The env variables names are misleading. They don't require api keys to OpenAI. Apparently, their tool can connect to any open ai compatible api and that's how you configure your crendentials. You can point it to openrouter or nebius.com to use other models.
> in the US, whether you are permitted to enter and how long you may stay are determined by the person at the border
I don't believe this is specific to the US. The agent at the border always has the last decision on whether you can enter the country even if you have a valid visa and travel documents.
Border guards in the US tend to be more strict than other countries though. I’ve heard plenty of stories of friends being refused entry into the US, and I don’t personally know of anyone who was rejected coming in to any other country.
It’s devastating when this happens because not only are you thrown out of the country on the next flight, but once you’ve been rejected at the border once, you can never apply for a simple online visa permit again. For the rest of your life you need to go to a consulate with your passport like this article describes.
I was almost denied entry once when I visited Hawaii. The immigration officer heard I was on vacation for a month and had no cash on me (who travels with cash?). Turns out he was worried I’d end up homeless. He didn’t realise that as an Australian, I get paid while on vacation and I had plenty of money in a bank account online.
This isn’t (just) a race thing. I’ve heard plenty of rejection stories from white, Australian men.
The US also has some quite byzantine rules. For example, let’s imagine I fly from Europe to Canada, with a 3 hour transit in US. I stay four months in Canada because I’m a UK citizen and Canada allows me to stay up to 180 days. I return to Europe using the same route via US.
If I did that I would have overstayed in the US. Because the US only allows a stay of 90 days under the Visa Waiver program, and even though I only spent a few hours in the US, the four months in Canada counts towards the 90 day limit. The US also doesn’t have airside transit like most countries.
The correct thing to do would have been to apply for a US transit visa so that I am not entering on VWP, or to route my flight so that it doesn’t transit in US.
I've also noted that issue. I know of several people at my former job who traveled to the San Jose office and were turned back for some inane reason that had never been an issue before that time. US Border Guards have extreme latitude and they seem to like their power a bit too much.
Problem is that a single rejection forces you to go through the Visa process instead of the Visa-free process for the rest of your life: one of the questions on the entry form is (or was) "have you ever been denied entry", next to "are you a nazi war criminal" (not a joke). And answering "yes" on the former guarantees a whole lot of pain. If you answer "no" you're committing a felony.
The USA's entry system is inane, utterly dependent on the person in front of you and downright scary to me.
I've known conferences to move outside the US for this kind of reason, the pain was just too much and too many people couldn't get in.
Something I've started mentioning, is the US immigration and customs is also pretty rude to their own citizens. Coming back to the US has been the far more stressful border crossing in my experience.
The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.
Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
Using metaphors of physical reality for psychological states can make it falsely appear more immutable that it is. It is possible to escape the burning buildings of the mind and knowing that you have agency over your ideas can be an essential part of the reframing/rethinking/challenging that can free you from suffering.
Letting people believe they are in a situation like floor 100 of the WTC and their flesh is literally burning with no escape could be outright harmful and irresponsible for those experiencing suicidal ideation.
> Should people quote DFW as an authority given his suicide?
A very good writer who committed suicide is probably a great person from whose experience we might learn, especially since they expressed what might be their internal anguish so eloquently.
He may be advocating for highly dysfunctional irrational thinking patterns that leads to suicide. They might be convincing, seductive and dangerous and should only be responsibly presented with clear context and challenge.
He's trying to share what the experience is like to promote empathy, so that suicide can be better understood by those with less personal experience with it. He's not advocating for people to commit suicide, just for ways to engage with the problem that doesn't further isolate and other those who are suffering.
I don’t think he was advocating anything. I think that misses the point. He was just trying to state the matter in a form that would allow people to understand the suffering better and have empathy for those who are in that type of suffering. Personally, I think he nailed it, and for that I am thankful.
I think to portray it otherwise would be to lose the message, and the fact that Wallace commited suicide should give credibility that the thoughts he wrote beforehand were those of an eventually suicidal man.
In my opinion, without the immutability of the situation the metaphor loses its meaning. People don't kill themselves because they feel they're in a situation they can get out of. I think it does more harm for those with suicidal ideation to ignore their feelings rather than validate them.
Sorry, I never read the quote as supporting suicide as a decision. But it's possible that a person contemplating suicide might see it that way.
I always read it as being about empathy. Explaining that sometimes a person's action probably have subjectively valid reasons that we should try to understand, or at least try to accept.
I read the gp comment's quote the same way that's why I shared this one.
It isn’t seen an condoning suicide. GPs point is more that his eventual suicide makes him less of an authority here. Bit like a relapsing addict trying to justify his drug use
> The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’
Yes, they do. Out of personal experience, when things are very bad and you have lost all hope of thing being able to get better ever, that is a strong incentive for suicide. Having any hope vs. none makes a crucial difference in whether life is bearable.
i think this opinion is simply wrong. a lot of people do kill themselves out of a feeling of hopelessness. and yes, for some death seems very appealing at some point especially given a painless method. every time i read something by dfw i get the impression that he was just a little bit too infatuated with his eloquence and putting style over substance.
You are overindexing on the word "hopelessness", which isn't even defined.
Are you claiming that a lot of people are attracted to their death more than repulsed from their life, or (as DFW wrote) that they recognize death as the best option?
Outside of a religious death cult with ideas of heaven, I don't see people with painless lives attracted to death.
