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I know this sounds batshit crazy, the turning point for my social anxiety was finding the pickup community. Yes, that same group of creepos obsessed with getting laid and wearing funny hats to "peacock". Believe it or not, there's more to it than cheesy pickup lines. I actually found it when I was googling "how to build confidence". Take a quick look at /r/seduction and read some of the sidebar and see if it's your thing.

Although the focus of the pickup community is on sleeping with lots of women, 90% is just glorified self-help (it's hard to sleep with girls if your shit's not together). It's not for everyone though, but if you want it to work it really will. Also, although 90% of your progress socially comes from actually going out and talking to people regardless of your fears, some reading couldn't hurt. These are some non-pickup resources that I found helpful when getting over my social anxiety:

• How to win friends and influence people - A great book on the basics of interacting with people. It's seriously a classic; even my mom has read it. This is what got me started on working on my social skills and may be one of the most helpful. It's simple, effective, and will for sure help you make smalltalk with strangers.
  
  
• succeedsocially.com - A website with a pretty good collection of articles about developing social skills. I personally haven't found it majorly useful since a lot of the information on the site is covered in pickup material in one way or another
  
  
• What Every BODY is Saying - A good book on reading body language--essential when interacting with people.
  
  
• No More Mr Nice Guy - A very informative book. If you're one of those people who wonders how people (especially girls) can ignore how nice you are compared to other men, or if you feel like you are always walked over, give this book a read. Hell, even if you don't feel this way give this book a look, you'll definately find some parts that resonate with you.
  
  Then some of that PUA shit that I have found useful (The italics are ones that will be helpful whether you follow pickup or not):
  
  
• Models by Mark Manson - This is actually borderline pickup. The author used to be the author of one of my all-time favorite pickup blogs, though he recently moved past the pickup community.
  
  
• Magic Bullets - A structured how-to on how to pick up women. This is one of those PUA books that's really pickup-y. If you're severely against pickup, I would skip this one, although it is pretty respected.
  
  
• mASF Player Guide - The fastseduction.com player guide. A very comprehensive guide of most of the concepts involved in pickup. I'm currently working my way through this, and it covers things pretty well.
  
  
• /r/seduction - Our very own seduction subreddit. Unfortunately, some people find the subreddit to be a little squemish about some of the less glorious parts of pickup. Still, you can get some self-help value from the sidebar. I personally don't follow it any more, though.
  
  
• Vin DiCarlo Escalation Ladder - Another one dedicated to picking up girls and very little to self help, but helpful nonetheless. If you're hitting on a girl, you've gotta touch her, and whenever someone asks about how to do it, people point them to this pdf.
  
  If some of the books seem expensive, remember that this is the internet. It is VERY easy to torrent these books, but I would rather not link to them just to be sure my post won't get messed with. Don't read too much either. It's a lot more fun to read about being social than actually doing it. Don't fall into the trap of always reading and never doing. Also one more thing about pickup, watch out for people who have no experience. A lot of people give advice on what to do without actually having experience themselves. If someone hasn't been around the block a few times, don't listen to them. Always try something out before you decide whether it's good or not.
  
  Regardless of if you take the same path as me or not, remember one thing: By putting an effort into putting yourself into situations that you find socially stressful, you will become more confident. For example, the first time I tried to make smalltalk with the cashier at the store, I nearly crapped my pants. But by now it's second nature. Just keep putting yourself in places where you are scared and you'll get over it.
  
  Good luck!
  
  EDIT: Added a few more pieces of reading and rearranged a few others

Bear with me on this, but I think this article may benefit you. The focus is on how we can be manipulated through habit, but I've never seen this information on habit formation anywhere else. The author of the article has written a book and now that you mention it, I could stand to learn more about habit myself, so I just bought it on Kindle and I'll let you know what I think of it.

In short and according to the article:
Human behavior is often governed by sets of habits that are stacked together to create habit chunks.
>the brain converts a sequence of actions into an automatic routine, is called “chunking.” There are dozens, if not hundreds, of behavioral chunks we rely on every day. Some are simple: you automatically put toothpaste on your toothbrush before sticking it in your mouth. Some, like making the kids’ lunch, are a little more complex. Still others are so complicated that it’s remarkable to realize that a habit could have emerged at all.

So these chunks are awesome because they let us save energy and be more efficient, and they suck because when things are different from our expectations (we've been fooled) or don't go as planned (as we've rehearsed them so many times before) then we get into trouble.
>we’ve devised a clever system to determine when to let a habit take over. It’s something that happens whenever a chunk of behavior starts or ends — and it helps to explain why habits are so difficult to change once they’re formed, despite our best intentions

>the process within our brains that creates habits is a three-step loop. First, there is a cue, a trigger that tells your brain to go into automatic mode and which habit to use. Then there is the routine, which can be physical or mental or emotional. Finally, there is a reward, which helps your brain figure out if this particular loop is worth remembering for the future. Over time, this loop — cue, routine, reward; cue, routine, reward — becomes more and more automatic. The cue and reward become neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving emerges. What’s unique about cues and rewards, however, is how subtle they can be. Neurological studies like the ones in Graybiel’s lab have revealed that some cues span just milliseconds. And rewards can range from the obvious (like the sugar rush that a morning doughnut habit provides) to the infinitesimal (like the barely noticeable — but measurable — sense of relief the brain experiences after successfully navigating the driveway). Most cues and rewards, in fact, happen so quickly and are so slight that we are hardly aware of them at all. But our neural systems notice and use them to build automatic behaviors.

>Habits aren’t destiny — they can be ignored, changed or replaced. But it’s also true that once the loop is established and a habit emerges, your brain stops fully participating in decision-making. So unless you deliberately fight a habit — unless you find new cues and rewards — the old pattern will unfold automatically


After reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, I wonder if what we call our intuition might even be these chunked behaviors in effect.

The whole article is definitely worth a read.

I'd made this comment when you'd first posted about a week ago, but it was caught in the spam filter. A new mod, WellEndowedMod was added and took me out of the spam filter and suggested that I resubmit my comment so that you see it. I hope this helps you out.

Well, I want to stress that you need to consider how much money that is and what it can earn you. If you're say, in your twenties then you have a golden opportunity. Hell, if you're older than that you're still in a good spot.

First consider what bank you are keeping the money in. Is it insured? Is it all in one account? Many banks only insure up to $100,000.

Second, consider inflation insurance in any of your investments. Especially bank accounts. There are bank accounts that offer this.

Third, consider whether you want growth or something else. You have to risk money to see high returns. Every investment is a risk, let no one tell you otherwise.

Depending your age, your options should be different. If you are retiring in 5-10 years, then you'll want less securities than if not. Either way, don't consider putting even half of your money in bonds or stocks. Let no one tell you different.

I want you to read a book.

It's titled "The Intelligent Investor" by Benjamin Graham.

It was first published in 1949.

If you don't have an economics background except from context, or even if you do, check out the thoughts of Milton Friedman, personally I believe he is one of the most brilliant economists to ever live. Others have thought that too, he won the Nobel prize for economics.

Consider what your cost of living is now, as well. Could you buy land and a modular home or build your own home for a reasonable price? Overall would that be cheaper than paying for where you live for the next 15 years? Are you a simple-living type of person or does being self sufficient interest you? If so, /r/homestead or /r/SelfSufficiency might be for you.

Personally, if I were you this is what I'd do.

A) Decide if I have a good car for every use that I might have or want to have. If not, sell your current car and opt for one better for you needs or supplement your car with a truck. I'd buy the truck used, as new trucks that will do work run $30,000+. Pay cash unless you have reasonable but not great credit. Then pay mostly cash and build a little credit by buying the car if it is cost effective. Be diligent in this.

B) Settle every single one of your financial obligations. Debts and bills are a bad thing.

C) Build credit if you don't already have it.

D) Look into land purchases

E) Look out furthest first to what goals you have or can come up with. Look to retirement and not early retirement. Do you have enough money to now retire? If the inheritance is all you have, no. Okay, re-assess your situation for now, 5 years from now, 10 years from now, 20 years from now and all the way out until you retire. Figure out what you need to have done during each of those periods to meet your retirement goals. Your current retirement goal, beyond a house, car and expenses up until then should be around 1 million dollars. This is feasible for you, especially if you are young.

F) If you want to play with stocks or other securities, the most important thing that anyone trading is self control. That means not overbuying or buying more when the price drops. Make your decisions and stick to them. Do not make conditional decisions unless they fit orders. Like, sell if it drops a dollar is fine. Buying more of the same or another stock when you lose money on a given stock is not fine.

G) Don't invest in precious metals more than anyone else would. Even the survivalists who do invest in precious metals more than other people as a demographic only invest 5% to 10% if they're smart. If it loses money, you lose and you can neither eat, drive or trade gold easily. ;)

H) Talk to twenty people before making a decision. This may takes months or a year. I don't mean ask twenty people on reddit. Make a self-rule that you will talk to 15 people or 20 people (all who don't charge for a consultation or to talk to) before you invest in anything larger than 5% of your total money.

Futhermore, talk to students and the like. Let me warn you, though. Whether you tell people you have money or not, many will ask to borrow money or suggest investments. Do not let your decisions to be based upon excitement and emotions unless a chick asks you our and the only decision you are making is to buy her dinner and a movie, then maybe a hotel room.

I) This is about you, not others. I resent my mother for it, but I understand why she has made and does makes decisions herself. I invited her to invest in Dell, Microsoft and Intel in 1994 through 1997 and she refused to. She lied to me about it later on, telling me she'd put all of her money into it. She had a trust a bit larger than yours. She'd be worth quite a bit now. I knew I wouldn't be wrong, but she didn't. It's no one's decision but yours, regardless of whether wrong or right. You'll regret investing more than you will not investing. Not investing can make you beat your fist and get drunk. Investing and losing it can turn you into a scarred and depressed person who hates their life.

J) Invest in what you know. Gold has gone from $30 an ounce in the 1950s or 1960s to $1,800 now. Consider that. I don't trust things that gain a great deal of money based upon experience. They fluctuate too. Look at silver, it's gone up higher than $40 and now is probably somewhere around $30. I don't know because I don't care because I don't invest things that change value up and down quickly. More than one man has become an alcoholic or given up on life when their investments have plummeted. Sadly, some have even killed themselves before their investments changed value near or past what they were worth when originally invested in.



Please don't hesitate to contact me sometime if you ever question an idea or investment of yours or advice someone has given you.

If you like, buy my book ($3) on the Amazon Kindle Marketplace. It's titled [The Guide To Living, Volume 1: Urban, Rural & Bush Living, Emergency Preparedness & Survival] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B006KRIAPO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=amazonwww-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B006KRIAPO). Click the title and check it out. Your best investment is your own life, your knowledge, your preparation and your well being. I also have a blog you might appreciate, Survive2.com.

I love well written science fiction books that have way more to them in terms of political views, predictions about the future, "what would happen if" situations. I generally gravitate towards the genre and all these books are science fiction, but I found them enjoyable and definitely thought provoking to me. I tried to write some descriptions about them but I'm not that great at writing, and also thinking clearly in the morning while lacking sleep.

• Ender's Game Series - Mainly Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. It's just a young adult science fiction series but Orson Scott Card talks about some interesting stuff and the society that he made is detailed and interesting.
  
  
• A Canticle For Leibowitz - I loved the ideas in this book. It probably doesn't have the same impact as it did during the cold war and the threat of nuclear war but it's still interesting. It's written in eras and the main subject the book deals with is the three stages of a civilization. The first one being a period of darkness where people will gravitate towards faith in something that promises good things. The second one being a period where everything is under control and people are focusing on society as a whole, mainly improving it and generally being selfless. The third period is where the growth stops and people are comfortable enough to start worrying about their own issues and happiness which eventually leads back to the dark ages and the cycle repeats. Pretty interesting.
  
  
• Animal Farm - Great book, not much to say since everyone here probably knows at least what it's about. If you haven't read it it's a small book and will take a couple of hours if not less to read.
  
  
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Great apocalyptic/wasteland -future book about a bounty hunter questioning his motives. A lot of small things in it and a book that makes you think (at least it was for me).
  
  
• Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts - This is a great collection of short science fiction stories, had to get it for a sci-fi college class and I'm slowly reading what we didn't read. It has nice and long sections for stories about Alien Encounters, Artificial Life, Time, Utopias and Dystopias, Disasters and Apocalypses, and Evolutions.
  
  
• 1984 - Great book, a bit boring but terrifying to read and think about what it would actually be like in that society.
  
  Why I added Science Fiction: Stories and Contexts (Amazon reviewer)
  >Masri's collection is a monumental anthology of science fiction stories and novel excerpts that are paired with theory, criticism, and analysis relevant to a given theme found in the stories. There are no other anthologies with the breadth or scope of what Masri accomplishes here, which makes this a very unique and useful addition to any teacher's arsenal.
  
  >Instead of focusing on one of the many historical approaches to science fiction, Masri selects 9-10 stories around particular themes (e.g., Alien Encounters, Artificial Life, Time, Utopias and Dystopias, Disaster and Apocalypses, Evolution) and pairs the stories with three contextual essays by critical theorists, scientists, and scholars (e.g., for the Evolution stories she includes essays by Steven Jay Gould, Marvin Minsky, and Steven Johnson). Additionally, Masri is careful to select stories that are representative of the whole gamut of science fiction and its writers. The collection's author diversity crosses sex, race, and nationality lines.
  
  It really is a great collection, I haven't found any stories I haven't enjoyed at least somewhat yet.
  
  edit: added some details and fixed some grammar

Quick answer: Mixed reality/vr overlays. Read Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge to get a taste (the book is prophetic in that regard).

Longer answer: The internet won't go away, just like travel by train or ship hasn't gone away, but it will change. It will still be there as a baseline of "this is where you go to get information quickly" but the way you interact with it will be completely different. The "revolution" will require several key technologies, all of which are already possible or in development.

1- Ubiquitous WiFi or equivalent. I'm talking free, fast, reliable internet service, everywhere. Google is doing this right now in the US, and many countries (ie: Japan) are already way ahead of the US in that regard.

2- Miniaturization. Things will get really small, like nano scale, and that will allow the below technologies to become reality.

3- VR Augmented Reality Overlays. This is a google glass type technology but taken further. Miniaturized to the form of contacts. Flexible displays at the next level. Complete visual reality overlay with gesture controls as well as voice commands. On mobile atm, so can't look it up, but There's a company already out there making a gesture control input device in the form of a band that goes on your forearm and reads your muscle movements. Combine that with glass and you have a very early version of what I'm talking about.

4- Wearable computers. Again google glass, but woven into your clothing. I'm sure there will be plenty of companies trying to market "smart clothing" as a selling point. These will be able to act as a personal health assistant as well as provide more computational horsepower if needed, though at that point you will likely have the whole of the "internet" to help you compute anything you want, doing away with the need for a personal computer that does everything. Moreover, these will provide context for OTHER people wearing their displays to get information about you. Privacy issues abound, of course.

These technologies combined will completely reshape the way we interact with computers, the internet and each other. Entire new fields of entertainment will be created. New communication tools unheard of will come to exist. Cell phones will be as foreign as 8-tracks. PCs as archaic as gramophones. Hell, even the way we travel, work, meet friends will change. If you have the ability to see/hear everything as if you were actually there, why leave your house to visit Rome? New York? Tokyo? Mars? Why physically commute to work? Conference calls are cute and all, but how about having everyone that needs to be in a meeting face to face with each other regardless of what continent they're on? Hey! Nine Inch Nails is coming out of retirement for the 5th time! One show, in Barcelona. Venue holds only 500. But that's ok, cause the live link will be able to hold the other 10 million as if they were right there at the front row. Convenience fees might still apply though.

That's just the surface of what I can think of, and there's plenty more that will happen that I can't think of.

EDIT: Added links and fixed grammar/spelling.

I googled "weight of soul" and got this link as the first link http://www.snopes.com/religion/soulweight.asp

Within this link it shows a few different resources. The best thing to use google for is to find original sources. The best way to find original sources is by looking through articles, blog posts, and the like about the topic you are using. Then search for that original article. Here is an amazon link to a relevant book listed in the source material for this article. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1883620074/ref=urbanlegendsrefe

That took me oh 2 minutes. Most likely you will have a hard time finding original source material for true research. As research tends to be hidden behind paywalls (JSTOR, books, etc). It is one of the issues with research and the internet.

You have to picture the internet as a window into the research. You might look for a relevant youtube clip of a university lecture on the topic or a short student style documentary http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvfuXh01m8I

Again. Look for source material. Use the internet as a window into the source material. Then look for the specific source material. Lectures, blog pots, new york times articles all will have a variety of source material present. You can even search for specific syllabus of a specific class by a specific professor and use those materials. in the end, you will still need to use a library, or purchase materials to study. Good thing is most colleges allow free use of their library to the public. Community colleges are great places to start as well.

Good luck!

Although I would be inclined to agree with you that in general that is the case; I don't think that is true for all people. I've seen people's accounts before about how their vegetarian diet was actually giving them poor health. This is a book written by one of them. The synopsis is:

>"For 26 years John Nicholson was a vegetarian, following a seriously healthy diet that included no cholesterol or animal fats but plenty of brown rice and lentils. His diet defined him. It was the one thing that was definably, unshakeably him throughout half a century. However, for 26 years John Nicholson was ill - tormented year after year by apparently untreatable IBS. He was eating the healthiest diet known to mankind yet his digestive system was breaking down. His illness was affecting his life so badly that eventually he and his partner considered doing the unthinkable - eating meat. The results were spectacular. 24 hours after eating meat, he was better. After 48 hours he was totally well. All his symptoms had gone - the IBS, the headaches, the mid-afternoon tiredness, achy knees - the lot. Even his eyesight improved to the point he no longer needed to use reading glasses. Twelve months on, he feels like a new person. The Meat Fix details John Nicholson's remarkable transformation with the characteristic wit and humour that saw his We Ate All the Pies nominated for the 2010 William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. It is the story of how eating meat again after 26 vegetarian years changed his life powerfully for the better, and his quest to understand why the supposedly healthy diet he had existed on was actually damaging him. He is not a scientist and this is not your standard diet book. Rather it is an explanation of how Nicholson discovered what works for him and why we should all look at nutritional advice through a clear lens, not the warped prism of what has become conventional dietary advice over the past three decades. This is a fascinating, surprising, often hilarious and shocking journey of discovery."

> My issue is that the link between the act of donating money and the actual achievements of the charities is too tenuous. Shouldn't charities do more to show exactly how they spend money, what they spend it on, who decides how to use it, etc...?

No. What you are unaware of is that charities actually already spend a lot of resources on what is called "accountability" and "measuring effetiveness" and this process already takes up a good n of resources. The question of effectiveness was a small section of the subject of my Master's thesis on NGOs (NGOs are related to charities; effectively, what we call charities might be called NGOs in other countries).

There are two problems with traditional accountability systems and they are:

1. They are resource intensive. They require the charity to devote a lot of man-hours to measuring and reporting on the effectiveness of their programs. Often it means one (or many, depending on the size of the organization) people devoted exclusively to managing and sharing this information with donors.
   
2. When you measure the effectiveness of an organization quantitatively, you are going to inevitably start focusing on projects which can be measured quantitatively and devote less resources to projects which can't. So even in a region, for example, would benefit greatly from work on community empowerment, or improvement in gender equality, or improvements to mental health, these sort of things can't be as objectively measured as things like numbers of wells dug or buildings built. Although I am of course exaggerating, as no doubt by now there are ways to measure things like improvements in mental health. Still, there is still a mentality from this accountability mindset that values tangible countable improvements over uncountable ones.
   
   What I will say is that, on the whole, almost no one is in the charity business to make a lot of money. There are some organizations that do this but they are very few, and more often they are the smaller organizations. The very large organizations, such as the Red Cross, Heifer International, etc. all do very good work and your money will not be wasted if you send it to them. I would steer clear of nearly all "personality" organizations where the name of the organization is the same as someone famous, with the exception of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation which has done stellar work and should be praised for focusing on some very serious but nonetheless fairly un-glamorous causes (malaria for one).
   
   There are definitely problems in what is sometimes called the "Development Industry" - structural problems, logistical problems, etc. Even some accountability problems. If you are interested in this you might want to read Despite Good Intentions which is well-written and engaging (although also depressing) and addresses a lot of the problems with development aid.

Dad's a (recovering) alcoholic, younger sister's one too (with other stuff mixed in), and I'm an addict too to boot.

If you think treatment is right, do it. You are your top priority, take care of yourself. I've found taking care of myself (working out, eating healthy) to be 100% helpful. I've kicked cigarettes, drugs, most alcohol, most video games, and television: I allow myself two vices, beer and coffee.

If anything, I'd recommend the following: read. Find topics that interest you and dive in. Include Buddhism; this is a great resource that has hugely impacted how I view the world and also how I act within it. I cannot recommend it more highly.

Lastly, ID the negative effects of your addiction and substance of choice. Remind yourself why you want to control it, because you cannot without truly wanting to. Learn to appreciate feelings of longing, craving, etc: make them your bitch. Remember they're a part of life, enjoy them. This is what's worked for me, I hope it can work for you. Good luck!

>If we cut public funding to education and other services, we are taking the rug out from underneath future inventors and innovators.

I think you believe that you are presenting facts, but you are not. This is not a 'fact', this is an emotional appeal. You make your decisions based on political rhetoric, not on your understanding of how policies actually affect people in the real world.

If you want to learn how to logically and rationally understand politics, read some economics.

>It is beyond irrational to believe in such a utopian ideal

I'm glad that there are 'rational' people like yourselves who know better than idiot-libertarians like me.

Doesn't it seem strange to you that there are a higher percentage of economists that support freed markets than regular punters? The question is: how are you so sure that you're on the right side? Could this possibly be a function of the Dunning-Kruger Effect?

> Is that because voters are already polarised

Yes. I think a lot of people have this ideal of like, voters carefully evaluating each candidate in every election which is in practice totally insane. The two parties in the US are pretty distinct and party affiliation is a very strong predictor of voting behavior. Unless you have a very particular and unusual set of issues you care about it (only stuff where there's major divisions inside both parties) ticket splitting is totally irrational. Most voters know this, which is why the number of true "independents" is so low (most self described "independents" are reliable partisans who just don't self-identify with the parties for various reasons). Winning elections is mostly about turning out your base and demoralizing the opponent's base and TV ads aren't actually any good at this, since they're targetted towards extremely uninformed voters who probably won't turn out no matter what.

Honestly - through rigor. I would suggest studying logic, some philosophy (this is about the structure of arguments, and deduction in a general sense) and then something applied, like policy analysis or program evaluation. <- those last two are just related to my field so I know about them, plenty of others around.

Some suggested books that could be interesting for you:

Intro to Logic by Tarski

The Practice of Philosophy by Rosenberg

Thank you for Arguing by Heinrichs

Policy Analysis is instructive in that you have to define a problem, define its characteristics, identify the situation it exists in, plot possible solutions (alternatives), and create criteria for selecting the alternative you like most.

Program Evaluation is really just tons of fun and will teach a bunch about how to appraise things. Eval can get pretty muddy into social research but honestly you can skip a lot of that and just learn the principles.

The key to this is that you're either very smart and can learn this stuff through your own brains and force of will, or, more likely, you'll need people to help beat it into you WELCOME TO GRADSCHOOL.

Regarding competition, a lot of it is rooted in the types of people who settled the United States and the reasons why they came. Some of the people who came were religious or political dissenters trying to escape persecution, yes; but many, many of them were speculators here on behalf of some venture or company to see what they could discover/exploit the hell out of (and for how long) to get filthy rich and please the financial backers in the venture back home (some of whom were royal). That behavior was simply carried forward, both by Southern plantation owners and Northern industrialists: if you spend as little as possible running your venture, you'll have much greater profits in the end. And there is always somebody who will think they can do it more cheaply than you.

Here's an interesting book that might provide more insight: American Nations (Amazon)
An interesting article posted elsewhere on Reddit: NY Times article on American capitalism

Regarding college, there are many factors that have sort of dovetailed over the last 70 or so years to create the current situation. There's a big obsession ("madness") with attending college because the vast majority of employers now seemingly require college degrees for basic, halfway decent positions, and nobody wants to be left behind. This has led to a lot of bloat and the (unfortunate) de-valuing of the average degree. And this leads into why people are angry ("mad") about attaining/having college degrees: over that same period, college tuition has steadily gone up as costs have gone up. At the same time, wages have stagnated and subsidies (like for the public universities) have been slashed. Employers still want that degree, though, so many people take out loans to cover the difference in cost. And when they get to the end and get that job, they find out that they're going to be sorting garbage or filing widgets. And they still have to pay the loans back. You'll basically never get to use the university knowledge that you paid so much for, that the employer themselves required. So, yeah. Anger.

Of course, this doesn't explain why the US doesn't have a more robust (or publicized) vocational training system. Were I in office, I'd work to organize some kind of educational summit between industry and academia where they could hash all this out. What sort of knowledge does a university degree confer? Is it really necessary for most jobs? If you want your employees to have some kind of post-secondary training, what would be an acceptable alternative to university? Stuff like that. Then I'd work with the Department of Education to make it happen.

A good book about this is Flat Earth News, which details how and why the media have changed in the last couple of decades. I found it very insightful.

The gist of it is that because most media are owned by media conglomerates, fewer reporters are paid less to produce more, which has inevitably led to a lack of fact-checking, copy-pasting press releases from whoever sends them in, and no time or money for investigative journalism.

Some media maintain a high standard of journalistic excellence, such as the New Yorker and the Guardian, but the industry as a whole has changed dramatically.

The best point the author makes is that journalism has traded in objectivity (finding out what's true and reporting it, a time-consuming, tedious task) and neutrality (reporting the controversy and letting both parties have their say, without taking sides, an easy task that requires no knowledge of the point being debated).

The more extreme politicians and activists are wise to this and use it to their advantage. The government shutdown is a good example: in the past, the GOP would have been cut down by the media for sabotaging the country just to postpone a law that passed through Congress, was signed into law, and passed a constitutionality test in the courts. Now, the shutdown is presented as a "game of chicken" in which both sides are on equal footing.

It's also a logical consequence that you can get a lot of made-up bullshit reported as truth by the media. This has been proved time and again.

Assuming you're male, I really took a lot from this book: http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339

I think it presents an interesting context to understand the feeling, and a reasonably concrete plan to go about getting better. I can't stress enough the importance of working out and being proud of your physical self and appearance. If you don't follow /r/Fitness, they've got a fantastic community and great advice on that front.