I certainly need the stimulants dawg. If you're in the States, then there's probably an online pill-mill that makes it easy, if you can't make yourself physically go see a shrink.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
7hr ago
No. A local maximum is a peak. You seem to be arguing that people on Ozempic are stuck in a state that is better than the alternative (obesity), but not the absolute best possible state (some imagined ideal of pure willpower). If we're torturing a metaphor, that's a local minimum of negative outcomes. But why let basic logic or the meaning of words get in the way of your grand philosophical pronouncements?
I suppose Jacques Ellul only died 30 years ago.
And? Darwin died 140 years ago, but we don't treat his theories as gospel just because he's dead. Age doesn't make an argument correct, and name-dropping French philosophers doesn't make your position any less incoherent.
Ah, an appeal to an obscure academic to justify your terror of the modern world. I don't need to have read him to recognize the staggering hypocrisy of your position. You lament the "complex drug" that relies on global supply chains while typing your screed on a device whose complexity makes a vial of semaglutide look like a sharpened stick. This isn't a coherent critique of "technique"; it's just selective, convenient moralizing.
I'm critical of modernity whilst living in it. What else could be reasonable?
What would be reasonable is to apply your critique consistently, instead of drawing an arbitrary line at a medication that saves people from suffering. You enjoy the fruits of modernity that allow for your comfort and your intellectual hobbies, but you condemn the fruits that rescue others from a life of pain and metabolic disease. It's the pinnacle of entitled, ivory-tower thinking.
So I was indeed right to believe you take the DSM-V to have the power to decide the meaning of a word that has existed since the 1500s.
Spare me. I didn't cite the DSM-V; I cited the common, modern, functional understanding of a word as it is used by virtually everyone who isn't deliberately trying to be obtuse. You're clinging to an archaic definition from a historical dictionary as if it's a sacred text, precisely because it allows you to dilute the word "addiction" into meaninglessness. By your logic, a marathon runner is "addicted" to running and I am "addicted" to washing my hands between patients. It's a semantic game to avoid confronting the vacuity of your argument. Context matters. If we're talking about cars, I don't define "transmission" as "the act of sending a message" just because that's what it meant in 1400.
This isn't about Oxford vs. Wikipedia. This is about clarity vs. deliberate obfuscation. You are using language as a weapon to feel intellectually superior, not as a tool to understand the world.
And let's be clear about what you're really arguing for when you strip away the philosophical fluff. You say weaning off the drug should be the goal to avoid "slavery." For many, the alternative isn't freedom; it's a return to the biological slavery of a body screaming for food, a slavery that leads to diabetes, liver failure, and an early grave.
You can sit there and pontificate about "novel addictions" and the failings of modernity. I have to look my mother in the eye. I've seen the "natural" state you seem to prefer, and it's ugly and it's brutal. So frankly, you can keep your dusty dictionary and your non-sequitur arguments. They are useless. The pill works.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7hr ago
Well the video is 5 years old so it might be here already. Juan losing his job because he's scared of ICE is an opportunity for mechanization that should be taken.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
7hr ago
That's quite funny, but if you can remember his specific quotes about Bill Clinton, Trump knew what the deal was and what people were objecting to pretty specifically.
That's what makes this 180 so conspicuous. It makes no sense: if you know you're compromised, you wouldn't have campaigned on lifting the veil, if you know you're not, what could possibly convince you to hesitate at the last second?
So far the only theory I've heard that makes sense is that important US interests are presently depending on the kompromat and none of this can see the light of day for reasons Trump wasn't privy to when campaigning or when he was president.
And yet still, why not just bury the story and say nothing? Or endlessly delay? This performative display of guilt is so stupid I'm almost willing to believe some insane cope about it being 4D chess.
erwgv3g34
7hr ago
How do I get prescription stimulants without a prescription?
(If I had enough conscientiousness to be able to get a prescription, I wouldn't need the stimulants.)
Not drop a cryptic reply like "I'm anti third-worldism." several times and never explain what that means.
Here he is with a related take though still not a coherent or contextually-appropriate one.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
8hr ago
But he married Robert Maxwell's daughter? That's a pretty big connection. It's not hard to imagine that Mossad reaches out to an influential American billionaire closely connected to one of their top people. Influencing American elites is one of their priorities. Epstein has all these connections and he's Jewish, Mossad relies on local Jews a lot in its intelligence work just like how Chinese espionage relies on Chinese people overseas. They're called sayanim, helpers, and usually do passive information gathering, safehouses, logistics, access, bureaucratic processes, introducing contacts - the boring but necessary stuff. But that's when they're low-ranking, low-profile people, rather than billionaires.
And Epstein seems like the kind of guy who'd love to be working with them, make himself more of an exciting international man of mystery, make more friends in high places who could give him stock tips or useful information.
I suggest that Mossad wasn't giving him huge amounts of money, they were exchanging information and providing some level of protection from the law, perhaps passively. The FBI investigated him once and he got off easy, somebody got him a get out of jail free card. Maybe that was Mossad, maybe it was somebody Mossad knew or introduced him to, maybe there was just a certain vibe floating around. Connections can enable the acquisition of wealth like you say, being connected with a billionaire is a lucrative opportunity if you have the skill to grasp it. Connections with intelligence can surely be just as lucrative and advantageous, if you don't bite off more than you can chew. Mossad or being connected to Mossad helped enable his weird sex parties with other elites.
But it seems he only got one get out of jail free card, there's a certain level of media attention that can't be squelched and a critical point where one's friends in high places turn their backs.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
A strawberry picker that's slow, isn't actually available and apparently works only on hydroponic berries? I think Juan Enrique still has his job. Maybe another 5-10 years it'll make a dent, assuming the product isn't entirely fake.
Tomatoes are indeed largely automatically harvested. The catch is... well, do you think a tomato you buy in the grocery store could stand up to what that robot is doing? Nope... those are tomatoes for processing, not for eating fresh.
TitaniumButterfly
8hr ago
This feels close to the crux of my complaint. It seems that the truth has been overplayed for political purposes and the people who are supposed to be managing it show every sign of operating in bad faith.
TitaniumButterfly
8hr ago
Yeah that's probably the best description I've heard of the tattoo fiasco. Trump's take on it was outright embarrassing.
I still think the guy's probably up to no good, though.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
8hr ago
I didn't mean that in terms of being poor, though I can see it now that you point it out lol. I just meant that what ingredients are commonly stocked varies from country to country - for example I have a recipe for cupcakes that involves clotted cream, which (to my understanding) is commonly available at UK stores but you have to go to a specialty store to get it here.
I wouldn't worry too much about being a noob at baking, especially because quick breads (the type of bread banana bread is) are made to be easy to make. Literally just put all ingredients in a bowl, mix them together until the wet and dry ingredients are decently combined, then pour it into a pan and bake. Even if you make a mistake somehow, the worst case scenario is that it'll still taste good but maybe it'll be denser or drier than normal. So worst case scenario, you still have tasty bread!
Mantergeistmann
8hr ago
When you say "Final Dungeon", I assume you mean Skybound Avatar? Yeah, that one was a bit tough, with no good enemies to mage-MP grind on, but it's also slightly shorter than I expected. ...And I just now remembered those teleporting liches. Man, fuck those guys, but I guess it wouldn't be a proper Atlus game without them and the legged fish.
TitaniumButterfly
8hr ago
Likewise. You'll note that I was happy to volunteer those links.
TitaniumButterfly
8hr ago
Thanks for a great reply. Regrettably I think it was caught in the spam filter or something because I didn't see it until like two days after you posted it, and also if others saw it I'm sure you'd have a lot more upvotes.
I'm about to move from the prep phase of dinner to the cooking phase, and you have so much here, so in short I'd just like to say
- Thanks again, sincerely
- You've substantially shifted my views in your direction
- Plenty of food for thought moving forward
- Basically I consider you to have fulfilled the request I was making for more perspective and info
I think modern right-wing converts are very different from people who actually grew up in socially conservative communities because they’re fundamentally not conservatives at all. They’re people who grew up in a liberal environment who want to rebel against it (often for valid reasons), by adopting the values the liberals themselves previously fought against. Paradoxically, to be a socially conservative convert, you need to be a non-conformist who’s not afraid of questioning the worldview they were brought up in.
If you were a conformist who respected and followed societal expectations, the behaviour that from your description is encouraged in conservative communities, you wouldn’t have converted at all.
By being a right-wing convert in a liberal environment, you’re joining a counterculture, you’re adopting certain views because they’re cool, edgy, based, provocative, you want to tear down the system… you’re obviously going to have a very different attitude to life than people born in a socially conservative bubble.
faceh
8hr ago
I think the only way to make it 'clearer' was to not make the whole fanfic explicitly about disrupting the canon set up by Rowling in every way possible.
That is, its still pretty possible that there was an incompetent Lord Voldemort who got destroyed by the combined might of the good wizards...
AND there's a vastly more competent dark wizard who isn't blatantly evil but is definitely running machinations in the background that are far and beyond what Voldemort could achieve, whilst having nothing to do with voldemort.
I guess the one factor I didn't see right away is the why, as to why a supergenius wizard with demigod-level powers would want to adopt that persona for long periods of time. That came out later.
But yeah, he practically bashed people over the head with clues.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
8hr ago
That was me, and as we discussed at the time that's a horrendously inaccurate and uncharitable take on what I was saying.
Anyone can click through and see what you said.
I have to eat my words on this one, though my opinion is unchanged.
The last time I seriously looked into this was circa 2005. When I go looking now the results are incredibly one-sided. As such, my tone and attitude were inappropriate and I apologize.
Yet I clearly remember many, many accounts of Jews getting decent healthcare -- self-reported, mind, not according to the nazis. My expectation is that the truth has shifted outside of the overton window and sources which might paint nazis in a more nuanced light have been deprecated. Certainly this would be in keeping with google's general ethos re: filtering search results.
This will understandably not be very convincing to you, but integrity dictates that I owe you a response.
If you're feeling up to it, I'd still like a response too:
Are you disputing that inflating the numbers suits the Zionist agenda, or are you disputing that the institutions which would do so had many incentives to do so and few if any incentives not to?
And, if neither, what makes you think the numbers are sound?
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
8hr ago
· Edited 8hr ago
7.77 million tons of rice production annually isn’t trivial
It's about 15% more than US rice production, and Japan's biggest crop by far. Meanwhile, the US with only roughly 3 times the population also produces 8.5 million tons of sorghum, 48 million tons of wheat, 117 million tons of soybeans (which Japan imports a good deal of), and 370 million tons of corn. Of course, these are all cereal grains and all subject to harvesting and processing with automation; Japan no longer has to rely on peasants with sickles and hand flails. That's why nobody talks about rice pickers but rather fruit pickers. Automated fruit harvesting, at least for first quality fruits, is something that hasn't been solved for many fruits.
Green tea is a little more like fruit, in that the top quality stuff is hand picked, but harvesting of lower quality stuff is automated. But 77,000 tons really is trivial.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
8hr ago
They are written for a US audience, so you might need to make substitutions from time to time if things aren't available in UK stores.
The UK might be poor and shabby, but not quite that poor!
If the two of you are so keen on it, I'll keep my eye out for ingredients. I'm more concerned about the fact that I can't identify the make of my oven or what the settings do, and I'm entirely a noob at baking.
You probably mean minima.
No.
this is a.. novel definition
I suppose Jacques Ellul only died 30 years ago. But I would have expected everyone here to be long familiar with this ancient history given we discuss the philosophical implications of AI on the daily.
Care to reproduce such arguments in full instead of waving at them?
The section on medicine as a human technique is of course most relevant to this conversation, but I don't recommend skipping around if you are unfamiliar with philosophy of technology and the associated jargon.
Are you typing this on a "simple" device?
No. Semiconductors are arguably the most complex things mankind has ever made. Especially using this definition.
They could, in an ideal world, live short but tortured lives! Is that a tautology?
No, it's a non sequitur.
You seem to conveniently enjoy that particular fruit of modernity, while crying about this one.
I'm not sure what part of my writing evoked any kind of detectable emotion. I assure you it is purely analytic. I'm critical of modernity whilst living in it. What else could be reasonable?
Call me an ungrateful atheist for living in creation if you must. I can't help but look at what I'm doing.
Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder
So I was indeed right to believe you take the DSM-V to have the power to decide the meaning of a word that has existed since the 1500s.
I think the fact that you'd take Wikipedia's word over that of Oxford reflects poorly on your conception of the world, frankly. But this is a silly semantics exercise anyways. I have clarified what I meant beyond doubt. If my vocabulary irks you, so be it.
by that definition, one could be addicted to collecting stamps, to morning walks, or to breathing. You have diluted the word to uselessness.
No, I've used in in a way you don't like, which is common and in accord with its historical usage. There is a difference.
I have no "authority" over you
You misunderstand. It is the expert authority on your own language and thinking I recommend you remedy, not your authority on me.
self_made_human
Grippy socks, grippy box
8hr ago
You've got your cognac, I've got a bottle of cheap rosé from the nearest supermarket. Life, if not good, is doing okay today.
My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.
Alas, I can't get much in the way of goat-mutton in Scotland. That's what I was used to back home, but to be fair, well-prepared lamb comes close. Evidently your culinary skills came in handy! If Mrs. Hale doesn't like lamb, you can't go wrong with making chicken kebabs. It's too late at night for me to order some, but the idea itself has got me hankering.
But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.
Your innate suspicion is far too common. Modern culture has primed everyone to be suspicious, to look for things that are "too good to be true". That might work for narratives or literary fiction, but reality isn't quite the same. Sometimes, the uncaring universe is kind enough to give us things that are unalloyed goods, and also good. So it was for antibiotics and vaccines, and so it goes for Ozempic.
While not literally perfectly safe (what is? No drug I've ever heard of, and I've heard of most), it is a paradigm shift when it comes to one of the most pressing issues of our time. It is a solution to the obesity epidemic, even if that is somehow dissatisfying to some. I can only stress that the universe is uncarinv, not actively malevolent. Good things happen, or are even discovered, every now and then!
If you need to lose a few pounds, or many, you can't do much better. You can always stop once you hit your target, and seek other ways to keep yourself there. I would hope that getting my own mother, as well as myself, on it would be a sufficient signal of confidence.
It's here. Do not have high expectations.
Followed, which costs me nothing at all. Hopefully you'll get around to writing more!
I think it is at least moderately possible that we live in such a degraded political and media environment, that Donald Trump can rise to the Presidency by just continuously doing the thing that seems like the best idea at the time. So, compromised or not, run on nailing Epstein johns to the wall, because that incrementally improves your electoral chances. Then, once in power, if it turns out there are reasons to not release that information, just do a 180 with no explanation and brazen out the short term consequences because they don’t matter in the long run.
Donald Trump walks the Shortest Path.
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