a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
NikolaiFyodorov's comments
activity:
NikolaiFyodorov  ·  18 hours ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 17, 2024

Good to hear. What's the job?

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  1 day ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 17, 2024

How is it that, this far into my career, so much of my work output still comes down to a last minute cram?

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  9 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 10, 2024

Everybody drop what you're reading and go pick up Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  9 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Unraveling Havana Syndrome

So accidental injury as a side effect of attempted high-tech bugging? That is interesting. Thanks for linking.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  10 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Unraveling Havana Syndrome

This is wild.

"A consensus has formed among the growing community of AHI sufferers that the U.S. government — and the CIA in particular — is hiding the full extent of what it knows about the source of Havana Syndrome. The victims offer two general hypotheses as to why. The first is that releasing the full intelligence around Russian involvement might be so shocking as to convince the American people and their representatives that Moscow has committed an act of war against the United States, thereby raising thorny questions as to how a nuclear power fond of showing off its hypersonic missiles ought to be made to pay. The second is that acknowledging Havana Syndrome is caused by a foreign adversary could put a damper on recruitment to the CIA and State Department."

Hell of an indictment either way.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  16 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: April 3, 2024

Sent a couple of chapters from my latest experiment in novel writing to an agent. Haven't heard back, which may be par for the course. I'll keep going with it regardless and try again once it's closer to completion.

Had a great long weekend visiting Beechworth, land of Ned Kelly and the place where I was raised but haven't returned to in years. Perfect weather. Excellent wine. Great food. Astonishingly friendly people.

Would that not sit under task aversiveness? That is, due to the fuzziness / scariness / complexity of the task, one to seeks to avoid it until it can be put off no longer?

I can relate to your description completely, btw. (In fact, it's the reason I found myself looking up procrastination.)

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  28 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 20, 2024

I have yet to read a single Douglas Coupland novel. Which one should I start with to get maximal wowage?

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  30 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dark Hubski

Welcome aboard sogre. Gmail seems like a big obstacle to getting new subscribers to this site - and for old subscribers who've forgotten their password and need to renew it. #bugski

> Based on an abstract of the new study provided to me by the American Heart Association [...] the researchers did not ask people if they were following time-restricted diets. What they did was look for people who only ate for a short period of time during the day based on two reports to the survey of what they ate.

Yeah, that seems like a caveat that deserves more attention.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  30 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: This Was Village Life in Britain 3,000 Years Ago

Wild that trade networks in the British Isles extended at least as far as Iran even then.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  30 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 20, 2024

I DREAM'D in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the

attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream'd that was the new City of Friends;

Nothing was greater there than the quality of robust

love—it led the rest;

It was seen every hour in the actions of the men of

that city,

And in all their looks and words.

This surprises me.

I practice 16:8 (actually, probably closer to 20:4) four days a week. The idea that I've been (potentially) damaging myself the last couple of years of doing so is counterintuitive to how I've felt over the same period.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  31 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Putin Wants War in the Balkans

This article suggests the draft age in the United States was extended to 64 during World War Two (?), although I note that military service was to remain capped in the mid-40s.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  31 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Dark Hubski

Hi mk. There are good discussions on here that I value. On occasion I direct friends to them (originally in the hope that they would create a username and get involved in the discussion). I feel like it would be a loss if those conversations were no longer visible to people who drop by. Just my thoughts.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  40 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: March 6, 2024

Great novels I've read recently:

- Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

- The Trees by Percival Everett

- Plains of Promise by Alexis Wright

Currently back on the Everett wagon with Erasure, which may well be the best of his I've read yet.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  44 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: People Aren't Still Having Sex

>For others in the same white Christian theocracy movement, it's because they know that limiting access to those things will disproportionately impact non-whites poorly.

How does that work? If people of colour are reproducing at a higher rate than white people, then surely that disproportionately impacts the racists interested in maintaining a white majority.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  45 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: People Aren't Still Having Sex

Seems more like white people still aren't having sex. What's going on, white people?

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  46 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024

Congratulations, dude.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  49 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024

You're in Europe, aren't you? Are you launching from there?

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  51 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 28, 2024
NikolaiFyodorov  ·  61 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: OpenAI's Sora

> I recognize I'm the only person here who knows what "rotoscope" means which is part of the problem

Nah, man. Everybody who played Prince of Persia on the Apple 2E remembers rotoscoping!

If any of these turn out to be AI generated, I'll cry.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  72 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: February 7, 2024

I don't believe I've heard that proverb before, so thank you for sharing it. Sorry to hear you're in a slump. I hope you find yourself in higher climes, soon.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  73 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 563rd Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately"

Did you love Skid Row and Slaughter as an early 90s teenager, before they went to seed?

Then you'll love Dead City Ruins.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  79 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 23andMe’s Fall From $6 Billion to Nearly $0

So a company that holds the genetic information on millions, if not tens of millions, of people is failing. I imagine health insurers would love to get their hands on that info.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  82 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 24, 2024

Yo dude. It's been the Australia Day long weekend down here so apologies for taking a few days to get back to you. I've been thinking over what you said. You bring a refreshing level of normality to interpreting the spectacle.

It's interesting that you cite lack of engagement by voters as a favourable indicator. I would have thought that was more of a risk factor, no? If most people don't care, then only the zealous will vote. Besides which, Trump is still the punters' favourite for next president. Irrespective of whether voters care, if he gets in again I can't imagine it will be steady-as-she-goes. Watching the latest meltdown after the E. Jean Carroll decision over the weekend has underscored that point.

Hope everything's going well up at your neck of the woods. I'm wrangling another work trip to the northern hemisphere but it looks like it will just be to Europe this time round.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  85 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 24, 2024

So I take your argument to be:

- the division between the two sides today is not essentially about competing economic systems (at least not existentially so) so the factors that tore the country apart 160 years ago aren't there;

- each team hates the other side, but not enough to kill the game;

- until and unless people are no longer able to buy their groceries and get care etc when they need it, these points will hold, and the improving economic outlook suggests this to be so.

Which yeah, makes sense. And obviously you're living and seeing all of this up close while I just get to watch from (mostly) a safe distance.

Just, from over here, it feels as though there's a lot of ... something. Call it intergenerational wealth, call it rural resentment, call it frustrated white male entitlement, call it a Russian cabal - or whatever you like. But it feels like there is something that is trying very hard to wreck the country rather than give its power up. And when it came to the fore six years ago it started off headless and a bit of a joke, but since then it's woken up to its power and to the huge reserves of resentment that it can leverage to support its power, and to the frailty of the structures that were thought to keep it in check, and it's become organised, insidious and it is actively pursuing an agenda that is malign to the democratic United States.

NikolaiFyodorov  ·  86 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: January 24, 2024

Sure, but I assume a decent proportion of voters (perhaps comparable to the percentages you listed) in Mississippi pre-1861 were anti-secessionist, and I assume the broad bulk of Mississippians then also weren't afire with zeal; that didn't stop the state from rebelling.