Also, if you are not fighting a war and your workplace is so toxic that you have to take military grade advice on stress reduction then you should look for a new job.
I went to basic training and looking back on it, it's almost funny how easy it was compared to other training and situations I was in, but RELATIVE to my life up to that point it was way harder than anything I had experienced as a high schooler. and relatively speaking it was harder than any other training that came later that was actually more challenging. I'm not sure if that makes sense but i'm agreeing with you.
It’s kinda weird how that works out. You’d think that every time you experienced something that was harder than anything you’d done before it would be a big deal, but apparently, basic training works on a meta-level. Instead of learning how to get through that particular hard experience, you learn that you can always get through a harder experience than you’ve ever dealt with before.
You can be a civilian and tasked with rerouting | patching the navigation and steer by wire systems of an oversized fishing trawler refitted to perform seismic survey while the majority of the crew fight a fire underneath the kerosene filled cable spools (with kilometers of microphone cables) during a monsoon storm.
That's fun, luckily most people in such situations tend to be pragmatic task solving types and few are loose cannon BP observers bouncing about screaming "I'm a teapot!" and "The pirates will get us if we don't drown!"
You don't have to be in the military to get caught up in surprise popgun atomic testing twixt India and Pakistan - you just have to be the bunny that took on a radiometric survey contract at third hand.
In hindsight these, and other adventures, are all part of the job and not worth quitting over.
As long as you're not the type that gets in a flap about every shipboard fire and runs about like a headless chicken, of course.
"while the majority of the crew fight a fire underneath the kerosene filled cable spools (with kilometers of microphone cables) during a monsoon storm."
That reads like a scene from a distater movie. I am talking regular people with day jobs!
Also, your use of India / Pakistan while you could have used any other nuclear power smells of prejudice.
That was my day job, designing building, field testing seismic mapping systems. Lots of coding, lots of firmware, some hardware.
> Also, your use of India / Pakistan while you could have used any other nuclear power smells of prejudice.
Or simply that I'm not old enough to have been over the Monte Bello's test site when it was live, whereas we were contracted to fly radiometric surveys over the Pokhran-II test site on the day of the first explosion, and crew were detained until after the completion of the Chagai-I response.
If it helps, I've flown over many a former test site, many a tailings pond for a uranium mine in many parts of the world. It's a dull fact that the Pokran-II site is the only such place that went 'live' on a work day (in my experience at least).
My job as a software dev is usually pretty cushy office job.
Then sometimes I get involved in seagoing expeditions or trials as part of it, and it changes a lot. Still very much a day job. I am not (that much of) a trained mariner. Definitely become witness to (and involved in) high-pressure situations, like "we have to winch this big yellow thing onto the deck, but it's too close to the aft and we can't reach it with the grappling hooks, it's dangerously close to getting sucked into the propellers, please please figure out how to fix the networking so we can send the CHANGE_HEADING command to get it to drift to a safe grappling distance".
It definitely does wonders for honing your Calm Problem Solving mode.
I imagine A&E probably can feel like a warzone at times. No doubt there are also other high stakes jobs (being a firefighter?) whom we all rely on so we can enjoy the privilege of not leading such stressful lives.
Just like with space exploration - it's good for the secondary benefits of observing humans at the limits to filter back to everyday life. In this case stress management
You can have a similar impact in your brain and body that fighting a war. Not only in a job.
As you said, one main difference is that you can quit your job but not the war. There is a detail: you can experience these feelings even if your job is not toxic.
"There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them - little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander."
There are plenty of ways to quit. E.g. deserting, self-wounding. You also got different forms of mutiny and "fragging" officers (not really quiting, but refusing to do the job).
As the M*A*S*H quote notes, war doesn't only involve combatants, but noncombatants, civilians, neutral parties, children, and future generations.
For the last, consider unexploded WWII ordnance routinely uncovered in Germany and the UK (an example of the latter only this week); mines in Vietnam and elsewhere in Southeast Asia, among many other theatres; Agent Orange and other chemicals utilised in various locations (including a sunken trove of mustard gas munitions aboard a US Liberty ship, the John Harvey, lost at Bari, Italy, during WWII); depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, amongst others; and the political disruptions of national borders drawn either ignorant of or to deliberately exploit local rivalries across the Middle East (Sykes-Picot), Africa, and the Indian subcontinent.
Even barring that, and allowing that there are long-term employment conditions (shipping, remote development, expeditions) which might be difficult to quit on a moment's notice, military service at the least has legal proscriptions on arbitrary quitting not found in civilian service.
Unfortunately you made it sounds like you deject what the page said, anyone taking the advices there is working in a toxic environment and should leave.
So he's playing both sides, like a true philosopher. The simple fact is, work for survival sake is often mind-numbing and soul destroying. Finding work you have a passion for that creates a positive impact in the world is something everyone should strive for, even the wealthy trust fund kids that don't need to lift a finger.
>> The simple fact is, work for survival sake is often mind-numbing and soul destroying.
This would be the government work. It isnt there to satisfy, it's there to keep a roof over your head. IF it was fun they would not PAY you would they?
>> In place of the old pleasures demanding intelligence and personal initiative, we have vast organizations that provide us with ready-made distractions - distractions which demand from pleasure-seekers no personal participation and no intellectual effort of any sort. To the interminable democracies of the world a million cinemas bring the same stale balderdash. There have always been fourth-rate writers and dramatists; but their works, in the past, quickly died without getting beyond the boundaries of the city or the country in which they appeared. To-day, the inventions of the scenario-writer go out from Los Angeles across the whole world.
The point he's making is to find that passion elsewhere, make music, play sports ... DO rather than CONSUME. And that everyone should do this in all things. These are the "pleasures" and they should be enriching you via your participation not your passivity.
>> Finding work you have a passion for that creates a positive impact in the world is something everyone should strive for
No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.
>> So he's playing both sides, like a true philosopher.
> No one wants to work at the DMV, no one dreamed that in their child hood. But we need people to do it... he's speaking out against them going home and sucking down film, tv, tiktok rather than DOING things that enrich their minds and bodies.
That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day. I agree mostly that doing things is better than just consuming, but unfortunately the bigger part of the population just aren't able to do it.
>>> That same DMV work + household chores + family would not give time and energy enough for someone to participate actively in whatever kind of activity by the end of the day.
Does no one read any more?
This is the very nonsense his essay rages against.
You leave work and:
Buy yogurt on the way home, make sure your kid does piano practice and watch soccer on TV.
-- OR --
You buy milk on the way home, make yogurt with your kid, play soccer in the back yard and then amuse yourself by playing music in the evening.
Same time investment, less money spent better engagement and an enriched life.
All of ML, including DL, are literally implemented using mathematical models. Alas, a model is just a model and doesn’t imply it works well or imply that it’s simple or easily discoverable.
If you ever regard wide-audience advertising, most of it is devoted to status games; imx breakfast cereal ads are the only ones that seriously resist such low-effort interpretation.
The issue seems to be more subtle. Nobody is trying to explain all of human behavior with primate studies. Rather, to establish that there are still traces of our animal nature visible in human behavior.
We tend to believe we are no longer influenced by our animal nature. But without accepting that part of our construction, it not possible to understand human behavior, because that part is essential. Usually, statements like "primate studies cannot explain all human behavior" are used to de-legitimize some studies, in order to protect the taboo.
If you think that not all of human behavior is influenced by our animal nature, then certainly you can name some behavior that you believe is influenced by our animal nature. So start by asking yourself, what is such a behavior.
I love these IKEA hospitals and the quote at the end of the article assembled it all together,
"The hospital is a small contribution by India to humanitarian work around the world,” she said. “We are now ready to share it with any country that needs it.”
It reflects a new way of thinking and a fresh world view. A vastly different view from the one I grew up in (80s)... Which was huge headlines in NYT about how poor countries need aid and western aid organizations are helping them. When in reality it was "relief theater".
That is maybe an 80s world view at best. The United States government is extremely proactive and effective in providing international aid whenever a disaster strikes.
Lets take the 2010 Haiti earthquake as an example, which happened at about 4 PM. The US ambassador declared an emergency, the joint chiefs issued an order for support, SOUTHCOM initiated its crisis response operations center, and the newly formed Joint Task Force Haiti was setting up calls with local ministers before the Haitian president even formally requested assistance that evening.
At first daylight 3 surveillance aircraft were overhead surveying damage and identifying rescue targets, a US coast guard cutter that was in the area arrived in port to begin infrastructure damage assessments, and SJFHQ established a command post in country. By sunset US special operations has teams on the ground to assist with security, FEMA has an Urban Search and Rescue team rescuing trapped victims, and Air National Guard combat air controllers have taken control of the airport and turned it into the busiest single runway airport in the world for arriving aid workers and supplies.
By the second day hundreds of troops from the 82nd Airborne have arrived, the State Department diplomatic security service is in the process of evacuating thousands of American nationals, and multiple Global Hawk drones are providing real time video feeds to rescuers on the ground.
The third day the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier arrives where its deck is turned into a 50 bed hospital, and it would remain on station until the USNS Comfort hospital ship and USS Bataan causality receiving ship arrived the following week.
An IKEA hospital is an amazing thing, but it isn't worth shitting on the massive international aid operations most major countries conduct as "relief theater." India itself is among these, their light helicopters and skilled pilots were vital during the initial response to the Nepal earthquake.
Totally. During the early months of the pandemic when NYC was hit super hard, Samaritan's Purse set up a tent hospital in Central Park directly opposite the main campus of Mt. Sinai which was a marvel to see, I would run and cycle past it nearly every day. Another of my common running routes took me past the USNS Comfort, docked at Pier 90, and the Javits Center, which hosted yet another modular hospital. Then a little later, a modular morgue on Randall's Island, which is now the site of a modular migrant encampment.
I later read that because of strict policies relating to a notion that only the "simple" cases, of which there were few, could be transferred, the temporary hospital facilities ended up underutilized. But the ability to surge capacity in a specific area is hardly constrained to parts of the world with fewer hospital beds. Public health crises and natural disasters in the USA are perfect candidates for this technology.
I hope we can test this quickly, and if it works, buy a bulk pack.
Do you think it would be useful to explain how to macroexpand whenever you do it so the folks you are responding to can learn and do it themselves next time?
I think it solves a different issues. This is aiming to solve a depth issue (e.g. a deeper coat rack would make a door hit it, as shown in the video) while a multi layer hanger seems to be more a "I don't have enough space for all the hangers" (but importantly, you have space for at least one!)
p.s : professional stand up comic here, been trying to quit my day job for 14 years :-)
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