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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2026

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  • Often enough, even with the degree, you can end up no better off for some time. If you don’t get a degree and make x/yr, or you get the degree, spend 6~8 years in school and looking for a position that pays 2x/yr but you spend half of the money on paying down your debt for 20 years… That’s a long time to get back into the black, assuming you even went for a degree leading to a position that will pay that much. It is almost criminal that a credit hour learning to work on machine learning systems often has the same cost as one spent learning about art history. Both are valuable to society in their own ways, but they definitely won’t get you the same paycheck, and the cost of entry should reflect that.


  • The people you work with and the management of the site/company/team/etc. are oft the most important factor in your experience while working there. I have worked for a company/management that literally was known for firing people without cause just to put a sense of fear into employees and a company/management that sent employees for paid educational courses without being legally obligated to do so. Same industry. Same city. Just different people. The attitudes of management tend to impart a flavor to the workspace that is nigh impossible to ignore. So, if you have the ability to get away from the workplace that mistreats you, do it. It’s really not all people. It’s those people, in that workplace, with that management. Chances are, if you chat with a few people in other places, you can find an in somewhere the people are not so awful, and the best time to look for a new job is always while you have one.




  • I recommend only continuing the interactions where you and your interlocutor seem to have aligned intentions. If they are trying to understand, that’s what you posted for. Help them. If they have partially understood, you have partially succeeded. Use the interaction to help them understand and find better ways of expressing yourself. But if they have named you their opponent, you won’t be able to fix that through the internet. If it seems worth it, add an ‘edit: Blah blah blah’ note to your original post to help keep others from misunderstanding but don’t try to become a teacher for someone who has decided you are the enemy. Communication won’t work without good-faith effort on both sides.






  • No one REALLY feels the threat posed by the polycrisis. It’s all complex, intellectual worries about things that FEEL like they’re still just a little ways out, not quite here. People are mostly focused on the here and now and the very near future. The riots happen when people literally can’t feed their kids in the here and now. As long as it’s just difficult, and not impossible, people will struggle on with their nose to the grindstone. Watch for rises in unemployment. CoViD showed what can happen when millions if people find themselves with mountains of free time to use on political action. When enough people are hungry and have no job to distract them, the fires will come.


  • Reading fiction and non-fiction (I assume this is what you mean by 'hard) are effectively different activities.

    Reading fiction is about getting caught up in an imagined world. The stakes are lower and the expectations are lower. This makes it easier. If you miss the paragraph where a character is described as having a beard, you won’t feel the need to go back to reread when you find out they do four chapters later when they scratch said beard.

    Reading non-fiction is about building new conceptual structures in your mind. It requires more attention. If you fail to understand Nietzsche’s ressentiment in ‘Geneology of Morals,’ you are unlikely to be able to understand the later concept of the ‘priestly’ morality. You will not be able to fully construct the conceptual structures the book attempts to generate.

    Because of this, reading non-fiction is a process of doing whatever is necessary to get all the parts and relations into one’s mind in order to produce a mental tool and then, hopefully, learn to use it. If notes help, write them. Rubber ducking can help. Simple repetition can help. Slowing down can help. Talking to other readers (as in a study group (shoutout to @DGQC on YT)) can help. Concept mapping can help. Sleeping on it can help. Highlighting can help. Cross referencing can help.

    It’s study. What helped you learn in school? Do that.




  • A big part of moderation is enforcing what makes you (the moderator) uncomfortable. The moderator(s) probably have not come to terms with their views on eating meat, so the question makes them uncomfortable, so they ban the discussion to preserve their own feelings.

    In a less selfish view, it also probably helps preserve the community because many others are also uncomfortable with their unresolved views on eating animals and might be discouraged from participating if it is discussed. You are probably a microminority in wanting to discuss it and the number of free speech absolutists who will die on the hill of your right to talk about eating roast mareep is also a microminority. As the discussion does not really add anything to the community it costs them almost nothing to keep people comfortable.