Wow BBC

You should really work on your tone.  Check out the middle bottom title here.

Journalistic suicide

How to stop spreading fake news? Ceasing to read BBC would be a good start....

Nirvana

Empty Message

Back 2 Neal

I've been bouncing around a lot lately. Fasting, not fasting. Stress eating. Yelling at the kids. Flying off the handle. It's so not me. I need to get back to my usual zen self.

Food has been poisoning me. I need to just keep it simple. Eat what I need. Stop stress eating when the kids get on my nerves.

I used to be one of the most patient people. No more. I'm not sure why, either. Everything seems to be going our way. Katy is making more than an SES. I'm making a ton of money for doing basically....nothing. Not quite nothing. But very little indeed. Certainly less than I've ever done. So many toxic work experiences over the past 11 years have taken their toll. It's time to let them go and move forward.

Part of the problem now acute anxiety over the kids future and the state of the world. And the fear of feeding them into the same system that I went through. The idiot education machine. Run by idiots. Taught by idiots. Surrounded by idiots. Yeah....that one. Is it wrong for me to want something a bit better for my kids? But what would be better. Home schooling? That wouldn't be the most healthy option, particularly if I'm the teacher. My world view isn't the best to rub off on young minds. Attitudes are contagious...mine might kll you.

Private school with all the other privileged youths? Perhaps the quality of education would be better, but I wouldn't want them interacting with fucked up preps.

<sigh>

Also it's pretty fucking obvious that this world is flying apart at an alarmingly accelerating rate. Climate change is accelerating. We were inundated with rain yet again, in mid-December. Do the climate deniers never go outside? Are their yards not turning into swamps while the West burns? I really don't get it. It's right out your fucking window, moron!

And don't even get me started on the political situation. Suffice it to say that all governments, like all bloated bureaucracies, are totally incapable of responding to any threat. "Power of One" was added to Netflix, on a side note, and I watched my favorite scene with the prisoner's concert. After that scene, it cuts back to the main character's school, and the teacher says "Any system that spends resources attacking that which least threatens it will not survive a generation." Holy shit, how prescient. That's where we are. Ignoring the truly existential threats and focusing on things that don't matter two dingoes kidneys.

Honestly it's a lot like the situation I faced in high school. Exactly, actually. I was overweight and started training to survive nuclear war. I lost 50 lbs in a month by watching my diet and starting to run. Well, running isn't an option anymore. I've learned after 25 years of running that it's useless, and there's a lot of better things you can do. But here I am, facing existential threats, but this time to my children. So, like then, I guess I have the option of just giving up or fighting my way the fuck out.

I chose fight. Doing nothing isn't an option. Filtering what I do to what I like seems the most logical course. I like lifting. Hitting things. A healthy dose of physical labor now and then. There's ample opportunity for all of those. Fuck endless and pointless cardio. Fast when you want. When you eat, eat things you like and eat what your body needs. Change your stress response from eating to fasting.

There is no system, no master plan. The universe....is indifferent. I should be too. Through all the fight in my youth I came to a zen-like detachment from the world. I discovered that humanity was ultimately worthless and that nothing I could do would change this fact. I also learned that, logically, humanity is destined to destroy ourselves. For the longest time I wrestled with this undeniable fact. In the end, all I was able to control was the level of my emotional attachment to it and the effect that depressing reality has on me. For a decade it inoculated me against pretty much anything. The total annihilation of mankind being an inevitable foregone conclusion, everything else seems a moot point. I am always startled at what people get hung up on, particularly at work. I mean people argue and get worked up over the dumbest fucking shit. Jesus.

People at work still mention that they are surprised how things never affect me. It's because work means nothing to me. Accomplishment, recognition, promotion, awards....I have no need for these things. Nor should you.

What matters to me is my family. My friends. Their future. I know in the end I am just as helpless in shaping those as I discovered earlier in life. I guess I need to learn to let go a bit and let things play out. And just do my best to guide them through the tempest, both literal and metaphorical, that they are facing.

The reminder to go lift just popped up on my screen. A couple of last thoughts before I go do the 3-rep max all muscle groups shred....a key part of letting go of how fucked up the world is getting would be detachment from the digital globe. Step 1: Stop reading news....spoiler alert - it's all bad. Step 2: Ditch the smartphone, it's too easy to lose yourself texting, checking email, weather, news, whatever. None of it is shit you need to know. You have a life to live. Get off the fucking phone and do it. Step 3: Say a big "Fuck you" to cooking, cleaning, doing housework, etc. and spend more time playing with the kids.

How troublesome.

Road to Recovery

I had a vasectomy on Tuesday. It's Thursday. Most of Tuesday was spent icing my balls. Wednesday, I went to work in the morning, got some beer at lunch, and then went home. Today I'm at work and it's OK, but the sutures are still sticking out and getting hung on any gauze I put on them. So now I'm down to underwear and we'll see how that goes.

Since I'm recovering, I guess it's time to revisit everything else. Evaluate what works for me and what doesn't. I've really been digging the lifting. Having some down time has let me slow down and think a bit more.

Last week we got our first plug-in hybrid, the Honda Clarity. After driving it, I got in the van and thought: "What kind of monster drives an internal combustion engine?" ICE is dead. A dinosaur that runs on dinosaurs. Today I got lunch at Mom's Organic Market, and topped off the battery for free while I ate. Yup, this is the way to go. Wholesome food and free energy. No gas. Shit, why didn't I do this a long time ago?

I've also been thinking about Elon Musk's Boring company project. All the nerds at work love it. At the unveiling, Elon said that "we work in 3-D buildings" surrounded by 2-D infrastructure, so it's no wonder there's traffic when everyone piles out of the buildings and into the streets at the same time. Duh Elon. But instead of pouring all those resources into a matrix of underground tunnels, we fundamentally change the way we operate? I'll tell you why....it's free. The same reason fasting isn't taken seriously in this country. It's effective and it's free. Free and logical solutions are verboten. Only solutions that generate money for overlords like Musk are the ones considered and promoted endlessly on TV.

Wow....that tunnel promo really rubbed me the wrong way. We should instead revamp the idiotic way our society operates to provide a practically endless infrastructure project to his company. He's pitching the same tired shit to keep society wasteful, but he wants you doing it in a Tesla rather than a Ford. This isn't the way to overhaul our infrastructure. We should instead leverage technology and flexible work schedules to reduce traffic.

Stagger shifts for all workers.....and maximize telework? Dare I say, make it state law or local ordnance in high traffic areas that all professionals be provided the opportunity for full time telework? No professional job needs an office. All you need is an internet connection, a computer, and a desk. This would save companies all all of the office overhead and waste maintaining climate control. Plus it would save all the wasted time and energy commuting. While you're at it, ban work travel except in extreme conditions. There's no reason to fly across the country or continents to have a face to face meeting. Try Skype, fuckheads!

Why aren't we doing this? Well, as I mentioned above, these changes are logical. Strike one. They would reduce mindless consumption. Strike two. Many of them are free. Strike fucking three.

Money. Corporations want you burning as much of that gas as possible, so you have to keep paying. They want you all in the same place at the same time. They want control. They want everything. Your time, your work, your kids, your life. They're all in bed together, inventing ways to fuck you out of everything you have. Even the planet. And it's working. Frugality will never be in vogue. But saving the planet may be once things get so bad they can turn a profit doing it. That's where all your kids money is gonna go. Buying air filters, masks, and habitability systems to keep them alive on this wasted rock.

<sigh>

I think we should all read a couple of books again. Ones that were probably introduced to us a long time ago, when we were kids and we couldn't appreciate them. That was definitely by design. One, you probably wouldn't read it again. And two, you were inoculated against wanting to read them because you were forced to. "Walden" and "Self-Reliance." One focuses on the bare minimum needs. The second, on your responsibility to take care of yourself.

They want you to think you're all alone. You're not. We're all isolated together. More and more of us are starting to wise up to the lies. Waking up to the truth. On the radio last night, "Jazz and Justice," a talk host was railing against capitalism, saying that our elections are important not because of what they offer us, but what they don't.....an alternative to capitalism. Fucking A.

Face it, the government isn't going to help. It won't be allowed to by its handlers. Corporations aren't going to help beyond a level that is tax recoverable. I hate to break this to you, but it's all on you. On us. The only way this ship can be righted is if a whole lot of people stand up, brush themselves off, and do the right thing. Ignoring cost. Ignoring trends. Ignoring ads and societal pressure and all the other bullshit that's been put in our way.

Join......or die.

Late bloomer

bravo US.....bravo.  The last horse finally crosses the finishing line.  Should we all go have cookies now that lynching is officially a federal crime?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-46634184

this place, man.....wow

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-law/

Again.  I would be surprised.  But this is America after all :(

bits of truth leak out

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176369/tomgram%3A_engelhardt%2C_seeing_our_wars_for_the_first_time/#more

Shattered Skies

It's pretty clear now that the world is headed straight down the toilet. No real surprise there. Humanity can't grapple with the major issues facing it. In the past, technological or agricultural innovation may have saved the day, but I don't see that happening this time around. For one, we are getting less intelligent. Evolution is playing the darker side of its hand and rewarding those who reproduce more. Our education systems, designed to produce factory workers and not free thinkers, is working all too well. All of our innovators are flocking to design the next big useless app, while our society decays into a molten mess of cell phone addiction and advertising. In three generations we have lost our ability to be good stewards of the earth, forgetting how to grow our own food, forgetting self-reliance, wasting so much that it is truly mind-boggling. The current system is so wildly unsustainable that its reign-bearers were forced to create whole media industries to misinform the public and turn them into little more than cattle.

People are starting to wake up to this, but there's not much they can do about it. They're too invested in the system to wish for its end. With the fall of every empire comes an excruciating reckoning, a dark age, that lasts a very long time. People talk about corrections, well, this "correction" will be quite devastating and its intensity will only intensify the longer it takes to occur. If we wait long enough, humanity may not even survive.

That's why I wholly endorse Trump 2020. No other single factor is going to speed the complete collapse of global capitalism than another Trump administration. At the very least, the number of people waking up to reality is higher when he is around.

I'm not saying, in any way, that I like Trump. I detest the man. I think he is the pure embodiment of the worst qualities of man. Furthermore, it's obvious that his "populist" message is a fraud. He never has and never will care about the little guy. He's using this as a podium to line his pockets, and he'll probably move to China once all is said and done. They'll open their arms to him, because he is basically their best advocate.

I suppose that's the hypocrisy in it all. I know the system needs to fall, but honestly I've been spoiled by the system. If it holds out, I could retire at 50 and be done! But I think we all need to start asking ourselves what the true cost of our comfort is. Certainly it's destroying the rest of the world, and has been for a very long time. It's also destroying our children's future. Seriously, what is going to be left for them? Will there even be an economy once the Earth is stripped bare of its resources?

There's not going to be much left for my kids. Much less their kids. It's probably time to teach them the things that we have all forgotten, like growing your own food. Hunting. Living off the land. Better yet, it's time we all started doing these things and stop spending all of our time earning money that won't be worth anything after the impending collapse.

How much electricity do you really need? And I mean need in the sense of survival? Very little. Perhaps enough to run one fridge and a hot plate. You don't need lighting. You don't need a cell phone, a TV, washing machine, dryer, hot water heater, etc....etc.....etc. What you really need is to take back control of your life instead of outsourcing it.

You could build a small home with everything you need for $15-$20k. Some land in West Virginia, <$10k per acre. You only need a couple of acres to grow everything you need on a vegetarian diet. Grow as much of your own food as you can, like our grandparents did. Consider it your own victory garden. Buy or hunt the meat you want. Better yet, raise some goats or trade veggie harvest for meat. Would it be an easy life? Hell no. But you would be free from a lot of unnecessary garbage that is killing both you and the planet.

My meager early retirement would more than cover it. As would part time work. Wish I could get to it now. The best I can do right now is go as off-grid as possible and use as few resources as possible. Insulate the house. Install solar panels. Electric car. At least for another 10 years until I'm early retirement eligible. I wonder if there'll be a world left to retire in by then......

the truth ain't pretty, friend....

https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/

I think their estimates are low.

The truth is out there

UFOs over Ireland, east coast, west coast, scientists saying that extra-solar system objects are alien probes.  

All these stories made me go back and watch the Anasazi X-files trilogy of episodes.  In the blessing way episode, there is a great intro replicated in this graphic.

Have we started the fire?

Yes......the FIRE rises!

BBC - Capital - FIRE: The movement to live frugally and retire decades early
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20181101-fire-the-movement-to-live-frugally-and-retire-decades-early

the other tr5affic on 95

it sucks in more ways than you thought

Arts and crafts

Empty Message

Castle of Glass

I had intended to do a mega-post on all my problems with Columbus, since Monday was Columbus Day, but I think I’ll just sum my feelings towards him as follows: Fuck that guy and the ship(s) he rode in on.

Turning to more recent affairs, it’s pretty obvious this whole sham is falling apart. On Tuesday, Elinor’s teachers from daycare called saying she had a fever, so I picked the kids up early and watched them the rest of the day. After watching them basically for two days straight, I began to seriously wonder why I bother to work at all. Money? That’s a worthless carrot. Most of it ends up back in the hands of the banks who create it out of thin air. Don’t believe me? You should probably read up on the Federal Reserve. The Corbett Report has a good hour and a half intro on exactly how fucked up our monetary system is.

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh yeah....work. Useless. Waste of time. Aren’t there a hundred things you’d rather be doing?

Houses, cars, etc., etc.....all useless. And yet we all keep doing things we hate to buy and maintain them. Talk about fucked up priorities.

Started drawing up a logic diagram on the electoral system and Trump. All signs point to Trump being the ultimate psy-op. Everything we’ve been sold is the exact opposite. He was chosen to be the ultimate distraction so the fleecing can be ramped up, while red state idiots don’t know any better and blue state idiots spend all their time having panic attacks and they can all spend their miserable lives flaming each other online. “Red is blue, blue is red! It’s all a lie!” People are so easily divided and pitted against each other.

Trump is the insider that convinced his followers that he is the outsider. What tipped me off is that Kavanaugh is solidly in the Bush dynasty inner circle. “Drain the swamp?” More like fill that shit to the brim. Trump has lined his administration with all the mainstream neocons he can find. John Bolton? That mustachio’d turd? That guy? Really....

As a colleague at work always says, “it’s all over except the arguing.” Just a slippery slide into oblivion for the empire. The world is probably better off without it, to be honest.

Nothing I can do about it, except point it out to people so they are better prepared when it finally goes south. All that money stored away for a rainy day? Worthless. Could literally vanish overnight.

Not that I would do anything about it, even if I could. I tend to take the Carlin approach these days. On one of his interviews he said that he was not an active participant. He just stays out of it and tries to point out to people “look at what you’re doing to yourselves.” It seems to me that humanity was doomed from the start.

My approach is perhaps best described in Linkin Park’s “Castle of Glass:”

“‘cuz I’m only a crack in this castle of glass, hardly anything there for you to see......

‘cus I’m only a crack in this castle of glass, hardly anything else I need to be.......”

FocusWriter plug / link

A few posts ago, I mentioned FocusWriter.  It's available for all major platforms at the following link:

https://gottcode.org/focuswriter/

Pretty nifty application that lets you focus on writing.  You can set it to highlight all text, or just the paragraph you are currently working on.  You can enable optional typewriter sounds.  Which I would like to get a working typewriter at some point, the one my parents brought up that I used to use in high school was DOA and would have been a project in itself to revive.

FocusWriter also has built-in alarms and controls if you want to set a goal for number of words to write a day.  I haven't used this feature, but whenever I get around to writing the book that's been floating around in my head, I will definitely use that feature to keep writing.

Just a short plug.  All my recent posts have been written using FocusWriter.  It's good to have nothing else on your screen to distract you from the words.

The truth about sports

My parents came up to help watch Elinor, and before we put her to bed we set up the TV antenna so my dad could watch the VT game. For about 20 minutes before heading to bed, I unfortunately saw a bit of the Miami vs. Florida State game (I think). But what struck me was a commercial for a Samsung TV, in which a bearded man and his friends sat catatonic, slack-jawed, staring at a game on the latest 84 inch 4k TV. It was an oddly honest picture of what our corporate overlords wish you to become.

After putting Elinor to bed, I considered writing an honest book about sports from my perspective, sort of a dictionary-style list of everything I hate about sports. Here's a few of the ones I brainstormed:

Sports - an amalgum of activities designed to distract the general populace from actual issues, either by encouraged participation or socially-forced spectation. Participation in some form of sport is recommended as a drain for energy and rage that may otherwise be turned against the ruling class.

Athlete - a person with more muscles than brains.

Professional Athlete - an athlete with a wallet size that far exceeds their brain capacity

Baseball - an extremely dull game where one meathead throws a ball in the vicinity of another meathead, who tries to hit the ball with a stick so other meatheads can try to get it before he runs in a diamond pattern.

Cricket - the international version of baseball, with the added benefit of longer games and incomprehensibility.

Basketball - Inexplicably popular game in which children who never grew up bounce a ball and try to be the meathead team of five that places the ball through a hoop the most times in a given time period

Football - the ultimate meathead sport, in which two teams of meatheads try to beat the little brains remaining out of each other in order to advance an oblong object towards either end of a 300 foot field.

Boxing - a sport in which two meatheads enter a ring and demonstrate in no uncertain terms their disdain for brains.

Mixed-martial arts - similar to boxing, except the meatheads demonstrate an extreme dislike for all bodily organs.

Olympic sports - meatheads from around the globe congregate to compete for a spot on next month's cereal box.

Marathon - a bastardized version of the original, in which overly self-important assholes run a long way and, for the most part, fail to die as originally intended.

Marathoner - a severely damaged human being that has nothing better to do than run for hours on end. For some reason, these people never confront whatever it is from which they are running.

Sprinter - a marathoner with attention deficit disorder.

Tennis - Ping-pong for meatheads, spectated mostly by rich white folks (see golf).

Golf - Meatheads try to hit a ball across a large swath of what should be wilderness, while rich white people spectate and plot how to ruin the rest of the world.

Soccer - Referred to as the world sport because anyone can play it, even destitute kids with both arms blown off from sectarian violence. In the absence of balls, human heads have been used the world over as a subsitutue.

Sports Commentator - A lowlife who makes their career describing the actions of meatheads.

Sports Fan - base human beings that are too fat or weak to be athletes and too dumb to read.

Continuity of Operations

People love to hate on Trump. And it's deserved. The guy is a total bag of shit. Complete. In every conceivable way. I'm not arguing that he exemplifies all of the very worst qualities of humanity, wrapped up in a bloated, hauntingly ugly package. As if the asshole gene had finally been isolated, grown in a test tube, and unwittingly unleashed upon an unsuspecting and unprepared world from a secret government lab.

But what I do question is the belief that "voting" is somehow the answer any of the most pressing problems facing the United States. As if removing Trump from office is in any way going to instantly make America a better place, or fix any of the deep, endemic problems facing the nation.

In point of fact Trump is the very caricature of our dying, overspread empire. He is bloated. Wasteful. Ignorant. Militaristic. Unapologetic. Anti-intellectual. All these things that America has been for a very long time, except taking human form.

And in many ways he is the first unabashedly honest American president, in that he is completely, unabashedly fake. A total fraud. Usually the elite put palatable people into place, alternating red vs. blue sound byte machines that are soothing to the American eardrum. But through every administration, Democrat or Republican, the empire's agenda continues in a remarkably consistent direction. Bipartisan agreement? What a joke. This country is and always has been unipartisan. The rich. End of story. Plutocracy from day one. The two-party system is just a perversion of sport, segmenting the population into two factions rooting for their favorite team. And just as in sports, no one seems to realize that the players are all the same meatheaded assholes, just with different shirts.

With the selection of Trump as the current distractor-in-chief, the power elite seem to have bitten off more than they can chew. Then again, that may all be part of the planned smokescreen. Or maybe they just think it's funny watching everyone harp on his every Tweet while they rob us all blind.

Lately I've been reading a lot about the real history of America. Not the whitewash crap you get in your history texts. No, the real story of power in America and the evolution and consequences of our global empire. Devil's Chessboard. In the Shadows of the American Century. The Power Elite. Dirty Wars. Overthrow. You want to take a hard look in the mirror, America? These are a good start.

And plenty of Gore Vidal. In the end, I tend to agree with him the most. It's time for a constitutional convention to dissolve the United States. Way past time. We've done enough damage to the world. Time to let someone else take over.

And time for the states to handle their own business. No longer would blue states have to even speak to red states, and vice versa, if they so choose. I would think the West Coast would unite, likely with a Colorado or Nevada thrown in there for kicks. Call it the Western Republic. Likely the Northeast states could merge as well. Hell, call it New England and cozy up to Canada and the U.K.

Texas could become it's own republic. I doubt Texas would want to economically prop up all the leftover red states like we all are now, pouring disability funds into them so they can vote against taxes. The rest of the states would just become forgotten gas stops between the big three. Resigned to history, or heritage, or whatever they call their homegrown version of bigotry these days. I'm sure you could get them to vote for their own economic demise. Just slap a Tea Party logo on it and it's a done deal!

All pipe dreams, I know. Will never happen. There's too much capital invested in this hulking juggernaut to let it fracture.

Once again, I'm kind of struck at how stark-ravingly obvious the sham has become. With all the cyber issues circulating the propaganda machine, they've pretty much told you flat out that the results are whatever they decide is best for you. After all, the voting machines aren't connected to anything. Why else would they be so ill-designed that a 12-year old could hack them? Neither are the canditates connected, except to gigantic corporate donors. Your so-called "representatives" in Congress, just how well do they "represent" you and your needs. Not a damn bit is my guess. So what is it? The nice suit? The nice smile? More that he's on your team, and the other guy is on the other team. That's the ticket, right?

I'm guessing the power elite have realized that their Trump card was overplayed, and you'll see a swing to Democratic control of the Senate come November. And half the country will celebrate, believing themselves and the country partially vindicated.......the other half will sulk at their team's recent defeat. Washington will again be settled in its as-designed gridlock.

But the drones will still be dropping bombs all over the world map at an ever increasing rate, in dozens of countries, killing untold numbers of civilians and, quite conveniently, creating more "terrorists" to target down the line. The NSA will still be reading all of your emails, texts, online activity, and calls. At more than a thousand U.S. military installations scattered across the globe, people will go to work doing exactly whatever it is they do to preserve the empire, whether or not they can admit to themselves that this is their function.

And here at home, you'll go to work every day until you're old enough to retire. You'll pay a remarkable portion of your pay to fund the empire, whether you admit that to yourself or not. Most of your money will be fed back to banks and companies solidly vested in the maintenance of the empire. All of your taxes....empire building and maintenance. Food, gas money, mortgage, all of it going to expand their power. Your parents and your kids, same thing, different life.

If you're lucky, you are comfortable. Or at least getting by. For now. And besides, you are an outstanding citizen. You even vote...whatever that means.

E.F.L.R

Testing a new software on Linux, called FocusWriter. It’s a full screen word processor that eliminates all menus and icons on your desktop, and the text you type shows up over on your preferred theme background. Mine, perhaps not surprisingly, is called “Bitter Skies,” a dark themed background picturing a high altitude lightning strike. Very fitting, since I’ve been reflecting more and more on how our whole economic system is sick. Politics, economy, agriculture. All of them terminally ill. But that doesn’t mean that I have to buy into any of it.

I am three months in on a year-long experiment with intermittent fasting. The first phase of the experiment was intermittent fasting (eating nothing on MWF, eating lunch and dinner on T-Th-Sat-Sun), and going vegan with no exercise completely ad hoc (infrequent, lifting once or twice a week, cardio occasionally). I lost 23.2 lbs in 43 days. I then took a break for a month, eating a more consistent schedule (1-2 meals a day). To my surprise, I hadn’t gained any weight back despite dropping most dietary restrictions. I simply found that I wasn’t as hungry, and often forgot to eat for a whole day.

This week I started the second phase of the experiment, with an initial goal of an additional 20 lbs weight loss. My ultimate goal is 60 lbs of weight loss, spread over three phases. For the second phase, I am keeping the same intermittent fasting schedule (MWF no eating) while limiting myself to lunch and dinner on Tuesdays / Thursdays, and a single meal on Saturday and Sunday. Added to this is a structured exercise regimen and a modified dietary approach based on lessons learned in phase 1 (described in more detail below).

Our agricultural system that produces so much food while providing so little real sustenance. This comes into sharp relief when you fast. Fasting completely overhauls your relationship with food. It amplifies the effects of the food you eat. Any positive or negative mental, health, or metabolic effects of a given food are multiplied, particularly if it is the first food that you eat after a bout of fasting.

For instance, I have completely lost my taste for beer, which I used to drink at a rate of almost three a day. There are only a few cases where I can enjoy a whole beer. One is after a long day of physical labor outside, in which case a very light beer is refreshing. The other is a draft beer on special occasions. However, in each of these cases, I have noted that after the fact I have regretted drinking each time. The initial rush gives way to an amplification of snap negative behavior, particularly when dealing with the kids. I have thus concluded that any ingestion of alcohol is ultimately unproductive and not worth the metabolic costs.

Another unexpected result from initial experimentation was a marked reduction in the urge to eat sugars. Now and then, I crave something sweet, but I find that having an apple or a cinnamon toast rice cake is enough to quell the urge. Before intermittent fasting, I would be ravenous for dessert, particularly after dinner. I still have a pang now and again, and admittedly have relapsed and had a single episode of eating cake and ice cream at people’s birthdays. But with these events came a realization that wasn’t there. I had a noticeable reaction that the sweets have no sustenance. No filling value, no medicinal value, just pure energy that is wasted.

Another marked discovery from my dietary experimentation is the marked inflammatory effects of gluten. The ingestion of this vile substance creates across the board inflammation in my body. And it’s in almost everything that I usually eat. And have been eating for my whole life. Horrible. Truly horrible. How much damage have I done to my system over the years from ingesting this garbage? Lots. Well, it ends now.

Regarding veganism, I tried it for about three months and realize that it is an incomplete solution to dietary and moral issues. While it is definitely the lowest carbon dietary alternative, the protein sources you get, particularly nuts, are not necessarily carbon conscious. Almonds in particular. Coconut milk I have found as a desirable and sustainable alternative to cow’s milk. Almond milk is similar, but almonds use a massive amount of resources, particularly water, that I can’t support. Peanuts are another source that I over-relied on during the vegan experiment. However, these may have slight allergenic consequences when consumed at a high rate. Also, I noticed that the over-consumption of nut products acts as a severe depressant. For protein sources, I have incorporated fish products into my diet, since they contain no carbohydrates and healthy sources of fat. Initial results are promising, but I will continue to monitor since I am too early in the process to pass final judgment. All told, it seems that the dietary composition question tends as all things do to a moderate, mixed approach. I will continue exploration of my theory in this regard, which is currently the elimination of as many allergenic foods as possible, with serious limitation but no stringent prohibition on the consumption of animal products.

Also highlighted by recent experimentation is an addiction to coffee, which was eventually cured by intermittent fasting. I used to drink multiple cups of coffee each day, to the point that it took an inordinate amount of caffeine to produce any real response. I was drinking iced coffee at dinner. Initially, coffee was a crutch to help me through the fasts. A kind of treat that I could have while fasting. Once I adjusted to the fast, however, I found that coffee had worn out that use and was making me feel worse. When you fast, your body dehydrates with dropping insulin levels, and coffee is a diuretic, so I found its effects ultimately counterproductive. Tea, on the other hand, hydrates. In addition, herbal teas can be selected for medicinal effects. My current favorite is a turmeric / cinnamon blend. I still have an iced coffee each day, but unless I finish it in the morning I find it hard to finish and opt for tea instead.

All told, intermittent fasting has highlighted the medicinal value of the food you eat, whether those effects be detrimental or beneficial. It amplifies the sensitivity of your body and your mind to these effects, making them obvious. Before, these effects were buried in the noise of your body’s reaction to a cacophony of reactions. With fasting, you can isolate the effects of a given food and make adjustments to your diet accordingly. It is a long, drawn-out, and often humbling process. But I think it works in the long run. It can go a long way to cure food addictions and bad habits, simply by bringing your reaction to a certain food or habit into focus.

Regarding exercise and intermittent fasting, I made a few discoveries over the past four months. Specifically, these discoveries relate to the effects of different types of exercise before and after the fat-burn switchover point, when the body switches from burning glucose to processing fat as it’s primary energy source. I noticed that while fasting, if I performed cardio exercise prior to the fat-burn switchover point (24-36 hours for fresh fast after full feeding, 20 hours during intermittent fasting) resulted in much more extreme desires to eat and a higher fast failure rate. This effect did not occur if cardio was performed after the fat-burn switchover point. In fact, after the switchover point, cardio exercise did not result in an increased desire to eat. Strength training prior to the switchover point, however, does not result in significant increase in hunger. After the switchover point, ultimate strength and endurance seem to decrease slightly early in the intermittent fasting program, but these effects wane as the body adjusts to the new energy source. In effect, your muscles take a while to “learn” how to perform while harvesting fat energy. These discoveries have led to an adjustment in my program. I now only do cardio after I have cleared the switchover point “wall.” Theoretically this should be optimal, since cardio exercise burns the most calories, and if it is performed after the switchover then it will burn only fat. Within the switchover window, I do strength training. During this time, your muscles still have access to dietary protein, and building lean muscle helps to continue burning fat through the fast.

Having learned this, I would recommend to long-distance runners: Try fasting for two days, then running. You will already be past the wall and accessing a much higher reserve of energy that is pent up in your fat cells. The ultimate “bonk” training. Then again, I wouldn’t recommend running at all. After losing more weight in eight weeks of intermittent fasting than I did training for the last half-marathon, I suddenly have an urge to scream at every runner “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!” They are wasting their time burning glucose, only to store it back up at their next meal. Talk about a Sisyphean effort. It is a futile business. It only took me 25 years and a worn down knee to learn this, but hey....better late than never.

Of course any discussion of fasting would be incomplete without discussing mental effects. In the end, fasting is merely an exercise of mind over body, overriding the survivalist tendencies of your body with pure willpower. It is a simple process, but by no means easy. Simple in that all it is in not eating for an extended period. Difficult in the body’s determined will to keep the status quo, even if that three meal a day status quo is an evolutionary outlier. Exercising this type of willpower does take a great bit of effort, and it is much worse at the beginning. But after a while your body adjusts to its new reality, to the point where you wonder how in the hell you ever ate three meals a day when a meal every other day seems more than sufficient. Fasting also opens up time that would otherwise be spent getting and eating food to use for more intellectual pursuits, like reading, writing, exercise, meditation, language learning, what have you. Keeping busy actually helps immensely during the early stages of fasting, because your mind can focus on something other than the constant, unnecessary demand for food from your tummy.

Exercising mind over matter unlocks other effects as well. Noticeably I have been more creative than ever, writing more in my journals, drawing more graffiti concepts. In general, I’m trying to do a single creative thing every day. Today’s is this entry. Yesterday was a graffiti motif “ENJOY LIFE.” Last week was a journal entry on advice to Ryan and Elinor one day, graffiti the next, programming a desktop schedule app in PYTHON the next.

Creativity on one hand, a healthy dose of societal criticism on the other. When you realize what a literal crock of shit you have been fed your whole life, everything comes into question. How deep is the rot? Well, it’s all the way to the core of course. Everything. Every aspect of our culture is subverted. Off kilter. Dead ass wrong. “Everything you know is wrong.”

Which I guess brings me to the point: Life is an experiment. My favorite mug has an infinity sign and says “Experiment. Fail. Learn. Repeat.” I think too often we forget the “Learn” part. When picking up Ryan and Elinor the other day, I overheard another kid tell his father “Scientists know everything.” Incorrect. A true scientist will admit that he knows nothing, but he has theories supported by data. A true scientist would also consider all data, even the data that doesn’t fit into his current theories. In large part science has become it’s own worst enemy by purporting to adhere to these principles, while completely failing to acknowledge or consider data counter to current scientific understanding. It’s only human to think that you are right and everyone else is wrong. But when this is morphed into scientific hubris, it discredits the whole enterprise.

I guess what I’m saying is be a true scientist. Perform your own experiments and learn from them. This is your life. Your time. Experiment. Fail. Learn. Repeat.

Wow. It seems that an ancillary discovery is that, on initial inspection, FocusWriter works. I wonder if they have this on Windows.....

What happens when you VPN through Germany

You see who is siphoning your data. At least Europe respects privacy....

Fun with stencils

Cool effect on my overhead light blocker made from a hammock.

Dead on balls, sounds like.....

You shouldn't only resist when the country occasionally drops the act and shows you it's true face.

You should have known what was going on the whole time on both sides of the aisle. Over every administration. Particularly ever since we acquired the Phillipines and became an empire.

I guess you can be excused thanks to your factory-style, mind-destroying education. Forget I mentioned it. Keep feeling righteous resisting the current administration. Vote a more palatable face in as soon as possible, and go back to your comfortable slumber.

https://theintercept.com/2018/09/21/michael-moores-fahrenheit-119-aims-not-at-trump-but-at-those-who-created-the-conditions-that-led-to-his-rise/

ruh-roh!

song of the day

Sick Boy by The Chainsmokers:

"I'm from the east side of America

Where we choose pride over character

And we can pick sides, but this is us, this is us, this is

I live on the west side of America

Where they spin lies into fairy dust

And we can pick sides, but this is us, this is us, this is

And don't believe the narcissism

When everyone projects and expects you to listen to 'em

Make no mistake, I live in a prison

That I built myself, it is my religion

And they say that I am the sick boy

Easy to say, when you don't take the risk, boy

Welcome to the narcissism

Where we're united under our indifference

And I'm from the east side of America

Where we desensitize by hysteria

And we can pick sides, but this is us, this is us, this is

I live on the west side of America

Where they spin lies into fairy dust

And we can pick sides, but this is us, this is us, this is

I am the, I am the, I am the sick boy

I am the, I am the, I am the sick boy

They say that I am the sick boy

And they call me the sick boy"

Why I have come to hate food

Dishes still left to do tonight. Plus, over the past few years I have come to hate the act of cooking itself. And eating as well. The monotonous routine of cooking, eating, cleaning, bedtime. It's so fucked up. 

Katy doesn't understand the Soylent. Pop top, drink, recycle. Done. No mess. Meal in 5 minutes.  Not two hours plus overtime.

All food is tending toward tasting the same anyway, as in if I've had it before, it's just the same shit again.  Just the same, processed, gooey shit.

Oh well, time to clean up this garbage heap.....and then do it again ad infinitum. 

All the other little shit that needs to be done around the house reminds me that this is too much house. During the deluge today, was out in the yard clearing a drainage ditch and widening parts of it.  Standing in the monsoon, I had to admit that the world probably won't last long enough in it's current state for Ryan and Elinor to have our standard of living.  Ankle deep in water flooding the driveway and knee deep in the bullshit, I'm not so sure I would have them repeat my mistakes.


Can't to retire to a condo. Or better yet, a lightweight trailer that can be pulled by van. 


Those tiny house fuckers have their shit straight. The American dream is and always has been bullshit. 

One down, tons to go!

Sacha Baron Cohen ridicule prompts Georgia lawmaker to quit - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44949504

Darwin was wrong. It's devolution. The pyramids should have tipped us off.

It's okay, everyone is paying!

US to give farmers $12bn trade war bailout - BBC News
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-44945112

[Sigh].....Well at least the price of my soy products will fall. Just kidding, agricorp inc will just increase their profits and hold end user prices the same.

That's it. I'm signing up for the Trump train 2020. This train wreck of a country is burning too slowly. Let's pour on the gasoline!

Thought this was an onion article....

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44910195

"Toblerone to revert to original shape"...into the toilet :)

Tried to watch the new star wars on Netflix

It is shit. Total shit. Couldn't even finish the first scene. Forced intro text, shit dialogue. Just a bunch of processed, gooey shit.

Bombers....in....space?......sooooooo........fucking......stupid.

I don't get it, man. I really don't.

Ugh. Disney. I feel sick to my stomach. I haven't felt this bad since Prometheus.

"Bombs away!"

Lead-laced swedish meatballs, anyone?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44617081

Gotta love this country, man.  A hearth in every* home and a cap in every ass....

*non-migrant only

crumbling infrastructure

and a big FU to Iowa!  They voted red, right?

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-44585882/crude-oil-pours-into-river-from-derailed-train-in-us

Welcome to America

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44531187

Clear line of sight to the our absolutely rotten core.

Space farce!

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44527672

OK, who said "extra-terrestrial" near DT?  Apparently he heard "extra-terrorists" instead and proceeded to declare war on space.

<sigh>

<yawn>.....

FTP

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44411208

Like I told Katy the other day:  You don't need to read dystopian novels.  You're living in one.

Admission of guilt

Why else would you need to pardon yourself?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44359434

Fun with alert systems

oh you silly hackers....

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/22/florida-city-zombies-power-outage

Duck Donuts review

more like......

but Chuck said racism was over!

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44158098

Chuck said that a while ago, and to be fair, he was probably drunk when he said it.  If that's still his position, he should try living in the South for a while.  Racism is the mental Coca-Cola of the South:  even though it's horrible for you, they guzzle it down like it's going out of style.  The bible belt is a giant turd of blatant racism covered with a razor-thin veneer of gentility and religious hypocrisy.  It's one of the main reasons I left Virginia.  Bible thumpers and the least-trodden "Don't Tread on Me" crowd?  No thank you.

Last year when we were visiting Ashland, Katy had the privilege to witness some of it.  She was in the train toy store with Ryan, and the store owner was obviously ignoring a single black mother and her children in favor of the white folk.  The owner wasn't interested in turning on the model train sets for the black kids, unless, of course, they were going to buy something.  If Ryan had asked, guaranteed that that fucker would have run those trains.  Afterwards when she told me about it, I just shrugged and said "That's Virginia."  Seems standard operating procedure down there. Particularly given that at the same store, she also witnessed another employee praying for one of the customers pain to go away.  Literally praying at the register.  Ugh, enough to make bile rise in my gullet.

Evangelicals, man.  They'll swear up and down that they aren't racist.  But the more they deny it, the more it seems disingenuous.  Having grown up in that environment, it came as absolutely no surprise to me that a horde of pious posers came out in droves for Trump.  Hypocrisy is what these so-called "Christians" do best.

And all of us do this to a degree.  All humans are racist.  We are tribal monkeys.  But there's a big difference between taking responsibility to recognize and accept this, and the idiocy of ignoring or refusing its existence.  At least have the decency to say "Damn, that was racist" to yourself when you think, say, or do something you know is racist.

Or, at the very least, if you happen to be an evangelical Trump voter, do me a favor and paste a picture of Trump to your bathroom mirror and take a good, long, hard look.  Welcome to your new identity......bitch.

I do nothing

http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20171204-the-compelling-case-for-working-a-lot-less

And it is everything I thought it could be.

Toonami - belated welcome back

The anime block from college that died in the early 2000s apparently came back.  Yeah, I didn't notice, because I had cancelled cable by the time it was revived. 

But their video compilations are still great....here's a compilation of 50 of their videos, even the ones from back in the day (been playing this at home when I'm shredding it):

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3TcsE7r8f98_yS5vpwxxA8dW-oEhfdfO

and a funny recent one:

"Just DO IT!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJGmvyH7EMM

Great quote

Particularly fitting when you discover your whiskey stash has been drained and resort to porter in your whiskey glass.

Still tasty - lucky number 7 porter

The porn president

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/13/plans-for-the-porn-president-uk-visit-donald-trump

Destruction

Sent from ProtonMail mobile

Idiocracy

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160929-is-this-the-age-of-the-bum

We have just given up and switch over to ripping parts directly from the script.

White people are so skittish....

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43998181

We even get scared when others are quiet.  We suck.

BBC - Capital - How your workplace is killing you

BBC - Capital - How your workplace is killing you
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180502-how-your-workplace-is-killing-you

Not just that but the poisoned water, the contaminated air, the fake food etc., etc....

Depressing article

Until you get to the comments:


http://marylandreporter.com/2013/09/13/maryland-emissions-related-deaths-highest-in-u-s/

Accidentally discovered how to find good news...

Started using a VPN since the US is swinging way right on data privacy.

Unexpectedly this resulted in news sites showing a whole other side.

And, no trump headlines on the main page to boot!

Elderly dog helps save girl lost in Australian bush - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-43860787

All those years of Quake 2 finally pay off

I guess I could switch careers to .....court typist?

One skill to make you type a lot faster - http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180423-one-skill-to-make-you-type-a-lot-faster

In any other country this might seem strange......

Naked gunman kills four in Nashville Waffle House - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-43855097

Just another day in Donald Trump's America!

Worth every penny

Good to know my kids are being watched by people that read and write at their level.

to protect and serve

Yet another example of the hypocrisy of our institutions....

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/when_cops_become_robbers