@jeffcliff @typicker I haven't even seen compelling evidence that we're dealing with a public health crisis that needs to be managed, certainly not to the extent that we've managed this one. Even jurisdictions that "did nothing" did more than any other health situation in the past 100 years.
There are a few control cases where government didn't do much, and it doesn't really look like letting people manage on their own has been more or less fine.
For the massive amount of money we've spent, we could have put a billion dollar health center in every city in the country. Instead, we've got nothing to show for what we've done except a severely weakened economy, a severely weakened populace, a lot of people dead by suicide, drug overdose, domestic abuse and other things that were preventable but for the measures taken to fight covid.
There are a few control cases where government didn't do much, and it doesn't really look like letting people manage on their own has been more or less fine.
For the massive amount of money we've spent, we could have put a billion dollar health center in every city in the country. Instead, we've got nothing to show for what we've done except a severely weakened economy, a severely weakened populace, a lot of people dead by suicide, drug overdose, domestic abuse and other things that were preventable but for the measures taken to fight covid.
@jeffcliff @typicker That's a matter of opinion.
I'd rather be dead than live under authoritarianism forever. What was the point of fighting the nazis if we just became them on a longer timeline?
I'd rather be dead than live under authoritarianism forever. What was the point of fighting the nazis if we just became them on a longer timeline?
@jeffcliff @typicker https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/offices-saskatchewan-ditching-restrictions-province-reopen-1.6097530 That's unexpected but positive.
We can't Wuhan forever.
We can't Wuhan forever.
@jeffcliff @typicker Oops, now it mutated. Pax Covidicus now and forever! Epsilon variant for the loss!
@jeffcliff @typicker The vaccines aren't 100% effective. No vaccine is 100% effective. Therefore, even at 100% vaccinations we'll still see new cases, and so we're all thralls of the covid empire forever.
@jeffcliff @typicker At this point, isn't that the correct thing to do? I mean, we're at like 80% vaccination rate, at what point do we get our fundamental human rights back?
I guess never. We're all just thralls of the covid empire now.
I guess never. We're all just thralls of the covid empire now.
The Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) is an optical disc technology developed between April 2004 and mid-2008 that can store up to several terabytes of data on an optical disc 10 cm or 12 cm in diameter. The company responsible for HVD went bankrupt in 2010, and the product was not launched.
I mention it because I remember for years seeing stories hyping up this format, and predictably after years of hype, the company went out of business with nothing to show for the effort.
I mention it because I remember for years seeing stories hyping up this format, and predictably after years of hype, the company went out of business with nothing to show for the effort.
This is a message for the next generation.
Yesterday something pretty bad happened to me. We loaded up our new car, took it to a lake about an hour away from town, and had a wonderful day swimming. Right up until we were about to leave, and I realized that I hadn't taken my keys out of my pocket. Some fishy somewhere now has my keys.
Of course this isn't a good thing. I'll completely own it, I should have not been dumb and taking my keys out of my pocket before going in the water. There was a lot going on and I just didn't think about it and it happens.
Of course the first reaction needs to be to own your mistakes. I know a lot of people who go through life making really bad mistakes like that without ever changing anything and they just go from crisis to crisis and they expect everybody to drop everything to help them out. You know, at some point it isn't the world's fault that you're in crisis when you're always in crisis.
We see this a lot in the workplace, people who are constantly complaining that they are being targeted and abused at work. It can definitely happen sometimes, but the sort of person who ends up complaining about the sort of thing often always seems to have somebody that they're complaining about, and not just a little bit, a lot. When people go around constantly complaining that the world hasn't handed them exactly what they want at all times this is what's meant when people call our generation entitled.
The only way to get better in this world is to recognize when you've made a mistake, own it, and take real measures to try to make sure that the same mistake doesn't happen again. There is a big difference between a mistake that happens once and a mistake that's happening constantly. Unfortunately, a lot of people never grow out of making the same mistakes over and over again and here's a little secret: when you are 20 and you're constantly making the same mistakes, people tend to give you a little bit of leeway. Once you hit 30, people expect you to start dealing with your own problems. By the time you're 40, people are sick of your shit and you have probably long since been removed from any tracks that could lead to a successful life. Fix your shit early.
The world isn't digital. A lot of people run around acting as if the world is digital. Buy this, I mean that everything is a Boolean equation. If you do X then Y. Immediately, and if you do X then Y today then the same will be always true. Likewise, if you do X and Y does not happen then why cannot happen. This is a very simplistic view of the world, and in our world surrounded by digital technology it's very easy to get caught up in this way of thinking, but that's not the real world. In the real world, maybe if you do X then Y today, but maybe tomorrow they get sick of your shit and that's no longer the case. Maybe you do X then Y today but it ends up messing up another equation later so you don't get Z. And sometimes there's noise in the signal, variables that you're not even aware of so even though under pretty much any circumstances you could expect that if you do X then Y, today that's just not the case.
I'd like to apply this way of thinking to dealing with people. Let's say that you're late for work today, and you don't get in trouble for it. Some people think "oh I guess this means I don't get in trouble for being late" but that isn't necessarily the case. It could be that you're normally on time and so your boss decided to overlook it today. It could be that your boss wanted to do something about it but it got busy so he didn't mention anything about it. It could even mean that your boss noted it, and later on when it comes time for a raise he's going to remember that you were late that day. If you continue to come in late based on the premise that you didn't get in trouble the one time, you are relying on a Boolean equation in an analog world. Eventually you will get in trouble, you may even get fired, and if you are the sort of person who unreasonably thinks the world is digital then you may complain that it's unfair that you got fired because you were able to get away with this before, but in the real world what actually happened is your boss gave you some leniency and you abused it and you probably deserve what you got.
If you continuously try to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences in terms of whether you get awarded today or not, there's no guarantee, sometimes you really are being oppressed in which case maybe it's time to look for a different job, but often in this analog world of hours trying to do the right thing regularly puts a little weight on the balances for tomorrow. In another story I talk about how I nearly flunked out of school in high school. I noticed a major difference between the way I was treated when I was a terrible student and the way I was treated when I was a good student. It didn't happen every single time, and sometimes you ended up getting a teacher who didn't know you were a good student yet, but as a general rule of thumb in this analog world, by making the teachers life easier by being a good student you could actually get away with more in general then if you are constantly pushing and constantly trying to break the rules for stupid reasons.
All that being the case, there is a pragmatic reason to own your mistakes early, and to try to make things right rather than assuming that because you haven't had an immediate consequence there won't be any.
Again in the context of a workplace, sometimes this ends up working out in a lot more literal sense than you think. I remember one time, somebody ended up getting in trouble at work and they we're told by their employer that they needed to write something up about what happened. That individual ended up sitting there and whining and crying about how it was unfair that it was barely even a problem that they should just be let off the hook. Obviously, that was not going to be a helpful way to make it to their next work day. My recommendation to that person was that they should come up with a list of things that they would do to try to make sure that the thing that had happened wouldn't happen again. In doing so, they were able to come up with something that looked half decent and they were able to basically move past that moment.
When I lost my keys, I was pretty upset about it. Anyone would be. Suddenly, I was going to have to leave my car where I parked it. The cost of a set of car keys is really expensive, and in that moment I wasn't even thinking about that far ahead. I was just thinking about the fact that in this moment I didn't have the keys that I needed.
The next step for me unfortunately was to start figuring out how I was going to get myself out of that mess. the first thing that we needed to figure out was how I was going to get from this Lake in the middle of nowhere back to town. The next step after that was going to be to figure out how to get a new set of car keys. After that, I was going to have to figure out how to get back there to get my car. Finally, I had to start thinking about what I was going to do in the meantime without the use of my vehicle.
When you end up in a situation like this, there's really no use to dwelling on it for too long. I was definitely really upset with myself for a few minutes because I've made a stupid mistake, but dwelling on it wasn't going to help us get home and it wasn't going to help us get a new set of car keys.
Thankfully, we had gone to the beach with some friends who brought their car so we asked those friends to bring everyone back in a couple of runs. I stayed behind for the second run and in the meantime went through and tried to find those keys as best I could in the lake. Tried my best, but ultimately they just were nowhere to be found. So the next step was to start figuring out who could get me a new set of keys, and after looking at a few different options it looks like the best option will be the dealership. It's not going to be cheap to replace those keys in a modern vehicle, but it's important to have contacts to that whatever is going on in the moment, odds are you are not the first person on the face of the planet to have this problem.
So let's look at what happened here: we started with a stupid mistake on my part resulting in a major consequence, and the first step was accepting that I made a mistake and resolving to make sure that the same mistake didn't happen again. The second step was figuring out what steps I was going to have to take to make things right first in the short term and then in the longer term, and then once you have a plan together executing that plan. Arguably there's a fourth step that you should probably pay attention to, and that is being thankful and gracious to the people who helped you out along the way. People don't need to help you out, and if they do it's something to be grateful for.
This process is important not just when you're a kid, but as you age. Especially as you get older, people aren't going to tolerate someone sitting there crying about their mistakes. You have to have get over your mistakes and fix them. Eventually you won't be the youngest person in the room, and people will be looking at you for stability, so wallowing in your failure won't just affect you negatively, the people around you who expect you to lead them will also be negatively affected. You should be preparing for that day from early on, because it is our destiny to one day become the older generations leading our own families.
Yesterday something pretty bad happened to me. We loaded up our new car, took it to a lake about an hour away from town, and had a wonderful day swimming. Right up until we were about to leave, and I realized that I hadn't taken my keys out of my pocket. Some fishy somewhere now has my keys.
Of course this isn't a good thing. I'll completely own it, I should have not been dumb and taking my keys out of my pocket before going in the water. There was a lot going on and I just didn't think about it and it happens.
Of course the first reaction needs to be to own your mistakes. I know a lot of people who go through life making really bad mistakes like that without ever changing anything and they just go from crisis to crisis and they expect everybody to drop everything to help them out. You know, at some point it isn't the world's fault that you're in crisis when you're always in crisis.
We see this a lot in the workplace, people who are constantly complaining that they are being targeted and abused at work. It can definitely happen sometimes, but the sort of person who ends up complaining about the sort of thing often always seems to have somebody that they're complaining about, and not just a little bit, a lot. When people go around constantly complaining that the world hasn't handed them exactly what they want at all times this is what's meant when people call our generation entitled.
The only way to get better in this world is to recognize when you've made a mistake, own it, and take real measures to try to make sure that the same mistake doesn't happen again. There is a big difference between a mistake that happens once and a mistake that's happening constantly. Unfortunately, a lot of people never grow out of making the same mistakes over and over again and here's a little secret: when you are 20 and you're constantly making the same mistakes, people tend to give you a little bit of leeway. Once you hit 30, people expect you to start dealing with your own problems. By the time you're 40, people are sick of your shit and you have probably long since been removed from any tracks that could lead to a successful life. Fix your shit early.
The world isn't digital. A lot of people run around acting as if the world is digital. Buy this, I mean that everything is a Boolean equation. If you do X then Y. Immediately, and if you do X then Y today then the same will be always true. Likewise, if you do X and Y does not happen then why cannot happen. This is a very simplistic view of the world, and in our world surrounded by digital technology it's very easy to get caught up in this way of thinking, but that's not the real world. In the real world, maybe if you do X then Y today, but maybe tomorrow they get sick of your shit and that's no longer the case. Maybe you do X then Y today but it ends up messing up another equation later so you don't get Z. And sometimes there's noise in the signal, variables that you're not even aware of so even though under pretty much any circumstances you could expect that if you do X then Y, today that's just not the case.
I'd like to apply this way of thinking to dealing with people. Let's say that you're late for work today, and you don't get in trouble for it. Some people think "oh I guess this means I don't get in trouble for being late" but that isn't necessarily the case. It could be that you're normally on time and so your boss decided to overlook it today. It could be that your boss wanted to do something about it but it got busy so he didn't mention anything about it. It could even mean that your boss noted it, and later on when it comes time for a raise he's going to remember that you were late that day. If you continue to come in late based on the premise that you didn't get in trouble the one time, you are relying on a Boolean equation in an analog world. Eventually you will get in trouble, you may even get fired, and if you are the sort of person who unreasonably thinks the world is digital then you may complain that it's unfair that you got fired because you were able to get away with this before, but in the real world what actually happened is your boss gave you some leniency and you abused it and you probably deserve what you got.
If you continuously try to do the right thing, regardless of the consequences in terms of whether you get awarded today or not, there's no guarantee, sometimes you really are being oppressed in which case maybe it's time to look for a different job, but often in this analog world of hours trying to do the right thing regularly puts a little weight on the balances for tomorrow. In another story I talk about how I nearly flunked out of school in high school. I noticed a major difference between the way I was treated when I was a terrible student and the way I was treated when I was a good student. It didn't happen every single time, and sometimes you ended up getting a teacher who didn't know you were a good student yet, but as a general rule of thumb in this analog world, by making the teachers life easier by being a good student you could actually get away with more in general then if you are constantly pushing and constantly trying to break the rules for stupid reasons.
All that being the case, there is a pragmatic reason to own your mistakes early, and to try to make things right rather than assuming that because you haven't had an immediate consequence there won't be any.
Again in the context of a workplace, sometimes this ends up working out in a lot more literal sense than you think. I remember one time, somebody ended up getting in trouble at work and they we're told by their employer that they needed to write something up about what happened. That individual ended up sitting there and whining and crying about how it was unfair that it was barely even a problem that they should just be let off the hook. Obviously, that was not going to be a helpful way to make it to their next work day. My recommendation to that person was that they should come up with a list of things that they would do to try to make sure that the thing that had happened wouldn't happen again. In doing so, they were able to come up with something that looked half decent and they were able to basically move past that moment.
When I lost my keys, I was pretty upset about it. Anyone would be. Suddenly, I was going to have to leave my car where I parked it. The cost of a set of car keys is really expensive, and in that moment I wasn't even thinking about that far ahead. I was just thinking about the fact that in this moment I didn't have the keys that I needed.
The next step for me unfortunately was to start figuring out how I was going to get myself out of that mess. the first thing that we needed to figure out was how I was going to get from this Lake in the middle of nowhere back to town. The next step after that was going to be to figure out how to get a new set of car keys. After that, I was going to have to figure out how to get back there to get my car. Finally, I had to start thinking about what I was going to do in the meantime without the use of my vehicle.
When you end up in a situation like this, there's really no use to dwelling on it for too long. I was definitely really upset with myself for a few minutes because I've made a stupid mistake, but dwelling on it wasn't going to help us get home and it wasn't going to help us get a new set of car keys.
Thankfully, we had gone to the beach with some friends who brought their car so we asked those friends to bring everyone back in a couple of runs. I stayed behind for the second run and in the meantime went through and tried to find those keys as best I could in the lake. Tried my best, but ultimately they just were nowhere to be found. So the next step was to start figuring out who could get me a new set of keys, and after looking at a few different options it looks like the best option will be the dealership. It's not going to be cheap to replace those keys in a modern vehicle, but it's important to have contacts to that whatever is going on in the moment, odds are you are not the first person on the face of the planet to have this problem.
So let's look at what happened here: we started with a stupid mistake on my part resulting in a major consequence, and the first step was accepting that I made a mistake and resolving to make sure that the same mistake didn't happen again. The second step was figuring out what steps I was going to have to take to make things right first in the short term and then in the longer term, and then once you have a plan together executing that plan. Arguably there's a fourth step that you should probably pay attention to, and that is being thankful and gracious to the people who helped you out along the way. People don't need to help you out, and if they do it's something to be grateful for.
This process is important not just when you're a kid, but as you age. Especially as you get older, people aren't going to tolerate someone sitting there crying about their mistakes. You have to have get over your mistakes and fix them. Eventually you won't be the youngest person in the room, and people will be looking at you for stability, so wallowing in your failure won't just affect you negatively, the people around you who expect you to lead them will also be negatively affected. You should be preparing for that day from early on, because it is our destiny to one day become the older generations leading our own families.
@AlexJones Fully vaxxed here, still have to get nose blasted, still have to wear a mask, still have to live under all the restrictions I did before I wrecked two weekends sick in bed due to the damn thing.
They're never giving us our fundamental human rights back.
They're never giving us our fundamental human rights back.
@Shadowman311 Oh, maybe this means the FBI will do something about the violent riots that happened for almost 200 days last year?
Oh, no? They don't care about violent extremism when it's the right kind? Good for them, I guess. I'm sure they'll be on the right side of history.
Oh, no? They don't care about violent extremism when it's the right kind? Good for them, I guess. I'm sure they'll be on the right side of history.
There's a concept in maintenance management: The idea is that every time you do maintenance, there's a chance you take something that works and turn it into something that doesn't work. It's contrary to the idea of "doing something" for the sake of itself, because if you're not reducing the risk then you're going to cause the thing you want to prevent. Because of that, proper maintenance management says that you do exactly the amount of maintenance you need to, and not one bit more.
This concept I believe does extend to medicine as well. Every time you do something as a doctor, there's a chance it makes things worse. That goes with surgeries, as well as various prophylactic treatments. You have to be very careful when you're mitigating risk that you actually are mitigating risk. It's very easy to say "We have to DO something!" and in doing something you cause more harm than you would have by doing nothing.
This concept I believe does extend to medicine as well. Every time you do something as a doctor, there's a chance it makes things worse. That goes with surgeries, as well as various prophylactic treatments. You have to be very careful when you're mitigating risk that you actually are mitigating risk. It's very easy to say "We have to DO something!" and in doing something you cause more harm than you would have by doing nothing.