(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best biographies

Get comfortable, I wrote you a book.

tl;dr: You want to make a quick buck and you are letting that desire cloud your thinking. You - and you alone - are responsible for yourself and for the consequences of your decisions. Do whatever you want, but recognize that your decisions now are setting up your future. Your decisions. You came here and posted this question and you got good advice. You can reject it if you want to, but own your choices. No one is impressed by "I wasn't really thinking about it." You are just starting life. Who do you admire? Who don't you want to be like? What do you want in life? How can you maximize your chances of making that happen? What do you have to do? Be sure of yourself. Then do it.

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I agree with the majority of what has been written. I also wonder if your mind is made up on this. It shouldn't be, but either way:

You would be doing yourself an incredibly good service by taking your motivation and sense of entrepreneurship and putting it toward something that isn't likely to ruin much of your life while simultaneously closing most of the doors which are currently open to you. (Yes, that means doing something legal. Particularly now.).

From what I'm reading, I suspect that it's important you choose something challenging. Something you think is challenging and which you actively decide to do. Put yourself on the line and work your ass off. Be responsible for your own success and be proud of it. Own your life, because - surprise - you already do. Importantly, put your work in toward something where when you fail you can talk proudly about it with anyone; you can put it on your resume, even use it to show people - yourself - that you are capable. And hell, you might succeed. You will succeed if you learn from your mistakes and keep trying. That's how entrepreneurship works -- through failure. (Reference Scott Adams, How to Fail at Almost Everything And Still Win Big. Or here, for free

I'll be straight with you: You seem to have a lot of drive and focus for things that you want to do, but your attitude surrounding that is shit. You also don't seem to have learned from your mistakes. You made some quick money with drugs and you now have none of it. (Also, you're comfortable selling drugs but not comfortable collecting a Government benefit which you would be 100% entitled to? One which probably exists for people in exactly your situation, among others? Accept yourself.)

It seems like you think you know what you want to do so you are seeing everything else as pointing you toward that decision. That's normal. But look at what people wrote here. You may think of yourself as restricted, bound, or labeled because of a charge on your record. A charge from when you were a kid, which is probably going to disappear at some point rather soon. You obviously know that school is important but you are blaming cigarettes for your absences? Dude: You control yourself and you are responsible for yourself. You smoke. There are consequences. They aren't the fault of nicotine. No one but you can change things, and that will never happen through defeatism or shifting responsibility. (I have my own addictions, btw.) I get that you don't like school. Pretty much no one loves it. But have you actually tried? Have you worked hard at something you don't like and done well? When was the last time? Have you even talked to people at your school about what you want and what you dislike? What your challenges are? Do you know what you want?

Figure that shit out, man. It's important. Take responsibility for yourself, because everyone else is going to expect that from you if they don't already. You dictate your future. View that as a huge opportunity rather than something negative and you are on the right track.

It seems like you probably know all these things. You are clearly thinking, which is a good sign and is also more than many other people your age are doing. I suggest bringing people in on your thought processes (beyond Reddit), such as a school guidance counselor or someone who you look up to because of what they have accomplished for themselves. You don't have to listen to what they say.

>I feel like I could do better applying my skills somewhere else - >namely, selling narcotics as well as keeping a job.

"Namely"? Those don't follow. It's also telling that you wrote "selling narcotics" and "keeping a job" as separate things. You are looking to make quick cash. My take - a random person on the Internet who has been successful in business and who also likes drugs (too much): the risks FAR outweigh the rewards. That's why the potential return is higher than the pay for flipping burgers. Not because it's harder, but because you don't go to jail and likely ruin the rest of your life's opportunities for flipping burgers. It's too easy to only see the rewards from where you are standing. Remember how the money you made is poof gone? There are a lot more ways in which that same story is likely to replay itself if you keep following the world it came out of.

You know that growing and selling weed is not your only option. You want to grow things? I bet you could make a solid amount of money growing and selling niche plants. Legal ones. I even know someone who does that, though I'm obviously not saying you should do that specific thing. (And be smart, if you don't know a business don't start it. Plants? Get a job at a plant nursery or something.) I honestly agree with the people who are saying "Get yourself a job." Do that. And take heed to the warnings about girlfriend. I'm sure she's great. Don't think with your dick, and don't get her pregnant any time soon.

There's something else I don't know if you see: There are a lot of ways you can improve your situation in life and improve yourself. Things which you can do to separate yourself from your personal history of rocky family stuff, smoking at a young age, drugs, shaky school, iffy decisions, etc. You can also tie yourself to your personal history - very tightly. That's an ACTIVE CHOICE and it's one you are making pretty much right now. The whole "get a legitimate job and try at life" thing? That is a strong way in which you could show yourself and everyone else that you are capable of running your life. Anything which involves intelligently trying to improve your situation is awesome and people will notice it. Get a job, learn from your mistakes, work hard, be entrepreneurial, be smarter than many people and realize that mental health and fitness is important and deserves serious time and attention, figure out school - whatever that means for you, and don't let yourself be convinced by the thought processes you wrote about here and about which no one else seems to be as convinced as you.

Most of all, accept that you are in control of yourself and your future. Fuck it up because you don't try? That's on you. No one looks down on people who try, though. You came on Reddit and posted this question and you got a lot of good advice. Consider it. Reject it if you want, but if you do that you better do it actively. Own it. Don't pretend this page of solicited advice never existed. Today, tomorrow, always - you are making decisions about yourself, your life, and your future. You are in the driver's seat. What do you value? Who do you want to be? Who don't you value? What kind of person don't you want to be? How do people get where and what you want? How can you maximize your chances of getting there? Talk to people about that and think some more. Reread this if you want to. Go.

(Or don't. Your choice.)

I'm reposting something I posted a couple of years ago:

Well, perhaps the most famous recent post-apocalyptic novel was McCarthy's The Road. Quite a bleak book, and very characteristic of McCarthy's spartan prose, this became a huge international best seller and a successful Hollywood movie. I certainly recommend it, but it's not really an uplifting book and has several confronting scenes. Still, very good.

The other obvious recent "literary" PA novels would be Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" trilogy. They start with Oryx and Crake, are followed by Year of the Flood and conclude with MaddAddam. These are very good books with strong feminist and ecological themes (a good thing!). Highly recommended.

The Dog Stars is yet another recent PA novel which garnered a fair bit of praise (I picked it up after hearing a segment on the novel on NPR's Fresh Air). I enjoyed it, despite the cliched "Survivalist" aspects and occasional far-fetched coincidences. A good, fun read; especially if you're a dog lover. :)

Other recommended titles (which I won't link to directly for time reasons) include Justin Cronin's The Passage trilogy (kind of a mash up between post apocalypse and horror), Stephen King's The Stand (ditto), A Canticle for Leibowitz, Earth Abides and Alas Babylon (the triptych of classics of the genre).

Good luck. I love these books even though I'm a positive optimistic guy! :)

EDIT: I overlooked Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven (fun, action packed but accused by some of racist undertones), The Postman by David Brin (so so so very much better than the movie it spawned. So much better), The Year of the Plague by someone I forgot (rather original PA novel with nano-technology rearing its head) and even Blood Music by Greg Bear (though most people consider this full on science fiction, it does feature an apocalypse... or a sort. :)





 



 




 



Since then, I've thought of (or read) a few more. Perhaps one of the most famous is Station Eleven. It garnered a fair bit of media attention and mainstream critical acclaim a couple of years ago. It's a bit of a slow burner, and whilst it's not my favourite post-apocalyptic novel, it's certainly worth picking up. The Girl with All the Gifts was a recent hit. Set in the UK, it tells the story of a band of British scientists and soldiers searching for remaining survivors, as they bring along a very strange and very dangerous survivor of the recent plague. It's great fun and was made into a movie recently. I believe the author recently published a sequel (The Boy on the Bridge?), but I haven't read this.

Wastelands is a collection of short-stories. Some really good stuff here, and if you're not feeling up to a full length novel or comptemplating the end of humanity, it's well worth a look.


Let me know if you want more. It's a favourite genre of mine. :)

The book that really got things started for me is the Autobiography of a Yogi. The group he founded is called Self Realization Fellowship who have carried on his mission of teaching powerful yoga techniques of meditation. I can certainly testify that their techniques work very well, and they have plenty of meditation groups around the world.

So if you like what I have written you can check to see if there is a local center of that group. However there are all kinds of groups out there.

What kinds of spiritual groups do you resonate with? Christian? Jewish? Hindu? Buddhist? Native American?

You can use meetup.com to find local mediation or spiritual groups, or find a metaphysical bookstore to find groups of like-minded people that get together. Then find the individuals that seem to 'glow' and are positive and lovely people and find out where they go for spiritual strength and support and training.

Then always check to see how you feel after you leave any person or group of people -- you should feel uplifted, joyful, buoyant, cheerful.

A group of people gathered in a place like a church should have a tangible uplifting atmosphere that takes you up out of your problems and makes you feel energized and positive.

Once you find a group that you like, you want to use the power of their community space plus a personal daily practice of connecting to the Divine within to really accelerate your growth.

If you keep asking around and making it clear what you are looking for, you will find individuals that will speak up. There are many like me that are passionate about this kind of thing, and there is plenty of power out there if you will look and start to open your 'spiritual eyes' and pray for guidance.

The Divine exists within you as you, so you will find plenty of inner help if you ask within and don't doubt and create static to mess up your answers. Just ask with faith and trust that you will be guided and you will, slowly but surely, even though you may make mistakes along the way.

I don't want to be too specific with my recommendations because you will have your own unique set of circumstances that will really resonate with you. However the principles will stay the same.

Edit:

IF your senses are strongly focused on material plane, as is the case with many people, you may not get seemingly strong results or a strong sense of light/upliftment. If your physical eyes are closed, a strong physical light may show up as rather dim. Likewise if your spiritual eye is closed, then a strong spiritual light may similarly show up dimly to you.

However just as the sunlight shows up very faintly in the first dim glow of dawn, if you follow that light it will keep getting stronger and stronger until you get full daylight. The same thing applies with spiritual practices. You may think you are not getting much of a result in most cases, but you are seeing the very subtle first rays of dawn. So if you only get a little peace, or only a little joy, or only a little love or upliftment, don't discount those results but treasure them instead. Just like tiny gold flakes will indicate a mother lode of gold nearby, tiny spiritual results will
Indicate great spiritual returns if you keep seeking and working and praying -- developing your spiritual abilities takes great time and patience -- but it is worth all that investment because nothing else will give you that kind of lasting and powerful results.

Hi, Azalea! It sounds like you guys are in a really tough place right now. I'm on the other side, and have been for 3 years now, and I just want to say, don't give up quite yet. You're only four weeks in, and many things can change over the next several months. Counseling and taking some time to do some reading might help you work through what you really need. It certainly did for me.

It sounds like you married your best friend, which sounds an awful lot like my situation. I met my wife our senior year of high school, dated through college and grad school, and married after 7 years of dating. 5 years in, when I was about 31 and right after our third child was born, she came out to me as transgender. I have to say, I reacted badly. In my case, I was stuck at home with two preschoolers and a baby, and I found out that she was using business trips and after work activities as excuses to dress in secret and go to support groups. I was, frankly, pissed. And I didn't know what she really meant by transgender. At the time, I didn't really know a lot about people that weren't gender typical, but I did understand that gender was a spectrum, and that I was completely straight with zero interest in women. And I had 3 children under age 5, out of state from my family, and hadn't worked in my field since moving out of state.

My wife saw how hurt I was and did not want to hurt me again, so she put off transition for quite a while. She went through a long phase of "If I just attend support groups, I'll be fine...." and that slowly ramped up into fully transitioning, with my full support and with a very strong marriage.

At some point, I realized that no one really cares what you do in your private life except the people in the marriage. No one can decide for you, even your parents, what you want to do with yourself. If you need to leave, then do it. If you need to help her through this very hard thing, do it. In the end, the thing that matters most is that you are happy with yourself and the decisions you have made. You only get one chance to go through life, so try to live it the best way you can, right?

For me, that meant staying. It took a bit, but I discovered that I married a person because he, then she, was that particular person, and not because she was a particular gender. I married my best friend. and now, almost 9 years since this all started and about 3+ years since transition, I still have that best friend, still have the physical relationship, and most importantly, still have the emotional relationship with her.

> I wish I could cuddle up next to him and be wrapped in his arms and know he's my world and our relationship is going to stay the same, that he's going to stay my wonderful husband.

This resonated with me, but looking from the other side of the bridge, the only thing that changed for me is that I now say "she" and "wife/spouse". She's still my world, and she's still my wonderful spouse.

Some of the reading that really helped me was a blog written by someone who went through the process about a year before us, and the Jennifer Finney Boylan books. In Boylan's story, I really identified strongly with what Grace (her wife) was going through. Here are the links:

She's Not There

There's a followup book just published last year called Stuck in the Middle with You that talks about their lives 10 years later.

And the Permission to Live blog series starts here.

Permission to Live has since written two more blog series. One is about life in the opposite gender, guest written by her transitioned wife, and the other is a story of their lives of the year between coming out and resettling in new lives. If you want those links, I'll look them up for you.

I hope you find something helpful in what I wrote. I'd be glad to chat more if you'd like.

So my guess is that it's less of a physical appearance matter and more of a personality/attitude thing. Such as the beach for example, instead of asking who wants to go to the beach, make it more definite. You're going to the beach, who wants to come along? You need to give off the air that while you would like everyone's company, you don't need it. THEY'RE the ones who should feel privileged to be around you, not the other way around. As for the getting things example, I assume you always go up and get it? It's one thing to be the helpful guy people appreciate, another to be the carpet they walk on. If they ask you to get something, give them a little crap for asking, then another time ask them to make it up to you. Perhaps "Alright fine I'll get the beer, but you owe me pizza later" And actually get them to get the pizza.

As for the body, it sounds like you lack some confidence due to being skinny. While skinny men can be Alpha and imposing, perhaps you should work out more so YOU feel imposing.

But basically what it boils down to is that it feels like you don't have the most confidence and get dejected when people don't go with you to the point of being a bit submissive. Fake it till you've got it, just pretend that you're confident and things should be the way they are, and eventually it'll actually work out that way. Read some of the links on here, plus I highly recommend looking at The Art of Manliness for more ideas. Most important is to just go out and try things out, reading can only take you so far, and failing is not failure, it's a learning experience.

Also here's some advice I gave earlier which might help:

>For your hair post in /r/malehairadvice for a style that fits you, they're going to want full body pics with outfit. As for fashion, post in /r/malefashionadvice for some help based on your figure and body stature. If you truly want a progression to give you some guidance, consdier The Art of Manliness' 30 Days to a Better Man (also just a damn good manly blog.

>If you want to change how you look physically, hit the gym, use /r/Fitness to help develop a routine. With a diet and regular exercise within a year you'll look completely different.

>Now we've hit the physical attributes of being more manly, for the more mental ones that's harder. They will develop as you come to appreciate your body more, but it's a mindset more than anything. If you pretend confidence long enough you have it eventually. When someone tells you you're like an annoying little brother, ask why, figure out what personality traits these are and change them. I highly recommend finding some inspirational figure to model your life on, for me personally it's Theodore Roosevelt, Edmund Morris's biographical trilogy is FANTASTIC. At least read the first book, Roosevelt had to overcome much greater hurdles than you, you can do the same. Don't be afraid to ask questions and figure out why people think you are the way you are, just be sure to change it. If you need motivation, /r/GetMotivated is there for you. Further let this move into other areas of your life, work hard and play hard.

>I'm going to strongly encourage you to read some articles on Art of Manliness, it's not 100% perfect, but a great site for men.

>Edit: Oh and I know it's too late for you to do this now, but one of the most attractive qualities I've been told by women is that I'm an Eagle Scout. Reasoning behind this is that it says that I embody certain aspects, namely the Scout Law and Scout Oath (as well as the Slogan and Motto). You can still live up to these ideals without being an Eagle Scout, just start now, they really are very manly.

Obligatory wiki links: Dystopian Literature. Although, some of the titles listed don't seem to fit (The Dispossessed?). Nuclear holocaust fiction, and your general apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction.

Some of the better/more popular ones:

• Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Kate Wilhelm.
  
  
• Eternity Road Jack McDevitt. Well written, but not very insightful.
  
  
• The Postman David Brin.
  
  
• Mockingbird Walter Tevis. Great read. Think Idiocracy, with a serious take. Humanity's totally run by robots, everyone's forgotten how to read and think for themselves, and the world population's dropped to almost nothing.
  
  
• We Yevgeny Zamyatin. The inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. Not the best read IMO, but some people claim it's better than 1984. It's possible I read a poor translation.
  
  
• Island Aldous Huxley. It's a utopian island surrounded by a dystopian world. Might not fit in this list, but it's a good read if you like Huxley. I think it was his last novel.
  
  
• 1984 George Orwell. One of my favorite novels. I have a bumper sticker with the quote "War is Peace, Ignorance is Strength, Freedom is Slavery", which is a slogan from the book. (Also, a sticker on my mirror with "Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you and you sold me"). The link points to Animal Farm and 1984.
  
  
• Fahrenheit 451 Ray Bradbury. Another must read. Very well written, thought-provoking novel. Is it still required reading in schools?
  
  
• Earth Abides George Stewart.
  
  
• Alas, Babylon Pat Frank. Lucifer's Hammer Larry Niven/Jerry Pournelle. I'm grouping these two together because they're very similar, both in setting and politics. I didn't really enjoy either. The politics were not at all subtle, and the characters fit too neatly into stereotypes, and too obviously the writer's hero fantasy. Still, they're pretty popular, so try them out and feel free to disagree with me.
  
  
• Brave New World Aldous Huxley. Really just a utopia that's rough around the edges, if I'm remembering it correctly (also called an anti-utopia, thank you wikipedia). Another must read.
  
  
• A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter Miller.
  
  
• Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Stanislaw Lem. Another favorite. I once created a text adventure based on this book. It was about as frustrating as that Hitchhiker's Guide game.
  
  
• The Road Cormac McCarthy.
  
  
• Philip K. Dick It's hard to keep track of PKD's novels, but some of them are dystopian, all of them worth reading. Favorites: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (also known as/inspired Blade Runner), Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said, The Man in the High Castle.
  
  
• The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake Margaret Atwood.
  
  
• Y: The Last Man A graphical novel/comic collection. Decent art, great story.
  
  Zombies: World War Z, Raise the Dead, Marvel Zombies, Zombie Survival Guide, Day By Day Armageddon, I Am Legend.
  
  Also, just for kicks, some of my favorite dystopian movies:
  Brazil, Soylent Green, 12 Monkeys, Blade Runner, Akira, Children of Men, Dark City, A Boy and His Dog, Logan's Run, Idiocracy, Equillibrium.

While you do need a college education in this day and age, it doesn't have to follow a strict formula. My little sister just graduated with her PhD in Math at Rutgers at 36. Her road was a pretty long one. She got married to an asshole at 18, divorced him five years later (thank god no kids), went to community college, then a state school, and then got a fellowship for her PhD. She has ZERO debt. Her bachelor's took longer, because she was working full time and taking night classes at first, but then she scaled down the work to part time and college full time. She was just offered a position by her former employer at $150/hour for 10 hours a week and she has a fully funded post doc at UPenn for another 10-15 hours a week starting mid June.

My point is, you have time. Yes, you do need to get a degree, maybe more than one, but it's also not a race and if you get creative you can do it with a minimum of debt. She's pretty special. I mean, to get a PhD in math you have to be, but she is also EXTREMELY frugal and that made an astronomical difference.

If you have to take a year off to work full time and save money, then that's what you have to do, but SAVE THE MONEY! Don't get sucked into just making that your life, because a lot of people do. Ultimately, you want that degree so do whatever you need to, even if it's just putting inspirational quotes on your mirror to remind yourself of your ultimate goals, no matter how long they may take.

My little sis, who I am so fucking proud of, called me many many times wanting to quit, because she was used to being first in her class and now she was in the bottom third. I finally told her, if she quit now she would forever regret it, because she would never ever know if she could have made it or not. I told her that quitting was the same as failing and that if she just kept going they would either kick her out and she could go back to her corporate job or she would succeed. Even as incredibly smart and talented as she is, she had to face down reality and work hard hard hard and save save save and forego many little pleasures, but she fucking did it and she did it all by herself and you can too. You may not get a PhD in math, but if you get creative, don't spend a dime you could possibly save, and work as hard as you can, you will achieve so much. You will find out who you are in the process, what you want, what you can achieve through hours of hard and often tedious and drudging work with people you don't like very much, but you will come out the other side a complete and whole person. Not many people can claim that, but you have taken the hardest step, which is to be your own person and escape a mind numbing cult, even when it meant forsaking your own parents. That is an experience not many people can claim and it will make you stronger than you could possibly know. You will meet people in college and university who have NEVER had to grapple what you have had to grapple with and that experience will be a strength to you for the rest of your life.

No one can tell you exactly what to do and based on what you have said, it sounds like the road is going to be long and difficult, but that's okay, because when you get out there in the "real world" you are going to find that this experience is an asset, not a disability.

/u/olsh gave some great practical advice. You are in a very tough spot, but you can do it. It will take more than courage. It will also take a lot of endurance through many difficulties. I would urge you to read or listen to Hillbilly Elegy before you do anything else.

I posted this a few days ago. Hope it might be helpful for someone else. :)

> I'm a planner and a plotter by nature...so when I wanted to come out to people, I wanted to have this big speech laid out and a massive carpet bomb of information ready for everyone once I told them. I even wanted to tell people at the right time...not around anyone's birthday or holidays or anything, but when the moment was just right. It was just hindering me coming out. So, first tip: RELAX. Some planning is nice, but don't overdo things. You can take notes in, but don't write a letter or an essay. :)

> The good points I'd take from my experience thus far:

> let your family members know you wanna talk to them before you do. It's a thing they need to make 15-20 minutes of time for and not something you may wanna just casually throw in after dinner while watching TV.

> divide and conquer. Separate out the family members you think will be most comfortable (for me, it was my mother and sister over the phone) and speak with them first in private about it. It's a lot harder to come out to several people than just one.

> when you talk, talk to them about how you've felt first. Tell them it may be an awkward conversation, tell them that you're nervous talking to them, tell them how you've felt uncomfortable or dysphoric or how this has manifested in you. Put the 'I'm trans' near the middle/end.

> they may ask questions about it. You may not know all the answers just yet. That's fine. Stand firm, it's okay to not know everything or where things will end up.

> give them some time to wrap their head around things and don't push them.

> If everything goes well...bootstrap. ask the people you've told to help you with the people you haven't. I told my father and brothers, who helped me talk with my aunt, who helped me talk with my grandparents.

Addendum - good resources on trans stuff that I found:

The Praeger handbook of transsexuality. I was so lucky to have a copy in my local library, has some of the few studies/surveys i've seen, covers a lot of ground, trans guys and trans gals. Kinda technical though and a few years old, but I loved it. Learned so much!


Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. I think it really helps you understand society's fascination with trans ladies, but more mtf and activism focused of course.

PFLAG booklet I think it covers the basics okay for friends and family.

WPATH v7 standards of care Lots of fancy documentation about treatment of trans* individuals, expectations of HRT, etc.

I also read She's not there by jennifer finney boylan. i thought it was okay and I think it provides a more personal narrative to the whole thing, especially for me and my family because she's a fellow Mainer. Also mtf focused. Sorry trans guys, hopefully someone else can get you some cool resources. :(

edit: added some links. Also remember that while books are expensive, library cards are usually free and interlibrary loan is the coolest thing ever. :)

India is definitely the place for that! I am born in the US but visited India in my college years when I was getting interested in spirituality. I am blessed that I had some strong experiences in the US and had a few in India. You can take that as confirmation that you are on the right path. You are right, they will just happen when you least expect it. Sometimes I get experiences like deja-vu, but I just take it as a confirmation that I am where I am supposed to be. I had a few amazing ones that really pushed me into spiritual life as well.

When I was getting interested in spirituality I was a big fan of Paramahamsa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. A classic from earlier in this century. This is maybe off topic, but when I was visiting Kurukshetra I had a sadhu stop me on the road and wanted to show me things and then asked for money. He actually changed a rock into some sugar candy in front of me. I thought "OK whatever, he did some slight of hand". Then he had me pick up a rock in my own hand, close his hand over mine, then chanted a mantra and it turned into sugar rock candy within my closed fist. I ate it. I had read about those things in the Paramahamsa Yogananda book and it was happening. He then asked for money and wasn't happy with how much I gave. He opened his shirt and showed me scars and said he had been doing a lot of austerities!

An interesting experience. I eventually read more of Shrila Prabhupada's books and settled in as a Hare Krishna devotee. Shrila Prabhupada and even Paramahamsa Yogananda explained that those sort of mystic powers are not the end goal of self-realization.

This is also a great book, this person is still alive and has written an amazing tale of his travels from the US around the world in search of God. How he ends up in Himalayas living amongst the yogis and then meets his guru.
The Journey Home

The authors site: http://www.thejourneyhomebook.com/

The best advice I can give you about not knowing what to do with your life is changing the way you look at your future, at least for now.

In his book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00COOFBA4?ie=UTF8&redirectFromSS=1&pc_redir=T1&noEncodingTag=1&fp=1

Scott talks about how he found success, not by being a goal-oriented person, but by being a systems oriented person. Even though having goal is a good thing, setting up specific goals for yourself can be very limiting. If you live your life by using systems, you give yourself more avenues and opportunities to become more successful.

A great example of this is instead of setting a goal for yourself to "lose x amount of pounds in x amount of time" you instead focus on setting up a system of continuous exercise, good diet, and good lifestyle habits. Eventually success will come to you because you instead focused on the system, not the goal. Good coaches don't focus on winning the title at the end of the season. Good coaches focus on winning each game at a time.

Focus on good mental and physical habits. Form good habits with your money. At your age it is hard trying to figure out exactly where you want to be in 10 years. It is much easier to figure out how to be the best you can be at this moment in time. Eventually you will have built up yourself to a point where you will be prepared for the opportunities that might come your way in the future. Focus on the process not the outcome.

It sounds like you're off to a good start. You sound pretty close to the right height/weight ratio, so it'll probably be pretty hard to see any big weight changes even with a lot of effort. I had a lot of good luck on a bicycle, largely because running would tear my body up, so good luck to you.

There's some good (and conflicting) advice in this thread already, but working out with friends can help you stay at it. In a similar vein, I started playing pick-up basketball at a park a couple nights a week, made some friends there, and my team of 5 would expect me to be out there so we'd have a full team on those nights. That way I'd be sure to be out there since I knew if I wasn't they'd be upset. It really helped on nights where I could have easily packed it in and stayed home, any almost never did I regret actually going. Another thing you can do is train for an event with someone; maybe a mini-triathlon, half-marathon, century bicycle race.

But I actually came to answer your audiobook question. I had some good luck with This American Life (you can get all of the MP3s for free) for awhile but burned out on it a bit. Then I made myself a musical bike helmet and I'm in freakin' heaven with that thing; it's the perfect amount of split attentions for me. I like fitness cycling to adventure/survival non-fiction, I could manage to push myself since the characters had it so much worse. How can you refuse to go balls out for another 3 minute interval when you're listening to a story where someone's starving to death?

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing was my favorite of that genre, had a brilliant reader.

I also liked Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer.

And out of that genre, I've recently listened to Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and Moneyball by Michael Lewis and I can't stop talking about either of them.

Good luck and keep at it. I got a lot of silver-bullet advice from a lot of well-meaning friends, but what really helped was finding stuff that worked for me and then ignoring them. I'm down about 50lbs over the 16 months or so.

Many psychedelic drug users have dropped the drugs in favor of meditation.


They say "when you get the message, hang up the phone".

I would recommend "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda for an overview of the yoga perspective on spiritual exploration.

I have used the SRF lessons that were developed by Yogananda to teach people to access these states of spiritual realization at will.

These lessons teach techniques that are powerful and effective.

You have to put some time and effort into the techniques, but what you get in return is your own, bought by your effort and understanding.

What is nice about spiritual experiences that you gain through meditation and inner yoga is that they never really leave you -- they become part of your being and you become transformed by them, so that they become part of your everyday experience.

The point of yoga is to make these experiences become your permanent reality.

The best part is that over time these experiences become more powerful and deep and also more easily accessible.

So I would wholeheartedly recommend accessing these states through meditation and inner yoga.

It's not as cheap and easy as accessing the states through drugs -- the metaphor that seems most apt is the mountain climber vs the person who takes a helicopter ride to the top.

The mountain climber is changed by the effort and time put into the climbing and becomes a master, while the person who got the helicopter ride ends up back at the airport that he or she started from.

The mountain climber may make slow progress and take many years to get the same experience the helicopter passenger got immediately, but when the climber gets to the top, he has gained the ability to come and go as he wishes, and hang out wherever he wants as long as he wants.

The helicopter passenger instead has no control over the experience but always has to return to the airport he started from when the ride is over.

So I think you are on a wonderful track - there are many paths to the top of the mountain, you just have to pick which ones appeal to you.

The advantage of yoga methods is that they use features of your inner energetic anatomy to make the 'climbing' faster and easier.

>How is education in your country?

It's complicated. Please keep in mind that what follows is directly from my experience from going to public and charter (primary and secondary) schools, and public community college/university. My experience is also limited to the following states: Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Montana, and Wyoming.

First, everywhere I have lived, education has always been the means to a job/career. No more and no less. The humanities and the arts are generally seen as knowledge for the sake of knowledge (or mere "hobbies"), and thus are only really pursued by people from the higher socioeconomic backgrounds, or anyone lucky enough to get a "full ride" scholarship, or anyone who qualifies for loans from the federal government based on financial need and academic merit. Non-STEM people are the academic "second class" who aren't really taken seriously until they are successful (read: millionaires).

Primary school is very general and is usually focused on learning how to read, write, and do basic math, along with social interaction.

Secondary school is also very general and usually has a focus on social studies (history and government), math, science, and English, but students can begin to follow their own direction by choosing from a variety of elective classes to take. These electives are limited to what is available based on the school's budget, what teachers are available, and what the demand is for particular courses. Some schools require that students take language electives and art electives. Some schools offer technical and professional electives. This phase also includes taking regular standardized tests (both from the state level and national level) in reading, math, and science.

As far as I know, the requirements for admission to an accredited college or university vary wildly, but most require a minimum SAT (980) or ACT (21) score and a minimum high school GPA (usually 3.0 on a 4 point scale). Some also require that people take specific courses in high school. Some also require essays. Some also require letters of recommendation. The for-profit schools usually only require someone who is able to pay (or get loans) and occasionally demand that their applicants have a high school diploma or G.E.D.. Tech schools (job training you pay for) requirements also vary widely, but are generally incredibly flexible and can be as minimal as completing an interview.

Once at the post-secondary level, quality of education is difficult to quantify. Each school has its own professors with their own research focuses and specialties. A few schools (including public ones) have been criticized for grade manipulation (in both directions). The trick is to find the school that is focused on what you want to learn and go there. More and more post-secondary schools are partnering with industry representatives to tailor the curriculum to industry needs, but that is usually limited by location (i.e. universities in California teach a lot of tech because they partner with Apple and Microsoft while universities on the east coast teach a lot of finance because they partner with investment firms and banks). Most people assume that the schools on the coasts are the best, but, again, there isn't an unbiased, controlled way to quantify that assumption.

People who do get to post-secondary education have a variety of ways to pay for it. The ones who appear the most exceptional on paper (or are good at sports) get full scholarships that pay for all of their expenses. The ones who apply to the federal government, show academic merit, and financial need (based on family income) can get access to grants, scholarships, and loans. For everyone else, scholarships are available for a variety of qualifications, but are more competitive. There are scholarships for women in STEM, people who have blue eyes, people who wear duct tape dresses to prom, people who like archery, people who intend to enter a certain industry, single mothers, and first generation college students, to name a few. For those who don't qualify for, don't get, or don't apply for scholarships, they either get their family to pay for their education or they hold a job while going to school.

I personally believe that knowledge is a right and should be freely available to anyone who seeks it, but I understand how and why our current system works the way it does, and what benefits such a system affords. The internet is also helping in this respect by making loads of information available for free, but sometimes a good teacher/guide can make all the difference (and not everyone in the U.S. has access to a computer, let alone the internet). People who are smarter than me are working on it, though, so I’m pretty optimistic that we’ll soon find a balance between individual merit, industry, correcting systematic inequities, collective intellectual progress, and paying for it all. Go team!

>Have you heard about our lord and saviour Synthwave?

No. I mostly listen to the radio in my car and Pandora. I occasionally find new music on YouTube and through friends, but it is usually specific to a single artist or band, not really a whole genre. I don't really focus much on music either (I don't like concerts or "live" versions of songs, I don't go out of my way to follow any specific band, and I don't buy merchandise or cds).

>Did you know that it snows in Iran and we have ski resorts?

Yes. This is the first photo I ever saw of Iran. I was writing a paper on Persepolis and had trouble connecting some of the story with my mind image of Iran (sand), so I looked up "Tehran mountains" and got this image. Those mountains look a lot like the Rocky Mountains, but the Tehran is so much more expansive and cluttered-looking compared to Denver (and it looks like Tehran is right up against the mountains, while Denver is several miles from the Rockies).

Let me know if you have more questions for me or if I need to clarify anything! Thanks for the info!

From what I've been told even most economists don't really know much about these. They just don't spend much time with the old history of economic thought. They're taught certain ideas that originate from these schools of thought and stood the test of time, but they aren't really told they're doing so.

I'll try to give a quick rundown though of some of the terms in the meme:

1. Marxist Economics: IIRC people usually say Marxian in this context but w/e. This refers to the economic school of thought deriving from Karl Marx (duh.) I'll try to summarize them in a couple of key ideas. 1. They think crisis is inherent to capitalism, and that these crises will worsen until the system is destroyed, 2. Value is derived from labor hour put into a commodity, and 3. profit rate falls over time for firms (this ties into #2 and #1.) The latter two ideas are pretty much not accepted at all in modern economics. But on crisis he was one of the first iirc to really think of crisis as cyclical. There are modern marxians but they're pretty scarce and not really relevant outside of socialist circles.
   here's a little more reading from a non-marxian about what he contributed, scroll down to the econ section
   
   
2. Austrian school: Holy FUCK i love the free market. I'd say they're important for three big things. 1. They thought that the value a commodity has is subjective, in contrast to the labour theory of value. This is where marginalism comes from too iirc (i'd google that.) 2. The idea of opportunity cost. and 3. They battled with the marxists a lot, and laid down a lot of great theoretical criticism. Austrian economics didn't keep up with Keynesianism and nowadays isn't relevant, they're honestly more of a joke/meme than anything else. Probably the best known "source" is mises.org. You'll find their advocates being libertarians and anarchists.
   
   
3. Mercantilism: This is what old European empires functioned by, and old America somewhat as well. The idea was that trade is actively bad and your nation should be as self-sufficient as humanly possible. They backed their money with gold and silver and believed that the more precious metals you had, the better your economy was simply doing, hence the Über-protectionism. This was a big motivator of colonialism too which is fun stuff. This school is some old (15th-19th century) shit and you won't find any economists (really even at the time) claiming to be mercantilist.
   
   
4. Classical Economics: This was the original statement of market economics pretty much. It's big "origin" is Adam Smith and his book "The Wealth of Nations." It's very important because first and foremost it challenged mercantilism and asserted that trade is a good thing. They generally believed that the free market worked well without intervention (not always, though, they weren't libertarians.) And monopoly sucks and competition is fucking fantastic. This is where I'd say they're fairly unified. But otherwise, classical economics was veeery diverse.
   
   
5. Keynesianism: This is actually pretty hard to summarize since it's pretty much a "current" set of schools so I can just grab a few key ideas. I think the shortest way I can put it is that instead of focusing mostly on supply as classical economists did. The big revelation we get from Keynes is that in the short-run, fluctuations in aggregate (total) demand can affect economic output. People then go on and use this to justify government policy to inject stimulus into aggregate demand to bring the economy back to full output. You can split this into A. Monetary policy and B. Fiscal policy. Monetary policy means fucking with the money supply, actions done by the central bank (for americans, the fed.) Fiscal policy means government spending and taxation pretty much. There's a lot of schools claiming to be "keynesian" such as new keynesian, neo-keynesian, and post-keynesian. Neo-keynesian was the dominant school after world war 2 until the oil shock in the 70s. After that we got new keynesianism which is the most "current" mainstream theory and is a part of the new neoclassical synthesis. Post-keynesianism is a modern heterodox school of economics. I don't know much about post-keynesianism but IIRC it's considered a more respectable heterodox school than marxian or austrian economics at least.
   
   
6. Monetarism: People who really emphasize the role of monetary policy. Milton Friedman was a very important monetarist. For example he argued that the federal reserve's failures caused the great depression to be magnitudes worse than it could have been. This was pretty important at the time but is another thing that's pretty much taken for granted by modern economists.
   
   
7. New Neoclassical Synthesis: Pretty much any economist nowadays. This is the name referring to the synthesis of New-Keynesianism with New-Classical economics.
   
   
   I'm tired now and I probably could have done a lot more regarding classical -> neoclassical/new classical but that's an okay gist on some of them I think. I don't know anything about pre-classical economics or ancient economics so I didn't bring them up.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Economic-Thinkers-Seventh/dp/068486214X
   
   You can check out of this book if you want to go a bit more in-depth. Note: I haven't read it. I just went to the r/economics sidebar to see what they had.

General

• The Righteous Mind - OP, if you only choose one book, it's gotta be this one. Trust me.
  
• The Fractured Republic - Written by a committed conservative, but very fair. Critical of his own side and empathetic of the positive traits on the left. Also one of the best writers in political history/theory imo.
  
  Conservative - I'm keenly interested in the intellectual history of American Conservatism and could make this this list could go on forever. I'll keep it to three, but if you want more suggestions feel free to ask.
  
  
• 10 Conservative Principles - Not a book, but essential to understanding conservatism
  
• Conservatism in America Since 1930 - A reader that guides you along a chronological and ideological path of conservatism in America.
  
• Hillbilly Elegy - Less academic, but very well written and explains the support of Trump from the rural white working class perfectly
  
  Liberal - You may get a better liberal reading list from another user, but I'll give it a shot.
  
  
• On Liberty - Modern political dialog from the left still echos Mill's classic defense of cultural liberty. A must read for all Americans.
  
• American Progressivism: A Reader - As you can tell, I'm a big fan of reading political giants in their own words.
  
• The Affluent Society - The controversial classic that underpins progressive economic policy.

Personally I value how much of an effort he makes. Many CEOs just find one good company, make it as profitable as possible and just sit on their fortune. With all the companies he is creating, to me it really feels like he's trying to do good for the world. SolarCity and Tesla are trying to help the environment. Tesla, The Boring Company and Hyperloop are trying to revolutionize transport. OpenAI and Neuralink are trying to be a safeguard to make sure that computers don't kill us. SpaceX is for when the world can't fix it's problems and needs to go somewhere else.

Elon Musk has problems. Period. Anybody who tells you otherwise is an idiot. He sucks at relationships, he can be practically sociopathic at times, and he frequently sets unrealistic timelines for his most important projects. But on the other hand, his laser-like focus and drive in his companies which makes him practically sociopathic at times results in frequent success in them (albeit not necessarily on the original timeline but still,) which in turn allows them to bring newer, better technology into public knowledge (Who gave a shit about electric cars before Tesla? Practically nobody. Who gives a shit now? A lot of people + car companies). But most importantly, he tries. He truly believes that everything he creates could work, and some of it will. However, I believe that he has already succeeded. Even if his companies go bankrupt in the future, he has already inspired many people, and in doing so he has insured that more people will try to help the world just like him. And even if many of them fail, eventually someone will succeed and then maybe, just maybe, we can start to fix some of our problems.

Just a few notes before I end:

• First impressions matter. I first heard about Musk because of Tesla and I thought that that was cool, giving me a good first impression.
  
  
• I'm a really big optimist. I see that stuff could work, and I hope it will.
  
  
• Reading over this again I make it sound like Elon is Christ reborn, here to fix all of our problems, and that's not entirely what I meant to say. I know that he is partly in it for the money, as everybody is, but I do feel like he is motivated by a need to do good, at least in part.
  
  
• I might also recommend reading this book about Elon Musk. It goes through his successes and failures quite thoroughly. It's not really pro- or anti-Musk, in fact it's actually quite neutral if I remember correctly (I read it a while back), but it is VERY illuminating.

Some advice here for anyone looking for psychedelic therapy.

Mushrooms are still not legal in Oakland, they've just instructed cops not to do anything about possession. So don't expect to see shops selling mushrooms, or therapists giving them to clients. Your best bet is to look for a "psychedelic integration therapist". They won't give you drugs or trip-sit for you, but they specialize in helping clients make sense of psychedelic experiences. Also check out meetups such as those run by the SF Psychedelic Society. Their Psychedelic Therapeutic Use Peer Support Group (there's one that meets in Oakland and one in Petaluma) is great.

There are therapists who practice psychedelic therapy underground. They don't advertise, obviously, so you'll need to make connections to find them. I can't help you there.

You don't need a professional guide to benefit from psychedelics. In fact few therapists have training or experience in this unique modality. More than formal training, it's important to have a trusted trip sitter (ideally someone who's taken psychedelics before), a safe and comfortable setting, and a positive mental state going in. If you want to read trip reports, there are thousands available on Erowid. I recommend the book Psychedelic Psychotherapy by R. Coleman (although I don't endorse everything in it). How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan is a popular book that covers a lot of topics related to the psychedelic renaissance. Also check out /r/PsychedelicTherapy.

Both psilocybin and MDMA are in the FDA approval pipeline and might be legally prescribed for therapy within the next 10 years. You could potentially do this now if you qualify for a clinical trial.

Hopefully we will soon see full legalization and a safe way for people to access these experiences that doesn't require them to label themselves as "sick". There is a ballot measure in Oregon next year which would be a big step in that direction.

To add:

• Childhood(1858-1869) Being a terrible asthmatic and having 'nervous cholera' didn't stop this moose calf. He decided that the aliments of his body would have to kill him to stop him. He also started "Roosevelt's Museum of Natural History" as a child after buying a dead seal's head at a market on Manhattan. His zoological studies continued into adulthood too. Also, when on trips in Africa and the Middle East he brought his own embalming, taxidermy, and mercury supplies to add to his museum.
  
  
• Thesis (1880-1883) "The Naval War of 1812" was published after Teddy left Harvard and is considered the precursor to the modern doctoral thesis. Yes, he invented the doctoral thesis, christ, what a jerk!
  
  
• Dueling (1886) The de facto leader of Medora was Marquis de Mores. Seeing as T.R. was in his town ranching, he invited him on over. One thing lead to another and blammo, duel time. Now the Marquis was a dead shot and had killed many men. T.R. wisely apologized and went back to his cabin. Yes, it's not the most badass, but the man knew when he was beat. And that takes balls too.
  
  
• Treaty of Portsmouth (1904 -1905) Teddy manages to get a peace treaty signed between the Russians and the Japanese. This sort-of ushers in the Japanese as a world power akin to Great Britain, Germany and France. T.R. gets a Nobel Peace Prize for this.
  
  
• Bull Moose Party(1912) He splits the GOP and form his own party. Yes, he is so badass, no amount of political bitching will stop the guy. The party machinery is broken and corrupt? Screw it, lets make a new one in 7 weeks and have a convention in the exact same spot.
  
  
• WWI (1917) Roosevelt volunteers to lead an infantry division into the trenches at 59 years old. Wilson turns him down.
  
  
• Scouting (1918) Scout Julian Salomon once said, "The two things that gave Scouting great impetus and made it very popular were the uniform and Teddy Roosevelt's jingoism." Thats right you Eagle redditors, you got the Bull Moose to thank.
  
  Want more?
  YOU SHOULD ALL READ THIS: The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. It's like 3 bucks used right now. Better yet, got to your Library and check it out. I am not kidding when I say it made me love biographies. Morris makes his early life read like a fiction novel. You also learn a LOT about publishing, party politics, and post civil war America. It is one of the best book I have ever read. Heck, PM me and I can help you get a book.
  

Psychology (studied, but never practiced)

Here are a selection of interesting books:

• Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Easy introduction into behavioural psychology and decision making. I am pretty sure Dan did an AMA relatively recently. He's a champ.
  
  
• Quiet - The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain. This is a great book for those of us whose tendency is to listen more than talk.
  
  
• Tell Me I'm Here: One Family's Experience of Schizophrenia by Ann Deveson. Ann is a very well respected journalist in Australia. Her description of raising her son who had schizophrenia is well worth reading.
  
  
• Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's by John Elder Robinson - lesser-known brother of Augusten Burroughs. I did my research on higher-functioning Autism including Asperger's. This is a great memoir, and wonderful description of growing up different'.
  
  
• First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple by Dr Cameron West. Whether you are dismissive of the validity of Dissociative Identiy Disorder or think it is a genuine condition, I read this many years ago, and found it compelling.

First thing for you to remember: You are the same person you have always been. If you really do have Aspergers, then you always have. This changes nothing.

You might want to get a 'professional' diagnosis, at least then you'll know for certain and you'll have actual proof.

Alright, supposing you do have Aspergers. Where do you go from here? I'd say this could be a good opportunity to dig into some self-improvement. There are plenty of forums (just like this one) full of autistic people going through a lot of the same situations as you. I'm one of them! If you have any questions on, say, "How do I respond to this in a conversation", etc, ask away.

I'm sure there are also books on the subject - but honestly, it's nothing I've read up on. I just sort of played it by ear as I went. Although I did read the book Look Me in the Eye and enjoyed it a good bit. It might not teach you much about handling autism itself, but it'll give you someone to relate to, and John Elder Robison really made something of himself.

Other tips? Study people! Figure out what draws you to someone or turns you off from someone else. Try to take steps to act more like the people you like. (This should actually go for everyone ever, but it also applies here!)

As far as eye contact goes, try actually thinking about eye contact when you're having conversations. Learn to not look at "their eyes", look at "those round white spheres with a black dot in the middle", or their forehead, or their head as a whole. The action of directing your eyes at theirs isn't what's difficult, it's the thought of looking at their eyes. So just give it some practice, focus on it, and you'll get better.

Sarcasm? Sarcasm can be tricky for anyone. If someone says something with a strange tone of voice, or if what they said doesn't make sense for some reason, take a moment to think about the possibility that they were just kidding. If you're looking over a ledge and your friend says "Hey, jump off", obviously that wouldn't make sense, they're probably joking. Stuff like that.

As far as stress having your routine disrupted - that's actually something I struggle with a bit myself, and I personally don't have a great fix for it. If you can, see about finding something happy or distracting to preoccupy yourself with during the distraction. If you're able, maybe text a close friend, or if not, replay in your head some favorite scenes from a movie you like.

Hopefully this is actual the start of some good changes for you. It's not a disease, and it's not a sentence! It's just who you are.

Bless.

For fiction, I recently finished A Gentleman in Moscow and while some would consider the story slow going, I found the language used to tell it enjoyable enough to see it all the way through.

If you're into biographies, I'm just now finishing Washington: A Life, by Ron Chernow, the guy whose Hamilton Bio inspired the play. Sometimes I think he tries to undersell Washington's involvement with slavery, but that's just my bias and I think on the whole he does a fair job of it. Edmund Morris' three book set on Teddy Roosevelt was what got me reading biographies to begin with, and ironically enough I found it from a reddit comment years ago, haha.

For a lighter read on a really interesting true story, I'd recommend "Stranger in the Woods," by Michael Finkel--especially if you're an outdoorsy type.

Oh! And if you're into productivity definitely pick up Deep Work by Cal Newport. Changed the way I structure my time, and since I started changing my schedule my efficiency has skyrocketed.

I don't know if you're the sci-fi/fantasy type, but anything by Steven Brust, especially To Reign in Hell is both snappy, smart, and fun to read.

And if you want dry, but grammatically sound textbooks on psychology and personality theory, let me know 'cause I've been required to read tons as of late, lol.

Sorry for the delay in the response, if you give me a genre or area of interest I could probably be more help. I love to read, and I read a bunch of different things, but this is what I've most recently finished.

I'm going to put a couple passages from Heilbroner's The Worldly Philosophers here to try and answer you.

>[Marx] sets the stage. We enter a world of perfect capitalism: no monopolies, no unions, no special advantages for anyone. It is a world in which every commodity sells at exactly its proper price. And that proper price is its value—a tricky word. For the value of a commodity, says Marx (essentially following Ricardo), is the amount of labor it has within itself. If it takes twice as much labor to make hats as shoes, then hats will sell for twice the price of shoes. The labor, of course, need not be direct manual labor; it may be overhead labor that is spread over many commodities, or it may be the labor that once went into making a machine and that the machine now slowly passes on to the products it shapes. But no matter what its form, everything is eventually reducible to labor, and all commodities, in this perfect system, will be priced according to the amount of labor, direct or indirect, that they contain.

...

>How, asks Marx, can profits exist in such a situation? If everything sells for its exact value, then who gets an unearned increment? No one dares to raise his price above the competitive one, and even if one seller managed to gouge a buyer, that buyer would only have less to spend elsewhere in the economy—one man’s profit would thus be another man’s loss. How can there be profit in the whole system if everything exchanges for its honest worth?

...

>He finds the answer to the dilemma in one commodity that is different from all others. The commodity is labor power. For the laborer, like the capitalist, sells his product for exactly what it is worth—for its value. And its value, like the value of everything else that is sold, is the amount of labor that goes into it—in this case, the amount of labor that it takes to “make” labor-power. In other words, a laborer’s salable energies are worth the amount of socially necessary labor it takes to keep that laborer going. Smith and Ricardo would have agreed entirely: the value of a workman is the money he needs in order to exist. It is his subsistence wage.

>So far, so good. But here comes the key to profit. The laborer who contracts to work can ask only for a wage that is his due. What that wage will be depends, as we have seen, on the amount of labor-time it takes to keep a man alive. If it takes six hours of society’s labor per day to maintain a workingman, then (if labor is priced at one dollar an hour), he is “worth” six dollars a day. No more.

>But the laborer who gets a job does not contract to work only six hours a day. That would be just long enough to support himself. On the contrary, he agrees to work a full eight-hour, or in Marx’s time, a ten- or eleven-hour day. Hence he will produce a full ten or eleven hours’ worth of value and he will get paid for only six. His wage will cover his subsistence which is his true “value,” but in return he will make available to the capitalist the value he produces in a full working day. And this is how profit enters the system.

>Marx called this layer of unpaid work “surplus value.” The words do not imply moral indignation. The worker is entitled only to the value of his labor-power. He gets it in full. But meanwhile the capitalist gets the full value of his workers’ whole working day, and this is longer than the hours for which he paid. Hence when the capitalist sells his products, he can afford to sell them at their true value and still realize a profit. For there is more labor time embodied in his products than the labor time for which he was forced to pay.

So the "exploitation" that Marx would be referring to is the "surplus value" that the capitalist gets for selling stuff.

Now, to answer your initial question. The difference between exploitation as Marx used it and what OP is talking about is that immigrant workers who are restricted in such a way can be (and have been, IIRC) taken advantage of in ways that are more similar to what we would colloquially define as exploitation rather than what Marx would say. For example, their passports could be taken from them, they could end up being paid less than minimum wage, working conditions could be less than what they should be, etc.

This ended up being longer than I intended, but at least I can have the comment on hand for when people start talking about Marx.

EDIT: Removed some stuff

I've been here periodically but I haven't formally intro'ed myself so I'll do that here:

• I work in IT as an engineering/architecture level (tend to fall more in architecture roles, but do a lot of engineering too).
  
  
• Dream job... well, I might be starting it in a bit over a week. It's 100% remote (globally), working with a tech firm pushing technology in ways that break many of the traditional models, great benefits, amazing people, etc etc. I might post more later, but still seems too good to be true right now. If I had to say something else, probably consulting where I work remote architecting datacenters/cloud deployments and building the migration plans for them. Really jobs that challenge me technically while enabling me to work how I want to work, when I want to work.
  
  
• Likely driven, goal oriented, logical to a fault, and would do well going with my gut more. #EngineeringLife
  
  
• Dream vacation is kind of a misnomer for me, and my dream would be more of a vanlife thing at this point for a bit. Otherwise Australia/NZ
  
  
• I am watching a friends dog right now (about 5 months so far lol) while they look for a house. Need to get my own.
  
  
• I'm really proud of myself for completing a marathon. Crossing that finish line was one of the most rewarding feelings I've ever had on my own. Took 2 years from the goal being set to achieving it. I was in rough shape but would've cried if I had any fluids left to cry with lol
  
  
• Been reading a book about the newest research on psychadelics. It's pretty interesting. I'm a big advocate for ending the war on drugs, and more legalization of psychadelics for medical use (especially in therapeutic settings) if not full recreational. I've never used them, but strongly believe in their use for therapeutic use with minimal risks (I equate it to marijuana in this regard). The book is How to Change Your Mind.
  
  
• Neither. I prefer ginger ale, or stuff like La Croix. Although usually water, tea, and coffee are my go-to's.

Scott Adams calls this the 'Moist Robot Hypothesis'. Like a dog being trained, he views people as machines (or moist robots) responding to stimuli. Instead of fruitlessly trying to motivate yourself he advocates changing your environment to reinforce the behaviors you desire. I think this is the basic idea that Perry is advocating. And they both recognise that you act as the 'owner' setting the incentives and the 'dog' being trained.

A related idea that both Perry and Adams touch on is that it's more effective to be systems driven not goals driven. Don't focus on "I'm going to run a marathon", focus on incentivising yourself to go running four times a week. Focus on "I'll write blog posts every Tuesday and Thursday" over "I'm going to make Scott Alexander look like an amateur." Perry describes this as the difference between “getting things done” from “doing things.”

The practical implications will be different for everyone however it means acting as the owner to understand the reactions to stimuli (diet, incentives, sleep routine, emotional states, etc) and then setting up processes / systems that reinforce the positive behaviours and disincentivise the negative. The general idea Adams words:

> Take a volunteer and ask him all of his favorite sensations. This could range from the taste of his favorite food, to foot massages, to sexual stimulation, to warm baths, to his favorite song. Then spend a few weeks showing the volunteer a particular and not-too-common object whenever the positive sensations are applied. For example, you might pick a sock monkey as your object because you don’t see them often, and they don’t carry with them any sort of special association beyond generic fun. After two weeks of intensely associating sock monkeys with favorite sensations, the volunteer’s brain would make a permanent connection. Thereafter, any time he wanted to turn a bad mood into a good mood, he would look at his sock monkey and his brain would execute its happiness subroutine. It’s safer and quicker than pharmaceuticals. The only risk is that the volunteer might fall in love with his sock monkey. But I’m not judging.

This has high cross over with the ideas of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) which is considered pseudo-scientific by many. NLP practitioners call this 'anchoring'.

If you're interested Adams goes into some detail on what this practically means in his book 'How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big'.

Ok, two different categories of recs that arent exactly what you asked for but you might want to put on the radar:

​

1. Superbly enjoyable stories of bad-assery: I love Alistair MacLean's (historical fiction) books. These two are my favorite. They are the alpha male equivalent of romance beach novels. They are excellent:
   South by Java Head: https://www.amazon.com/South-Java-Head-Alistair-MacLean/dp/0006172482
   The Guns of Navarone: https://www.amazon.com/Guns-Navarone-Alistair-MacLean/dp/0006172474
   
   
2. Marcus Aurelius's Meditations is the single book I would take with me to an island. It reads like a conversation with a friend. Not archaic, not heavy or overwrought, and yet gets to the essence of what it means to be a good man and live a good life. General Mattis used to carry this in combat. I suggest reading it bits at a time, in 20-30 minute sessions. https://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X
   
   ​
   
   Some quotes from #2 to give you a sense. Crazy this was just a roman emperor's diary 2000 years ago:
   
   ​
   
   “When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love ...”
   
   “Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.”
   
   “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”
   
   “Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?”
   
   “The first rule is to keep an untroubled spirit. The second is to look things in the face and know them for what they are.”
   “Nothing happens to anybody which he is not fitted by nature to bear.”

Thanks for your reply.

I believe there has been some miscommunication, as I had never actually heard of George until you mentioned him. This is the book I"m referring to, which was neither written by nor mentions Henry George:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Worldly-Philosophers-Economic-Thinkers/dp/068486214X

That being the case, I won’t reply to the substance of your comments on George’s beliefs. The only thing I would say is that the idea of private property ownership as the problem is naive in its denial of the natural inclinations of human behaviour. There is a reason they say “possession is 9/10th’s of the law” - exclusive possession to the exclusion of all others is the foundational basis of our ability to trade with one another.

"As a science, the mathematics that governs all of economics is as intractable as the cure for the disease. But we don't claim that medicine isn't science. “

I would counter that astrology and numerology both use “the maths” but that doesn’t make them scientific. While I certainly lack the mathematical skills to know conclusively for myself, my own experience and impression was certainly confirmed by the mathematician in the link I posted.

"I would say that "full" employment can never be a goal, but that buoyancy can be. One simple problem with stating "full employment" as a goal is the intractability one - how would we measure full employment? What does it mean?"

Well, even if you say it can never be a goal, the fact of the matter is that it very much is part of the current Fed mandate. As for it’s definition, this is what I am referring to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_employment

As to the issue of buoyancy, you’ll have to forgive me but I am not familiar with the concept of buoyancy in economics, and my brief search only revealed the concept of tax buoyancy, which doesn’t seem applicable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_buoyancy

"However, a more important one is actually a purely mathematical one, that can be modeled mathematically: you simply can't have complete utilization of a resource as a goal. It's out of balance. When you achieve "full" employment something must give way. Growth of some parts of the economy must stop because there is no more of the labor resource to add. This means the value of adding investment (the marginal utility of capital) goes down. And when that occurs, you have negative growth. Negative growth cascades and you have recession.”

I won’t go into full detail on this paragraph as there are more important matters to discuss, but I don’t believe your logic follows. When you posit that “full” employment will result in shrinkage of other parts of the economy, you fail to account for the dynamic nature of the system and the fact that the free market should, over time, allocate this scarce resource (labor) to its most efficient and highest use, meaning that negative growth would occur in the least viable areas of the economy while positive growth happens in more economically viable areas - the marginal utility of capital doesn’t go down, it goes up!
"However, economic buoyancy can be a goal; and when you reach closer to full employment, you can throttle back. Buoyancy is, I believe, if we take the politics out of it not such a bad goal."

Again I am not sure what you’re referring to here.

"But as it turns out, the ECB's one mandate is the one that is good for the savers and the capital accumulators.
Two issues: First, this begs the questions of what is "good" and for whom (the conservative-marxist argument and the progressive resolution) but of what is buoyant. Second, if the ECB mandate were buoyant, why do they have recessions in Europe?"

First, to answer your questions, by “good” the ECB means a stable currency that doesn’t fluctuate up and down and “for whom” means people looking to invest their capital. Second, I have never claimed the ECB mandate is buoyant, nor have I claimed that their system will somehow prevent recessions. Far from it - in any dynamic system there needs to be adjustment both upwards and downwards, so it’s not the job of the central bank to prevent recessions.

If you want an explanation of why Marx was so very wrong, I can’t implore you enough to read this article. The issue is not “labor vs. capital” it’s a matter of “debtors vs savers” or people who want “easy money” vs. those who want “hard money”. It is the best introduction to the topic of “freegold” that there is (by the way, do NOT read the wiki article on freegold, it is a debacle”.

http://fofoa.blogspot.ca/2010/07/debtors-and-savers.html
"More aptly put: If we were simply to state buoyancy is good instead of entrenched growth or "full" employment would we then check and reduce the boom-panic cycle? History seems to indicate that the answer is yes."

I am not familiar with any historical instances of the boom-panic cycle being defeated or overcome. I do, however, subscribe to the belief that the Euro has been designed in such a way that said cycle will no longer bring with it damage to the currency - economies can crash, but the currency will be fine. More on that at another time if you’d care to hear me continue rambling.

Welcome. Namaste. My humble suggestion is in agreement with Plutoid--order the sampler box. Hot yoga certainly doesn't have a corner on the market in being the most beneficial physically. It is on the athletic side, but as is several types of hatha yoga, power yoga etc. And I've been reading that the benefits of the heat tend to be more personal/experiential than scientific.

I'm no gymnast but Vinyasa has been the perfect equilibrium of physicality in postures (asanas), paired with breath strengthening (pranayama). I'd suggest you give it a shot to perfect your breathing, and then move on to the more physically demanding versions.

Re-reading your post, you did enjoy the heat--so my suggestion is to follow that direction if you still prefer it over the other styles, having worked on breath in this evaluative period.

Sidenote, in a very un-yogi-like observation, the founder of Bikram yoga, Bikram Choudhury, has been accused of many wrongdoings over the years. Despite the help and power he's given people over the years, he actually began to copyright his sequence of poses, which amassed him billions of dollars. In addition to his materialistic (and sometimes bizarre) pursuits, he has also been accused of sexual harassment by his disciples and trainees. If I did do hot yoga, I'd rather support a local studio that's not the Bikram brand.

Good luck and enjoy!

PS If you're interested in the spirituality and contemporary history, I highly recommend Autobiography of a Yogi, by Paramhansa Yogananda. He was a Shakespeare merged with a Buddha. Beautiful writing about Hindu yogic spirituality and his journey helping to bring yoga to America in the early 20th century.

For sure!

​

I've had several roles in the technology space, from the strategy around a complete digital transformation (ripping out a clients current ERP, CRM, MES, PLM, and HR to implement an API-riddled "modern ecosystem" so those systems could share data), to implementing a continuous improvement framework and sustainment model around a technology implementation. What really got me interested in PM was my first role where I took a custom mobile application from design to deployment while running an Agile team for ~2.5 years. I've been searching for PM jobs on and off for the better part of a year until this opportunity came through the pipeline.

​

As to why I made the switch, I really enjoy working through all the cross-functional portions that comes with launching a new piece of technology. During the lifecycle of a product/feature you have to do strategy (what is the product-market fit), design/development (work with engineers to build a feasible product), and launch work (empower Product Marketing and work with them to find the correct segment/marketing materials). In my experience consulting teams usually focus on one portion of that work, but seeing the lifecycle through falls under the PM because they're there for the long haul.

​

Career aspirations include moving along the PM track and eventually leading a team of PMs. Consulting gave me a strong skillset mostly because I had mentors driving my career development, and providing standards to work towards. One of the most rewarding things I found was returning the favor to the new crop of consultants. Definitely looking to do that in my new position once I get more settled down and we build out the PM team a bit more.

​

Speaking on career aspirations, if money is one of your main motivators for becoming a PM I might suggest a different line of work. I got a small pay raise to $122,000 living in an expensive area, but the compensation trajectory is much higher if you stay in consulting (i.e. assuming everything had gone well this year I was looking at a raise to $145,000 base). In the short term compensation may be similar if you get a PM job with a FAANG company (especially at the MBA level where everyone is competing for top talent), but if you hit partner you leave your PM counterparts in the dust.

​

Getting this role was really luck-based (in addition to practicing for PM interviews for a year). I was initially contacted by a recruiter for this role and ended up hearing nothing after two weeks. So I found someone in the company on LinkedIn and reached out to them (we had gone to the same school). Turns out that person would be my boss and was interested in talking with me! The rest is history (after some harrowing interviews). I guess the moral of the story is if something seems interesting don't stop at the first roadblock.

​

I haven't started the PM role yet so what I like/don't like is TBD, but what I really enjoyed working on the custom mobile application was being "the guy" that everyone comes to with questions/ideas/complaints. One minute I'd be talking with customers about how to use the app, the next I'd be talking with our engineering lead about how I could ever design something so stupidly, and finally I'd get called into the office of the program head to run the numbers with her and see if we were really saving $5 million annually in operations cost. It's stressful, but being the ingress point keeps you constantly on your feet.

​

Did you know that psychedelics were legal in the 50s/60s and used to treat alcoholism/depression? I sure didn't! I've been reading How to Change your Mind and it has been mind-blowing (pun intended) charting the rise and fall of psychedelics in both research and counter-culture terms.

Okay - then to start, I will recommend Oryx and Crake and Year of the Flood, both by Margaret Atwood. They're part of a trilogy, the third book is due out this fall. Atwood defines them as speculative fiction; they're set in the not-to-distant future, and follow the downfall of civilization. I like Year of the Flood better, but both are pretty awesome.

For fantasy, I really like The Fionavar Tapestry by Guy Gavriel Kay. It's a blend of celtic mythology, fantasy, and arthurian legend. Some people don't like that it's basically an homage to LOTR, but it's one of my absolutely alll-time favourites.

For YA dystopian fiction, I'd suggest Divergent and Insurgent - also a trilogy, not sure when the third one is due out, off-hand.

One of my favourite sci-fi series is Phule's Company and the following books, by Robert Asprin. I also love Time Scout by him and Linda Evans. His writing is ridiculously clever and witty, and he's one of last century's greatest writers, in my opinion.

And finally, I love anything by Terry Pratchett - his Discworld series is amazing. So very very British and hilarious.

My non-fiction pick -

1. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York - Robert A. Caro
   
   
2. 9/10
   
   
3. Biography, History of New York, Political Intrigue
   
   
4. This is one of the best biographies I've ever read. Full Stop. Caro is a master writer, and an incredibly detailed researcher who must have spent a good portion of his life putting together a picture of one of the most influential men in the history of New York City. The book is huge, at almost 1400 pages and it will take you a while to get through it, but it is absolutely worth it. It's the tale of a man who, with no conventional source of power (personal wealth, elected office, corporate sponsorship, etc.) was able to run roughshod over not only the citizens of New York, but also Presidents, Governors, Mayors, Bankers, and Industrialists. This is the closest you'll get to a real life House of Cards. The Power Broker is a master class in the use of power, and the political realities facing American democratic institutions.
   
   
5. Amazon
   
   
6. If you like this, you might check out Caro's sprawling books on LBJ.
   
   My Fiction Pick. I'm not sure if I'm allowed to give two different recommendations, but tough titties, because this novel is one of the best I've ever read.
   
   
7. The Big Rock Candy Mountain - Wallace Stegner
   
8. 10/10
   
9. 20th Century American Fiction, The Great American Novel, Seriously Read IT!
   
10. I had no idea who Wallace Stegner was when I started this book. I thought my days of discovering 'the greats' were long over. I spent 2 years in a graduate english lit program and never heard his name mentioned once. I was never assigned this book in high school. And I can't for the life of me figure out how this guy has been so overlooked.
    The novel follows the Mason family as they travel the country trying to find their particular place in the world. I won't say more than that. If you liked The Grapes of Wrath, or East of Eden, you should check this book out.
    It is absolutely the best book I've read in the last year, and immediately threw my "top ten list" into question.
    
11. Amazon
    
12. If you like this one you might check out Richard Russo's Empire Falls.

>If there is less work to do, everyone can split the work up and work less. Those who work more or do more important work should be compensated accordingly.

How do you fairly define what is 'important work'? How is compensation determined from different types of of work?


>and decide in some democratic way in how to implement it and how to share the wealth. Unlike the totalitarian structure we have today.

What if the janitors in a big company collectively refuse to take any less pay then the highest payed scientist there? You can't get them out, it's collective ownership. Speaking of ownership, is it a 1:1 ratio by person? So said janitors would be the biggest voting block at Google? Is the ratio determined on prestige, skill, or even raw intelligence? How is that fair to those not endowed with said advantages?

>The space program has been driven by public institutions from the beginning. In fact it was the Soviets who started the space race by sending the first satellite and people into space. And we had to create a government program and plan our education around math and science to catch up with them. Capitalism wasn't going to cut it.

Yes! I am for this control of the market. Many pivotal technologies would not have come to exist were it not for government investment. But do you know what companies do to win those contracts? Compete. The government has an abundance of choice when choosing contractors, or simply investing/subsidizing sectors of the economy. While you could recreate this effect in a public system, why not let capitalism do what it does best? Competition.

>I mean, even at SpaceX, people know about Elon Musk but not Thomas Muller, who is the actual brains behind the company. He's an actual rocket scientist and its his work (along with his fellow engineers) that made re-usable rockets possible. Not some billionaire throwing his money around. Labor, not capital, gets things done.

Here is Musk's biography. While he undoubtedly gets help from others, he heads a lot of the technical development there.

>Labor, not capital, gets things done.

The new labor is robots, and the goal is to make people obsolete. Thus, day by day, as technology grows more powerful, human labor grows weaker. The very nature of technology implies immense existing capital. Look at semiconducters, where do you think most of them are built?

Thus, with a democratic means of production, where the labor is mostly robots, how do things even get done? With capital ideally being evenly distributed, everyone would have some of these labor saving machines, but organization into an economy would have to be run by the government.

Why not keep the free market system and give citizens a substantial monthly dividend? While $1000 is a start, I envision it getting much higher as automation truly comes into its own. Strong enough, the dividend would prevent massive capital accumulation, while still allowing all of capitalism's benefits such as inherent market efficiency, automatic, dynamic supply/demand adjustment, and innovation to manifest automatically.

We dont need to tear down the old. We just need strong adjustments to the existing one.

This might be a strange recommendation, but I'd recommend he read Biographies. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt is a great book which chronicles the life of this amazing figure. The sheer amount of mental strength and determination this guy had was crazy. There is also the book "Be My Guest" written by Conrad Hilton. You get to read about how this man started with nothing in a dead town and was able to create the largest hotel chain in the world. I love self help books, but at the end of the day they give you a tool without an application. That's why personally I enjoy reading Biographies since you get to see how the application of the tools makes all the difference. So tell him to pick out one of his idols. Doesn't matter if he loves sports, politics, movies, have him pick out one idol and read the biography of what it took to get that person to the top.

There are a fair number of popular level books about mathematics that are definitely interesting and generally not too challenging mathematically. William Dunham is fantastic. His Journey through Genius goes over some of the most important and interesting theorems in the history of mathematics and does a great job of providing context, so you get a feel for the mathematicians involved as well as how the field advanced. His book on Euler is also interesting - though largely because the man is astounding.

The Man who Loved only Numbers is about Erdos, another character from recent history.

Recently I was looking for something that would give me a better perspective on what mathematics was all about and its various parts, and I stumbled on Mathematics by Jan Gullberg. Just got it in the mail today. Looks to be good so far.

His relationship with his second wife Talulah Riley still seems to be extremely friendly and supportive? As far as I can tell she’s had nothing but quite lovely things to say about him and their marriages, and vice versa.

“Elon and I are best friends. We still see each other all the time and take care of each other. If this could continue indefinitely it would be lovely. When you’ve been with someone for eight years on and off, you really learn how to love them. He and I are very good at loving each other…”
Link

She also rejected the idea he was the ‘alpha’ in their relationship:

“Elon’s ex-wife Justine has described how, while dancing together at their wedding reception, he told her, ‘I am the alpha in this marriage.’ Given his extraordinary power, wealth and the fact he’s 14 years Talulah’s senior, you might guess that this has been the case with her, too. Talulah bristles and for the first time fixes me with a stare. ‘Alpha is a phrase that gets bandied about in America but it’s not something I really thought about before I moved there. I wouldn’t apply it to Elon or myself.’”
Link

ETA: I also found this quote from Riley taken from a Musk biography:

”Elon doesn’t have to listen to anyone in life. No one. He doesn’t have to listen to anything that doesn’t fit into his worldview. But he proved he would take shit from me. He said ‘Let me listen to her and figure these things out’. He proved that he valued my opinion on things in life and was willing to listen.”

As a longtime Christian, I came to a point in my life where I was desperate for a solution to my depression season (7 years in total). After suffering, prayers, therapy, and antidepressants as a last ditch effort I started to explore the possibility of psychedelics. I spent 6 months reading medical studies from Johns Hopkins and NYU as they studied for treatment to those with PTSD and cancer induced depression. Nothing but flying colors and no potential for addiction. I was interested.

I’ve had spiritual and mystical experiences in the past and had no idea what to expect. I had some hesitation because of its legality and the notion of “bad trips.” After time and consideration and the consultation of deeply trusted friends and a therapist I decided to give it a try.

To prepare, I spent time praying and writing my intentions for the time as a sacred space. I made of list of the things I wanted to explore with God including past relationships and trauma. I dimmed the lights and played minimalist music. I was ready. It was 4 hours of pure connectedness and healing to my heart sans an ego to combat the felt experience.

Doctors and scientists say that the experience is pneumatic (or a deeply fear spiritual experience). It certainly was. They also say it’s a very hard experience to describe (but I’ll give it a whirl). I felt known by God. I saw memories, heartbreaks, and traumas flash in my mind. I saw that God was there with me. I felt that he cared more than I ever thought possible. I felt a deep love of God. I felt one with God and it was nothing but beautiful. It felt kin to other spiritual experiences I’ve had at church or out in nature. Now on the other side of it, my depression is gone and my heart is open. I feel more connected to God after feeling disconnected for quite some time.

I believe that I had that experience because of my prayers and intentions. I hear that many people “manifest” their unconscious and emotions that they carry into the time. This is why some people have “bad trips.”

If you decide to proceed, I recommend doing a lot of therapy (preferably somatic based, EMDR) to uncover your trauma and unconscious triggers. Then, do your research. I’ll list a couple links below. Next, find a therapist (ideally the same one) to be with you while you are using. They can guide you back to the right space and keep you focused. That will help ensure a good experience.

Feel free to PM me if you have any other questions.

“How to Change Your Mind” by Michael Pollan
https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

“The Mind Explained: Psychedelics”
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt10948426/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/tim.blog/2019/09/10/largest-psychedelic-research-center/amp/

https://podcastnotes.org/2019/07/15/psychedelics/

https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/publications

Read The Worldly Philosophers it is a great book and helped me get a better understanding of how a bunch of genius motherfuckers helped develop and improve upon an economic system in a world where technology had so rapidly created such a crazy influx of supply without any idea of how to manage it that we had 10 year old children working 14 hour days for next to nothing. I'm all for being "down with the man" and all that but when I look at it historically I see capitalism creating an overall improvement in the living conditions of the nations that have adopted it. Of course, you might say that the only reason we have managed to attain such improvements through capitalism is because we crushed and stole from weaker nations like those in the middle east and Africa and there your argument would not go entirely unjustified. But remember, previous to the world wars the united states was a successful nation that practiced a decent amount of isolationism and other countries as well have maintained relative success with isolated capitalistic economies. Does that mean they are perfect? absolutely not. we still have much to learn and fucktards like many major corporations CEO's and the politicians they employ don't help. But, as it stands its the best we got and hopefully we can improve upon that

Where does toll money go after being collected by various bridge and tunnel ''Authorities''?
The MTA is not a .gov, but one of those Federal Reserve style quasi private agencies. http://web.mta.info/mta/investor/ .... EDIT--> This one is very very juicy as regards the clear separation of state and MTA: http://web.mta.info/mta/investor/pdf/stateservice.pdf
They are separate entities for sure.
In revealing how Moses did it--how he developed his public authorities into a political machine that was virtually a fourth branch of government, one that could bring to their knees Governors and Mayors (from La Guardia to Lindsay) by mobilizing banks, contractors, labor unions, insurance firms, even the press and the Church, into an irresistible economic force--Robert Caro reveals how power works in all the cities of the United States. Moses built an empire and lived like an emperor. He personally conceived and completed public works costing 27 billion dollars--the greatest builder America (and probably the world) has ever known. Without ever having been elected to office, he dominated the men who were--even his most bitter enemy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, could not control him--until he finally encountered, in Nelson Rockefeller, the only man whose power (and ruthlessness in wielding it) equalled his own.
The editorial reviews on that link should be noted.
"Surely the greatest book ever written about a city." --David Halberstam
"Caro has written one of the finest, best-researched and most analytically informative descriptions of our political and governmental processes to appear in a generation." --Nicholas Von Hoffman, The Washington Post
"Caro's achievement is staggering. The most unlikely subjects--banking, ward politics, construction, traffic management, state financing, insurance companies, labor unions, bridge building--become alive and contemporary. It is cheap at the price and too short by half. A milestone in literary and publishing history." --Donald R. Morris, Houston Post

"The most absorbing, detailed, instructive, provocative book ever published about the making and raping of modern New York City and environs and the man who did it, about the hidden plumbing of New York City and State politics over the last half-century, ... A monumental work, a political biography and political history of the first magnitude." --Eliot Fremont-Smith, New York
"One of the most exciting, un-put-downable books I have ever read. This is definitive biography, urban history, and investigative journalism. This is a study of the corruption which power exerts on those who wield it ..." --Daniel Berger, Baltimore Evening Sun
"In the future, the scholar who writes the history of American cities in the twentieth century will doubtless begin with this extraordinary effort." --Richard C. Wade, The New York Times Book Review
One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes.
Where exactly does the money go?
Anyone with a short and casual answer is deeply deeply deluded.
What is the MTA?

I've read and loved almost all of the recommendations already here (TAMORA PIERCE). But to add some that haven't been mentioned (and trying really hard to not overload you with 20 books at once), I read and reread Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown and its prequel so. many. TIMES. Maybe even more than I reread Tamora Pierce. Patricia McKillip, Maria Snyder, Patricia C. Wrede (Dealing with Dragons quartet), Althea Kontis, Francesca Lia Block, Libba Bray and Susan Fletcher (Dragon Chronicles) are similar authors to check out for awesome female-driven fantasy, with varying degrees of lightheartedness. Wrede, Fletcher, Snyder and Kontis all wrote books that lean a little less epic/serious, Block writes a lot in prose that's also a very quick (but more intense) read, McKillip tends to be more wordy but beautifully so, and Bray can kind of go either way depending on the series.

For more contemporary fiction, RACHEL COHN (of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist"). Her Gingerbread series has content a good deal more mature than Angus, Thongs, etc., but her style is similarly irreverent and witty and really fun. Seriously, check her out. Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons is like a much younger version of Cohn, still zingy and sweet. For a quieter modern-day read, Garret Freymann-Weyr writes realistic (more mature) young adult relationships, and introduced me to the idea of bisexuality in a sort of roundabout way.

Julia Alvarez relates stories about the Latina-American experience incredibly well, although I think the first book I read by her takes place solely in the Dominican Republic. According to my reading list, I guess young me got sick of reading about other white people, so I'll add Marjane Satrapi's hilarious graphic novel Persepolis and the more sedate Shabanu series by Suzanne Fisher Staples.

I'd also strongly second comments for Gail Carson Levine, E.L. Konigsberg, and did I mention Tamora Pierce?

(I tried to link a lot of authors to my faves from their work, but I won't be mad if you never look at any of them. Is your reading list long enough now? Also, I know you didn't ask for a ton of fantasy/historical fiction recs, but I think a lot of us defined our teenagerhood by and identified more strongly with one of those series or another.)

tl;dr my top three recs that haven't been mentioned yet are Rachel Cohn, Julia Alvarez, and that one duo by Robin McKinley.

Nerves of steel come from confidence and being above fear. Confidence comes from practice and competition. Being above fear comes from a lifestyle of conquering fears.

If you want to be more comfortable on the street, figure out exactly what you're afraid of and get better at it. Are you afraid he's going to hit you? Learn boxing or muay thai or bjj. Are you afraid he's going to yell at you? Learn debate skills.

My dad was a firefighter for a decade. His dad trained WW2 bomber pilots. I asked my dad how he kept calm on intense calls. He said he would rely on his training and took every problem as it came. You have no idea what the scene is going to look like on your way there, but you can trust that you're the best prepared one there, so everyone's depending on you to take charge and lead. Planning ahead is very important, but more important is staying in the moment.

Meditation works out that muscle. Staying in the moment is a muscle in your brain that you have to work out. What fear and anxiety is is you living outside of the moment. Fear is you trying to bring the past into the present. Anxiety is you trying to predict the future. Live in the moment and take shit as it comes. The more you can do that, the more you can relax into chaotic situations with confidence. Just do your best and know that that's all anyone can do in life. We can only do our best.

Another thing is your mindset for life. Always do your best. Always give your fullest. Figure out your core values and live to them every day of your life. If you can say every day that you did your fucking best, then you are going to be able to say "I am ready to die today" and you won't walk around terrified of death. Death is the root fear of all the fears. If you can conquer the fear of death, you will be very strong.

.

There's a lot more to this, I'm just kind of rambling off what comes to mind before I go to work. But this will get you started. I wish you all the best and I hope I've helped some.

Some good resources are Shambhala, The Art of Learning, On Becoming a Leader, Better Under Pressure, Leading at the Edge, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, and then this interview with Rickson Gracie (one of the greatest fighters to ever walk the Earth).

First and foremost, 48 Laws of Power. It will show you 100+ ways other people have tried and where they failed and succeeded. It's a great introduction. Get this first.

A lot for these are free on gutenberg.org

Meditations - On being ethical and virtuous in a position of power.


33 strategies of war - A great companion to the 48 laws.

Art of war - Ancient Chinese text on war and power. All but covered in 48 laws.

Hagakure - Japanese text on war and power. All but covered in 48 laws.

On war - Military strategy from Napoleonic era. All but covered in 48 laws.

Rise of Theodore Roosevelt - Amazing book.

Seeking Wisdom from Darwin to Munger - Abstract thought models and logic patterns of highly successful people.

The Obstacle is the Way - Not labeled a book on power, more like thriving during struggle, which is important to a leader.

Machiavelli: The Prince - Pretty much the opposite of meditations. All but covered in 48 laws.


Also, here's a good TED talk on why power/civics is important to study: http://www.ted.com/talks/eric_liu_why_ordinary_people_need_to_understand_power?language=en


If you've gone over these and want something more specialized, I can probably help.

Are you planning on taking us over with force or charm?

> I feel like I get a slight head change when I do it.

That feeling of getting a 'head change' will increase as your bran/mind gets this skill of meditating developed.

The effect can be quite pronounced.

> I do feel as though I have more mental energy and focus after doing this (placebo maybe?).

It's not at all a placebo effect. It comes from the fact that you have made your mind more efficient. Imagine a river that runs silently, so deep and quiet that it doesn't seem to move at all. Then imagine a whitewater stream that is chaotic and wild. Which has more power?

By harmonizing the flow of your mental energy, you stop it being wasted in chaotic patterns, which leaves you much more calm, rested, and energized.


>Eventually if I lose focus with reading will meditating for 10-15 minutes help bring the focus back?

Yes, although taking a light walk and breathing deeply with fresh oxygenated air will help as well.

Also, the meditation breaks will refresh and recharge you as well. After a while you could be surprised with what even a 5 minute meditation can do for you.

Part of what is going on when you are losing focus is that there is an internal conversation happening in your bran about the reading material that eventually takes over and takes you off track. You will find after a few months of continued practice that this conversation will start diminishing leaving you with a focus that will help you retain and remember the material much more efficiently.

>Very pleased with the results I've seen thus far. If you have anything you have read that you found especially helpful in your journey I'd love to have it.

What really got me going in meditation was a set of home-study lessons from an Indian yogi named Paramahansa Yogananda who came to America in the 1930s to teach meditation and internal yoga methods for achieving bliss to westerners.

He wrote the book Autobiography of a Yogi and while It deals with spiritual things, i figured that 'this guy could teach me how to meditate'. So I sent off for the home-study series of lessons he wrote in the science of internal yoga and meditation, and it actually ended up delivering in the promise he made of learning how to get in touch with inner peace and joy.

So that's how I ended up getting so excited about meditation -- essentially using Paramahansa's techiques of meditation I ended up learning to have spiritual experiences on demand. Which is pretty cool. The techniques themselves deal with the breath and so on, and the idea is that when the mind gets quiet enough then you can directly experience the inner bliss that is at the core of your being. What worked for me since I was extremely skeptical is that you can prove everything for yourself by direct experience.

I know you are basically looking for non-spiritual techniques / outlook on meditation, but since you asked, this is the stuff that's been inspiring me, teaching me, and thinking that meditation is the best thing ever.

Ohh I got some goodies for ya, Hermann Hesse is amazing and opened me up to many books.

1. Just buy it right now..seriously. The Book of Mirdad by Mikhail Naimy
   
   
2. Another Classic by Herman Hesse Demian
   
   3)Another with a similar feel as Siddhartha The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
   
   So these top 3 are the "closest" to Siddartha that I've read. You will defintely like the top 3, they are amazing books with such fundamental truths told through a story. All easy to read and similiar in length.
   
   These next 4 are just suggested for anyone that is into these types of books, I would almost guarantee that you will love them! They are just less "story" like. The Autobiography is an amazing read, and is indeed a story but it's non-fiction. The Way of Zen is just a beautiful book, but is not a fiction along with the Bhagavad and The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (The author actually suggests Siddhartha in it!)
   
   
3. If you liked Siddhartha heavily for it's spiritual aspects and the effect it left on you, this book has changed me deeply (they all have but this book is a little different) The Autobiography of a Yogi by
   Paramahansa Yogananda
   
   5)And his translation of The Bhagavad Gita
   
   6)Good ol' Allan Watts The Way of Zen
   
   
4. Another highly suggested book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma
   
   Enjoy my friend!

Books: I'm reading She's Not There and my wife has found _Transgender 101_ to be very useful too.

Videos: I liked How do I know if I'm Transgender? and the series from "The Transition Channel" (like with Are You Transgender?) was quite good too.

Personally I really liked this article: Transition Deconstructed as it showed a positive story coming out of a spouse transitioning. I find that there are so few of those, and would really love more resources showing a positive outcome for families!

I'm really looking for resources about how to transition with young children (toddlers) and books to help them understand what's going on. Definitely not sure of how to go with that other than _I Am Jazz_, which is aimed at children a bit older than toddlers.

What else has helped you? Thanks so much for sharing!

Initially I'd avoid books on areas of science that might challenge her (religious) beliefs. You friend is open to considering a new view point. Which is awesome but can be very difficult. So don't push it. Start slowly with less controversial topics. To be clear, I'm saying avoid books that touch on evolution! Other controversial topics might include vaccinations, dinosaurs, the big bang, climate change, etc. Picking a neutral topic will help her acclimate to science. Pick a book related to something that she is interested in.

I'd also start with a book that the tells a story centred around a science, instead of simply trying to explain that science. In telling the story their authors usually explain the science. (Biographies about interesting scientist are a good choice too). The idea is that if she enjoys reading the book, then chances are she will be more likely to accept the science behind it.

Here are some recommendations:
The Wave by Susan Casey: http://www.amazon.com/The-Wave-Pursuit-Rogues-Freaks/dp/0767928857

Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh: http://www.amazon.com/Fermats-Enigma-Greatest-Mathematical-Problem/dp/0385493622

The Man who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman: http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Loved-Only-Numbers/dp/0786884061/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1405720480&sr=1-1&keywords=paul+erdos

I also recommend going to a book store with her, and peruse the science section. Pick out a book together. Get a copy for yourself and make it a small book club. Give her someone to discusses the book with.

After a few books, if she's still interested then you can try pushing her boundaries with something more controversial or something more technical.

Seems like the body is great, but if you think your mind is lacking, you have to train that too! Mens sana in corpore sano, you know. I will like to support the idea of meditation; guided meditation is great, and it really helps you put things in perspective and create the self-awareness that you need to know where you stand. Also, I'll recommend you read Meditations, by Marcus Aurelius. Seriously a good read, and it's cheap (or free online)

You said it yourself man, cannabis elevates mood. Which is how it's used to treat PTSD, it stabilizes your mood and makes you happier and more compassionate.

I think plant medicines as a whole can be used interchangeably in some cases, which is a great benefit compared to specific and targeted pharmaceuticals you're probably used to that only treat one thing and one thing only. Not everyone wants to go through an intense psilocybin experience, some people might not be mentally ready, or they may have tried it and might be in the small population of people that psilocybin doesn't work for. Cannabis isn't just a one trick pony, and neither are many other plant medicines & drugs that are soon to be legalized. MDMA has also shown great promise I believe. MAPS is actually about to go through a 3rd wave of trials soon for psilocybin and if it performs well, it will then go straight to the FDA and probably be legalized. MDMA is expected to be legal sooner than that for treatments. Michael Pollan talks about this on a recent podcast with Joe Rogan which is here, as well as in his recently released book that can be found here, also check out his Twitter as he Tweets out research and news on drug studies often. Trump could also soon be signing a bill that would allow terminally ill patients to try cannabis, LSD, MDMA, or psilocybin to alleviate their symptoms, article here. Interesting things on the horizon for sure.

A good book that is fun to read and has tons of anecdotes about scientific history is A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson

In a similar vein, you can ponder the more mind-bending aspects of our Universe with Stephen Hawkings A Brief History of Time

Other than that you may find some interesting things in the works of Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins (I personally recommend Dawkins's The Selfish Gene)

If you are sick of scientific titles you can also check out Freakonomics or The Worldly Philosphers

These Books are all written for a general audience so they go down pretty easy.

Deciding which major in College can be tricky - I was lucky since I knew exactly what I wanted to study before I left High School, but maybe some ideas in these books will pique your interest. My parents always told me to go to school to study something I love, and not to train for a job. I'm not so sure this advice carries through in "recovering" economy. You may want to factor in the usefulness of your degree post-college (but don't let that be the only thing you consider!).

Good Luck, and enjoy!

hmm... this is tough are you more interested in theory or application? Political Economy can get very abstract/philosophical which I personally like but it turns some people off.


why nations fail: great overview of Institutional/development economics by two phenomenal economists, Acemoglu and Robinson.

violence and social orders Another great book, it was written as introduction to North's theories for non-economists. Very interesting work.

capital in the 21st century: I don't think this book needs an introduction. But just in case, Picketty examines the interplay between economic prosperity and income inequality. The book was written with non-economists in mind. The math will greatly help your understanding but it's not necessary to understand his general arguments

Capitalism a general introduction to socioeconomics that is concise and a variety of topics on capitalism that have puzzled (and sometimes outraged) sociologists since the 19th century.

Development as Freedom: Sen argues that open dialogue, civil freedoms and political liberties are prerequisites for sustainable development.

The Worldly Philosophers: The Lives, Times And Ideas Of The Great Economic Thinkers: A history of economic thought/theory that really elucidates the intersection of politics,economics and philosophy.

First is Alexander Hamilton by Ron Chernow. It's a big book, but the way he frames the historical setting and the motives and characterization of Hamilton and those around him make the book hard to put down. He shows Hamilton to be both brilliant and overly passionate, capable of love of country and family political ruthless and egoist that led to his downfall. Though I had a leaning before towards Hamilton from his position as the US' first Sect. of the Treasury, Chernow's book solidified him as my favorite Founding Father/Constitutional Framer (before it was cool).

Second is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. Morris' writing is good, but what really makes the book awesome is Roosevelt himself as he overcomes his early childhood weakness to make himself a physical and political force of nature as a young man. Whether it's his two week adventure to capture boat thieves through icy rivers and snow storms, his incredible knowledge that crafted a Navy guide that would be used by the US Navy for decades, to his philosophy on masculinity, Morris' book on Roosevelt's life is a manifesto of not accepting what life gives you, but getting what you want out of it.

What part of science? Scientists, like a biography? Scientific theories (natural philosophy), starting with the Greeks? Scientific philosophy?

Sir Roger Penrose in his book "The Emperor's New Mind" goes over the (relevant) discoveries/theories of science in a chronological order and uses them to argue that consciousness isn't something you can code into a machine. He touches on a lot of subjects and it may seem really dry if you're not passionate about science, but IMO it's very interesting read, despite him not having a very convincing argument, mostly because we don't know enough about the human mind yet.

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a biography of Paul Erdos. I like the book because it describes Erdos as a person who has an exceptionally passionate work ethic and I admire mathematicians.

I think you'll have a hard time finding what you're looking for because of the lack of specifics in your question. You might want to narrow it down to, whether you're interested in biology, chem, psychology or physics or something else like archaeology or biographies. Otherwise you won't find a great depth, because each field has become massive in terms of literature, and each are filled with bewildering questions that can kickstart a philosophical discussion.

Good luck with your search though!

I feel the best way to go about this is to gain a general sense of the outline of history, which isn't nearly so difficult as it may seem as first once you realize that the "history" that mainly gets talked about is only about 3000 years. Learn some sign posts for that span, and then from there you can fit anything new you learn into the general outline you've gained. A couple good books for gaining those signposts are:

A History of the World in 6 Glasses. A phenomenal starting book. Gives very, very broad strokes on the entirety of human development, from pre-history when we first made beer inside hollowed tree trunks (it predates pottery), all the way to the dawn of the global economy with the perpetual success of Coca-Cola.

Roots of the Western Tradition An incredibly short (265 pages!) overview of Ancient Mesopotamia up to the decline of the Roman Empire written in very accessible language. Phenomenal text.

The Story of Philosophy. A bit more dense than the other's, but a tour de force breakdown of the history of Western thought.

Obviously the above is very Western centric, I wish I could recommend similar books that cover Asian history, but sadly I can't think of any (though hopefully others will point some out in the comments). Still though, once you gain the signposts I talked about, learning Asian history will still be easier as you can slot things into the apporpriate time period. Like "Oh, the first Chinese Empire (Qin Dynasty) rose up in the same era as Rome was rising as a power and fighting it's wars against Carthage". Or, "Oh, the Mongols took power in Asia just about right after the Crusades."

As a little bonus, they may not be accurate but historical movies can still help pin down those first signposts of your history outline. Here's a little list.

I just read the origins of Cloak & Dagger, which was a great story across 4 comics collected into a graphic book. It's out of the 80s but it's darker than most of the time. Would be similar to how Daredevil is portrayed currently.

Amazon Link

Persopolis: I'll be honest, I did not read this one - but saw the movie which was literally animated in the same style and I assume the story was identical because it was soon good.

Amazon Link

Another classic like this is Ghost World from Daniel Clowes. Maus would be another classic in this type of graphic novel. For the super heroes, Killing Joke and Dark Knight seem to be required reading.

What is your particular interest? I can offer you some general suggestions, but if you are interested in a certain era or neighborhood or person I can point you in that direction too.

For a succinct history going up until the 2000s, look to The Restless City. If you are more interested in power politics of the 20th Century, The Power Broker is the definitive source (boo Robert Moses). Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning is a great look at the city in 1977, a tumultuous time both politically and socially.

Much of the history of the city after the mid-19th Century centers around the development of railroads, elevated trains and the subway system. 722 Miles and A Century of Subways are both excellent books about the growth and evolution of the transit network. I picked up Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America for the 100th Anniversary of the Terminal, and it was an informative and lively read.

I really think you should read How to Change Your Mind. It dives into the details of how psychedelics help with depression and you'll probably be able to relate to some of it. Turns out most who use it for depression find that it doesn't last long term for them either, but does provide a break usually at least for a few months. To me that seems like a good enough jumping point to be able to reconnect with emotions. Michael does a much better job of analyzing and theorizing the functions and possibilities.

I truly wish you had the ability to use this medicine with an experienced therapist who maybe could've made the experience more enjoyable and rewarding.

I infer that you are looking for a secular handle on a normative ethical theory.

Right Conduct: Theories and Application by Bayles and Henley provides a basic outline of essential philosophical thinking from an academic perspective.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, while authored by a Mormon, doesn't have any religious content that I recall and outlines some very useful heuristics for living a moral life. It's targeted at a general audience.


Meditations by Marcus Aurelius does contain some religious content (though here he's not referring to YHWH), but still has a lot of useful ideas with secular application.

You may also be interested in The School of Life and The Greater Good Science Center.

Good luck.

Don’t listen to this person below, like yikes. Have you read any biographies or autobiographies of women who have transitioned? Some of them will have stories that you can relate to and I highly recommend it. They also have written letters to their loved ones and I recommend taking a page from them in how to format the letter and what to say.

Try “She’s not there: A life in two genders” by Jennifer Finney Boylan. She’s an English professor married with two kids before transitioning and her relationship survived with her wife and children. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders https://www.amazon.com/dp/0385346972/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_UGi8BbB6YG241

I borrowed a lot of inspiration from her letter when I transitioned, and granted I’m not married or have any kid or was even in a relationship at the time.

You also need to see a therapist. You can’t take care of your family without first taking care of you. It’s like the oxygen metaphor for when oxygen masks on a plane deploy. You put yours on first, then help your kids.

When you find a story that resonates with you, have your wife read it too. It sounds like maybe she knows already about your gender crisis, and she’s still here, so she can be a great ally. Don’t push her away.

Sup homie,

Now firstly before I get into the actual books I am going to recommend Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast - He's effectively doing audiobooks via podcast these days (I'm actually re-listening to "Prophets of Doom" at the moment, it's about 4 hours 30 minutes of excellent storytelling of historical events) - Really, really recommend that. (you can also buy all the old episodes).


Now onto the History Nonfiction books themselves:



Michael Pollan - The Botany of Desire - While somewhat more of an analysis of how plants have become and evolved according to human cultivation the book does an excellent job of historically breaking down each major event and process involved.



John H. Mayer - Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan's Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws' Bloody Reign - Title says it all. Pirates. Open seas. History. Strong recommend.



Alfred Lansing - Endurance - Shackleton's Incredible Voyage - If you love an amazing story of stoicism, heroism, and amazing leadership then anything about Shackleton should be on your list. This epic tale follows Sir Ernest Shackleton's voyage on the Endurance with the aim to cross the Antarctic - which failed. What happened next throughout the following months is an monument to the incredible spirit of a man, his crew, and the desire to get everyone home.

If you need more try looking into the below:

Niall Ferguson - The War of the World

William L. Shirer The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich A History of Nazi Germany

Andrew Roberts - The Storm of War

Jared Diamond - Guns, Germs, and Steel

Marcus Aurelius - Meditations

Here's my list of the classics:

General Computing

• But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone
  
  
• The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
  
  
• Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
  
  
• Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
  
  Computer Science
  
  
• The New Turing Omnibus: Sixty-Six Excursions in Computer Science
  
  
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques, and Tools, 2nd Edition (aka The Dragon Book)
  
  
• The Art of Computer Programming
  
  
• Algorithms, 4th Edition
  
  
• Introduction to Algorithms, 3rd Edition (aka CLRS)
  
  
• Essential Algorithms: A Practical Approach to Computer Algorithms Using Python and C#, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Grokking Algorithms: An Illustrated Guide for Programmers and Other Curious People
  
  
• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, 2nd Edition (aka SICP, available for free on the MIT website)
  
  
• Discrete Mathematics with Applications, 4th Edition
  
  Software Development
  
  
• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems by Martin Kleppmann
  
  
• Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (aka The Gang of Four)
  
  
• Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer: your journey to mastery, 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
  
  
• Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things
  
  
• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship
  
  
• Programming Pearls, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Soft Skills: The Software Developer's Life Manual
  
  
• Hello, Startup: A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams
  
  
• Hacker's Delight, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams, 3rd Edition
  
  Case Studies
  
  
• The Soul of a New Machine
  
  
• Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
  
  
• Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
  
  
• Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet
  
  
• Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer, 3rd Edition
  
  Employment
  
  
• Cracking the Coding Interview: 189 Programming Questions and Solutions, 6th Edition
  
  
• The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide: How to Learn Programming Languages Quickly, Ace Your Programming Interview, and Land Your Software Developer Dream Job
  
  
• The Self-Taught Programmer: The Definitive Guide to Programming Professionally
  
  
• The Passionate Programmer: Creating a Remarkable Career in Software Development
  
  Language-Specific
  
  C
  
  
• The C Programming Language, 2nd Edition
  
  Python
  
  
• Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: Practical Programming for Total Beginners, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Python Crash Course: A Hands-On, Project-Based Introduction to Programming
  
  
• Python Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Effective Python: 59 Specific Ways to Write Better Python
  
  C#
  
  
• The C# Player's Guide, 3rd Edition
  
  C++
  
  
• The C++ Programming Language, 4th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with C++: from Control Structures to Objects, 9th Edition
  
  Java
  
  
• Introduction to Java Programming and Data Structures: Comprehensive Version, 11th Edition
  
  
• [Java: A Beginner's Guide](https://www.amazon.com/Java-Beginners-Seventh-Herbert-Schildt/dp/1259589315/, 7th Edition)
  
  
• Java: The Complete Reference, 11th Edition
  
  
• Core Java Volume I - Fundamentals, 11th Edition
  
  
• Starting Out with Java: From Control Structures through Objects, 6th Edition
  
  
• Effective Java, 3rd Edition
  
  Linux Shell Scripts
  
  
• The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Wicked Cool Shell Scripts: 101 Scripts for Linux, OS X, and UNIX Systems, 2nd Edition
  
  
• Linux Command Line and Shell Scripting Bible
  
  
• Mastering Linux Shell Scripting
  
  Web Development
  
  
• Learning Web Design: A Beginner's Guide to HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Web Graphics, 5th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming, 3rd Edition (also available for free on the author's website)
  
  
• JavaScript and JQuery: Interactive Front-End Web Development
  
  
• HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites
  
  
• You Don't Know JS: Up & Going
  
  Ruby and Rails
  
  
• Ruby on Rails Tutorial: Learn Web Development with Rails, 4th Edition (Note: this book is somewhat out of date compared to the live version on the author's website.)
  
  
• The Well Grounded Rubyist, 3rd Edition
  
  
• Practical Object-Oriented Design in Ruby: An Agile Primer
  
  
• Agile Web Development with Rails 5.1
  
  
• Programming Ruby 1.9 & 2.0: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, 4th Edition
  
  
• Eloquent Ruby
  
  Assembly
  
  
• Assembly Language for x86 Processors, 8th Edition

Will Durant's "The Story of Philosophy". I'm reading it now and I wish it was the first book I read. At 400 pages it definitely skips some major parts of history but it's written in a way that's very entertaining. It reads like a novel and makes the material accessible instead of getting bogged down with technicals like Anthony Kenny's history.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0671739166/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

A really great way to get "the flavour" of philosophy as they like to say.

hey OP, when i was around your age, i felt/acted quite similarly. it took me years, but now people often express complete surprise when i reveal that i am actually an introvert. so, alongside all the good advice already in this thread...

social skills can be learned. many times us INFJs don't want to make any moves until we feel that we understand the landscape. so, go learn the landscape. pick up some self-help books on conversational skills (and just about living a better life), and then put that learning to use. one of my favorites is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big. that one is not about conversation, per se, but it's written by an ENTP and i found it wonderful.

the other side of the coin is that, when you talk more freely, you will end up saying things that come out wrong, or stupid, or whatever. that's just life. you will never be perfect. you will never put out the perfect words all the time. mistakes happen, so teach yourself through mindfulness to accept them. sure, you'll cringe for hours when trying to fall asleep one night about something you said and what if the person you said it to thinks you're a total moron now? in those moments, do some breathing exercises, distract yourself, don't wallow in it, and i promise you, you will get over it. and not only that, you'd be repeatedly proving to yourself that life goes on and not to stress the minutia so much, and you will eventually lead a freer life that revolves around who you are as a human and not the opinions of others.

there's nothing inherently wrong with you. growing into yourself is a process, so try to be cognizant of that. do your best and don't be so hard on yourself, and try to teach yourself the skills you will need to get to where you want to be. the thing that turned my social anxiety upside down was working customer service jobs. it's awful, but it's basically akin to exposure therapy. just my two.

I'm glad you linked to this again—looks like some good reviews have been added in the last couple of days! Check out the main page...

>I bought this thinking it would be a how-to book. I wanted "How to set up your own Foundation for fun and profit." Also, would like to have seen a chapter on "Ten easy steps to setting up your own secure server in a bathroom." I do hear there's going to be a sequel, tentatively called "The Art of the Shakedown." Should be interesting.

And 318 people like this:

>This could be the first "book" in history to have more reviews on amazon the actual sales bwwwwaaaahAAHA lol

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/406180/

You are not defective. That would imply that being neurotypical is better. I don’t believe that, except that society’s constructs make it easier to be neurotypical.

One of the coolest guys, who designed the guitars for the rock band Kiss was autistic with Asbergers. You have hidden talents and ways that your brain can organize information that are superior to a neurotypical. You just have to find the way that works for you and train yourself to do it. These books are Asbergers related, I’m not sure what kind of autism you have but they are a good read.

https://www.amazon.com/Look-Me-Eye-Life-Aspergers/dp/0307396185

https://www.amazon.com/Journal-Best-Practices-Marriage-Asperger/dp/1439189749

Good luck and feel better!

Before you commit to it, read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. If it fires your imagination then computer programming may be is for you.

Another one to read is Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder which is much older, but easily readable by non coders. Again if it fires your imagination then coding might be for you.

CS can lead to many many careers - many more than when I did my degree (80s), but you need to understand where the world of computers is moving to and where you want to be in that space.

If you're just looking for more money, then perhaps you shouldn't be looking at coding as a panacea. Don't get me wrong, coding is fantastic thing to do - if it floats your boat. However it's main problem is that you constantly have to keep yourself up to date with new technologies and techniques. This requires you to have the passion and self motivation to do that training.

I'm been coding since I was 11 (1978) and have seen many many aspects of the industry and the trade. I will concur with some of the comments here that indicate that the degree itself isn't the answer, but could be part of it.

Either whatever you decide - good luck!

In the Heart of the Sea tells the true story that inspired Moby Dick, and is a great read.

If you like non-fiction, Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage and The Perfect Storm are also very good.

Michael Pollan, the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "The Botany of Desire", recently released a book on psychedelics and their potential to treat addiction and other mental issues.

It's called "How To Change Your Mind"

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

I cannot recommend this book highly (nyuknyuk) enough. Having tried LSD, psilocybin, and ecstasy, I can say that I really enjoyed most of those experiences. Of course, setting is key. You need to be in a good place, both physically and mentally.

This book is a revelation. Pollan does excellent research, and also documents his own experiences with the drugs that he profiles.

I wept with joy several times as he interviewed people who recounted how their lives were changed for the better after having a guided trip.

It was glorious.

Most recommendations I’ve heard are for 0.2g, up to 0.4g of mushrooms. It could be more but generally, what I’ve seen recommended is that if you can feel it, it’s too much. Dose one day, skip two days. It should make you generally feel like your day is better. Your brain can gain the ability to make new neural connections, among other amazing things. Check out the Paul Stamets interview on Joe Rogan around 46:00 and the fantastic
The Psychadelic Explorers Guide on The Tim Ferris show with Jim Fadiman, they discuss it right away. There’s also books, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594204225/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_ZKL5BbQ7K6JYQ (though Michael Pollan offers little on microdosing)
about this new frontier of psychedelics plus a new micodosing specific documentary.
Then there’s the wide variety of psychadelic research currently happening, leading back to OP.
Edit: formatting

History of science books are 80% of what I read, and Bryson's book was great, but many of the books that I'm seeing here are oddly not close to Bryson's in terms of style or content.

Just off the top of my head, The Man Who Loved Only Numbers would probably be an excellent read. It has been awhile, but I remember Lost Discoveries was along a similar vein with a similarly light writing style. How I Killed Pluto is pretty fun as well, although it veers off into personal stuff as well.

Does he like reading? If he does, buy him these books:

Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character

What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character

The man who loved only numbers

Those are amusing biographies of two scientists, Richard Feynman and Paul Erdos.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

The first book that comes to mind is Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. As an entrepreneur, I found it very inspiring—it's all about hard work, perseverance, and doing something that hasn’t been done before. I like to think that’s what we’re doing at 1933, developing unique products for the cannabis market that help people live better lives. I also enjoy reading anything by Ed Rosenthal or Jorge Cervantes, as both taught me how to care for the cannabis plant.

​

Great question!

I took Yoga at a college. It was offered as part of the exercise sciences program (phys. ed just wouldn't do any longer). The instructor was great and I benefitted and did recommend it to many people. It also had a blatant religious component. We were required to buy and read Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yogi. Then we had to complete a 10 page paper dealing with the text, the class, and our lives.

I enjoyed the physical development and noticed great gains (we had an initial set of tests and a final set to gauge improvement). I also enjoyed learning a bit about Yoga. It did occur to me that in p.c. new agey California religion could be taught and exercised in a public exercise class so long as it was not Christianity. Namaste.

Try the ice cube trick if the anxiety ever hits and you have a drink handy. I just hold an ice cube in my left hand until it melts. Can still shake hands and everything but the ice cube seems to force my heart to slow down a bit. My best guess is that it triggers the Mammalian Diving Reflex and turns off whatever is derailing.

That trick came from a Viet Nam Vet, has been a huge help as time has gone on.

As for things sticking around, now that I'm well into my 40's the flashbacks and nightmares seem to have slowed to almost nothing - though they can still get triggered by trauma anniversary and other surprises. I have one trauma around a car accident so anytime the brakes squeal behind me I get to have a fun day.

Totally agree that basic Meditation is necessary to get through, can't see it ever being accepted in the public school system here in the US though - hell some places refuse to teach Evolution.

I also think that Philosophy has helped me cope some - Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius have been incredibly helpful reading to sort of adjust the way I see the world these days. I highly recommend the two following books:

http://www.amazon.com/Enchiridion-Dover-Thrift-Editions-Epictetus/dp/0486433595
http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X

My favorite book is oryx and crake by Margaret Atwood... its a great dystopian novel by an amazing author!!

Surprise me, i have a fairly good size book wishlist! =)

Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy is an excellent overview of philosophy. While it is limited to a small selection of the most notable philosophers, each chapter is dedicated to providing a very readable summary of the ideas of one philosopher. I sincerely believe the best way to get into philosophy is to get a very general "historical map" of the big ideas. Once you have that, it becomes much more rewarding to pick a philosopher of interest and study them in greater detail.

you mentioned being a fangirl; i've been reading some amazing, recent sci fi works written by women authors lately, maybe you'd find them interesting? all 3 of these are among the absolute best sci fi i've ever read:

the time traveller's wife by audrey niffenegger

^ forget about the movie, the book is fantastic

oryx and crake by margaret atwood

^ nice and dark

lilith's brood by octavia e. butler

^ amazon reviews calls it "profoundly evocative, sensual -- and disturbing", which sums it up pretty well

> Tesla was not a poor overlooked genius in his life.

And yet for many people (myself included) it may literally be the band Tesla, or something like the Oatmeal comic that may introduce them to the topic.

And I had numerous classes in science and engineering that certainly should have touched on his work but didn't. In fact the other week I took a tour of a museum where I needed to fill in much needed information that was otherwise a one-sided Edison homage.

But I would encourage, like you, for other people to go out and read what they can on the topic. Books like:

• Man out of Time
  
• The Inventions, Researches, and Writings of Nikola Tesla
  
• Empires of Light
  
  And while you bring up Wozniak, you grossly exaggerate what The Oatmeal did to the point of being comical, but you know I'd almost like to read a treatment of him by The Oatmeal because Jobs will far outshadow him and I'm willing to bet he'll probably suffer the same fate in a few decades. Just the story of Breakout reminds me of a similar Edison/Tesla dichotomy
  
  And that perhaps is the reason people may tip the pendulum a little too far in the other direction. It just so happens that sometimes Cracked or The Oatmeal may actually introduce people to things that neither conventional media nor our "Texas approved" school books may cover adequately.
  
  Don't knock The Oatmeal for making a reasonable attempt to shed some light in a comical way on a topic that deserves attention. Unless you are willing to give it a rebuttal point for point and then have the author respond to it as he did Forbes as cited below.
  
  For those interested in a follow up by The Oatmeal, here it is:
  
  http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response
  
  I agree with you in spirit, but I think your line of thinking still helps perpetuate the original problem. We need to actually stop turning people like Edison, Jobs and Gates into deities in the first place and then perhaps the folklore about others who make substantial contributions that many people have little knowledge of wouldn't have to fight so hard to rise to the surface.

I'll tell ya one thing, if you submitted a story/chronicle of how your class responds to this etc I would read the shit out of it.

Good on you for thinking outside the box and trying something new to help engage your kids. I had a spare few teachers back when I was in school who did but I was grateful for each and every one of them.

Keep being awesome!

Edit: Also, ever considered throwing V for Vendetta into your lesson plan? Or Persepolis for that matter.

Last thing, if you can find time or on the occasional handouts to include something from Calvin and Hobbes there's a lot of thought provoking strips that Watterson did that could easily be an aide for struggling readers to help them find deeper meaning in literature. Just a thought. Shouldn't be hard to figure out why my favorite job was working in a book store, heh.

Just taking Psilocybin won't really help fix much. You're better off using it in a therapeutic setting intended to help you deal with past issues. It's all about your intentions using it and the set and setting.

​

I can't recommend Michael Pollans book enough to help you understand how Psilocybin works and the therapy that goes along with it. https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

​

If you want a quick intro to everything, his interview with Tim Ferriss is really great:

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

https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/

​

Good luck, be safe, and take it slow. You're gonna be just fine.

Do you have any strong interests? For example, I love math, and the book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers, which is a biography of Paul Erdos.

If you are interested in graphic novels, and they are allowed for the assignment, Logicomix is the quest of Bertrand Russell for an ultimate basis of mathematics, and how the journey of understanding can often lead towards obsession and madness.

If you're interested in physics, Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman is a great book that is arguably a biography.

So, what are you most interested in?

Neat question. The two obvious big names from Urban Planning are Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. They epitomize Modernist planning and Post-Modern planning, respectively.

Robert Moses was one of the most important non-elected officials in the 20th Century, with the most popular account being Robert Caro's massive biography, The Power Broker. He was a fantastically smart legal wiz who came to power in the 1920s in New York and was the standard-bearer for sweeping top-down government approaches to development. He used his knowledge and authority to gain more and more power, creating some of the first modern highways in bridges all over New York City and state that helped influence the Interstate Highway Act and the urban car-centric model.

He can be viewed as quite a villain these days (think the unbridled power of Mr. Burns on the Simpsons), especially as academic planners now generally recognize the huge negative impacts that Modernist American planning had. There was massive economic and social displacement where things like the Cross Bronx Expressway ripped working-class immigrant neighborhoods in half, allowing commerce to escape urban centers and help create mid-century ghettoization. In short, the modernist approach can be seen as paternalistic at best and willfully concentrating power at the expense of the masses at worst. That said, depression-Era New York had huge problems (dilapidated housing and political corruption, to name two) that Moses' public works projects helped alleviate, and he was one of the country's most powerful advocates for public parks even in the face of massive growth and sprawl.

Moses sat on countless commissions and authorities for decades, his power only finally waning in the 1960s as the top-down modernist approach of (Post) World War II America faced its loudest criticisms with the related Civil Rights, Hippie, Environmentalist, Anti-Vietnam movements: Americans were finally scrutinizing the "Build Build Build Cars Cars Cars Roads Roads Roads" model that had driven cities for decades, which brings us to Jane Jacobs.

Jacobs (who got herself a Google Doodle last week for her 100th birthday), was a Greenwich Village liberal and fierce critic of the Moses-type technocratic planning. She was a community organizer who helped stop Moses as he tried to push through plans for highways in Midtown and Lower Manhattan. For those unfamiliar, these are two of the economic and social cores of New York City - she argued that roads are supposed to serve us, not destroy our important urban spaces.

If you ask a city planner what sole city planning book to read (myself included), the overwhelming favorite will be Jacobs' 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, the most important critique of modernist planning to date. Instead of sprawling highways and engineering projects, Jacobs saw the healthiest urban spaces as walkable, intimate, friendly and inviting and on a human-scale. She advocated for small city blocks, much wider sidewalks and mixed-use spaces instead of the classic Sim City "Residential/Commercial/Industrial" segregated zoning.

While there has since been plenty of critique of Jacobs' post-modern model, today's planning leans much closer to Jacobs' vision (at least in academic settings): Planners are more focused than ever on the post-modern walkability, mixed-use, high-density, equal-access, participatory planning model. Although this seems like a healthier place for planning than the Moses model of old, the academic ideals clash with the huge legacy of the Modernist planning approach (We can't just up and rebuild cities every time a theory changes, after all), along with the neoliberal financialization and privatization of so many of our spaces over the last few decades, so it's still as muddy as ever.

Anyway, that's a slight oversimplification of some of the history, but Moses and Jacobs were certainly the biggest avatars of the Modernist and Post-Modernist planning movements and have been as influential in the field of planning as anybody.

Oh boy have I got some books for you:

• The Conservatarian Manifesto, Charlie C.W. Cooke --
  The editor of National Review Online argues the path to a better conservatism lies in a marriage with libertarianism.
  
  
• The End is Near and it's Going to be Awesome, Kevin D. Williamson --
  National Review's Roving Correspondent argues that the American government is collapsing under its own weight and that's a good thing.
  
  
• Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance --
  A former marine and Yale-educated lawyer gives a powerful account of his upbringing in a Rust-belt town and his family's connection to Appalachia.
  
  
• The Evolution of Everything, Matt Ridley --
  The Fellow of the Royal Society and member of the House of Lords describes how spontaneous order is behind a great many advancements of the modern age and why centralized "design" is ineffective and prone to failure.
  
  
• The Vanishing American Adult, Ben Sasse --
  The popular freshman senator describes the crisis of America's youth, and how the solutions lay beyond the realm of politics.
  
  
• Our Republican Constitution, Randy E. Barnett --
  One of America's leading constitutional law scholars explains why Americans would benefit from a renewal of our Republican Constitution and how such a renewal can be achieved.
  
  
• A Torch Kept Lit, William F. Buckley, edited by James Rosen --
  A curated collection of Buckley's best eulogies, A Torch Kept Lit provides invaluable insight into both the eminent twentieth century conservative and an unrevised conservative account of the great lives of the twentieth century.
  
  
• Scalia Speaks, Antonin Scalia, edited by Christopher Scalia and Ed Whelan --
  This volume of Justice Scalia's finest speeches provides intimate insight on the justice's perspectives on law, faith, virtue, and private life.

While I'm busy expending my fifteen minutes of fame here in /r/mvis, this is the book that the author referred to: Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. Elon is a pretty amazing guy, and I think Ashlee did a pretty good job of capturing what makes Elon tick. Highly recommended.

I have a copy of the book [The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth] (http://amzn.com/0786884061) (Amazon) by Paul Hoffman. It is a great read if you like that sort of thing.

Erdos seems to be unique in his ability to ingest copious quanties of stimulants and improve his life.

I hope that you are not too affected by the disruptions and violence in the Middle East. I really hope for peace.

I would love to visit Israel one day...

I don't read a lot of action-y graphic novels, so I can't really help you with finding more stuff like Watchmen, Wanted, etc. (However, you have to promise me you'll read Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.)

But I can recommend more laid-back graphic novels if you're ever in the mood for something different! Give American Born Chinese, Anya's Ghost, or Daytripper a shot sometime.

Persepolis and Maus are also graphic novel must reads, no matter what genre you usually favor. And Scott Pilgrim was super popular recently, with great cause.

And, if you're willing to settle down for a long haul and read your comics backwards, I really can't recommend Fullmetal Alchemist enough. 27 volumes, but it's the best action series I've ever read and one of my all-time favorites of any sort of media. Check out a stack of it from the library and you'll fly right through it. That's what I did one afternoon, and my time has never been better spent.

Edit: More suggestions, typos.

Good self-help books are underappreciated. They can provide the push needed to us in critical moments of our lives, e.g. to overcome short-term pain / excessive risk-aversion when making an important decision, and let us change the fundamental frames / instill useful mantras into our lives, changing our trajectories significantly. These two self-help books definitely changed my life, providing both motivation and timeless advice:

How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life by Scott Adams

Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odd by David Goggins

I recommend these to all my friends and everybody who read them so far loved them (note that for max effect probably best to space them out and to first read Adams and then Goggins a few months later).

> is because my ability to focus for non-trivial stuff has been completely shot by years of doing nothing but surf the web (literally), I'm having a hard time getting anything systematically done, even basic reading.

Here's a method that doesn't work very well:

• Visuallize long-term goal for your life
  
  
• Think of how much smarter you need to be to fulfill the goal
  
  
• Collect large stack of books (or websites) with information you think should be in your head
  
  
• Try to read and memorize all the books
  
  
• Lament your lack of willpower
  
  Here's a better method:
  
  
• Visuallize long-term goal for your life
  
  
• Figure out specific short-term goals (not abstract self-improvement goals like "read a book", but specific accomplishments like "write a program to do x")
  
  
• Aggressively search books (and websites) for the specific information you need for each step of the short-term goal, ignoring everything else
  
  
• If you get curious about something else from your stack of books, go ahead and read it only until your curiosity is satisfied, then go back to your goals
  
  > rationalism is appealing both by virtue of the people I've been meeting and the practical effects it has been having for me on the occasions that I've managed to use it. But I'm more than a little intimidated by the SSC backlog: there's so much there! And that's just SSC. I have no idea where to begin.
  
  It is likely a mistake to think that rationality will be a philosophy that will change your entire life by virtue of reading things. There is a lot of very interesting material to read in the "rationalsphere", but most of it is not self-help material and you may be disappointed if you expect it will all be highly applicable to your daily life.
  
  What you will find is a lot of material that can help clarify your thinking and give you more knowledge about many intriguing domains. The "Sequences" (long series of blog posts collected into an E-book) by Yudkowsky are the standard resource that much of this community has read (or pretends to have read). If you have not studied science, probability, psychology, and philosophy, then it is pretty eye-opening stuff! Like taking a seminar course from a brilliant but highly eccentric professor. That said, some of it is boring or hard to read, so just skip around and follow the hyperlinks to the parts that interest you.
  
  If the main thing you have done for the past two years is to browse websites, then you must already know that reading good material is compulsive and so I am not sure what is stopping you from spending all your spare time reading the entire archives of LessWrong and Slate Star Codex. Either you are enjoying it and you keep reading, or you are not enjoying it and you stop.
  
  HOWEVER, if you are trying to force yourself to read through the annals of Rationality because you think it will fix your flaws as a person, or make you a genius, you will probably be disappointed.
  
  If you are really looking more for a self-help book of how to change your life with logic and rational behaviour, a decent one is How To Fail At Almost Everything by Scott Adams.

> A shift to community-based policing and more accountability for cops. An end to discriminatory practices like stop-and-frisk and the uneven enforcement and sentencing of marijuana and other drug laws. Legalization or decriminalization of marijuana. An increase to the minimum wage. More money to public infrastructure, like housing developments and mass transit.

How exactly would any of this help? I lived in Phila. Mass transit there was already great. Most of the people in inner-city communities are unemployed - and haven't had a job for generations, so minimum wage does nothing. Marijuana is actually a source of income - if you legalize it, you cut a money stream and actually hurting the community. Stop and frisk does nothing to economic well-being.

Source: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo18039324.html

> Roll-out of high speed internet to rural communities at affordable prices. Stricter regulation and anti-monopoly moves on large, predatory agricultural companies like Monsanto or industry financiers like Agstar. Worker protections, rather than corporate protections. Federal job retraining grants for dead and dying industries that will not return, like coal, to help workers transition to up-and-coming industries that don't need to be in big cities, like wind. Bringing back rescinded environmental protections (and creating new ones) to protect the game and wildlife of rural areas, keep those communities clean, and to ensure the health and viability of deteriorating farmland for the future.

So I happen to live in Seattle, and I also have a farm in Eastern Washington. So I get exposed to both a super-liberal and super-conservative part of the state.

> Roll-out of high speed internet to rural communities at affordable prices.

My internet access on the farm is better than my internet access in Seattle.

> Stricter regulation and anti-monopoly moves on large, predatory agricultural companies like Monsanto or industry financiers like Agstar.

That does absolutely nothing to a normal person working around here. Farmers are a very small percentage of the population, and they are relatively rich. What you think is a farmer is to a regular "peasant" what a city medium enterprise is to a regular worker. Monsanto is as relevant to a regular person in E-WA as Glass Steagal Act to a McD employee in Seattle.

> Worker protections, rather than corporate protections.

What does this mean for rural areas specifically? A large percentage of the population is unemployed or underemployed. Worker protections are about as relevant to them as caviar inspection to an urban African American - it's pointless to protect something you don't have.

> Federal job retraining grants for dead and dying industries that will not return, like coal, to help workers transition to up-and-coming industries that don't need to be in big cities, like wind.

If you think that wind can replace jobs 1:1 or even remotely that for coal, you need to move out of marijuana legal state. This is laughable. The fact is, ALL industries are dying and are replaced with automation. Some more, some less. Are you going to retrain everyone as a software engineer?

> Bringing back rescinded environmental protections (and creating new ones) to protect the game and wildlife of rural areas, keep those communities clean, and to ensure the health and viability of deteriorating farmland for the future.

How does this help economic well-being of people who live here? Oh yeah, it doesn't.

Source: https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547

> Time and time again, Democrats have been the party of the rural worker, pursuing policies that will improve their lives.

You people don't even understand how much you don't know. Really. Read the books above, you will sound less like a Hillary campaign worker and more like someone who can at least appreciate the reality a little bit.

> But because they also pursue policies that improve the lives of immigrants, or gays, or non-Christians,

They pursue these policies because their urban electorate is familiar with these issues. These policies do absolutely nothing to working class or rural people. That is what is called "identity politics".

> But if you're voting for a politician because he's "upholding the sanctity of marriage"

I am sorry to break your bubble, but that's not why people are voting for politicians. That's why SOME people vote for politicians, and it is convenient to push their quotes to dehumanize the enemy. How many rural people - actual, real rural people, not on reddit - did you ever speak politics with?

Source: http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/

A lot of people will suggest The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, which is a fine book, but the author didn't do enough research and was just writing a novel.

I'd recommend John Elder Robison's books. He has wrote multiple memoirs and lives a very vivid life; he, his son, and possibly (don't remember if she was diagnosed) his son's mother are all autistic. I loved the books, and I've never seen myself or connected with a book like I did with his. His books aren't hard to read and I believe there are four in total.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time:
https://www.amazon.com/Curious-Incident-Dog-Night-Time/dp/1400032717

Look Me in the Eye:
https://www.amazon.com/Look-Me-Eye-Life-Aspergers/dp/0307396185

Like you I work at a tech startup. When we were just starting, our business/strategy people asked the question you just asked. They opened a dialog with development team, and found good answers. I attribute our success in large part to that dialog being eager and open-minded, just as you are being right now. So, it's good tidings that you are asking.

For us, the answer came from conversation, but it also came from reading the following books together:

• The Soul of a new Machine. Pulitzer Prize Winner, 1981. It will teach you the texture of our work and of our love for it, as well as good role models for how to interact with devs.
  
  
• Coders at Work, reflection on the craft of programming Will give you perspective on the depth of our discipline, so you may know to respect our perspective when we tell you what the technology can or cannot do -- even when it is counter-intuitive, as ModernRonin described.
  
  
• Lean Startup It will teach you the means to deal with the difficult task of providing hyper-detailed requirements when the nature of building new software is always that it's new and we don't really know yet what we're building.
  
  
• Agile Samurai Will teach you agile, which ModernRonin also mentioned.
  
  
• Watch this talk by one of the inventor/popularizer of agile, Ken Schwaber Pay particular attention to the issue of code quality over time. You will soon be surrounded by devs who will be responsible for making highly intricate judgement calls balancing the value of releasing a new feature a tad earlier, versus the potentially crippling long-term impact of bad code. Heed Ken Schwaber's warning: your role as a manager is to be an ally in protecting the long-term viability of the code's quality. If you fail -- usually by imposing arbitrary deadlines that can only be met by sacrificing quality -- your company will die.
  
  
  
  

Thank you so much! I am pretty envious that you get to take an entire course on this period. I just get so excited learning about it.

There is the parish library right across the street from my house, but I never use it for some reason. I have three short books I want to read, and then I am going to read all of the books you listed. I can't wait to read about Theodore Roosevelt. Regardless of if you agree with his politics, he is just a fascinating guy.

I had never heard of settlement houses during the era, but I will definitely be researching that.

Here are the links to the Theodore Roosevelt biographical trilogy, just so everyone can find them easily:

Volume 1
Volume 2
Volume 3

This may be a little more specific of a book question, but are there any books that explain the Progressive Era's impact on the rest of the world? Can youalso give me the definitive beginning and end of the Progressive Era (according to your course)? I seem to get a lot of differing years. There may not be an exact beginning and end but I might as well ask; it is AskHistorians anyway. Does it include or exclude WWI?

As far as fiction goes, the best I have read is "Nevada" by Imogen Binnie. This is one of those books that I immediately started reading again as soon as I finished it the first time.

https://www.amazon.com/Nevada-Imogen-Binnie/dp/0983242232/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321271&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=Nevada+imogene+binnie

Another work of fiction that is not about the transgender experience but does touch on some themes that you may be able to relate to is "Middlesex" by Jeffery Eugenides. It is really well done and has several interesting story arcs that intersect in really interesting ways with the protagonist.

https://www.amazon.com/Middlesex-Novel-Oprahs-Book-Club/dp/0312427735/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321681&sr=8-1&keywords=Middlesex

As far as bios go I really liked Janet Mock's "Redefining Realness" and "She Not There" by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

https://www.amazon.com/Redefining-Realness-Path-Womanhood-Identity/dp/1476709130/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321501&sr=8-1&keywords=redefining+realness

https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Not-There-Life-Genders/dp/0385346972/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466321522&sr=8-1&keywords=She%27s+not+there

Edit: My auto correct want Boylan to be be Moylan.

Somebody in another comment mentioned Kevin Mitnick.

In addition to Mitnick's book, I'll also recommend:

Steven Levy's Hackers. It's a classic exploration of the birth of the computer age and hacker culture, with a lot of insights into the mindset of computer people, both white-hat and black-hat.

The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll, which is an account of him tracking down some serious hackers waaay back in the day. It's kind of vintage now, but I remember it being very well written and engaging. It's more like reading a novel than some dry academic piece.

In similar vein is Takedown, by Tsutomu Shimomura, which is Shimomura's account of pursuing and catching Kevin Mitnick. Also quite good, as it was co-written by John Markoff. There's a whiff of Shimomura tooting his own horn in it, but you definitely get a feel for the chase as it was happening, and learn a lot about the details of what Mitnick (and others in the underground hacking world) were actually doing.

Weird fact: I had no idea at the time, of course, but during some of Mitnick's last days before they nabbed him, he lived in an apartment building in my neighborhood in Seattle, right across from the grocery store where I always shopped. And about a year later, I ended up dating a girl who lived in that same building at that time, though of course she had no idea Mitnick was there either or even who he was. Still, I always wonder if I ever happened to stand next to him in line at the grocery store or something like that.

Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood would be an excellent choice. Her language is beautiful. This one's about a capitalist future controlled by corporations, social stratification, and rampant genetic engineering where a genius wipes out humanity and his best friend gets to pick up the pieces. Bonus: it's going to be an HBO series, so you'll be ahead of the game.

Probably the most influential urban planning book ever was written as a response to trends in 1960s development: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs. Along the same lines, the Pulitizer Prize winning The Power Broker by Robert Caro is the definitive biography of Jacobs-nemesis Robert Moses who was super important in the planning decisions made in New York City in the 50s and 60s.

Witold Rybczynski's Makeshift Metropolis includes a pretty good summary of urban planning throughout the 20th century in America, which is helpful for putting trends from the 1960s into context.

I don't have a specific book to recommend here, but also look into the design of Brasilia, since it was by far the biggest and most complete project designed on the sort of modernist principles that dominated the 50s and 60s urban planning scene. It's obviously not an American city, but many of the planners and architects who worked on it worked on American projects as well, and the ideas that influenced it were very important in American thinking on urban design also.

These are all sort of general interest recommendations, though. Sorry if you were looking for something more technical.

> Kopierte du virkelig samme svar du ga til en annen?! Gå ut å få deg luft.

Ja det gjorde jeg og det like etter å ha tilbringt 6 timer i skog og mark med over 30 venner. Go figure!

> Du er så opplagt en komplett slave til iden om hasj at jeg skal støtte forbud kun for gleden av å gjøre det vanskelig for sånne samfunns slasker som deg.

Det var da voldsomt. Så det du sier er at du støtter organisert kriminalitet?

Er forøvrig ganske mange år siden jeg brukte cannabis og da i samråd med en psykolog pga PTSD. Produsert av meg selv i et skap på soverommet, for å ikke støtte organsisert kriminalitet og ikke minst for å være trygg på hva jeg fikk i meg. Dette var på ingen måte vanskelig eller kostbart.

Det er heldigvis på ingen måte nødvendig lenger etter at jeg tok en tur til Costa Rica. Det anbefales om du har mulighet, men gjør grundig research i forkant. Vet forøvrig om norske psykologer som drar til Sverige for dette. Har også bekjente av en bekjent, som for mange er en veldig kjent person, som opererer i Danmark. (Det ble jaggu et sammensurium av en setning. Henger du fortsatt med?)

Om det blir for skummelt kan du kanskje lese denne boka Om du ikke er en leser, så finnes den også på lydbok lest at forfatteren selv. Den er skrevet av en utenforstående, for utenforstående som deg. Han er kjent for å være en svært god formidler og bruker her denne evnen i et forsøk på å sette ord på erfaringer, som er svært vanskelig å sette ord på. Den blir regnet som et sjumilssteg i den psykedeliske rennesansen, som nå er på vei også til Norge

"Michael Pollan is the author of seven previous books, including Cooked, Food Rules, In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma and The Botany of Desire, all of which were New York Times bestsellers. A longtime contributor to the New York Times Magazine, he also teaches writing at Harvard and the University of California, Berkeley. In 2010, TIME magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world."

“Pollan’s deeply researched chronicle will enlighten those who think of psychedelics chiefly as a kind of punchline to a joke about the Woodstock generation and hearten the growing number who view them as a potential antidote to our often stubbornly narrow minds....engaging and informative.”—Boston Globe



Her er et kort intervju fra CBS



Ser meg ut som en slave og en slask du ;)

Kan du nevne en eneste positiv følge av "narkotika"forbudet?

For light, math-related reading I've always enjoyed semi-biographical books about mathematicians, because these books usually include a summary of their mathematical contributions without getting too technical or dry. And they always get me pumped to do more math. Here's books I'd recommend in that vein:

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers An Autobiography of Paul Erdos. This one's a really great read with lots of Number Theory and Graph Theory in it. Not to mention a heartwarming bio of Erdos. If you haven't read this yet, give it a go.

The Equation That Couldn't Be Solved - A book about the history of Group Theory and how Galois was able to prove the Abel-Ruffini Theorem. At times it's a little simple, but it's fun to read, and it gives some insight into elementary group theory.

Of Men and Mathematics - not too much actual math in this one, but it's a very solid cheap, quick read. Well worth the money/time.

Marci Bianco writes: "billionaires' atmospheric ambitions are a 'desire to colonize' tinged with patriarchal undertones... The impulse to colonize, she writes, 'has its origins in gendered power structures,' including the 'entitlement to power, control, domination and ownership.'" But are these traits exclusively linked to men? Is entitlement exclusively a man-thing? Is she implying that these traits (power/control/domination/ownership) are positive or negative?

Bianco is very highly educated (with various degrees from prestigious universities, including an undeniable master's degree in women's studies) so I wished to give her a benefit of a doubt that maybe she's onto something. However, it is immediately obvious that she has not read Musk's biography (by Ashlee Vance) where it was made clear that Elon was interested in space exploration from early childhood (probably before he understood the meaning of the word "patriarchy.") Besides the usual extreme feminist rants about patriarchal pigs, I'm not sure what Bianco's point is. Is it a call for action for more women to get interested in the space program, and for billionaire women to start their own space exploration companies? Or for men to stop being interested in things that women are generally less/not interested in? In either case, Bianco's article appears to be tinged with feminist undertones.

In the case of space exploration companies (like Space X, or Virgin Galactic) the risks (financial, and operational) are enormous; so much so, that many people (regardless of gender) are not willing to invest in these programs. Women generally take on less risk in life (this is also evident in financial trading, where on average, women typically outperform men) and thereby would be less interested, and less likely to pursue such investments. But Bianco only considers three possibilities why someone would be interested in space exploration; and since it' not the "'nationalist' fervor of the Cold War nor 'the American spirit of invention'" (even though Musk is a naturalized American, and a long-time resident) it must obviously be the patriarchy. God forbid someone would think it would be really cool to go into space, and or feel that it's important for humans to have an escape plan.

Amazon's reviews are the best:
https://www.amazon.com/Stronger-Together-Hillary-Rodham-Clinton/dp/1501161733

my fav:

1.0 out of 5 starsThe Art of the Shakedown by Hill and Tim

ByElaineon September 16, 2016

Format: Kindle Edition

I bought this thinking it would be a how-to book. I wanted "How to set up your own Foundation for fun and profit." Also, would like to have seen a chapter on "Ten easy steps to setting up your own secure server in a bathroom."

I do hear there's going to be a sequel, tentatively called "The Art of the Shakedown." Should be interesting.

Yes that one sorry I did not clarify further. https://www.amazon.ca/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4

I've found similarities between successful and those still trying about them using a system rather than goals. My friend decided to be good at sales and uses that system to teach others in his brokerage and has made millions. Look at the franchise model vs opening 1 really good restaurant. Usually the prior will succeed (obviously with proper processes aka systems in place)

Any book by Mary Roach- her books are hilarious, random, and informative. I like Jon Krakauer's, Sarah Vowell's, and Bill Bryson's books as well.

Some of my favorites that I can think of offhand (as another poster mentioned, I loved Devil in the White City)

No Picnic on Mount Kenya

Guns, Germs, and Steel

Collapse

The Closing of the Western Mind

What is the What

A Long Way Gone

Alliance of Enemies

The Lucifer Effect

The World Without Us

What the Dog Saw

The God Delusion (you'd probably enjoy Richard Dawkins' other books as well if you like science)

One Down, One Dead

Lust for Life

Lost in Shangri-La

Endurance

True Story

Havana Nocturne

If you're solely interested in the Presidential History, Theodore Rex is an excellent biography on Theodore Roosevelt's Presidential years. I would strongly encourage reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt and Colonel Roosevelt, his before and after years respectively, as they are equally excellent.

She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders: This would be my highest recommendation. Jennifer Boylan is a great writer, and succinctly articulates what a lifetime of low-level dysphoria is like. This one or something like it, would help greatly with fleshing out your character's personality.

Whipping Girl: Probably needs to be read so that you don't make a tremendous misstep and offend a ton of people. Julia Serrano is an activist. She comes off as a political warrior, which was a bit off-putting for a mostly apolitical person such as myself, but her information is solid and comprehensive.

Warrior Princess, A U.S. Navy Seal's Journey to Coming Out Transgender: I haven't read this one yet, so I can't really say if it's an interesting read but, this one is sure to have some of the qualities that you're searching for. For someone to complete Seal training, and succeed in that extremely masculine environment, while suppressing her female nature seems to be just the kind of insight you need for your story.

Also, you can gain a better understanding by reading up on "dysphoria" here on AskTG. The experiences of the people here are vast and varied, so you may find a better feel for your character by delving into this subject. Does your protagonist just feel as though something is slightly off? Do they feel shame for wanting to be female, because of the lower social station? Does your character experience crippling fits of anxiety and depression, or anger at their plight?

Hope you find what you're looking for. We could use more trans-positive literature to counteract the bile that has been present for far too long.

You need to read the book Look Me in the Eye. Its a book about this guy growing up with Asbergers and having to grow up feeling different. I had to read it for my summer reading for university, but it was honestly one of the most interesting and changed my view on the whole subject, I'm extremely glad I did (its the only school assigned book I ever liked and that's saying something). If you haven't read it, I would pick it up and read it ASAP, the guy goes through the same stuff as you.

I'm still not keen on Bernie leading the party nor Warren. Folks like Keith Ellison would make a great DNC Chair. People like Tim Ryan need to go somewhere else. I like replacing the establishment, but Tim Ryan is less liberal than even Hillary Clinton.

I think that what Hillary wrote in Stonger Together is great! But we need a better messenger, and we need a better emphasis on economics.

I have no clue who should lead tho.

My husband and I have recently realized that LSD is now our favorite drug. We're amazed that something so tiny have such a crazy profound effect on your mind.

We've started reading "How to change your mind" by Michael Pollan and it's fascinating. He talks about the history of LSD in clinical studies in the 50-70s and that the drug influenced a lot of organizations, including the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous.

If you're interested in learning more about the drug, it's definitely an interesting read, it would be even better on audio book.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1594204225/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_zn-KBbYB9Z16H

I would recomend you to read Future Crimes by Marc Goodman https://www.amazon.co.uk/Future-Crimes-Digital-Underground-Connected/dp/0552170801?SubscriptionId=AKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q&tag=duckduckgo-ffab-uk-21&linkCode=xm2&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=0552170801 mostly deals with the non existence of electronic security though and how it is and can be exploited

Information and Corporate security is a very big subject, so it kind of depends where you intend to take your story. But you can start by reading the Wikipedia article about InfoSec https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_security and then see how each area fits into your story and work out from there.

Some realisim in how difficult it can be to track down a hacker, read The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Computer-Espionage/dp/1416507787/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500888747&sr=1-1&keywords=clifford+stoll very different from what you see in the media

IMHO the most interesting area in Information security is Social Engineering, it requires cunning and skill, and sometimes you can't stop admiring the talents and genius of some of these people. Read Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking https://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Engineering-Art-Human-Hacking/dp/0470639539/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1500889212&sr=1-1&keywords=social+engineering+the+art+of+human+hacking

Each year Verizon release their data breach report http://www.verizonenterprise.com/verizon-insights-lab/dbir/2017/ it is free to download (don't have to register, just click the download only button) I think that is possibly the best insight you can get into corporate security challenges in 2017

This was almost super hard for me until I thought about my grandmother and aunts. My mom is a distant mom. I feel like it is hard to explain in a few short sentences. She never seemed involved in my life. She was very much all about herself. My grandmother did a lot to raise me when I was a small child, well up until 4th grade and then times when I really needed her. My 3 aunts have always been there to bond with me over my moms actions. They help me realize that it isn't me, it is her. This can be hard when you think you aren't worth the love/time because your own mother doesn't want to be involved. I still struggle with those feelings in other areas. I'm glad you had a mom you can be proud of, and I'm sorry for your loss <3

Everyone in my family loves books :)

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0385721676/ref=cm_sw_r_udp_awd_.5Jhtb0PA280C

Hey Bean!

My advice is to dabble in the tradition for a little bit before you consider majoring in it. You have probably taken Physics, History, Math, Economics, etc, in High School and understand what sort of thing you'd be studying if you take any of these subjects as a major. This is not the case for philosophy. To decide whether you want to major in Philosophy, I think you need to do two things. First, you might want to dabble in the philosophical tradition as broadly as possible. You can do this by going through a book that deals with the history of the movement. I wish Will Durant's The Story of Philosophy was my introduction to the history of philosophy. Durant gives his own arguments for why philosophy is a worthwhile thing to study, but also gives a really nice, readable, and informative history of some of the greatest philosophers of all time. The second way to dabble in the field is by taking one philosopher central to the cannon and really get into him. (Hopefully, it wont always be a "him" :). Its not easy to decide which philosopher to read first. In any case, it will be massively difficult to get through whatever book you decide to read, since philosophy books are unlike any other book you were taught in high school. Personally, if i were you, I'd read Durant's work first, and choose whatever philosopher you enjoyed reading about most in that book, and then find the most important book that author has written. If you have trouble deciding that, of course feel free to ask us!

Well, it’s been a hell of a struggle, but as far as them accepting my identity, definitely!

What helped my dad to “get it” was him finally reading She’s Not There. Fun, funny, and insightful; it’s a good book for both trans people and family members (especially for family, actually), and it’s an easy read. I read it in two sittings. I definitely recommend it to everyone, even to those who don’t know any trans people.

Do you like fantasy stories? The Gita is actually just one chapter in India's greatest epic, the Mahabharata. It's an amazing story, and gives a great cultural background for Hinduism. Hindu's other epic, the Ramayana, is also lauded by many. I actually just began reading it recently.

Hindu's purest (and probably the world's longest) treatise on non-duality is the book at the very top of the bookshelf, Vasistha's Yoga. It's intense, so if you are just beginning, it's probably not the best intro to Hindu thought.

The most ancient written roots of pure Hinduism are found in the Upanishads. Eknath Eswaran's introduction and commentary are sublime.

A more modern, yet just as mystical take on Hinduism is The Autobiography of a Yogi.

If there is such a thing as evil, it wants nothing more than to have us believe that feeling joy is wrong. ~ Andrew W.K.

We we are at birth is less important to us than who we will become. We are expected -- indeed, obligated -- not just to be, but to become. This, in a nutshell, is the American dream. ~ Richard Russo in the Afterward for She's Not There

But we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments. Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses. ~Robert Ardrey

I'm a collector myself and have a whole book of them. These are just a few favs that I printed and laminated for my own room.

I'm tired of all the Tesla worship memes that are devoid of any critical thinking. Oooh, Edison stole everything Tesla ever did, blah blah blah. The full story is a bit more complex than that, as was his life. He was a complicated guy. He was brilliant, no doubt. But he was also a crackpot and made a lot of crackpot claims he couldn't back up. He was very generous when George Westinghouse had financial troubles. His OCD compelled him to calculate the volume of his soup before he could eat it. His best friend was a pigeon.

To appreciate the man fully in all his complexity, you have to accept all of those truths.

I highly recommend Tesla: Man Out of Time by Margaret Cheney. It's a good read.

Autobiography of a Yogi - While not mind altering, it gave me a new perspective on things I would have initially labeled as quackery.

The Believing Brain by David Shermer - explains the mechanics of why we believe in the things we do without any critical examination especially on topics like religion, politics, ghosts, and conspiracy theories.

Awareness by Osho - Osho might have been a controversial personality, but some of his writings were brilliant and refreshing. This book blew me away and provoked me to live life more consciously and with greater deliberation.

The Freedom of Choice by Tom Chalko - Simple but powerful read (only 100 pages)

There is a book that has had a lot of success in the bourgeois circles recently, to explain the Trump success: The Hillbilly Elegy https://www.amazon.fr/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547

It's about the way polite bourgeois love to hate the dirty proles while doing a lot of virtue signalling to say that they love the Diversity.

You can find many interview on Youtube about it.

Also, take a look at a previous post of mine on the ideological denial of the inconvenient science.

I compare climate denial among the right and intelligence denial among the left.

https://www.reddit.com/r/energy/comments/68zuum/trump_puts_critic_of_renewable_energy_in_charge/dh4ddpw/?context=3

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EDIT: I made another answer with more details if you are interested https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/comments/6du6wb/leaked_documents_reveal_counterterrorism_tactics/di5r7m5/

Have you looked into autism in general? Being in a close relationship with someone who is not neurotypical is difficult and I don't know if doing things with the RPW toolbox will necessarily help. Autism requires a schedule, structure, and a direct form of communication from a logical standpoint.

Based on what I've seen of people on the spectrum in my family and their relationships, the most successful relationship I've seen was actually where the wife acted in far different than a "RPW" way; almost like a manager. Their home is clean, they seem happy, their son is doing well. The least successful; they've been married for almost 20 years and they don't speak, she's cheating, and she's allowed his hobbies to take over the home and between his random hobbies of collecting various things and his failed small business attempts, the house is like an episode of hoarders, and their daughter is open about how miserable she is on social media.

This is anecdotal, and by no means fact. I'm just not sure whether submissive sexual strategy is going to fix this.

There's a chance that he's centered his curiosity on too many things at once and unguided, people on the spectrum can overwhelm themselves. Sounds like this could be happening to him. I don't know how or why he's so against getting diagnosed, in the States it could qualify him for state help and getting a therapist could help him deal with sensory overload. It's as far as I know, illegal to discriminate against autistic people.

This is an amazing book on the experience of someone on the spectrum, by the way, I highly recommend it!

I strongly agree that the history of mathematics and computing should be taught as an integral part of any CS / Math degree.

Two books you might want to read by way of a 'history assignment'.

1. Fumbling the Future -- How Xerox Invented, then Ignored, the First Personal Computer. I was there for part of it (late 70's) and this book pretty much gets it right.
   
   
2. The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. It's about the mathematician Paul Erdos and is one of the more amazing true stories I've ever read.
   
   
3. For extra credit, try the book The Man Who Knew Infinity. There's a recent movie based on the book (I haven't seen it yet); it's gotten a mix of very-good-to-meh reviews.

I love reading biographies, I find them more inspiring and enjoyable to read than self-help books. Currently I'm reading Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. I highly recommend this book to anyone, prior to this book I only knew what they taught us in History class, this explores so many more aspect of his life, some of which we can all relate to (like his constant drive to improve himself).

[Meditations by Marcus Aurelius] (http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X) is another great book I just finished. Written by a former Roman emperor who ruled during the time of frequent war, disease, and natural disasters, it's about how he dealt with it all as a leader by following the stoic philosophy. Amazing book and helped changed my outlook on the world.

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. This is one of those books that isn't geared to self-improvement, but to updating your view of the world. In it Taleb talks about how highly improbably events happen all the time, but we only see them as probable in hindsight. I think it's a great read since we tend to think in cause-and-effect ways, when in fact the world works more in a probabilistic way.

You're not going to want to read things that make you wish you had a computer with you, trust me. You have no idea how many times I have tried to force myself to read stuff like that when traveling or on vacation. Never works. So here's some stuff geared more towards the philosophy of development and programming that will be fun to read and will probably make you want to slow down, relax, and think about the concepts.

• The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering by Fred Brooks
  
  
• The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master by Andrew Hunt
  
  And for fun:
  
  
• The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll

Study philosophy! Seriously, just get a big ol' book on the history of philosophy like this one and wade your way through it. A good amount of political thought is based on philosophy, so understanding it is essential to truly understanding politics. You'll find yourself pondering the great questions like "What is the value of equality? Is it compatible with freedom? Is government necessary? Is there a such thing as a Just War? Are morals relative?", and your answers to these questions will determine where you lie politically. (I haven't actually read the book I linked to, but I've heard it's good and I don't want to recommend you that $100 textbook I read.)

Now, when you wade into the terrifying mess that is contemporary politics, you should learn and keep in mind all of the logical fallacies, because you'll hear lots of them. There isn't really any place to "get started" with this, just look around for sources of unbiased information. Never trust the mainstream media, don't trust fringe activists either. Of course they're both right from time to time, but you're better off doing in depth research on any position. If your like me, that means you'll be ambivalent about most issues simply because you don't have the time to learn about them. That's okay, sometimes it's best to just say "I don't know".

> I feel similarly about computer security, in broad terms. The scary thing isn't that "hackers" can do the cyber equivalent of teleporting into your neighbourhood and trying the lock on your front door; it's that we live in a culture where people habitually don't even metaphorically install locks (despite the fact that they're often absurdly effective and trivial in cost), and also the part where people habitually have no understanding of the value of their metaphorical household goods (often many times the value of the property itself).

The book The Cuckoo's Egg is, by the way, an excellent nonfictional account of an early computer security case that has strong echoes with many of the security issues we are facing today. (And is also a damn good read, highly recommended.)

So I like comics but I agree with Jacob that overall, comics are simplistic and less interesting than regular novels. They can be charming in that aspect, but I understand why many people don't like them.

With that said, Persepolis fits all the criteria Jacob asked for.

Persepolis is an autobiographical graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi depicting her childhood up to her early adult years in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution.

> As you can imagine, this is not a topic we can just bring up with our current friends. So many of them don't use any kind of drugs at all.

Why not? We bring up tripping with our straight friends all the time. Maybe give them Michael Pollen on tripping. He is pretty mainstream and quite popular.

I would also suggest investigating your regional burning man community. They generally ahve facebook groups, and local events. They skew a bit older, and are pretty ok with tripping.

> But without other like-minded people there would be no reason to grow more as we could never consume them all ourselves, and I am not interested in selling them.

When I grew shrooms, it was really easy to give them away. I swear once someone found out I had them, I would get so many requests. Be aware that they do go bad, faster than LSD in my experience.

If you don't understand someone, it's easy to call them stupid. There's a couple of books written specifically to help people understand those who voted for Trump:

Hillbilly Elegy:

>Now, along comes Mr. Vance, offering a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion, particularly the ascent of Donald J. Trump. Combining thoughtful inquiry with firsthand experience, Mr. Vance has inadvertently provided a civilized reference guide for an uncivilized election, and he’s done so in a vocabulary intelligible to both Democrats and Republicans.

White Working Class

>White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers--and voters.

It's because your premise is nonsensical. "Only a quarter of X" is a random figure — what's the baseline? Please tell me, how many of Trump's adverts or speeches or slogans were about policy? How many voters were swayed by Trump's policy who would've voted for Clinton "if only she had shared her policy"?

Her campaign literally released [A BOOK of policy proposals] (https://www.amazon.com/Stronger-Together-Blueprint-Americas-Future/dp/1501161733). Her slogan was never "I'm With Her" — that was a Twitter hashtag started by her supporters: women (and men) standing up FOR women. Her slogan was "Stronger Together" — never about her, but about strength and inclusivity and positivity.

You should try psychedelics. In many test cases, subjects who use such substances (especially psilocybin mushrooms) in a clinical setting report greatly reduced fear of death. Please check out this book on the subject by the science writer Michael Pollan,

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

Here are some recent podcasts the author has appeared on to discuss the book. The discussion focused on the positive impact of medicinal psychedelic use amongst terminally ill patients:

From the Joe Rogan Experience:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tz4CrWE_P0g

From the Waking Up Podcast:

https://samharris.org/podcasts/127-freedom-known/

I really hope this helps. As humans we’re all united by the common struggle with our own mortality, and I wish you all the best in enjoying your life. Hang in there :)

I just finished reading Look Me in the Eye: My Life with Asperger's and if your experience is similar, you'll probably be great at advertising. John had to learn how to interact with other people by observing as an outsider, which is a super useful skill for advertising. You might also consider exploring the art side of things, and getting good at InDesign and Photoshop.

Read something on the history of philosophy, then something about each field, just to understand the basics of it(epistemology, ethics, morals, antropology, methaphysics, logic, aesthetics)



Start with the Greeks (Plato, Socrates and Aristotle) then move up to the scholastic(Thomas Aquine, Saint Augustine) then westerners(Kant, Hobbes, Rousseau, Descartes, Popper, Wittgenstein, Russel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer) then read about politics.

​

Start by watching videos about the history of Philosophy, what philosophy is and then move to Greek philosophy then to individual philosophers, so that you can understand the context of their ideas. Then, as you get more interested, you can pick up a book of your interest. If you go directly into the book, you might feel overwhelmed and lost.

​

If you are looking for something like a "philosophy for life" I would recommend reading reading Meditations by the Emperor of Rome Marcus Aurelius, if you want something that will shatter your world but its hard to digest read Nietzsche. Both are very redpilled. If you want to pursue higher knowledge, or simply high culture, follow the what I wrote above.

​

These are great men, and we have inhereted their legacy, please take this seriously.

​

https://www.amazon.com/The-Story-Philosophy-Opinions-Philosophers/dp/0671739166

Seconding the Theodore Roosevelt Trilogy by Edmund Morris. I know they're long but I promise you if you pick it up you'll fly through them. He had a fascinating life and Morris is such a good writer it never really gets dull.

I have a couple of books about big game hunters on my list, but I have not read either of these yet:

• Man-Eaters of Kumaon by Jim Corbett, memoirs of a big game hunter in India in the early 20th century.
  
  
• The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival by John Vaillant, about hunting a killer tiger in remote Russia.
  
  As for explorers, the best non-fiction I've read about explorers are The Lost City of Z by David Grann, about Percy Fawcett's attempts to find Eldorado in the jungles of South America, and Endurance by Alfred Lansing, about Shackleton's survival after his doomed polar expedition.
  
  It occurs to me that none of these are set in Africa. Hope that's not a deal-breaker.
  
  I'll also recommend my favorite memoir of all time, Papa Hemingway by A.E. Hotchner. It's about his time spent traveling with Ernest Hemingway, who was something of a hunter and adventurer, and recounts a lot of very exciting trips to exotic locales in which manly deeds were done.

The first two books that come to mind are The Story of Philosophy by William Durant, and A History of Western Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. I've never read the Russell book personally, but I've heard great things about it (plus, its got a great cover).

Many monk mode books are available as audiobooks on YouTube, or PDF files through torrents.

It's actually great that you're on a low budget for monk mode. Living frugally is a great activity for building a sense of self-efficacy.

Absolute essentials may be:

A notebook to plan, journal, record exercise, etc.

One or two books that you refer back to often enough, or work through slowly (Meditations by Marcus Aurelius comes to mind: http://www.amazon.com/Meditations-Thrift-Editions-Marcus-Aurelius/dp/048629823X)

Maybe some camping gear or other stuff that gets you into nature more often. Tent/sleeping bag/lantern/firemaking supplies.

Outside of that, you don't need anything, and tbh, it's monk mode.. monks don't need anything and that's part of the experience. Good luck man!

P.S. second u/Dr_D1amond on supplements

Barefoot Gen is written by a survivor of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It's very moving and raw and personally I think it's better than Maus or Blankets. It should be required reading in all schools.

Persepolis is another amazing read. It's written by someone who grew up in Iran and witnessed and ran away from the revolution in the late 70's. It shows that the people in Iran and that part of the world are just like us, though because of America's (and other foreign powers) intervention, has become really conservative and hostile. I think this is another book that should be required reading in schools.

Fun Home is another personal tale about a woman's recollections of growing up and about her father.

Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings Adrian often writes very personal stories that are heart felt and touching.

American Born Chinese Gene Yang writes about growing up as an Asian American.

Epileptic French, David B writes about his Epileptic brother.

Margaret Atwood has two companion books, both of a dystopian nature. I prefer Oryx and Crake, but The Year of the Flood is a nice afterword. The Handmaid's Tale is her most popular work. She calls it speculative fiction instead of science fiction.

She's one of my favorites, obviously.

Hi I recommend reading "how to fail at everything and still win big"
https://www.amazon.com/How-Fail-Almost-Everything-Still-ebook/dp/B00COOFBA4

You are still young so you have plenty of time to suceed and you will see that what looks like failure can be useful down the road. Practice the law of attraction https://www.reddit.com/r/lawofattraction/wiki/usefulposts
enjoy :)

The Man Who Loved Only Numbers is a beautiful telling of Paul Erdos' life.

Someone else mentioned The Man Who Knew Infinity which I also love.

A potpourri of questions.

• What are your favorite books or reading material for getting your mind right? FWIW these are three of my favorites:
  
  • Man's Search for Meaning
    
  • Endurance
    
  • Unbroken
    
• What did you learn during the big events you wished you knew beforehand?
  
• What's your favorite little hack or trick?
  
• If selection is a 10. How would you rate HCL? Heavy?
  
• My favorite question: Why do you do it?
  
  

Hmmm... fiction? Non-fiction? First-person meaning told through a first-person narrative style, or just generally following a single person fighting for survival?

Fiction-wise, I'm a fan of To The White Sea by James Dickey. I've also always heard universally good things about the young adult novel Hatchet by Gary Paulsen, but have yet to read it myself.

In the realm of non-fiction, Touching The Void is a pretty incredible story, and was made into a stellar documentary film. Also, anything about the Shackleton expedition to Antarctica is worth checking out, so there you've got Endurance by Alfred Lansing, as well as Shackleton's own account, South: The Endurance Expedition.

Homogeneous countries win.

If you backed-out the heavily democrat districts, which have a population of more than 9/10 combined in your list, the US would easily climb from 11th. But to what end?

The fact is we have millions of kids that do not care and will not put in effort because they are culturally programmed so. Voting Democrat allows their generational servitude to continue.

Read this: Hillbilly Elegy if you want to know what's going on in the US.

Trust me, if I could send all the Baltimore City Public School kids to any of those top-10 nations, those nations would drop out of the top 40 so fast your head would spin. In fact, given the handicap with which the US operates, it is amazing we are #11.

Basically, you are not a body. If life after death is still a question, it means that you think you are a body. But there does come a point after which it is not a question, just a fact. You are Spirit.

At that point, your body is a "wholly neutral" thing (see "A Course in Miracles") because its forms aren't positive or negative. Just utilitarian. If you want to go get breakfast at McDonald's, it will help to have two legs. But other than that, you wouldn't be attached to any particular form. Just whatever's useful at the time.

As such, materializing and dematerializing at will would be something that happens without any mystery. Read Autobiography of a Yogi. The Great Babaji is known to materialize and dematerialize in locations as a means of travel. (Much faster than booking with kayak.com.)

Jesus doesn't really seem to materialize, per se, though I have no doubt that he could. Same with Mary. But they do appear to people and have throughout the centuries. Usually to encourage us. (I refer you to "The Great Apparitions of Mary" by Ingo Swann)

And the Babaji actually shows up in different forms (different physical descriptions). Sometimes he has facial hair, sometimes not. He also speaks all languages. (Known to converse with people in their native tongues). Really quite an interesting read. Really ... a must read. Pity it took me so many years to get around to it. It's more Christian than very many modernly-labelled "Christian" books.

It might not be so much a book on conspiracies but if you wanna know how true power functions behind the scenes I can think of no better book than

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York

greatest biography ever written imo

I would recommend an introductory book. Personally, I suggest Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. But if you really want to understand it, you're going to have to get in the habit of reading slowly and rereading until you really understand it. And have a dictionary and look up of all of the words you don't know.

If you finish the book, I guarantee your entire perspective on life will be completely different. Not necessarily for the better, as some people learn more than they bargain for. But if you finish and really want to learn more, I can give you other good introductions.

In Cluj am vazut un model X, superb, culoarea nu prea, maronie/cacanie, dar e ok si asa.. are ECO la numar. Model S am tot vazut pe ruta Cluj-Alba-Cluj.. Si ca sa iti infrumusetez/ocup toata ziua: enjoy watching these videos


Edit: iti recomand si cartea asta, ca sa iti faci o idee cum au luat nastere companiile lui Mr. Musk :) Mie mi-a placut

Maybe the typing wouldn't be as feverish, but it's possible to be on the same system as a hacker and try to lock him out or track him. The thing is, this is usually not something you want to do, especially in a corporate environment. Generally, you just want to shut down the affected systems and start clean from backups just because there is far too much damage a hacker can do that would be practically impossible to fully trace. If you want to do forensics, it generally is not done live on the hacked system but from a clean environment looking into the affected system. Again, this goes back to the level of trust you can place on an affected system, which isn't much.

If you want to have a nice and entertaining idea as to what hacker vs sysadmin looks like, read The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Egg-Tracking-Espionage/dp/1416507787/

There is a movie based on the book:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKxaq1FTac

To put it into Mythbusters terms: Plausible, but not likely.

Hope this helps!

Not OP but you should totally read Robert Caro's The Power Broker. It's a ~1,500 page tome but it's a fantastic breakdown of the history of Moses specifically, and Jacobs as well.

Then follow it up with Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities for the counter argument. After that you can decide if you want to get into City Planning as a career. Lots of politics unfortunately...

Clearly this right-wing libertarian dude doesn't have to commute through Penn Station.

He's just wrong. Honestly, if there was a reasonable argument against historical preservation, it is not present in this blog post. Does he really think that Grand Central would still be standing if it didn't have landmark status? GCT was bought for a measly $80 million in 2006 because it's worth nothing to real estate developers as a train station (contrast that with the tiny footprint of 432 Park Ave. which has >$1B in value), but it has an incalculable benefit to New Yorkers.
He doesn't even make the case that landmarks increase rent prices (which could be worth discussing). He just wants to build things faster and without obstruction. Which is EXACTLY how they built things between the 1920's and the 1960's.

I ain't so good at book descriptions but here's some stuff I really enjoyed -

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline: http://www.amazon.com/Ready-Player-One-A-Novel/dp/0307887448

The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi: http://www.amazon.com/The-Windup-Girl-Paolo-Bacigalupi/dp/1597801585

The author would argue with me about this being SF - Atwood prefers the term "speculative history" I believe - but the entire Oryx and Crake trilogy is very good.
http://www.amazon.com/Oryx-Crake-Margaret-Atwood/dp/0385721676/ref=la_B000AQTHI0_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1397411558&sr=1-2 the first book in Oryx and Crake, followed by Year of the Flood and Madaddam

Yep. Btw these are two great books that talk about how the physical structure of cities, a.k.a. urban planning, has brought about the changes that we see in OP's picture, and that we can pretty much blame one person for making cities super car-centric: Robert Moses.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York https://www.amazon.com/dp/0394720245/

The Death and Life of Great American Cities https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HWKSBDI/

1. The man who loved only numbers (just generally a good read):
   
   http://www.amazon.com/MAN-WHO-LOVED-ONLY-NUMBERS/dp/0786884061
   
   
2. Four colors suffice (really good if you like graph theory):
   
   http://www.amazon.com/Four-Colors-Suffice-Problem-Solved/dp/0691115338
   
   

You sound like me around 10 years ago. The only difference between misery and happiness is what we choose to focus on.

Take a walk! Meditate! Life is so precious. Every moment of your life is a spectacular phenomenon that should be enjoyed and appreciated. If you don't feel that way, I'd recommend some light reading -

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

I heard the book "How to Change Your Mind" is very good and might be what you need to convince your friend. :)


Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225/

The Worldly Philosophers

> The Worldly Philosophers is a bestselling classic that not only enables us to see more deeply into our history but helps us better understand our own times. In this seventh edition, Robert L. Heilbroner provides a new theme that connects thinkers as diverse as Adam Smith and Karl Marx. The theme is the common focus of their highly varied ideas -- namely, the search to understand how a capitalist society works. It is a focus never more needed than in this age of confusing economic headlines.

yes.

It was shortly after he left Paypal if I remember right. He went overseas there with some people, met with them to try to buy rockets, they said he was crazy. The thing to keep in mind is, for that moment it was crazy. Spaceflights like this were always pioneered by governments because of cost, not companies, let alone individuals looking to make a company.

He pulled something off that is absolutely tremendous. He has his flaws... But I think we needed Musk; I bet he has inspired a whole new generation of scientists and engineers.

If you want to read more about this, check out the biography written on him, Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future. It was very good, and it puts into perspective some of his bigger goals.

Either you don't understand Elon's objectives for any of his businesses, or you just don't care to see them through. Everything he's taken on he tries to find new efficiencies. Boring Company goal, improve tunneling efficiency, SpaceX goal, make a better, cheaper rocket. Tesla goal, make a more efficient vehicle that doesn't require as much maintenance, make production more efficient through new manufacturing techniques. Yes, the Tesla goals are extremely ironic at the moment.

Of course it's obvious the hell that they're in is of their own making - that's the cost of trying something new. He doesn't want business as usual, to just nibble away market share from other companies, he wants to change how the whole system works.

I really feel like people here should read this book about him: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-SpaceX-Fantastic-Future/dp/006230125X

It is not overtly pro Elon, not even close. The book does a great job showing where he's screwed some things up, including being a dick for a boss. But I think it'd shed a lot of insight to his mindset on his businesses and why he is choosing to run them this way.

Literally my parents irl, at least at first. At least they're trying and have gotten better over time. My mom actually read She's Not There of her own volition and really liked it and thought it was helpful, so we're making progress.

You're very welcome - if you haven't had enough Erdos then I strongly recommend The Man Who Loved Only Numbers. It was actually thinking about this book (which I read a few years ago now) that prompted me to search for and watch this documentary yesterday.

The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York by Robert Caro

A bit more recent than the other suggestions already posted, but a riveting read (especially if you're a New Yorker).


One of the most acclaimed books of our time, winner of both the Pulitzer and the Francis Parkman prizes, The Power Broker tells the hidden story behind the shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York (city and state) and makes public what few have known: that Robert Moses was, for almost half a century, the single most powerful man of our time in New York, the shaper not only of the city's politics but of its physical structure and the problems of urban decline that plague us today.

Another really good memoir is She's Not There by Jennifer Finney Boylan.

To the OP - when you figure it out, I would love to know. I haven't made the determination that transitioning is my only option. My dysphoria can be really bad at times and hasn't lessened all that much. For me if I do decide to transition it is that I can't take the terrible dispair that I feel 20-30% of the time. For me, it feels like someone pushes their hand through my rib cage and crushes my heart for hours on end.

There is so much counterfactual information in your post that I don't know where to start. Let's start with her public agenda that she spoke about at length but no one listened to. She even went so far as to write a book on the topic: https://www.amazon.com/Stronger-Together-Blueprint-Americas-Future/dp/1501161733 And to say she has no passion is to ignore her passion for helping women and children.

Then let's go on to Bernie: We have no reason to believe he would have won. Every pre-convention poll of Clinton vs Trump had years of concentrated attacks from across the aisle already baked in, where as the Bernie vs Trump polls did not. And the GOP had plenty of as-yet-unused oppo on Bernie. The kind of stuff that looks a lot worse than it actually is, but requires a more nuanced approach than the electorate apparently has to realize that. Bernie might have won, but that is an unknown.

But the most ridiculous part of your post is the suggestion that Trump is in any way whatsoever straightforward and truthful. I would say that he lies all the time (about everything), but the truth of the matter is that he says things without any regard for whether they are true or not. What hasn't he changed positions on in the last 5 years? Even the last year-and-a-half? His self-aggrandizement is the only thing that comes to mind.

The Practice of System and Network Administration, Second Edition by Thomas A. Limoncelli is a great place to start for mindset. Guess that counts as a "textbook" to you however.

For non-fiction/memoir grab The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage for a great walk-through of what it is like to find an anomaly and track it back to the source and then figure out what to do about it.

I am really enjoying the trilogy by Edmund Morris. The first one is The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. The author has a wonderful voice and really strong use of primary sources.

Books regarding how to build your online business / extract value out of an email list come from people who collected their online offerings.

For example: Ryan Levesque "Ask" on how to build products through email lists are a compilation of user stories from what he's done online.

With that said if you're looking for general entrepreneurship books here are a few I would check out:

• My Startup Life by Ben Casnocha. Ben started a company in his teens. Recently he wrote a book with Reid Hoffman (founder of LinkedIn) called The Startup of You
  
  
• Crush It by Gary Vaynerchuck
  
  
• The Four Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
  
  The best books to read to get through the thick and thin however are not business books. For example, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius is excellent

There are tons of articles in major publications now about psychedelics being used for therapy, many of them in the New York Times etc. Look some of those up.

​

Michael Pollan just wrote a new book about psychedelics, people in their 30s fucking love Michael Pollan, very famous food writer. He writes from the perspective of someone who had not really taken psychedelics, and wanted to know about history and neuroscience and immerse himself in it, to see if those transformative experiences were true. He was on a speaking tour for the book and I went to his talk. Hey, if he's coming through your town you should just take everyone to that!

https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

decent interview about the book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whmnx_Cb5ts

this one is more of a talk/presentation, also very good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuhmZSFvhL0

---------

re: some of the other suggestions

I do not think psychedsubstance youtube vids are going to appeal to non-psychedelic users. That guy's target audience is people who are already interested in psychedelics and other substances, and he writes from a harm reduction perspective. He's also not exactly charming, kind of an abrasive know-it-all.

​

Doors of Perception is a fantastic book but it's a very old perspective and feels very old timey academic to modern readers. Or maybe kind of like a beat poet in search of the miraculous and transcendent. But OP, YOU should certainly read doors of perception.

​

Thank you!

My favorite book is probably the most boring book to alot of people: The Power Broker by Robert Caro. It's all about how one man basically created the New York that we know today, and was the most powerful man in the State even though he was never elected to any position.

My favorite movie is probably Caddyshack. Because... it's Caddyshack!

>What does this have to do with their content? Nothing.

On the contrary, I established that your primary source is a blog post which holds as much stature as the cartoon it and you criticize.

>There are mountains of material about this topic?

Yes there are several notable biographies on Tesla, and literally hundreds of books written about Edison, GE, the electrification war.


>Forbes dismisses 15% of the Oatmeal's piece? Really? Did you measure that number? Are you sure it wasn't 17%? Maybe 80%?

Yes, I did estimate that number. I wrote 14+15 (character/invention) claims on a discarded bank envelope that I use as a coaster. I felt the Forbes article focused on 3 invention claims, 2 character claims about Edison and 1 character claim about Tesla. I discounted the Edison claims because I'm well-read and I disagree, yielding 13.7% or if you would like to quibble 20.6%. In either case the magnitude is unimportant, because the Forbes piece does not address 17 out of 29 claims. It accepted 6 claims, the same contested. I'd love to see your estimates.

Nevertheless, I was being fairly generous in assuming the Forbes piece was correct in the statements it contested. I strongly disagree, specifically relating to the attempt to diminish Telsa's role in the development of AC.

>Don't insult me personally and pretend you're making an argument.

Given the beginnings of this thread, I'm amused by your posturing.

EDIT: I found this http://theoatmeal.com/blog/tesla_response after revisiting your article.

As for legitimate reading, start here:

http://www.amazon.com/Edison-A-Biography-Matthew-Josephson/dp/0471548065


and I very much like this one, http://www.amazon.com/Tesla-Man-Time-Margaret-Cheney/dp/0743215362

I’m 40 and weening off .5mg tables 3X a day for eight years. I’ve recently been reading Michael Pollan’s new book about microdosing psilocybin and I am convinced and going to start trying it out when I get low enough on my benzodiazepines and start really feeling WD. I figure this will be a ripe time to try a natural remedy used by shamans for thousands of years to battle tribal anxieties.

This post is a great connection for me.

The New Palgrave series from the 90s is pretty good for essays on basic economics, especially given the price tag.

If you're just getting into economics as an econ major (like I am), I recommend The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. Heilbroner really helps to break down how each of the main economic thinkers perceived the issues of their day, built off of or on the ideas of past thinkers, and how their ideas are perceived today.

There's active research starting up. Check out Michael Polan's latest book for deets:
https://www.amazon.com/Change-Your-Mind-Consciousness-Transcendence/dp/1594204225

Great stuff, definitely worth a read.

Hi, I’m a Buddhist in the US. And I can answer this.

First of all, the US is a massive country. One state is larger than most European countries (and we have 50 of them!). The majority of our residents live around the coasts, but plenty of people still live in rural and remote places. This makes things complicated when it comes to national politics as there’s not just one type of American. We are incredibly diverse in background, values, morals, life priorities, etc, and that’s what makes most of our elections on the state and national level challenging.

When Trump was elected I woke up and couldn’t believe it. Hundreds of thousands of Americans felt the same way. How could this happen?

In my view there are three factors that led to his election:

• (1) The plight of the economy in rural states
  
• (2) Anti-Clinton sentiments lingering from the Bill Clinton Presidency
  
• (3) Trump’s skill of telling people what they want to hear
  
  (1) After the 2008 economic crash, many rural areas didn’t recover. Factories closed and moved overseas; coal mining jobs evaporated as new EPA rulings came down limiting the use of coal and other dirty energy sources; people lost their homes due to the mortgage crash. The rural areas were by far the hardest hit, and these realities in people’s lives were the “proof” for their anti-immigrant and anti-EPA sentiments for example. When rural whites say “immigrants are taking our jobs!”, some of them actually meant it since the only factory in their tiny town outsourced to India. Or when someone from West Virginia says “EPA is over regulating our rights!” they really mean that the coal mining job, one of the only viable careers in West Virginia, is making cuts due to new regulations.
  
  (2) As the presidential election neared, it was clear the only democratic contender worth representing the party was Hilary Clinton. As much as I liked Bernie Sanders, he would have never one, as he was too left for most moderate Democrats, and we couldn’t risk splitting the party vote. Many people in my parents’ generation (age around the 60’s) loathe Hilary. The reasons are complicated, but she’s been tarnished since the Bill Clinton presidency. Some hate her for the way she acted during the presidency, others hate her for her political decisions she made as Secretary of State. So there was no way many people in my parents generation and older would vote for Hilary. That cut out a large number of possible Republican moderate votes that the Democrats could have gained in order to win.
  
  (3) Trump is a businessman used to getting what he wants through bullying and switch and bait tactics. He also is very experienced with television. This makes him incredibly skilled at telling people what they want to hear in order to garner support. During Trump’s campaign he spent billions of dollars traveling in rural midwestern and southern areas. He would say things like “Immigrants are taking our jobs and I’m going to stop that and build a wall!” in towns where factories where outsourced. In towns feeling a loss of jobs from new EPA rulings he’d say things like “I’m going to bring back coal!” Of course there are more than these two issues happening in rural areas, but you see how he realized that a large body of American people were still struggling after the 2008 crash and he found a way to prey on them for his own political gain.
  
  These three factors led to overwhelming rural turn out in the vote and he was elected. The sad thing is that Trump made promises to these people that he largely hasn’t kept. The Democrats saw that coming, but many Trump supporters were straight up duped. He said he’d find a way to get more jobs, but towns are still collapsing. He said he’d find a way to bring back certain industries, but they are still dying. He said he wouldn’t cut Medicare/Medicaid (what most rural people rely on to get health care), but he has.
  
  I am a Democrat and very anti-Trump, but I understand why he was elected. He was the “hope” that a lot of ignored Americans needed. I don’t agree with him, or many of their values, but I empathize with their situation. Living in rural places right now in America is very bleak.
  
  Source: I am a Soto Zen practitioner living in Washington DC. I am originally from the rural south and frequently travel home and I see first hand what these places look like.
  
  Edit 1: If you want to understand the mindset and experiences of rural white people living in America, I suggest reading [Hillbilly Elegy] (https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0062300547/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1511706844&sr=8-1&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=hillbilly+eulogy)