The DU Lounge

He sounds like a really sweet kid. Is he close to the other triplets? Do they live apart? Twins I know generally are very close. How is it with the triplets?

If he likes reading, I hope he reads “The Citadel” someday. It is a beloved classic and imo a must read for young medical professionals and scientists generally.

These are such corrupt times. I have rarely come across doctors I didn’t like. It is a profession (like science) which generally consists of people I respect and trust. The training helps instill a reality based worldview.

Hospital admins are another matter.

I rather like this one doctor, whose columns are pretty decent:
https://www.claytondalton.com/
Dr. Dalton is a physician-writer which I think is pretty cool.

I am myself trying to get back on track in science after a horribly extended break (a shitty job that was life destroying in 2011, covid, the death of someone I was very close to and some other really bad stuff local to me).

And experimenting with writing (which I have very mixed feelings about - which is why I end up deleting many of my posts off and on in a revulsion of feeling about revealing so much about myself online). I have complicated feelings about whether to only be someone who talks about their own field in the main and only posts other people’s views that closely match mine rather than write myself.

I know I will never write under my own name. But I am in the middle of a conflict and it comes down to whether honest human writing can help or not. I am a bit suspicious of concepts like “telling one’s story”. Sounds a bit dubious and sketchy imo. But Dr.Dalton, Yasha Levine, Ed Zitron, Chris Ketcham, Evgenia Kovda, Marina Bolotnikova and Adam Becker write unaffectedly and it isn’t an exercise in narcissism.

Hamilton Nolan had a piece years ago called “Journalism is not narcissism”. And I agreed mostly and like Nolan. So I have not decided yet. I suspect I will revert to my basic nature and end up deleting all my writing. Not as a reputation curating person. But as someone to whom sharing doesn’t come easily and who resents having been forced into it by a creepy, shitty loathsome workplace. I have fewer mixed feelings about writing exclusively about my hatred for my last workplace. There it feels natural.

But then I just sound embittered and disgruntled - both of which I am. But it comes down to whether it helps in my conflict with them. What sets my experience apart at least some from many is I was an early inductee into the creepy and repellant Panopticon being built and am writing to push back against it.

It all comes down to establishing conflict lines as I prepare to re-enter research if that is even possible. My last workplace made me give up. But when I look at the world today and how negative an influence Google, Facebook etc (all heavy influences on that creepy hell) have been on the world, I reject their worldview with the disdain it deserves. I do question some archaic views in science that make it less accessible to anyone but pis and temps. Looking at the diverse collection of creeps who catered to Epstein it doesn’t feel like a subset of these “superstars” of science are nice or sane unlike the average scientist (elite like my real mentor or non elite like me). And those creeps seem to be the gate-keepers like my disgusting, cultish and somewhat stupid former workplace.

This is an instance of politics getting entwined with science, medicine and reality and so maybe it is worthwhile? I just don’t think it is a very good thing when scientists or physicians are influencer adjacent. But the people I follow are not influencers. They are not shilling any products or posting on social media. Nor are they just contributing generic, canned stuff. Which I suppose is what it comes down to. What is the point if it is just more blandly insipid or spectacular, controversial and angering froth? Those are stylistic differences not substantial ones. That way I like Lucien Greaves - he writes to represent the caustic who have a function.

I will only ever write on DU which I do see as closer to collaborative teamwork which gets back to a comfort zone as that is much of science. I write here as you are all nice people and Dave, elad and MIRT make this very different from a hideous Zuckerberg owned hell. Otoh then I don’t want to grate on other DUers, while still writing freely if I do write. And my internal voice is perhaps a bit caustic and vinegary and one never wants to hurt people’s feelings unless they are all the public figures I hate and my last workplace. Like that is a shitty move to use an experience to invalidate other people’s views. That is the type of person who correctly annoys everyone. Of course I stay squarely in the average person side (which is why I stay anon). I have to think about it more. I switch between thinking of individual DUers and abstract concepts. As I have a picture of most DUers. I suppose it is how it fits into DU, but not electoral politics at all directly, but more what being an American or in my case an Indian who was trained in America means politically.

I have known both the healthy (my main lab) and the diseased (my last workplace and stuff I see here saw there. Oh fuck off auto wrong) versions of community or cooperation. A cult that hates nuclear families, largely solitary childfree catladies
is not the opposite of self absorbed solipsism and Thatcherite atomisation.

But the triplet is doing us all a favor. We need more doctors and scientists and he sounds like a decent kid. I am happy for you. You have changed your icon! You used to have what I assumed was a photo of you.
I shall check back. I have to go get back on track today .