Curt Doolittle

Form: Diary

  • I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen t

    I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen to know his wife (his third). She stepped out for a moment, and I started conversation by asking him if he was able to chat or preferred not to. And having overheard that he just flew in, and that he was downing scotch, listened to his itinerary – which gave no clue to his occupation but whatever it was he wasn’t proud of it. Men will tell you their biz if they are.
    Just then his wife returned, and I said that I was trying to pry conversation out of him. She replied that ‘He hates people’. 😉 She told me his occupation, and I started laughing and said “I’m so sorry for you.“ 😉 And he lowered his head accepting it as if it was expected. And didn’t disagree. Though admittedly he’s a bit tired. 😉
    I can’t imagine having a job where you listen to the complaining of and endless stream of overconfident clueless harpies pursing self interest under cover over moral duty with emotional loading of conviction.
    So I wait until they’re about to leave and “Can I ask one more question? What’s the best and worst aspect of your job?” He lit up and said that the best part of my job is the 500,000 kids I have that I love and care for.” He said the exact number, but I didn’t write it down at the time. “The hardest part is that this is adiverse state and every [locality] is very different. So I worry about giving all these kids a choice of achieving the life they want. And our biggest problem is that everyone can’t and doesn’t want to got to college (and something about how the weren’t helping them).”
    Now, what I see is a good person, who is passionate for his or, and holds a moral conviction to serve the children, but one that is limited like everyone from producing excellence instead of pleasing students and parent’s fantasies. What I heard later was the need to focus too much on their state of mind. What I didn’t get was any sense of the children developing responsibility and duty and putting in the work necessary to compete in the modern economy. An economy which he later stated, had a high cost of living vs the income of a lot of the student’s families.
    Unless we are more demanding, we are not going to produce a competent generation, and we will continue our demographic decline.

    Love you all.
    Cheers
    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-19 02:01:46 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1703952491522498562

  • I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen t

    I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen to know his wife (his third). She stepped out for a moment, and I started conversation by asking him if he was able to chat or preferred not to. And having overheard that he just flew in, and that he was downing scotch, listened to his itinerary – which gave no clue to his occupation but whatever it was he wasn’t proud of it. Men will tell you their biz if they are.
    Just then his wife returned, and I said that I was trying to pry conversation out of him. She replied that ‘He hates people’. 😉 She told me his occupation, and I started laughing and said “I’m so sorry for you.“ 😉 And he lowered his head accepting it as if it was expected. And didn’t disagree. Though admittedly he’s a bit tired. 😉
    I can’t imagine having a job where you listen to the complaining of and endless stream of overconfident clueless harpies pursing self interest under cover over moral duty with emotional loading of conviction.
    So I wait until they’re about to leave and “Can I ask one more question? What’s the best and worst aspect of your job?” He lit up and said that the best part of my job is the 500,000 kids I have that I love and care for.” He said the exact number, but I didn’t write it down at the time. “The hardest part is that this is adiverse state and every [locality] is very different. So I worry about giving all these kids a choice of achieving the life they want. And our biggest problem is that everyone can’t and doesn’t want to got to college (and something about how the weren’t helping them).”
    Now, what I see is a good person, but one that is limited like everyone from producing excellence instead of pleasing students and parent’s fantasies. What I did hear later was the need to focus too much on their state of mind. What I didn’t get was any sense of the children developing responsibility and duty and putting in the work necessary to compete in the modern economy. An economy which he later stated, had a high cost of living vs the income of a lot of the student’s families.
    Unless we are more demanding, we are not going to produce a competent generation, and we will continue our demographic decline.

    Love you all.
    Cheers
    Curt

  • I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen t

    I’m sitting near the deputy secretary of education for a local state. I happen to know his wife (his third). She stepped out for a moment, and I started conversation by asking him if he was able to chat or preferred not to. And having overheard that he just flew in, and that he was downing scotch, listened to his itinerary – which gave no clue to his occupation but whatever it was he wasn’t proud of it. Men will tell you their biz if they are.
    Just then his wife returned, and I said that I was trying to pry conversation out of him. She replied that ‘He hates people’. 😉 She told me his occupation, and I started laughing and said “I’m so sorry for you.“ 😉 And he lowered his head accepting it as if it was expected. And didn’t disagree. Though admittedly he’s a bit tired. 😉
    I can’t imagine having a job where you listen to the complaining of and endless stream of overconfident clueless harpies pursing self interest under cover over moral duty with emotional loading of conviction.
    So I wait until they’re about to leave and “Can I ask one more question? What’s the best and worst aspect of your job?” He lit up and said that the best part of my job is the 500,000 kids I have that I love and care for.” He said the exact number, but I didn’t write it down at the time. “The hardest part is that this is adiverse state and every [locality] is very different. So I worry about giving all these kids a choice of achieving the life they want. And our biggest problem is that everyone can’t and doesn’t want to got to college (and something about how the weren’t helping them).”
    Now, what I see is a good person, but one that is limited like everyone from producing excellence instead of pleasing students and parent’s fantasies. What I did hear later was the need to focus too much on their state of mind. What I didn’t get was any sense of the children developing responsibility and duty and putting in the work necessary to compete in the modern economy. An economy which he later stated, had a high cost of living vs the income of a lot of the student’s families.
    Unless we are more demanding, we are not going to produce a competent generation, and we will continue our demographic decline.

    Love you all.
    Cheers
    Curt

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-19 02:01:46 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1703952186055573504

  • (Diary) Very strange evening. I live in a small town of only a few thousand peop

    (Diary)
    Very strange evening.

    I live in a small town of only a few thousand people. Most working class. (And I love working class people).

    I need to finish this document for Court on Monday. Rather, I needed to finish it for Friday but couldn’t do it. Short notice to start with. Tech problems making it worse. And of course, under stress, ADHD problems abound.

    I need white noise to work on anything written of substance and overcome the ADHD. So I drive to a local cafe and get most of the way done, then my battery dies. So I drive down the street, there isn’t much in the way of shops in town, so I run in to the dollar store and luckily they have a ten foot lightning cable.

    Next I drive to local restaurant, pub. I need power so I take a table for four in the corner near an outlet, and tell the staff that I’ll move if they need the table, but otherwise I’ll move to the bar when my iPad is charged. (Yes I’m writing on an iPad Pro because I dropped my laptop on it’s head.)

    I’m not hungry at all, but I need to rent the table so to speak to pay my way. and so I order nachos without cheeze – meaning just chips, and sour cream and salsa to dip them in, and a Corona to drink. I can then nurse this combination for a couple of hours. And Coronas don’t provoke my allergies, so other than Jack Daniels that’s charcoal filtered, and also doesn’t provoke them either, that’s the total range of my alcohol pallette unless I swallow unhealthy amounts of antihistamines.

    Shorlty after I get settled, the barmaid who I’ve gotten to know a bit, tells me to come sit at the end of the bar and she’ll plug my adapter in. And I’m thankful. Partly because I know she’ll chit chat with me. And that means I get to take a break and not get too caught up in the work.

    So I sit down at the end of the bar, next to the wall, and start working – and after twenty minutes or so I’m getting to the last part of the argument that suggests the mutually beneficial remedies so to speak, before I have to add the signature page and, then write a Motion to Continue because I’m not going to be mentally ready, have my witnesses and such, and the Judge won’t have time to read this missive and think about it before court in the moring – which is scheduled for online.

    I don’t like online court AT ALL. I havent done the research on it but it’s quite evident to me given the few cases I’ve worked, that decorum and communication is dampend and conflict accelerated in the online forum.

    Thankfully I have a legitimate excuse that my laptops are busted and waiting for repair, and I can’t suffer the court on an iPad or iPhone, and would feel at a disadvantage.

    Anyway. I meet a pair of couples all in their 50s that have sold their construction business. I do my thing and learn their life stories. And the four of them are a lot of fun. Especially the two men willing to talk smack to one another. They guy nearest me is hooked in with some VCs and is pushing me for leads so I take his contact info and add it to my list of others.

    Next couple is an incredibly fit mid 40s electrician and his wife of four years that’s a realtor. He’s a hard 8 easily, and she scored. But of course she’s a handful and smart. So conversation is good. I get the contact info because she’s with Coldwell real estate.

    Then I work for about an hour, and at this point I’m mostly making sure I’ve made sense, was clear, and didn’t repeat myself (which I am want to do).

    And this guy walks up and offers me fifty bucks to call him an Uber, because his car broke down. Why he can’t use the phone in his hand of course is suspicious but I’m charitable and I try.
    While I’m re-downloading and setting up my phone and trying to log into my Uber account I ask him a series of questions, including name, occupation, how he feels about it, why he’s so stressed (in divorce), and he’s a cardiac nurse in a local hospital – and he’s not lying because some of the details are too accurate.

    Unfortunately my phone is new, I haven’t used it to call Uber, and I’m switching carriers now that I actually need a phone (recovering from covid I didn’t). So I only have my international number and Uber won’t take it. He walks outside to make some calls.

    I’m feeling that no good deed goes unpunished. But I want this guy to dissapear by now. So, next I try the cab company and they don’t answer. Next I try the local police routine calls number because I know they will solve this problem – and if this guy goes off, I am out of the loop. And they don’t answer. And next the young woman next to me calls the town next door’s dispatch and it turns out they’re who you call from our village. Great, I think. Off my hands off out of the risk of a man on the edge because of overwork, divorce, car breakdown, and unable to get home. I mean, he doesn’t have shoes on, just fliip flops. 😉

    Anyway, when I tell this guy the police are coming to help him he goes from hyperstressed to agitated, and starts spiraling. At this point he offers me 200 cash to drive him to a town 30 minutes away. Well, not only am I not doing that, but I am not getting in a car with this guy because my dysfunction detector is now approaching the red zone, and given my current condition I don’t feel like trying to force this guy into submission anywhere, including my car. Next he insists with agitation and slightly suppressed panic, and so I tell him that I”m a good person and trying to help him but I’m not going to do it, so don’t ask me again.

    The cops show up, and surpirsingly take great care of him, call a family member, for him, and wait until that person picks him up. And then I spend the next ten or fiftten minutes with back and forth stories learning that not only are these cops great human beings, but they’re the kind of cops we all wish we ran into. This is also a strongly italian ara, especially in the police force, and I’m friends with a rather popular and retired cop from the deparment, so of course stories have to be told, compliments given, names exchanged, and hands shaken.

    So I run home contemplating this evening and thinking about all these good people I meet, and how horrific the internet and the media and entertainment, and all the talking classes are. And how dangerous is the collapse of prosocial behavior, especially in the younger generations. And the narrative they experience only confirms the propaganda and indoctrination, because they are so desocialized by other than that internet that they are effectively crippled socially, politically, and mentally.

    One of our missions at the instutute, now that we’re converting from R&D to activism, is running events that promote in-person relationship formation (Something I learned from the Mises Institute and the Property and Freedom Society), because even at our scale, every little bit helps.

    The Lesson Here?
    The upside of being confident and gregarious is that you make a lot of contacdts and easily make friends anywhere. And makingn a game of it is a lot of fun. Because it lets you see, and remember, that there are really alot of good people if you don’t want anything from them and are willing to give them positive attention and reinforcement.
    But there is also the downside to being kind, gregarious and confident enough to help others in distress when others won’t.
    Sometimes you are the victim of that distress. 😉 And it’s all too often true that no good deed goes unpunished. Because that distress is often self inflicted. And self inflicted distress is often the result of wiring that is not well put together in those few pounds of grey matter etween our ears.

    Cheers. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-17 06:16:19 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1703291773357830144

  • Q: CURT: (Health) “Was there anything that led to a breakthrough?” Just ’cause y

    Q: CURT: (Health) “Was there anything that led to a breakthrough?”

    Just ’cause you asked, and just cause I’m feeling hypersocial and and relaxed at the moment…. I’ll overshare in the hopes someone finds something personally useful:

    Problem: Genetic defect > Allergies > Aspieness > Cancer and busted immune system (twice)> vulnerability to respiratory infections both head and chest > Gradual exhaustion and decline without recovery > tendency to obsessively overwork and cause vulnerability to all the above until crashing. By March 2023 I couldn’t walk more than half a block. I was sleeping all but four to six hours a day.

    There was no ‘breakthrough’ as much as Dr’s Brad, Nichols, and Miller just worked with me a little at a time over two and a half years, to incrementally fix each problem until the sum of the fixes got me to the point where I was healthy enough that could finally change aspie-nerd meds and feel like myself again. 😉 Now I just gotta lose the 30lbs I gained between covid and this illness. And then I’ll do something stupid like take on more work than I can handle like decide I have time, energy, and attention for another startup (already sorta did) because I’m a biz junkie and I sorta miss my ferrari and have poor competitive self regulation like a dog that chases trucks and can’t help it. 😉

    1 – Time? Mostly just sleep and time to get over long covid (I think) My immune system was just working overtime and wiping me out.

    2- Again, mostly diet and dramatically reducing allergic reaction which let me both sleep, breathe, and reduce all the stress. This was a far bigger problem than I understood. I’m cutting out bread right now as much as possible, and I need to stay as paleo as possible and carnivore when I can.

    3 – I had been running a 200/160 blood pressure for more than six months, and it was damaging my kidneys. So I had to give up coffee (fixes the adhd, ocd a bit). I also got a bit triggered and lit by a famlily legal issue and for some reason I couldn’t downregulate that stress (fury). You might have to realize how much I hate the irresponsibility and malfeasance of the government to grasp the depth of my anger.

    4 – I had (again, just as I did in seattle in 2008, and ukraine in 2016) multiple therapy resistant infections both fungal and bacterial. (And we’re still going to try the parasitic purge too.) The fungal is a genetic vulnerability and there is some relation to allergies, asthma, sun, and vitamin d. The bacterial (pneumonia) I fight all the time and have since my first cancer operation in 2001. That op, six hours on the table, did something not good to my respiratory system, or gave me a hospital bug we can’t fully cure. Worse, as my faculties declined I started to fear I wasn’t going to be able to complete my work on the law. This put me in a bit of a tailspin. But I kept working at it anyway- but progress was slow. And it made me even more exhausted to work for just two hours a day. I thank all my friends here and in real life for helping me through that mess.

    5 – A decent therapist that agreed that my ocd meds which pretty much fix my autism’s difficulty changing contexts, when combined with my age, was downregulating me enough that it needed replacing with a stimulant. I couldn’t try that until I had my blood pressure under control. Couldn’t get my blood pressure under control without changing blood pressure medications on the on hand and destressing myself from the litigation on the other. As well as stabilizing my immune system from both the allergies and infections. And then migrating from the calming OCD med to the stimulating ADHD med – a med I had tried in just before covid appeared. And while it was awesome I really didn’t like or trust the doctor enough to be dependent on him for my well being, and because I still assumed at that time I would want to return to europe and getting these ADHD med over there is all but impossible. So I didn’t want to get stuck on a prescription that would cause me problems, and stopped it.

    Anyway, long story short, I had to downregulate an immune system that was out of control and exhausting me constantly to the point where I wasn’t sure I was going to be around.

    Not sure anyone wants to read that, but hey. If it helps someone that’s great. It’s kinda nice to both get through this mess and get it off my chest in prose as well.

    Thanks for asking.
    Cheers

    Reply addressees: @VaxSideEffects

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-15 05:17:17 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702552144195227648

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702529571101286447

  • (Diary) Mostly back to feeling like myself again, and with it, the creeping rest

    (Diary)
    Mostly back to feeling like myself again, and with it, the creeping restoration of my love of humanity, and faith in mankind despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. 🙂

    So I must be having a good day. My faculties are back strongly enough that I had to stop myself speed talking to a friend and his wife to be (she’s a bit of an aspie so I can get away with it.)

    I should write a bit more about how autistics disconnect where how we differ under physical and mental duress from normies. I never know when these little bits help people and am always surprised when they do.

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-15 01:05:25 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702488756941389824

  • It’s 3:30 am and I’m trying to fall asleep. The analysis of the outstanding prob

    It’s 3:30 am and I’m trying to fall asleep. The analysis of the outstanding problems is close enough. The criticisms fail to grasp their meaning. Then, chatgpt tries to tell you what you want to hear, to help encourage you in your thinking. And while excellent at synthesis collapses under analysis. Ie it’s logic is pretty bad as yet. And this is a great example. And you missed it as well. Which makes it interesting.

    I have a heavy day tomorrow but I’ll try to get to this after, and pls ping me this weekend if I space out, because this is a discussion worth having and saving for re-use.

    Reply addressees: @pgleamy

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-14 07:44:52 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702226896388345856

    Replying to: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702152541897904524

  • (health update) Ok. Experiment run again. I’m pretty sure, that a new crisis asi

    (health update)
    Ok. Experiment run again.
    I’m pretty sure, that a new crisis aside, we have largely restored my cognitive abilities, and that within six months to a year I should be back on my feet and able to work more than a few hours a day. (fingers crossed)

    Again, thank you all for your patience and support.

    Not that long ago, I really didn’t think I was gonna be walking this earth much longer. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-14 02:45:23 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702151529032019968

  • (Diary)(humor) So, I”m waiting my turn in a mall outside the Apple Store hoping

    (Diary)(humor)
    So, I”m waiting my turn in a mall outside the Apple Store hoping my MacBook Pro doesn’t explode into flames (I got lost in New Britain because the roads have changed while I’ve been living far away, and while isn’t as bad as Chicago but it’s getting there).

    Anyway, as usual, running a little social science experiment as I am want to do at all times, and using my fearless hyper-gregarious disagreablness to discover differences in social responses. (I’m always doing science!)

    Some categories are obvious. There are immigrants who clearly feel alienated and lost. There are the obvious overweight people that are avoiding judgement by non interaction. There is a class of timid people who live in phones across the age spectrum. There are an unexpected number of fit young men who look like they live in the gym. There is a class of confident people who are situationally aware and relatively happy. And there are quite a few families with two young children who are happy to provide an humorous response to a query if they purchased them at the cute store. ;). I never address young girls unless stressed because they have been taught to be afraid of men.

    When I arrived at the apple store (late) the clerk looked for the next opportunity to ‘fit me in’. And while she’s fuddling with her smartphone and attached contraption I tell her that I’m a massive apple fan. So much so that when I come to the apple store I just want to hug everyone on the staff and thank them. Now, I expected a confused expression with giggles, but I got an “aww thank you” and giggles instead. So then I said “but you know, I’m a white man over sixty, and that could be interpreted as somewhere between creepy and crazy depending on who I hugged.” (Now she’s laughing and can’t focus on the screen or press the buttons). And I finish with, “So I have to tone it down and just thank you personally. She gives me the next appointment, and I tell her I’ll wait. ;)” My contribution to making young black women thing white people are crazy. 😉

    In the Apple Store, I’m looking for a small Mac keyboard (no numeric keys) because the windows keyboard keys are in the wrong place and it hogs my desktop space. I found two guys working together, white, and black, and talked a bit of man nonsense with them, then asked one where they keyboards are before asking the white guy if I could pick on the black guy’s pink hat. He said he might be sensitive, and because this was 2023, implying correctly that I should be respectful of the generation gap – which is exactly what I expected him to say. 😉 Followed by explaining he has two daughters so he feels comfortable wearing his two pink shirts. (So do I but it’s because pink shirts are common for the over 55 men’s demographic as a symbol of retirement.)

    Now, I’m sitting here typing on my iPad and occasionally look up and naturally smile at everyone, and about a fifth of people smile back, biased to people who are older – because younger people are more antisocial and insecure – older people are more pro-social, less phone-absorbed, and frankly don’t give a hoot. 😉

    I’ve approached about a dozen young couples and told them they need to have lots of kids because they’re adorable and we need more beautiful people in the world. The girls have all been thankful and supportive and the men have all reacted positively in one way or another without agreeing because of course all they think of is being ignored by the wife and having to pay for these expensive wife toys. 😉

    I asked a question I already know the answer to, of white woman a bit younger than I, and she responded with a lovely polish accent, which led us to a discussion of Poland, and how L’viv (Lvov) used to be polish and being there she saw the beauty of that gorgeous city and lamented it was no longer part Poland (or Austria Hungary for that matter). And so i assured her both Lviv and Kiev are doing fine, and my friends there keep me informed.

    Happy happy, Joy joy 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-13 21:27:42 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702071580048625665

  • (diary, update) offline while I go to see if apple can fix this battery before i

    (diary, update)
    offline while I go to see if apple can fix this battery before it lights my house on fire. 😉

    Source date (UTC): 2023-09-13 19:01:09 UTC

    Original post: https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1702034701098066244