Can’t say I’m deep in this space, but I think there’s a lot of sentiment towards going more lean with operations and aiming for direct donation toward Firefox development (which I don’t believe is presently an option) which seemingly, if Mozilla narrowed to their core (Firefox, MDN), the community would likely show heavy support. I have my doubts it would fully cover the bill in a sustainable way, but I at least think that’s one of the main sentiments.

Not op but https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-to-run-in-alberta-byelection-1.7525104

Basically he asked a con in the highest % of con votes to step down to trigger a by-election. It’s an area where the other parties don’t even campaign, they just hand it to the cons.

There are already talks of “liberals rigged the election” so that he can deflect and not make it a personal failing that he lost a riding that’s historically always been conservative and lost a 25 point lead in the polls in a few months.

Interesting points, maybe a book I’ll have to give a read to. I’ve long thought that information overload on its own leads to a kind of subjective compression and that we’re seeing the consequences of this, plus late stage capitalism.

Basically, if we only know about 100 people and 10 events and 20 things, we have much more capacity to form nuanced opinions, like a vector with lots of values. We don’t just have an opinion about the person, our opinion toward them is the sum of opinions about what we know about them and how those relate to us.

Without enough information, you think in very concrete ways. You don’t build up much nuance, and you have clear, at least self-evident logic for your opinions that you can point at.

Hit a sweet spot, and you can form nuanced opinions based on varied experiences.

Hit too much, and now you have to compress the nuances to make room for more coarse comparisons. Now you aren’t looking at the many nuances and merits, you’re abstracting things. Necessary simulacrum.

I’ve wondered if this is where we’ve seen so much social regression, or at least being public about it. There are so many things to care about, to know, to attend to, that the only way to approach it is to apply a compression, and everyone’s worldview is their compression algorithm. What features does a person classify on?

I feel like we just aren’t equipped to handle the global information age yet, and we need specific ways of being to handle it. It really is a brand new thing for our species.

Do we need to see enough of the world to learn the nuances, then transition to tighter community focus? Do we need strong family ties early with lower outside influence, then melting pot? Are there times in our development when social bubbling is more ideal or more harmful than otherwise? I’m really curious.

Anecdotally, I feel like I benefitted a lot from tight-knit, largely anonymous online communities growing up. Learning from groups of people from all over the world of different ages and beliefs, engaging in shared hobbies and learning about different ways of life, but eventually the neurons aren’t as flexible for breadth and depth becomes the drive.

Any good options recommended for self-hosting something similarly functional that doesn’t take too much effort to get up, audit, maintain? Discovery isn’t really important for me, so federated isn’t really necessary, but a cool extra. I’d love to host something or contribute to hosting for my gaming groups, my class or multiple classes at my school, or otherwise. Voice, chat, screen share, camera, would all be great if possible, but range of options would be good. I’m still using Mumble for gaming…

Haven’t tinkered much with Matrix nor do I know much about Revolt, but I’m curious before I look into it deeper if anyone in the community has experience hosting any communication platforms for small, invitational groups.

Oh yeah, the 365 version is terrible. And post of the time, it could have been a Python Gradio interface or similar simple implementation without having to fight so much to make basic things work. Most of what I want Excel to do it just isn’t efficient enough for; particularly with lets and lambdas, it’s gotten quite powerful as a programming paradigm where you can visualize and manipulate your data spatially in a kind of Logo / NetLogo style way which is really interesting, but the second you reference a few thousand cells a few times even a solid CPU starts screaming.

I use Excel for a decent number of tasks and can do some magic with it, but only ever really for work where it’s easier to share a weird Excel sheet than it is to pass around a Python script (which given I teach Python, isn’t actually as often as most people experience).

But what about those of us in R1C1 mode using lambdas to do recursive cell operations across data pulled from multiple sheets? Am I anywhere near the kinda of Eldritch horrors discussed? I’ve also written indirect references based on Sheet name to populate filters from web scraped tables. I just don’t know how deep the pit goes at this point.

For those undiagnosed wondering about the accuracy of this, let’s play real ADHD bingo. Gather 5 of these and have experienced some form of it for most of your life:

• Losing and misplacing things very frequently
• Restlessness, squirming, seeming like you’re motorized
• Blurting out answers to questions before the questions are completed
• Lots of thoughtless mistakes, not focusing on details
• Avoids talks requiring extended concentration
• Struggle to wait your turn
• Overly talkative
• Forgetting daily activities

I’ll note as someone who took a long while to really accept my diagnosis: And to a distressing degree.

Like, I didn’t just forget where I put my phone regularly, I’d lose expensive electronics on my ride home from school. I’d regularly forget my backpack on my way to school. I regularly needed replacement keys for my dorm.

I wasn’t just overly talkative, I’d miss busses constantly because I couldn’t stop talking. I don’t even like people all that much, I just can’t stop. Unless it’s a topic I’m not interested in. Then it’s agony.

I didn’t just avoid unnecessary things that needed my focus; my heart would race and I’d get aggressive because I needed to checks notes copy information from one page over to another… Carefully.

I wouldn’t just cut someone off to answer them before they finished, I’d get this feeling of a ringing in my ears and internal screaming, digging my nails into my hands, to try and be nice… Before cutting them off to answer before they finished anyways, but later than I intended.

Every day.

It’s not fun. I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars on late fees, extensions to degree because of missed deadlines, procrastinated dental bills. It’s agonizing. It’s pain. You will know what it is to talk to other people, have them go, “Oh my God, me too! Like sometimes, I clean, and I just don’t stop” and when you say, “I know, and then I’m just on the ground sweating and crying and feel like throwing up because I e been there for like 3 hours and missed my appointment” and you get the, “What’s wrong with you?” look. The ADH is often related; the Disorder, I’ve been surprised to learn over the years, often isn’t. I assumed people hid this distress, too.

Positive note for any concerns: Medication, therapy, and education are huge helpers. It isn’t perfect, things are just harder and that’s how it is, but they improve. I’m a professor, I have nearly 1000 students, 50 teaching assistants, and need to schedule, effectively, 120+ meetings and put out around 400 documents that must all line up every 4 months. It’s not hopeless, it’s just hard.