• 9 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: October 12th, 2023

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  • I don’t know what works for you, but I do the following.

    1. Feel your feelings. Base feelings for me are sadness, joy, anger, etc. the feeling is connected to an event, but not the same as the event.And I am not my feelings, I am just having a feeling. Feeling this feeling puts me in touch with something either vital or reframes my perspective.
    2. Reorient your goals. This can be either shifting your sense of worth to something more important to you than your work or a recommitment to attaining what was lost. This doesn’t always happen on the first pass, but I’m able to lift my head up at this point and look around.
    3. Make small tasks that build towards that goal. Or just connecting with the day and the people in my life.
    4. Reconnect to your support structure. This is just as important to you as it is for them. They want to see you thrive and see the best in you re-emerge.
    5. Rinse and repeat. Stumbling is normal. Successes happen. Feel those feelings again. And again.

    I don’t know if this will work for you, but this has been a process that works for me.









  • It can be interesting to have high moral standards. No one goes around thinking they have low moral standards. Rather, most people conceive of themselves as having high standards that still make them socially relatable. Some people use their high moral stands to isolate themselves. This can lead to either sadness or hubris. Either way, these standards can make it difficult to connect them. How to open up, how far to open, how long to open comes so naturally to most that it’s like riding a bicycle or tying your shoelaces.

    If the learning window is missed, having people explain what feels natural is difficult for them. If you’ve ever taught someone to ride a bicycle or tie their shoes, you know what I mean. Many people who missed this window are not predisposed to type of intelligence and we’re busy enthralled with something else. So they are at the same time, often, advance in one area and deficient in another.

    If they’ve situated their pride and identity in the area in which they previously focused and if they also have a pride that values results over process embarrassment and shame can creep in. Vulnerability is a liability and not an asset.

    In the case of hubris, I think it’s due to a feeling of fear of vunerersbility and shame causing one to harden their resolve so that they don’t feel the shame again.

    In the case of those with sadness, it due to a loneliness. No one else shares their high morals and therefore no one gets who they are.

    I don’t think you’re either one of these and none of this is as linear as I’ve presented it or as clear cut. Just some tendencies. You may find one sentence resonates strong and another wholly off the mark. Of course if your pride is more flexible and you don’t mind the process, that great! The above will only appear as shadows and not currents.

    But it sounds like you have healthy relationships with friends and family, so I don’t think you really have to worry about too much. In my view, vulnerability and empathy create a bond that is strong in a way that you can lose yourself. You can never really lose yourself of course and, I believe, that you never really have yourself as well. But in a space of love and connection we are freer to be a spontaneous expression of self with and through others and they with us.

    This is rather cryptic as experience roots words. But this is a space or mode of living that can open when connections are created. And high morals can isolate one from those opportunities. That isolation can keep us separate from creative acts as well. And these are the types of things that I would say you might be missing out on. I don’t think they are readily available to most, but they seem to appear occasionally.

    Any case… I hope I didn’t get too woo for you or make it sound like there’s anything wrong with what you’re doing. You sound like a high character individual and suspect when your friends and family reflect upon you, there is warmth in their hearts.


  • Cheers! It seems like your attitude is healthy and not self injurious. So that’s good. In posting this, you’re open enough to consider a possible blind spot. You’re curious, but not vexxed.

    I wanted to pursue the answer to the second question in a moment but wanted to ask a couple of follow up questions first.

    • How do close friends and family regard you when you are trying to live this pure life?
    • Are you able to be vulnerable with them?
    • Do you hold them to these standards as well?
    • Do you hold them to standards that they don’t hold themselves to?

    So as whole, I suspect you’re well adjust especially if the above isn’t negatively effecting anyone. The following is a deeper set of questions. Their resolution, as far as I know, doesn’t necessarily bring about increased health and could, for certain types of psyches, be destabilizing. I don’t think you are that type of person, but listen to your own heart of course.

    Regarding the second answer, you wish to die knowing you lived life to fullest. What does this wish give you? If you do stumble and you do have a regret at the time of your death, why does it matter? Another way of asking this would be, if there is no after life and you are dead, what does it matter that you then died with a regret? What purpose does dying with no regret serve? In a similar vein, does not wanting to die with regrets keep you from pursuing parts of life that you might have pursued if you did not have that goal?

    I want reiterate that that these questions aren’t an indicator of mental health. I also want to say that the framing of the issue and the questions lend itself to seeming like there’s a right answer. There isn’t. Honestly, the right answer could be that it feels right. And not having that feels wrong.




  • I don’t know anything about the laws limiting transfer of fissile material and may violate issues with NATO membership. I’m not seeing the upside for Sweden to do any of this.

    And from a quick search makes it sound like decommissioning of Ågestaverket began in 2020 and should be done in 2025. So the plant would need to be, essentially, rebuilt.

    Next, the nuclear program was shut down in 1961 because they didn’t have any Pu-240 to refine into Pu-247. Finally, when the program did exist, they had to get their heavy water from Norway. Heavy water allows them to use yellow cake directly for fissile material, but they still use light water but need an enrichment program. So, technically it’s a long way still.


  • That was an interesting watch, but he doesn’t put a clear timeline on how long it would take. I found this article that notes that:

    The Prydniprovsky Chemical Plant in the city of Kamianske in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast processed uranium ore for the Soviet nuclear program, preparing yellowcake, an intermediate step in the processing of uranium ore.

    It goes on to interview a couple of engineer about what they could be expected to produce, by when, and with what level of discresion:

    Robert Kelley, an engineer with over 35 years of experience in the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons complex, said that it would be possible for Ukraine to create a primitive uranium fission bomb within five years.

    “It’s a fairly simple thing to do in the 21st century,” he told the Kyiv Independent.

    It would be much more difficult for Ukraine to build a plutonium fission bomb, and it would be harder to hide, Kelley argued. It would take five to 10 years to build a plutonium reactor, he added.

    In contrast with a fission bomb, a “hydrogen bomb would be incredibly complicated,” Kelley said. “No way in the world would (Ukraine) be able to create it,” he added.

    Kelley also said that Ukraine might be able to create a crude nucleardevice without assistance from other countries. For a more complex nuclear weapon, it would have to buy technology abroad, he added.

    A Russian nuclear expert and a Ukrainian nuclear expert both confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that Ukraine is capable of producing a nuclear bomb, adding that it would likely take years. The Russian expert was speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, and the Ukrainian expert was not authorized to talk to the press about the issue.

    “Ukraine would certainly have the knowhow and resources to become a nuclear weapons state if it made the political decision to do so,” Lavikainen said. “The technology required is not out of reach for many countries, and certainly not for Ukraine since it housed crucial elements of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex when it was still part of the USSR.”

    “Ukraine could develop both nuclear warheads and carrier vehicles since it possesses the necessary military industry, uranium deposits, and nuclearenergy sector,” Lavikainen continued.

    Nikolai Sokov, a senior fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, was more cautious, saying that creating a nuclear bomb “is not impossible” for Ukraine. But, it “will take years, a lot of money, and most likely external support, at least on the equipment side.”

    “Ukraine does not have the industrial capacity to manufacture and maintain a nuclear arsenal; it does not have fissile materials, enrichment capacity, plutonium production, most of the elements that go into a nuclear weapon capability,” he added.

    Liviu Horovitz, a nuclear deterrence specialist at theGerman Institute for International and Security Affairs, also said that Ukraine faces challenges if it decides to create a nuclear bomb.

    “Ukraine surely has the scientific prerequisites for a nuclear weapons program,” but “acquiring the necessary fissile materials is neither cheap nor fast nor very easy to do in secret,” he added.

    The nuclear weapons expert who spoke on condition of anonymity said that the most primitive nuclear bomb program focused on uranium centrifuges could cost around $100 million. A plutonium bomb program would cost around $1 billion, he added.