I also disagree with the author. They don't consider the relationship between the meme makers/viewers and the demon core incident. And while it was horrific to those involved, most people have experienced maybe 0.1% of that terror – and that is good. They can and should make light of it.
Expecting everyone to be deeply affected by all traumatic experiences throughout history is unrealistic. We have defence mechanisms to cope with the overwhelming weight of global suffering, and breaking them down is a bad idea. So shaming those who managed to distance themselves from such events (by saying their dark comedy is in bad taste) is condescending. I say it's good to have healthy coping strategies and not be overly affected by awful events we were not exposed to directly – that is called healthy mental resilience. Not everyone should suffer because anyone else has.
People should and will still joke, even when awful things have happened to billions in every conceivable niche of life. Really, I would even argue one should not absorb more suffering and terror than they would have been exposed to in one life-time, even if the internet and news media makes it easy. One should certainly, without any doubt in my mind not internalize every tragedy in history in an effort to stifle humour.
Most comedy is tragic.[1] And laughing is an inherently selfish act, as Mel Brooks observed when he said, "comedy is when you fall in an open sewer and die."[2]
For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.
There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho, American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them deal with dark themes in a light way.
Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.
>this somewhat kawaii rendering of the Slotin experiment, along with the “I love science” phrasing, was a form of dark humor.
And later
>Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism — a defense against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world.
Strangelove is funny because it was true. Serious people really were doing studies on how to survive a nuclear war.
But just as in the movie it was politicians who weren't down with it. On both sides. Khrushchev was removed when his colleagues figured out just how close he got them to WW3.
Yeah, in spite of the author's claims to not want to be the humor police, this really just reads as someone who takes their work as a historian of nuclear weapons 'very seriously' and doesn't want it to be joked about. The SNL joke he identified as being particularly offensive ("Having received the Novel Peace Prize, the survivors of the nuclear bombings called the award the second biggest surprise of their lives") is ... pretty anodyne? It's not making fun of the survivors or glorifying cruelty, it's just contrasting the banal things people say when receiving awards with the extreme reality of having endured one of the most awful events in human history.
That kind of juxtaposition is pretty par for the course in comedy, let alone dark comedy. And when it comes to engaging with the reality of awful events, not everyone wants to or has the capacity to treat them with the grave solemnity the author seems to expect.
IIRC John Cleese has a talk from years ago where he makes a very interesting point that seriousness and solemnity are two very different things.
In his opinion, killing humor is the same as killing creativity and killing creativity is the same as inviting disaster and/or failure for the sake of your ego.
Not being solemn is not the same as not being serious.
I think your last sentence there really is the right take away here. But even more than that, I think the right way to prevent future tragedies is with humor not solemnity.
I think EU is just building Meta’s monopolistic moat. It creates a chilling effect on challenger tech companies who may not be able to pay these fines. And yet they still know they might be arbitrarily fined.
Oh the other hand, one might say — “don’t be monopolistic and you won’t have to pay the fines”. But does this stand up under scrutiny? But how does a company compete with a monopoly without having any monopolistic traits? Duopolies by definition are very close to monopolies.
It’s like the EU is saying “no one be like these guys, but please would someone compete with them for the sake of our market!”
This reminds me of how in the 18th century, captains in the Royal Navy wouldn't call to abandon ship because that would have career-ending consequences. So there were cases like HMS Tribune in 1797, where it is claimed that only 12 of the 240 seamen survived because the captain Scory Barker, even having ample time, was effectively prohibited from abandoning the vessel. Four survivors who escaped early were seen as mutineers, whereas the 228 that died and 8 that survived on the ship have been heavily commended in history for their discipline.
Modern practices are different, there is now a lot more emphasis in not needlessly risking lives, especially when abandoning vessels is done by the book. But dying in the line of duty is still weirdly seen as good leadership - call it bravery, honor, commitment to the cause, gumption, etc. We mostly praise those who do, rarely criticize them for maybe sacrificing themselves and others unnecessarily. But I would think we wouldn't threaten people who don't put themselves at unreasonable risk with career consequences anymore. I guess this ejection is an example of modern marines acting with 18th century principles.
P.S. The historical record on Royal Navy's informal code of conduct in the 18th century is a bit limited. I think what I say is not disputed by many historians, but there is some room for debate.
Comparing going down with the ship to dying for a cause seems like a false equivalence. When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink. The only difference is whether or not the passengers / crew survive.
Fighting for a cause, on the other hand, generally requires that people sacrifice themselves. If no one is willing to die, then the fight is very unlikely to be successful. Being willing to die (and sometimes dying) has the ability meaningful change the outcome.
> seems like a false equivalence. When a ship sinks,
It seems that way, but that's a subjective stance. This is during a time when ships were the armies of the time. It's not complicated to understand that 250 men were worth less than a ship for the purposes of late 1700s warfare. Dying for a sinking ship was a heroic thing, in that it was an attempt to hold on to an immense power for their country. How many untold millions have died to defend a parcel of land? The value of trying to save a ship is contextual, equating to defending your country, even in the face of insurmountable odds.
Trained and capable seaman were very valuable. It took many years to train someone in the proper functioning of the ship, and given that many raw recruits were typically whomever was rounded up on the streets of Portsmouth at midnight, the quality of the input varied wildly. I'm fairly confident the British navy had huge difficulty manning their ships properly.
> I'm fairly confident the British navy had huge difficulty manning their ships properly.
"very valuable" compared to a ship? Not so much.
> It took many years to train someone in the proper functioning of the ship
I'm not sure where you get this from. Many duties on ships could be successfully crewed by children^. Crew were commonly pressed into service, in lieu of volunteers and proper enlisted (transferred, et al). Debtors looking for debt-forgiveness, were a particularly fruitful source. Slaves were sometimes used. Training was on the job. Operational sailing circa 1800, wasn't particularly sophisticated. It was danger-prone.
Sailing circa 1800 was certainly danger prone, but it was also very sophisticated. Manoeuvring a three mast ship of the line takes multiple synchronised actions involving hundreds of men, at least a significant fraction of whom need to know what they are doing.
> Manoeuvring a three mast ship of the line takes multiple synchronised actions involving hundreds of men, at least a significant fraction of whom need to know what they are doing.
They needed to know how to do relatively straightforward tasks (many of which were unpleasant) when directed. Same as any other structured military force or industrial line. It was not sophisticated for the vast majority of sailors. Skills varied to be sure.
Debating soft terms like skillful, sophistication, and value will not definitively answer the question of a calculation. We look to other signals, like culture. The culture was such that the ships (including weaponry and anything else worth salvage) were more valuable than manpower by virtue of the historical figure sentiments. I have not seen a compelling contradiction.
> When a ship sinks, the outcome is more or less the same whether people are onboard or not: in either case the ship will sink
The more difficult question is when a ship is on the brink of sinking. Then, having people on board can make a difference: the extra weight can make it sink, or actions by those people (pumping, plugging holes, closing doors) can prevent it from sinking.
For the captain, the difficult thing is to figure out whether a ship is destined to sink or not.
dying in the line of duty is still weirdly seen as good leadership
The captain being the last person off a sinking ship is a naval version of "lead from the front". The captain going down with the ship is a probable consequence of following that ideal.
> Anyone have any tips that worked for getting over this hurdle?
This might give you something to work with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42102050. Maybe you're confusing natural and reasonable behaviour with self-sabotage? They look the same from some perspectives (such as perfectionism and people-pleasing).
And laziness in a way is very natural and healthy. Resting, digesting, being present is boon to longevity, vitality, and creativity. Mindless production has been put on a pedestal too much in recent years.
The author might be struggling with people-pleasing and perfectionist tendencies.
People-pleasers often do things because other people would like them more if they did these things. As such, the reward for work like writing a blog article is positive external reinforcement/approval or minimising the risk of confrontation, disapproval, or even aggression. If their work pleases few people (not enough readers), they may feel like it wasn't worth doing, or if their work attracts criticism, they may feel guilt or shame for doing it. Fear of these consequences fuels procrastination.
Writing should be about the innate purpose of writing. It is to learn, to express yourself, to communicate. If one wishes to do these things, then there is almost never procrastination, as these actions always bring only positive rewards. There is no negative outcome to learning, to expressing yourself in written form, and communicating. Sure, the type of things you learn, express, or communicate could bring some negative consequences, but those actions on their own do not. They bring good results and feel good to do.
Perfectionism exaggerates the expectations one would put on themselves and their work. So people-pleasing may become people-impressing, people-delighting, and people-sweeping-off-their-feet. Anything less may bring the shame, guilt, and disappointment, and then "procrastination" becomes pretty much guaranteed. Because it's not really procrastination, it is a natural and very rational decision to not engage in activities that would bring only a bad outcome. Humans, generally, really don't want to hurt themselves. We learn not to touch the hot stove, just as we learn to not do things that don't meet our (sometimes delusional high) expectations.
Everything in procrastination is a lot more logical and explainable than it may seem. People-pleasing/conflict avoidance + perfectionism combo is common in tech workers. This has taken me decades to learn, now it helps the programmers I train, and I hope it helps you. Of course, everyone's life is a bit different, so don't have an unreasonable expectation that what I said applies to you 100%. It may only apply 20% and still be helpful.
> If their work pleases few people (not enough readers), they may feel like it wasn't worth doing, or if their work attracts criticism, they may feel guilt or shame for doing it.
Likewise, even if the work is a resounding success and showered in positivity, there is now an internal pressure to do even better in the future otherwise you will disappoint your new followers in your next work.
All of this in my mind is fear of the outcome as opposed to the joy of the journey. The satisfaction must come from doing the work, not from the outcome of it. It's the only way to really break the cycle.
That's wise and quite emotionally mature. I'm only sharing some thoughts and not attacking anyone. So if it feels a bit like an attack, perhaps one of your core beliefs is being challenged. :)
This is currently in a category of cures that are always a decade away. I am happy that the researchers are putting it out there to attract interest and investment, but the GRI-type insulins remained in lab settings for about 30 years now and it is somewhat troubling to not see progression into and through the stages of pharma clinical trials on T1D patients.
Clearly, there is tremendous potential to make money here – diabetes is a very serious epidemic worldwide. So why hasn't this progressed out of the lab?
I was curious about this myself so I looked up a bit more about this. Here's what I found;
>Even though there have been many publications and patents on the subject, no mechanism has yet been shown to be compelling enough to treat diabetes.[1]
>An apparent more effective strategy is to give insulin glucose-responsive properties that let it respond to glucose reversibly. Merck created a system ... because of its incredibly low efficacy, this system did not merit advancement past phase I clinical trials.[1]
It sounds like they're saying basically that they exist, but aren't yet effective enough to replace the old standard. This particular design is newer.
From the study linked in the article as citation 1:
>Here we report the design and properties of NNC2215, an insulin conjugate with bioactivity that is reversibly responsive to a glucose range relevant for diabetes, as demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. NNC2215 was engineered by conjugating a glucose-binding macrocycle and a glucoside to insulin, thereby introducing a switch that can open and close in response to glucose and thereby equilibrate insulin between active and less-active conformations.
Essentially it's a new attempt at making a GRI that's more promising. It's insulin attached to a molecule that binds to insulin to block it from working unless glucose is present, in which case it binds to glucose instead and allows the insulin to be active. Of course that also means it will need to go through full FDA approval process which would keep it about ten years away if it does really end up being effective enough.
But this time could be different! It's very cool conceptually too. The fact that it's possible to make a drug that works like that. It's amazing to see these novel drug delivery concepts develop in real time.
It's always a decade away because the progress promised shows up, and it improves quality of life a bit, but isn't enough and is very expensive.
We've gotten a variety of synthetic insulins with different rates that help control the disease. We've gotten pumps and meters and very cautious closed-loop feedback.
Now, an insulin itself that adjusts its potency based on blood sugar. We'll get that in the next decade or a bit more. But it'll be very expensive and it will be a relatively ineffective control mechanism-- making control a little bit easier for diabetics and blunting worst case episodes a bit.
I agree that many types of treatments have been advancing. Closed loop is a good example, and stem cell-based islet transplants are in real clinical trials now. We have gotten synthetic insulins that act much faster like Fiasp and stuff like Tresiba that's a multi-day action time prolonged insulin. GLP1 inhibitors are more commonly available for T1Ds, especially now that they are in weight loss drugs that doctors are starting to more easily prescribe off-label to T1s. Metformin has basically become on-label for T1Ds due to its benefits to insulin sensitivity. But the smart insulin hasn't made much progress for the last several decades.
I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom. I'm bringing attention to different rates these things evolve at and questioning why GRIs haven't left the lab since the 90s. :)
The molecular GRI work in the 90s was really proof of concept work that showed you could maybe build something like this, not something that looked a decade from approval. From what I remember, the early work spun off free radicals, had the middle of its set-point in the wrong place, and its "gain" was minimal.
- A dumbphone. Even if I’m not using it anymore, it has shown me what life I could be living without distractions. My anxiety and stress levels went down from about the second day using it, I became much more aware of my emotional state and the environment around me, it was a noticeable shift.
I no longer buy the arguments that we can control our smartphone addictions with will. The technology is too optimised for most of us to break free. And the addictions — too subtle for most to notice.
It may simply be a physiological addiction to checking email or for notifications every now and then. If you feel like you’d be missing out unless you check your phone several times a day, you have it. If you reach for your phone without thinking when you’re bored, you have it. It’s all about compulsive action.
I think much of the population is addicted. Certainly most of the online types.
Every interaction with your phone pulls you out of being present!
I really don't see the point of a dumbphone: it seems a lot like buying a ham radio and trying to use that for your daily life. Who am I going to talk to with a dumbphone? No one actually does "phone calls" any more using voice calling, at least in my corner of the world. (They do for work, but I'm not in a customer-facing job so I don't.)
There seems to be a hole in the market for a dumb phone that does sms well. Perhaps we can even get rid of phone calls entirely and just have an sms device with a camera.
I would suggest an eink phone if this is what you're looking for. I, for example have the Hisense A5. Can do everything a regular android phone can it's just less effective
Then you end up doing all kinds of android things. I don't want a toaster that is also a casino and a web browser. It needs to be a thoughtless process between the idea of having toast and eating it. "lets have toast", "ahh, nice toast"
They just translate, no candy crush, no angry birds, no hero wars, no facebook, no push notifications how you've spend 123 minutes per day using your phone. You can take it to the pub and not end up playing hayday, doom scroll twiiter or hey, I can spend the night reading hn, and ohh is it closing time already? Did anyone else have a good time?
The assumption one can be strong enough to not do that isn't supported by the data.
In the USA -lots- of people use SMS only, and it’s their main communication. You can do that on a dumb phone, and if you tend to get into doom scrolling or TikTok dance scrolling it can allow you to recover a lot of free time back. No SM? Count me in.
>In the USA -lots- of people use SMS only, and it’s their main communication. You can do that on a dumb phone
This is unique to the US (and probably Canada); elsewhere, everyone uses various chat apps to communicate.
Regardless, if we just ignore everyplace else, the main problem I see here is that texting on a dumbphone is really painful once you're used to typing out messages on a modern smartphone's touchscreen. Sure, they had that T9 system back then, but compared to typing on a modern phone it's a huge step backwards in typing speed and usability. On top of that, the tiny screen size makes it much harder to follow a conversation.
Flip phones now have apps, but very limited. You can totally get a modern flip phone to check your email or play Spotify if you need to, but web browsing and doom scrolling are pretty tough.
Agreed. Only stupid thing is that my dumb phone comes with fb that cannot be deleted, but I have no data-plan. Oh and some games that apparently auto-bill your phone account if you start using them, also cannot be deleted. Still it was the best tech purchase in a long time under 100e for quality of life improvement, and helped me finally escape the depressing 'news/propaganda' streams.
under 1000e: I am still experimenting with, but a water distiller and some glass bottles to try and escape the plastic water bottle madness.
I think I like the “dumbify” apps better. You can install them on a regular smartphone and make it a bad experience for doom scrolling but still have conveniences like MFA apps, Password Managers, audio books, music streaming, etc. that are hard to come by on true dumb phones.
I switched to an iPad plus cellular Apple Watch, and I’m finding it more convenient than a straight up dumb phone. Biggest downside is no ride share apps work on it, but otherwise it has everything I need.
I’m thinking about getting a cellular apple watch and not carrying around a phone most of the time. Can still get critical messages without being able to check the news when I’m bored or anxious.
i did this for some time. I'm probably due to again as I check my phone often. Apple watch does have standalone navigation which is a win. It got annoying not being able to do things sometimes, such as checking a groupme etc.
Sunbeam is a popular one. Also a bunch of Nokias should work.
There is also the Xiaomi/Qin/Duoqin F30. It’s a T9 phone with Android 11. But the “Westernized” version with Google Play Store has tampered with software (hacks applied) as the original Chinese software doesn’t have Google stuff nor is the phone Play verified. Then there are questions about the Chinese software itself. I’ve gone deep into the rabbit hole of trying to verify it’s secure but couldn’t to a satisfactory standard.
The F30 is still considered a dumbphone for how limiting the T9 keyboard and its tiny screen are. You won’t enjoy consuming or searching for any kind of content on it. But you can install many modern Android apps if you are comfortable with the security situation. And that’s quite important sometimes to not get isolated from people, to bank, for 2FA, streaming music, and a few other things. It’s basically then a capable but highly inconvenient phone, which I think is excellent.
Still, if you want privacy and security, how many days are you willing to sink into tinkering with these Xiaomi/Qin/Duoqin devices? You will need at least a few, possibly more.
It’s much less hassle to just get whatever dumb phone with a feature OS you can get on Amazon or Walmart.
That’s why it’s important to have tech that serves you, like a dumbphone. You throw your smartphone away (leave it in your car, leave it at work, throw it in the deep end of your attic, etc), make it really inconvenient to act in these compulsions.
And then you just suffer through it for a few days. It gets better very quickly.
Delete the stuff you’re compulsively checking. Turn off notifications, so you need to make the intention to check things, rather than the phone calling for attention. Spend some time now trying to ween, but going told turkey. Go for a walk, leaving the phone at home. Leave it in another room when doing things around the house. Don’t take it with you into the bathroom. Get comfortable with boredom. Allow your mind to wander and see where it takes you.
Cal Newport’s book Digital Minimalism is pretty good for stressing the importance of spending time in thought without the influence of the internet, podcasts, audiobooks, or anything else. This used to be the norm for large sections of the day for people… now it’s rather rare.
That’s a nice compendium of methods. I tried almost all of them, they all work to an extent.
I now use a smartphone again, as practicalities of life demand it. But I am switching to an old sluggish iPhone with a 4.X inch screen to hopefully put frictions in my use of it. I will see if that helps.
You can disable Safari in iOS. Search for “Content & Privacy Restrictions” in Settings. Then turn Safari off in “Allowed Apps & Features”. The app will disappear after a few minutes.
You can also turn off the Fitness app this way, even if you have an Apple Watch, and Car Play if you don’t like it for some reason, such as your car auto-connecting.
Expecting everyone to be deeply affected by all traumatic experiences throughout history is unrealistic. We have defence mechanisms to cope with the overwhelming weight of global suffering, and breaking them down is a bad idea. So shaming those who managed to distance themselves from such events (by saying their dark comedy is in bad taste) is condescending. I say it's good to have healthy coping strategies and not be overly affected by awful events we were not exposed to directly – that is called healthy mental resilience. Not everyone should suffer because anyone else has.
People should and will still joke, even when awful things have happened to billions in every conceivable niche of life. Really, I would even argue one should not absorb more suffering and terror than they would have been exposed to in one life-time, even if the internet and news media makes it easy. One should certainly, without any doubt in my mind not internalize every tragedy in history in an effort to stifle humour.
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