A compendium of everyday research

(roughly stolen from #6 on this list of things that would all be great)

 

Tati and I disagreed about whether we should get plastic or glass food containers, for long-term health-and-safety reasons. Like... BPA was a thing, but we're fine now, right? But what about, I don't know, if you put hot food into plastic? Is it still safe then? We had different instincts and that makes it difficult to make a shared decision.

Another question someone challenged me on is: how bad is cannabis for you? I have it in my head as "roughly as bad as alcohol" but that answer isn't very thorough. How bad is vaping vs. edibles? Raw flower vs extracts and processed things? How many mg of THC should I be thinking about as equivalent to one beer? Is that even a fair comparison?

I'm sure one of my friends has researched both of these thoroughly, but I don't know who. As it is, I'll probably spend an annoying couple hours looking up articles and trying to fit them into my brain. It'd be nice if I could just look into the Google Drive folder where a friend has written a thing about it and decide.

(I assume this will be a major thing in the future, assuming we have kids! so many questions about what's good for kids! eesh.)

This is not just reinventing wikipedia, because I think this has to be local-ish. Answers are somewhat context specific. If I were in the Yukon, maybe I'd have to worry more about freezer storage. If I already knew I was allergic to plastic (? I dunno), I'd just buy glass. If I couldn't afford glass containers, I'd just buy plastic. If I were 14 years old, I think the answer on weed is "don't do it; it will mess with your developing brain." So I don't think there's One True Guide for everyone. But my friends are likely to be in roughly similar life situations, and they're likely to roughly share my values, so I could probably just use their research.

(yes, Wirecutter does this for some "which X do I buy" questions. indeed, they have a pretty good answer here. but most questions are not "which X do I buy" and maybe I wouldn't trust a NYT/Amazon hybrid to answer many questions anyway.)

 

edit a couple hours later: geez, researching plastic food container safety is awful - I think the answer is something like "who knows?" and so I'm landing on "try not to mix heat and plastic; maybe don't reuse plastic containers a ton, and buy glass reusable containers instead of plastic when given the choice; otherwise don't worry about it"

Some smaller thoughts about links

Happiness won't save you (contains talk about suicide) (read with bypass paywalls)

1. Those studies about how lottery winners and car-accident paraplegics all went back to the same baseline they started from, after some time? Not, uh, super true. ("not true" is glib shorthand; science is hard) This is both scary (oh man if I got in an accident my life probably would get worse) and empowering (if I feel like I'm on a new better baseline, that's not just an illusion.)

2. Man this poor guy! Academia is bad, sure, but uff I'm always so sympathetic to people who are in this situation. I think about logarithmic scales of pleasure and pain a lot. While there's more to suffering than just a number, the "logarithmic" part is what's so scary; it can get real bad in there.

3. Every discussion about suicide contains a link to the suicide prevention hotline. ... kinda curious, do they mind that a million people keep linking to them? Also, what happens when they get overloaded? I imagine "sorry, there's nobody here to talk to you" is like the worst possible failure mode, so they probably super-prepare against it; I wonder how.

Tech isn't neutral: a list of resources. Mostly just bookmarking this because one time I had to argue that tech isn't neutral and I was unprepared. It's so obvious! gosh.

 

Rumcakes and rainbows; or how meaning is interactively constructed through things, not inherent in them or totally in your head. This is also just a link to this whole ongoing Meaningness book project that seems to me generally pretty good. It's like a philosophy book but you don't have to know philosophy. It also AFAICT is trying to address the main question that I'm pretty interested in: what even matters, and why?

Mozilla "privacy not included" gift guide. This is always going to be an oversimplification but this seems to be a pretty good start. I like how they show what data is collected, and then let people vote on "... so, how bad is it?" to address the fact that "gathering X" isn't inherently creepy. If a Fitbit checks my pulse, fine; if a "smart fork" does so, gtfo. Reminds me of Privacy Grade, which also used this kind of "analyze data use then let people vote" kind of thing.

rehydrating a little this week

I feel kind of like I exist again. gosh was really that much mental energy taken up by the Tr*mp show?

Jung

I've been reading about him, mostly through Jung's Map of the Soul.  It's mostly comprehensible, and full of interesting ideas.

Some concepts:

Libido - I want to know more about this. I feel like this book just briefly touched on it, but it's one of my big questions here. There's some kind of "energy" (not woo here, just like, sometimes you feel energetic and sometimes you don't and it's hard to explain it all just physically. oh and unlike with Freud this doesn't just mean sexual energy.) - how does it move? Where does it come from? Have some people figured out how to get more of it?

Archetypes and the collective unconscious - these are pretty exciting too. Sometimes your experiences aren't just yours! You can see this obviously sometimes: kid grows up in Great Depression, becomes a miser but manages to become well off, passes that tendency on to kids who are penny-pinchers despite never experiencing poverty. Sometimes it's weirder (and more interesting), like when you're feeling things that go way back to ancestral stuff. I'd love to hear more stories of these. I'd also like to understand the difference between instincts and archetypes more - like, you startle when you hear a strange sound at night, is that archetypal?

Anima/Animus: I think I've kinda understood the bits about ego, complexes, persona, and shadow. But what the heck is the anima/us? What do later people say about it? Can you do certain things that will get you in touch with your anima/us? How would you know? Or maybe, what are other people's stories of their anima/uses?

Oh but look out there's some garbage too: diagrams of "quaternities" and talk about "synchronicities" and stuff that's either just straight up nonsense or else way over my head :P

psychedelics

Oregon legalized psilocybin therapy! And Scott Wiener's introducing legislation to get CA on the same track! This is great for 3 reasons:

- War on Drugs is bad, duh

- even if you think we shouldn't legalize/decriminalize all drugs, psychedelics are among the most harmless.

- and they can actually be very helpful. I know people who they have really helped dramatically with depression.

 

other notes

can you bring anything through the tunnel? ("tunnel" being nitrous in his case, but this also applies to dreams or whatever else.) and is the experience still useful even if you can't?

this on sutra vs tantra - did I just not click with Buddhism because all the Buddhism I learned was "sutra"?

*exhales, but maintains really quite a lot of tension throughout the body anyway*

so many feelings!

 

- thank god, etc. I almost cried, and maybe still will; this ate up a lot of mental/emotional space.

 

- this actually is good; the president is just one guy but does get to appoint a whole lot of people; also there's a lot of symbolism and diplomacy and stuff. ok cool, relieved, whew! uh oh here come the rest of the thoughts...

- oh god for all this hype about Biden, we basically lost the election. We thought we'd be at 52 in the senate - but we're at 48 and hoping against hope for Georgia. We lost seats in the house. We lost a lot in state legislatures. If like a few hundred thousand votes went the other way, we would be either still fretting, or unconditionally sobbing. As it is, we will probably be unable to do anything for at least 2 years and then there'll be another election involving...

 

- oh god the next Trump - a new strongman dictator who's actually competent? we are so lucky that our first Trumpist president was this one and just mostly bad at stuff in addition to being corrupt, lying, racist, sexist, selfish, and awful. The next one might be good at stuff too.

- point is, Trump is not a one off, he is a product of his party, which voted for him more than ever this time. can we please stop pandering to the center and start doing policies that most of America likes and just winning the game of elections more? how are we so bad at this?

- ... speaking of "winning elections more", I tried volunteering in a new way (technical help with sending emails for a state house candidate in FL.); it was kinda painful and I don't want to do it any more probably. plus we lost big. uh, gotta keep playing around with good ways to help. I know there is a third option besides "sacrifice my life doing drudgery work that I hate" and "sit back and watch while the world explodes" but I still haven't found it.

...

still, despite all these very true feelings, I do feel some relief, and it's nice.

*holds breath*

(no wait dammit, I'm *new, more enlightened* Dan! (breathes deeply for a couple breaths - then goes back to holding breath after mind wanders even the tiniest amount))

 

I wish I had something wise or caring to say here! basically, tomorrow I'll have one of three feelings:

- f'in thank god + a little crazy exultation + ok, we haven't solved anything, but now we can start making forward progress

- despair and rage

- still holding breath

and none of these are brilliant or beautiful or wise! sometimes we are none of these things, I guess.