vldx

I'm wondering how much context plays role in this perception — for example, I'm from Europe and find it somewhat confusing when people from USA talk about BMW/VW as utterly unreliable; here, it's the reverse — people equate VW cars as reliable and unpretentious, while BMW reliable and having great driving dynamics. Many people do consider BMW/VW as well-engineered/well-built quality cars that provide relatively good residuals.

How much is 70k after taxes in Austria?

> Many are white nationalists.

He has ~17 million followers — what is your methodology in determining with such precision the demographic profile of his followers?

You should definitely check “The Mastermind: Drugs. Empire. Murder. Betrayal.” by Evan Ratliff. Fascinating story.

I’m happy with TransferWise. I was thinking to check Revolut as well, but now I’m not so sure.

I think I understand the sentiment here, but I don’t think it applies well to OP’s specific case. He mentions that he is considering the idea moving to the states. The bureaucratic machine doesn’t care about your passion. I’m from EU country and the wizard form on Canada’s immigration site ends abruptly after the step concerning my formal education.

Some commenters are mentioning that you can’t pursue MS w/o having BS. This is not true — it’s possible.

I’m pursuing master’s at the moment and I don’t have bachelor’s. It’s from red-brick university, part of the Russell Group. The program is online/remote and it’s suitable for working professionals. To meet the entry requirements I had to prove ~10 years of industry experience, incl. gather glowing recommendation letters from c-level execs.

@OP — I was in similar situation as you and I enrolled when I was ~29 years old. I don’t regret my decision. I can hit you up on mail if you need more details.

Have you traveled to other Middle East countries previously?

I’ve done the same and had the exact same experience. What is the reason for that?

Given the new Mac Mini, would you still build your own PC now? I was seriously considering going the Hackintosh route, but the new Mini seems to provide fair value for its price.

This seems true, however the following quote is worth mentioning:

“The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/08/09/remain-solvent/

Do you miss the macOS shortcuts? I’m in the same boat as you (early 2013) and starting to looking more and more to X1 Carbon. The emacs-like system wide shortcuts is what I’m afraid of missing mostly.

Care to expand on the hallucinogens and empathogens? How did they benefit you?

I’ve tracked my sleep patterns for the past 1106 nights w/ Sleep Cycle — my average time in bed is 8:31 hours, went to bed on average 21:32 and woke up 6:05.

I think this was intended to be ironic? Thought it’s funny.

He had identified himself as classical liberal.

Occam's razor.

Thanks for your downvote; it substantially aids your argument.

As I've said, the book does re-package some millennia old ideas and adds couple of hundreds usages of the f*ck world -- because it's of highest priority to be witty for some, apparently. Hell, CBT essentially does the same -- but it doesn't feels witty as it should be, right? Witty is of utmost importance after all.

Eh, you can skip that (it's not a bad book) and go directly read the Stoics.

My hypothesis: people are not trained as a young person to seek pleasure, they're genetically programmed to do so; many (most?) modern "foods" are engineered and designed to short-wire various naturally evolved systems by introducing artificial stimulus, thus creating closed feedback loops. The baseline is amended upwards with each iteration, and what was normal yesterday is under stimulating now.

> [...] Scientists call this phenomenon, “supernormal stimulus.” It is what happens when an exaggerated version of what appeals to evolutionary instincts can cause some one or some thing to engage in behavior counterproductive to its own survival (or the survival of its genes).

MORE!

http://joyousandswift.org/hyperstimulus/

That's fascinating. Just ordered Design of Design to supplement GEB. Thanks!

I've just recently bought "Gödel, Escher, Bach" -- looking shortly to start it. Curious, how did it influenced you in connection to programming?

This is interesting, would you recommend any specific resources to research further?

Yes, that is interesting thought; in fact, he even goes further and consider Aspergers as an advantage in this context.

This is more or less validated by the OCEAN/5 factor model -- low agreeableness and low extroversion might be proxy for not being influenced by the convention.

Eastern Europe is state of mind, not a geographical location.

It just boggles my mind why a young person (like the article author) would choose to think in such a lazy manner and beat that narrative to death -- corruption, local economy, the struggle to run legitimate business, etc.

With all due my respect and w/ the risk of being downvoted -- that is BS; and completely opposite of the SV mindset.

It just shows that the author haven't been exposed to the actual environment (i.e. not the university) in Bulgaria -- there are numerous large-scale companies w/ strong regional presence, as well various small outsourcing shops and at least 5 co-working spaces, where you can find lots of very capable people working in very healthy environments; anecdotally, for the last ~13 years I haven't heard even one founder/c-level exec of being asked to pay anything under the table.

For anyone interested -- this model is called Wake therapy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake_therapy

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fighting-depressi...

> In the new study, published online January 15 in the journal Translational Psychiatry, the scientists investigated whether this process is responsible for the antidepressant effects of sleep deprivation. Mice with depressivelike symptoms were administered three doses of a compound that triggers adenosine receptors, thus mimicking sleep deprivation. Although the mice continued to sleep normally, after 12 hours they showed a rapid improvement in mood and behavior, which lasted for 48 hours.

> The results confirm that the adenosine buildup is responsible for the antidepressant effects of a lack of sleep. This finding points to a promising target for new drug development because it suggests that mimicking sleep deprivation chemically may offer the antidepressant benefits without the unwanted side effects of actually skipping sleep. Such an intervention could offer immediate relief from depression, in stark contrast with traditional antidepressants, which take six to eight weeks to kick in.

Curious if it'll be mimicked somehow in the form of drugs in the future.

Interestingly, WPP mandates all it's employees to shut down their computers – irrespective of the OS.

> As a precaution, WPP is mandating that everyone immediately shut down all computers, both Macs and PCs. This applies to you whether you are in the office or elsewhere. Working on an office computer remotely is not an option. Please leave your computers turned off until you hear from us again.

> Many thanks for your co-operation and patience.

> Best regards,

Not necessarily. MDMA could potentially enable you loose any feeling of self-concern -- no fear, insecurity and self-consciousness; that feeling of being 5 year old on the Christmas morning.

This might be especially beneficial for someone who is communicating predominantly w/ machines since a kid, and who might have trouble empathizing or relating w/ people.

In this short video Sam Harris describes it very eloquently.

http://bigthink.com/think-tank/sam-harris-discusses-mdma-and...

Yes, but on the other hand -- recently I've had a relatively persistent flu and decided to visit a doctor. After ~10 minutes I've been prescribed Levofloxacin antibiotic (w/o even doing blood work). I've bought the antibiotic and even got some probiotics; back at home, I've decided to do basic overview and research what I'm about to administer, as (luckily) I've never been treated before w/ drugs of such group. As it turns out -- this medicine do have frightening side effects, which may occur months even years after the initial 5-day administration. The side effects are potentially life long and may cause various disabilities. There are clinical studies which do provide very strong evidences about these side effects; numerous class actions against given pharmaceutical companies and blogs, where people are writing about the hell they are going through.

I'm in EU, but FDA warns about these potential issues and recommend prescribing fluoroquinolones as last line of treatment.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levofloxacin

Honestly, I don't buy this argument about the numerous side-effects preventing further reasearch of psychedelics.

Psylocibin/MDMA should be available for research and even as last line of treatment, I believe, thousands of people will benefit.

Please note, when given press gain significant popularity, it's common to be replicated by other "producers", and frequently the "counterfeit" pills are containing less desirable compounds. Always test what you're about to take, irrespective of the vendor/pill reputation -- reagent tests are cheap and available even via Amazon Prime.