Sam Nolen

Touched sand and factory reset my nervous system and I’m fine now

I get it! You don’t want to admit you have a medical condition that is “disreputable”. You don’t want to admit you’re not just sick, you’re disabled. I empathize with these impulses but it’s sad to see people who could shift the conversation choose not to.

Prominent people who clearly are suffering from complex chronic illness (in many cases long COVID) are explaining it as POTS. This is becoming a pattern. I think it’s because 1. POTS has few denialists compared to related conditions like ME and 2. it sounds reversible.

@davidbessis I have no idea what they are trying to accomplish after reading this. It’s grandiose in a Silicon Valley way, and it’s precious in a Reddit way, but it communicates nothing at all.

A rare read — an AI-for-math startup thesis that is clear, well-written, and meaningful.

Am I ready? Am I equipped to help anyone? I want to be able to say yes. I want to be ready but I need to be consistent, reliable, and clear-headed and I’m very far from that right now. I need to log off and work seriously on that.

If we’re going to see not just imperial decline but collapse, then, being unfortunately an American, I ask myself, what am I without empire, which provides the material circumstances for a lot of comfortable anti-imperialism reading groups etc. Am I any good?

I had a pretty bad mental health episode this week. Really my mental health has been garbage for most of the past 3-5 years of physical health struggles, and it also hasn’t been a priority. The priority has been to physically recover to work and survive. (1/5)

Generally I have little sympathy for “the news is affecting my mental health” but at this conjuncture I actually need to take a break and get a grip

it’s incredibly blackpilling to me that it takes rising gas prices and rising gas prices alone to have people turn against the war in iran, and not the american government murdering thousands of children and civilians in iran. americans are incredibly selfish

Keep this in mind: When these types of supply chain disruptions inevitably happen as a result of climate collapse, there’ll be no one to negotiate with, no treaties to sign, no end to the “conflict.” Climate tipping points do not know or care about you, & they will not reverse

@tolstoybb Exactly, the only hope now is that we will become a great whale carcass on the bones of which (once we are fully devoured) there will grow coral etc.

America’s Suez Crisis.

@toomuchistrue This is still relying on market mechanisms. It’s indistinguishable from the logic that got us to this point.

strange how everyone seems to be panicking instead of considering that if oil gets expensive enough, climate change might stop

I want to make something clear about this: artificial fertiliser use fundamentally changes the composition of soil and soil ecosystems. Yield collapse is assured by its absence. Whilst possible, soil restoration takes a long time.

An example of actual essential AI reporting is Ed Zitron’s deep dives into OpenAI’s finances. Everything of importance is independent now.

I like when you see a post that’s like “this is urgent, essential AI reporting” and you read the article and it’s just an anthropological study of San Francisco

Something I miss about my twenties is that I was totally unafraid to start reading anything, no matter how long or inessential. I had no sense that anything might be a waste of time.

The Iliad and the Bhagavad-Gita both open with a guy who won’t go to work because he’s depressed. Okay, that’s fiction, but the single best documented Roman is Cicero and no one today is in their feelings as much as that guy.

@suchnerve The goal is not to provide what people need and want, the goal is to squeeze blood from a stone to appease endlessly rapacious shareholders and/or VCs. There is truly nothing that can be done about it unless you have a weapon in hand and are ready to help abolish the value-form

Software developers are broadly in denial of the fact that nearly every feature people need and want has already been added, which means the industry must learn to get used to the idea of shifting to being maintainers rather than pioneers