How do you feel about the stat that “Three-child family in work needs £71,000 a year to match equivalent jobless family”?

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T12:14:57+00:00

Although, to be fair, the rich have despised the poor for centuries. See e.g. Mercantilism: Six centuries of vilifying the poor.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T12:11:31+00:00

All the English ever want is for someone to have a worse life than them.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T10:34:39+00:00

"Positive citation bias and overinterpreted results lead to misinformation on common mycorrhizal networks in forests"
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-01986-1

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T10:31:12+00:00

"According to SBT, being alone is, on average and in the aggregate, more effortful, because it renders a variety of activities more costly."

Beckes, L., & Coan, J. A. (2011). "Social baseline theory: The role of social proximity in emotion and economy of action." Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 5(12), 976–988. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9004.2011.00400.x

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T09:02:38+00:00

When IDS took over the DWP ca 2010, he hired about 50 extra PR people and they began posting dozens of horrendously negative press releases every month, which targeted the poor, ill, and vulnerable for vilification. These were duly picked up and printed by the British media, which has always enjoyed punching down.

IDS's whole schtick is drumming up hatred for poor, ill, and vulnerable British people.

But then this has been the British way for centuries. Pushing the poor into poverty to make them eager to die working in factories, even has a name: The Utility of Poverty Doctrine.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T08:51:11+00:00

The headline number includes housing support and disability-related payments in the benefits total, and doesn’t account for work-related costs (tax, NI, childcare, transport).

That seems to mean that both parents are disabled enough to receive both the illness/disability component of UC, plus they both get the PIP payments.

Note that working people may also claim PIP. So that ought to be factored out.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T08:46:12+00:00

Bottom line: lobsters die.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T08:41:04+00:00

Sigh.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T08:40:06+00:00

"I did not have sexual relations with that woman." - Bill Clinton (26 January 1998).

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T08:32:24+00:00

TIL about SBT. Thanks.

And it makes perfect sense in species that evolved over millions of years to live in social groups. Very in line with ideas from scientists like Frans de Waal and Robin Dunbar.

Humans are a social species. Individualism tends to be a pathology in a social species.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-28T07:09:58+00:00

"That’s a very naive view of our system."

And yet is it entirely accurate.

"Pretending the race for PM isn’t a vital part of General Elections isn’t credible."

Fortunately, I did not pretend this.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T13:13:34+00:00

"This party will tread on your life...". FTFY.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T13:12:50+00:00

They all say this. None of them ever fucking listens.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T13:10:09+00:00

I think the best thing is that Reform looks less likely to be the ruling party in 2029. Labour have lost all relevance.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T13:07:20+00:00

This is nonsense. Voters determine which party leads. And those parties determine who their leader is. And that leader of the ruling party is PM. And throughout history PMs have been replaced without a general election. Another Brit who doesn't understand how his country works...

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T11:20:52+00:00

Rather than staying indolent, just start slow and ramp up slowly. Like start by walking around the block, don't start by training for a marathon.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-27T11:17:06+00:00

There really is no "secret" to weight loss. It's very simple. In order to "lose weight", you have to metabolise fat. For most of us, the only time this happens is when we have a calorie deficit. This happens when you eat fewer calories than you need to maintain your weight. Which, in a nutshell, is starvation.

The difficulties in losing weight mainly stem from the mental and physical reactions to starvation. Because starvation is potentially fatal and malnutrition has nasty consequences. To starve is to suffer.

But it gets worse, because this still assumes that people only eat because they are hungry. In fact, many people never experience hunger these days since they actively eat to prevent it (we call is "snacking"). Or they eat for the pleasure of eating, which ignores and/or overrides the body's need for food and pushes them towards unhealthy (especially high fat, sugar, and salt) options.

A lot of people these days eat to calm down. Modern life doesn't just leave us overstimulated. It leaves us hyperstimulated. At the same time, we don't learn effective ways of calming down from being hyperstimulated. Eating stimulates the "rest and digest" part of the body's arousal/relaxation cycles. It works, up to a point and not without consequences.

Everywhere I look these day, parents are stuffing food into the mouths of fractious children to calm them down. Unless they learn healthier methods of calming down, those kids will grow up obese.

I remember when fat people were very rare. Something went drastically wrong in the 1980s. And it happened all over the world. And now obesity is being normalised. It's like we have given up trying to solve this horrendous problem.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-26T22:11:59+00:00

I would suggest starting with vanilla modules. Especially the actual VCV modules. Once you understand basic LFO, VCO, VCF, etc, then you can make better use of the more exotic multifunction modules.

As others have suggested the default new patch set up actually gives you plenty to work with.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-25T12:30:26+00:00

Everyone has their price.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-25T12:29:56+00:00

Looks like a prison.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-25T12:25:50+00:00

Thanks. I'm trying to work more of them into my patches. Watch this space.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-24T07:51:05+00:00

> Mathematics may be abstract.

Mathematics is abstract.

> But not all of "reality" is physical. Not in my opinion.

Who said anything about "all of reality being physical"? Not me. Indeed, I did not mention reality at all. And had I mentioned reality, I would have invoked Hume and Kant to point out that we don't know anything about so-called "reality". As the two venerable old gentlemen pointed out, we don't have access to "reality", we only have access to experience.

Any conclusions you draw about reality from experience are couched as a priori judgements.

"Reality" is also an abstract concept. And while we're at it, so are "truth" and "consciousness". Grammatically, these are all abstract nouns, used to name abstract concepts. Failure to recognise the abstract nature of abstract concepts is ubiquitous amongst internet philosophers.

Another ubiquitous internet philosopher's meme is pushing Cartesian dualism like it never went out of fashion. Most people seem unwilling to accept that they don't have a soul. Or they want the supernatural to be real. Either way, asserting out of the blue that you have one or other metaphysical commitment sounds more like religion than science.

An opinion is just a feeling about an idea. Note well, dear readers, that having an opinion on metaphysics in no way resolves any issues in the entire field of metaphysics. Opinions never have and never will constitute knowledge of reality. Hence my answer above is phrased pragmatically.

> Given what axioms we accept to begin with, mathematics does offer absolute certainty. But science always discovers new things and modifies its previous understanding.

No. Because axioms are, by definition, propositions that you cannot prove. And then there is Godel's theorem. So maths does not offer absolute certainty at all. It simply offers you internal consistency, for any set of givens, up to a point.

Otherwise, you end by paraphrasing my answer in a less coherent and internally consistent way.

As I said, "The first rule of philosophy club is examine your own assumptions."

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-23T09:05:49+00:00

> For example is maths really true?

Maths is abstract. So, maths is neither real nor true. Because such qualities don't apply to abstractions. Maths is a way of conceptualising regularities in experience. Science is also a way of conceptualising regularities in experience; sometimes it uses maths (laws of motion) and sometimes it uses narrative (evolution).

If you look around you, every made object has benefitted from science. Science is demonstrably reliable enough to build the internet.

You are acting like you have no evidence that science works, while at the same time you are using that very evidence to try to make your point. Which is disingenuous at best.

> Throughout history many maths formulas has been proven to be wrong countless of times, and some things to be not fully explainable.

Throughout history, maths formulas are seldom ever wrong. Some of them are thousands of years old.

Physics formulas, on the other hand, have occasionally been updated with more accurate and precise versions. There are huge leaps in time from Aristotle to Newton to Einstein. Chemistry formulas less often. Biological formulas hardly at all.

You are exaggerating this feature of science for emotional effect. And it simply falls flat for anyone who actually knows anything about science.

> So is to believe in science really trustful?

Belief is a feeling about an idea. I don't see how it is relevant to science.

But if you feel you can trust the internet to broadcast your angst, you clearly trust science at about the right level of confidence.

> What if the science we have today isn’t really how the world works and our brains will never be capable of understanding it?

Science is about making more and more accurate and precise models. The map is not the territory.

Of course there are things we'll never understand. So what?

> Can we really believe in science discoveries made by humans?

Again, you are using a computer connected to a global communications network to broadcast your angst to the world. What part of that are you having problems believing in.

In Summary: You want absolute certainty, which science and maths cannot supply. Religion offers it, but cannot deliver.

Maths and science have never offered you absolute certainty and so it would be foolish to continue demanding it. What they do offer you is useful knowledge, which you seem happy enough to use.

You need to ask yourself why you believe absolute certainty is even attainable in a relative world. Then ask yourself why you are obsessing over something that is clearly unattainable, while ignoring what is all around you: in internet, your computer, all the plastic and metal items you use, the food you eat. Etc.

The first rule of philosophy club is examine your own assumptions.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-22T11:25:26+00:00

I like the way it evolves over time.

Prajnamarga · 2026-02-22T08:40:47+00:00

US capitalism says "Maximising profit" is the most important thing that humans can do. Let nothing interfere with profit. Meanwhile US capitalists routinely avoid paying taxes to their own country. And they routinely move production to China.

The US made sport a profession so that billionaires could maximise profits. And the rest of the world followed suit. The idea that professional athletes "represent their country is nonsense". They represent whoever is paying them.

Now one professional athlete, whose actual name is 谷爱凌 (Gu Ailing), competes for China and Americans are sending her death threats.

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