The political system has no interest or even real incentive to fix climate change. Money has corrupted our governments too deeply to alter course in time.
There's nothing that you, I, or any individual can do to affect our current trajectory. Not at any scale that actually matters.
The only answer is to stop producing fossil fuels right now full stop, no conditions, no "phasing out". And that is simply not feasible because of money. Because we've spent the last half a century ignoring the problem.
What do we do? No amount of voting or recycling or buying new cars is going to make any change. It hasn't for 20 years. By the time our society gets its collective head out of its ass enough to vote for political change, we'll already be deep into global famine.
I predict two general scenarios:
1. Status quo. Nothing changes, world governments will attempt a massive last ditch effort far, far too late to make a difference. A huge portion of all species die. From there pick your favorite post-apocalyptic movie.
2. The people wisen up and overthrow their governments, string up oil execs, and force decarbonization at any cost.
We are currently, right now, TODAY at the stage where we must decarbonize at any cost. Literally no cost is too high. If we shut down oil today, it will be hugely disruptive and destructive to global society. A lot of people will die and many, many more will suffer. This will go on for decades most likely. But the alternative is most likely an extinction level event. Global famine and plague, entire species going extinct, loss of coastlines, entire ecosystems collapsing en masse.
Fundamentally, I don't think human psychology at scale can handle that. I expect that nothing barring miracle technology is going to save us, and in our current socioeconomic system, that might be even worse than nothing.
So yeah, I think we're doomed. We let capitalism go on for too long and it's too late to change direction. Those with power have systematically taken it from the rest of us so that the people with the incentive to survive longer than their career don't have the power to. The rest have the power to build nuclear bunkers under a mountain, or a rocket to Mars.
All because some men wanted to see a number go up.
Maybe we'll crack fusion and suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere, but that again simply buys us another few generations until our industrial waste heat boils the oceans. Until then, rich men will attempt to use carbon capture as leverage to extract even more money and power. "Pay me or I turn the climate up another degree" is not far off from what they're doing today.
The only thing that can save us is widespread revolt, strikes, overthrowing governments and forcing action. We've given the political system nearly a century to sort this out, and they are very clearly not interested. It's going to kill us if we don't do something.
To be fair if we really wanted to , we could phase out fossil fuels instantly and still keep the whole capitalist gig going. Go all in on nuclear power, outlaw cars and replace them with networks of public transit powered by electricity. The government throws billions of dollars into infrastructure creating jobs and opportunity. Go all in on a massive public works project; We know a lot of this is doable on a decade long timescale because China can do it.
The problem is that this would require our senators and judges and representatives to not be old and decrepit. They would need to actually live long enough to be affected by climate change. They would need to stop selling out thanks to $10k checks from gas companies and oil companies.
The problem is ultimately the country is ruled by rich old people wanting to extract more riches before they die no matter the consequence. And by the time the consequences do come to roost, the only thing that can be done is pissing on their grave.
No we can't. We need something to replace the fossil fuels instantly. We can build more quickly than we do now. But we can't instantaneously build nuclear to counter the instantaneous fossil fuel shutoff...
Hmm, I think cynicism is a reasonable response to how we got in this mess, but some of these scenarios seem fairly unconnected to climate change, like "a huge portion of all species die." Human beings have certainly brought about plenty of extinction, but mainly though destruction of habitats, overfishing, etc. Climate change is just a one of many pressures on animal and plant species we have brought to bear.
I think it might be possible to take an absurdist attitude, we're pumping out solar panels and wind turbines at a furious clip, it's possible that capitalism will incidentally save us, just like it's incidentally almost killed us up to now.
What would happen if you went around to every house in your neighborhood and smashed everyone's printers? Would you be fined 0.01% of the cost of damaged items, or would you go to jail?
There is no good answer. Adderall is a miracle drug for people like us.
To get by without, you have two options: incredible discipline and force of will, and overcompensating with other stimulants.
Meditate, exercise, do anything it takes to force yourself into whatever structure fits your life. I'm talking to-do lists for your to-do lists and scheduling your daily time down to brushing your teeth. You have to force structure onto your life to contain your attention and energy. You have to make some truly profound changes in your life.
Or drink way too much caffeine, smoke too many cigarettes and try very hard to not think about the damage you're doing.
The only shortcut I know of is to get enough black market adderall for a couple of months and use that to keep yourself functional long enough to build the systems and habits that can keep you going without.
See the Getting Things Done method, pomodoro, and find a good task management system. Write everything down, find a system for keeping notes. Also try keeping a diary.
Also try to reduce your phone and computer usage. If your phone supports it, use monochrome mode. Push yourself to read more books instead of watching videos or playing games.
I thrived without meds during my time in the Army. The structure, being told what to wear, when to show up, and the clearly defined expectations were great.
Attempting to emulate this personally as a civilian has yielded mixed results.
The market is ripe for a First Sergeant as Service solution.
> Attempting to emulate this personally as a civilian has yielded mixed results.
Right. I'm not even trying, even though I highly suspect it would've helped me if it worked - because I know it won't, because my brain is able to tell when I'm trying to trick it, and will refuse to cooperate.
Actual military? That could work, because the order and structure would be beyond my control. Self-imposed? It's hard enough on drugs, impossible without. Asking someone else to impose some structure on me, as an adult? My brain knows it's even easier to cancel the deal, weasel off of the agreement - especially if it has literally no other purpose and meaning than trying to trick myself into functioning.
So yeah, I'd be up for becoming a paying customer of some First Seregant as a Service thing, but I can't imagine how you could structure it so it doesn't feel artificial and voluntary, making me unable to stick to it any more that I can to exercising (a highly beneficial activity that my brain recognizes as artificial and bullshit, and refuses to allow it).
I'd say this is where there is a whole area of non-sexual Dom/Sub dynamic kink relationships. It exists, just has a taboo attached to it and is also difficult to find and negotiate.
That's... something so unusual that it never would've occurred to me. Thanks for posting it!
When you put it this way, I think you're absolutely right about this - those kinks are exactly what one should expect to have a "halo" around them, of people unknowingly self-medicating their undiagnosed ADHD.
YMMV, but this has been great for a "natural" feeling focus for myself as someone with ADHD.
2 pills of BodyBio PC (phosphatidylcholine + 3 other phospholipids)
3g MSM
1g DHA
140mg elemental Magnesium Threonate
Optionally:
1g Taurine + 100mg caffiene pill
Another optionally
50mg provigil/modafinil (typical dose is 200mg)
=============
Most folks are focusing on dopamine increasers (amphetamines, provigil, dopa mucuna, caffiene, sugar) as dopamine stimulants, but too much has its rough points as others have pointed out.
But focusing on supplying underlying nutrition has had pretty profound effects on my mental ability to get things done and focus.
> Meditate, exercise, do anything it takes to force yourself into whatever structure fits your life. I'm talking to-do lists for your to-do lists and scheduling your daily time down to brushing your teeth. You have to force structure onto your life to contain your attention and energy. You have to make some truly profound changes in your life.
This doesn't help when I try to get out of bed in the morning and my body does not move. Does not move. I can't do it.
I'm not going to tell you that happy thoughts and a motivational poster will fix you. I will say that once you get past the stage you're in and have the ability to make those big life changes, this part will happen less often and you'll find it easier to break through. When you're generally healthy, it's easier to recover when you're sick. Applies just the same to mental illness as it does to an infection.
Unfortunately, you're in the hardest part. Or at least it feels that way in the moment. I don't have any good advice other than to seek help and do whatever gets you to the next day. Try your best to make small improvements when you can. It is okay to not make progress every day, but you also have to not let that be an excuse. You really have to push yourself. It might be the hardest thing you'll ever do, but you aren't the first to have done it.
Sorry all I have is the same pithy nonsense you get on Facebook. At the core, it's good advice, but you have to know the limits. There are some battles you can't fight. Sometimes you are in a truly impossible situation. No internet comment can help you with that, but you can find help if you can bring yourself to ask for it.
> I don't have any good advice other than to seek help and do whatever gets you to the next day.
Well... I did seek help, and ended up on dextroamphetamine, which helps me more than any routine possibly could. It's just that my tolerance got bad enough in just 3 months that now I can't take it more than once every few days, or else it completely stops working.
I can't take more because my body already requires a dangerously high dose (30mg/day) and raising it any further causes heart issues. (I tried)
I'm also on dextroamphetamine and have been for ~10 years now, with some breaks. When I get off it, I always make sure to taper down the dose. Otherwise I'll be miserable for no reason. I also skip doses on the weekends, which gives me body a chance to reset and keeps the tolerance cliff from growing higher every week. It does come with the tradeoff of sleeping most of the weekend, but if my body needs it, then who am I to say no?
Regarding inability to get out of bed: I empathize completely and have been there, even while on medication. There's not really a magic solution, but if you are getting off medication, you just need to give it time and eventually (could be months) your dopamine levels will return to normal.
Also, I think it's important to recognize the difference between motivation and willpower. If you have ADHD, I'm probably preaching to the choir here. But for me, "motivation" is a long term drive more akin to ambition, whereas willpower is a short term muscle that I have trouble exercising. That's what makes ADHD so frustrating: I have an abundance of ambition and motivation, but a dearth of willpower. I know what I should be doing, but I just can't do it. This is a distinction that someone suffering from ADHD will recognize immediately, but a neurotypical person can only understand in the abstract, if at all.
Getting out of bed is about willpower, but it can also be about motivation - it's worth examining your life trajectory to see if you're moving in a direction you're happy with, because if the cause is lack of motivation, then pills will hardly help (other than a desire to take them driving you to get out of bed). Pills can fix a lack of willpower, but no pharmaceutical can give you motivation. That's a long term drive that you need to seek for yourself.
> by that kind of logic people shouldn't make any recurring purchase of anything since in future terms might change.
20 years ago, you'd be right. This argument would be paranoid nonsense. But that's not the world we live in.
We live in a world where your car manufacturer wants you to pay monthly for heated seats. Today it's normal for hardware you bought outright only works if you pay rent to someone else, and services like Netflix reduce features and increase the price. Amazon can, at any moment, delete books from your kindle that you already paid for. Digital rent extraction is a huge part of how the tech industry operates today.
Yes, you should avoid subscriptions where you can, because there is a real risk that they'll change the rules to take away what you paid for down the line.
And especially don't trust the advertising company to not put ads in their paid tiers down the line.
Yeah, I'm pretty okay with sponsored segments. By and large, the people I watch only accept sponsors that appear to be legitimate, and the read is generally "here's this service and what it does, give it a try and thank them for feeding me this week!" Or "I've been using this service since they started and I think it's pretty cool"
They're generally not low quality scammy products or designed to extract money or spy (with the exception of VPN ads, but that's a different issue).
I'm alright with them. I tend to skip them more these days because I can only hear about Brilliant and Squarespace so many times in a day
I'm happy subscribing to creators' patreons or Kofi or whatever because almost all of my money goes to them.
Whereas on YouTube, most of my money or ad-generated money goes to Google. YouTube pays creators very little and treats them very poorly. There's a new adpocalypse every few months where YouTube will randomly change the rules, retroactively demonetize and delist videos, while offering no chance to appeal or even have videos reviewed by a person.
Without even considering Google's generally evil and monopolistic behavior, why would I ever willingly give them money?
YouTube's shitty treatment of creators is why every video now has a sponsored segment in the middle. They aren't paying enough and creators need additional income sources. YouTube can decide at any moment without notice to nuke your entire business and give you no option to recover. They keep shittifying the website with shorts and aggressive ads and dark patterns to drive up ad exposure, but this doesn't translate to higher pay for creators. In no circumstance is giving google more money going to fix any of the problems.
All a YouTube plus subscription gets you is YouTube will turn off the ads and dark patterns designed to force you to pay for the subscription. As well, I have exactly zero faith that YouTube won't also start showing subscribed users ads in a year or two.
You and your creators use yt as a service. Their servers and network. Payment and others. That services don't come for free.
If you don't give them any money, why Google need to provide the services?
If you don't like that, you can build your own server and steam from that.
Theyve also dominated the market with anti-consumer practices.
They should take responsibility for being the Internets video archive because they've faught so hard to become it and pushed everyone else out the market.
And I'd rather not use YouTube! I want nothing at all to do with google. They quite simply do not deserve my money.
How much money has google made on selling my data? What do I get in return? More ads. If I pay google to remove the ads, they still sell my data and they take my money directly. By playing the game at all, you can only lose. So to the extent that is possible, I don't play. I also feel exactly zero remorse for taking advantage of a company like google. Their practices are deeply unethical and harmful, being a monopoly is inherently bad, and stealing from them is an ethical net positive.
Don't be reductive, it makes you look uninformed. This is a much more complex issue than simply paying for bandwidth.
I am the proud owner of my own firstnamelastname.com
When I first ventured into web hosting, the domain was dead, but still registered. I did a whois and got Firstname Lastname. Not sure what I expected, really.
After some years I randomly checked with my favorite registrar, and it was suddenly available for $15/yr. Immediately grabbed that, no regrets.
A couple of years ago, I got a series of emails from some broker offering me an increasing amount of money for the domain. I think they gave up at $5k, and I never responded. $5k would have been incredible at the time, but by then I was fully committed to my FirstName@firstnamelastname.com email address.
I guess I never really put a website at that domain, it's just an email address. I keep telling myself I'll do it eventually, but it's been almost 10 years at this point...
Many years ago I got mylastname.com for a normal price (like $20 a year or whatever) and then forgot about it. It helps that I have a very unique surname.
A few years afterwards, I woke up one morning with the bright idea that I should probably secure mylastname.com in case some jerk off domain name squatter grabs it. I do a whois from the command line (I don't trust the online domain name search sites anymore) and saw that it was already taken! What the hell! My last name is so unique, how did anyone know, let alone a domain name squatter, to snap this domain name from under my nose!
I go to try and find more info about the domain outside of what was in the whois info (eg. who should I contact to try and negotiate a price for mylastname.com) but the domain didn't go anywhere when typed into my browser. Bummed out, I go into my usual domain name registrar dashboard to try and perhaps get the .net version or something, and there I saw in my list of currently owned domain names, the very mylastname.com domain I was looking at buying.
The squatter was me all along! </callWasComingFromInsideTheHouse>
Some domain companies will buy the domains you searched and try to resell them for a premium. Happened to me just a few months ago. I was using a GoDaddy search since it seemed like a useful way to bulk search some tlds for what I wanted. Looked up a few things that I'm almost 100% sure nobody else was looking for since they were very unique. Didn't buy them that day, but spent a while browsing them using the GoDaddy search tools.
One day later I decided I was ready and went to buy one, but everything I had searched was suddenly only available to buy jacked up with a huge "premium" fee and seemed to be owned by GoDaddy. Never again will I search using their console.
Some registrars have done something called "domain tasting", where they will register a domain when they see interest via their web whois tool. Then they will offer it for a higher price. They were able to register it for five days without paying anything, and then cancel the registration if they didn't manage to sell it.
This has mostly stopped since about 2010 when registrars had to start paying a few cents per transaction. Since the overwhelming majority of those never converted to a sale, it's no longer really economically viable and I don't think it's much of a worry today.
I admire your decisiveness on the email branding. I own a few domains I could use for such a thing, but I'm still trying to figure out the best local-part.
Consider the possibilities! Sure, you could go classic and timeless, like yours, with FirstName@. But what about cool and terse, like initial@firstnamelastname.com? Or something unique and artisanal (that will hopefully never get old), like io@firstnamelastname.com?
(I've even seen a few people do hello@firstnamelastname.com, though I could never bring myself to do such a thing.)
I have a domain hack of my name so I use firstname@firstnamelastna.me
I wish I could get just lastna.me or lastname.com but I share the name with someone who's worked at icann, google and the white house at various points. I never had a shot.
For long names I'd suggest the [a-z][0-9][a-z].tld abbreviated form. Those three char domains with a digit tend to be readily available, don't command premium pricing, and are very convenient when you need to type an address in or verbally tell someone how to contact you.
that's been a big thinker for me as well; wth no real solution yet..
first@firstlast.example seem rather redundant; like saying "John John Doe". I guess if it was a business it would make more sense; like "John, owner of John Doe Inc." and "Bob, assistant for John Doe Inc." but for a personal domain... eh.
Similarly mail@ email@ seem 'too obvious' since.. of course it's email? Directional local parts like talkto@ to@ only make sense for inbound-only or outbound-only.
I do like io@! hello@, contact@, note@, or communique@ also seem more neutral but at this point I'm getting dizzy lol.
first@last.example seems more simple in retrospect but also harder to get.
Funny enough, I'm also the owner of firstnamelastname.com: I bought it when I was first in college, and sold it for $300 or so to an actor of the same name when I was entirely broke. For some reason, he let the domain expire, and I bought it again a few years later at the registration price. $5k at this point wouldn't be nearly enough for me to change email addresses again, that's an absolute pain.
Finally got around to putting together my personal site this past weekend. Just a simple blog and centralized place to post updates and photos for family. I was dragging my feet for a while but finally made a big push.
Nostalgia for the simplicity of the GeoCity days made me apprehensive over the years.
If someone offered you $5000 to change the email address you've used on every website for a decade, would you? All of your banking and financial accounts, your phone and utility bills, your doctor. Could you even identify every place you've ever used it?
That sounds like an awful lot more than $5k worth of work to me
You can configure your server to download and mirror videos from other instances, but (iirc) only if the remote instance allows it, and if it allows your instance to "follow" it.
The fact that you haven to follow other servers as a server is insane. It also really fucks up federation, because some instances do not allow follows at all. Tilvids does not, which was a major factor in me shutting down my instance.
That said, the mirroring system is really nice. You have all sorts of dials to cache only the x most popular videos for y days and up to z GB. You can have it mirror videos from user subscriptions in a similar way, and right next to the 'download video' button is one that says 'mirror' that does what you think.
P2P as a client is a whole different matter, and I also have never, ever seen my client uploading. I think this is purely a function of how few users are actually on peertube. The chances of you watching the same video as another person on the planet is incredibly small.
I really, really want to like peertube, but it really is completely unusable. Discovery is abysmal because there's no global search. You can't rely on federation to find content because federation is opt-in and has a crazy nonsense mechanism.
Peertube is not fit to run a single-user instance like mastodon unless you only want to publish. It simply doesn't work at all if you only wish to consume video. The only real way to use the service at all is to sign up on the biggest instance you can find and hope they have interesting videos.
I have a server with tons of free disk and a big fat fiber line, and the idea of mirroring peertube videos of small creators sounds like a perfect use for my spare resources. I would love to mirror tilvids to help reduce their server load, but I simply can't because they choose to disallow it.
The only alternative is LBRY/Odyssey, which is vastly more popular, but has some serious issues with violent/extreme/illegal content and is fully wrapped up in blockchain bullshit.
After having been through this crap and now being on the other side of the desk, I've come to the conclusion that this is simply standardized testing for adults, with all of the same myriad problems. It doesn't identify what you're actually looking for, gives you more false signals, and alienates the talent you actually want.
The way we do these at my current job is extremely productive for us. We look for two things, apart from basic competency: problem solving, and asking for help.
It's structured as a two 90 minute pair programming sessions. Interviewee shares their screen, and we work through the problems together. Obviously it's pretty hands-off, but we guide and nudge where appropriate. Here and there, when they use something that relates to a deeper topic, I'll ask questions to gauge how deep their knowledge goes. Like asking if they know how C#'s foreach works under the hood. Not as a selection criteria, but simply to get a sense of how much they know.
Use of a search engine is openly encouraged. A lot of the time, we don't even care if the program actually runs. If they struggle with syntax or the correct function overload, we'll help them out after giving them a little time to find the solution.
I also throw in a problem designed to get them stuck, and ask questions I expect they can't answer. A good programmer asks for help and admits when they don't know. A bad one bullshits their way through.
We want to hire programmers who can do a real job in the real world. Implementing red/black trees on a whiteboard blindfolded isn't a job skill, it's a party trick. That's not something a programmer will ever need to do.
In the real world, real people use google and stack overflow. They don't have encyclopedic knowledge of the entire language's syntax. They ask their coworkers for help or opinions.
Our interview process is designed to show us how a person will function in a scenario as close to the job as possible. Because that's what we're hiring them for. We look for their ability to work through a problem with the resources that everyone always has. We look for how they work with others and how much they lean on coworkers.
This has worked out extremely well for us. We've hired some very talented individuals, and have totally avoided the archetypal shitty dev. The people we hire immediately mesh with the team, and learn and grow the way all programmers do.
Granted, we are a small company and we have the time to have our own programmers giving interviews. We also have a much higher need to be so selective. But every single person who has made it to the technical interview has remarked unprompted that it's the best interview they've ever had. And I mean 100%.
It's because we treat candidates the way we'd treat our own employees. They get to know what the job is like, and we get to know how they'll do the job.
The political system has no interest or even real incentive to fix climate change. Money has corrupted our governments too deeply to alter course in time.
There's nothing that you, I, or any individual can do to affect our current trajectory. Not at any scale that actually matters.
The only answer is to stop producing fossil fuels right now full stop, no conditions, no "phasing out". And that is simply not feasible because of money. Because we've spent the last half a century ignoring the problem.
What do we do? No amount of voting or recycling or buying new cars is going to make any change. It hasn't for 20 years. By the time our society gets its collective head out of its ass enough to vote for political change, we'll already be deep into global famine.
I predict two general scenarios:
1. Status quo. Nothing changes, world governments will attempt a massive last ditch effort far, far too late to make a difference. A huge portion of all species die. From there pick your favorite post-apocalyptic movie.
2. The people wisen up and overthrow their governments, string up oil execs, and force decarbonization at any cost.
We are currently, right now, TODAY at the stage where we must decarbonize at any cost. Literally no cost is too high. If we shut down oil today, it will be hugely disruptive and destructive to global society. A lot of people will die and many, many more will suffer. This will go on for decades most likely. But the alternative is most likely an extinction level event. Global famine and plague, entire species going extinct, loss of coastlines, entire ecosystems collapsing en masse.
Fundamentally, I don't think human psychology at scale can handle that. I expect that nothing barring miracle technology is going to save us, and in our current socioeconomic system, that might be even worse than nothing.
So yeah, I think we're doomed. We let capitalism go on for too long and it's too late to change direction. Those with power have systematically taken it from the rest of us so that the people with the incentive to survive longer than their career don't have the power to. The rest have the power to build nuclear bunkers under a mountain, or a rocket to Mars.
All because some men wanted to see a number go up.
Maybe we'll crack fusion and suck all the carbon out of the atmosphere, but that again simply buys us another few generations until our industrial waste heat boils the oceans. Until then, rich men will attempt to use carbon capture as leverage to extract even more money and power. "Pay me or I turn the climate up another degree" is not far off from what they're doing today.
The only thing that can save us is widespread revolt, strikes, overthrowing governments and forcing action. We've given the political system nearly a century to sort this out, and they are very clearly not interested. It's going to kill us if we don't do something.