If you want to begin to understand this I recommend you read two books, in the following order:
The Abolition of Britain - Peter Hitchens
The Abolition of Liberty - Peter Hitchens
Synopsis:
Two worldwide wars led the flower of Britain to be torn to shreds by shrapnel into rat food. The millions of broken homes, (furthered by the subsequent exodus of native Brits which continues somewhat to this day), and society which has never really recovered led to the spivs taking charge. Hence the phrase 'mediocre mafia'.
Things are changing for the better, and will continue to do so. But right now we are seeing the light of the past fade and the lunacy (PR1D3overPrinciples) of a nation only just coming to terms with this loss from 1914 onwards - hence 'special relationship' sucking up to 'USA'/'YU-ES-AY'.
> Things are changing for the better, and will continue to do so.
I'm curious as to what gives you cause for optimism. As an interested observer from Australia, it seems to me that the UK has a very bleak immediate to medium term future. But I'd be happy to hear why I'm wrong or what I'm missing.
I'll explain it, since no other local has bothered to.
In the UK, those who know don't call the so-called 'DfT - Department for Transport', we call it Department for Roads, because that's what it is.
But those who actually know are not yet a majority. The majority think 'Dr Beeching' (an mere frontman), destroyed the railways, yet have never heard the name Ernest Marples. Since the Marples creature unleashed carnage decades ago, there hasn't been a single government in Westminster which has not been anti-railways.
Nobody wants 'HS2'. The railway industry does not want it. The PR for it is ridiculous even by Unicorn-chaining HM Gov standards (see: Gareth Dennis), even the contractors admit its a farce.
Not only does 'HS2' reflect the bigotry of UKpolitik against real civilised transport, but it reflects a much greater stagnation and overall decline in the 'yu-kay' formerly Great Britain.
double-O says it's not going to reach Birmingham.
Word is it will be scrapped.
I would have Kim Johngson, Goodun Broon, Warmonger Bliar et al replant every tree they dug up along the route; all whilst singing that old favourite: "all the world's a stage, for ...'
Here's an idea:
(medium-complexity) port of android to TCB which partitions /hardware/ (cpu-cache, RAM), on a per app basis. Android's app-based permissions API doesn't require too much work to do this.
My perspective:
Either cheap-monolithic-SOCs get really cheap, (for low end devices), with long-term-support, and low power, or compartmentalised architectures start to gain the traction that will kill of SOCs.
Now more than ever a truly independent alternative to Google is needed; (with its aims to improve from what Google left behind circa 2016).
Is anybody aware of a search engine which would prioritise results properly, i.e:
1) works without JS
2) first-party JS
3) 3rd party verified libraries
4) any JS
a) No ads
b) non-JS, non targeted ads
etc
The business model would be the ability to run advanced searches and a live-search (instead of cached index), as a premium product (say varying from 2gbp/month upwards). And given the relative simplicity of the operation compared to Google - I think it would be profitable.
If you use any currently standard protocol such as wireguard, openvpn, IPSEC with Suite-B ciphers you are getting 'enhanced-privacy'* from eavesdroppers on your local network, which eliminates alot of low-tier/easy MiTM attacks.
A two-layer/double tunnel is pretty-good for mitigating against most commercial data collection by eavesdroppers. (Though your tunnel-exit/last-VPN-hop, (varying by client-destination protocol), and the destination IPs/sites will still be able to collect data of course).
*Consider privacy a vector. Suite-B ciphers are not perfect, letalone their freely-available implementations.
How is it a "colossal failure"?
Amazon has tens of millions of these devices which are a 24/7 microphone, and with the wireless transceivers even more data-collection capabilities.
I think the problem is that they have no consent to collect or use any of that data, and if they were caught collecting/using it, they’d end up in massive legal trouble.
Just because it’s technically possible doesn’t mean it’s actually possible.
When you say 'any of that data', you are incorrect.
Simply to function (voice recognition) the echo microphone is constantly on, in the same way that any input device needs to be on to function.
You're not only incorrect, but your comment goes on to be incoherent, did you think before writing this comment?:
'Just because it’s technically possible doesn’t mean it’s actually possible.'
All this musk-style motivation 101 BS is direct from the CIA's manual on domestic espionage - frustration from within.
The means define the ends. If you treat people like shit, or as morons who need BS pressure techniques, you'll get a demoralised company.
Treat people well, set them clear targets and say it without fluff when they're slacking. If you can't tell somebody they're not good enough, you cannot help them to be good enough. None of this psychobabble BS where you're constantly second-guessing in a failed attempt to retain them on the rat-race for the rest of their life. Stop building ratrace companies.
They build rat-races because they are all still rats at heart.
Endemic crisis of leadership and vision bred men who cannot think
outside the maze. No amount of climbing extended their horizons or
released them from slavery to money and the misery it brings.
> released them from slavery to money and the misery it brings
Good point. I often wonder what motivates a billionaire to keep making more money. For most it seems like ego, greed, and inability to rethink their life. I suppose they climbed so high by being relentless and not stopping. This is what makes the example of Yvon Chouinard so interesting.
The "disorder" is a description of about how it's causing people pain / trouble in their lives. Experiencing something, and processing it, and it having a lasting impact on your life and your thinking isn't by definition disordered. But having it cause problems in your life, e.g. physical touch from people you trust causing panic attacks, that's a disorder.
Forgetting, as a treatment, may be something some people want.
To my eyes your comment is pretty dismissive ("drug people up"). A little empathy, and an open heart goes a long way here.
A long time ago my wife shattered her wrist. In the ER, they explained that they needed to reset it so it could be put in a splint before surgery could be scheduled. They weren't going to use anesthetic. She would be conscious of the pain as they moved her wrist into position, but they'd give her something so she wouldn't remember the experience.
15+ years later she remembers telling them to go ahead and do it, then there's a hole in her memory for about 10 minutes.
Interesting -- I recently had a similar experience (very bad wrist fracture), but they used a nerve block instead. I was conscious and it was painful, but not unbearably or traumatically so. I wonder why a nurse would choose one over the other.
Dunno. It was about 15 years ago and may have had something to do with the extent of the injury? She was 25 at the time and the orthopedic surgeon kept saying he couldn't imagine the amount of energy it took to do that much damage to such young bones. The wrist was shattered into at least 5 pieces.
This is one reason we always give a shoutout to Tria Orthopedics in the Twin Cities, MN region when someone needs an orthopedist: she was one of their first patients and the wrist maintained full range of motion after healing.
Ah, mine was "only" three pieces... still the talk of the ER though :P They did insist on full anesthesia for the surgery (the fracture was unstable so I needed a plate). Glad to hear she recovered full range of motion; getting close myself.
Ketamine has been something I have seen used. The lack of reaction from people having broken bones manipulated while under its influence is very disconcerting.
Because sometimes there's no war left to fight but the soldiers still can't return their minds to civilian life. They're disabled, unable to hold down a job reliably, unconfident in their ability to do normal tasks like go grocery shopping without having a debilitating panic attack which causes additional heart damage every time.
That's a bit like asking "why is pain after an injury a 'disorder'"?
Just like some people are left with persistent recurrent pain in an otherwise healthy and recovered limb (often known as rheumatism), some people are left with persistent recurrent stress after trauma - such as suddenly bursting out crying or cowering in fear after incidentally remembering trauma that happened 20 years ago while doing the dishes.
When this sort of thing happens, we call it "post-traumatic stress disorder", and are looking for ways to treat patients. Making them forget the event is one possible treatment, and there are others (such as trying to disassociate the event itself and the strong negative feelings).
Just like acute pain is useful to keep us healthy, acute stress is very important. But chronic pain and post-traumatic stress are not useful to anyone, they are failure modes of these otherwise useful systems, and it makes sense to try various ways of correcting them.
I should have said (and I believe explained in the rest of the comment) that it's a bit like asking "why is pain after an injury a 'disorder'" of a person suffering from chronic pain. PTSD is a disorder beacause it is a chronic version of a completely normal accute reaction.
I don't consider any kind of acute pain acceptable personally. Even if short-lived. Unless it's needed as a signal to pull your hand out of a fire or something.
If you didn't feel pain while having an injury, you'd quickly find that you are extremely likely to greatly aggravate that injury (e.g. walking with a broken bone in your foot is possible, but it hurts terribly to help you not do it, sine it will ruin the bone and any chance of ever recovering).
We know this for sure since there is an extremely rare disease in which people literally feel no pain. These people have a very tough life, and have to constantly manually inspect their bodies to make sure they don't have injuries they're not aware of (cuts, sprained ankles etc.), and are also essentially unable to participate in any kind of sports because of this.
I'd prefer to be careful rather than be tortured into the correct behavior. As for walking on a broken ankle, I'd categorize that under temporary pain signals to notify you to stop a behavior. Also it takes a lot less than acute pain to keep normal people from injuring themselves.
If you didn't feel pain, you wouldn't know that you had an injury, or even that you are getting close to injuring yourself.
For example, when putting your hand on a surface, if you didn't feel the pain of extreme heat, you wouldn't know that your skin is getting burned. Or, if you miss-stepped and sprained your ankle but didn't feel the pain, you would keep putting your full weight on that sprained ankle and probably turn it into a serious injury. Without pain, you wouldn't know you're having a heart attack and wouldn't seek any medical attention. I can go on and on: accute pain is extremely important to basic health. You can't "be careful", unless you think it's reasonable to get full medical checkups after every walk.
Note that "acute" means "short lived", it doesn't mean it's particularly strong. It's the opposite of "chronic", which means "long term". For example, when you prick your finger, you're feeling some (very mild) accute pain, which serves the purpose of letting you know your skin was pierced and you need to stop pushing in that direction.
Indeed. And now that you've repeated your point, I shall repeat mine: "I don't consider any kind of acute pain acceptable personally. Even if short-lived. Unless it's needed as a signal to pull your hand out of a fire or something." Please pay extra careful attention to that last sentence this time around. Anyway let's recall this isn't a thread about fun physiology facts and making magic wishies that turn into nightmares or something, but about the appropriateness of intervention in someone's emotional suffering. Since you've written so much on the importance of acute pain, how long would you say is an appropriate amount of suffering before someone can get relief? Here's an odd one, what about an acute anxiety attack??
I don't know what point you think I'm making. The poster I was replying to was claiming that stress after a traumatic experience is normal, and not a disorder that should be treated.
My whole point was that this is utterly wrong, and that, while stress during a traumatic experience is normal and potentially even required (akin to pain), stress after the experience is definitely not a good thing, and should be treated in any way possible (whether that's family support, therapy, or medication is up to every individual case) - just like chronic pain.
Relating to pain, people should get relief as soon as the pain has done its job - that is, as soon as they know about the injury and the area they have to protect - any more pain than that is unnecessary, even if normal. In the vast majority of circumstances, I imagine this is probably a matter of seconds or minutes after the injury occurred. I can imagine some weird, vanishingly rare, circumstances where the pain may legitimately need to be endured for longer, but that would be splitting hairs.
And an accute anxiety attack (assuming this occurs without some traumatic event) is obviously not normal or helpful and should be treated immediately. If this anxiety attack is happening during a traumatic event (say, I am currently being held at gunpoint), taking a pill to calm down may be less required (though even that is debatable, especially for a panic attack, which generally leaves you entirely helpless).
I think you're repeatedly "dad-splaining" basic science facts. True of false?
When has grief done its job? I've never been held at gunpoint yet somehow experienced stress on many occasions. How many of those do you want to subject me to? The DSM generally says 6 months to become a disorder for most things from what I've read. How about considering a question that isn't trivial to answer?
Not all stress after trauma is a disorder. A disorder, by definition, is a big problem. It’s “an illness or condition that disrupts normal physical or mental functions”. Think PTSD as “disorder from stress from trauma”.
How is it a solution? If giving people a drug reduces disorders and that benefit outweighs the cost, then it’s generally considered a good idea.
Synopsis: Two worldwide wars led the flower of Britain to be torn to shreds by shrapnel into rat food. The millions of broken homes, (furthered by the subsequent exodus of native Brits which continues somewhat to this day), and society which has never really recovered led to the spivs taking charge. Hence the phrase 'mediocre mafia'.
Things are changing for the better, and will continue to do so. But right now we are seeing the light of the past fade and the lunacy (PR1D3overPrinciples) of a nation only just coming to terms with this loss from 1914 onwards - hence 'special relationship' sucking up to 'USA'/'YU-ES-AY'.