reply via reblog

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

comparativelysuperlative:

femmenietzsche:

The Billy Joel song We Didn’t Start the Fire is 4:49 long and covers 41 years worth of history. Recorded history began ca. 3000 BC with the invention of writing in ancient Mesopotamia. Therefore a version of We Didn’t Start the Fire which covered all of history at the same pace would be around 590 minutes long.

Or you could reach the first chorus with bad news from the first day of 2020, which also covers 41 years worth of history.

 

Are you telling me…that the fabled dedicated-to-2020 version of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” *existed*…but was *lost*?

I don’t think “spared” is really the right word here, but I don’t want to beat you up over it. In any case, perhaps people will be in a better position to write it after 2020 is over. Hindsight is, after all, 2020.

Tags:

#is what my 2023 self will tell people when they ask her why she owns a P100 respirator #reply via reblog #illness mention #music #history #amnesia cw #please get a cloud sync Nate

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

rustingbridges:

voxette-vk:

So I just had this really weird experience.

This girl was visiting me, and I was washing dishes, and I asked if she could put up the dry ones.

And she had never heard the expression “to put something up”.

She said “you mean put them away?” and I said yeah, thinking she just didn’t hear me well and wanted to confirm. But then she explained that no, she had never heard that expression, only “to put something away”.

The only thing she had heard of with “put up” was “to put someone up”, i.e. host them as a guest.

And I said that I understood “to put something away” perfectly well, but it sounded a bit formal, so I wouldn’t say it normally.

Is this really some kind of Southernism? Or otherwise geographically peculiar?

This girl is a second-generation American, which could also explain it.

it was obvious to me what it meant, but I wouldn’t ever say it in place of “put away” unless there was a specific meaning.

I’m not sure if I’ve actually heard it before or if it just fits into a normal pattern of regionalisms.

If I’d been there in the place of your visitor, we would probably have had exactly the same conversation.

(linguistic context: first fourteen years in northeastern America (South Jersey with significant Massachusetts influence), latter thirteen years in southern Ontario)

I do recognise the “putting up a painting/poster” usage that a couple other people in the notes mentioned, as well as the “putting up supplies of preserved food (usually, but not always, for the winter)” usage that @isaacsapphire mentioned, but I don’t think I would have thought to mention them on short notice.

Tags:

#language #reply via reblog #(yes I’ve almost reached the point of having lived the majority of my life in Canada) #(I have the equal-halves point marked on my calendar)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o1_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o2_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o3_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o4_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o6_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o5_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o7_500

tumblr_nwgwufhzkk1rc7zl1o8_500

weasowl:

imfemalewarrior:

thelamprey:

sizvideos:

A man has built Ogo, a hands-free wheelchair for his paraplegic friend (video)

Holy shit this is awesome.

For any wheelchair users following me! 

-FemaleWarrior, She/They 

every few months I forget about this and then see it again and it is always one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

So this time I looked it up, I wondered how to get one and how much it cost. Turns out  it was a bit hard to find, actually, and that’s because it’s no longer called the Ogo, it’s called the Omeo.

They are pretty advanced as a product now, in terms of accessories, color options, etc (they have an off road conversion kit and stuff!). They are kind of expensive, tho not necessarily when compared to other wheel chairs, which cost anywhere from a couple hundred bucks for a shitty one, to like 4k for a high end electric one. An Omeo will cost you just under 2k.

Here is their website, if you want to learn more: https://omeotechnology.com/

(I think weasowl overlooked a 0: it’s more like 20k. https://omeotechnology.com/frequently-asked-questions/ indicates that you can sometimes get healthcare coverage for it, though, particularly in Australia.)

Tags:

#interesting #wheelchairs #the more you know #reply via reblog #(sort of)

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

moral-autism:

couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name:

f0ce9fd2f49706132d5488090d2e227ae20ca80f

me when I hear my family making big Christmas plans that ignore the state’s mandate that says no more than 10 people in a space 

Somehow I don’t think your heart is going to grow three sizes if you see them gather with a large group of people to all sing together.

I’m trying to plan tomorrow’s grocery trip around the possibility that I will not dare to go back for quite some time. And if I *do* go on the 22nd, it will be planned likewise: December 22nd being of tolerable risk does not at all mean January 5th will be.

(I guess if January turns out terribly we might be able to drive out to one of the expensive grocery stores that offers curbside pickup. I still have all of my CERB money (if only just), and they gave it to me for a reason.)

Tags:

#reply via reblog #covid19 #illness tw #Christmas #food mention #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

the-bright-path:

6bcbcbcacdc3a1106c9350d53d794984bdcad9ba

I wrote this as a tag ramble because it felt like a tag-register kind of post, but I’m running out of space in the tag box and also I don’t want to discourage people from responding to me (apparently a lot of people interpret tag rambles as followers-only posts? and it’s certainly more effort to quote them, in any case), so here it is:

#the great thing about living with your parents is that it gives you potentially as much as two or three decades to figure out
#where the fuck you’re going to find platonic nesting partners after they’re dead
#(the other great thing is that you don’t have to spend years trying desperately to make your savings outpace the rise in house prices)
#(because you can just take over your dad’s HELOC)
#(but that’s *somewhat* tangential to this post)
#I guess I could *try* living alone for a while but I don’t think I’d like it
#I could probably *tolerate* it and there’d be *some* upsides
#but yeah it *is* very inefficient
#and it seems like it would be rather lonely and frankly kind of dangerous
#(I have this suspicion that a lot of the lifespan benefits of marriage are simply from having a housemate)
#(someone to take care of you (and also of basic household maintenance) when you’re sick)
#(someone to hear you choking)
#(someone to find you passed out on the floor)
#(someone to hug you in lockdowns so you don’t break down from touch deprivation)
#one-breadwinner households were a historical aberration and their time has ended
#it’s time to spruce up the homestead system to make it less dependent on having [living family] [that you like being around]
#(okay I went and looked up homesteading and maybe that’s not *quite* the right word)
#(I think it’s just that most of the family-sized communes I know of
#–that *weren’t* forged in the extreme pressures of San Francisco†–
#are homesteads)
#((I mean *ideally* it’d be good to have enough skillsets and executive function and physical function and land between us that
#we *could* retreat into self-sufficiency in a crisis))
#((but “division of labour is good” extends beyond the household level))
#†I really don’t want to live in San Francisco‚ please don’t make me move to San Francisco just to find a commune

Tags:

#tag rambles #reply via reblog #death tw #adventures in human capitalism #illness mention

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

marcusseldon:

I have been feeling increasing anxiety about AI given the success of gpt-3, and not because of the potential of a singularity or AI foom scenario.

What I’m worried about is that AI will soon make nerds obsolete. In the current world, you can be socially awkward and weird but still find success and status through your intellectual abilities. There are many jobs available for people who can write, code, or even just memorize a lot of information (like lawyers). But it seems like we may not be too far off from AI being able to take many of these jobs over. Perhaps not the most complicated and high status ones, but the bulk of the low and mid-range complexity jobs that most nerds work in will disappear.

If AI takes over most of these information jobs, then what’s left will be physical labor and people-oriented jobs. Everyone will be either a construction worker or yoga instructor. The salespeople will be fine, meanwhile most data analysts and entry level coders and writers will be laid off as one person plus an AI can do the work of dozens of people.

Right now, you can still get some level of societal respect if you’re smart even if you lack charisma or physical ability, but that may not be true much longer.

 

balioc:

…both physical labor and, uh, let’s call it “user interface labor” are already getting hammered by automation.  That doesn’t seem likely to stop or slow down. 

(A high-level salesperson dealing with high-value wares may not be replaceable by present-generation AI…GPT-3 can’t schmooze a client…but the McDonald’s cashier is getting replaced by a kiosk, and the ordinary floor salesman is getting replaced by the Amazon algorithm.) 

It is true that intellectual labor may be thrown into that basket as well. 

Social respect stems from economically productive labor is a mug’s game.  We’ve been falling down on the job of dealing with that truth, in part because nerds – who are, de facto, responsible for that kind of philosophical work – have been doing very well economically of late.  But it remains true.

 

bambamramfan:

The lucrative remuneration for analytical thinking of the past couple decades should be understood as a blip. Eventually it will die down, and that will suck for many people (including myself.) But you shouldn’t build your life counting on it to last.

 

eightyonekilograms:

But you shouldn’t build your life counting on it to last.

Ok, so… what should I do? This isn’t actionable advice.

 

bambamramfan:

Save the money you earn now instead of counting on a regular increase in pay throughout the rest of your life. Talk to lawyers you know about what their professional arc has looked like (given that they have had the same arc recently.) Vote for a strong social safety net because even if you earn 6 figures now you may need it later.

I don’t really have good advice for people. A lot of people are in very bad situations! But “I and my friends have well paying jobs and I expect this to never change” is not guaranteed to hold up.

+1

I’m going into accounting soon, and I plan to operate under the assumption that I will be permanently laid off at some point. Here’s hoping it’s far enough in the future to give me a good chance to prepare.

(On the bright side, my *baseline* expenses are barista FIRE†, and I have several Vimes Boot Theory plans that I would only need a few good years to be able to enact. Also I have my foot in the employees-only door at a local fast-food joint, which is in a small town where automation of fast food is less economical.)

I won’t make the same mistakes my father made, thinking that because he was a programmer†† he was golden and didn’t need to do more than basic 401k deposits. (I’m gonna make *new* and *different* mistakes, which will almost certainly revolve around having less fun than I could be getting away with having. I’m pretty okay with that.)

—

†”barista FIRE” = the ability to cover your personal expenses on 20 minimum-wage-hours a week (the shortfall is implied to be covered by interest on your investments, but I would *have* no shortfall on 20 minimum-wage-hours/week, though it’d be a bit tight and I wouldn’t be able to support anyone else)  ((okay, the lack-of-other-income is not quite true, ~half our rent is being covered by partial ownership of our home and absence-of-rent-cost-due-to-ownership is a form of interest income in its own right; upon reflection, people who come from subcultures where car leasing/loans are normalised would likely also be inclined to consider the absence of payments on our (admittedly shitty) car as a form of interest income))

††of devices that no longer exist, having been subsumed by Blackberries and then even further subsumed by smartphones

Tags:

#reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #in which Brin has a job #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what #apocalypse cw?

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

slatestarscratchpad:

Today’s lesson on health care economics:

On GoodRx, a month’s worth of sildenafil 20 mg costs $17.25

On the same site, a month’s worth of sildenafil 25 mg costs $507.24

Does anyone buy the 25 mg version? You bet – I saw a patient who was on it yesterday (don’t worry; he’s since been switched over).

What’s going on here? Sildenafil has two FDA approvals – one, under the name “Revatio”, for hypertension. The other, under the name “Viagra”, for – well, you know.

The FDA only approved Revatio at doses of 5 and 20 mg, and only approved Viagra at doses of 25 and 100 mg. So sildenafil 20 mg has “Revatio” on the box and sildenafil 25 mg has “Viagra” on the box. Revatio is generic and dirt-cheap; Viagra is still on-patent and expensive.

But can’t people who want Viagra just buy Revatio?

Yes, totally. But the average patient doesn’t know this is going on. And the average doctor doesn’t really have any incentive to care because they’re not the one buying it (I’ve had patients who have asked their doctor to prescribe the cheaper version, and the doctor has refused because they want to do it the “proper” way). And I think it’s illegal for the insurance companies to insist, because technically the FDA only approved sildenafil 25 mg for erectile dysfunction but didn’t approve sildenafil 20 mg.

(also, some people are like “But I need a higher 50 mg dose of Viagra, and Revatio only goes up to 20 mg!” As the ancient rationalist proverb goes, have you tried thinking about the problem for five minutes?)

At the advice of my doctor, I’m on pseudo-prescription naproxen. Instead of one 500mg prescription pill, I buy the 220mg OTC stuff and take double the dose on the label: it’s close enough, and it’s somewhat cheaper per mg if you don’t have prescription coverage. She said if I ever do get prescription coverage I should let her know and she’ll write me an official prescription then.

I love my doctor.

—

(Please do not take prescription-strength naproxen without medical supervision: you can fuck up your liver.)

—

Side benefit:

People in the spring: “it’s horrible that they’re making *chronically ill* people go to a *pharmacy* *every month* and risk plague! patients aren’t allowed to keep buffers of medications they often need to *survive*!”

Me: *looks with a mixture of relief and awkwardness at my 200-pack of Aleve*

(Note: I only need it around the onset of menstruation, so 200 OTC-sized pills is about a ten-month supply.)

(Store-brand naproxen doesn’t come in 200-pack, and the bulk-discount benefit outweighed the name-brand penalty.)

Tags:

#other things my doctor has done: #prescribed prune juice for constipation #prescribed string for skin tags #used Big Pharma ”samples” to keep her poorer patients supplied with meds they would struggle to afford on their own #readily admitted that people in my situation don’t actually need gynecological checkups #and I should only see a gynecologist if something goes wrong or I decide to start having sex #reply via reblog #adventures in human capitalism #medical cw #illness mention #covid19 #menstruation #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what

Finally, A Personality Quiz Backed By Science

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{Title link: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/personality-quiz/?group=-MLnw84-zDddzbQsP6ta }}

rustingbridges:

voxette-vk:

TIL 538 has a personality test

Follow the link above to be in the “group” I made so that you can compare your score against the average. (Hopefully. It seems not to want to load the results when I refresh the page…)

c7f813ba153e5b17bb4cf97bd1a2bcff06a6571a

we’re doin big 5 I guess:

9687af0eccb13aa6f1d4cd1764ad61a4ca562d69
30ccfc5eb49856a1b965b3797179e9514352f62e

My first thought was that it was attempting to tell me what I want to hear: most of these are rather “better” figures than I was getting on Open Psychometrics a couple years back.

Then I looked at the more detailed breakdown, and a lot of my supposed middle-of-the-road-ness is from having very high scores in some subcategories and very low scores in others, which “averages out” when seen at lower resolutions. Are you very anxious but not depressed? Congratulations, your negative emotionality is “moderate”.

(Except conscientiousness, which is a nice symmetric equilateral triangle with every vertex at ~75.)

((…wait, how does the *average* American have *75th* percentile conscientiousness))

This version seems to place somewhat more emphasis on *treating* people well when it comes to agreeableness, as opposed to Open Psychometrics’ questions which were pretty much purely about how you felt about them on the inside, and that difference is most of what dragged me from 12 up to 38. I am a proverbial kitten who thinks of nothing but murder.

—

“You might also have a low opinion of your own looks.” I look plain in a vaguely pleasant manner, which is *exactly how I like it*, thank you very much

“Some scientists think low extraversion has protected humans from disease — you can’t pick up a bug from people if you avoid people.” saaame

Tags:

#reply via reblog #memes #surveys #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #anxiety #anger management

{{next post in sequence}}

~ Brin ~ Leave a comment

maryellencarter:

is there like. Theory. about the definition of the self through the objects we surround ourselves with? i feel so much more like Myself ever since i got my shirt again and i am curious what the philosophy side of tumblr has to say about it

Off the top of my head there’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_mind_thesis, but that’s more specifically about using external computation/storage to augment your brain.

While I do get the part-of-me feeling most strongly with computers, I occasionally get it with other stuff too. I’m not sure how much of it is just an autism not-liking-change thing, but there definitely does seem to also be an aspect of “affirming my identity as the sort of person who would have X”.

(I’m sure that’s the holy grail of marketing, but I think it very much *can* be both natural and healthy. I absolutely endorse my desire to be the sort of person who would have a utility belt.)

Clothing can have additional aspects: I think the feeling I get from wearing my Girl Guide jacket primarily operates through some of the same mechanisms as weighted blankets, feeling more comfortable and confident when well-covered.

Tags:

#philosophy #reply via reblog #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #clothing #transhumanism #autism

~ Brin ~ 1 Comment

{{previous post in sequence}}

plasmapop:

plasmapop:

5b5aab97a80ba53a4e31e73d7225f855f3e6cb94

20/04/20 • title is the subject line of an email about middle egyptian classes. italics are ‘quotes from my middle egyptian prof that i happened to write down’ 

#…apparently this post was *not* made in October #it was posted in June and that date implies it was written in April #which means that truck of emotional resonance that hits you at #“it is october‚ and i wait for the symptoms of spring/it is april‚ but only when i close my eyes” #is not *intended* to be there #or at least *that* particular truck isn’t #but fuck it they sing it back to you for 85000 reasons (via @brin-bellway)

yeah so possibly this unintentionally contains a timeloop thing. you’re right that it was written in april but it also grew out of various sentences from my diary-ish notebooks. the line about october/april was written in october 2019 and was vaguely about seasonal depression / winter Sucks and april is when you can See trees starting to grow leaves again. then when i was putting the poem together in april obviously that resonated in…… a very different way. so i was like yeah ok sure. and now it’s october again and it has a whole new but not unrelated meaning!! poetry timeloop

#so yeah intent doesn’t really…… matter and usually i don’y reblog things onto this blog

#but this time it’s kinda interesting bcs i Did actually intend it Kind Of this way but then also the intent got Out Of Control!!!

I wrote a post [link] about time standing still during the plague, so it makes sense that that was the first meaning that hit me. I can see *multiple* COVID-related interpretations, though: one could also interpret it, not as waiting for the spring of 2020 that never came, but as waiting for the metaphorical blooming of a post-plague world (which *could* potentially happen during a literal springtime too).

The second interpretation that occurred to me was a Northerner moving to the Southern Hemisphere, the experience of the local Octobers carrying what they still think of as a certain essential April-ness.

Also I just took the exam for my penultimate semester and late next month I start my final semester, so…obviously it depends on how much 2020 Bullshit I have to deal with in the next few months, there could well be delays, but the single most likely month for “what month am I going to officially receive my diploma” is April 2021. Next spring will likely be a metaphorical spring for me personally, the blooming of the next stage of my life, entering my career.

Plus there’s that seasonal-depression interpretation, which I did not think of on my own but yeah I can see that.

Layers!!

Tags:

#reply via reblog #poetry #time #death tw #covid19 #is the blue I see the same as the blue you see #illness tw #adventures in University Land