I wonder how much of this labor is a choice between online labor versus choosing not to work retail where the profit is a lot lower, meaning your take-home is equal to your costs.

Let's assume that you can make a reasonable living in a different part of town instead of commuting to a service sector job. Add on top of that, you get to control your hours and there also seems to be more and more foot traffic in that part of town. As you start moving to that part of town, you realize that it's so much closer to your work that you save money on transportation and you have free time to pursue investing or other ways to better yourself. I don't think we would ever have issues with labor moving to better parts of town, right?

The only issue is that this better part of town is the internet. I wonder if the larger long-standing effects of COVID were an experiment on the general population that they could make money outside of what they've been told.

Many people do this with the Costco Food Court, just saying, there is something pretty powerful about providing food as your loss leader to consistently get traffic

Technically, Olympic sports are niche sports as well - the only difference is they have a giant collaboration every four years. There's nothing to say that disc golf won't be part of the olympics or bowling (addressed in the article as well)

In my 10+ yrs in this industry, it's astounding how many founders we've lost trying to hack Maslow's hierarchy. I'm not against drugs, I'm against addiction because it is terrible, destructive, and so short-term.

Founders, you're not Peter Pan, your shadow stays with you no matter how many lost boys you surround yourself with. Such a tragedy that he was taken away from us too soon

I'm very interested in the "shadow" concept, am always curious what people really mean when they mention it.

If you could elaborate on your mention of "shadow", (perhaps "Explain Like I'm Five"-style), I'd appreciate it. But I'd understand if you don't care to.

I parsed "shadow" in this context as things that challenge you emotionally as person.

Personal difficulties that you'd rather pretend to not exist like a drug addiction. People who run from their shadow avoid having an honest conversation with their self. An honest conversation requires one to confront personal difficulties head on, in order to final a (lasting) solution to their negative effects.

There is escape, and there is hope. We can increase our resilience to life's trials. You're right that it is a cruel world. But there is still joy to be had. Lots of it.

Not that I dont believe you, but why dont you share what the options are? The problem is that if you say something along the lines of "family and friends" there are millions of people who for different reasons dont get to enjoy good experiences in that front or any experience at all. Same with health, travel, food, jobs, peace, company, love, justice or hope.

I don't think there's one answer for this. Life on its own is ultimately a tragic story for everyone. So once we have our basic necessities met, it's the job of each of us to try to layer on top of that tragic story a personal story of meaning, a story explaining why the pain mattered somehow.

That layered story can take many forms. The most time-tested one is having children. But there are many other ways to write the story too.

There's also no law saying we have to layer any story of meaning at all, but human brains seem to really crave it and don't seem to do well without one.

You're right but I don't want to put stress on anyone in a difficult situation by adding a "job" of finding meaning. Sometimes the only thing you have to do is survive the night. That's enough.

If you can survive to live another day, eventually joy will find you, or you will find joy. Just keep surviving. One of the hallmarks of suicidal depression and ideation is a feeling of increasingly severe constraints until there's only one way out. In all but the most unlikely situations these are not real constraints but are the product of a malfunctioning mind.

Great to see an analytics product finally telling me what insights I should be looking at!

Recent New York data during a slowdown paints a different picture:

"De Blasio, in this sense, is a remarkably unimaginative politician, like Andrew Cuomo. Police did stop doing their jobs, momentarily, after the murders of Liu and Ramos, in protest of de Blasio’s allegedly anti-police gestures. Arrests and summonses plummeted in early 2015. This, in labor and political parlance, is called a slowdown. The truth about the slowdown, as I’ve written before, is that crime remained quite low. Lack of police enforcement did not unleash the sort of disorder Lynch and his ilk always promise would come. It’s a small sample size, yes. But de Blasio has never used this data point to his advantage. Instead, he has grown only more defensive of his police department. Even in an age of COVID-19-induced catastrophe, with tax revenue evaporating by the month, de Blasio cannot bring himself to meaningfully cut funding to his police department."

Source: https://rossbarkan.substack.com/p/why-is-the-nypd-so-powerfu...

As I live and breathe - we're talking about ToshCo. I have shopped here, spent time in Gustavus, enjoyed the greatest July 4th celebration in the US here while climbing a grease pole. Funny thing is that not all the residents can buy stuff from ToshCo because it's more expensive, so they go to the local thrift store instead, aka Treasure store.

Also, the one about patients doing gut-transfers to help with their very difficult gut flora issues.

Dunno if this could be probiotics or it could be quack science. I think it's important that it warrants investigation (a double-blind RCT) - I always harbored hope that experiment.com could be able to create crowd-funded research for populations who are going to great lengths and using lots of resources for these cures.

Also, you're forgetting about the two following paragraphs after your quotes (which I just think is interesting to test in general):

> Perhaps, instead of destroying the bacteria directly, the venom’s effect is indirect, kick-starting the immune system. Bee venom studies have shown promise in combating symptoms for autoimmune diseases such as multiple sclerosis and rheumatoid arthritis. According to Justin Schmidt, an insect venom expert at the Southwestern Biological Institute, in Tucson, it’s possible that when the immune system begins attacking itself, an injection of bee venom may help by providing an alternate target—“something to chew on,” he said, “and this tends to regulate the immune system so it does what it’s supposed to be doing, which is attack toxins that are getting into your body.” While Lyme is a bacterial infection, it sometimes mimics autoimmune disorders, and so maybe, somehow, similar rules apply.

> It’s also possible that the pain of the stings plays a role. “Maybe the venom is doing something to kick off pain receptors,” he said. Anecdotal evidence suggests that other types of venom may also work this way. A brief article in the Lancet, from 1983, described a 43-year-old woman in Arizona who had MS and went into remission for two months following a scorpion sting on her right foot. An immunologist in Houston told me she was contacted by a physician experiencing progressive MS who said he’d been stung by a sea anemone and went into temporary remission.

Hey guys - I'm the author. Rare for an asian male in tech to have an essay in the Modern Love column - I"m sure this violates all of our standards on what belongs on HN, but just wanted to submit it here