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More like deep-rooted and legitimate mistrust in people, ha ha. "The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." Source: James Madison.
For concepts - as opposed to memorization - I have found that I get the most out of trying to explain the concepts to someone else, rather than just reading and formulating the idea in my head. Sometimes this is a real person who wants to learn what I'm studying, but often I would do it by trying to write out the idea in an explanatory document with the intention of making a self-contained explanation - taking a dialogical tone, as if speaking to a friend. This seemed to "activate" the idea in my mind the same way that a real conversation would. In explaining something, you invariably have to try to make connections to other concepts and formulate simple examples; this was the difference between "being familiar with" a concept (what I'd get from studying it" and actually knowing it.
You're doing languages and such, so this won't be relevant to you, but: I studied physics like this, and used LyX to type up my thoughts. It's a visual LateX editor which makes it more possible to type math without getting bogged down in programming it, which makes it easier to think about as you go. There's a bit of a learning curve to learn the hotkeys, but after that it's quite simple.
35% - Started poor. (95% of Americans are here)
22% - Decent starting point, some help from family
11.5% - Inherited a medium sized company or over $1 Million
7% - Inherited over a $50 Million
21% - Inherited enough to make the list to begin with.
Seems unlikely that 80-90% of wealthy are self made but it's possible I guess, definitely not true that the very rich are though, only 35% are actually self made.
If you are looking for counterculture and subculture in general, you will want to relax your definitions a bit. It is true that every single one of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers runs Linux. But bleeding edge performance and features are not always part of these technology solutions. Usually you will be trading some bells and whistles in order to receive the privacy and security you are requesting.
I will point you towards the following resources
/r/privacy
/r/fossdroid
That will hopefully get you started. As usual, it is turtles all the way down - you can engage as casually or as deeply as you would like.
Many speed-reading apps work by only showing you 1-3 words at a time, in the centre of the screen (example). It's not optimal for all purposes of digital documents, only for reading something new faster, but it's one area where digital can beat paper.
You're right, it is difficult, but that's a sign that it's worth your time! Start easy, 15 minutes whenever you can. There are some guided meditations out there. Two apps to check out: Headspace and 1 Giant Mind. Both are free (although headspace is just a trial).
I understand why you might be scared about it. Our mind plays some pretty wild tricks on us, if you let it. "The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master" is the common quote. The cool thing is that you can take control -- ultimately you are the pilot of your conscious experience and can willfully steer in the direction of greater happiness and understanding. Looking at it like this, doing nothing is more scary, right?
I'd say most adults do not meditate regularly, but it has begun to be more popular in the western world recently, tying in with the acceptance of yoga and other traditionally eastern practices. Don't worry about learning about this late, now is a good a time as any to start!
Maybe this wont be something you're interested in but there are discrete one ear bluetooth earbuds that are really easy to conceal which you can put on one ear, so you can listen to audiobooks/podcasts and people won't see that you're listening, and you have one ear free so you can still hear everything going on around you. Theyre tiny, hard to see and can easily be put in a pocket if you need to quickly put it away.
Forgive yourself for your past failings. Frame them in terms of your feelings and needs at the time. Try to be more in tune with what you need as an individual, and don't beat yourself up when you can't be perfect.
Also, practice what is known as Learned Optimism. There are three axes at which you can rate good or bad things in your life: personal vs. impersonal, specific vs. general, and temporary vs. permanent. The idea is to think of bad things in your life as impersonal, specific, and temporary, rather than personal, general, and permanent. Instead of thinking "I'm a terrible person overall and I'll never change", you need to think "Some people might dislike quality X about me, but I can fix it."
This is a good overview of learned optimism I've read, but there is an entire book about this.
You're fine with evicting your friends when (not if) some of them stop paying? But wait, you had them pay 10k up front as part of the down payment? Do they get that back? What even happens there?
Also, most Americans can't put together 10k like that (not sure what country you're in). Only 15% of Americans have 10k+ in their savings accounts and most of those people are probably older and not in their 20's or 30's.
What if you have trouble filling it? Or you fill it initially but have too many people drop out? Do you have a solid plan in place for dealing with disputes? I'm sure you'll have some people who like to stay up late and be noisy and others that like to get to sleep early and that will cause problems. You have to decide on pet policies and a lot of other hard decisions that not everyone is going to be onboard with.
At some point you have to stop being a friend and start being a landlord and kick people out and lay down the law about pets and loud music etc., or at least have the board willing to do that
Thorough or not, it's bullshit. Let's first pretend this guy didn't just dismiss every book that was written by a Middle Eastern/Asian/other non-white person in his ranking. Atlas Shrugged is nowhere near the second most influential Western book ever written. At the very least it isn't old enough to have influenced as much of modern thought as books like Plato's Republic, Homer's Iliad, The Wealth of Nations, Marx's various works on Communism, Milton's Paradise Lost, and a hundred other books from various periods of history. In fact, without a solid grounding in these books, I don't think it's possible to fully understand Atlas Shrugged, which is very much a response to all of them.
This claim is nothing but hype and should not be taken seriously. I highly doubt most people would agree. Note that very few college classes involve reading Atlas Shrugged, but so many ask you to read Plato's Republic.
I see on the Wiki Page that a survey of Book of the Month Club ranked it #2 most influential. This may be where the claim comes from. However, this isn't even in the same galaxy as "second most influential book ever". For one thing, I would say that The Analects of Confucius are far more influential, given that they informed Chinese, Japanese, and Korean culture and government for thousands of years before colonialism. The Republic is also a great contender, since it is practically the origin of Occidental philosophy. Whatever I might think about Plato's ideas (I think they're mostly bullshit), it's pretty much a matter of fact that the vast majority, if not all, of philosophy responds to it. You can point to specific passages in many works that are specifically responding to things that Plato said in Republic and his other dialogues.
War has always been like a game of chess. The best chess masters have never played the same game twice; the skills required for both chess and war are 1) unconventional techniques and 2) quick and efficient counter techniques.
Unconventional warfare is when a new technology or technique grants an advantage. Archer, chariot, machine gun, trebuchet, suicide bomber, smallpox blanket, nuclear bomb. These things (especially when first used) win wars and build empires.
Counter techniques are more strategic in thought. Making quick judgements for your troops' actions, while taking in account variables like weather, topography, time of day, everything about your troops, everything about the enemy. I highly recommend reading The Art of War by Sun Tzu if you're interested in military history, game theory, or eastern philosophy.
For anyone interested, The Winter Fortress is an interesting book describing Allied commando effort to destroy the Norwegian Vemork hydroelectric plant that was the source of heavy water, a necessary requirement for the Nazi Germany’s atomic bomb program. The book chronicles four major attacks: an unsuccessful British commando raid, a successful Norwegian commando raid, a U.S. Air Force bombing attack, and the final efforts to demolish the remaining heavy water supplies.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-winter-fortress-neal-bascomb/1122754994#productInfoTabs
> t's very handy. I sometimes use the > outside of reddit, even though it doesn't lead to the same quote indicator, simply because it's practical to use one sign for quoting.
>
> Some email systems use the same sign for it, which might be where reddit got the idea from.
Um, yes. <strong>Markdown</strong> (which predates Reddit’s comment support and is also used in many other places) was modeled after email conventions.
> While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters, the single biggest source of inspiration for Markdown’s syntax is the format of plain text email.
Those articles are rather binary, in headline. Even the QZ article mentions China's economy is expected to hit some hurdles. Even despite that, the numbers aren't all that clear. There's conflicting information:
A counter-point from Marketwatch, which counters it's own opinion article with an opinion article: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sorry-but-america-is-still-no-1-2014-12-04
What I'm trying to say: It seems like the articles claiming that "China overtakes US" is based on Purchasing Power Parity only... and cannot be used to say that China > US in economic terms.
Pretty limited view to be using such a broad brush about the entire countries economy, don't you think?
You can see the World Bank's projections and prospects here...and in the next two years the US is considered to be higher than China in GDP growth.
That isn't to say that China won't increase its GDP or surprise economists. But considering the US is one of China's major economic partners, if China does well, we can do well. So unless you think of it only in geo-political terms, I think it's important to keep perspective and not suggest it's something to worry about.
You know that feeling when you find a new thing that you enjoy, and you want to share it with everyone else?
Like you have just read through a web serial novel like Worm, or a freeware video game like Katawa Shoujo, and you spend your time trying to to adverise it to others on Reddit, or to put a link to it in your various forum signatures, or go out of your way to mention them in unrelated threads. You are willingly doing the kind of free work for it's creator, that many others would have to pay shills to do. How is that rational?
Yet it is, even if not in an economic sense. People can take up efforts for many other things than profit, for example because it feels good to spread things that you like.
Well, file-sharing is like that too, except illegal. Which doesn't matter all that much, given that copyright industry is far from an ominous manhunt. There are simply way too many people sharing files on the internet to shut down even a significant minority of it. So you don't need to be untrackable, only slightly safer than the main flock.
"The joy of sharing" is a particularly sugary way to put it, so in case as of piracy scene uploaders, we might call it peer approval, subcultural fame, and "sticking it to the man", though it also has an aspect of wanting people to be able to access stuff that they otherwise couldn't.
Edit: this is only adressing generalities, like casual TV show or song uploaders, there are also some specific scenes of crackers who break video game DRM, in that case there is also a matter of showing off technical skills, and different teams competing with each other.
Fornication Under Consent of the King is a total folk etymology.
Not that it's been easy to track but we do have some idea of the etymology of the word Fuck.
create a video or paint a story with series of images
show what goes in the classroom and how money is being spent & what donations will be used towards.
For example: show the current classroom, it's current condition and the children learning. Have a thermometer and measure temperature outside & inside. Show footage of a child fainting (if you're able to document it). All this will convey a sense of urgency and show people that money is going toward solving an actual problem.
Run an indigogo / kickstarter campaign [^^(late-edit:) ^(infographic)] where you crowdsource $$ to make things happen (alongside your efforts to get larger donors). Once you have such a page up, you can go out and try to solicit attention from different online media outlets and they'll have a definite place to send traffic (people) to, so they can contribute.
You need somewhere to send people to once their familiar with the cause.. you can't send people to that website mentioned in OP. I say that b/c the content on the website is in Hindi, however Google & other translators aren't able to translate the content into English... if you want to get western donors, you should definitely look into a way of resolving the content/translation issue.
If you want get maximum support, start a non-profit and setup operations so that donations and contributions will be tax deductible... This will also be a way to incentivize large & institutional investors to get involved (potentially).
I agree with you on all of your points - especially with philosophy being introduced at a younger age as well as a stronger emphasis on learning how to think (as opposed to what to think).
I am in favor of Unschooling. It is similar to homeschooling, but less structured. It seems kind of crazy and foreign at first, but it seems to be the best educational philosophy for my husband and I. If you're interested in learning about it I would highly recommend reading "Everything Voluntary: From Politics to Parenting" by Skyler Collins. Even if you only read the chapter about schooling, it's a great introduction to Unschooling and what it involves.
EVs are already pretty much the perfect commuter or "around town" car. The best selling EV today is the Nissan LEAF, which has a range of around 80 miles (70 or so when the heater is needed) which is considerably above what the average person drives per day. The cost per mile is pretty good and there are fewer moving parts to maintain, and the range is only going to improve with future generations.
> and I pronounce "suggest" as "suh-jest" rather than "sug-jest".
Huh, I didn't even realize the US pronunciation had that almost silent "g" in there. The UK pronunciation doesn't.
Good golly, that's a broad question. Hard to give a good answer to something that general. I will suggest Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance as a great book about how to receive, think about and process information. It is a philosophy book that touches on a lot of other philosophies as well as many cultural points. Not all of the answers given in the novel are the right ones, but it will teach you a lot about how to find your own answers in life, which is one of the most valuable tools you can possess.
The number one choice of Americans is the F-150.
In "The Millionaire Next Door" it talks about millionaires driving vehicles that are cheaper by the pound. Big big 3 vehicles, like full size pick ups. I think Sam Walton also preferred dis old F-150.
The economic system of Star Trek is rooted in legitimate theory and is beginning to look at lot like a viable model for investigating the solution to what we will soon be experiencing, which is near total unemployment in a post-scarcity world. Do keep in mind that the people behind and responsible for Star Trek were mostly geeks who spent a long time thinking about things like this, in this case, what do you do when people no longer have to work? In fact, some of the first people seriously thinking about this were probably aficionados of science fiction and the possible future scenarios associated with it.
The later series of Star Trek, DS9 in particular, dealt a lot more with the economic implications of all this.
I can almost guarantee that that link will be the most interesting thing you will read today.
Get your programming skills together. Do your best to make this yourself. You can get help, but it almost always works out better to earn help than to pay for it.
Read about Lean software development and agile/scrum.
Read the blogs of Mark Suster for basic MBA-type how to do stuff. Read the blogs of Paul Graham for everything else.
James Altucher is usually an SEO stunt, but he's got some ok stuff here: http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/24/the-ultimate-cheat-sheet-for-starting-and-running-your-business/
> Also have a gander at https://howsecureismypassword.net/[2] for the beginning of an idea of password strength.
Sorry, you are potentially putting your legitimate password here into a web service you know nothing about. Similar services have known to be honeypots to build up password dictionary lists. You talk a lot about security but you're also asking people to input their password in plain text into a service they know nothing about.
Mindfulness in Plain English is a must-read if you're interested in the Buddhist approach to things. It's not a religious book, more like an essay on how to practice mindfulness meditation, the primary tool developed by Buddhists for freeing the mind. I consider it a prerequisite to all of the rest - it's a mental toolbox developed over thousands of years for optimizing the way the human mind works that has no equivalent in modern Western psychology.
For Stoicism, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations are still very readable and important. It's a relatively short book and contains plenty of practical wisdom.
Some psychology/neurology can also be interesting for that purpose, because they make you realize how much of our thoughts and actions are not usually under our direct control - it can be scary, but it's also often fascinating. I've read a lot of Freud and its successors (I know psychoanalysis is considered passé nowadays, but I've found it invaluable for myself); on the more "medical" / neurological side, Oliver Sacks's books are amazing (The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat is a good start), and recently I very much enjoyed Damasio's Descartes' Error about how emotions and cognition are deeply interlinked.
On the more "out there" side, I fell down a pretty deep rabbit-hole after reading Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminatus!* trilogy, and then the "sacred" texts of Discordianism, and from there a carload of texts about Chaos Magick and the like. Pretty bonkers stuff, really, but good for expanding the mind. Do not mix with psychedelics.
What's the point of ANY identity? Nationality, race, gender, sexuality, etc.
Identity is a fundamental human need. Read up on it. http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=group+identity
In the U.S., at least, it is generally impossible to opt out of self-identifying. I mark down my ethnicity, gender, and other identities on a regular basis in a variety of settings. Taxes, school forms, applications for just about everything. And that's just bureaucratically.
Socially, there is a huge pressure to conform to some identity.
You also keep suggesting that gender identity is a choice. It's not. Please stop.
"Basic gender identity—the concept “I am a boy” or “I am a girl”—is generally established by the time the child reaches the age of three and is extremely difficult to modify thereafter." (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/228219/gender-identity)
There's this comprehensive collection of live news footage from around the world, with timestamps so you can easily jump to footage from each major event of the day.
I know it isn't as helpful as a step-by-step instruction guide... but really - just try. You aren't going to make friends or meet people if you don't leave your apartment. Go on something like Meetup.com and try to find things you are interested in, go to those things, and bond with people over a shared interest.
You don't need to go out to bars and shit to meet people.
"Camp taste is, above all, a mode of enjoyment, of appreciation - not judgment. Camp is generous. It wants to enjoy. It only seems like malice, cynicism. (Or, if it is cynicism, it's not a ruthless but a sweet cynicism.) Camp taste doesn't propose that it is in bad taste to be serious; it doesn't sneer at someone who succeeds in being seriously dramatic. What it does is to find the success in certain passionate failures. ... Camp taste is a kind of love, love for human nature. It relishes, rather than judges, the little triumphs and awkward intensities of "character." . . . Camp taste identifies with what it is enjoying. People who share this sensibility are not laughing at the thing they label as "a camp," they're enjoying it. Camp is a tender feeling." Susan Sontag, Notes On Camp
This lets you print an image on several sheets of paper, so you can make your own posters of whatever you want using the school's printers (aka for free!)
I cannot find a single reference to him being born in Brooklyn. The Encylopedia Britannica may be more reputable to you. Looks like your textbooks are not acceptable sources for scholarly research, either!
Truth is subjective, and can be manipulated. Perhaps calling him Christopher Columbus makes him seem more British/English/American? I don't know, seems shaky, but regardless I doubt there's some brainwashing conspiracy going on. Events in history are fairly cut-and-dry, but any attempt to answer why those events happened will have bias.
There already is. It's called Diaspora, and it's a distributed social network. That means that no one central entity controls the data.
But, a social network needs people to be members. And people are happy with Facebook, because everyone is on it and it works "well enough", which is all you need.
IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) is a decentralized alternative to current internet protocols made with this thought exercise in mind. The idea is that when somebody on Mars accesses something on Earth, their computer caches that information, so that next time somebody else on Mars tries to get the same information, they load it off of the other Martian's computer, rather than downloading from Earth.
One thing to keep in mind is the notion that the majority of humans will be out of work doesn't have a huge amount of weight to it, history helps us understand this.
Lets take an example, in the future, every barista will be replaced my an automated barista machine. We've lost thousands of jobs. But this is not a net loss overall. The owners of coffee shops now have more wealth, and can do with this what they please.
With this new money in the economy, new industries can be stimulated, for example, coffee makers, store renovation services, air conditioning units.. and so on. In these industries, employment will increase as it is more economically viable.
Edit : If you truly want to understand a point of view that strongly contradicts your own, read Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt.
It sounds a lot like what you're talking about is the same thing that Pirsig calls Quality.
You can read more about that in his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Oh, footnote: what you're asking is a philosophical question, which means that literally every answer you get will just be someone's opinion on the matter. I recommend looking through multiple opinions, and using them as a basis for forming your own.
Except some studies (such as those in Predictably Irrational) have shown that humans are terrible at making rational decisions independent of some very deep-rooted psychological biases.
If we go just based on our gut then we will tend to believe that tall males with symmetrical faces are authorities, regardless of their actual knowledge.
It’s an interesting question and kind of relates to the question of who gets PTSD. Here’s a summary from Mayo Clinic: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/symptoms-causes/syc-20355967
Risk factors People of all ages can have post-traumatic stress disorder. However, some factors may make you more likely to develop PTSD after a traumatic event, such as:
Experiencing intense or long-lasting trauma Having experienced other trauma earlier in life, such as childhood abuse Having a job that increases your risk of being exposed to traumatic events, such as military personnel and first responders Having other mental health problems, such as anxiety or depression Having problems with substance misuse, such as excess drinking or drug use Lacking a good support system of family and friends Having blood relatives with mental health problems, including anxiety or depression
This isn’t exactly what I think would happen, but Magic: The Gathering had a world set up somewhat like this with a sky full of energy if anyone wants to read the stories on it : https://magic.wizards.com/en/content/kaladesh-story.
I haven’t read them at all because I’ve been told they aren’t exactly the best literary works, but I played the set, and I think there’s a strict governing body that regulates how and how much gets used per person etc. The people in general do seem prosper but not without some of them disagreeing on the methods of distribution or something like that and apparently some random, overpowered, super old dragon dude coming around to abuse its potential with their minion(s?). Lol, I hadn’t been playing for that long, so that was out of nowhere for me at the time. Hmmm... Honestly, it still is out of nowhere to me. LOL
So from a strictly economical standpoint you have to option to pay the fine, which this year will be less than you pay for insurance. Additionally, under the Affordable Care Act, insurance isn't supposed to cost you more than 9.5% of your total annual household income. If your current premium is more than that, then you are qualified for a subsidy.
Podcasts, documentaries and pop science books are good to spark your curiosity, but they often tend to present "sexy" topics, such as, for example black holes, while at the same time neglecting more mundane ones, that are both more important to the understanding of the subject and are actually much easier to understand. In addition to that they often use analogies, some of which mystificates the subject matter instead of illuminating it. Maths documentaries are especially guilty of this. Many blogs, especially in economics, tend to present only the most controversial and politicized issues, for example macroeconomics gets much more attention than microeconomics, despite the fact that the latter is better understood and probably understanding it would give you more insight how economists think.
At the moment I do not know the better way to improve your knowledge than to read introductory textbooks and/or watch video lectures online. This is much more time consuming but your knowledge will be much deeper and will have a solid background to build your knowledge upon. Then even trivia will be easy to learn since you will be able to put it in the right context. Try to search what textbooks university freshmen use. Look into what courses are available at Coursera or elsewhere.
Lol. STEM. Did you know that in the ranks of captured and confessed terrorists, engineers and engineering students are significantly over-represented?
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/12/magazine/12FOB-IdeaLab-t.html
Same in the leadership of the Chinese Communist party.
In addition to everything else said here:
- Learn to find external notes and resources. Do not spend hours and hours reading the same text over and over and over. Wanna find a nicely written document about ... any specific topic? Search "your topic ext:pdf" in google. Here's a website I built for my students which curates some of the best notes & resources.
- First rule of roomates -- "If either of us is doing something that is driving the other crazy -- explicitly state what it is and deal with it soon as possible." Pretty much every situation can be resolved with that rule.
Good luck!
It's important to note that in the specific case of the Pride blockade, some of those present did not consider it entirely nonviolent:
http://www.metafilter.com/160790/Why-Black-Lives-Matter-stopped-the-Toronto-Pride-Parade#6596651
> the BLM protest is being seen not as a peaceful demonstration, or even as a vigorous, righteous action, but as an act of physical violence that hurt thousands of people.
I think it's clear that it was not intended to hurt anyone, but maybe the consequences were not clearly thought through.
(Different person)
I internalize things that are immediately relevant, like the technologies underlying the things I do at work, but other things (philosophy for one) I just can't. There is too much going into my head at once.
What I started to do was bookmark sites that I found. But that got unwieldy rather quickly. Recently, I discovered Pocket, which allows me - with one click - to store webties that I have found interesting. There is a little popup that lets me tag the content. So if I find something cool about programming, I'll tag it with "<language name>, <framework name>, work, programming, code" or something like that. Then, I can pull up the site and look at/search through everything. The real kicker is offline storage. It saves the webpage and you can look at it offline. This is useful for the smartphone app so that you can have access to your knowledge base at parties and the like.
Also, combined with RES, pocket gives you a little button that lets you save every Reddit post/comment. Pretty nifty.
See if your local hospital's outpatient care has a depression group or something similar. Typically they have a program on cognitive behavioral therapy that lasts ten weeks or so.
If they do, sign up!
If the depression is really bad, just GTFO of the house and do anything but sit online. Audiobooks are excellent for these types of situations where you don't want to just walk around without a purpose.
You can even sign up as a dog walker with your local SPCA as a good excuse to get out.
If you're eating fast food, cut that shit out right away and move toward a healthier diet.
If you find yourself really isolated, try to find a decent chat for your favorite hobbies or games. Chances are there's something on IRC or Discord. It's not perfect, but some socialization is better than nothing.
Depression sucks -- and it really does consume / spoil everything when it gets bad. Externalizing in a journal is excellent, but getting some professional help is also key. Even if you're not going every week, every-so-often is better than nothing.
Book-wise, The Feeling Good Handbook by David D. Burns is pretty standard. You can get it from your local library or for cheap on Abebooks.com. It has a lot of exercises to work through, so its good to own a copy that you can make notes in.
I finally dealt with my depression in my late twenties. First of all, don't expect things to work right away, and don't expect too much of yourself. I sabotaged myself a lot by thinking I was going to do everything right or nothing at all. All the advice to seek professional help is spot on.
Start with the basics. Get enough sleep. Eat fruit and or vegetables every day. Get a little exercise. Don't abuse drugs or alcohol, including caffeine and nicotine. It's OK if you slip up, just try again the next day.
Once you've got that down, start digging a little deeper. Do you have toxic relationships? End them. Do you hate your job or school? Make constructive plans and change it.
Make room for healthy fun. Celebrate your successes.
Finally, try some self help. 'The Feeling Good Handbook' is a classic and quite trustworthy. Many people find meditation helps them. If you take antidepressants, do so consistently.
I read a book "The Armchair Economist" by some Rochester professor that was highly recommended to me. One chapter went over this topic. The conclusion? Smokers save the 'system' money, and cigarettes should not be taxed if the 'system' wanted more money in the long term.
I would say first, start attempting to turn them into stories. No matter how haphazard and crappy your attempts are, the sooner you start the sooner you start improving.
See if you can find some stories that are similar to ones you'd like to read, and read them, once for entertainment, and then again for close study of how they did things. Pay particular attention to the sections that you think worked really well or really poorly, and try to figure out what went wrong there.
Try picking up a few books on writing. The Elements of Style, Bird By Bird, Story by Robert McKee, just really whatever piques your interest. Writer's Digest has put out some good, basic books as well. And if you really want it to be a movie, then you should pick up a few books on screenplays as well, and spend some time reading some actual screenplays.
My memory of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is hazy, but I do remember a lot about the "flavour" and imagary of the book, particularly the vivid descriptions of riding motorbikes over crisp desert sierras. I also remember the idea of classical vs romantic thinking, which at the time I saw as something of a false dichotomy.
I have always remembered the feeling of freedom and companionship that it left me with.
BTW: I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and was somewhat surprised to find out that it was a work of fiction.
I've been having a very similar problem to yours for as long as I can remember. It seems like everything is so trivial (like video games, which I find myself enjoying far less than I used to), and the only thing that gives me a sense of fulfillment is getting work done (I'm a college student). So I end up working and studying all the time, because those are the only things I can rationally justify, rather than engaging in activities that would be just for fun.
One thing that's been helping me is rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is a terrific and highly readable book about the meaning of Quality. It makes me feel like I'm more in control of things, and that I'm taking the bull by the horns rather than hoping it passes me by. I'd recommend the book to just about anyone, but I'm sure there are other books/movies/whatever that might help you with a sense of fulfillment.
I have found the Chrome extension, "stayfocusd" extremely beneficial in limiting mindless time on social media, etc. You have a better chance of changing your behavior with small, incremental changes and improvements. It's a chore to disable, and I've gotten to the point now where I usually only cruise Reddit on my phone when I'm away from the computer, waiting in line... or taking a dump, which I'm doing right now haha. I think that this discipline might cascade into other parts in your life. Several studies have shown that discipline and "willpower" is a muscle and resource... The Power of Habit is a great read for behavior modification.
I'd like to recommend a book I got a few weeks ago after it was recommended by a handful of Redditors. It's called Learned Optimism by psychiatrist Martin Seligman, Ph.D..
The idea behind the book, and much of Seligman's career, is that depression is strongly linked to pessimism. Or, more accurately, it's strongly linked to having a pessimistic explanatory style -- which is the way we explain what causes good and bad things to happen to us, basically. Obviously there's more to it, and it's not argued to be the sole source of depression. It's just a very important element to overall mental health, and Seligman makes a strong case for this. It's been very helpful and mind-opening for me, even though I went into it with heavy skepticism ("Pfft, he's just gonna repeat over and over that I just need to be positive and optimistic.").
I know you said no books, but a book called The Power of Habit might be of interest to you.
There is some cool info in there about analyzing your habits to find out what the true habit is.
He has a great example that his afternoon trip to get a cookie in the lunch room wasn't about the cookie it was about walking around and seeing some people.
It goes in all sorts of other directions, but it gives you insight into the concepts of habits that might spark some change.
Buy "Security Analysis" in addition to "The Intelligent Investor"
>Security Analysis is the bible of fundamental analysis. Originally published in 1934, the tome systematically lays bare the science of security analysis. Written with the assistance of cowriter David Dodd, Benjamin Graham's intellectual tour de force has yet to be equaled in the annals of investing. Written only a few years after the devastating stock market crash of 1929, Graham had one objective--to make the investment process as safe as possible using knowledge of key factors about the business.
>Beginning with bonds and moving quickly to stocks, Graham and Dodd go over all of the angles. Articulating a comprehensive theory of fixed-value and common stock investment, they examine in detail the various factors that one should consider when valuing securities. Dividends, extraordinary items, depreciation, amortization, capital structure and balance sheet analysis are all described and defined in lurid detail. It is impossible to read Security Analysis and not come away with a deeper understanding of corporate finance and how it relates to investing.
I also suffer from depression, low self-esteem, and lack of self-worth. I'm 25, graduated college, got a well-paying job, a caring girlfriend, a loving family, and great friends. What I'm trying to say is that being happy is practice, a result of willpower that you exercise by taking care of yourself. View yourself from the third-person and try to make that person happy.
Look up something called cognitive behavioral therapy, and consider seeing a counselor who practices CBT. If you lack the willpower to do that, look up and read the book, Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy by David Burns. If you lack the willpower to do that, download the app, Pacifica and follow the lessons.
You have to give yourself permission -- realize that the power is within you -- to be free of negative behavioral patterns and self doubt. I like to remember this quote by Alan Watts: "You're under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago."
Star Trek has nothing to do with communism though. There is no central planning and private ownership of land and the means of production is alive and well. Would you like to know more?.
Interesting, tis has been featured on /r/LifeHacker https://lifehacker.com/try-reddits-best-tips-for-reading-more-books-1832394982
I feel like we're talking about two different things.
I feel that a person does not need to be emaciated and knocking on deaths door for an atrocity to take place.
For example: http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/top-1-getting-95-income-gains-washington-responsible-151332783.html
That fact that "the majority of them don't have any idea what actually constitutes an improvement in their standard of living" help perpetuate the situation in that link. I don't think you have to be poor to fall in that category. In fact, many are fighting to maintain that situation.
Again, 1st world problems are not the same as 3rd world problems... which I tried to point out from the start.
This link from How-To-Geek should run you through the procedure from start to finish. There are also third-party apps that will do the trick.
Though men who come out as gay usually don't do so until they're older (because of our cultural discrimination against the LGBTQ) and though, as you said, they don't have older brothers (my source below doesn't cite if they have a dad) men who have older brothers have a higher chance of being born homosexual. Interesting to note, this is mostly with people who are right-handed. Left-handed younger brothers didn't see a change in homo/heterosexuality. It's possible it could be due to the development before birth.
This article also explains y/x chromosomes influence before birth.
The second article is biased towards homosexuality and birth (not going to lie).
I'm a little curious to see your source on the correlation between prison rape and sexual orientation.
Edit: wrong they're
There are plenty of cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin, so it's never too late. Of course it's a huge gamble, unless you devote essentially all of your spare time to following the market. So maybe don't dump all of your savings into it... But if you have a couple hundred bucks to spare, it's not the worst idea ever to buy a bunch of never-heard coins that go for pennies each now and check back in a few years.
I was going to suggest a link but before posting I did some research to make sure it was still a good recommendation and seems like there have been a change in leadership and it's no longer worth recommending. I hope you find what you are looking for.
My workplace provides counseling and coaching services, which I have used and even thought it's intended for career, the coach did not place any such restrictions and helped me resolve my issue by helping me look at the problems from a different perspective. Check and see if you have access to any such resource.
BTW if you want to know what website I was going to recommend its https://www.7cups.com/ but cannot vouch for it anymore.
What you need is pictures licensed with 'Creative Commons Attribution'. Flickr, for example, lets you search their catalog while filtering specific license.
I'm confused. You're supposed to go to healthcare.gov, which may redirect you to your state run website, you fill out some information about yourself, and then a list of insurance policies you can buy pops up. In my case, they cost $119 per month and up. I wouldn't worry about the fine. It's $95 and nothing compared to the yearly cost of insurance, and there's a way to opt out if you don't make enough money to pay it.
If I'm fortunate, part of my summer will be spent at Jedediah Smith state park.
Also, I have had a similar experience with astronomy - once the vastness of time and space clicked for the first time, my perspective on life changed.
When I say "clicked," I mean that I got a taste of how utterly incomprehensible it is to my little brain.
That won't necessarily be how it will work. Most of the main parties have already started to take on board some green ideas, and it may just be that all parties start getting greener over time.
Population growth is one area that underlies most other issues.
You are right. The very word camp comes from Polari, a secret language that gay men in the UK used. Other words have entered the mainstream as well--butch, rough trade, basket (in reference to a man's crotch), troll (as in trolling for sex), and so forth.
Camp is historically an important part of gay culture and humor. I feel like some of that stuff is dying out now that gay people aren't forced underground anymore--I'm often surprised at how quickly people have forgotten that culture.
Depends what you're reading also, I use https://getpocket.com/ . and while on the subway to work every dayI try to read two articles.
Pocket is basically a "read it later" app, which I find useful for LONG Wikipedia articles and internet posts.
> That's not to say there aren't open source engines, there are, but they're not as highly used.
Unreal Engine 4 is open source. The Unreal Engine is widely used, though it being open source is a relatively new thing I believe. Previously, in order to gain access to the closed source (even then it may have been only partial access) you had to have a contract / agreement with Epic Games.
That being said, the Unreal Engine by itself is not a finished game but just an engine. But it being open source may encourage developers to also make their final product open source as well.
I believe there's already a project like that called Movim. It's basically a decentralized social network built on top of the XMPP protocol and 100% open source. It just hasn't managed to achieve popularity yet.
As mentioned, there's also Diaspora, though that hasn't achieved popularity either.
If you honestly want reasons for why Western conspiracy theorists are anti-semitic, and anti-science to a lesser degree, you will find much more detailed and sincere justifications at www.4chan.org/pol . The content there is fascist, extremely hate-filled and disgusting, but they have many more types of reasons (or excuses) than anyone on Reddit can supply for you. I'm sorry, Reddit absolutely hates fascism, anti-intellectualism and hateful ideology, but that also means they don't have sincere or complete interpretations about why people like 4channers or conspiracy theorists believe what they do. You should go to a main source like /pol/, brave into the vile heart of the beast (or lack thereof) and try to understand from their point of view if you can. Godspeed.
Here are some books I really like and that had a great impact in my life.
Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is really inspiring if you feel like you need a bit of stoicism in your life. It is a beloved book of great generals, including Gen. Mattis.
Principles, by mega investor Ray Dalio is really interesting, shows a great deal how to organize your life around principles and has some great pick me up lines.
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind is a great little book on zen meditation, but the concept of keeping a beginner's mind, open, without prejudice, is very inspiring.
Citadel by Antoine St. Exuperie is poetic prose full of great imagery and discussions about empire, growing up and the desert. I always cry a lot reading this book.
A Band of Brothers again, not a self help book, but the story of Easy Company is so awesome I couldn't help but end the book feeling motivated.
These are a few off the top of my head. /r/booksuggestions may be a good place to ask as well.
Check out anything by Eckhart Tolle, he has some great guided meditations on YouTube, but they can get a bit esoteric. He wrote The Power of Now, which is a lot more straightforward. I've also been told that Mindfulness in Plain English is good, but I've never read it. What helped me a lot was just searching "guided meditation" on YouTube and listening to a bunch until I found some I liked.
Check out anything by Eckhart Tolle, he has some great guided meditations on YouTube, but they can get a bit esoteric. He wrote The Power of Now, which is a lot more straightforward. I've also been told that Mindfulness in Plain English is good, but I've never read it. What helped me a lot was just searching "guided meditation" on YouTube and listening to a bunch until I found some I liked.
Well, first off I'm not a liberal. I'm an author writing a story with the above scenario as the jumping off point. But as I was planning it, I realized that, although I could make a good guesses as to how people would react, I didn't know for certain. Therefore, I asked.
I've upvoted everyone who said something new, no matter what it was they said, and those who provided good counterpoints. Now, i can't see the scores for everyone's comments and I may have missed one or two, but seriously, what is your problem?
If you must know, I am neither Liberal nor Conservative. I am an Aristotelian. If you want to know what I believe, there is this great book called the 'Nicomachean Ethics' followed by its sequel 'The Politics' that I can highly recommend.
And no, I won't answer your questions. Nor will I provide more information. That's the point of asking the question this way. The scenario, let me repeat, is as follows: you saw this on the news. You don't HAVE the information that you are requesting nor do you have any way of getting access to it. Therefore, based upon limited information, what is your decision?
The first thing that occurred to me about this topic is one of the lines that stands out as the most wise from 'The Art of War'
> “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
It's more or less assumed that conflicts on a mass scale like World War 2 simply cannot occur anymore, given that any two sides pushed to the brink would likely resort to nuclear weapons--because of that, it seems like anything short of a shooting war could be, like that Sun Tzu quote there, a sort of war "meta game".
Things like economic sanctions, United Nations reprimands and political actions of that nature are ways to try to win without playing. Hell, even the sort of thing that Nixon was doing (madman theory) could be considered an action taken to win without putting forces into the field.
A classic is Thorstein Veblen's "Theory of the Leisure Class." It doesn't offer alternatives, just provides a compelling and (I think) still relevant dissection of consumer culture before it was consumer culture.
It doesn't really outright challenge the capitalist system itself, but since you mention work in particular, check out resources concerning basic income guarantee.
As for people, there is obviously Marx and his "Capitol," but if you need to just familiarize yourself with Marx's key concepts with little effort try Richard Wollfe's website. He teaches at NYU and puts many lectures on his website for free.
A lot of medieval authors condemned either commerce (buying then selling at a higher price) or usury (lending on interest), or both. See Dante ("Inferno", Cantos IV, VI, VII, I think), who borrows a lot from Thomas Acquinas, and both of them borrow from Aristotle, who I think accepts commerce but condemns money-lending in the "Nicomachean Ethics."
Jesus in the New Testament also has a problem with moneylenders, as well as wealth in general.
For alternative ways of organizing society, look up the (now defunct) technocracy movement, similar to guaranteed income.
John Zerzan is an anarcho-primitivist, basically rejecting every aspect of civilization as exploitative. He doesn't emphasize alternatives for society (other than destruction) so much as ways for individuals to reject civilization (and capitalism first of all).
The absolute best textbook on the subject is Russel and Norvig's Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. For a more high-level, theoretical way of looking at AI, I'd recommend Marvin Minsky's The Society of Mind (Minsky is one of the Great Forebears of AI). Finally, for a historical perspective I liked Crevier's AI: The Tumultuous History of the Search for Artifical Intelligence - the author knows most of the researchers he talks about personnally and he has tons of interesting tibits and anecdotes, all in a highly readable form.
If you're interested in more resources, I'll happily send you the bibliography of my just-finished Master's thesis on AI :)
Here are /r/investing favorite books
http://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/166ha8/what_are_rinvestings_favorite_books_future_side/'
I recommend The Bogleheads' Guide to Investing or A Random Walk Down Wall Street
You don't.
I recommend you read Cal Newport's <em>So Good They Can't Ignore You</em> to give you some perspective on this question. It debunks the idea that you can find something your passionate about before you start doing things and heading towards mastery in some area. Will be high value for you to read it at this point.
There's so much I know now that would have been helpful back then. Great idea asking your questions on Reddit to get some feedback from those who have gone down the road before you.
From reading up on Stoicism, meditation, and Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, accepting the idea of impermanence. It seems depressing at first, but realizing that nothing lasts forever and that life can change dramatically in a second is oddly comforting. You learn to treasure the good things life has to offer now and feel more prepared for any changes that may occur. Meditation can be good practice: focus on sensations - be they pleasurable, painful or neutral - and watch them slowly fade away. Appreciate how each session will bring new experiences. It helps me feel more aware of my own mortality and consequently how I want to live each day.
The advantage of anarchism is not in charity, it is in economics growth. China has lifted approximately 600 million people out of extreme poverty since 1980, largely because of the introduction of special economic zones. India has experienced much greater economic growth since its reforms in 1991.
As for whether the free market increases or decreases wages, there is no question. Google does not pay their employees highly because of generosity, they do because they want to attract the best talent. Computer engineers are paid more than English majors because computer engineers are more productive. America is not rich because of better politicians, but because our rule of law allows us to fully exploit potential gains from trade.
Most of the suggestions are political philosophy, I would recommend you read more economics. Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt and Economics for Real People by Gene Callahan are two good books to start with.
It seems to me that you are incredibly uncomfortable seeing yourself apart from your characteristics you currently possess.
You're probably not familiar with Aristotles' Nicomachean Ethics, but I hope that you read the second book.
It's hypothesis is that moral action reaches its best when it finds the happy balance between excess and deprivation.
Thanks! That actually makes sense and helps me understand this chart a bit more. I cant really tell what 0 is!
I got the 45 from an App I dl'ed off the market (sounds so stupid now) and without calibrating it showed me 45.
On one of the meters it says
20 is rustling leaves,
30 is quiet whisper at 3ft in a Library,
40 is Quiet residential area,
50 is quiet office
60 is Normal conversation at 3 ft
70 Busy traffic
Looking back 45 makes no sense because its actually pin drop silence where I live. So I can calibrate and set the sound pressure lower so it reads 25ish ambient which puts my whispers at 32 (which matches the scale), my mouse at 36 (3 cm away from it), and my keystrokes at 45-49 (Mechanical Keyboard Cherry Reds).
Do these numbers make more sense?
EDIT: Put in the Link to the App I used