I struggle a lot with OCD. I have a therapist. We have techniques and routines to try and reduce the anxiety and compulsions to some reasonable baseline. Some days are O.K, others are torture.
My frequent OCDs include:
1. Leaving the cooker on
2. Leaving the taps on
3. Leaving a window open or a door unlocked
4. Some kind of electrical fault burning down the house
5. Causing harm to other people, particularly when driving
6. Searching the Internet for illegal content
7. Doing something awful/unforgivable and being criminally prosecuted or losing all my savings in some kind of civil case
I never usually experience them at the same time. They come and go one at a time and some I have learned to manage better than others.
"Leaving the cooker on 2. Leaving the taps on 3. Leaving a window open or a door unlocked"
I fret about these things a lot - so I take pictures on my phone. This completely solves the problem for me and, of course, I never look at the resulting pictures.
Does create some surreal Apple Memories made up of nothing but unplugged plugs and locked doors set to music.... :-)
I too started taking photos on my phone. It's not a solution, it's a safety behaviour. The trouble with safety behaviours is that they can stop working after a while and then you're in trouble.
That's a very practical and straightforward way of addressing it, a really good idea.
In my case I very occasionally worry about having left the gas stove on in the kitchen after cooking, and what usually works, in a way similar to the pictures you take I guess, is re-tracing my actions just before and after switching the gas off. This way I can actually visualize how I turned off the gas just before draining the pasta in the sink or whatever.
This works if I remember something particular about that specific occasion tho, but it usually does the thing.
I found it helped my compulsion to repeatedly check if I locked a door was to check, and then say, out loud, to myself, "OK, it's locked." Just throwing it out there for someone else.
Although I don’t have OCD, I have ADHD. Your condition causes you to have anxiety about it, and my condition makes me more likely to actually do one of those things :)
How I’ve gotten around the anxiety (as I actually have left doors unlocked to my detriment on multiple occasions, have left the stove on etc.), is I say it out loud as I’m doing it. “Locking the front door.” Sometimes I might have to add a day: “Monday morning. Locking the front door.” as my brain will occasionally trick me into thinking that memory wasn’t from today.
I did this enough that now it’s somehow ingrained in my head and I don’t forget to do things as often. I’m not sure if this would work for you, but it might help.
> 5. Causing harm to other people, particularly when driving
I actually think this is a healthy thing to be a little obsessively worried about. Drivers are generally too blasé about the damage they can cause to other humans through their actions.
Like, most people should be worried about that enough that they drive less often because of it.
Please don't trivialse a disabling condition by saying "sure, but everyone does that".
All you've done here is shown that you have fialed to listen to and understand the parent poster.
They're not describing the perfectly normal response of "I'm in two tons of metal hurtling down the road I better be careful".
They're describing the pathological anxiety response. That gentle rumbling noise? That's a dead child trapped in the wheel arch, and I ran over them at that last junction. The air con is working a bit harder? That's because I ran over someone and that accident damaged the aircon. That car behind me, that everyone else says is perfectly normal? They're trying to get my attention to tell me about the cyclist I just killed.
It's not healthy. For some people their OCD is so bad that they cannot pass a cyclist or pedestrian, regardless of how safe or textbook the manoeuvre, without having deep anxiety that they might have hit them.
Is it healthy for a cyclist or pedestrian to have a deep anxiety that any given driver passing them is going to hit them? Because that bit happens pretty frequently.
You and sibling are right that such a horrific illness shouldn't be trivialized, but I get really tired of people pretending that driving a car should be something you don't feel a little nervous doing.
Would it help to automate stuff? Like detectors on your windows/doors? Or to cook with induction (shuts off when there is no pan and after a certain wattage has been applied to a pan). Or would other things fill the void?
I live in a block of flats with a flat mate. I can tell when she is home before she even gets to the front door as you can hear people walking in the corridor and she has a particularly heavy, almost clumsy walk that is completely and easily distinguishable.
Spain and Italy currently have weakened economies caused by large unemployment and government debt.
Italy in particular is at risk of defaulting on its debts (which are 131% of GDP compared to 87.7% for the U.K and 64.1% in Germany as of 2017) and the ECB and other lenders are going to be reluctant to lend to them. This is turn puts the banks and all kinds of public services at risk.
Wrong. Weak economics, low employment, and large government debt (US anyone?) are not relevant when you bring talents, Quality of life is, and Spain or Italy are high above the mentioned countries. Also is much more cost-effective and secure. Ask yourself why many Europeans choose to retire to Spain.
But I do agree, we export talent to anywhere, where Spanish professionals, executives or researchers lead the way on many fields.
The comparison to the US is not apt because the US has control over its own currency. This is critical for high debt scenarios because it leaves the option of essentially printing money via a program like quantitative easing to always ensure interest rates on fed bonds don't get out of control. This serves the purpose of providing favorable rates for the government as well as inflating away the value of the outstanding debt.
Countries bound to the Euro do not have this option so it usually means growth-killing austerity+taxes is the only way out.
>low employment [is] not relevant when you bring talents
While I agree with the rest, I wouldn't be too sure about this. I suppose a tech talent doesn't plan on working at the same place their whole lives, so they would take into consideration the availability of tech jobs in the area.
I don't understand why it will be harder to attract software developers to Italy versus Poland. Weather and environment are much nicer and if this job ends you just move elsewhere.
I would easily move to a cheap locale even if tech scene there is not abundant. I'd not move to London or Switzerland since you will always be 2nd class citizen compared to e.g. bankers. Which is just non issue in southern europe.
> would easily move to a cheap locale even if tech scene there is not abundant
I wouldn't. Being in high demand in Silicon Valley is amazing even compared to Seattle. I wouldn't move to a backwater for fear of having to move again every 3-5 years.
Also, those places are way more international than most places in Europe, which makes relocation more attractive. Good luck attracting non-Italians to Italy, or non-Polish to Poland.
I (as a neither Polish or Italian person) wouldn't mind moving to either, but given the current political climate in Poland I'd rather move to Italy tbh.
Is not it obvious? When you tell you do software in Perugia you sound important, when you tell the same in London you basically say you're a nobody.
I would gladly move to Italy with its amazing culture. I would not move to a place so diverse and full of recent immigrants that it no longer has any specific culture. Am I unique here?
And yes, people relocate to Poland a lot, from ex-USSR countries for example.
I'm pretty sure both London and Switzerland have cultures (OK, UK culture is mostly just drinking but still...).
Large software hubs generally need to pull in people from around the world, not just USSR. And that's the crux of the problem. London, Berlin, Paris, Zurich are all major international cities - it's easier for people from all around the world to settle down there than in places like Warsaw or Perugia.
> hire local underemployed (and Soviet era educated) talent
You are aware that the Soviet era is long ago and the youngest people educated under a Soviet system are mid-30 by now? There is plenty of universities in Poland teaching among other things also Computer Science.
I am a long time user of repl.it and I think it's great but I do wonder what the expected ROI is here? Call me short sighted, but It's still just a repl. Perhaps it could be sold to GitHub to integrate with Gist?
Towards the end of the post there's a bit about our business.
As we've noticed that more people want to use repl.it for more things: from building websites and apps (250,000 in 6 months) to data science[0] and education, with a growing community of hackers[1] it's becoming a generic computing platform. The fact that the REPL is the main interface is besides the point. We're going to productize our infrastructure that runs all this.
After all, Microsoft started as a Basic interpreter for the Altair[2] ;)
Since you've been using this for a while, maybe you can educate me on the benefit of this over a shell or IDE on my local system? I don't quite get it.
We've occasionally used it when discussing Python X vs Python Y behaviours across separate machines (I don't have 3.6 installed but 3.7, a coworker has 3.6 but no 3.7) and are the kind of questions you just want to quickly check, not create a new virtual environment (under Homebrew on Mac, good luck having 3.6 _and_ 3.7 if you regularly `brew cleanup`...) or spin a docker instance. The coworker also regularly tries Scala stuff there (he's had to code review some simple things to start getting familiar with the language), he seems to like it more than the normal Scala repl (which I use).
It's also handy for funny little languages you may not have (the APL version it has is decent enough, for instance, although I prefer GNU, as the free one)
One of the issues is the federalisation of the European Union.
I don't know what could be done to address that though, it's not something that can be undone I would have thought without huge political and economic consequences.
Although IMO it’s not possible to have a monetary union without some kind of federal law. In addition, EU isn’t poised to compete with other world’s superpowers unless it gets its shit together (e.g. EU countries competing amongst each other to offer lowest corporate tax etc.).
Although tax "dumping" is infuriating, it's not the major problem within the EU (look at Delaware tax code vs the rest of the states, and USA is doing fine economically speaking).
The real issue for the EU is the lack of financial and political solidarity. You can bankrupt a EU country and expect the others to pick up the tab, even if there nothing written down in the EU constitution saying so. The Syrian migration issue is a glaring example of a lack of political collaboration.
EU countries needs to acknowledge the fact they are actually tightly bounded to the union and make changes in the way the EU works to reflect that situation.
The Fiat 500 is a cheap car for the masses. It competes with the Ford Fiesta, Renault Clio and other B class hatchbacks. A Fiat 500 can be had from £10,900 to £15,000 in the U.K. while the Ford Fiesta starts at just over £13,000 and can be optioned up to £20,000.
The Abarth 595 is also competitive with B class hot hatches such as the Fiesta ST, Polo GTI, Renault Clio Sport, etc.
The 500 is 'A class', the 500L is the 'B class'. The 500L is the one made in Serbia, again not brilliant for keeping Italian people gainfully employed on the production line. There are people selling the cars and fixing them in Italy so there is some economic utility there, however, manufacturing matters, just ask Donald Trump.
The 500 is designed with the female buyer in mind. The colours and retro-styling suits this audience and makes it a 'designer' car. If it looked like a Dacia Sandero and was priced accordingly then it would be a 'cheap car for the masses'.
Except that people can still breed horses which keeps the cost of horse riding reasonable.
In contrast it will no longer be legal to manufacture and sell ICE cars, and so the price of these cars will go up as demand outgrows supply, making it financially unattainable for all but the rich.
Car manufacturers are now looking at using 48v powered turbochargers to eliminate turbo lag. I wonder if that could be seen as an electrification of the powertrain?
A turbocharger is a funny shaped air compressor. So let's put an air compressor in the trunk and pipe the air to the intake manifold. And if there car is a hybrid, that battery can power the compressor too.
My frequent OCDs include:
1. Leaving the cooker on 2. Leaving the taps on 3. Leaving a window open or a door unlocked 4. Some kind of electrical fault burning down the house 5. Causing harm to other people, particularly when driving 6. Searching the Internet for illegal content 7. Doing something awful/unforgivable and being criminally prosecuted or losing all my savings in some kind of civil case
I never usually experience them at the same time. They come and go one at a time and some I have learned to manage better than others.