Fiona 🔜 eth0, 40c3

There needs to be a new salary index:

Purchasing Power adjusted Net Salary after Housing and Healthcare (PPNSHH)

That is, how much stuff can you actually buy after paying for housing and healthcare.

And yes, there are differences in how nice apartments are and how good a health insurance is, but at the end of the day the difference in housing between 30 m² and 100 m² still seems to be far less relevant than how fucking bad of a job governments and municipalities have made at keeping places affordable. Same for healthcare!

Frankly, just take the median values for housing and healthcare at a given salary level and subtract them from the net salary, and the multiply them by the purchasing power factor.

I would love to see results for different jobs across different countries, because I strongly suspect that many of the supposedly well paying places are actually just awful in reality.

Looking more for housing in Luxembourg and about the living conditions there and it just really seems to be a horrible hellhole without culture that is too expensive to live in. 😞

Like: We are currently looking at spending up to 3000€ a months of housing and housing related bullshit!

And then people have the guts telling you that you at least won’t pay taxes, which isn’t even true, but in any case, all you end up doing is working for some fucking corporate ass landlord that takes over half of your net income.

And if you would in exchange at least live in a place that has a proper culture, you would at least get something in return, but this seems to be just a straight downgrade from Eindhoven in just about every dimension possible, I’m expecting to have substantially less disposable income there, than I’ve had as a PhD-Candidate in Eindhoven, that is a city that has an actual culture!

And while I like the notion of an international place, apparently it is like fucking Dubai, where everyone expects to leave after a short amount of time, once they’ve made a ton of money, except that I don’t see how that is supposed to work, giving that all that money goes to the fucking landlords. I mean, I’m no exception there, I also hope to move back to NL, given the first chance, since even though housing is stupid here as well, the Netherlands are at least a country instead of a bad joke and there is actually something like a nightlife and queer culture here, which doesn’t really seem to be a thing in Luxembourg.

One of the issues here is definitely as well that my first contact is with the housing market and that it is the kind of contact that makes me want to turn around and move literally anywhere else; like: WHY would people pay this much money to voluntarily live in a glorified village?

But hey, in exchange for more insane amounts of money, you get to buy internet with almost no uplink that will default to “carrier-grade NAT”, because fuck you, that’s why!

Part of me is still unsure whether I should actually cancel this and hope for a certain teaching position in an actual city instead… Like: I still haven’t made my final decission there, the trial period is three months during which I could get out easily and move to a city where normal people can actually afford living… 😞

This section from the second book of the inheritance cycle (#Eragon), has probably shaped my world-view to a very disproportional amount and I still agree with almost all of it. (I’ve had to learn that there are people who know that they are evil and choose to be evil regardless, but that is also my primary disagreement.)

Transcript of the relevant part (Eragon was asked by his teacher what the most important tool of the mind is):

»Weisheit«, erklärte er schließlich. »Weisheit ist das wichtigste Werkzeug des Geistes, da seine Person besitzen kann.«

»Eine sehr schöne Antwort, aber auch sie ist falsch. Die richtige Antwort lautet: Logik. Oder besser: Die Fähigkeit analytisch zu denken. Richtig angewendet, kann die Logik selbst den Mangel an Weisheit ausgleichen, die man erst durch viel Lebenserfahrung erlangt.«

Eragon runzelte die Stirn. »Schon, aber ist es nicht wichtiger, ein gutes Herz zu besitzen als einen analytischen Verstand? Logik allein könnte einen zu Schlussfolgerungen führen die moralisch verwerflich sind. Ist man dagegen anständig und ehrlich, tut man nicht Schlechtes.«

Oromis lächelte dünn. »Du bringst da etwas durcheinander. Ich wollte nur wissen, was das nützlichste Geisteswerkzeug ist, über das eine Person verfügen kann, ungeachtet der Frage, ob die Person gut oder böse ist. Ich stimme dir zu dass Tugendhaftigkeit sehr wichtig ist. Müsste ich mich jedoch entscheiden, ob ich einem Mann einen guten Charakter schenken, oder ihn lehren sollte, klar zu denken, würde ich ihm lieber Letzteres beibringen. Zu viele Probleme in der Welt werden von Männern mit edler Gesinnung und umwölktem Verstand verursacht.

Die Geschichte bietet uns viele Beispiele von Menschen, die überzeugt waren, das Richtige zu tun, und in diesem Irrglauben schreckliche Verbrechen begangen haben. Vergiss nicht Eragon, niemand hält sich selbst für einen Bösewicht, und nur wenige treffen Entscheidungen, die sie für falsch halten. Jemandem gefällt vielleicht im Nachhinein nicht, wie er sich entschieden hat. Aber in der Regel wird er sein Verhalten rechtfertigen, weil er glaubt, dass seine Entscheidung zum betreffenden Zeitpunkt die bestmögliche Option gewesen ist.

Ein anständiger Mensch zu sein, garantiert noch lange nicht, dass man das Richte tut. Das bringt uns wieder zu dem einzigen Schutz zurück, über den wir gegen Betrüger, Hetzredner und den Wahn der Massen verfügen und der uns am sichersten durch unser schicksalsgebeuteltes Dasein führt: klares [sic], vernünftiges Denken. Die Logik wird dich niemals im Stich lassen, es sei denn, du bist dir der Konsequenzen deiner Handlungen nicht bewusst oder ignorierst sie absichtlich.«

“Wisdom”, he finally declared. “Wisdom is the most important tool of the mind, that a person can have.”

“A very beautiful answer, but it is wrong as well. The correct answer is: Logic. Or better: The ability to think analytically. When used correctly, logic can even balance out the lack of wisdom which is only acquired by a large amount of life experience.”

Eragon frowned. “Yes, but isn’t it more important to have a good heart than an analytical mind? Logic alone might lead you to conclusions that are morally repugnant. If you are upright and honest instead, you are not doing anything wrong.”

Oromis smiled thinly. “You are confusing something there. I only wanted to know what the most useful tool of the mind is that a person can have, independent of whether that person is good or evil. I agree with you that virtue is very important. But If I had to choose whether I have a man a good character or teach him to think clearly, I would do the latter. Too many problems in the world are caused by people with honorable intentions but a clouded mind.

History has many examples of humans that were convinced that they were doing the right thing and committed horrific crimes under that mistaken belief. Don’t forget Eragon, nobody believes himself to be the villain, and only few make decisions that they believe to be wrong. Maybe someone will dislike how he decided afterwards. But usually he will justify his behavior because he believes that his decision was the best option at the time.

To be a decent human is far from a guarantee that one does the right thing. Which brings us back to the only protection that we have against fraudsters, demagogues, and the hysteria of the masses and that will lead us most safely through our fate battered existences: Clear, reasonable thinking. Logic will never leave you alone, except if you don’t know the consequences of your actions or ignore them intentionally.”

#SelfOH: “That’s the dysphoria-laziness tradeoff. And I’m very lazy.”

The one gaming youtuber I regularly watch is #Perun (of @PerunAU@www.youtube.com fame), not least because of gems like this one:

Which means we need a plan. And what better way to present the plan for the first phase of our operation than using a medium custom designed for the tradition we’ve already developed of getting around bureaucratic hurdles, making things go fast, and reflecting budget constraints?

Let’s break out the Powerpoint quickly.

[Interrupts gameplay with a (literally) five minute long powerpoint presentation on how he intends to approach this iteration of a spreadsheet simulator he is playing.]

Casual reminder that if you need a basic voice training app that

• is guaranteed 100% free of any LLM-output
• absolutely paranoid about your privacy
• runs in any modern browser on any operating system that supports one on any hardware that can display a light web-app fluently
• Is 100% free to use
• Is AGPL-licensed, with no single person holding sole control over the current state of the code.
• Can be downloaded and run locally from a file:/[…]-url

Then there is this project of mine, which has admittedly not seen updates in way too long (a new version was meant to be out ages ago), but you can try the current stable release here on my website, delivered from my hardware, which is currently located in my girlfriend's living room, without any spying beyond general nginx access- and error-logs, the former of which anonymize your IP-address. (That's why there is no cookie-banner: I am not storing personal data! Also: I might have even disabled logging fully for that site, but no promise on that.)

Contributions are welcome, but external dependencies are not! I have zero trust in the NPM ecosystem and that was true before all the vibecoding started taking off!

#VoiceTraining #transVoiceTraining