This really turned into a real life cautionary tale of the rabbit hole for me. All I knew was that I hired this guy in 2016-ish and that he quit in 2021-ish. By 2021 I'd given up day to day office details and I guess I had no idea what happened.

Turns out this is a whole descent into madness brought about by the pandemic. He resented "lockdowns"(yes, I know there was not really any such thing) and started railing about teachers being "lazy" when his kids went virtual. He hated the fact that I, and others in charge, had implemented a COVID policy at work that at the time he quit that probably involved no work related travel and masking(people who have to work in a lab can't be fully virtual). This is all quite the opposite of other people that I know quit around that time because they didn't want to get COVID and wouldn't come into a lab.

Now I guess he has an MBA and attends school board meetings with Moms for Liberty and rails on about how there needs to be bibles in schools and whatnot. I never would have thought it for a minute, but, I guess that's the path from science to insanity.

@donkeyherder

I've looked at my phone at least 5 times thinking "Did that really just happen?" I hired him and worked in science with him for 5 or 6 years. Just mind blowing.

@BE

That is really baffling

@BE

This seems not unrelated

https://www.okdoomer.io/strangers-to-our-futures/

@NilaJones @BE That’s an interesting essay. I consider my past selves (and there have been many) to be strangers but I assume that I will know and be my future selves. It had never really occurred to me that others felt differently. I guess I am still discovering my path through the neuroverse.

@Bette

I'm sure you're right, but I was terrified to dig into it any further 😂

@BE

I don't blame you one bit.

@BE @Bette

I certainly understand the instinct to back way slowly!

Although, as a person who is not going to be directly harmed by the cognitive dissonance of hearing it from a fellow scientist's mouth, I am almost unbearably curious to know what he means by "Scientists are just conspiracy theorists."

@BE

I tried a search on the phrase, with and without the 'just', but no luck

@NilaJones @BE FYI most search engines are broken and if you try to use old-style searches they just fail. Multiple words in quotes will typically fail. Easy to see; do any search, copy a six word string from the displayed search text, put it in quotes, re-search, and note no answers.

For me, this pattern holds on every search site (many of which share engines) that I have recently tried. Frustrating!

The tokenizing and vectorizing have been way de-dimensionalized to better fit LLM inputs that don't lead to direct copyright infringement, secret revealing, etc.

@NilaJones @BE @Bette

Yes.

I'm puzzling what in his #MBA training created this?

Here is one posited scenario:
The functioning of humans has made sense to him through the lens of his MBA - people and groups are working to make money/profit by doing business.
Scientists are saying that global business has produced #ClimateChange and that how businesses are run needs to change.
He feels this threatens global business.
And resolves this conflict by declaring science not to be real, etc.

@BE Cybertruck and Moms for liberty?!

I guess that's a full package deal.

@invadersil

I recognize that I don't have a whole lot of bandwidth during a move and all, but this whole thing really blew my mind today. What a place to end up.

Oh, geez, I left out from the above that his wife still is a science believer and he now lives in a modified shed in the backyard of his house while his wife and two kids live inside...no wonder he needs furniture 😬

@BE Is there a bottom to your story? lol

ugh

I hope you find homes for furniture at the very least.

@invadersil @BE this IS the happy ending (for his family).

@BE @invadersil wow.

@BE @invadersil "modified shed"

"One of my favorite nuggets of writing advice comes from James D Macdonald. Jim, a Navy vet with an encylopedic knowledge of gun lore, explained to a group of non-gun people how to write guns without getting derided by other gun people: "just add the word 'modified.'"

As in, "Her modified AR-15 kicked against her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger, but she held it steady on the car door, watching it disintegrate in a spatter of bullet-holes."

Jim's big idea was that gun people couldn't help but chew away at the verisimilitude of your fictional guns, their brains would automatically latch onto them and try to find the errors. But the word "modified" hijacked that impulse and turned it to the writer's advantage: a gun person's imagination gnaws at that word "modified," spinning up the cleverest possible explanation for how the gun in question could behave as depicted.

In other words, the gun person's impulse to one-up the writer by demonstrating their superior knowledge becomes an impulse to impart that superior knowledge to the writer. "Modified" puts the expert and the bullshitter on the same team, and conscripts the expert into fleshing out the bullshitter's lies."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/27/cmon-do-it-again/

@BE @invadersil I LOVE stories about badass women who don’t let men destroy their peace. His wife is awesome!!

@BE MBA: the path from science to insanity
Yeah I guess that tracks.

What is a "master of business administration" anyway, if not just a new name for overseer?

@BE @BE that's terrifying

@BE I'm reading a book on medical grifts and why people go anti-science. It is a desire to take control over their lives from unseen forces. They feel that life is out of control and a magic incantation will give them control.

As to furniture, giving it away is hard. There are the scammers on FB. Non-profits make you take furniture outside. I finally connected to a family in need via an involved citizen and then freecycle.org for the desk.

@BE Phew! For a second there I was worried.

"Know your enemy" - did this mean having to add MBA materials to the reading list?

That would've sucked!

But he's just a derailed kool-aid drinker.

That subpop s well enough documented.

@BE also "drives a cybertruck"

If someone pulls up to an interview in a cybertruck, I would appreciate it. It'd save both of us the interview time!

@BE Extra bonus: If you leave the furniture out for him, you can watch him next week struggling to get the furniture into his cybertruck. 😆

@SteveThompson

I have tried every one within two hours of us. There's one that I've been donating their max of 15 boxes per pickup to about once a month since last year. They won't take any furniture. I've spent countless hours trying to find a way to get rid of it. We're pretty rural in Florida, and I can't find anyone.

@BE If you can deliver it, they usually have drop off areas open for large items. You may want to put it curbside and posit on local Craigslist under free items with photos. Call some of the nearest churches? They may want it.

@SteveThompson @BE

BE literally said " I've contacted everywhere that I could theoretically donate it, and they're not taking any furniture." in the first paragraph

@grumpasaurus

Not really. Contemplating Tampa/Orlando freecycle even though they're both hours away and just putting it in the driveway after we move to see what gets picked up.

@BE fb marketplace and Craigslist free is scary responsive by me. I feel as if there are people who literally hang in they '99 Tacomas searching the free section

@BE @grumpasaurus or something like e-bay? I think the reason for furniture being denied is not that there is no demand, but simply because it takes up too much apace. But people are still looking for furniture. Especially students.. they just need to know if is available.
As for your former colleague... no words. I guess the only question left is: how did the conversation end and will he still get some furniture?