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Sounds good, but you can say that Healthcare in general. Why go to the doctor? He's just going to keep you sick so you keep coming back. Hell, you can say this about most purchases, service or good. Why hire a plumber, they're just going to do a shitty job so you call them back. Why buy a cell phone? They'll just make them shitty so you have ro buy another in 2 years. Except no, just like cell phones, plumbers, doctors, and therapists are incentivized to do a good job through market forces.

Now, you may think the current market as constructed makes it difficult to distinguish bad therapists from good, but that seems like a separate point.

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Because it's the same as the generic, or?

its so surreal to hear the term "brain zaps" for ssri withdrawal for like a decade, never get this symptom despite ebing on it the whole time, assume that it must be some sort of silly twee term, switch meds, and start experiecning what can only be described as *zaps* in your *brain* every time you forget your meds. and like, debilitatingly so. drunk on brain zaps

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Sounds like effexor.

its so surreal to hear the term "brain zaps" for ssri withdrawal for like a decade, never get this symptom despite ebing on it the whole time, assume that it must be some sort of silly twee term, switch meds, and start experiecning what can only be described as *zaps* in your *brain* every time you forget your meds. and like, debilitatingly so. drunk on brain zaps

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Ngl on ambien this slaps

people in the early 20th century were having their minds blown by poems like: rat-a-tat-tat BAM POW KABLAMO goes the artillery gun a chick-chick-chick kurplow kurplow! HONK HONK says the car unfolding on krunk-a-bunk-bunk streets of silver glass

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I've noticed such decadence in this one. Such moral decay.

about once or twice a year I treat myself. I go to an AI generated image website and click the 'woman' category. and then I look at the woman there

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i think about this scene all the time

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Stumbled on this 1992 interview with Michael Crichton about his 90's Japan Scare novel Rising Sun, which is very fun. For one, Crichton is a Perotist!

Question: “Rising Sun” makes a strong argument that Japanese business is unfairly aggressive and Americans are foolish to have tolerated this unfairness for so long. Is that a decent synopsis? Answer: Not exactly. Let me just restate it. In the immortal words of my hero, Ross Perot: “It’s not a two-way street. It never has been a two-way street. It’s not their fault.” It’s our fault.

His 90's "Declinist America Needs Protectionism" vibe really comes through in the whole interview, you forget these days due to Trump how much of a Type of Guy that was and how intellectual-coded it could be in that era of dominant "unreflective" neoliberalism.

Anyway, we certainly did talk about race in the 90's!

Q: Do you consider the Japanese racist? A: [...] We’re talking about a historically inward-looking nation, an island nation, largely monoracial. That’s a good structure in which to have the rise of feelings of superiority about your own people as opposed to other people in the world. Of course, these broad statements can’t be applied to the individual Japanese person. One of the things that Americans, as a multiracial society, feel is a tremendous sensitivity to racial comments of all kinds. In the book, one of the things I tried to say to Americans was: Hey, while you’re tiptoeing around the race issue, your competitors are a monoracial country, very much aligned, and tend to hold in common beliefs that would astound you.

Narrator: America did not, in fact, "tiptoe" around the race issue.

But to be clear it isn't like this is super wrong or anything - 90's Japan absolutely was a "racist country" if such a thing is possible, most countries are, and its geographic isolation and relative lack of modern immigrants at that time certainly did contribute to that. What I instead find amusing is the idea that this is a threat to the US; the implication is that, because Japan is a racist country, when they rule the world economically they will in some way impose that racist worldview upon us. Which, I don't really think that is how free trade works? Might have watched too much Gunbuster on this one buddy.

We of course have the classics of Japan Scare:

Q: Has the continued decline in the Japanese stock market, their falling real-estate value and shrinking foreign investment caused you to rethink your views of Japanese-American business dealings? A: No, not at all. I’ve not seen figures on what the growth of the Japanese GNP will be this year. You hear stories about economic distress in Japan, but you see that the growth rate is going down to 4% from 5%. If this country had a 4% growth rate, we’d all feel like we were pumped full of testosterone.

-😬😬😬-

Narrator: it did not stop going down at 4%.

What i love most is how you see the same exact arguments about American "economic weakness" you see today, but with the dates/countries swapped around:

Q: What allowed us to contribute so willingly to our own weakening? Greed? Altruism? Shortsightedness? Arrogance? A: (following a large sigh) You have to look back at broad time periods. It’s possible now to argue that Americans have had no increase in real earnings power since 1962. Some economists would dispute that, and set the date at 1973. Either way, the country is in a steady, consistent and ongoing decline. Why? That’s an extended conversation. 

Obviously since then US living standards have gone up quite a lot! You definitely *cannot* argue that they did not go up since 1962, that is in fact an insane claim. You can't argue they haven't gone up since the 90's either. Even in Japan they have, they definitely have in Europe, economies grow in general. And of course the classic "American companies are all gambling now":

No one invests in a company anymore, in the way it was done in the ‘50s, say, because they believe the company is good. They buy because they think the price of the stock will rise or fall. What this means is that American managers are obliged to manage in the short term. There’s no incentive for an investor to hang on with a company for the long term. In Japan, savings--up to a certain point--are tax free. Why is that not also true in America? You want savings? Then don’t tax it as ordinary income.

I will leave posting a list of the most high-value companies over the past 30 years as an exercise for the reader; you don't need it, you already know them. But I certainly see versions of this dancing around today, and you definitely saw it in 2008 all over the place.

No real skin off Crichton's back, to be clear - prediction is hard, he isn't an economist, most will be wrong. Just funny how the ideological churn keeps spinning.

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First story in the murnane colleciton im reading rn. really really good.

🐁🐁🐁

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Re: blorbo from my research, here is my favorite ever case study. I'm obsessed with it.

Summary:

- Guy presents to neurology with muscle issues, very clearly has something going on but diagnostic tests are inconclusive

- History is mostly unremarkable. Key word, mostly. He drinks four liters of plain Earl Grey tea per day. For context this is nearly twice the recommended daily fluid intake. All fluids, to be clear, not just tea. He only drinks tea tho

- Bergamot is known to be phototoxic in high doses (reacts badly on your skin with sunlight)

- APPARENTLY nobody previously has consumed enough of it for it to be widely known that it is also, apparently, mildly toxic to ingest in high doses

- Guy starts drinking plain black tea again. Only 2 liters this time (he didn't have a medical reason to drink that much tea, he just liked it) and so now he's fully recovered

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Forgive me for posting about this but some of the harry potter worldbuilding is soooo funny in hindsight. the political dimensions of every single wizard child in britain and ireland being expected to attend the same school in the mid 90s were not thought through in the slightest but what do you expect from an englishwoman I suppose

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Is this what Freud meant by penis envy

Imagine you're a normal gay guy in 1979, reading your gay newspaper, maybe it's your little respite from the otherwise homophobic 1979 society you live in, and there's some article from the antipenis woman there.

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toddler started playing a game a while ago where he points at dad and says "you're [toddler]. I'm Dada" and then they roleplay being each other. I gotta say. the schadenfreude, the absolute satisfaction, when toddler says "eat your hot dog" and dad says "no! I want a lot!!" (imitating what the toddler does when he refuses to eat unless he is given a GIANT PILE of food, which he will eat approximately 5% of) and toddler says "you can have this" (exactly what we say to him in this situation) and dad says "I WANT A LOT!!" and the toddler tries to think of a way to convince him and says "EAT IT!!" with visible frustration. exquisite. incredible

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love reading asoiaf threads about translation fails

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House of the wounded bear, Pompeii.

Photo: Silvia Vacca

The name of the house is due to the mosaic on the entrance floor that depicts a bear wounded by a spear.

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