AspiringAlienist's recent activity

  1. Comment on At what age do you consider someone to be an adult? in ~talk

    AspiringAlienist
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    This is such a great question. I feel like an adult in relation to the younger, lees experienced ones. The older, more experienced ones will think of me as a kid. My peers are adults, but also...

    This is such a great question.
    I feel like an adult in relation to the younger, lees experienced ones.
    The older, more experienced ones will think of me as a kid.
    My peers are adults, but also kids. They probably think the same of me.
    In retrospect, everything I wanted and thought previous to this period in my life seems childish.
    Looking to the future, tasks and challenges seem daunting, hopefully I will act more as an adult when they come.

    I wonder if I truly felt any different at any point in my life. Besides the legal safety guards et al. Being an adult really feels like a concept that’s for the most part relativistic.

    The coming of age ritual I underwent, as everybody in the West, is the ritual of being alone. It is not only a physical ritual (decrease of human touch, living in a small studio), but even moreso a mental ritual (believing that you have to conquer this life on your own, becoming self-reliant in all life domains, not sharing your doubts with others, participating in the capitalist rat race).

    5 votes
  2. Comment on What's your take on capital and corporal punishment? in ~talk

    AspiringAlienist
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    This proposition is highly unethical and frankly the whole argumentation seems to be in bad faith. I do not know what the real reason is that you’re posting this. If you’re truly wondering what...

    This proposition is highly unethical and frankly the whole argumentation seems to be in bad faith. I do not know what the real reason is that you’re posting this. If you’re truly wondering what would be a good system, read up how Norway treats their prisoners

    6 votes
  3. Comment on What are your favourite things to mix with natural yogurt? in ~food

    AspiringAlienist
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    Greek yoghurt with 10% fat. Peanut butter without additives (only ingredient being peanuts). Some ground cinnamon. Chocolate sprinkles to taste. Maybe the chocolate sprinkles could be swapped for...

    Greek yoghurt with 10% fat.
    Peanut butter without additives (only ingredient being peanuts).
    Some ground cinnamon.
    Chocolate sprinkles to taste.

    Maybe the chocolate sprinkles could be swapped for cocoa nibs to be slightly healthier. Haven’t tried that.

  4. Comment on Looking for some advice on a cat food dispenser in ~life.pets

    AspiringAlienist
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    Does the opening gets greasy from the cat food, preventing smooth falling? Maybe gravity food dispensers marketed for dogs have a bigger opening, which makes the flow better.

    Does the opening gets greasy from the cat food, preventing smooth falling?

    Maybe gravity food dispensers marketed for dogs have a bigger opening, which makes the flow better.

    1 vote
  5. Comment on Great shows with a truly satisfying ending? in ~tv

    AspiringAlienist
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    Oh right! Whenever I watch shows with similar feeling ideas - Westworld comes to mind - I keep thinking “I should rewatch Dollhouse”. Nothing really seems to match the vibe. Thought-provoking is...

    Oh right!

    Whenever I watch shows with similar feeling ideas - Westworld comes to mind - I keep thinking “I should rewatch Dollhouse”.

    Nothing really seems to match the vibe. Thought-provoking is exactly the right word.

    2 votes
  6. Comment on Great shows with a truly satisfying ending? in ~tv

    AspiringAlienist
    (edited )
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    While most of the shows mentioned are -beside the satisfying ending- also satisfying or conventionally good in their entirety, I’d like to offer a show that’s really rescued by its ending. Well,...

    While most of the shows mentioned are -beside the satisfying ending- also satisfying or conventionally good in their entirety, I’d like to offer a show that’s really rescued by its ending. Well, in my humble opinion at least.

    Dollhouse is a show with such an interesting premise. Its episodes differ a bit in quality. And it was cancelled halfway season 2. The epilogue Epitaph One*, which is considered kind of the finale, really wrapped everything up in an amazing way. Actually the best part of the show.

    *edit: I meant Two, per @3d12’s comment

    8 votes
  7. Comment on Great shows with a truly satisfying ending? in ~tv

    AspiringAlienist
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    Avatar is so good. The ‘spiritual grammar’ of the story -for lack of better words- make the themes and characters really come alive for me. It’s one of those shows that needs a rewatch every few...

    Avatar is so good. The ‘spiritual grammar’ of the story -for lack of better words- make the themes and characters really come alive for me. It’s one of those shows that needs a rewatch every few years.

    2 votes
  8. Comment on What is your favorite museum? in ~talk

    AspiringAlienist
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    It’s hard to pinpoint and I agree that the feeling is different. There’s something aesthetically pleasing to a beautiful painting or sculpture. Most contemporary art makes me think or has captured...

    It’s hard to pinpoint and I agree that the feeling is different. There’s something aesthetically pleasing to a beautiful painting or sculpture. Most contemporary art makes me think or has captured my gaze somehow. Sometimes it’s the concept an artist wants to convey, sometimes it’s just a way of (over)stimulation that just hits different. E.g. funfairaffair by Funda Gül Özcan (2017) is just this crazy moving diorama with accompanying soundtrack. Or anything really by Ai Weiwei, both because of the impressiveness or strangeness of the pieces, while also being political statements.

    2 votes
  9. Comment on What is your favorite museum? in ~talk

    AspiringAlienist
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    I like local museums with contemporary art and changing exhibitions. Used to have some kind of pass to go unlimited to local museums when I was a student, which made going to a new exhibition...

    I like local museums with contemporary art and changing exhibitions. Used to have some kind of pass to go unlimited to local museums when I was a student, which made going to a new exhibition possible as a lunch activity (and made it painless to leave early if I didn’t like it).

    The Louvre gives this strange feeling of massiveness besides having great pieces. Especially the hall with sculptures left an impression.

    The American Museum of National History in New York is really cool. Worth it already for the planetarium and the dinosaurs, but there’s so much more to explore.

    Museums that are centered around historic houses are always of interest to me. It’s a different type of experience than your typical museum, interesting nonetheless. For example Freud and Mozart houses in Vienna, the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam and the Terror Haza in Budapest.

    8 votes
  10. Comment on The perverse consequences of tuition-free medical school in ~finance

    AspiringAlienist
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    I. Choosing a career is more likely influenced by personality and personal story, and could be loosely modeled after the hedgehog principle in my opinion. This encompasses the idea that companies...

    I. Choosing a career is more likely influenced by personality and personal story, and could be loosely modeled after the hedgehog principle in my opinion. This encompasses the idea that companies will move from good to great if they are passionate about their product, they are good at making their product and if the product makes enough money.
    Let’s say that you are equally interested in family medicine and dermatology and every other aspect is equal, except the amount of money you’ll be making. What would you do?

    II. The field of medicine is romanticized to lure young and hopeful idealists into a pyramid scheme. Once inside, you would be a fool to not try and get to the top. Or at least get the most out of it. Getting free tuition gives you a lot of options, including leaving the field debt free. Maybe that’s the merit of these donations. And that people still continue to practice medicine even after having freedom of choice after medical school stems hopeful; maybe the selection process for these tuition free schools does select individuals that are more likely to stay.

    III. Inequality in health care, but they meant inequality to get access to medical education. If your goal is to make health care more equal, how about changing how the system works.

    IV. For which audience is this article written. What is the point? As long as medicine is a for profit zero sum game (as is everything in the - regulated - free market), nothing will really change. And somehow the diversity in physicians (i.e. primary care vs other) gets pulled into the discussion, as well as the diversity in races (white vs other) and diversity in income (poor vs rich).

    V. Top down deciding how many vacant positions are available for preferred specialties and forcing the rest into primary care specialties might be an option, however, I am too unfamiliar with the US system to really guess at which place within the system such a policy has to be implemented. Alternatively, maybe a ‘forced’ period of employment might be an interesting solution, akin to obligatory military service and for example the Aravind Eye Hospital business case (getting top education in an unique hospital in India, in exchange for working for them for a certain period).

    TL;DR Everybody wants to get money. Money is more easily got if you had it in the first place. Health care is no exception.

    5 votes
  11. Comment on Which debut albums from the 2020s do you recommend? in ~music

    AspiringAlienist
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    Fred Again.. blew up the past years, his debut album contains highly emotional tracks worth listening to: Sabrina (i am the party) or Kyle (i found you), beside of course Marea (we’ve lost...

    Fred Again.. blew up the past years, his debut album contains highly emotional tracks worth listening to: Sabrina (i am the party) or Kyle (i found you), beside of course Marea (we’ve lost dancing).

    IDKHow has some great energetic happy indie rock tracks with sometimes serious themes.

    daði freyr technically had an debut album in 2019, but his English debut album in 2023. They gained popularity after Eurovision. The funny dances combined with actually good singing voice and just good catchy pop vibes make him very easy to listen to in my opinion.

    6 votes
  12. Comment on How accurate is the conventional wisdom about dopamine? in ~health.mental

    AspiringAlienist
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    I am trained in neuroscience, but the finer details are no longer part of my daily job. The explanation of @eyechoirs match my view of the role of dopamine in the brain with regard to your...

    I am trained in neuroscience, but the finer details are no longer part of my daily job. The explanation of @eyechoirs match my view of the role of dopamine in the brain with regard to your question.

    The brain is not like an experience machine, you drop in some happy neurotransmitter and you feel happy, or you dump in some sad juice and feel sad. Really understanding the brain is hard if not impossible. At best, we measure activity and deduce which neurotransmitter is responsible in X area of the brain. Most studies take proxies of proxies (fMRI, or behavior in other species). I’m partial to the electrode implanting stuff.

    What has been found by putting electrodes into the brain of monkeys, is that firing in neurons with dopamine receptors in the part of the brain associated with reward is more related to cues signaling reward is to be expected, or either unexpected rewards without cue. See:
    Schultz, W., Dayan, P., & Montague, P. R. (1997). A neural substrate of prediction and reward. Science, 275(5306), 1593-1599.

    This phenomenon is strongly implied in the near-miss effect, which is why gambling has the potential to be so addictive. Cues that are signaling incoming reward (slot machine playing 7, 7 … bar), will tickle your reward center, even without giving the reward. So let’s try again, and again, and again.

    5 votes
  13. Comment on <deleted topic> in ~health.mental

    AspiringAlienist
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    Maybe someday I’ll do a bigger write up regarding this endlessly fascinating topic. It seems to me, like with all human belief systems, that one size does not fit all. As hearing voices is a...

    Maybe someday I’ll do a bigger write up regarding this endlessly fascinating topic.

    It seems to me, like with all human belief systems, that one size does not fit all. As hearing voices is a pretty hard symptom to treat, trying to deal with them in some way (finding meaning and distraction in other parts of life, give the voices themselves positive meaning) is an important part of recovery, from the medical viewpoint that is.

    Don’t get me wrong, antipsychotics are one of the most effective medications in whole of medicine and ideally are a part of recovery. But there’s a group that will keep symptoms and/or is hard to motivate to keep taking antipsychotics.

    3 votes
  14. Comment on Six distinct types of depression identified in Stanford Medicine-led study in ~health.mental

    AspiringAlienist
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    Interesting endeavor to try an grapple with the difficulty of the heterogeneity found within the major depressive disorder diagnosis. At best it links some fMRI findings with a clinical reality...

    Interesting endeavor to try an grapple with the difficulty of the heterogeneity found within the major depressive disorder diagnosis.

    At best it links some fMRI findings with a clinical reality that’s already known; i.e. there are more biological seeming depressions, and more psychosocial/psychological determined depressions. At worst it’ll be used in the softening of the ontological uncertainty of the depression diagnosis concept. We got fMRI findings now; it’s a real ‘thing’.

    2 votes
  15. Comment on Just wanna talk about drinking less in ~talk

    AspiringAlienist
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    If you like ginger, there’s a whole array of ginger based drinks that give some kick without being really sweet. Of course you have your ginger ale and ginger beer, which are still sweet, but if...

    If you like ginger, there’s a whole array of ginger based drinks that give some kick without being really sweet. Of course you have your ginger ale and ginger beer, which are still sweet, but if you can get your hands on some quality concentrate and mix it with sparkling water.. the spiciness will warm you. You could probably make it yourself if you want.

    If you like tea, you could probably find a blend that has a bitter flavor profile.

    And depending on your locale, there could be some good tasting 0% alcohol beers.

    19 votes
  16. Comment on Apple Music's 100 best albums list in ~music

    AspiringAlienist
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    Very surprised to see Burial in this list. While his influence on ‘intelligent dance music’ (for lack of a better term) is unparalleled, it’s not the easiest music to listen to. Definitely an...

    Very surprised to see Burial in this list. While his influence on ‘intelligent dance music’ (for lack of a better term) is unparalleled, it’s not the easiest music to listen to. Definitely an album to listen to in one sitting. Now I at least expect Aphex Twin to be somewhere down the list.

  17. Comment on South Korea health alert raised to ‘severe’ over doctors walkout in ~health

    AspiringAlienist
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    Well, I don’t really know the state of South Korean health care, but probably a safe bet that they don’t really regulate which patients may ask for evaluation at the ED, resulting in a lot of time...

    Well, I don’t really know the state of South Korean health care, but probably a safe bet that they don’t really regulate which patients may ask for evaluation at the ED, resulting in a lot of time and energy spent triaging. Some care could be better delivered by a family medicine doctor instead of in a hospital.

    A better work-life balance to keep doctors in the work force longer should be a given. If you squeeze the last bit of life out of freshly graduated doctors, their replacements - even if in larger numbers - will not necessarily last longer, no? It will not fix the problem, but ignoring this factor will exacerbate the problem sooner than later.

    In my own locale, I don’t see strikes (yet), but I feel like the willingness to put up with inhumane working conditions grows less and less each generation, making it increasingly difficult to fill positions in hospitals, which in turn results in better working agreements in some situations - but not all.

    5 votes
  18. Comment on South Korea health alert raised to ‘severe’ over doctors walkout in ~health

    AspiringAlienist
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    Good that they stand up for themselves. The government chooses to increase the risk for the patients by acting in this way. Increasing working hours in an already unhealthy work-life balance is...

    Good that they stand up for themselves. The government chooses to increase the risk for the patients by acting in this way. Increasing working hours in an already unhealthy work-life balance is insane.

    There’s ample evidence that working with sleep deprivation leads to more risks. It’s just malpractice waiting to happen.
    Increasing the student influx now, will not help the current situation of scarcity, which also poses the problem: Who will train these extra people? The overworked junior doctors? And if it effects anything, it will be 4-8 years in the future.

    These are the results of political choices: Do you want a socialist health care in which doctors are motivated to work in public hospitals with healthy working hours, normal compensation. Or do you keep going with a winner takes all system, which incentivizes private practice, places an inhumane amount of workload on the junior doctor workforce, and in which health care is seen as a product.

    3 votes
  19. Comment on Recommendations for medical history in ~humanities.history

    AspiringAlienist
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    Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry by Jeffrey A. Lieberman with Ogi Ogas (4.1/5 on goodreads). It gives an easy to read history of psychiatry in the United States, by a former president of...

    Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry by Jeffrey A. Lieberman with Ogi Ogas (4.1/5 on goodreads). It gives an easy to read history of psychiatry in the United States, by a former president of the APA. There’s also some form of critique on the DSM V, if that’s of interest.

    Not a book, but the podcast Bedside Rounds has some great medical history stories. For example this episode is on vaccines during the small pox epidemic: https://pca.st/episode/3964f32e-09d5-4577-aa11-58091a74648d

    5 votes
  20. Comment on Advertisers want to place ads next to content that is 'Brand Safe'. The end of Jezebel is a case study of how that impacts hard hitting news sites in ~tech

    AspiringAlienist
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    The power of ad based content probably is the societal breakdown. Find me one teenager that isn’t glued to twitch streams, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram etc etc in their free time. Funding the...

    I don't know how we break through that except through other societal breakdowns first.

    The power of ad based content probably is the societal breakdown. Find me one teenager that isn’t glued to twitch streams, TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram etc etc in their free time. Funding the system, while also suffering the losses of independent information.

    2 votes