This does work for some people, but my experience was that having my livelihood depend on my passion completely killed my passion.

District attorney’s quote in the LA Times article this one sources:

Arson to me is a real head-scratcher. I do not understand … somebody who is suspected of arson does something where they get no value out of it

He’s only got half of the equation here. People generally don’t premeditate actions when they expect to lose more than they’ll get out of it. This story is so sad when you realize that this guy got to the point where he concluded prison couldn’t be any worse. I don’t think that just manifests out of thin air overnight after a couple hard days.

Like 5-10 years ago there was a “subreddit simulator” which would generate fake reddit posts generated from specific subreddits. It was almost entirely garbage, but that time the /r/askreddit simulator posted “Redditors of reddit, what’s the biggest mistake my mom makes in bed?” probably justified that whole endeavor. Such a perfect encapsulation of the content.

idk posting “ai;dr” as a reply is not functionally different from posting “ai” other than needing three more characters to type.

If either party actually disagreed on principle, we would have heard someone criticize the war on principle and not on breaking procedural norms or not planning the war well enough. Virtually every critique I have seen from elected officials, at least before this explicitly genocidal statement here, is some form of those two. “This war was poorly planned” is only a sidenote observation from someone actually opposed to a war of aggression. It’s the most milquetoast opposition you can give to claim you were always against it when things go wrong. No way in hell am I going to accept that they were powerless to stop him when no one will even clearly lay out the actual reasons why this is wrong.

We know that actions speak louder than words, but if we want to give anyone else in our government the benefit of the doubt we’re gonna have to figure out what comes next after words.

Yes someone needs to warn the Iranians that this administration doesn’t always negotiate in good faith, they’re clearly not aware of that possibility.

Arch Without Touching The Terminal

FINALLY.

Officers now have to decide whether or not to commit war crimes? Wow, that is a dilemma, I wouldn’t want to be forced to make that decision. This article does a really good job humanizing their struggle, you can’t help but feel bad for them.

multiple IVs administered

Actually yes, people being crushed under inescapable debt should get to enjoy things sometimes.

You’re right, it is.

You can try all you want, but you will never get me to read the articles before commenting.

99.9% of people using WINE/Proton aren’t going to have any idea what fsync is

Speaking, although I’ve heard the term thrown around a lot. Can I get a layman’s overview?

A friend once texted me that she really liked my writing and said “It sounds like you”, with “sounds” italicized. It was like she was just focusing on my writing and hadn’t even thought through that using “like you” as unambiguously complimentary is a bigger compliment towards me than towards my writing.

Instead, billionaires are surrounded by people who they can’t trust. Sycophants everywhere, who don’t care about who you are as a person, but what you can do for them. You’re less likely to have people calling you out for things, but you also won’t get much affirmation for the genuinely good things about your personality.

This is a really good observation and makes perfect sense when you say it out loud.

In any way, Kent stepping down from the position is just an opportunity for the US to insert someone who is more class conscious, is more willing to bat for US policy, and will fall in line with the status quo no matter what imperialist vassal state is benefiting from the US’s attempts of capital accumulation.

I’m extremely skeptical “more willing to bat for US policy” means anything beyond “isn’t actively worried about being a fall guy”. Admittedly I hadn’t heard his name before today though, so maybe I just lack the imagination to picture someone in his position today being unwilling to “fall in line with the status quo” before this letter.

I was really passionate about math for years, and I spent most of my free time on it. When I got to grad school and I had to do it to survive my passion dried up. I think it became harder to have fun when I knew I wouldn’t be free to put a project down if I wanted to, and when math stopped being fun I stopped being good at it.

I passed all my coursework and exams but I burned out before finishing my dissertation and dropped out seven years into my phd program. It’s six years later and I still barely touch it. I passed qualifying exams in algebraic topology and today if you asked me to compute a homology group I’d be clueless.

I’m not going to discount that monetizing your passions works for some people, but the experience of finding out you’re not one of those people is soul-crushing.

Iran, for its part, has rejected the possibility of any ceasefire until U.S. and Israeli ‌strikes end

Does this need to be said? Should I have expected otherwise?

There should be an AI helper to pet and play with my cat, that way all I need to do is buy food and pay vet bills and clean the litter.

I do play some video games and I guess this is nice, but what I really enjoy is listening to music. When am I gonna get an AI helper to listen to songs for me so I can get that done in peaceful silence instead?

I always found it overwhelming to get started on big messes, so cleaning everything up immediately would get around my executive dysfunction. When I got in a relationship with someone whose approach was to be a human hurricane and then deep clean every once in a while it was a culture shock and it took years of me being a bad partner to become more responsible. I didn’t really understand the executive dysfunction so I self-loathed over it.

I think it’s disingenuous to say those two murders turned public opinion when those two murders were a direct result of public opinion already turning. Everyone has grown up immersed in propaganda, it’s not helpful to shame people for shedding that too late.