yes, that is happening to me real-time, the article in the Economist reminded me (https://www.economist.com/business/2026/07/01/can-bending-sp...), right down to Evernote being the one they are attempting to gouge me on at best and charge illegally at worst. so i had a closer look at bank and PayPal GLs
i found similar issues with Paddle (attempted to quit), Proton (double charged), Splashtop (attempted to quit), and Bloomberg via Apple (attempted to quit) and the common thread is PayPal. never Stripe.
my PayPal account is ancient (2002) and knowing what i know about payments (perhaps a little) i believe there is something akin to a hole regarding legacy pre-auth tokens in a PayPal architecture which is old enough to run for the US House. at least Bending Spoons would be willfully exploiting such a hole, because after i refunded / cancelled, 9 days later they were able to charge again. PayPal also seems to have an open marriage with PCI-DSS / SOC2
The heuristic I found when researching this a few years ago was slightly more nuanced than your quote: back surgery is very likely the wrong solution for back pain.
But if you have nerve problems caused by an issue with your spine, you probably want to address them before they become worse or irreversible, and back surgery may end up being the only option.
I helped a friend through a microdiscectomy, and it could not have gone better. Laparoscopic procedure, short recovery, lifechanging reduction in symptoms. The biggest hurdle was that their insurance required PT/rehab prior to authorization, even though all the experts involved agreed that it would not help.
This kind of comment is only marginally better than "well, I asked ChatGPT and...."
You acknowledge the parent commenter knows more than you, but you decide it's somehow helpful to post contradictory information anyway sourced from someone else who also likely knows more than you.
You don't have to listen to Steve Kerr. Every back doctor I have seen has said the same thing - surgery is the absolute last resort. I was fortunate that the epidurals worked for me, because it was the worst pain I have ever felt.
It's a good idea to ask a few AIs to get extra feedback. They may be wrong, your doctor may be wrong -- it is better to have a set of inputs and, to some point, check it against sources.
But what a godsend propranolol has been for a contentious work situation causing extreme anxiety.
Wonderful to take ahead of a scheduled meeting that could have otherwise been an hour of physical panic that no rational thought (this will feel unimportant in a week, it's just job, etc etc) could quell.
But psychodynamic is directionless and in a way that never seems to help either, and hides behind the lack of measurement. It could be amazing with a wise Irvin Yalom figure, but 99% of us aren't interacting with somebody that thoughtful.
How well, generally, do you think therapy works?
What works best?
> Dardaris had entrusted her pooches to the care of a dog-sitter, who was Tang’s then-girlfriend, in the fall of 2019 while she acted in a play in South Carolina, she previously told The Post.
> Tang snuck into his girlfriend’s apartment when she wasn’t home and viciously tortured Dardaris’s white-furred companions Oct. 24, 2019.
> After fatally beating Alex, Tang was accused of taking Frankie to the building’s rooftop and punching, throwing and kicking him.
And he served no jail time and just got a slap on the wrist. Completely insane behavior, who does that?
Completely true, but comparable with lots of other coffee drinkers habits. I make mine half chai concentrate from a local restaurant and half 2% milk in small portion sizes of about 120 calories, so I don't feel _too_ bad about it.
I might have slightly more sugar than is strictly recommended DV, but not by much.
I worked remotely from Tenerife last year. I was there two months, at first it was great, everything new and novel. But it wears off and towards the end of my stay I longed for home, community and my usual routine.
The best balance is occaisonal "pattern interrupts" like travel abroad (or within your own country). You do not necessarily need big sweeping vacations or "experiences". A bike ride in a forest for a few days with a friend you have not seen for months can give you that mental refreshment.
I appreciate Derek Sivers. (And he is active on HN, so - hi)
Derek does though tend to act in, or advocate for, the absolute extreme.
I remember an old story where Derek micromanaged CDBaby knowing how to do every thing including write all the code in Rails. Burning out, he then trusted his employees to run his company completely without him. Derek became painfully disillusioned when his employees betrayed him under zero oversight, and sold the company. My thinking reading this years ago was the wise path was probably more reasonable delegation with reasonable oversight.
It is ok to reject the shiny extreme. Moderation is beautiful.
I also appreciate Derek and his writing. But his style is like catnip to the 20-something-single-guy part of my lizard brain: sometimes he's missing a degree of duty, responsibility and community consciousness as he approaches situations. You've got to read his stuff with a critical eye, because a lot of it ignores the responsibilities that a mature grown person has.
"What is Bending Spoons? The little-known AOL and Vimeo owner that's now public" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48799966