Charles van Straubenzee
162 posts
Charles van Straubenzee
@mlxzdk
Erstwhile Governor of Malta
the ramparts Katılım Kasım 2024
484 Takip Edilen27 Takipçiler
Coming to the opinion that it might be a waste to have cultivated expertise in esoteric radio lore only to switch to finance.
Maybe I can switch to RF engineering instead 🤔
There's still a thesis to write between me and unemployment. Then I'll have to make a decision.
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Charles van Straubenzee retweetledi
Charles van Straubenzee retweetledi
@nithin_vejendla @GroovySciFi In the sense that, given you're an expat, you're more likely to be a wrong 'un
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Italy is very safe. The incidents in this article occurred at expat meetups in Milan. Unfortunately, any expat meetup group gets taken over by extremely strange antisocial people who are hard to get rid of. I know because I helped organize a language exchange in Pisa 1/2
New York Post@nypost
Tourist's Italy dream vacation takes nightmare turn after she's kidnapped twice in one day trib.al/b8b9AGu
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@GroovySciFi Yeah, a lot of adverse selection in the expat world in general unfortunately
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which I no longer attend. Within a year, it was taken over by two types of unpleasant people:
1. Desperate dudes (both Italian and foreign) looking to get laid
2. Scammers
Trying to force people to stop attending a voluntary free meetup is next to impossible, so I abandoned ship
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I made a lot of money in the stock market during covid so despite being well below median income for my age I was well above the median wealth. Sadly 4 years in Italy have taken their toll and I am now only slightly above median wealth for my age.
Cassie Pritchard@hecubian_devil
Realizing I’ve been below the median income for Millennials in all but 2 years of my life
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@meaning_enjoyer Those traditions and structures are quite different to modern USian protestantism. But, if you dispense with them, you lose the essence of Christian mysticism. A great book on the link between (Eastern) theology and mysticism is V.Lossky's Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church
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@meaning_enjoyer Surely a central element of the Christian mystic tradition is that it has always existed inside a "dogmatic" framework (see the early councils of the church) and an organised church structure. These things are seen as necessary to prevent descent into pure spiritual delusion.
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i want to sell tpot on the idea that the corpus of christian mysticism offers a better framework for the sort of states one encounters through meditation and psychedelic (ab)use
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@GroovySciFi But can't she stay around just a little longer?
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The Lord of Hosts dismisses the nations as quickly as he commissions them. I wouldn't cling to them too tightly.
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@GroovySciFi I've seen a few in Italian-tourist towns in Sicliy. A strangely high proportion of children I saw there were twins though, so perhaps the only large young families happen by accidentally getting an extra.
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I have lived in Italy for four years and have never seen a couple in their 30s with 3 children. French tourists in Italy seem to frequently have 3 children, even when the parents are young by European standards.
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@novusolus There's a similar metaphor of belief systems as fields in W.V.O. Quine's "Two dogmas of empiricism"
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A healthy belief system can withstand the hailstorm of new data, incorporating, revising and judging as it swims upstream. A degenerate system must shield itself, hide from the light, and waste resources stitching up its rickety scaffold to remain afloat with the tide.
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@jeff_of_norwich The French First Republic! Not quite the Empire yet
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Statue of La Valette, the Frenchman who helped save Malta from falling (again) to the Caliphate
Maltese Francophilia isn't random
Malta was part of the French Empire for a few years after all! 😅
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I can't believe it's taken me this long to return to the motherland
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@BigBreakfastLob Do you find isolated vocab like this effective? I tend to prefer sentence mining, but to be fair haven't really tried anything else.
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I am about to speedrun med + law student experiences.
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Friends, I hope to return my account to my origins (less investment poasting, and more niche cultural references poasting). If all proceeds well this summer, I should be able to read Guermantes' Way in French. I will blog my experiences with it on this acc too with a long thread.
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@onehappyfellow Can't say I'm a fan of his, but what's wrong with this video in particular?
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I really really really want to understand how a person like him can get such a big audience
the content is trash but he undeniably made himself influential. how????
Gary Stevenson@garyseconomics
Do bond markets control the government?
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@TigerYardley @RJTMorrissey Murray Edwards is still all female as well
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@RJTMorrissey I believe that Newnham still survives as the last bastion of female supremacy?
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The leadership was like that for years. I was at Magdalene College in the late 80s - it was the last all male college in Cambridge in my final year. The JCR voted against allowing girls to join the college. The academic leadership had other ideas and they obviously won. What’s sad is that they didn’t even consider that real diversity would allow for single sex colleges for men and women along with mixed colleges. But it really wasn’t about diversity. It was about removing all male institutions.
Norman Leeds@NormanLeedsFRSA
@yuanyi_z Deeply embarrassing for Cambridge University, now gone Full Woke.
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@macrocephalopod @Duderichy I somewhat accidentally ended up in a tax haven, mostly to take a very good job it would otherwise have been hard to get. I don't regret it for that reason, but I very much agree it would never be worth it for tax alone.
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The same line of thinking is why I won’t live in a tax haven btw. I would have more money, but I’d be putting distance between my family and friends, living somewhere with a poverty of cultural experiences. Huge quality of life downgrade in return for what? Bigger number in bank account? Lmao.
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> I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SPEND ON!
> When I realized this, I kinda had a panic attack nervous breakdown. And I'm still recovering from it.
I’ve heard this from at least one other person
There’s something about having more than you could need to work again
47fucb4r8curb4fc8f8r4bfic8r@47fucb4r8c69323
I hit my number three times. First in the early 2010s after some very well timed trades. That gave me the opportunity to quit my professorship, move to NYC, and try to be a journalist (which I was for about a year). Then in the late 2010s when I finally got back the money I lost in my divorce via saving/investing. I upgraded my lifestyle at this point (went from a 2br to a penthouse, started flying business, etc). Then again in 2023, when I tried to upgrade my lifestyle again by going to the next level. This time, I kinda couldn't. Like, I could go to more Michelin star restaurants more often, but course menus bore me. Watches are idiotic, I prefer beer to wine, and even with wine I don't like French wines all that much. Owning a Lamborghini in Thailand is idiotic, and I hate cars anyway. My Mercedes is comfortable and stylish, and besides I live on an island with (almost) no cars. My car is parked on the mainland. I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO SPEND ON! When I realized this, I kinda had a panic attack nervous breakdown. And I'm still recovering from it. When you spend 10 years of your life obsessively accumulating, and then you get to a position where you feel safe, you'll be tempted to upgrade your lifestyle if only because, if you reach your goal, you'll look back and realize how empty, how pointless, how meaningless goals really are. They're just ways to avoid indignity and misery, they aren't enlightenment, joy, happiness, or any of those things. But when you've finally got to a place where indignity and misery are mathematically impossible, you either start making up fake indignities like a child ("I want the Patek Philippe and I'm a loser if I don't get it!!!") or, even darker, you become an optimizer ("well, this custom sound system sounds really great, but I should probably add speakers in case I need to get something from the garage while rewatching Independence Day"). The thought "I'm rich enough, there's nothing else to buy" is at first horrifying, existentially terrifying, because it makes you realize you never really wanted or needed to be rich. You just didn't want to be poor.
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Alright maybe I stay in exile just a little longer
UNN@UnityNewsNet
Gary Stevenson set to be appointed as an 'Economic Adviser' in a new Andy Burnham administration.
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