PayPal is, unfortunately, not dead. It's used by RMV in Germany for a start - only way to pay for a bus ticket in the app/website. No credit or debit card, straight up PayPal account.
I've taken antidepressants for years (20 mg prozac) and have sometimes tapered off them, restarting later. I can barely tell that I'm taking them, I feel 100% like myself on--and off of--them. I know they do something because when talking about difficult traumas with my therapist, if I'm not taking flouoxetine I will get choked up to the point I can't speak. That's the only difference I can perceive. My dose is not a "happy pill", it simply smooths out some extreme lows. Tapering off (a few weeks of 50% exponential declines) I've done because it's recommended, but again, I've never noticed any affect on mood before, during, or after.
after a number of years, a small dose of lithium (300mg) was recommended by a psychiatrist who stood apart (at least in that respect), and it was magic at mood stabilization, I never before even realized that I experienced hypomania (and I took it for anxiety), I just thought I was "bold".
(Lithium is not a drug, it's an element, taken as a metallic salt. It occurs naturally in the water in various parts of the world, and those populations have been studied and suffer lower rates of mental illness. My shrink said his recommendation was based in conjunction with the prozac I was taking, i.e. a known correlation. Bipolar II is a different mental condition than bipolar I, and somewhat slippery/loosely defined)
The extreme anecdotal stories people report online as in this forum strike me, an experienced but likewise only an anecdotal user, as more an artifact of underlying emotional distress rather than a result of the drugs.
I just wanted to contribute a different voice to this topic.
I should add, I do have "extra money" and am able to pay extremely qualified and expensive doctors, an option that is not available to everyone, including those with full public health services.
I think this is more relevant than people give it credit for. While bipolar depression and unipolar (major) depression might generally be functionally indistinguishable from the outside, they seem to have genuinely different origins within the body and brain.
And the drugs seem to be far more powerful for people with bipolar.
That's both good and bad. Good, because between mood stabilizers and very careful use of antidepressants, many people with bipolar can genuinely achieve complete treatment, or close enough to pass as complete. Which is wonderful! Bad because antidepressants and (hypo)mania are a dangerous combination, and the antidepressants can have more kick than one would normally expect. They'll often cause a patient's first manic episode, which can be very bad on its own but might get things on the right treatment course. (Of course, they often still do nothing much at all.
I think the tapering may be related as well. I was eventually diagnosed with bipolar II and I've never really had to taper off anything that didn't have a black-box warning about tapers (either intrinsically or due to blood-pressure effects, which are worth taking seriously). I've stopped some things cold which one really shouldn't stop cold. I didn't really notice much other than the bad side effects causing the stop going away.
> I do have "extra money" and am able to pay extremely qualified and expensive doctors
I don't really have "extra money" but I still do this anyway. My psychiatrist is $500 an hour, out of pocket, no insurance accepted period. He actually listens. It's worth it.
>You legs may have a comparative advantage at running
that's not what comparative advantage means except in a degenerate sense.
if country A is worse than country B in both making clothes and making paper, their comparative advantage is in the product which they are less worse at; they can maximize their GDP making that product.
you raised a good point but (et al) didn't touch on the meaningful questions: where does the "core team" of developers of DuckDB now reside? are they now "captured/cashing-in/getting paid" at AWS, or will meaningful MIT-licensed development of DuckDB continue in a robust way outside of commercial enterprises with proprietary needs that are not aligned with where the project was going?
that study was specifically "asylum seekers" which is not migrants taken as a whole. isn't the migrant population substantially higher than the asylum population?
>then the energy required to run them isn't free either
i think his point was that if you are in a remote location with solar and or wind power, the power is free because you can't do anything else with it (without transmission lines)
his implementation does not save space which is fine because that was not his intent. to make a programming analogy, he turned spaghetti-code into structured code.
>about primates that have high carb-sugar diets but doesn't explain why their brains remain so small compared to humans. Maybe they will eventually evolve?
if they have abundant sources of carb-sugar, there would be no selection pressure to evolve in a particular direction.
Don't most evolutionary traits/changes come at times of restrictions? I don't think many traits are developed during times of abundance, it's when there is a shortage and they have to seek out something else; like protein. Or, sometimes it's just natural competition for the share of the abundance. If there where a big brain out competing you for your carbs, you might have to reconsider your dietary options and make substitutes/changes that would have evolutionary implications.
>I don’t think that would fly as a defense in court
but that's not the point, the point is to not wind up in court by presenting a phone that no long contains evidence but seems plausibly like your phone so doesn't arouse suspicion
If it was implemented in such a way, there would be no reason to suspect anyone of using it because it would be totally indistinguishable from not having used it. At that point they have no grounds for legal action. Unless they could monitor FS/disk activity, but that goes beyond typical airport security stuff.
I'm imagining a duress code that erases select files and any indication that there was ever a duress code set up in the first place.
As things stand right now, software is 1-A protected speech. I'm not sure how long that will be the case with growing authoritarianism, specifically wrt to tech, on both sides of the aisle. I am concerned it may be considered probable cause though -- like how you can legally have an ax in the bed of your pickup but it's a free pass for a cop to search your vehicle if they're so inclined -- but really, they can manufacture probable cause for anyone if they want so it's kind of moot. You may be attracting unnecessary attention though if
you've got "GrapheneOS" on your lock screen. But this goes back to my original point, they still have to catch you in the first place.
(1) Keep manufacturer's Android plus some plausible apps and data in a reserved part of the drive. (2) GrapheneOS runs from the other part of the drive. (3) Make sure PIN screen designed to not give away the OS. (4) When duress PIN is entered, erase GrapheneOS and restore manufacturer's Android. (5) Now you won't be charged for having GrapheneOS because they won't know you had it.
online is dead too, no app uses paypal, and plenty of online merchants take credit cards more than paypal; they even offer their own credit cards.
paypal hasn't innovated at all in over a decade, and people are scared of the way it will hang on to your money with little recourse.
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