The Americans found an unfinished Nazi research project on LSD and took the obvious next step, added it to the list of crimes against humanity. No, wait, that’s not what happened.

The history of LSD is tragic, given what we now know about its therapeutic properties. Tripped by Norman Ohler is an interesting text on the subject.

Make America white again

These guys were the first against the wall, come the revolution.

Curious what happens to these people when the prevailing political sentiment changes. Do they recant their beliefs or retreat to an incel bunker or what?

Is this mostly a ADHD thing? They tried to make me learn times tables at school but that never stuck. Recently had to solve a problem with a CRC and part of that was manually calculating a long division in binary. At some point realised I didn’t even know how to do that in decimal so wound the clock back 35 years and learnt it from scratch. Badda bing badda boom, working CRC 🤓

I would not argue against that. Two steps forward and one back is usually how it goes with technology. Reliability is the problem that has only been achieved relatively recently. I remember a time when the hard shoulder was full of stalled vehicles. Japanese cars from the 70s and 80s were notably inferior to their competitors. We’ve come a long way in making this technology polished and affordable to the masses. Now the science shows us it is contributing to climate change and we have a new challenge. So it goes.

Car companies hate this one trick.

I would argue that it is already the case that cheap cars look and perform excellently, compared with cars produced fifty years ago. They are more reliable, economical, comfortable, higher performance, superior in virtually every respect.

The other factor to consider is the use case. Something like a Ferrari is not reliable compared to a VW Golf, it sucks at carrying passengers and cargo, terrible fuel economy, it is horrible value for money and inferior in most ways apart from one - compensating for a small penis. That is its chief purpose and it is supremely well crafted for this use case.

Source: automotive engineer of 25 years.

They’re working on it.

I love confident people explaining how a supply chain works in an advanced economy, especially when they have no clue how any of this stuff is made.

Eat my shorts

What a loser

While I recognise some of this dysfunction in my life, I think it is possible to avoid the worst excesses. I have a workshop and a tool fetish, which can be expensive but most of my tools have paid for themselves several times over considering the money saved doing things for myself.

We have bad impulse control but we’re also good at improvising, it’s not all bad. I don’t actually care that much about having an attention deficit, I just want to be treated compassionately, the way I treat other people.

Get in on the ground floor

Cultivating a good working routine is fulfilling but it’s a long road and we should not criticise people who struggle with this. When I hear people railing against authority figures it makes me cringe because it’s a sign that they’ve been mistreated (oppositionally defiant disorder).

They tried to shoehorn a social component into Reddit post hoc but it is essentially a lurkers habitat and distinct from the walled gardens of FB, etc. that was the draw for me and now it’s been enshitified, too bad. I’ve been on Lemmy ever since the API culling, I think this concept has got legs and it’s a credible alternative.

In that case we have to rely on Elons white power.

Maybe those are the subreddits to inhabit but they will inevitably devolve into content and moderation that serves the lowest common denominator as they grow past ~100k subscribers. That seems to be the case generally, whatever the platform. The scale motivates dysfunctional behaviour and we have to either accept it or move on. I feel better off social media in general but miss the discussion.

Deception on the scale they are proposing with this bot experiment would be a disaster for personal relationships, it’s definitely not okay. I think of those subreddits as a type of entertainment, it’s not my thing but I understand how people are titillated by stories of personal trauma. It was one of the many reasons I permanently abandoned Reddit after fifteen years, it has become a cesspit of bullshit. Some people like rolling about in that stuff, others don’t understand it’s shit.

I don’t know what your experience is on Reddit but mine came to be that what I was reading couldn’t be trusted. I remember stumbling across a post on some technical subject that I happen to understand very well and couldn’t believe the twaddle that was advanced in the comments with utter conviction and certainty. It got me thinking about all the things I had read and just accepted because I know nothing about them. This is our information landscape, for better or worse.

Why should it be any different in a role playing scenario? These platforms are motivating engagement and people love an emotional story and so that is presented to us. If we loved true stories more, we would get them instead. I don’t think there’s any malice intended, we’re getting what we want because morons love their feels over their knowledge. It’s the reason the Americans have Trump and Elon and antivax, these people inhabit social media but it is the last thing they should turn to for truth because they are dumb as a sack of rocks and are getting played, shorty.