Saturday, February 27, 2016

"Unfortunately, a lot of these students have the First Amendment in their crosshairs..."

"Student activists say they want their campuses to become safe spaces. But they are conflating two very different kinds of safety. Of course students have the right to physical safety—universities are required prevent violence and illegal harassment on campuses. But too many students think they are also entitled to emotional safety."


Mizzou Fired the Professor Who Asked for 'Muscle.' So What's the Lesson for Campus Protesters? - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "This Thursday, the University of Missouri announced the firing of mass media professor Melissa Click, who gained online notoriety after a YouTube video depicted her hollering for some "muscle" to help her remove a camera man from a public space on campus amidst heated protests. The video, which has racked up more than 2 million views on YouTube, also shows students blocking and arguing with University of Missouri student and ESPN photojournalist Tim Tai. Tai stands his ground and offers a spirited defense of the First Amendment, pointing out to the students that it is what protects their right to speak and protest as well. 

 This all happened a mere three days after another video depicted Yale students dressing down a professor whose wife questioned in an email whether or not it was appropriate for administrators to regulate or comment upon the Halloween costume choices of college students who are, after all, adults. Several months have passed since those incidents occurred, but campus protests have not dissipated and may have even intensified. Just this week, Rutgers students smeared fake blood on themselves before chanting and staging a walk-out of a speech being given by conservative writer and provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. Counter-protesters began a chant of "Trump! Trump! Trump!," which Reason's Robby Soave argues is less an endorsement of Donald Trump's policies and more likely a trollish reaction to the "cult of political correctness" that's established a safe space for itself on American college campuses. Watch the video above to hear Soave explain what lessons students should be taking away from these campus clashes."


#TheStruggle


"So I know that a little later on this year you're going to have another of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much..." - George Carlin


"If you have selfish, ignorant citizens, you are gonna get selfish, ignorant leaders...  So maybe, maybe, maybe it's not the politicians who suck.  Maybe something else sucks around here.  Like... the public.  Yeah. The public sucks!  There's a nice campaign slogan for somebody.  "The public sucks, fuck hope!" 

...I don't vote. Two reasons. First of all it's meaningless; this country was bought and sold a long time ago. The shit they shovel around every 4 years *pfff* doesn't mean a fucking thing. Secondly, I believe if you vote, you have no right to complain. People like to twist that around – they say, 'If you don't vote, you have no right to complain', but where's the logic in that? If you vote and you elect dishonest, incompetent people into office who screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You caused the problem; you voted them in; you have no right to complain. I, on the other hand, who did not vote, who in fact did not even leave the house on election day, am in no way responsible for what these people have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created that I had nothing to do with...

So I know that a little later on this year you're going to have another of those really swell presidential elections that you like so much.  You enjoy yourselves it'll be a lot of fun.  I'm sure that as soon as the election is over your country will improve immediately.  As for me, I'll be home that day doing essentially the same thing as you. The only difference is, when I get finished masturbating I'm gonna have a little something to show for it."



Friday, February 26, 2016

"What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study on Happiness." #Powerful


"The clearest message that we get from this 75 year study is this:  Good relationships keep us happier and healthier.  Period.

...

Loneliness kills."



This strikes me as related.  Why are women so unhappy? Too much choice.: "...a whole lot of people, faced with a multitude of choices, are made deeply unhappy by those choices, and often don’t make any choice at all. They become paralyzed by the sheer number of choices. Barry Schwartz wrote on this phenomena in his book The Paradox of Choice: Why Less is More. It’s a fascinating book...

Schwartz touches briefly on the issue of family and marriage, and I’d like to explore the subject in more depth, in the context of choices. For most of recorded human history, when it came to marriage and family, there weren’t any real choices...

...one of my biggest beefs with feminism is how it lies to young women about what will make them happy. A certain percentage of women are perfectly contented working in a cubicle and paying someone else to raise their children, if they choose to have them, and no one should stand in the way of their happiness, but most women are miserable under those conditions. 

When Forbes surveyed working mothers, fully 84% of them said being at home with their children was their dream, and of that 84%, one third said they resented their husbands for not making that possible. Where did women get the idea that they would love their paychecks more than their children? Feminism. It started with Betty Friedan, and has only escalated since then. 

Combined with the toxic narrative of ‘men are to blame for everything’, women are virtually guaranteed to make choices that will result in misery for everyone...  The more choices women have, the unhappier they have become, because, as Schwartz explains, women experience the paradox of never being happy enough, even when they have made a good choice..."

Old Japanese people are the cutest.


Mr. Takahashi, 93 years old.

"Do you ever remember being sick?
No, I do not...

I can't help but notice that you're smoking.  How long have you been smoking?
I've been smoking since I was 25.

And Mr. Takahashi is not alone, his neighbor goes through a pack and a half a day..."


Jokes about "Liberal Tolerance" in 3, 2, 1...



Thursday, February 25, 2016

Training - "It’s not always fun, but if you want to be good at something, you have to do it when it’s not fun."

2/25 - power clean, deadlift, squats, situps, speedbag, stretch
2/24 - stretch
2/23 - shadowbox, stretch

Obsession, Dedication, and Sacrifice (Flea and Steve Nash): "“It’s not always fun, but if you want to be good at something, you have to do it when it’s not fun.”  The significance of this line cannot be overstated. As I mentioned recently, getting ahead in any pursuit involves more than simply working hard when you are in the mood. Those who have truly excelled are often the rare individuals who continue to grind at those times when it isn’t fun...

Some might suggest that pushing through exhaustion and injury is unhealthy and excessive. I actually agree. I am not suggesting otherwise. I’m also not suggesting that there’s any guarantees of anything. That’s not the purpose of this entry...

As much as I believe in hard work and dedication, I’m also a firm believer in learning from others. Almost anyone who has ever accomplished anything significant has an experience to share that is worth learning from. As I tell my athletes, try to learn something from everyone you can. And that often means studying individuals who have pursued entirely different goals. For example, you might be an athlete, but that doesn’t mean you can’t benefit from Flea’s wisdom as a musician. Those who succeed often rely on similar attributes. The relentless work ethic and obsession for greatness is easily recognized. In summary, even if you aren’t willing to make the same sacrifices as Flea or Steve Nash, at least recognize what was necessary for them to succeed. You don’t need to follow the same path, but you can understand and appreciate it. Not everyone is willing to give up so much to chase a dream. I’m not suggesting that you should or you shouldn’t. That’s a choice that we all must make on our own. "




How Tiny Changes Transformed Me from Steve Rogers to Captain America | Nerd Fitness: "Two years ago, my mentality changed. I stopped asking “when will I arrive?” and instead realized that I will never actually get there. With this mindset I created a new strategy, and today I stand (well, sit) before you a changed person – physically and mentally. I’m 20+ pounds (of muscle) heavier, stronger and more resilient than ever, and believe that every day is an opportunity to set a new personal best. I did it by refusing to focus on the “end.” In other words, I stopped worrying about “before and after.” Instead I just focused finding goals and quests that excited me each day...

There’s No “After.”

It was only until I started of thinking of progress in “years and years” instead of “weeks and months” that my mentality finally shifted. This was a tough pill to swallow. I had to put my “after” goals on hold, and instead just did what needed to get done every day. I had to change my mentality: there is no after, only “during.”

I initially thought “Ugh, Years!?! That’s gonna take too long.” And then I thought back to how little sustainable progress I had made in the previous 10 years and knew things needed to change. Today I look back and can’t be more relieved that I made this choice. In two, five, or ten years, what choice do you wish you’d have made now? The one that puts you on a “30 day diet” or workout plan? Or one that instills changes for the long term?

If you want to change your appearance in the long term, your normal life (how you live every day) has to change. Every day you are building a new normal: a sustainable way of eating, sleeping, and exercising that gets you a tiny bit closer to where you want to be...

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention another crucial reason why I was able to make sustained progress over the past two years: I made my health a priority. I wrote about “why you need to be selfish sometimes” on Nerd Fitness before...

I finally put my foot down...  Mostly, I stopped accepting excuses from myself, and stopped relying on motivation. Instead, I manufactured discipline in my life. I ruthlessly removed unnecessary time-wasting activities from my life and got better at managing my time...  I just do this stuff strategically. Sleep has been prioritized. When I relocated to New York City, I made sure to spend money on a quality mattress and blackout curtains. As a cheapskate, this was a huge challenge for me. However, sleep is one of the most important elements of a healthy life. I don’t play games late at night, I don’t have a TV in my bedroom, and I make sure I’m sleeping as much as possible."







Science, a colonialist social construct.

FFS.  Kill me.


The More You Know...

The Vagina Monologues - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could, in which a woman recalls memories of traumatic sexual experiences in her childhood and a self-described "positive healing" sexual experience in her adolescent years with an older woman. This particular skit has sparked outrage, numerous controversies and criticisms due to its content, among which the most famous is the Robert Swope controversy (see below). In the original version, she is 13, but later versions changed her age to 16. It also originally included the line, "If it was rape, it was a good rape", which was removed from later versions..."


"...In 2000, Robert Swope, a conservative contributor to a Georgetown University newspaper, The Hoya, wrote an article critical of the play.  He suggested there was a contradiction between the promotion of rape awareness on V-Day and the monologue "The Little Coochie Snorcher That Could", in which an adult woman recalls being given alcohol and statutorily raped at 13 by a 24-year-old woman as a positive, healing experience, ending the segment with the proclamation "It was a good rape." Swope also noted the double standards involved, asking "why is rape only wrong when a man commits it, but when it's by a woman committed against another woman, who just happens to be 13-years-old, it is celebrated and a university club sponsors it?"  Outcry from the play's supporters resulted in Swope's being fired from the staff of The Hoya, before the piece was even run. Swope had previously criticized the play in an article he wrote entitled "Georgetown Women's Center: Indispensable Asset or Improper Expenditure?" His termination received critical editorial coverage in The Wall Street Journal, Salon, National Review, The Atlantic Monthly, The Washington Times, The Weekly Standard, and by Wendy McElroy of iFeminists."

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

"And retcons! You can’t delete a sin by just burning some shit any more, I believe."

The Taxonomy Of Sin | MORNING, COMPUTER: "Sin fascinates me: an entirely fictional concept, an invention that has defined the lives and behaviors of millions upon millions of people across centuries. Actual sin, internal sin, mortal sin, venial sin, the list seems endless. Transformative works built upon the original invention. And retcons! You can’t delete a sin by just burning some shit any more, I believe. The storytelling that is the bedrock of religions is frequently wonderful. 

I left angry, intolerant atheism back in my teens...  Atheism should be characterised, I believe, by a generally relaxed position of tolerance, and the peace that comes with knowing that it’s just us here and that this is not a rehearsal. I won’t be judged by a god or some mysterious universal machinery for being a shrieking hateful prick who doesn’t know how to choose a fight or operate an ethos: I’ll be judged by myself and other humans. That’s probably worse."


"...personality always beats policy details."

Solving for Scary (Trump Persuasion Series) | Scott Adams Blog: "In the 2D world of politics, voters say they look at the issues and choose the candidate with the best platform. In the 3D world of persuasion, so long as a candidate isn’t bat-shit crazy, personality always beats policy details. So the question comes down to which of the three candidates can solve for their perceived personality flaws.  


 If Trump finds a way to be less scary, he wins. If Clinton finds a way to be more trusted, she wins. If Sanders accepts Jesus as his personal savior, he wins. 

 I don’t see any scenario in which Clinton regains trust or Sanders turns to Jesus. But Trump probably has several solutions to fix his scariness problem...

We have already seen Trump modulate his personality to fit any circumstance. He fights when he needs to fight, but he also shows empathy – with wounded veterans, for example – when the situation calls for it. Trump says clearly and often that he changes his approach to fit the situation. But can he change his approach enough to stop scaring the pants off of Democrats?" 

 ...

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." - H. L. Mencken















"The category of hate speech is ridiculous... an ideological tool disguised as a force for moral good."

Brendan O’Neill - The myth of hate speech: "I completely reject the category of hate speech. I’m always surprised to find that so many people treat the category of hate speech seriously. You hear them having discussions along the lines of, “Is this hate speech? Is that hate speech?” And I find myself thinking: “What are you doing? Why are you treating the idea of ‘hate speech’ as a measurable, scientific thing when it’s nothing of the sort?” 

To my mind, the category of hate speech is as ridiculous, and as abominable in fact, as the idea of thoughtcrime. And my mission in life — or at least this afternoon — is to try to create a situation where people bristle and balk as much at the phrase ‘hate speech’ as they do at the phrase ‘thoughtcrime’. There are two reasons I reject the idea of hate speech. 

The first is that it is an ideological invention. It is designed, explicitly, to repress the expression of certain ideas, and it does so to great effect. It is an ideological tool disguised as a force for moral good. And the second reason is because the idea of hate speech encroaches into the realm of free communication in an extraordinary way, in a way that no other law or censor in modern times has done. 

For it polices not only ideas, but also emotion, feelings. It is the very definition of government overreach; it has all the ingredients of tyranny. On the first point. You can really see the ideological component of the modern idea of hate speech if you look at the history of it. After the Second World War, the keenest proponents of controls on so-called hate speech were the Soviets. There were various international gatherings in the 1940s and 50s to hammer out postwar international treaties, and at these the Soviets continually pushed for a global commitment to repressing ‘hate speech’, in particular fascistic and far-right speech. They wanted stipulations against ‘hatred’ and ‘incitement to hatred’.

Amazingly, the West resisted. Eleanor Roosevelt represented the Western powers at some of the debates on international treaties, and she argued that it would be “extremely dangerous” to outlaw hate speech, since “any criticism of public or religious authorities might all too easily be described as incitement to hatred”. 

But eventually the Soviets won out. In 1965, the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopted, and it included a proposal to criminalise “ideas based on racial superiority”. The keyword here was ideas. 

From the outset, treaties and laws against hate speech were about controlling ideas — obnoxious ideas, yes, but ideas nonetheless. It was clear very early on that the category of hate speech was an ideological tool for the repression of ideas. 

...the category of hate speech is a supremely elastic ideological tool of ideas-control. The most striking thing about it is how unwieldily and arbitrary it is. It has in recent decades spread from curtailing ideas of racial superiority to suppressing expressions of religious hatred. Some Scandinavian countries want to outlaw misogynistic speech. On campuses there are clampdowns on transphobic speech. Anyone who says that a person with a penis is a man can now be branded a ‘hate speaker’ and find himself No Platformed. 

This is the world we live in, folks, one where even saying ‘men are men and women are women’ has been encapsulated into the ideological category of hate speech. The category of hate speech has spread and spread, and now covers not only the Soviets’ original target of hard right-wingers — or just any right-wingers — but also people who despise religion (religious hatred), who oppose gay marriage (homophobia), who doubt gender dysphoria (transphobia). 

There is a seemingly unstoppable momentum to the category of hate speech, because once you accept the idea that some ideas are beyond the pale, then no idea is safe from restriction and punishment. To see how the category of hate speech continues to punish ideas, consider some recent examples. A Swedish pastor was given a one-month suspended prison sentence for saying homosexuality is a tumour on society. But he really believes that. He was punished for his beliefs. Brigitte Bardot has been fined 30,000 Euros for describing the Islamic ritual slaughter of meat as ‘barbaric’. She really believes that. She has been reprimanded for her moral convictions. Germaine Greer is hounded by radical students for saying that a man cannot become a woman with a click of his fingers. That is her deeply held belief. She is hounded for her beliefs. 

We must always remember that one man’s hate speech is another man’s real, genuine, heartfelt moral or religious belief. What the state or mainstream society or student leaders refer to as ‘hate speech’ is to someone else an acceptable and even good way of thinking. We are rebranding ideas — whether it’s racist ideas or religious ideas or traditionalist ideas — as hate speech. 

It is cynical and censorious, and in my view as equally as outrageous as rebranding criticism of the government a ‘thoughtcrime’. So when students seek to silence what they have decreed to be hate speech, they are helping to enforce a severe, top-down diktat. These students present themselves as radical, progressive, liberal… but in truth they are the obedient footsoldiers in an elitist, tyrannical repression of certain ideas that was kickstarted by the Soviets and later embraced by the Western powers. And then the second reason I reject the whole idea of hate speech is because of the extraordinary powers it grants to officialdom and other bodies. Powers to police not only what we say and think, but what we feel. 

Historically, censorship has been designed to repress ideological and religious convictions. The category of hate speech does that, but it does something else too, something even worse: it allows the monitoring and punishment of what we feel about certain things, people or ways of life...  It expands its power from the public sphere of discussion into the psychic sphere of thought and feeling. And it infantilises the public; it robs us of our right and responsibility to challenge what we consider to be wicked or wrong, preferring to ask experts to do that on our behalf. It is time to get serious about freedom of speech. It is unacceptable to repress the expression of ideas. It is unacceptable to repress the expression of hatred. It is unacceptable to repress the expression of prejudice. The title of this session asks, “Is hate speech free speech?” My answer is that hate speech is a nonsense. There is only speech, and speech should always be free."

"I don't want to understand the world..."


Monday, February 22, 2016

Training - "I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life..."

2/22 - bench, db press, db row, curls, speed bag, stretch
2/20 - shadowbox


Q/A – Advice for an Older Lifter - JimWendler.com: "Question: I know there are a lot of variables to this question but do you find that older lifters (over 55) respond better to full body training 2 days a week or focusing on one main lift a day 4 days a week? 
 Answer: It doesn’t matter at all – for any lifter. People get so caught up in this stuff, and I totally understand why, but it doesn’t matter at all. Just like where you put the bar when you squat, what kind of grip you take on chins/pull-ups, casein vs. whey…  Just a lot of bickering and ridiculousness. Anyway, with an older lifter there are a couple things that need to be addressed/looked at.

First is recovery – that is BY FAR the most important issue. I’ve written numerous things about recovery, its importance and what to do – in fact we have a whole guidelines for what to do for the 5/3/1 program. But regardless of what program you use, you must follow the basic guidelines of recovery. (and no, none of them cost any money or require you to tell a therapist your bad dreams while submerged in cold water). Stress is stress and you have to be able to recover from it regardless of if you do full body, etc. Within the scope of recovery is sleep, diet, mobility/flexibility and aerobic work. The second thing is injuries – usually prior injuries that restrict the lifter. You have to be able to program around and through them. Third is hypertrophy or HYPERtrophy (depending on the accent emphasis) – we lose muscle mass at an alarming rate when we get older. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a bodybuilder or anything remotely close. This gets covered even when doing a “low rep” program or whatever it’s called but this ties into the final point…. Fourth is understanding the role of assistance work. For an older lifter, assistance is very important as it can allow him/her to work more without a ton of stress to the body. This can be accomplished a variety of ways but needs to be addressed. Assistance work for an older lifter doesn’t have to be “normal” exercises, rather movements: agility ladder, jumping rope, cone drills – stuff that gets your body to do shit you normally wouldn’t do. The more you train like an “athlete” (balance, not just lifting) the better, stronger and healthier you will be. 

Your body is like your brain; you need to challenge it in different ways or you will become physically stupid.  Training should be functional (squat, deadlift, press) and also include unfunctional movements – these are things you normally don’t do in training or even life that can help you stay healthier (agility, mobility).  The latter is done to make the former easier.  You don’t need to spend more than 10 minutes/day on the unfunctional stuff to reap the benefits. So do whatever program you want – I HIGHLY encourage people to change things up while keeping the same principles. Have some fun. If the effort and principles remain the same, you will thrive. "

Hardcore Training - JimWendler.com: "...hardcore is a term made up by people who aren’t hardcore. It’s used by pretenders. It’s used to motivate those that need some rah-rah bullshit to get them up before a lift. And therein lies the rub. Those who have trained, consistently, year in, year out, no matter the weather, day or circumstances don’t need motivation. They have discipline. And that’s why you train when it’s the last thing you want to do."


The Strenuous Life: Theodore Roosevelt's Mixed Martial Arts | FIGHTLAND: "“I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship, or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph,” Theodore Roosevelt, then Governor of New York, declared in his 1899 speech “The Strenuous Life.”  

“We admire the man who embodies victorious effort; the man who never wrongs his neighbor, who is prompt to help a friend, but who has those virile qualities necessary to win in the stern strife of actual life. It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. In this life we get nothing save by effort. Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been stored up effort in the past.”"



Anonymous Submission This month (February) marks...: "This month (February) marks the one year point on my weight loss journey. With a lot of hard work and sacrifice I was able to lose just shy of 60lbs. I never thought of myself as fat but one day realized I was no longer in the shape I was in my 20’s. Life has a way of getting busy and priorities become disordered. 
With my 40th birthday fast approaching I knew it was time to get in shape.  I now feel amazing, sleep great, and can chase after the kids all day. As in most/all things that I do, I’m not quite happy with where I’m at yet. I know that there’s lots more hard work ahead, with many meals and social gatherings that I’ll abstain from, but I’ve proven to myself that those sacrifices pay off in the end."