(Part 2) Best products from r/bestof

Like people have said here, a journal will most certainly make you aware of you eating habits.

What most people do that makes them fail miserably in their diets is fight their body, fight the habits. Going cold turkey on food is probably harder than going cold turkey on cigarettes just because availability is 100% granted, ergo people stitched their lips in the 90s...

Don't fight it, sway yourself into consuming less calories. Don't cut off, replace.

In my opinion losing weight is a process of self acknowledgement and patience, more than endurance and motivation.

Identify what is the highest calorie foods you eat. Is it dinner? lunch or breakfast? snacks maybe? Now what specific food from those do you think might be specially detrimental to your weight.

For the part above you might have to educate yourself a little about caloric relativity. What foods are more calorie dense, and which foods are more water based. Tip, vegetables are low calories and high water, candy is zero water 100% calories.

Find a bridge between calories - > water - > balance.

You can't go from eating to eating less. Good luck with that... The amount of self discipline to battle our instincts will take most of your mental energy and eventually beat you in the long run. Instead spend time educating yourself and turning cognitive goals into habits. You know you want to lose weight it just so happens to not be a habit you can practice.

So start building a habit. For this I don't want to get into it but I want to recommend you a book which you can find in audio books and helped me know myself.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Habit-What-Business/dp/1400069289

Not loosely reviewed as you can see.


This book will help you believe. Actually believe you can change your habits and have control over your life.

Back to weight loss. Anyway, try things like getting food of other stuff that is less calorie dense prior you start actually exercising stronger restraint. So instead of eating a full meal like you usually would.

an example of a smoothie : 1 scoop of protein powder, handful of spinach, ice, half a cup of milk, water, teaspoon of xantham gum, and sweeten it with splenda if you like. Why? that will yield over 1/4 gallon or 1 litter of just ~300 calories. It has ice creamy texture, its sweet and stimulating and will get you full so you have a much easier time eating less of other more caloric stuff you may normally eat.

Just keep in mind. Go step by step, make a log of what you eat and can you eat instead, and like I said before. Patience. Just do it, don't question it, wait and let results surprise you, don't weight yourself every day twice that is not patience that is anxiety. Know you are doing things right and diligently and you will be rewarded. Do it long enough and it will become inherent in you.

This is as briefly I can tackle one of today's most complicated issues. Good luck.

There is another thing though, that I would like to add quickly. If there is some kind of food that may be detrimental to your goals you will have to make a choice or a plan about it. Let's say beer. Beer is not the best to lose weight. So if I want to drink a lot of beer and lose a lot of weight I am in a tough spot because only one can happen at a time. When it comes to things like this ask yourself:

Is there a replacement? no?

can it be moderated? no?

can it happen less frequently no?

If none apply. Are your goals to lose weight something you want in your life more than (beer for example).
Which one will you give up so you can be happy with the other. Note that if you choose to let the weight loss go, at least you will have beer without guilt. Just an example. Coming into terms with yourself is an important tool when making this kind of changes.

>Before the Soviet Union, Russia was a backwater country. It was ruined by two world wars, idiotic leadership like Stalin. Despite not receiving and Marshal plan aid it had one of the fastest economic growth of any country after the war. They hit the wall at the end of the 70s, but before that they had in many ways outpaced capitalist democracies.

Every large, populous, resource rich country experienced explosive growth in the industrial period, particularly if they were previously held back by a regressive government. China has done the same. So did Japan after the war, Korea, Germany, etc. The fact that a man is able to run much more quickly after he has shackles taken off his legs don't mean he's an olympic runner.

Any non-monarchical system would have produced massive gains in wealth and adoption of technology, again as seen in countries that did adopt a more capitalist structure like Japan or Korea. The Russian system was actually extremely inefficient, and wasted huge amounts of resources, as seen in the gigantomania-influenced projects (see: Magnitogorsk, Denieper Dam, the White Sea Canal, etc. See also http://www.amazon.com/The-Ghost-Executed-Engineer-Technology/dp/0674354370). This can also be seen in the tremendous wastage of human life through the purges, the incredible stratification of Soviet wealthy and peasant/proletarian society, excessive military expenditures, the famines, etc.

Again, the fact that the Soviet system was able to experience a lot of growth when they finally were able to adopt contemporary technology is not indicative of a strong or successful system.

>If they Soviet Union had such a worthless system how come they beat the US countless times in the Space Race? A country which had not been destroyed by war and which had a huge head start in economic development.

Because they poured what resources they had into propaganda projects and military technology instead of consumer goods, despite the massive need thereof. They also had some pretty great scientists, many of whom were unfortunately either killed or excommunicated for silly reasons throughout the process.

>They also manged very well in their educational system, health care and sports.

Got any evidence for this? The ideals were obviously better under the Soviet system than the Tsarist one, but let's not pretend that the backwaters were not ignored per the status quo. Moscow was a place of great education and riches, but the vast majority of the country/countries lived in utter squalor.

For what it's worth I spent most of my college career studying the roots, impact, and after-effects of the Soviet system, so I'm happy to discuss this at greater length if you so wish.

That's an interesting point. I shouldn't have said he was always in heaven. But he was always welcome there, for he was a divine being among God's council. Also, you have to be careful when trying to read translations written recently/written by believers (by which I mean a lot of scribes, over the years, have "cleaned" stuff up or altered stuff slightly to suit their needs (a good example is when they changed "sons of El [Canaanite God]" to "sons of Israel" in order to erase the memory of Israelites' polytheistic/henotheistic origins. I can't remember which passage they specifically changed.) They can often stray from the source text. I just googled the passage you mentioned to quickly see and was surprised to see it straight up call him Satan. In my translations, which are for scholarly purposes, he is called ha'Satan.

Check these out if you're curious.

Tanakh as translated by the Jewish Publication Society. Quite good. I believe translated directly from the oldest manuscripts available of each text.

Harper Collins Study Bible. This is a great one. Not a typical "study bible" that you may be used to seeing. This is for academic studies. It also has some great essays and explanations of stuff. Very, very nice text.

>Thanks for the response.

Thanks for the conversation. I'm enjoying it.

>So, if I understand correctly, you're saying that karma as a content-sorting system is a useful and necessary part of reddit, while karma as a label on a redditor is an unnecessary and detrimental aspect of reddit.

I largely endorse this summary. I'm not saying personal cumulative karma is completely worthless, but I think "karmawhoring" is entirely related to going for a big score beyond that which is necessary to prevent filtering. I think there should be some point where you "win the game" or "stop leveling" and the score ceases to matter. Those who are only here for the score will either start a new account or leave. Those who were here for the discussions will continue on as before, less the annoying "you're just here for the karma" discussions.

At some point, our cups should truly runneth over.

>I would understand this opinion, as it is explained in the "Abolish Karma" post, but the very beginning of the linked comment seems to suggest otherwise:

>So, here karma (the summed label-on-a-redditor kind, not the content-sorting kind) is a currency regardless of its superficial valuelessness, which would seem to suggest something rather contrary to the "Abolish Karma" post: that karma does have some sort of underlying value.

I touched on this just a moment ago but I'm happy to elaborate.

Dan Ariely has done some interesting research on value and currency in Predictably Irrational. Basically, our behavior is manipulated easily by arbitrary numbers and arbitrary situations. The model for karma is very much like a score in a persistent-universe MMORPG. Scores in MMORPGs lead to gold farming. Most every participant on Reddit is at least passingly familiar with these environments and many of our participants are eloquently versed in them. Meanwhile, there are very few online communities that assign rank and weight to comments. So while the discussions have more in common with a PHPBB or the like, the community isn't unlike WOW.

Where things fall apart, of course, is the fact that you can't sell or trade Karma. Psychologically, however, that doesn't matter - we're primed to expect some sort of redemption system for our score because of past experience and peer influece, so we behave as if there's some sort of redemption system for our score.

I believe this makes Reddit a worse place rather than a better one - if there were some sort of exchange for karma, people wouldn't be scolded for having a high score. People who were just reposting things for the high score would be drummed out of the community. In a very real way, we're acting as if our poker chips are money... when in fact we can't even use them to bet more.

In a nutshell, Redditors behave as if that cumulative karma score had value, even though it doesn't... and this dichotomy causes a lot of squirrely behavior.

Like reposts.

That suave confidence I think comes from your body language. I've read a healthy dose of body language books lately. I don't like books that are total self-help books but books that show bigger picture information and explain the 'why' of what's going on. Some books:

This book has helped me be more aware of my own body language and become more in tune with what another person's body language might be saying. It focuses on when a person may be uncomfortable... but at the same time you can apply that to yourself to not appear uncomfortable:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0061438294/

I like the ideas the book brings up because there are some very great takeaways but I don't like how the author presents it (so, I enjoyed 2/3 of the book):

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307453987/

I also just started reading this one that's not about body language but gives a different slant of how to use the right words to better emotionally connect with others:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0787234796/

if you know someone who is alpha/suave male, you can also learn how to mimic some of their body language behaviors, other people will think you're suave then you'll feel suave too (fake it til ya make it...).

>We're talking about a level of care that was poor by any reasonable measure - all they needed to do was take on board basic advice relating to medicine and hygiene and apply that knowledge using the funds available. For decades that didn't happen, that's a problem.

This is what Fr. Peter Gumpel, an official at the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said after investigation regarding beatification:

”There are mistakes made in even the most modern medical facilities, but whenever a correction was needed, Mother and the Missionaries showed themselves alert and open to constructive change and improvement. What many do not understand is the desperate conditions Mother Teresa constantly faced, and that her special charism was not to found or run hospitals—the Church has many who do that—but to rescue those who were given no chance of surviving, and otherwise would have died on the street."

Your criticism is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of MT's mission and anti-Catholic propaganda.

>I'm not sure what you're getting at, we're talking about a person who stood up in front of the UN and declared that the greatest threat to world peace was abortion. That is somewhat non-trivial.

I think you are overstating her influence. At best she might have convinced nominal Catholics to publicly support orthodox Catholic social positions. AFAIK the UN supports contraceptives in a holistic health platform so it seems her pleads fell on deaf ears.

>Slander? Please. I'm working from the best information available.

You aren't.

Most money families contract out to family office and concierge firms, which are like companies that manage wealth and lifestyle. These are the UHNW individual's people.

Service packages differ. A lot of self-made, "on-paper" UHNW like tech founders might only need things like PA's for various aspects of their lives, and often the founder's companies provide concierge services for that via definition of their benefits. As generations progress and the wealth spreads into areas that are outside of the members' bailiwicks (often this focus becomes "philanthropy") the family offices manage investments, help get consensus from senior family members on strategic direction (of said investments among other things), do disaster and crisis planning and preparation etc.

Source: I have a friend in the family office and concierge industry.

The more unique spends I've heard of often involve the children of UHNW. UHNW themselves are often satisfied acquiring for themselves the best in class of what already exists (more name recognition anyway), be it Berluti shoes or their luxury camps at Burning Man, however when it comes to children...

Often there are design and production teams for children. Think about having the lives of your children curated - every moment maximized in fun, discovery, etc, overseen by development experts and professional producers - the raising of a child of UHNW can sometimes be like a movie production (even more so than for the rest of us). Tailors for Disney princess costumes, bespoke, hand embroidered and made out of real silk and sateen (or period specific fabric) instead of polyester. Hand made glass and crystal costume jewelry based on shows and movies. Custom designed lithium ion battery powered mini-sports cars made of fiberglass and professionally vinyl wrapped. Architects and other contractors for rooms, lofts, treehouses. Meal planners for home meals and vacation planners for museum trips (which may in fact be on a private jet to Greece to see the Acropolis), etc ad nauseam.

Most of the above could probably be fielded by UHNW folks in eight figures. When those kids grow up and get to the wedding stage, however, it's the billionaires that can blow the budget of an entire Hollywood blockbuster (or five) on a wedding ($200M - $1B).

One of the more memorable stories was that one wealthy individual noticed a specific commercially produced toy in their child’s room. It was basically a night light that projected shapes onto the walls and ceilings like this. Well, said person was intrigued but so dissatisfied with the limited number of options that they ended up spending about half-a-million dollars with a technical design firm to create a mostly self contained interactive projector bedtime story adventure console for a slightly older child by time it was finished (think those projector ripple ads at the mall on steroids). The design firm ended up breaking some new ground and told said person (due to pre-invention assignment in contract apparently) hey Microsoft might be interested in this, but the party was not interested, wanted this exclusive experience to their child for the time being.

Here is a quick overview of the biggest flaws. This post by itself won't serve to explain in detail how Special Relativity (SR) and General Relativity (GR) work but hopefully should be enough to help you understand in what way what OP posted is bullshit and provide you some references to dig deeper if you are interested.

> I don't know the specific equation, though it is logarithmic so you have to be pretty far along the curve (much faster than we can travel even with long term nuke bomblet propulsion) to even be noticeable in casual observation.

Time dilation is not logarithmic, it is given by the gamma factor which takes the form 1 / sqrt(1-β^2 ), where β is just the speed of the moving target as a fraction of the speed of light.

>As far as time displacement, I think for all practical purposes, space displacement and time displacement are basically the same thing.

Well... no. Time and space "displacements" are not interchangeable for all purposes neither practical nor theoretical. In fact they are very different in SR and GR, time differences e.g. (t_1 - t_2)^2 are negative in relativity and space differences (s_1 - s_2)^2 are positive, if this doesn't tell you anything by itself try to find 2 numbers whose difference squared is negative. This difference is so important that by itself and assuming spacetime is flat you can derive all of SR.

So with that sentence he not only shows absolutely no understanding of relativity he also killed the only thing that makes Special Relativity different from Galilean relativity.

>In fact, a 'wormhole drive', or gate would effectively be the same as a time dilation drive, in that the mass of the wormhole provides the energy for the Einstein-Rosen bridge, which warps space in such a way that no time passes experientally for the passengers.

No idea what a "time dilation drive" but it is absolutely false that observers crossing and a wormhole don't experience time. In relativity you experience time, all the time at the same rate you are experiencing it right now. It's everyone else who you see experience time at different rates depending on their relative motion with respect to you (hence the name relativity). The best way to understand it is by thinking that everything moves through spacetime at the same speed (the speed of light), when you don't move through space you use all your speed moving forward in time , when something moves with respect to you through space they use a bit of their speed moving through space and the rest moving through time (total adding to the speed of light). Time dilation is just a consequence of this, you see them from your perspective use less speed to move through time.

From your perspective you are always stationary to yourself and you always see the passage of time at the same rate, the same rate you are experiencing it right now.

And the rest of his comment goes on with a very poor understanding of SR and GR.

If you want to dig deeper the wiki articles on SR and GR are actually a great source to start with and they come with graphics and animations that can help a lot visualizing the funky geometry.

Start with this one and follow the rabbit hole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

For a formal understanding of Special Relativity you don't need much math, a first year course on linear algebra is enough. This book will take you from the very basics to more advanced topics: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/special-relativity/BDBCE66BDA2159DEF8226F8EE210AA8C

General Relativity requires a lot more math background, specifically differential geometry. A very nice book on the subject is Wald's General Relativity: https://www.amazon.com/General-Relativity-Robert-M-Wald/dp/0226870332

>Neckbeard: See family situation above. Now imagine you just hit puberty and you start growing facial hair and have absolutely no idea how to shave.

Oh jesus this.

I don't care who you are, if your child is growing facial hair please help them learn to shave.

I looked so fucked up when I was a teenager because my beard grew in so scraggly and patchy but I didn't want to shave it because I was so proud of the fact that I'd grown it. Little did I realize how insane it made me look.

Might help if you tell the kid that, if they shave, it'll grow back fast and a lot more evenly and look more mature.

EDIT: I've weirdly gotten like six messages now asking about shaving advice. I say "weirdly" because I put fully the least amount of work into shaving of anyone I know.

I've been shaving for a while now and I've tried almost every method out there at least once. I've even tried fire. I...really do not recommend that method.

For me, a pair of corded electric hair clippers like these are the best. Not one like this because it doesn't have the adjustable stand-off guide.

They're cheap, dead simple to use, and they cut better than anything I've ever used. Brand is completely irrelevant just make sure it's corded and has an adjustable stand-off guide. The snap-on guides are good too and be sure you get/keep a little brush (most of them come with one) to help clean out the teeth. Shave over a dirty t-shirt to catch the hair and dump it outside.

You won't get that baby-smooth skin but a neat, maintained 5 o'clock shadow is better than looking like you just got out of jail.

The stand-off guides also mean that even if you jam it into your skin it won't cut you. If it starts pulling out hair, you're going too fast (same applies with electric shavers too).

I actually hate electric razors because they're so fussy, they break so quickly, and you have to spend twenty minutes unclogging them to get them working. Fuck that noise. One set of electric clippers lasts me 3-4 years with basically zero maintenance and I get a nice, even shave every time. I can shape, layer, and shave almost smooth with the same set of clippers.

I maintain a decent beard and I put in maybe three minutes of shaving every two weeks and I'm solid. And yes it's even suitable for shaving your junk. How? Carefully and with the stand-off guide adjusted for safety. I have never cut anywhere I've shaved with electric hair clippers.

Definitely agree with you; Bill Nye did some great scientific teaching on his show and I like Michael's ideas, too. What I am getting at is it's not enough to just be a fan of a scientist like Neil deGrasse Tyson or Nye (who get a lot of media attention), but to explore the topics further and not just use their more basic teachings only as the end all, be all of scientific processes.

I think some people see these pop scientists as gospel and perhaps don't look into other areas of current (less "entertaining") research. I like to think they open the door for science, but it's up to the individual to develop the critical analysis tools needed to compare and contrast theories. A good book on this is "A Brief Guide to Thinking Like a Scientist." It's a quick read and actually pretty humorous :)

Just jumping in here because he is right:


1.) Is the American empire running out of gas? Foreign policy analyst and former Brookings Institution fellow Parag Khanna thinks that only inertia keeps us going. The collapse of the Soviet Union left America as the world’s only superpower, but we are not universally loved, feared, or even respected. “Does the world no longer need the United States?” asks Khanna. “Anti-Americanism continues even as America’s dominance fades.” China and the European Union (E.U.) have joined America as first-rank powers, although the nature of their power is different. China is working hard to become America’s military equal; already, its economic influence extends around the world. “Globalization is happening on China’s terms,”


2.) Trump's decision to kill TPP leaves door open for China


3.) US leaving TPP: A great news day for China


4.) With a population of 1.3 billion, China recently became the second largest economy and is increasingly playing an important and influential role in the global economy.


5.) Book: “For those who fear that the world is becoming too inward-looking, Connectography is a refreshing, optimistic vision. . . . The most convincing point in the book concerns policy prescriptions. To become part of global supply chains, Mr. Khanna argues, it is essential to invest in infrastructure. China, in particular, has built a sprawling network of ports, canals and the like across the world to acquire and transport natural resources. By contrast, rich countries, especially America, now underfund capital goods, in an attempt to reduce public spending. This short-term skimping bodes ill for future growth.”—The Economist



The list could really go on for miles... It is very widely known China is unabashedly and effectively and gunning for world trade / economic dominance.

Well sometimes things actually are free, someone's just hoping you'll buy stuff later. If you have not I recommend you read this book https://www.amazon.com/Free-Smartest-Businesses-Something-Nothing/dp/B0043RT912

It is extremely interesting. It's about the practice of giving away things for free to encourage stronger customer relations and sales in the future. Examples include bands putting their music up online for free, games being "free to play," etc.

idgi.. . anyways, i cant post on there(reddit nub here).

the 2 colognes he suggested by armani, i wore those in high school(27 now) . . . i wear ecko blue (would buy on sale when ecko site was selling, come out to 20$) and have been complimented on it alot because its a pretty fresh(cirtus) when i just "hang out" in town or chill with friends. if im planning on going to the bar( and have a fresh hair cut/shave, etc, hoping to get lucky) i wear versace or antonio banderas (the box has a picture of him; i keep my cologne on my nightstand and in box so they are more stable, friends asked me y the fk i have a picture of antonio banderas next to my bed, lolzzz) when i "go out"(night clubs, formal), i wear tom ford(it was like 50$ on amazon after gift card).