The Education of O

I desperately need to learn more math. Recently I invented "lerp" from first principles. Would have saved some time if I knew its industry-standard name :/

Got my horse to water. Now for the easy part

are these instagram chicks finally starting to realize their "therapists" are just scamming them?

EA ideas suffer from a particular problem where many people who've been significantly influenced by them still feel like endorsing any part of the worldview means endorsing all the people and orgs who are currently operating under the EA umbrella. But the ideas are general enough that this seems like saying you can't identify with capitalism without vouching for every self-described capitalist. I think this is an underrated reason more people aren't vocal about the EA ideas they've found valuable. And I'd like to see that change. I don't really care whether someone calls themselves "an EA" or want them to endorse any one thing that's happening or make the brand high status. It's because it's a real deep loss when people can't even point their audience toward the ideas that shaped how they think about the world. The ideas deserve guideposts pointing new people toward them. There are plenty of influential people who I know have been shaped by the basic EA framework who could serve their audiences well by just saying what they liked and what they didn't, but that influence stays mostly invisible unless you already know to look for it. I think it's on people into EA to show that in promoting specific ideas we're not just trying to make the brand or people high status, but it's also on people who have been influenced a lot by these ideas to take a bit of a leap for the sake of the ideas themselves.

my FIL has a friend in her mid 80s who has fallen victim to a con artist cleaning lady. this lady has managed to gain access to her credit cards and changed the old woman’s phone number so that nobody can get into the account using 2fa. she stole her car under the guise of getting it serviced. the old woman refuses to believe that the cleaning lady has done anything bad, despite the fact she was previously convicted of fraud. it’s been an absolute nightmare that my FIL is spending hours and hours making calls and visiting her home and the bank trying to fix. he’s also helping her with things like taxes, which she previously relied on her late husband for and is too old to figure out now. she has no children and it seems that without my FIL’s awareness and kindness, she’d likely be scammed out of everything she owns. it’s so sad to me. at a certain age people become helpless like children again. super scary how many people in that state have no family to help them, and that number’s only going up.