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Yeah. What I'm getting here as that you're very lost from yourself. What it's looking like is that you do actions, initiatives, etc., with a strong kind of will. You push through, but in truth you appear not to be quite bringing yourself along. This requires an adequate conception for you to use.

I'll try and use a simlie: we are like trees with legs, that can walk but are also partly rooted. This is to give a sense of how our movements of self work and happen. In your initiatives, you're sort of divided into a little boy who is in the tree and sets out on adventures, but the tree itself stays rooted and in a certain way forgotten. So you go and do, according to goals and ideals you have. These are things that should, in a way, work, but they don't work quite the way you think. So you undertake them, but you're left depleted and unfulfilled. Then you sort of crawl back into the tree, a bit beaten.

But you are the tree, and the tree has feet instead of roots, and yet at the bottom of the feet are roots, too. So it's like a walking kind of tree that roots down. This is a goofy image, but it's good enough I think. A person is like a walking tree and the feet do lift up, but they also set roots. Both at the same time. When you've set out on your projects and initiatives and relationships and lovemaking, in a way you haven't really brought yourself along. Your heart. Here I'll add your heart. The picture of the tree is just a guiding idea, it's not a serious, serious metaphor. But that is part of it.

You are that tree, not the little boy in the tree. Your heart glows when the tree is nourished and connected with the world, the rain, the soil, when it lifts its feet and takes real steps. Here you lose sight of your heart.

The idea of "forcing yourself to have conversations" is a good evidenceof this problem. What is "bae"?

So you set out on a healthy diet thing, a lot of effort. Strong will. Working out. That's just one branch of the tree, but in addition you didn't so much do it from the branch but went off and did it on a kind of virtual branch. It wasn't attached to your "tree self". Your heart wasn't really involved in this adequately.

It's not clear if you did talk to people or it's an idea you have and you are afraid to do it. I'd say that you might fear it because your talkign won't mesh with their talking because their treeself is more unified with themselves, while your's is separated and stagnant, even though you can have high initiative. So when you "talk" you don't talk from the heart and don't connect so well. So the other senses this and it's uncomfortable. You are trying but it's not connecting. Because you are disconnected from yourself.

Your selflessness with sex is the same, it looks like. Your self is separated off from your true self, which is more a rooted thing, a slower growing thing. But bear in mind that since you're separated off from it somewhat, it isn't just slow growing, it's in trouble and not growing right, like you've got it stuck in a bucket and not put in the ground. You're selflessness is to willfully engage, with respect and what not, it appears, but it's still not you that much; it's more willful. That might explain how the sex wasn't good on your end. How you describe it is more that it was a performance, but less really you.

The books you read are superficial. It's good info, but it's not enough about your deeper self. I don't know which books are best for this, but Erich Fromm's The Art of Loving is enough to give you a much better idea of your deeper self. Most of what he's about there is about calming down too much willful effort yet bringing the will into concentration, even meditating in a certain way, but really loving someone. You're efforts seem to be far from that. Self-help is a funny word, but the books you read are much more superficial stuff, oriented to performance and will, but deeper self stuff is another matter. As soon as you can tap into that deeper self, the slower growing, deeper heart, the real you, you will find things that connect to it all over. Even just in the world, in life, in people you meet or have known: it opens up when you open up like that.

The sex example can be a good thing to think about. How would your slower, treeself, true self, heart self be regarding sex? The trick would be strangely simple: date someone without having sex. Put off sex for the longest time possible. Wait until what you want more than anything is to give them a kiss, and still wait a bit more. Until it's really in you down to your roots. See what I mean? This is a lot of "law of reversed effort". You need the opposite of doing: you need nondoing!

Don't think that will lead to not doing things. It leads to plenty of doing, more perhaps, than you could imagine. But since it's organically rooted in your whole self, it is rooted and receiving nourishment from the world, it connects and can be substantial. You're not being substantial. You are more in flight, almost from yourself, or your idea of yourself is just inadequate.

If you saw a therapist, you don't need to see one for a couple of months; you need to see a good one for a couple of years. Not that you have to see one, but the point is it's about the longer self here, not the quick self, the quick fix, the project or the plan, etc. Those all for you run the risk of separating off from your deeper self which, again, is not just not doing so well, but is not even properly planted, so to speak.

When you learn how to find your slower, deeper, truer self, you can make real friends, have a real girlfriend (or boyfriend or whatever it is you want), have a real life, feel your real heart, feel your real, true, deeper needs in a different way.

Even the fast transition you talk of tells a lot about what was happening: "easy come, easy go" is the saying. You were really trying, but you didn't know how to bring yourself along.

To start to think about this isn't exactly hard, so much as really just takes understand what it is. There can be other things: it may be you are fleeing from your "treeself" and deeper heart because your family relationships have you messed up and you fear them as they aren't working well or something. Or you have a "defense mechanism" against something. That term, "defense mechanism" is standard psychology: psychotherapeutic stuff. People can have defenses and do stuff to avoid some difficult feelings. A therapist can be a big help for this. Plus you can read some psychology about therapeutics, basic relationships, even "object theory" and learn more of the basics about defenses as it's very primary. You'd want to be thinking about defenses, feelings and relationships.

Most of all right now you need to not do anything in a very careful way. I mean if you want to see a counselor or a good therapist, that's a good thing, but I bet they'll do some of that, too: you might be all about how you want to do this or that, and they'd come back with, "I'm thinking about how you are relating to me right now". And that's weird: you may want to go off and do, and they are thinking about your relationship to them. See, therapy is a real, human relationship. It's weird because it's a special one, meant to help you see things and learn things, but it's also still a slower, longer term relationship. They would probably work on how you are feeling about them, as it goes along. That's a real basic in real therapy. A lot of that is to bring you back to your real self, your truer heart, your slower self, and to see how you either are clueless about that or are defending yourself against feelings you have and are in a kind of flight.

Part of that you can do on your own, but a good therapist is helpful.

Anything can help you find this, if you are starting to look for it. Even just reading girls' romance novels can help with this. I knew a guy who did that a lot and he's now married. Reading longer novels can help. Reading poetry. Reading books about feelings. But it's more whether you are tapping into that in the first place. Here you seem so lost from yourself! But if you can realize how lost you are, then that's good, because then you can start to find yourself. You can't find yourself if yoiu don't even realize that you're constantly losing yourself. And it looks a bit constant: like you're always doing it in a way. Always going off, never quite oriented to being your truer self.

Try that on for size.

> Do you think a reality TV star known for bankruptcies and being a general piece of human trash is a good fit for a president?

I think as a person he is near trash, we're in agreement there, but his policy is not bad. Since Bill Clinton and JFK were elected despite being not the best people on the merit of "look at their policy, not their character", republicans have done the same.

>I know it’s not really relevant, but if we’re talking about a debate here how can you dismiss someone’s point of view based on their profession?

>Because the dude is a comedian he can’t have intelligent thoughts outside of jokes?

Fair enough, one's profession is not a good metric for judging their ideas and ideals. However, when your opening line is essentially saying responsible gun owners keep their guns in safes rendering them useless proves his ignorance on a subject right out of the gate. Why would I consider the opinion of one with no credibility? I keep my hunting rifles and shotguns in a safe, and yes, I wouldn't have time to get them in an intrusion. I do, however, have something like this on my nightstand. I can retrieve a loaded gun from a safe in about 15 seconds. If it's not there, it's on my hip where it's also safe.

Because this was the reality of what he had:

>Boys Will Be Boys included pictures of boys, many naked, in various non-sexual activities such as climbing a tree or sitting on a bench. The book had an inscription reading, "To Michael: From your fan. Love XXXOOO Rhonda – 1983, Chicago."[57] Another book, The Boy: A Photographic Essay was inscribed, "Look at the true spirit of happiness and joy in these boys' faces. This is the spirit of boyhood, a life I never had and will always dream of. This is the life I want for my children. MJ." The book contained pictures of boys in various situations by different photographers, including pictures taken during the filming of the 1963 Lord of the Flies movie and showed the boys on the set, usually clothed but sometimes nude, playing in the sand, reading comic books, and having pillow fights.[58][59] The only book depicting male sex acts was a rare out-of-print book called A Sexual Study of Man which featured many images of adult men engaged in all kinds of homosexual intercourse which the prosecution admitted they could not tell if Jackson had opened.[57]

Others are books like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Room-Play-Simen-Johan/dp/1931885095/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t

http://vindicatemj.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/porn-found-in-michael-jacksons-home-2/

In a library like this:

http://rhythmofthetide.com/category/favorite-things/books-favorite-things-2

With hetero porn like this:

http://lacienegasmiled.wordpress.com/category/2005-court-case/porn/

Photo of Spence was reportedly of him as a baby/toddler.

That ELI5 is, of course by nature, too simplistic. The Germans didn't "install the Tutsi into power". Instead, Rwanda as it exists today is one of the few countries where the current borders pretty closely approximate with the borders of a complex hierarchical kingdom that existed before the country became a colony.

Colonial powers prefer using existing governing structures as it saves them the time and effort to set up an entire administrative system of their own, and in the case of Rwanda, this was easier than usual. They simply solidified the existing system, so in their eyes, at this point they weren't inducing volatility at all, but strengthening a stable system.

After WWI, the Belgians took over the administrative functions and they not only continued to rely on these governing structures, but, guided by the racist and eugenics movements of the time, came up with a racial explanation for the Tutsi rule: their superiority was demonstrated by their lighter skin, aquiline nose, tall stature, etc. as opposed to the broad-nosed, darker and shorter Hutus. According to this new racial mythology, Hutu were Bantus while the Tutsi were part-Caucasian.

So they didn't intend to induce volatility, but they certainly weren't well-intentioned when they decided how to rule. As to direct economic gain, Rwanda has few resources and covers a small and landlocked territory, but it was well-suited for cash crop production of mainly coffee and some tea.

This is another important cause of the volatility of the country in itself. The post-colonial one-party dictatorship under Hutu rule relied almost entirely on a mix of foreign aid and profits from the coffee trade, and purposely kept the country rural and the population uneducated in order to maximize the exploitability of its only profitable natural resource.

When coffee prices plummeted in the late 1980ies, this caused serious problems for the regime as both the international and domestic communities as well as the exiled Tutsi community in Uganda mounted a serious opposition to the dictatorship. They were eventually forced to agree to political reforms, but hard-liners who were unwilling to relinquish their power seized control after the assassination (probably by the RPF - Tutsi rebels from Uganda) of the President, were able to use the years of anti-Tutsi propaganda, trained submission through dictatorship, and fears about the rebels from Uganda to organize the genocide.


There still is a lot more to it, and it is also interesting, but worrying to see many parallels between the current post-genocide Tutsi government and the pre-genocide Hutu government. I mostly based the above on academic sources, but more accessible reading I could recommend about the country and the region would include Dancing in the Glory of Monsters and anything by Prunier and Mamdani. Jared Diamond's Collapse has a chapter on Rwanda which focuses on the economic dimension; it's a bit controversial, but based on some very interesting research.

Cancer sucks. It is a horrible disease, and my heart breaks for your family.


You have said that her cancer is terminal. Please have a very frank talk with her on whether she wants to continue the chemo, or just accept palliative care. Find our from her oncologist what the hoped-for outcome is with this next round of chemo. Often times chemo can buy extra time, but sometimes at quite a price in terms of being very uncomfortable because of the side effects. Is three months of relative comfort better than six months of throwing up or losing your hair and having nerve pain in the hands and feet from the chemo. That is an individual choice, and there is no right or wrong answer - what is right for one is wrong for another.

Everyone's choice is different - some want every last possible moment on this earth, regardless of what they have to go through to get it. Others are accepting of the inevitable and want to be as comfortable as possible.

Like I said, there is no wrong choice, but I hope that whatever your mom chooses she does so because it is what she wants, not because of what someone else wants or what she thinks she ought to do.

I've been through this both ways with different family members. I have my opinions, but respect that they can be different than others choices.

Advocate for your mom to get her in to a hospice program. Home hospice is good, but if you can find a hospice house, those are usually great. Almost all are covered by insurance. They can help answer your questions.

I strongly suggest the book final gifts (you read it, not your mom). http://www.amazon.com/Final-Gifts-Understanding-Awareness-Communications/dp/0553378767.

All I can say is they seem to know when their time to go is, and they will communicate it, but often in subtle ways.

Best to your family in this hard time.

Not your fault. A lot of countries just don't teach it the way it should be taught. The important thing is now you know and you can go forth and learn even more. There are some great documentaries on it (a few are listed here: https://library.csi.cuny.edu/c.php?g=571360&p=3995885) I especially enjoy the Ken Burns one (which is included with Amazon prime here: Its episode one of the "Ken Burns: American Lives" series, which is an amazing series. And "iron jawed angels" sure made an impression on me when I was younger.

Here is a quick comment from previous thread re:my dash cams;

Front is Finevu CR-500HD

Rear is BlackVue Wi-Fi DR500GW-HD

To keep it 24/7 live/motion sensor I use this.

But the BlackVue UPS is the same, so either/or.

As far as one over the other?

The nice things about the BlackVue are both a built-in GPS and WiFi.

I have this just under my rear brake light (top of back window version) and I can use my phone iphone/android/tablet to view what is shown/stored on the camera. WiFi is not that strong and sometimes you have to sit next to the garage to be able to view away from the car.

And the GPS is built in so when I take out the 32GB chip it sync's up with a map to show where I was driving and how fast (moving map style)


Drawback? It is wide? i.e. the FineVu is a bullet type of cam and basically you see a lens, the BlackVue is a tube that covers the same width as the brake light so it shows more.

I like the FineVue as far as stealth but the BlackVue for the features.

The FineVu has a connection to add a monitor to view onboard images. And you have to buy an external GPS for the FineVu @ ~$40

Basically it is better to remove the 32GB MicroSD chip and view it on your computer.

Neither (at the time of purchase) can handle the 64GB MicroSD chips

They both loop the storage, i.e. after x amount of space, it writes over the older saves.

And depending on how you set up the sensitivity is how much it captures. e.g. if you have it on super sensitive, you'll get many 'Events' that never erase (like potholes/speed bumps) instead of regular capture/parking mode that gets overwritten on a space basis.

Both images are just as good.

Personally I only know of the fictional story (The Face on the Milk Carton) but I too would love to hear more about these, hopefully happy, stories.

From Hell is great, its about Jack the Ripper, and is fictionalized to a degree, so I'm not sure if it is exactly what you are looking for, but you should read it regardless. Dark story, great writing, great artwork. Classic.

This photo could not possibly be more severely mislabeled. This photo is from an expedition into the reactor long, long after the accident. What you see is once-molten (now solidified) corium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corium_(nuclear_reactor))

This particular photo is NOT taken in or near the core, but rather in the basement of the reactor. The core of an RBMK is a cylindrical arrangement of graphite blocks with channels drilled through them for water (coolant) and uranium fuel. On top of and below the core are massive (nearly 2000 tons) concrete shields and during the accident, the lower one was displaced about a meter, allowing aforementioned corium to flow from inside the reactor into the lower levels of the reactor building.

Edit: If you want to see what the core really looked like immediately after the accident, here are some shots taken from helicopter the morning of the accident.

http://inapcache.boston.com/universal/site_graphics/blogs/bigpicture/chernobyl_25th_anniversary/bp2.jpg
http://www.globaltruth.net/chernobyl_reactor4_disaster__03_05_86_1.jpg

Edit 2: Copying this from another comment to which I replied so more people see them.

Unit 4 control room: http://s.ngm.com/2006/04/inside-chernobyl/img/control-panel-615.jpg

Upper biological shield with deranged coolant channels, tipped up 5 degrees from vertical. Think of the power of the explosion that caused this: http://www.epa.gov/radiation/rert/chernobyltour/images/blast_02.jpg

Looking down into Unit 4's reactor hall: http://econc10.bu.edu/economic_systems/NatIdentity/images/chernobyl_site.gif

More corium: http://www.houseoffoust.com/fukushima/corium/65813_cropped.jpg
http://dalje.com/slike/slike_3/r1/g2011/m04/ox281264633029795697.jpg

Cleaning graphite from the core off the roof: http://ukrmap.su/program2009/uh11/11_11/65.jpg

Edit 3: Another quick edit, since people really seem to be interested in this topic. The best print resource on this accident is, in my opinion, R.F. Mould's "Chernobyl Record" (amazon page: http://www.amazon.com/Chernobyl-Record-Definitive-History-Catastrophe/dp/075030670X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371155025&sr=8-1&keywords=chernobyl+record) but it's relatively heavy on the science and engineering at times. I highly recommend it if the technical nature of it isn't daunting to you. It's also available on the Google Play book store, I believe.

Edit 4: Wow! To whoever gave me a month of Gold, you have my thanks. In return, here's some more of what I can dig up with some annotations.

Here's another of the UBS (Upper Biological Shield): http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/c/chernobyl/chernobyl_reactorhead.jpg

Graphite brick ejected from the core: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e4/Ejected_graphite_from_Chernobyl_core.jpg

Despite the History Channel watermark, this film is ancient and it's been shown in many documentaries. The orange mass you're seeing is graphite burning. Most or all of the metallic fuel had, by this time, flowed under the reactor. the ~1700 tons of graphite in the core took about ten days to burn itself out: http://a4.ec-images.myspacecdn.com/images02/116/d4c81fa2472a4bafbc1869cd2420369d/l.jpg

Elephant's Foot won't kill you instantaneously; here's a guy snapping a pic of it up close and personal: http://darkroom.baltimoresun.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/UKRAINE-CHERNOBYL_001.jpg

Reactor hall of Unit 4. You can see firefighting hoses draped down into the room in a hasty, and ultimately futile attempt to quench the blaze. The very top of the UBS is just barely visible in the bottom of the frame: http://images.dailykos.com/images/user/14898/17Interno3.jpg

And finally, since I'm something of a perfectionist, here's a MUCH better version of one of the pictures I posted earlier. Reactor hall and roof after accident: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2011/4/20/1303312630479/Chernobyl---The-Aftermath-028.jpg

Escape from Camp 14

If anyone is interested, I highly recommend reading the book "Escape from Camp 14"

It's an easy and highly intriguing book and gives an unfathomable account of life in the camps and shows how mentally warped the people of the country are.

The guy is in the U.S. now and discusses how before coming here he didn't even truly understand the emotional connection of family or loyalty to them as much as he did fear and loyalty to the country.

Edit: Autocorrect

I haven't read that one, but another great book in that vein is Journey of Souls by Michael Newton. Really opened my mind to some amazing possibilities.

You should read Drawings of the Gulag... by Danzig Baldaev, its his forth book, but they are all amazing.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Drawings-Gulag-Damon-Murray/dp/0956356249/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2?ie=UTF8&refRID=1VYM0VFBHDRCSAPSMHN3

this book covers this event... its worth a read if you are interested.

If this is something you're interested in, you should check out The Red Market by Scott Carney. It's about all aspects of the trade in human flesh, including organs, blood, hair, eggs, etc. It's really fascinating, and I love the analysis the author provides.

I encourage, as always, everyone pick up The Aquariums of Pyongyang , Escape from Camp 14 , as well as Nothing To Envy as u/winginit21 mentioned.

Also David Hawk's The Hidden Gulag:Second Edition is a great resource. (PDF File)

Teratology is the science of studying birth defects. It is from this study that we have gained most of our knowledge of foetal development, amongst other things. This book is a great overview of the subject and would probably be of interest to many people here.

Looks like there's a 10th Anniversary updated version too. Definitely went on my Wishlist.

Enough that in the gift shop at the Grand Canyon, they sell this:

Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon, Newly Expanded 10th Anniversary Edition https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984785809/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_yqowybR7G6E3T

Biologist here, get this book if you don't already have it. It's about the genetics & developmental biology of some of the most bizarre human mutations and birth defects. It's well written and absolutely fascinating.

So are you now going to claim that amazon.com is a neo-Nazi website?

http://www.amazon.com/Danzig-Baldaev-Drawings-Damon-Murray/dp/0956356249

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-Camp-14-Remarkable-Odyssey/dp/0143122916

Escape From Camp 14 by Shin Dong-hyuk and Blaine Harden

http://www.amazon.com/The-Red-Market-Brokers-Traffickers/dp/0061936464

This happened in camp 14, the same that is described in Escape from Camp 14, about a North Korean born and raised there and who lived to escape and tell his story. It's not a long read and I recommend it to everyone who want to learn about the horrors that are going on in North Korea. Not for the faint hearted.