It seems like a lost art to think that way. It’s disturbing to me how many candidates couldn’t write Hello World and compile it from the command line.

Everyone should spend some time with godbolt.org or better, the -save-temps compiler flag, to see how changes affect your generated code. Right now. I’ll wait. (Shakes cane at kids)

A timely piece I can relate to. currently starting my second week in a (US) hospital oncology ward after my 11th cycle of chemo. I was first diagnosed with stage iv colon cancer and after chemo, surgery, resections and stubbornness was NED from 2018 to 2025. The return is inoperable and I was given “six months to a year”.

I asked if I’d be in pain when death came, and he said that I wouldn’t likely be - it would just be feeling more and more tired. That’s basically what’s been happening.

The chemo itself hasn’t given me direct side effects like skin lesions or mouth sores, nor much nausea. The secondary effects on my kidneys (which were already doing poorly before this started) and liver (cirrhosis) plus the metastases in lymph nodes and lung leads to edema. Diuretics helped but flushed out my potassium, so there several months where they trying to balance those electrolytes.

Anyway, a lot of my swelling was reduced (and they took 4L from two rounds of draining my lungs) but for some ungodly reason my scrotal sack decided it wanted to play too, and became the size and consistency of one of those half size basketballs you can win at fairs. it’s so bad that I actually requested a catheter. The swelling makes walking or anything else really painful.

The oncology wing I’m in doesn’t seem soaked in the kind of depressing, institutional green malaise of slightly older hospitals but it isn’t a “nice place” to die (I don’t expect to do that this visit in any case). The older woman (70?) two doors down though - seems to be in constant pain and in and out of lucidity, shouting at everyone. Usually a phrase gets stuck on repeat for a few hours - the most heartbreaking was “mommy get my mommy I’m sorry mommy I’m a bad girl mommy stop it” yelled loudly for hours.

This is a generic hospital though. Memorial Sloan-Kettering in NYC has a patient day lounge and lots of projects for child patients and patients families. Still not even approaching the quality described

Sorry, rambling. Probably my way of compartmentalizing the anxiety.

The other thing I wanted to say is that I really liked Christopher Hitchens “Mortality” and that Terry Pratchett’s very relatable death character shows up in all of his books. My favorite quote is from “Small Gods” as Death comes for the protagonist at the very end:

> “Ah. There really is a desert. Does everyone get this?” said Brutha. WHO KNOWS? “And what is at the end of the desert?” JUDGMENT. Brutha considered this. “Which end?” Death grinned and stepped aside.

Maybe I’m not afraid of death because as a devout atheist - well yea, we all get to do that at some point.

(Along those lines I would also recommend Susanna Clarke’s “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell” which builds its own parallel history set in the early 1800s Britain, with Fairies taking the same role as elves in discworld.

1 - why not both?

2 - via MST3K “If you're wondering how he eats & breathes, And other science facts...(la! la! la!) Then repeat to yourself its just a show, I should really just relax...”

  “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C." - Governor Bobby Jindal, Feb 24 2009 in his party response to Obama first address to congress.  


  “Monitor my Beer” - Mount Redoubt in Alaska, March 22, 2009, erupted.  

I always end up thinking about this when republicans pick stupid examples of government waste. Best of luck to you.

This takes a non-zero amount of time and it takes careful consideration by subject experts.

I can’t really speak to your hopefulness of good intentions - as a parent that relies on government agencies to help my special needs child with the tools she needs, I see no hope here.

What does success look like? How long should the chaos and pain last before you’re beyond hope? Will there be remuneration for people that are materially hurt by this scorched earth policy? How will you be hurt, personally?

VR Chat was less locked down and felt more self patrolled and honest. (On the other hand I wandered a common “watch a movie” vrchat video room instance where Nazi propaganda played and the people in the room were bro-asting about being racist anti-semites.)

[1] https://grokware.com/ [2] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3Z4X4FmIhIw

It was a time of screensavers and palette animation.

[1]https://www.evilmadscientist.com/2014/555v2/>

The one time I remember something different was around 2003 when he was asked at an all hands meeting, a question that came down to “how do we work with all this chaos, war, blaming ethnic and religious minorities”, etc. The person that asked it was almost in tears. Jobs response was to look seriously non-plussed and he answered “if you can’t do anything else, vote for the democrats” and then moved on to the next question. He may have had deeper opinions- but they were not part of his public discourse when he was ceo.