According to wikipedia, Tinnitus is listed as an uncommon side effect of that drug, so that is indeed the most likely culprit, meaning it is very likely not permanent. :)

Constant background sound does not hurt your ears unless it is over a certain decibel level.

You can get temporary tinnitus from an active ear infection or a swollen/inflamed ear, it may not be permanent.

Were you exposed to any overly loud sounds recently, or chronically over the course of your life?

I don’t think that’s a good scene to judge it on, personally.

As someone who hates modern star wars, and only mildy enjoys the original trilogy, I thought Andor was extremely compelling, and some of the finest sci-fi, or fiction in general, that I’d ever seen (and I am very picky).

It is, in essence, a brilliantly written rendition of an oppressed people building an effective and realistically depicted underground resistance movement against a fascist regime which happens to be attached to the star wars IP (which it uses well, aesthetically). So more of a tightly written political/espionage thriller than it us traditional space opera.

The quality of the writing is far, far beyond any other star wars movie or show, going very much into the territory of Where Eagles Dare, The Godfather, or or 3 Days of The Condor. The dialog is excellent, the plots excellent, the pacing excellent, I have very few complaints.

I think the quality of it comes from the writer Tony Gilroy putting a tremendous amount of effort into researching historical revolutions and drawing from those, which makes it feel very grounded.

If you dislike modern star wars, I really implore you to give Andor a chance, it makes none of the mistakes of modern Disney star wars, in fact it could not be more different.

It’s a short video, and I found his speech pretty moving, I’d recommend watching it in its entirety.

Here’s an Irish Mayor recounting how Catholic priests raped and beat him repeatedly as a child, and how the catholic church of Rome sent out a priest during the investigation into the rapes just in an effort to discredit him and call him a liar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iq-BB_aZUVI

The interviews with retired/fired US generals that go over how and why Iran was a drastic miscalculation I think helps solidify that the current regime is incompetent.

Due to that incompetence, I have a somewhat hopeful view overall of how things may play out, but it could still be a while until things start getting better, including the possibility of an Irish Troubles-like civil war. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, but I could see it going in that direction if the republican party decide that they’d rather push this as far as they can instead of potentially going to prison if they give up.

Top military brass are still vulnerable to making blunders. Take the Bay of Pigs as an example, which fumbled so hard it eventually led JFK to say “The first advice I’m going to give my successor is to watch the generals and to avoid feeling that because they were military men their opinions on military matters were worth a damn.”

And that’s with ‘normal’ generals. Now imagine replacing them with compliant generals that will take orders regardless of how bad the idea is tactically or politically.

The same thing happened with Hitler, who ordered his compliant generals into some insane military blunders. The duo of dictatorships and Yes Men massively increase the chances of incompetence compared to systems where those lower on the totem pole can safely push back against dumb ideas.

The regime could’ve manufactured some more controllable distractions to Epstein without the dramatic downsides the Iran war has brought, such as fake assassination attempts or false flag operations within the US (like a Reichstag fire situation).

The Iran situation would be like if Hitler tried to invade Poland, but instead of swiftly conquering it, continually started and stopped peace negotiations while Germany’s cost of living skyrocketed.

I’m not saying they won’t use it as a distraction since it’s the only beneficial action available to them, but I very much doubt that was the original plan, or that they correctly assessed how badly this would go for them.

AFAIK, the concept first appeared in the dystopian sci-fi novel The Shockwave Rider written by John Brunner back in the 70’s. It was called a Delphi Pool in that. Great book, btw. Though unfortunately another example of tech-bros old dystopian novels as a model to build a business.

The description of it from the book:

It works, approximately, like this.

First you corner a large - if possible, a very large - number of people who, while they’ve never formally studied the subject you’re going to ask them about and hence are unlikely to recall the correct answer, are nonetheless plugged into the culture to which the question relates.

Then you ask them, as it might be, to estimate how many people died in the great influenza epidemic which followed World War I…

Curiously, when you consolidate their replies they tend to cluster around the actual figure as recorded in almanacs, yearbooks and statical returns.

It’s rather as though this paradox has proved true: that while nobody knows what’s going on around here, everybody knows what’s going on around here.

Well, if it works for the past, why can’t it work for the future? Three hundred million people with access to the integrated North American data-net is a nice big number of potential consultees.

And here’s how the concept was used in the real world (before polymarket), according to this source:

Perhaps the most striking attempt to make use of this kind of idea was the Policy Analysis Market (PAM), a proposed futures exchange developed by our friends at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). PAM was intended to be a kind of “futures market” for the Middle East; investors could trade futures based on political outcomes in the region.

The idea is that the monetary value of a particular “future” (a stated outcome in Middle East politics) would tend to increase as the outcome became more likely. That is, the value of a futures issue would tend to reflect the relative likelihood of that future actually occurring.

Unfortunately, it turned out that PAM would allow trading in such events as coup d’etats and assassinations; the resulting uproar caused the cancellation of PAM.

The Delphi method was used in the late 1940’s at the RAND Corporation. In their implementation, a panel of experts was regularly polled by a facilitator to predict future outcomes of events related to the Cold War. Brunner probably derives his Delphi pool idea from this work.

The name “Delphi pool” is derived from the pythia, or priestesses, of Delphi in ancient Greece. The pythia would take questions and make predictions (which modern-day geologists attribute to hydrocarbon gasses like ethylene, which bubbled up from the faults in the region).

I’m not sure how attacking Iran is helping their power grab, if anything it is making them look bad and pissing off their base with high domestic prices.

I think it more likely that they were feeling invincible after Maduro was captured, and since they installed Yes Men as top military brass, no one had the heart or the brains to point out how big a fuck up it would be to attack Iran.

Have you seen Andor?

Ah, bummer :(

You get paid a small amount per day until the trial finishes if you’re chosen.

Most of the things you mentioned like insects and spiders don’t have a mind. Their brains are too small for anything resembling a mind.

Jumping spiders have an interesting amount of cognition, more than I would’ve thought, and especially for their size.

I’m actually tired of eating beef.

Would beef-liver supplements (like in pill form) be enough iron to replace the beef?

I played s.p.l.i.t fairly recently, and I was seriously impressed. It’s a very unique narrative-driven game where you’re in communication with a small group of hackers in a uniquely dystopian world, and you need to collaborate with them to hack a specific device.

It’s only about an hour or two long, but it’s priced to match at $3, and wow did it leave an impression on me, it’s unlike anything else I’ve ever played.

Highly recommend it if that sounds at all intriguing.

Knowing some basic MS-DOS/Linux terminal commands beforehand, like how to change directories/navigate would be helpful (this quick guide would be all you really need).

3 Days of The Condor.

It’s a 70’s paranoid thriller with Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway, just an awesome film.

EDIT: Ah, I found that he was indeed at least open to the idea to centralize the militias.

He then met with Cipriano Mera, who proposed that all the confederal militias in Madrid be unified under Durruti’s single command; this would prevent an army from being formed, while also relinquishing the democratic control the rank-and-file had over the command structure. Mera and Durruti then agreed to meet the following morning

At the meeting, Mera said “for people to carry out their mission and not budge from their assigned position—in a word, so that they obey—there is no choice but to use the tool that we’re afraid to even mention: discipline.”

Mera recorded Durruti’s response: “OK, Mera, we’re mostly in agreement about this. I agree with the core of what you’re saying, and also with your idea of joining our forces. Mine have to be relieved because they’ve suffered heavy blows in the last few days. We’ll see comrade Val at 4:00 and can discuss all this together.”

It looks like he still wanted to hash some things out, but as far as I can tell, that meeting with Val never occurred due to his death the next day.

End of edit.

Could you share your source which details that Durruti created specifically a top-down centralized militia? From the sources I’ve read, he created a bottom-up militia with the ability to recall poorly performing elected leaders. As an example, from Chapter 7 of Paz Abel’s ‘Durruti in The Spanish Revolution’:

The volunteers decided among themselves how to organize themselves, and all opposed anything that suggested a resuscitation of the militarist spirit or hierarchies of command. The structure and organization of the militias, which lasted until the general militarization in March 1937, emerged from the discussions among the future combatants. It was simple: ten men constituted a group, which nominated a representative; ten groups formed a centuria, which elected a representative of its own; and five centuries would form an agrupación. The leader of the agrupación and the centuria delegates made up the agrupación committee. [540]

Pérez Farràs, the Durruti Column’s first military advisor, objected to this organizational structure and cast doubts about its feasibility in combat. Durruti quickly realized that Pérez Farràs would not make a good advisor and replaced him with artillery Sergeant Manzana, who had a better grasp of the anarchists’ anti-authoritarian psychology. Durruti entrusted Manzana and Carreño (a school teacher) with equipping the Column with artillery, munitions, as well as doctors, nurses, and an emergency operating room. Manzana didn’t need many explanations. He immediately understood what Durruti wanted from him and did a wonderful job carrying out his mission. He knew several soldiers who had joined the column, as well as some officers, and planned to have the military men instruct the others. All these people integrated themselves into the Column, fraternally and without conflict.

One day Pérez Farràs stated his criticisms to Durruti directly: “You can’t fight like that,” he declared. In reply, Durruti said:

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’ve been an anarchist my whole life and the fact that I’m responsible for this human collectivity won’t change my convictions. It was as an anarchist that I agreed to carry out the task that the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias entrusted to me.

I don’t believe—and everything happening around us confirms this— that you can run a workers’ militia according to classical military rules. I believe that discipline, coordination, and planning are indispensable, but we shouldn’t define them in the terms of the world that we’re destroying. We have to build on new foundations. My comrades and I are convinced that solidarity is the best incentive for arousing individual responsibility and a willingness to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline.

War has been imposed upon us and this battle will be different than those we’ve fought in Barcelona, but our goal is revolutionary victory. This means defeating the enemy, but also a radical change in men. For that change to occur, man must learn to live and conduct himself as a free man, an apprenticeship that develops his personality and sense of responsibility, his capacity to be master of his own acts. The worker on the job not only transforms the material on which he works, but also transforms himself through that work. The combatant is nothing more than a worker whose tool is a rifle—and he should strive toward the same objective as the worker. One can’t behave like an obedient soldier, but as a conscious man who understands the importance of what he’s doing. I know that it’s not easy to achieve this, but I also know that what can’t be accomplished with reason will not be obtained by force. If we have to sustain our military apparatus with fear, then we won’t have changed anything except the color of the fear. It’s only by freeing itself from fear that society can build itself in freedom.[541]

Durruti had expressed himself with extreme clarity. His goal was to unite theory and practice. As an anarchist, he intended to remain faithful to libertarian ideals while leading a workers’ column that would soon fight important in Aragón, on the frontlines as well as among the peasants in the rearguard. [542]

I don’t see the need for daylight savings either way

In practical terms, people like to be able to do their own personal, non-work outdoor activities while the sun is out. Daylight savings is intended to make it so that people on a normal day-shift have access to more sunlight during their personal activities after they get off work (or out of School), since work hours do not change or account for the reduced amount of time the sun is out for certain seasons. You can read more of the rationale on why it was created here.

Except for the places that dont really lose much morning or evening, should that have to do this too?

I would say yes. It would be unfair to punish people living in areas with more sunlight with more work hours, and would remove a potential cause for logistical issues.

Besides, working less and having more free time is healthier for a population anyway.

They get the same work length either way.

Daylight savings only shifts when a work day begins and ends, it does not alter the total number of hours worked.

To put it another way, a job that is 9:00am to 5:00pm means you will work 8 hours total. If everyone shifts their clock 1 hour back for daylight savings, you will still work a total of 8 hours, you just start and end those 8 hours shifted 1 hour earlier in comparison to non-daylight savings time.

My proposal is to change the total number of work hours seasonally, meaning in areas where it gets darker sooner, they would work 1 hour less than they normally would for same amount of pay.

So in the winter, businesses could be mandated by law to change work hours from 9:00am to 4:00pm. Or if you want to be really radical, remove 2 whole hours by making them 10:00am to 4:00pm.

This removes the need for daylight savings entirely, as then people can simply sleep in a bit more until the sun comes out, and head home earlier while the sun is still out.

The businesses won’t like that idea, as they don’t want workers to work less total hours at their businesses, even if it likely would result in higher profits from happier, more rested workers being more productive. Businesses would push for daylight savings instead of reducing work hours, because they are assholes.