Oneliners:
The older I get, the more enthusiastically I respond to people asking if I want some tea.
The Russian subreddit should be called r/ussian
If I have an opinion that a fact is a fact, and that fact is, in fact, a fact, does that make my opinion a fact?
I wonder if Morgan Freeman uses his own voice to sooth himself to sleep at night,by talking about himself in the third person.
When making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, is it best to: Dip the jelly-covered knife in the peanutbutter jar? Or, dip the peanut butter-covered knife in the jelly jar?
Assuming someone is gay is like assuming someone is pregnant. Keep it to yourself or you might get bitch slapped.
Rocking chairs are just old people's kids swings
"secretary" is a great password for porn sites because it's the longest word you can type entirely with your left hand
Any young man who says that he is marrying his best friend should try talking to her about the coworker he'd like to nail. Because that's what real best friends talk about.
School doesn't test your intelligence, it test your memory.
We dump so much stupid bullshit on the internet... Archaeologists are going to be ecstatic !
Does it piss you off that the United states of America is probably the only country that doesn't have a name. Were just some United states in America.
Everyone's body is possessed by their own ghost
All weather is sweater weather if you're a sheep.
What if the people saying "The South will rise again" are trying to warn us about the magnetic poles switching?
You've never heard a real Beethoven, Mozart, or Bach song. Only covers.
Children falling over is funny. Adults falling over is serious.
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Obama To Continue Airstrikes On Hospitals In Afghanistan Beyond 2016
WASHINGTON — When President Barack Obama leaves the White House in 2016, his successor will take command of the ongoing mission of bombing civilian hospitals in Afghanistan, sources confirmed today.
“While America’s combat mission in Afghanistan may be over, our commitment to Afghanistan and its people endures,” said Obama, in a brief statement from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. “I will not allow Afghanistan to be used as a safe haven for civilians to shelter from our nation again.”
In a reversal of his previous decision to withdraw thousands of unused American gunships, jets, and bombs from Afghanistan, Obama announced Thursday that he would maintain a presence in the country through 2017, indefinitely prolonging the U.S. mission of counterterrorism at hospitals, wedding parties, and other dangerous hotbeds of civilian activity.
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Teacher asks Johnny; “If a=b, b=c & a=c tell me the example.”
Johnny replies; “I love u - u love your daughter - so I love your daughter.”
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I really think folks are missing the point.
While Microsoft's alliance with Satan and subsequent plans for world domination are kind of bad, the *real* evil that needs to be exposed is the fact that the Windows operating system cheats at "Hearts."
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girlfriend noun girl·friend \ˈgər(-ə)l-ˌfrend\ An addition of problems, subtraction of money, multiplication of enemies and division of friends.
Issue of the Times;
The Last Laugh by David Cole
When a San Francisco high school principal named Lena Van Haren withheld student-body election results last week due to a lack of black and Latino winners (the victorious candidates were Asian and white), the right exploded in understandable anger. To conservative commentators, the principal’s actions conjured up images of racial political correctness gone wild. To me, however, the story conjured up different images: naked high school girls, beheaded students, and the death of “dangerous” comedy in the U.S. at the hands of the left and the right.
National Lampoon magazine, in its prime (the 1970s and very early ’80s), was something that simply could not exist today. With a staff made up of liberal and conservative writers and editors pursuing one simple goal—to be funny—National Lampoon made equal sport of the left and right. Perhaps more important, the Lampoon was politically incorrect to an insane degree (an impossible degree, by today’s standards). These days, when people reflect, nostalgically or angrily, on the Lampoon’s fearlessness regarding things like race and ethnicity, they’re likely to think of P.J. O’Rourke’s “Foreigners Around the World” piece from May 1976. It still gets mentioned because O’Rourke is still a presence on the right. But O’Rourke’s piece has nothing on an illustrated feature from the April 1978 Lampoon. Thirty-seven years before Principal Van Haren decided to give her students a lesson in the heavy hand of “diverse democracy,” Shary Flenniken, a seminal figure in National Lampoon history (she was one of the few women to work her way up from writer and artist to a position as editor), crafted a four-page comic spread that managed to be funny, insightful, and devastatingly politically incorrect. The strip is called “Whiteface,” which should give you an idea of why you can’t find it anywhere online except buried in the National Lampoon Internet archive.
Flenniken’s recurring character Bonnie, a blond, precocious 13-year-old, arrives at school on student-body election day, eager to participate in the grand democratic process. Sadly, Bonnie learns that the faculty members, who are boarded up in the teachers’ lounge, have turned the election over to black nationalist student Itty Bitty Meanie Mohammed, a middle school Idi Amin wannabe who has declared that only black students can participate. Bonnie’s black friend puts her in blackface and an Afro wig so she can be smuggled into the auditorium to hear Mohammed’s victory speech, which consists of promises of “culturally-oriented IQ exams,” an “ethnic dress code,” a Lincoln Continental in the driver’s-ed class, and Boone’s Farm wine in the cafeteria. Mohammed forces all the schoolgirls to strip naked and dance for him, which exposes Bonnie’s white body. Furious that a black traitor has smuggled an evil “Nordic” into his victory celebration, Mohammed seals the auditorium as Bonnie escapes, promising to “eliminate” all disloyal black students.
The final panel is almost certainly the most brutal image ever featured in a mainstream American comic strip. The next day, the white students notice how peaceful everything is, how devoid of racial unrest. As Bonnie goes to her locker, we see the bloody, decapitated heads of the black students, one per locker, murdered in Mohammed’s purge, as Bonnie’s friend explains that Mohammed has now “transferred to a school with a broader power base.”
It’s a gut punch of a payoff. The images are brutal because the subject matter is. Yet it’s impossible to read it in 2015 without knowing that it could never be published today in any mainstream publication, left, center, or right. A mainstream conservatism that declared John Derbyshire a racist embarrassment to be jettisoned and apologized for would never invite the backlash that would inevitably follow publishing the things that O’Rourke and the other Lampoon editors allowed in the ’70s. This gives racial despots like Principal Van Haren an edge. They know that any criticism or satire of their vision of race-based democracy will be limited by boundaries that even their harshest opponents have agreed to adhere to.
I spoke to the cartoonist, Shary Flenniken, about her motivation for creating “Whiteface.” Regarding her own political views, she is the opposite of a conservative or right-winger. She explained that, as someone who identifies primarily with the left, she was always fascinated by the fact that “radical” leftists so often pick on the oppressed they claim to be defending. The desire to satirize this leftist trait began after the Patty Hearst kidnapping. Flenniken, then a newbie cartoonist, was perplexed that the SLA thought it would be effective to kidnap and repeatedly rape a young woman in the name of ending “patriarchal oppression.” By the time she was at the Lampoon, Flenniken saw in the brutal excesses of Idi Amin a vehicle to explore the question “Why are black people killing other black people in Africa?”
“It didn’t make sense to me,” Flenniken told me. “And now it does. I look back and I go, like, ‘Oh, duh, there’s tribal warfare, there’s a lot of reasons that happens.’ But at the time, I was just so naive about, I guess, about race.” Back then, she used her art to work through that naïveté, and she laments that today’s artists, because the climate is so different, would not be able to explore an issue like black-on-black crime—an issue she agrees is every bit if not more relevant today as it was in ’78—with the same freedom she had in the Lampoon’s heyday. But in the end, Flenniken said, the strip was primarily about humor: “I thought that was really funny, to bring Idi Amin into that environment, to put something that evil into a high school environment. Also, at the time, the direction at Lampoon was to be outrageous. And my own instinct is to be outrageous.”
Sadly, these days, that instinct among comedians and satirists is smothered. And while it’s neat and tidy to put all the blame on the PC left, that’s not the reality. The right bears equal responsibility. The left may have dropped the ball regarding outrageous, politically incorrect humor, but the right shows little sign of wanting to recover it. While the left may be blinded by political correctness, the right has never shaken the prudishness that gave birth to the American Family Association and its mindless boycotts (in fact, the AFA was the topic of my very first L.A. Times op-ed), exactly twenty years ago). The AFA’s “kill it if you don’t understand it” mentality is even more prevalent in an age in which social media rewards manufactured outrage. The end result is that conservative-friendly satirists who try to go for Lampoon-style outrageousness more often than not find themselves on the receiving end of angry posts and boycott calls from the right.
Mike Judge (King of the Hill) has always been uniquely adept at inserting conservative-friendly themes into his work, in a manner that is never preachy and (more important) usually funny. Episode 5 of his HBO comedy series Silicon Valley contained a story arc that should have had conservatives cheering. The episode followed the characters’ attempts to create an “edgy” logo for their tech start-up. Looking for “street cred,” they go to a leftist graffiti artist named Chuy Ramirez. Chuy fancies himself an expert on all things Latino, yet he confuses the company’s Pakistani employee for a Latino (a clever twist on the old gag of white Archie Bunker types who can’t tell minorities apart).
The resulting logo, which has nothing to do with what he was paid to create, depicts the Pakistani employee wearing an Aztec headdress while having sex with the Statue of Liberty from behind. Chuy pretentiously explains that it’s a symbol of “the Latino struggle for justice in America,” as the white characters debate how to tell him they don’t like it without appearing racist. The graffiti artist is the butt of the joke; given the opportunity to do something creative, he demonstrates that all he is capable of is crass, obscene anti-Americanism, which he cloaks in faux “Latino pride.” But conservatives didn’t get the joke. The right-wing “think tank” Media Research Center slammed the episode as “anti-American,” and the MRC’s Facebook page was flooded with indignant comments:
GROSS, AND THEY SHOULD BE ARRESTED AND JAILED!!!!!... I think whoever is responsible should be charged with indecency and face criminal charges. ... It is really the Gay Rights Organization behind it!!!!! ... The show was to promote the “Latino struggle in America”??? And this is going to make the so-called struggle better in what way?... Disgusting…....they need to leave our country if that’s what they think is art. ... Is this what Latinos see themselves doing to the United States of America? Raping the nation? Disgusting! ... It’s how Jews train white people to be passive and accept humiliation along with Jewish rule. ... Tell Chuy to go back to Mexico if he is offended by our government and symbols of freedom. ... He should be shot. ... Satan’s maggots!
The one or two commenters who got the joke and tried to explain it were quickly overwhelmed by the others (and, for the record, “Satan’s Maggots” was the name of my college metal band). This exact same situation was repeated with last month’s South Park season opener, which showed Donald Trump being anally violated. Conservative Facebook pages and news sites were filled with the typical chest-pounding: “I don’t watch that piece of filth, but I bet they’d never do nothin’ insulting about Hillary Clinton” (conservatives are so darling when they opine about shows they proudly state they never watch). In fact, South Park, a reliably right/libertarian-leaning show, has most certainly been disrespectful to Hillary, once depicting her as having a terrorist bomb hidden in her vagina. Little difference that made; the Trump episode led to the typical “Ban the show! Arrest the queer perverts!” comments.
Anyone who thinks conservatives can or will step in as the left continues to sanitize comedy is sorely misguided. The kind of merciless, unashamed, unapologetic satire championed by the old National Lampoon will find no quarter these days on the left or the right. It’s to the detriment of society, and to the benefit of today’s Itty Bitty Meanie Mohammeds, like would-be election rigger Principal Lena Van Haren.
Quote of the Times;
"Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. - Liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition - The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern. - Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." - Lord Action
Link of the Times;
http://akinokure.blogspot.com/
Laugh?
Screw?
What did the optimist say as he jumped off the building?
So far, so good.
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Things That Still Bug Me About Aladdin
5. The Genie's past sounds really messed up
Based on the clues we get in the movie, it's safe to say that Genie is incredibly old and served plenty of masters before Aladdin. One can only imagine how many proposterous and/or disastrous wishes Genie must have granted over the years previous. When we first meet him, we learn the rules of Genie's wishes: 1) He won't kill anyone 2) He won't make anyone fall in love and 3) He won't bring anyone back from the dead. While you might reasonably guess that these rules have been in place from Day One, remember what Genie says about Rule #3:
The first half of that sentence implies that, at the very least, Genie witnessed a reanimated corpse in action, and didn't like what he saw. But the second half implies that he did the deed himself, at least once, and the result was so horrible that a rule had to be introduced to make sure it can never happen again. That basically confirms the idea that the rules weren't always in place, and had to be introduced after the fact. Meaning that at some point, Genie probably killed a guy at his master's behest.
That a lampholder wanted to eradicate an enemy or brainwash a lover isn't especially surprising, though it is disconcerting to think that this lovable character once used his phenomenal cosmic power to murder someone. Really though, it's Rule #3 that has the most disturbing implications.
Given Genie's distaste for the practice, a ressurection probably went wrong in one of two ways. Best case scenario: Genie zapped a dead body what came back was an evil entity, a la Pet Sematary. Worst case scenario: Genie accidentally unleashed a zombie apocalypse. It might seem like a stretch, but it gels with a prevailing theory that places Aladdin's time period in the far-flung future -- admit it, that definitely explains why Genie has such a good Jack Nicholson impression. Bearing that in mind, it could be that one of Genie's wishes kicked off an undead plague that took over the world, and it took humanity 10,000 years to get back to the Middle Ages. Man, the phrase "prequel trilogy" never sounded so good.
4. The Sultan's adorable ignorance is killing Agrabah
Agrabah's unnamed Sultan is the classic doddering cartoon daddy. He's more or less a mix of Homer Simpson and Maurice from Beauty and the Beast. He seems like a sweet man and a kind father -- until you realize that this buffoon lives in luxury while his city festers in squalor. Seriously, look at how the palace towers over the slums of Agrabah (aka every part of Agrabah that is not the palace).
This is a city that contains hundreds, if not thousands of impoverished people. Aladdin is so poor that he has to steal bread, and gives the bread away when he realizes there are children that are even poorer than him. Everything we see in the movie makes it look like a pretty shitty place to live. But hey, at least the Sultan gets to live it up with his toys...
...even though it's at the cost of children longingly looking at rotten fish bones.
The movie never acknowledges this. Aladdin is about a hero's journey to defeat a villain with the help of a friend, and also a princess' fight to marry whoever she wants. The "good guys" do manage to get a happy ending, but the rest of Agrabah still suffers. Al agonizes over whether he should free Genie, when but never considers the idea that the children he just fed are, at that very moment, still trapped in poverty. But hey, maybe they'll have their own magical adventures and go on to ignore the plight of their contemporaries. If we're really lucky, they'll also sing some catchy songs.
3. Is Jafar some kind of technological genius?
Fan theories aside, let's assume Aladdin takes place in the distant past. What would that say about the villain, Jafar? He would seem to have a leg-up on the competition because of the limited magic he can perform, but the supernatural is the least of Jafar's areas of expertise. The evil royal vizier we see in the movie is one that wears cunning disguises, throws smoke bombs and uses secret passageways. Jafar is a strategist, a scientist, an escape artist and a chameleon, but he's not really a wizard until he makes that wish.
The most impressive part of Jafar's arsenal is the machine he uses to find Aladdin. This thing is powered by electricity, hundreds of years before Ben Franklin macked on his first French lady. And he's not just waiting for an electrical storm to power the device, but instead gets Iago to generate the power.
That's basically a lightning strike up to 1.21 gigawatts, all produced by what's essentially a parrot running on a treadmill. It's an incredible feat of technology that's not even possible today, and it's in the hands of the villain. What does Jafar need with a magic lamp when he's obviously so technologically talented that he could rule the world anyway? Dude is clearly an evil goateed version of Batman.
2. The whole thing with Prince Ali
It's really difficult to get mad at Jafar for abusing his wishes when Aladdin does the exact same thing. His grand entrance involved hundreds (if not thousands) of loyal subjects singing about how much of a hardcore G Prince Ali is. But that brings up all sorts of questions, like uh, where did all those people come from? Was Genie "borrowing" some of Agrabah's people, temporarily brainwashing them to serve Aladdin's needs? That would mean thousands of Agrabanians woke up later with no memory of what they did, embarrassed and ashamed that they magically forgot to pick their kid up from school. Or worse, is Genie creating those people out of thin air? Is there an entire nation of adult babies wandering around, afraid and oblivious as to what they should do with their newfound existence?
Even if we assume the people are holograms or at least well-paid extras, there's also another problem: The part where Aladdin stops being a Prince for a while:
Apparently all it takes to be de-Princeified is to have your identity exposed and your clothes zapped off of you. All of the royal credentials that Genie presumably whipped up for Aladdin are somehow gone in an instant, and just like that he's once again a street rat that is ineligible to marry Princess Jasmine.
The whole thing is made more baffling by the ending, in which Aladdin considers using his final wish to make himself a prince again. What exactly is that supposed to change? Everyone already knows he's Aladdin. Is it just about the clothes? There's gotta be a nice tailor in the marketplace in between the sugardates and pistachio salesmen; Jas could probably spot him a few bucks for at least a suit rental. All the hand-wringing is moot anyway when you consider the idea that Aladdin could easily just hand the lamp to Jasmine or the Sultan and have them make the proper wishes.
That might be too much to ask of these people, though. After all, they're the ones who couldn't tell Aladdin was Prince Ali while he was wearing no disguise whatsoever.
1. The movie should have ended 15 minutes sooner
The monkey-flung shit hits the fan when Jafar gets a hold of the lamp and starts making wishes. Despite Aladdin having one more wish on the docket, Genie claimed he couldn't help him anymore. Al had to fight and defeat an all-powerful Jafar with his wits alone, for what seems like no reason at all.
Sure, Jafar held the lamp, but that was never a requirement before. Aladdin only held the lamp when he freed Genie. Both other times, Aladdin's hands were empty; for the second wish, Al was unconscious and underwater, and Genie took great liberties with "wish consent" in order to save his pal's life.
And that's not including the time that Aladdin tricked Genie into getting out of the Cave of Wonders without using a wish. Heck, at the end of the movie, Genie boots Jafar's black lamp into a distant sand dune for no other reason than he wanted to -- no wish needed. It's clear that Genie isn't bound by any iron-clad magic laws, and he really is capable of almost anything. All of these so-called rules that Genie is following, including the ones he has against murder and ressurection, are self-made. Nothing should stop him from granting Aladdin's wish to "wreck Jafar's shit" right here.
That might mean Genie would be still a slave at the end of the movie, but as we already covered, Aladdin could easily just hand the lamp to Jasmine and use those new wishes to solve all of their problems. Maybe she could even wish for Agrabah not to be such an oppressive dictatorship!
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In the 1980s, a Soviet citizen was given the rare opportunity to go to the west. He visits some distant relatives now living in the United States, then returns to Mother Russia.
His friends ask him, "Comrade, what is it like in America?"
"Wonderful. But they have some very strange customs there," the Soviet admits.
"Such as?"
"They opened a bottle of vodka and poured me a glass."
"And then?"
"And then," the man says with an incredulous look, "they put the cap back on the bottle!"
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National Guard General Resigns After ‘Hurtful’ Pranks By Other Joint Chiefs
ARLINGTON, Va. — Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau (NGB), abruptly announced his resignation this week amidst claims of hazing and abuse from his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to sources.
Guardsmen at all levels report they are often bullied by their slimmer, active-duty counterparts, but sources say this is the first time the bullying has occurred at such a high level, with the situation worsening in 2012, when Grass was given a seat at the table with the Joint Chiefs.
Grass went on the record following his resignation, speaking to reporters outside the Pentagon, flanked by his attorney Gloria Allred and his wife, Sally.
“At first the vibe was just weird,” Grass said. “Odierno would always walk around naked in the locker room so that I would ‘know who the bigger man was.'”
“But like the Stanford Prison Experiment, shit got real in a hurry,” he recalled. “In 2013 they made me teleconference into a meeting from a kiddie table at a local Chuck E. Cheese.”
Other Joint Chiefs, including recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey, have confirmed some of the allegations.
“I had to preserve my independence, since he was Army too,” said Dempsey. “So his first year on the job I made a rule that he was only allowed to speak in meetings one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.”
The Department of Defense Inspector General opened an investigation into the worst claim of misconduct, which occurred in 2012 on a business trip to Las Vegas. The other Chiefs allegedly made Grass pound shot after shot of vodka while “repeatedly calling him ‘Pledge’ and ‘Boot.’”
At some point, Grass allegedly drunk-dialed NGB’s advertising agency and ordered them to spend millions of dollars on NASCAR sponsorships. The Inspector General confirmed that Grass must have been “miles beyond black-out drunk,” reasoning that “no jackass in their right mind would blow half of his ad budget’ on a ‘sport’ that is just cars making left turns for two hours.”
New Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford declined to comment through a spokesman, who noted, “The Chairman has no idea who or what a Gen. Grass is.”
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Immediately, he sees the eggs and gasps in horror.
"Be careful! CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh, my GOSH!"
The wife, startled at her husband's violent reaction, dashes to the fridge to get some butter.
"You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW!"
The wife, concerned by the status of her husband's mental state, forgets about the butter and goes running to the eggs.
"WE NEED BUTTER! Are you CRAZY??? Where are we going to get the butter? They're going to stick! HURRY!"
The wife runs to the fri-
"CAREFUL about the eggs! CAREFUL. You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them quickly! Oh not that quickly, don't you know how to cook? Are you insane? Turn the DAMN EGGS!"
At this point, the wife starts crying, since she has no idea what to do.
She gasps "What is WRONG with you? I know how to cook eggs."
The husband simply smiles, remarks "I just wanted to show you what it feels like while I'm driving with you in the car", and leaves.
Issue of the Times;
Screw Finding Your Passion by Mark Manson
Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster.
Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement.
And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it, or you didn’t.
And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects?”
There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.
Today I received approximately the 11,504th email this year from a person telling me that they don’t know what to do with their life. And like all of the others, this person asked me if I had any ideas of what they could do, where they could start, where to “find their passion.”
And of course, I didn’t respond. Why? Because I have no fucking clue. If you don’t have any idea what to do with yourself, what makes you think some jackass with a website would? I’m a writer, not a fortune teller.
But more importantly, what I want to say to these people is this: that’s the whole point — “not knowing” is the whole fucking point. Life is all about not knowing, and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. All of it. And it’s not going to get any easier just because you found out you love your job cleaning septic tanks or you scored a dream gig writing indie movies.
The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to ‘find their passion.’
I call bullshit. You already found your passion, you’re just ignoring it. Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck do you do with your time? You’re doing something, obviously. You’re talking about something. There’s some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free time, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without you consciously pursuing it or looking for it.
It’s right there in front of you, you’re just avoiding it. For whatever reason, you’re avoiding it. You’re telling yourself, “Oh well, yeah, I love comic books but that doesn’t count. You can’t make money with comic books.”
Fuck you, have you even tried?
The problem is not a lack of passion for something. The problem is productivity. The problem is perception. The problem is acceptance.
The problem is the, “Oh, well that’s just not a realistic option,” or “Mom and Dad would kill me if I tried to do that, they say I should be a doctor” or “That’s crazy, you can’t buy a BMW with the money you make doing that.”
The problem isn’t passion. It’s never passion.
It’s priorities.
And even then, who says you need to make money doing what you love? Since when does everyone feel entitled to love every fucking second of their job? Really, what is so wrong with working an OK normal job with some cool people you like, and then pursuing your passion in your free time on the side? Has the world turned upside-down or is this not suddenly a novel idea to people?
Look, here’s another slap in the face for you: every job sucks sometimes. There’s no such thing as some passionate activity that you will never get tired of, never get stressed over, never complain about. It doesn’t exist. I am living my dream job (which happened by accident, by the way. I never in a million years planned on this happening; like a kid on a playground I just went and tried it), and I still hate about 30% of it. Some days more.
Again, that’s just life.
The issue here is, once again, expectations. If you think you’re supposed to be working 70-hour work weeks and sleeping in your office like Steve Jobs and loving every second of it, you’ve been watching too many shitty movies. If you think you’re supposed to wake up every single day dancing out of your pajamas because you get to go to work, then you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid. Life doesn’t work like that. It’s just unrealistic. There’s a thing most of us need called balance.
I have a friend who, for the last three years, has been trying to build an online businessselling whatever. It hasn’t been working. And by not working, I mean he’s not even launching anything. Despite years of “work” and saying he’s going to do this or that, nothing actually ever gets done.
What does get done is when one of his former co-workers comes to him with a design job to create a logo or design some promotional material for an event. Holy shit, he’s all over that like flies on fresh cow shit.
And he does a great job! He stays up to 4:00 AM losing himself working on it and loving every second of it.
But then two days later it’s back to, “Man, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
I meet so many people like him. He doesn’t need to find his passion. His passion already found him. He’s just ignoring it. He just refuses to believe it’s viable. He is just afraid of giving it an honest-to-god try.
It’s like a nerdy kid walking onto a playground and saying, “Well, bugs are really cool, but NFL players make more money, so I should force myself to play football every day,” and then coming home and complaining that he doesn’t like recess.
And that’s bullshit. Everybody likes recess. The problem is that he’s arbitrarily choosing to limit himself based on some bullshitty ideas he got into his head about success and what he’s supposed to do.
Another email I get all the time is from people wanting advice on how to become a writer.
And my answer is the same: I have no fucking idea.
As a kid, I would write short stories in my room for fun. As a teenager, I would write music reviews and essays about bands I loved and then show them to nobody. Once the internet came around, I spent hours upon hours on forums writing multi-page posts about inane topics – everything from guitar pickups to the causes of the Iraq War.
I never considered writing as a potential career. I never even considered it a hobby or passion. To me, the things I wrote about were my passion: music, politics, philosophy. Writing was just something I did because I felt like it.
And when I had to go looking for a career I could fall in love with, I didn’t have to look far. In fact, I didn’t have to look at all. It chose me, in a way. It was already there. Already something I was doing every day, since I was a kid, without even thinking about it.
Because here’s another point that might make a few people salty: If you have to look for what you’re passionate about, then you’re probably not passionate about it at all.
If you’re passionate about something, it will already feel like such an ingrained part of your life that you will have to be reminded by people that it’s not normal, that other people aren’t like that.
It didn’t occur to me that writing 2,000 word posts on forums was something nobody else considered fun. It never occurred to my friend that designing a logo is something that most people don’t find easy or fun. To him, it’s so natural that he can’t even imagine it being otherwise. And that’s why it’s probably what he really should be doing.
A child does not walk onto a playground and say to herself, “How do I find fun?” She just goes and has fun.
If you have to look for what you enjoy in life, then you’re not going to enjoy anything.
And the real truth is that you already enjoy something. You already enjoy many things. You’re just choosing to ignore them.
Quote of the Times;
“To penetrate one’s being, one must go armed to the teeth.” - Valery
Link of the Times;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
So far, so good.
*.*
Things That Still Bug Me About Aladdin
5. The Genie's past sounds really messed up
Based on the clues we get in the movie, it's safe to say that Genie is incredibly old and served plenty of masters before Aladdin. One can only imagine how many proposterous and/or disastrous wishes Genie must have granted over the years previous. When we first meet him, we learn the rules of Genie's wishes: 1) He won't kill anyone 2) He won't make anyone fall in love and 3) He won't bring anyone back from the dead. While you might reasonably guess that these rules have been in place from Day One, remember what Genie says about Rule #3:
The first half of that sentence implies that, at the very least, Genie witnessed a reanimated corpse in action, and didn't like what he saw. But the second half implies that he did the deed himself, at least once, and the result was so horrible that a rule had to be introduced to make sure it can never happen again. That basically confirms the idea that the rules weren't always in place, and had to be introduced after the fact. Meaning that at some point, Genie probably killed a guy at his master's behest.
That a lampholder wanted to eradicate an enemy or brainwash a lover isn't especially surprising, though it is disconcerting to think that this lovable character once used his phenomenal cosmic power to murder someone. Really though, it's Rule #3 that has the most disturbing implications.
Given Genie's distaste for the practice, a ressurection probably went wrong in one of two ways. Best case scenario: Genie zapped a dead body what came back was an evil entity, a la Pet Sematary. Worst case scenario: Genie accidentally unleashed a zombie apocalypse. It might seem like a stretch, but it gels with a prevailing theory that places Aladdin's time period in the far-flung future -- admit it, that definitely explains why Genie has such a good Jack Nicholson impression. Bearing that in mind, it could be that one of Genie's wishes kicked off an undead plague that took over the world, and it took humanity 10,000 years to get back to the Middle Ages. Man, the phrase "prequel trilogy" never sounded so good.
4. The Sultan's adorable ignorance is killing Agrabah
Agrabah's unnamed Sultan is the classic doddering cartoon daddy. He's more or less a mix of Homer Simpson and Maurice from Beauty and the Beast. He seems like a sweet man and a kind father -- until you realize that this buffoon lives in luxury while his city festers in squalor. Seriously, look at how the palace towers over the slums of Agrabah (aka every part of Agrabah that is not the palace).
This is a city that contains hundreds, if not thousands of impoverished people. Aladdin is so poor that he has to steal bread, and gives the bread away when he realizes there are children that are even poorer than him. Everything we see in the movie makes it look like a pretty shitty place to live. But hey, at least the Sultan gets to live it up with his toys...
...even though it's at the cost of children longingly looking at rotten fish bones.
The movie never acknowledges this. Aladdin is about a hero's journey to defeat a villain with the help of a friend, and also a princess' fight to marry whoever she wants. The "good guys" do manage to get a happy ending, but the rest of Agrabah still suffers. Al agonizes over whether he should free Genie, when but never considers the idea that the children he just fed are, at that very moment, still trapped in poverty. But hey, maybe they'll have their own magical adventures and go on to ignore the plight of their contemporaries. If we're really lucky, they'll also sing some catchy songs.
3. Is Jafar some kind of technological genius?
Fan theories aside, let's assume Aladdin takes place in the distant past. What would that say about the villain, Jafar? He would seem to have a leg-up on the competition because of the limited magic he can perform, but the supernatural is the least of Jafar's areas of expertise. The evil royal vizier we see in the movie is one that wears cunning disguises, throws smoke bombs and uses secret passageways. Jafar is a strategist, a scientist, an escape artist and a chameleon, but he's not really a wizard until he makes that wish.
The most impressive part of Jafar's arsenal is the machine he uses to find Aladdin. This thing is powered by electricity, hundreds of years before Ben Franklin macked on his first French lady. And he's not just waiting for an electrical storm to power the device, but instead gets Iago to generate the power.
That's basically a lightning strike up to 1.21 gigawatts, all produced by what's essentially a parrot running on a treadmill. It's an incredible feat of technology that's not even possible today, and it's in the hands of the villain. What does Jafar need with a magic lamp when he's obviously so technologically talented that he could rule the world anyway? Dude is clearly an evil goateed version of Batman.
2. The whole thing with Prince Ali
It's really difficult to get mad at Jafar for abusing his wishes when Aladdin does the exact same thing. His grand entrance involved hundreds (if not thousands) of loyal subjects singing about how much of a hardcore G Prince Ali is. But that brings up all sorts of questions, like uh, where did all those people come from? Was Genie "borrowing" some of Agrabah's people, temporarily brainwashing them to serve Aladdin's needs? That would mean thousands of Agrabanians woke up later with no memory of what they did, embarrassed and ashamed that they magically forgot to pick their kid up from school. Or worse, is Genie creating those people out of thin air? Is there an entire nation of adult babies wandering around, afraid and oblivious as to what they should do with their newfound existence?
Even if we assume the people are holograms or at least well-paid extras, there's also another problem: The part where Aladdin stops being a Prince for a while:
Apparently all it takes to be de-Princeified is to have your identity exposed and your clothes zapped off of you. All of the royal credentials that Genie presumably whipped up for Aladdin are somehow gone in an instant, and just like that he's once again a street rat that is ineligible to marry Princess Jasmine.
The whole thing is made more baffling by the ending, in which Aladdin considers using his final wish to make himself a prince again. What exactly is that supposed to change? Everyone already knows he's Aladdin. Is it just about the clothes? There's gotta be a nice tailor in the marketplace in between the sugardates and pistachio salesmen; Jas could probably spot him a few bucks for at least a suit rental. All the hand-wringing is moot anyway when you consider the idea that Aladdin could easily just hand the lamp to Jasmine or the Sultan and have them make the proper wishes.
That might be too much to ask of these people, though. After all, they're the ones who couldn't tell Aladdin was Prince Ali while he was wearing no disguise whatsoever.
1. The movie should have ended 15 minutes sooner
The monkey-flung shit hits the fan when Jafar gets a hold of the lamp and starts making wishes. Despite Aladdin having one more wish on the docket, Genie claimed he couldn't help him anymore. Al had to fight and defeat an all-powerful Jafar with his wits alone, for what seems like no reason at all.
Sure, Jafar held the lamp, but that was never a requirement before. Aladdin only held the lamp when he freed Genie. Both other times, Aladdin's hands were empty; for the second wish, Al was unconscious and underwater, and Genie took great liberties with "wish consent" in order to save his pal's life.
And that's not including the time that Aladdin tricked Genie into getting out of the Cave of Wonders without using a wish. Heck, at the end of the movie, Genie boots Jafar's black lamp into a distant sand dune for no other reason than he wanted to -- no wish needed. It's clear that Genie isn't bound by any iron-clad magic laws, and he really is capable of almost anything. All of these so-called rules that Genie is following, including the ones he has against murder and ressurection, are self-made. Nothing should stop him from granting Aladdin's wish to "wreck Jafar's shit" right here.
That might mean Genie would be still a slave at the end of the movie, but as we already covered, Aladdin could easily just hand the lamp to Jasmine and use those new wishes to solve all of their problems. Maybe she could even wish for Agrabah not to be such an oppressive dictatorship!
*.*
In the 1980s, a Soviet citizen was given the rare opportunity to go to the west. He visits some distant relatives now living in the United States, then returns to Mother Russia.
His friends ask him, "Comrade, what is it like in America?"
"Wonderful. But they have some very strange customs there," the Soviet admits.
"Such as?"
"They opened a bottle of vodka and poured me a glass."
"And then?"
"And then," the man says with an incredulous look, "they put the cap back on the bottle!"
*.*
National Guard General Resigns After ‘Hurtful’ Pranks By Other Joint Chiefs
ARLINGTON, Va. — Gen. Frank Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau (NGB), abruptly announced his resignation this week amidst claims of hazing and abuse from his fellow Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to sources.
Guardsmen at all levels report they are often bullied by their slimmer, active-duty counterparts, but sources say this is the first time the bullying has occurred at such a high level, with the situation worsening in 2012, when Grass was given a seat at the table with the Joint Chiefs.
Grass went on the record following his resignation, speaking to reporters outside the Pentagon, flanked by his attorney Gloria Allred and his wife, Sally.
“At first the vibe was just weird,” Grass said. “Odierno would always walk around naked in the locker room so that I would ‘know who the bigger man was.'”
“But like the Stanford Prison Experiment, shit got real in a hurry,” he recalled. “In 2013 they made me teleconference into a meeting from a kiddie table at a local Chuck E. Cheese.”
Other Joint Chiefs, including recently retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin Dempsey, have confirmed some of the allegations.
“I had to preserve my independence, since he was Army too,” said Dempsey. “So his first year on the job I made a rule that he was only allowed to speak in meetings one weekend a month and two weeks in the summer.”
The Department of Defense Inspector General opened an investigation into the worst claim of misconduct, which occurred in 2012 on a business trip to Las Vegas. The other Chiefs allegedly made Grass pound shot after shot of vodka while “repeatedly calling him ‘Pledge’ and ‘Boot.’”
At some point, Grass allegedly drunk-dialed NGB’s advertising agency and ordered them to spend millions of dollars on NASCAR sponsorships. The Inspector General confirmed that Grass must have been “miles beyond black-out drunk,” reasoning that “no jackass in their right mind would blow half of his ad budget’ on a ‘sport’ that is just cars making left turns for two hours.”
New Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford declined to comment through a spokesman, who noted, “The Chairman has no idea who or what a Gen. Grass is.”
*.*
Immediately, he sees the eggs and gasps in horror.
"Be careful! CAREFUL! Put in some more butter! Oh, my GOSH!"
The wife, startled at her husband's violent reaction, dashes to the fridge to get some butter.
"You're cooking too many at once. TOO MANY! Turn them! TURN THEM NOW!"
The wife, concerned by the status of her husband's mental state, forgets about the butter and goes running to the eggs.
"WE NEED BUTTER! Are you CRAZY??? Where are we going to get the butter? They're going to stick! HURRY!"
The wife runs to the fri-
"CAREFUL about the eggs! CAREFUL. You NEVER listen to me when you're cooking! Never! Turn them quickly! Oh not that quickly, don't you know how to cook? Are you insane? Turn the DAMN EGGS!"
At this point, the wife starts crying, since she has no idea what to do.
She gasps "What is WRONG with you? I know how to cook eggs."
The husband simply smiles, remarks "I just wanted to show you what it feels like while I'm driving with you in the car", and leaves.
Issue of the Times;
Screw Finding Your Passion by Mark Manson
Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, “What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?” You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster.
Nobody told you to do it, you just did it. You were led merely by your curiosity and excitement.
And the beautiful thing was, if you hated baseball, you just stopped playing it. There was no guilt involved. There was no arguing or debate. You either liked it, or you didn’t.
And if you loved looking for bugs, you just did that. There was no second-level analysis of, “Well, is looking for bugs really what I should be doing with my time as a child? Nobody else wants to look for bugs, does that mean there’s something wrong with me? How will looking for bugs affect my future prospects?”
There was no bullshit. If you liked something, you just did it.
Today I received approximately the 11,504th email this year from a person telling me that they don’t know what to do with their life. And like all of the others, this person asked me if I had any ideas of what they could do, where they could start, where to “find their passion.”
And of course, I didn’t respond. Why? Because I have no fucking clue. If you don’t have any idea what to do with yourself, what makes you think some jackass with a website would? I’m a writer, not a fortune teller.
But more importantly, what I want to say to these people is this: that’s the whole point — “not knowing” is the whole fucking point. Life is all about not knowing, and then doing something anyway. All of life is like this. All of it. And it’s not going to get any easier just because you found out you love your job cleaning septic tanks or you scored a dream gig writing indie movies.
The common complaint among a lot of these people is that they need to ‘find their passion.’
I call bullshit. You already found your passion, you’re just ignoring it. Seriously, you’re awake 16 hours a day, what the fuck do you do with your time? You’re doing something, obviously. You’re talking about something. There’s some topic or activity or idea that dominates a significant amount of your free time, your conversations, your web browsing, and it dominates them without you consciously pursuing it or looking for it.
It’s right there in front of you, you’re just avoiding it. For whatever reason, you’re avoiding it. You’re telling yourself, “Oh well, yeah, I love comic books but that doesn’t count. You can’t make money with comic books.”
Fuck you, have you even tried?
The problem is not a lack of passion for something. The problem is productivity. The problem is perception. The problem is acceptance.
The problem is the, “Oh, well that’s just not a realistic option,” or “Mom and Dad would kill me if I tried to do that, they say I should be a doctor” or “That’s crazy, you can’t buy a BMW with the money you make doing that.”
The problem isn’t passion. It’s never passion.
It’s priorities.
And even then, who says you need to make money doing what you love? Since when does everyone feel entitled to love every fucking second of their job? Really, what is so wrong with working an OK normal job with some cool people you like, and then pursuing your passion in your free time on the side? Has the world turned upside-down or is this not suddenly a novel idea to people?
Look, here’s another slap in the face for you: every job sucks sometimes. There’s no such thing as some passionate activity that you will never get tired of, never get stressed over, never complain about. It doesn’t exist. I am living my dream job (which happened by accident, by the way. I never in a million years planned on this happening; like a kid on a playground I just went and tried it), and I still hate about 30% of it. Some days more.
Again, that’s just life.
The issue here is, once again, expectations. If you think you’re supposed to be working 70-hour work weeks and sleeping in your office like Steve Jobs and loving every second of it, you’ve been watching too many shitty movies. If you think you’re supposed to wake up every single day dancing out of your pajamas because you get to go to work, then you’ve been drinking the Kool-Aid. Life doesn’t work like that. It’s just unrealistic. There’s a thing most of us need called balance.
I have a friend who, for the last three years, has been trying to build an online businessselling whatever. It hasn’t been working. And by not working, I mean he’s not even launching anything. Despite years of “work” and saying he’s going to do this or that, nothing actually ever gets done.
What does get done is when one of his former co-workers comes to him with a design job to create a logo or design some promotional material for an event. Holy shit, he’s all over that like flies on fresh cow shit.
And he does a great job! He stays up to 4:00 AM losing himself working on it and loving every second of it.
But then two days later it’s back to, “Man, I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do.”
I meet so many people like him. He doesn’t need to find his passion. His passion already found him. He’s just ignoring it. He just refuses to believe it’s viable. He is just afraid of giving it an honest-to-god try.
It’s like a nerdy kid walking onto a playground and saying, “Well, bugs are really cool, but NFL players make more money, so I should force myself to play football every day,” and then coming home and complaining that he doesn’t like recess.
And that’s bullshit. Everybody likes recess. The problem is that he’s arbitrarily choosing to limit himself based on some bullshitty ideas he got into his head about success and what he’s supposed to do.
Another email I get all the time is from people wanting advice on how to become a writer.
And my answer is the same: I have no fucking idea.
As a kid, I would write short stories in my room for fun. As a teenager, I would write music reviews and essays about bands I loved and then show them to nobody. Once the internet came around, I spent hours upon hours on forums writing multi-page posts about inane topics – everything from guitar pickups to the causes of the Iraq War.
I never considered writing as a potential career. I never even considered it a hobby or passion. To me, the things I wrote about were my passion: music, politics, philosophy. Writing was just something I did because I felt like it.
And when I had to go looking for a career I could fall in love with, I didn’t have to look far. In fact, I didn’t have to look at all. It chose me, in a way. It was already there. Already something I was doing every day, since I was a kid, without even thinking about it.
Because here’s another point that might make a few people salty: If you have to look for what you’re passionate about, then you’re probably not passionate about it at all.
If you’re passionate about something, it will already feel like such an ingrained part of your life that you will have to be reminded by people that it’s not normal, that other people aren’t like that.
It didn’t occur to me that writing 2,000 word posts on forums was something nobody else considered fun. It never occurred to my friend that designing a logo is something that most people don’t find easy or fun. To him, it’s so natural that he can’t even imagine it being otherwise. And that’s why it’s probably what he really should be doing.
A child does not walk onto a playground and say to herself, “How do I find fun?” She just goes and has fun.
If you have to look for what you enjoy in life, then you’re not going to enjoy anything.
And the real truth is that you already enjoy something. You already enjoy many things. You’re just choosing to ignore them.
Quote of the Times;
“To penetrate one’s being, one must go armed to the teeth.” - Valery
Link of the Times;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002
Punched?
A wife is like a hand grenade..
You take away the ring, and there goes your house.
*.*
Oneliners:
Ironically, The One Ring from Lord of The Rings is probably the most replicated ring ever.
Intentionally losing at a game of rock, paper, scissors is just as hard as trying to win
Why do we even have gender deodorants, if I'm a grown ass man and I want to smell like Cocoa Butter Kisses, fuck it I will.
Wrestling videogames are actual competitions with no predetermined winner. Does that make them more "real" than the live action they're based on?
It took me 16 years to realise Saturday has turd in it
If you get your tongue stuck in a mouse trap you will pronounce it mouth trap for a short period of time.
Cleaning my cats litterbox is like panning for terrible gold.
To Yoda, everyone must sound pretty fucking weird
All pants and jeans should have pockets lined with microfiber material so your phone gets cleaned every time you put it in your pocket.
If Luke Skywalker had turned off his targeting computer and then missed the Death Star's exhaust port he would have looked like the biggest dick ever
When a watch battery dies, it records the time of its own death.
Parents who tell their kids they can be whatever they want aren't taking into account they might choose to be an asshole.
All I want is a candle that smells like blown out candles
I can remember most of the 720 pokemon, but only a handful of 196 countries in the world
My brain will fixate on people I hate while allowing me to forget to drink enough water.
I feel like I'm the charismatic leader of a cult my dogs are in.
*.*
Porky was eighteen years old, friendly, and eager to do things right. Unfortunately, he wasn't especially bright. He had just started his first job, as a delivery boy and general 'go-fer' at a furniture warehouse. His first task was to go out for coffee. He walked into a nearby coffee shop carrying a large thermos. When the counterman finally noticed him, he held up the thermos.
"Is this big enough to hold six cups of coffee?" he said.
The counterman looked at the thermos, hesitated for a few seconds, then finally said, "Yeah. It looks like about six cups to me."
"Good," Porky said. "Give me two regular, two black, and two decaf."
*.*
I bet people would like me more if my sense of self-deprecating humor didn't suck so much.
*.*
This is weird.... it really works, just follow the directions.
These are the words
- Cows
- About
- Talking
- Hole
- Ass
- This
- Got
- I
- Long
- How
- Look
1. Say COW before each word:
i.e.
- Cow Cows
- Cow About
- Cow Talking
- Cow Hole
- Cow Ass
- Cow This
- Cow Got
- Cow I
- Cow Long
- Cow How
- Cow Look
2. Say COW after each word:
i.e.
Cows Cow -
About Cow -
Talking Cow -
Hole Cow -
Ass Cow -
This Cow -
Got Cow -
I Cow -
Long Cow -
How Cow -
Look Cow -
3. Say COW before and after each word:
i.e.
- Cow Cows Cow -
- Cow About Cow -
- Cow Talking Cow -
- Cow Hole Cow -
- Cow Ass Cow -
- Cow This Cow -
- Cow Got Cow -
- Cow I Cow -
- Cow Long Cow -
- Cow How Cow -
- Cow Look Cow -
4. Start at the bottom and read the words
upwards:
Cows
About
Talking
Hole
Ass
This
Got
I
Long
How
Look
I can’t believe that you actually did this!!!!!!!
Issue of the Times;
Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn’t Been Punched In The Face by Scott Locklin
Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline. The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.
Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality. The over-civilized will try to portray their decadence as something “highly evolved” and worthy of emulation because it can only exist in the hothouse of highly civilized urban centers, much like influenza epidemics. Somehow these twittering blockheads missed out on what the word “evolution” means. Evolution involves brutal and often violent natural selection, and these people have not been exposed to brutal evolutionary forces any more than a typical urban poodle.
Through human history, vigorous civilizations had various ways of dealing with the unfortunate human tendency toward being a weak ninny. The South Koreans (for my money, the hardest men in Asia today) have brutally tough military training as a rite of passage. I’ve been told that the Soviet system had students picking potatoes during national holidays. The ancient Greeks used competitive sports and constant warfare. The Anglo-American working classes, the last large virtuous group of people left in these countries, use bullying, violent sports, fisticuffs, and hard living.
I think there is a certain worldview that comes from violent experience. It’s something like…manhood. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest badass to be a man, but you have to be willing to throw down when the time is right.
A man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t. Fisticuffs, wrestling matches, knife fights, violent sport, duels with baseball bats, facing down guns, or getting crushed in the football field—men who have had these experiences are different from men who have not. Men who have trained for or experienced such encounters know about bravery and mental fortitude from firsthand experience. Men who have been tested physically know that inequality is a physical fact. Men who know how to deal out violence know that radical feminism’s tenets—that women and men are equal—are a lie. We know that women are not the same as men: not physically, mentally, or in terms of moral character.
Men who have fought know how difficult it is to stand against the crowd and that civilization is fragile and important. A man who has experienced violence knows that, at its core, civilization is an agreement between men to behave well. That agreement can be broken at any moment; it’s part of manhood to be ready when it is. Men who have been in fights know about something that is rarely spoken of without snickering these days: honor. Men who have been in fights know that, on some level, words are just words: At some point, words must be backed up by deeds.
Above all, men who have been in fights know that there is nothing good or noble about being a victim. This is a concept the modern “conservative movement,” mostly run by wimps, has lost, probably irrevocably. They’re forever tugging at my heartstrings, from No Child Left Behind to Israel’s plight to MLK’s wonders to whining that the media doesn’t play fair to the overwrought emotional appeals they use to justify dropping bombs on Muslims. The Republicans even took seriously a pure victim-candidate: Michelle Bachman. As far as can be told, she’s a middle-American Barack Obama with boobs and a slightly loopier world view.
Modern “civilized” males don’t get in fistfights. They don’t play violent sports. They play video games and, at best, watch TV sports. Modern males are physical and emotional weaklings. The ideal male isn’t John Wayne or James Bond or Jimmy Stewart anymore. It’s some crying tit that goes to a therapist, a sort of agreeable lesbian with a dick who calls the police (whom he hates in theory) when there is trouble. The ideal modern male is the British shrimp who handed his pants over to the looter in south London.
How did we get here? Estrogens in the food supply? Cultural Marxism’s corrosive influence? Small families? Some of the greatest badasses I’ve known had many brothers to fight with growing up. When good men who will fight are all extinct, there is no more civilization. No lantern-jawed viragos are going to save you from the barbarian hordes. No mincing nancy boys with Harvard diplomas will stand up for the common decencies: They’re a social construct, dontcha know. The conservative movement won’t save you: They’re chicken-hearted careerists petrified of offending a victim group.
Teddy Roosevelt, my ideal President, kept a lion and a bear as pets in the White House and took his daily exercise doing jiu-jitsu and boxing. He even lost vision in an eye in a friendly boxing match while he was president. Our last three glorious leaders are men who kept fluffy dogs and went jogging. I don’t trust squirrelly girly-men in any context. When confronted with difficult decisions, they don’t do what’s right or tell the truth—they’ll do what’s easy or politically expedient. Unlike the last three, Teddy Roosevelt never sent men to die in pointless wars, though he was more than happy to go himself or risk his neck wrestling with bears.
I’m no great shakes: I’m a shrimpy egghead in a suit who thinks about math all day. I don’t train for fighting anymore, and my experiences with violence are fairly limited. Nonetheless, I judge people on these sorts of things. When I first meet a man, I don’t care what kind of sheepskins or awards he has on his walls. I don’t care if he is liberal or conservative. I want to know if they have my back in a fight. That’s really the only thing that matters.
Quote of the Times;
“When it comes to government, if you aren’t involved in the provision of actual public goods, you are involved in extortion. It may be legal. It may have the blessing of the mayor, the city council, and your union representative, but it’s still extortion. And you should be ashamed of yourself. If your only purpose is getting in the way until somebody hands you money, then you are part of a protection racket. And you might want to think about going into a more honorable line of work.” – Williamson
Link of the Times;
http://www.illholdyourbeer.com/
You take away the ring, and there goes your house.
*.*
Oneliners:
Ironically, The One Ring from Lord of The Rings is probably the most replicated ring ever.
Intentionally losing at a game of rock, paper, scissors is just as hard as trying to win
Why do we even have gender deodorants, if I'm a grown ass man and I want to smell like Cocoa Butter Kisses, fuck it I will.
Wrestling videogames are actual competitions with no predetermined winner. Does that make them more "real" than the live action they're based on?
It took me 16 years to realise Saturday has turd in it
If you get your tongue stuck in a mouse trap you will pronounce it mouth trap for a short period of time.
Cleaning my cats litterbox is like panning for terrible gold.
To Yoda, everyone must sound pretty fucking weird
All pants and jeans should have pockets lined with microfiber material so your phone gets cleaned every time you put it in your pocket.
If Luke Skywalker had turned off his targeting computer and then missed the Death Star's exhaust port he would have looked like the biggest dick ever
When a watch battery dies, it records the time of its own death.
Parents who tell their kids they can be whatever they want aren't taking into account they might choose to be an asshole.
All I want is a candle that smells like blown out candles
I can remember most of the 720 pokemon, but only a handful of 196 countries in the world
My brain will fixate on people I hate while allowing me to forget to drink enough water.
I feel like I'm the charismatic leader of a cult my dogs are in.
*.*
Porky was eighteen years old, friendly, and eager to do things right. Unfortunately, he wasn't especially bright. He had just started his first job, as a delivery boy and general 'go-fer' at a furniture warehouse. His first task was to go out for coffee. He walked into a nearby coffee shop carrying a large thermos. When the counterman finally noticed him, he held up the thermos.
"Is this big enough to hold six cups of coffee?" he said.
The counterman looked at the thermos, hesitated for a few seconds, then finally said, "Yeah. It looks like about six cups to me."
"Good," Porky said. "Give me two regular, two black, and two decaf."
*.*
I bet people would like me more if my sense of self-deprecating humor didn't suck so much.
*.*
This is weird.... it really works, just follow the directions.
These are the words
- Cows
- About
- Talking
- Hole
- Ass
- This
- Got
- I
- Long
- How
- Look
1. Say COW before each word:
i.e.
- Cow Cows
- Cow About
- Cow Talking
- Cow Hole
- Cow Ass
- Cow This
- Cow Got
- Cow I
- Cow Long
- Cow How
- Cow Look
2. Say COW after each word:
i.e.
Cows Cow -
About Cow -
Talking Cow -
Hole Cow -
Ass Cow -
This Cow -
Got Cow -
I Cow -
Long Cow -
How Cow -
Look Cow -
3. Say COW before and after each word:
i.e.
- Cow Cows Cow -
- Cow About Cow -
- Cow Talking Cow -
- Cow Hole Cow -
- Cow Ass Cow -
- Cow This Cow -
- Cow Got Cow -
- Cow I Cow -
- Cow Long Cow -
- Cow How Cow -
- Cow Look Cow -
4. Start at the bottom and read the words
upwards:
Cows
About
Talking
Hole
Ass
This
Got
I
Long
How
Look
I can’t believe that you actually did this!!!!!!!
Issue of the Times;
Never Trust Anyone Who Hasn’t Been Punched In The Face by Scott Locklin
Conservatives like to talk about the causes of Western Civilization’s downfall: feminism, loose morality, drug abuse, Christianity’s decline, reality TV. Blaming civilization’s downfall on lardy hagfish such as Andrea Dworkin is like a doctor diagnosing senility by an old person’s wrinkles. The fact that anyone listened to such a numskull is a symptom, not the cause, of a culture in decline. The cause of civilizational decline is dirt-simple: lack of contact with objective reality. The great banker-journalist (and founder of the original National Review) Walter Bagehot said it well almost 150 years ago:
History is strewn with the wrecks of nations which have gained a little progressiveness at the cost of a great deal of hard manliness, and have thus prepared themselves for destruction as soon as the movements of the world gave a chance for it.
Every great civilization reaches a point of prosperity where it is possible to live your entire life as a pacifist without any serious consequences. Many civilizations have come to the state of devolution represented by modern Berkeley folkways, from wife-swapping to vegetarianism. These ideas don’t come from a hardscrabble existence in contact with nature’s elemental forces; they are the inevitable consequence of being an effete urban twit removed from meaningful contact with reality. The over-civilized will try to portray their decadence as something “highly evolved” and worthy of emulation because it can only exist in the hothouse of highly civilized urban centers, much like influenza epidemics. Somehow these twittering blockheads missed out on what the word “evolution” means. Evolution involves brutal and often violent natural selection, and these people have not been exposed to brutal evolutionary forces any more than a typical urban poodle.
Through human history, vigorous civilizations had various ways of dealing with the unfortunate human tendency toward being a weak ninny. The South Koreans (for my money, the hardest men in Asia today) have brutally tough military training as a rite of passage. I’ve been told that the Soviet system had students picking potatoes during national holidays. The ancient Greeks used competitive sports and constant warfare. The Anglo-American working classes, the last large virtuous group of people left in these countries, use bullying, violent sports, fisticuffs, and hard living.
I think there is a certain worldview that comes from violent experience. It’s something like…manhood. You don’t have to be the world’s greatest badass to be a man, but you have to be willing to throw down when the time is right.
A man who has been in a fight or played violent sports has experienced more of life and manhood than a man who hasn’t. Fisticuffs, wrestling matches, knife fights, violent sport, duels with baseball bats, facing down guns, or getting crushed in the football field—men who have had these experiences are different from men who have not. Men who have trained for or experienced such encounters know about bravery and mental fortitude from firsthand experience. Men who have been tested physically know that inequality is a physical fact. Men who know how to deal out violence know that radical feminism’s tenets—that women and men are equal—are a lie. We know that women are not the same as men: not physically, mentally, or in terms of moral character.
Men who have fought know how difficult it is to stand against the crowd and that civilization is fragile and important. A man who has experienced violence knows that, at its core, civilization is an agreement between men to behave well. That agreement can be broken at any moment; it’s part of manhood to be ready when it is. Men who have been in fights know about something that is rarely spoken of without snickering these days: honor. Men who have been in fights know that, on some level, words are just words: At some point, words must be backed up by deeds.
Above all, men who have been in fights know that there is nothing good or noble about being a victim. This is a concept the modern “conservative movement,” mostly run by wimps, has lost, probably irrevocably. They’re forever tugging at my heartstrings, from No Child Left Behind to Israel’s plight to MLK’s wonders to whining that the media doesn’t play fair to the overwrought emotional appeals they use to justify dropping bombs on Muslims. The Republicans even took seriously a pure victim-candidate: Michelle Bachman. As far as can be told, she’s a middle-American Barack Obama with boobs and a slightly loopier world view.
Modern “civilized” males don’t get in fistfights. They don’t play violent sports. They play video games and, at best, watch TV sports. Modern males are physical and emotional weaklings. The ideal male isn’t John Wayne or James Bond or Jimmy Stewart anymore. It’s some crying tit that goes to a therapist, a sort of agreeable lesbian with a dick who calls the police (whom he hates in theory) when there is trouble. The ideal modern male is the British shrimp who handed his pants over to the looter in south London.
How did we get here? Estrogens in the food supply? Cultural Marxism’s corrosive influence? Small families? Some of the greatest badasses I’ve known had many brothers to fight with growing up. When good men who will fight are all extinct, there is no more civilization. No lantern-jawed viragos are going to save you from the barbarian hordes. No mincing nancy boys with Harvard diplomas will stand up for the common decencies: They’re a social construct, dontcha know. The conservative movement won’t save you: They’re chicken-hearted careerists petrified of offending a victim group.
Teddy Roosevelt, my ideal President, kept a lion and a bear as pets in the White House and took his daily exercise doing jiu-jitsu and boxing. He even lost vision in an eye in a friendly boxing match while he was president. Our last three glorious leaders are men who kept fluffy dogs and went jogging. I don’t trust squirrelly girly-men in any context. When confronted with difficult decisions, they don’t do what’s right or tell the truth—they’ll do what’s easy or politically expedient. Unlike the last three, Teddy Roosevelt never sent men to die in pointless wars, though he was more than happy to go himself or risk his neck wrestling with bears.
I’m no great shakes: I’m a shrimpy egghead in a suit who thinks about math all day. I don’t train for fighting anymore, and my experiences with violence are fairly limited. Nonetheless, I judge people on these sorts of things. When I first meet a man, I don’t care what kind of sheepskins or awards he has on his walls. I don’t care if he is liberal or conservative. I want to know if they have my back in a fight. That’s really the only thing that matters.
Quote of the Times;
“When it comes to government, if you aren’t involved in the provision of actual public goods, you are involved in extortion. It may be legal. It may have the blessing of the mayor, the city council, and your union representative, but it’s still extortion. And you should be ashamed of yourself. If your only purpose is getting in the way until somebody hands you money, then you are part of a protection racket. And you might want to think about going into a more honorable line of work.” – Williamson
Link of the Times;
http://www.illholdyourbeer.com/
Overlooked?
Pizza Hut is testing a new "skinny slice" pizza that has fewer calories by using less dough and skimping on the toppings. This is the perfect solution for the person who never had the thought of cutting a piece in half.
The Air Force has dropped the phrase "So help me God" from its oath of enlistment. Not sure who's going to help them from here.
Warner Brothers is expected to lay off 1,000 workers, about 10% of its workforce. When asked if there were going to be more, a Warner Brothers spokesman said, "That's all, folks!"
Hertz is paying former CEO Mark Frissora a $10.5 Million separation fee. It wouldn't have been so much, but they forgot to fill up the tank before dropping him off.
Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has been sold for $700 Million. Doesn't that sound like parts from two entirely different sentences?
A snail that was thought to be extinct for the past 17 years was found on an atoll in the Indian Ocean. The snail was quoted as saying, "NOW who's the slow one?"
Dr. Dre was the top earner in the hip hop crowd, pulling in $620-million over the past year. All those years in medical school are really paying off.
A San Diego philanthropist wants to buy a local newspaper and run it as a nonprofit business. I thought all newspapers were non-profits these days.
*.*
COMMON STRIPPER PHRASES, TRANSLATED
Hey handsome!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Hello!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Want to buy me a drink?
Translation: I would like some money, please.
No.
Translation: No.
Yes!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
You’re my favorite customer.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
I have to use the bathroom.
Translation: I will be gone for the exact amount of time that it should take you to use an ATM, which is a really good idea, because I would like some money, please.
I have to go do a private dance, but stay here, because I really like talking to you.
Translation: I’m going to go make some money, but stay here, because I would also like to get more money from you.
I really like your hair.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
You’re my type of guy.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Hey, my real name is Tiffany. I really like you. I’m done here in an hour. Maybe we could meet somewhere for a drink? I’m buying.
Translation: Hey, my real name is Tiffany. I really like you. I’m done here in an hour. Maybe we could meet somewhere for a drink? I’m buying.
*.*
Gold has a characteristic, mellow, yellow color. Its beautiful sheen seems even more exotic when you find out that it's actually due to relativistic effects. Were you to calculate the frequency (color) of light that gold emits without taking relativity into consideration, you would predict it to have a silver sheen. However, the color gold actually leans further to the red end of the spectrum.
This discrepancy can be explained when examining how electrons in gold atoms move around in their shells. There is a total of 79 electrons zooming around a gold atom, and 79 protons in the nucleus. In the orbital closest to the nucleus (otherwise known as the 1s orbital), the electrons have to move at a shockingly fast speed. They move at roughly half the speed of light to avoid being dragged into the nucleus by the powerful positive charge from the protons in the nucleus, and that causes a lot of relativistic effects.
Because the electrons are moving so fast, the separate electron shells appear to be closer than they actually are. For an electron to jump to a higher energy level it needs to absorb a specific wavelength of light. In gold, the wavelengths that could be absorbed are usually in the ultraviolet range – beyond what we can see. However, when we account for the relativistic effects that appear to squeeze the shells closer together, we find that the gold actually starts to absorb light with a smaller frequency: blue light.
The blue light is absorbed and only the red colors are reflected into our eyes. Hence, gold has a glamorous, yellowy sheen.
*.*
Stupid things finance people say:
They don't have any debt except for a mortgage and student loans.
Earnings were positive before one-time charges.
This is Wall Street's equivalent of, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Earnings missed estimates.
The number of things called Ponzi schemes that are actually Ponzi schemes rounds to zero. It's become a synonym for "thing I disagree with."
This is the equivalent of saying someone has more mothers than fathers. There's one buyer and one seller for every trade. Every single one.
Unlike everyone else, who are just dying to set their money ablaze.
Our bullish case is conservative.
Good call. Like in 1929, 1999 and 2007, when everyone knew exactly what the future looked like. Can't wait!
There has never been a time when this was not the case. Let me guess, you also expect more winters?
He was tired of throwing his money away renting, so he bought a house. He knows a mortgage is renting money from a bank, right?
*.*
SELF EXAMINATION FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
....It takes less than 15 seconds......
If you are over 45 yrs. old, you SHOULD take this Alzheimer's Test
How fast can you guess these words and fill-in the blanks?
1. _ _NDOM
2. F_ _K
3. P_N_S
4. PU_S_
5. S_X
6. BOO_S
Answers:
1. RANDOM
2. FORK
3. PANTS
4. PULSE
5. SIX
6. BOOKS
You got all 6 wrong... didn't you?
You do NOT have Alzheimer's
But you are a Pervert.
Issue of the Times;
10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action
“This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell?”
In this speech from Steven Pressfield’s gripping, well-researched re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae (Gates of Fire), the Spartan King Leonidas addresses his troops after a victory. He is reflecting on the fact that when you do battle in chaos, Lady Fortuna and skill have an equal say in the outcome. Pressfield explains this dynamic in his equally worthwhile non-fiction work, The Warrior Ethos: “In the era before gunpowder, all killing was of necessity done hand to hand. For a Greek or Roman warrior to slay his enemy, he had to get so close that there was an equal chance that the enemy’s sword or spear would kill him. This produced an ideal of manly virtue – andreia, in Greek – that prized valor and honor as highly as victory.”
Andreia meant that judgment was based on actions taken — not outcomes. Society understood that the outcome was, at least in part, in the hands of the gods. What was in a man’s control was how he acted.
We tend to mix this up. There is an army of authors studying “successful” people and writing lists of 5, 7, 10, or 20 things that they did to become successful. All you have to do is emulate the list and you, too, can be successful.
That’s like looking at the living Spartan soldiers and explaining why they survived. Leonidas would laugh at their idiotic arrogance.
We have become so focused on results that our actions have become a secondary concern. We judge men based on what they have instead of what they do. We signal our ideals instead of embracing them.
In his short book Do the Work, Pressfield relates a New Yorker cartoon that cleverly skewers our preference for thinking about things, rather than doing them:
“A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.”
He’s perplexed. He’s considering the book. It’s funny because it’s absurd… and because we know we’d have the same consideration.
That’s where we are as a culture. We run desperately to abstraction and avoid action at all costs. Thoreau’s man of “quiet desperation” has never been so prevalent.
The world is full of men who are “stuck” in life. There has been some mass paralysis. Modern man has forgotten how to take action.
The culture is beginning to shift, though. The popularity of Nassim Taleb and his Incerto series, beginning with Fooled by Randomness, has brought an appreciation of randomness to a large segment of society. As we’ll see soon, a focus on action is dominating the business world as well.
The economist and author of Average is Over, Tyler Cowen, agrees:
“The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce; it’s the willingness to do something with it.”
A world that is increasingly confused, uncertain, and paralyzed is calling out for men of action. We need to stop thinking and start acting. Stop looking at the big red button and push it. Stop planning and take a step forward. Stop talking about grit and take a hit.
In short, the world needs men. I’m not sure if you’ll answer the call. I do know some will, though, and that’s all we need. I’ll be out there, too. You’ll probably find me facedown in failure. I’d appreciate a hand.
The next section will provide 10 powerful and mostly overlooked truths about the nature of action.
The final section will provide two specific practices that will force you into creating a habit of taking action.
1. Action is Cheaper Than Planning
Do you know why the Wright Bros. beat out all the mega-corporations they were competing with in the race to taking the first flight? Action.
Robert Greene explains in Mastery that the Wright Bros. had a tight budget and were forced to make small, cheap tweaks to each model. They would fly a plane, crash it, tweak it, and fly it again quickly.
The corporations had budgets that allowed them to go back to the drawing board (i.e. abstraction) with each failure. They spent a ton of money and time on each redesign.
The Wright Bros. had a hundred test flights in the time it took these big corporations to complete a handful. Every test flight taught lessons – the one who failed fastest gathered the most information.
This philosophy of failing fast has spread through Silicon Valley and beyond thanks to Eric Ries’ work The Lean Startup. We can imagine the Wright Bros. writing this passage from Ries’ book:
“I’ve come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. I call this validated learning because it is always demonstrated by positive improvements in the startup’s core metrics.”
Technology has reached a point where building is often cheaper than planning. We can build the thing and know the answer before we can plan for all the possibilities and determine how itmight work. Ries writes:
“The question is not ‘Can this product be built?’ In the modern economy, almost any product that can be imagined can be built. The more pertinent questions are ‘Should this product be built?’ and ‘Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?’”
These are questions that cannot be answered in the abstract – they must be tested in the physical world.
The key is to make the tests cheap and quickly make small improvements.
This applies to everything. Especially your life.
Planning has paralyzed me time and again. I was taught to always have a plan before taking action.
That led to a deep depression. I didn’t know what career I wanted to dedicate my life to and so I did nothing. I didn’t know what girl I wanted to marry and so I didn’t give any a real chance. I didn’t know what fitness plan was the best and so I stayed out of the gym.
Now I do the opposite.
I don’t let myself plan or research until I’ve taken action.
I’ve tried a ton of careers and found which I hate and which I love. I’ve let myself love the imperfect girl and have the best relationship I’ve ever had. I’m not allowed to read anything about fitness until I’ve worked out that day. I don’t let myself learn about a new diet until I’ve stopped eating sugar.
Most of the time, planning is procrastination. It’s based on theory. It’s going to be wrong.
Plans are useless without action.
That’s why Step 1 is to take action based on what you already know. Then improve bit by bit.Then begin forming a plan.
2. Action Allows Emergence
Taking action creates possibilities that didn’t exist before.
We always look out at our future from the place we’re standing. Yet we forget that this is only one spot.
Imagine walking in New York City. All you can see are skyscrapers, neurotic humans, and taxis. You turn down the next street and you’re looking out into the trees of Central Park.
A completely new possibility has emerged.
If you’re obese then you probably don’t see a possible future where you’re fit. But, after three months of working out and eating well there will be a possible future of physical fitness that didn’t exist before.
These possibilities seem to “come out of nowhere” but they actually come out of action.
If you’ve only failed then it’s impossible to see the possibility of success. The trick is to keep trying. That next step might be the key to a better future — you just can’t see around the corner yet.
3. Inaction is Scarier
The pain of action is acute. It’s right in our face.
Inaction tempts us because it’s slow.
We don’t consider refusing to choose to be a choice. We think we’re safe if we don’t expose ourselves to failure. We don’t appreciate the consequences of inaction because they are slow, chronic, and less obvious. That’s what makes them worse.
You don’t get to escape pain.
The pain that comes with action is acute, gives you scars, and makes you grow.
The pain that comes from inaction is low-grade, makes you soft, and makes you decay.
4. Motivation Follows Action
I had zero motivation when I began writing this. I had nothing to say. I wrote a book about action but for some reason I couldn’t think of the words to tell you.
It’s 1,600 words later now and I can’t stop thinking of new things to say.
It’s always like this.
I don’t feel like working out until I’ve been at the gym for 15 minutes. I’m too tired to have sex until we’ve started. I don’t want to go to the party until I’m there.
Motivation (and passion) will follow you if you have the balls to go without them.
5. Action is an Existential Answer
I’m a professional when it comes to existential crises. I’ve spent a large portion of my life in “what is the meaning of my life?” mode. I’ve come up with a lot of clever answers. Some of them even felt original.
The only one that ever really works is disappointingly simple: do something.
The meaning of my life cannot be summed up in a pithy quote or even the most complete philosophy.
It is impossible to give yourself a satisfying purpose in the abstract.
It is only in the flow of action that life can make sense. There are no abstract ideals there, just life.
6. Action Creates Courage
“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” -Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath
My business partner and I didn’t charge for anything for more than a year. We gave out some of the best content online and never asked for anything in return.
We didn’t believe that what we had was worth anything.
Intellectually we knew that we deserved to be paid. Something was holding us back, though.
Finally we put down a date. We scheduled a webinar and more than a thousand people showed up.
The webinar was a technical disaster. We started late, laptops went out, our business password was exposed to hundreds of people, and we didn’t know how to run the software. Everything went wrong that could have.
We offered our course for $497 – a price we thought was too high.
It turns out it was too low. We sold more courses than we ever thought we would and, in the process, made more money in a single night than we did in the previous year.
Forcing ourselves into a corner made us ballsier than we thought we could be.
People were amazed at how cheap we offered our course.
Our fake courage became real. Now we know in our bones that we can deliver value to people in a way that they are grateful to pay for it. We know that we are delivering something worthwhile.
Now I’m looking for the next corner. What’s the next abyss to jump into? What is something else I “know” I’m capable of but don’t know I’m capable of?
7. Explanations Follow Actions
Neuroscientist David Eagleman told the participants of a 2004 study to, “Move your finger when the impulse grabs you.” He reports on his findings in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain:
“Long before a voluntary movement is enacted, a buildup of neural activity can be measured. The ‘readiness potential’ is larger when subjects judge the time of their urge to move, rather than the movement itself.”
They made the choice before they were conscious of it.
Earlier in the book he reports on the findings of a study on people playing a gambling game:
“The interesting part came when I interviewed the players afterward. I asked them what they’d done in the gambling game and why they’d done it. I was surprised to hear all types of baroque explanations, such as ‘The computer liked it when I switched back and forth’ and ‘The computer was trying to punish me, so I switched my game plan.’ In reality, the players’ descriptions of their own strategies did not match what they had actually done, which turned out to be highly predictable. Nor did their descriptions match the computer’s behavior, which was purely formulaic. Instead, their conscious minds, unable to assign the task to a well-oiled zombie system, desperately sought a narrative.”
This urge of ours to create cohesive stories where none exist is called the narrative fallacy.
Knowing you have this need should help you act freely when no story exists. Or at least realize that the story you’re telling yourself is probably wrong. Nassim Taleb makes this suggestion inThe Black Swan:
“The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories. . . . Being empirical does not mean running a laboratory in one’s basement: it is just a mind-set that favors a certain class of knowledge over others. I do not forbid myself from using the word cause, but the causes I discuss are either bold speculations (presented as such) or the result of experiments, not stories. Another approach is to predict and keep a tally of the predictions.”
When we know our stories are probably wrong we can give them less power. Don’t let your scary stories paralyze you. Act and let the narrative follow (just as courage and motivation do).
8. Action Beats the Odds
“Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.” –Plutarch,Sayings of the Spartans
More information rarely helps unless you are ready to act on it. The perfect plan doesn’t exist.
The great Warren Buffett biography The Snowball shows that Buffett had no grand plan when he was younger. He just knew that he wanted to make a lot of money. There was no early master plan, just a powerful urge and the willingness to take opportunities as they came.
The uber-successful venture capitalist Ben Horrowitz says in his new book The Hard Things About Hard Things that:
“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.”
You don’t need to know if it will work (you probably can’t know), you need to try and find out.
Your obstacles are yours to face. It doesn’t matter how they compare to the obstacles in history or those of your peers. It’s a waste of time to consider anything except how you will overcome them.
9. Action Makes You Humble
Teenagers think they know everything because they haven’t tested their mettle. They don’t know anything and so they feel like they know everything. They are just beginning to learn about theories and possibilities. They haven’t done anything so they feel like they can do anything.
In Gates of Fire, an older warrior, Dienekes, addresses a younger:
“My wish for you, Kalistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you already have fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be.”
Action carries the potential to bring imagination and reality together. But only when taken consistently and powerfully.
After the young realize they can’t do everything they become disillusioned. They stop tryinganything. They fall into inaction.
This is why most adults end up so dull. They don’t do anything because it’s probably going to fail. They mistook early failures for a sign that they should stop trying.
That’s why they’re bored, depressed, and lethargic.
Instead, our failures should strengthen us. We should recognize that failures are how we learn and grow.
Just ask, “What would Leonidas think?”
10. Action Isn’t Petty
“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.” –Nassim Taleb
Action isn’t concerned with opinions, it’s dedicated to reality.
Action doesn’t leave room for gossip.
Action couldn’t be small if it tried.
Practicing Action
Here we will explore (briefly!) two specific ways you can train yourself to take more action.
I. Systems Over Goals
Nassim Taleb offers an explanation to the mental perils of non-linear rewards in Fooled by Randomness:
“Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. . . This summarizes why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. . .Most people give up before the rewards.”
If you train yourself to be emotionally rewarded for actions taken rather than outcomes you may be able to lengthen the time you can spend in active “failure” and increase your chances of success.
A possible solution is to reward yourself for following your system rather than achieving a specific outcome. Select a system you know will lead to success and follow it.
Eating right vs. losing 20 pounds. Building a business vs. achieving financial independence. Going on dates vs. having a successful relationship. The first are systems, the second are goals.
Scott Adams, the creator of “Dilbert,” champions this idea in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:
“Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.”
When I set a goal of “210 pounds and 13% body fat” I stopped going to the gym and began eating stupid amounts of ice cream. When I decided on the system of “work out every day” I began a real path to fitness success.
That’s the easy step. The next is the real challenge.
II. Input Deprivation Week
Go an entire week with zero information consumption.
I first tried this last year and it was wildly successful. I got more done in one week than I had in the month prior. I also ate the best I had all year and solidified my meditation practice. It was so effective I offered it up to the readers of my blog, StartupBros.
Most of the people mocked me or called me naive. A few actually tried it, though. And many of them are still practicing it to this day. It’s the most effective way I’ve found to boost output.
It’s also the most painful.
You are going to, for an entire week, live without information input.
Stay with me on this.
For one week:
No reading books.
No reading blogs.
No reading newspapers.
No going on Facebook (even just to post).
No watching TV (shows, sports, news, anything).
No watching movies.
No listening to talk radio.
No going on Reddit.
No going on Twitter.
No information input – only output!
You must force yourself to spend an entire week with yourself and the people immediately surrounding you.
This will, first and foremost, force you into action by stripping away every activity you run to in order to avoid actually doing the work you know you should be doing.
Besides that, it will increase mindfulness, increase the respect you have for your own ideas, you’ll have more ideas, unsolvable life problems may begin to make sense, you’ll have an increased appreciation for the news that actually matters, you’ll become more social, you’ll gain perspective, and you’ll become more original.
It sounds too good to be true but it’s not. It’s what happens. The only way for you to appreciate this is to do it.
When I first suggested Input Deprivation Week I provided the following 5 steps to start strong, and they still work just as well:
Install StayFocusd or its equivalent and put all your time-sucking websites on there. ALL of them! Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (??), reddit, Digg (??), Chive, EVERYTHING!
Delete your consumption apps. I deleted Facebook, Pulse, and Twitter off my phone. Delete the apps that you reflexively go to when you have a minute of free time.
Move your books and magazines. They will just taunt you if they’re sitting on your bedstand or at your desk. Make a stack and put it out of sight.
Carry a notebook with you. You’re going to begin having ideas pop up in your head; make notes of them. I like notepads more than phones because we associate them with creating instead of consuming. It’s risky to take notes on a smartphone if you’re trying to avoid inputs.
Take the batteries out of your remote. When you have the urge to flick on the TV you’ll have to go get batteries for the remote. This is a barrier to TV that will save your willpower pool from draining as you stare down the remote thinking about all the Game of Thronesand Mad Men you’re missing.
This may be the hardest thing you do all year. The benefits may not be obvious on Day 2. By Day 6 they’ll be undeniable.
Your focus will turn to production instead of consumption. You will become a giver instead of a taker. You will see your addiction to novelty and useless information plainly.
Remember that this is only a week and not a suggestion for a lifestyle. I love books. I love learning new things. I consume information like crazy. And it’s valuable! Input Deprivation Week is about creating a better relationship with information, not denying its importance.
Like a girlfriend that you didn’t fully appreciate until she was gone, your relationship to information will be forever changed. You will appreciate quality information and be more able to ignore the rest. You won’t be an addict to useless information.
If you need any support or have any questions, comment below or even email me (info below).
Godspeed
This was a long post on something that is actually quite simple.
I wanted you to know Action deeply so that you have the confidence to push when others don’t. This isn’t comprehensive, but it is a great place to push off.
Remember:
Failing can be progress if you use it.
The wisdom you receive from action often remains invisible.
Judge yourself based on the actions you take – not their outcomes.
I hope this is the last thing you read for a week.
Quote of the Times;
A 2008 study found that 28 percent of marriages in urban Syria and 36 percent in rural Syria are between first or second cousins. In Afghanistan, another major source of newcomers, the national average in 2010 was 42 percent. First-cousin marriages among Pakistanis in Britain are so prevalent that Pakistanis now account for 30 percent of children born with birth defects in the U.K.
Link of the Times;
http://thesurvivalmom.com/rural-survival-retreats-not-safe-refuge/
The Air Force has dropped the phrase "So help me God" from its oath of enlistment. Not sure who's going to help them from here.
Warner Brothers is expected to lay off 1,000 workers, about 10% of its workforce. When asked if there were going to be more, a Warner Brothers spokesman said, "That's all, folks!"
Hertz is paying former CEO Mark Frissora a $10.5 Million separation fee. It wouldn't have been so much, but they forgot to fill up the tank before dropping him off.
Pabst Blue Ribbon beer has been sold for $700 Million. Doesn't that sound like parts from two entirely different sentences?
A snail that was thought to be extinct for the past 17 years was found on an atoll in the Indian Ocean. The snail was quoted as saying, "NOW who's the slow one?"
Dr. Dre was the top earner in the hip hop crowd, pulling in $620-million over the past year. All those years in medical school are really paying off.
A San Diego philanthropist wants to buy a local newspaper and run it as a nonprofit business. I thought all newspapers were non-profits these days.
*.*
COMMON STRIPPER PHRASES, TRANSLATED
Hey handsome!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Hello!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Want to buy me a drink?
Translation: I would like some money, please.
No.
Translation: No.
Yes!
Translation: I would like some money, please.
You’re my favorite customer.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
I have to use the bathroom.
Translation: I will be gone for the exact amount of time that it should take you to use an ATM, which is a really good idea, because I would like some money, please.
I have to go do a private dance, but stay here, because I really like talking to you.
Translation: I’m going to go make some money, but stay here, because I would also like to get more money from you.
I really like your hair.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
You’re my type of guy.
Translation: I would like some money, please.
Hey, my real name is Tiffany. I really like you. I’m done here in an hour. Maybe we could meet somewhere for a drink? I’m buying.
Translation: Hey, my real name is Tiffany. I really like you. I’m done here in an hour. Maybe we could meet somewhere for a drink? I’m buying.
*.*
Gold has a characteristic, mellow, yellow color. Its beautiful sheen seems even more exotic when you find out that it's actually due to relativistic effects. Were you to calculate the frequency (color) of light that gold emits without taking relativity into consideration, you would predict it to have a silver sheen. However, the color gold actually leans further to the red end of the spectrum.
This discrepancy can be explained when examining how electrons in gold atoms move around in their shells. There is a total of 79 electrons zooming around a gold atom, and 79 protons in the nucleus. In the orbital closest to the nucleus (otherwise known as the 1s orbital), the electrons have to move at a shockingly fast speed. They move at roughly half the speed of light to avoid being dragged into the nucleus by the powerful positive charge from the protons in the nucleus, and that causes a lot of relativistic effects.
Because the electrons are moving so fast, the separate electron shells appear to be closer than they actually are. For an electron to jump to a higher energy level it needs to absorb a specific wavelength of light. In gold, the wavelengths that could be absorbed are usually in the ultraviolet range – beyond what we can see. However, when we account for the relativistic effects that appear to squeeze the shells closer together, we find that the gold actually starts to absorb light with a smaller frequency: blue light.
The blue light is absorbed and only the red colors are reflected into our eyes. Hence, gold has a glamorous, yellowy sheen.
*.*
Stupid things finance people say:
They don't have any debt except for a mortgage and student loans.
Earnings were positive before one-time charges.
This is Wall Street's equivalent of, "Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"
Earnings missed estimates.
The number of things called Ponzi schemes that are actually Ponzi schemes rounds to zero. It's become a synonym for "thing I disagree with."
This is the equivalent of saying someone has more mothers than fathers. There's one buyer and one seller for every trade. Every single one.
Unlike everyone else, who are just dying to set their money ablaze.
Our bullish case is conservative.
Good call. Like in 1929, 1999 and 2007, when everyone knew exactly what the future looked like. Can't wait!
There has never been a time when this was not the case. Let me guess, you also expect more winters?
He was tired of throwing his money away renting, so he bought a house. He knows a mortgage is renting money from a bank, right?
*.*
SELF EXAMINATION FOR ALZHEIMER'S DISEASE
....It takes less than 15 seconds......
If you are over 45 yrs. old, you SHOULD take this Alzheimer's Test
How fast can you guess these words and fill-in the blanks?
1. _ _NDOM
2. F_ _K
3. P_N_S
4. PU_S_
5. S_X
6. BOO_S
Answers:
1. RANDOM
2. FORK
3. PANTS
4. PULSE
5. SIX
6. BOOKS
You got all 6 wrong... didn't you?
You do NOT have Alzheimer's
But you are a Pervert.
Issue of the Times;
10 Overlooked Truths About Taking Action
“This is a holy moment. A sacramental moment. A moment in which a man feels the gods as close as his own breath. What unknowable mercy has spared us this day? What clemency of the divine has turned the enemy’s spear one handbreadth from our throat and driven it fatally into the breast of the beloved comrade at our side? Why are we still here above the earth, we who are no better, no braver, who reverenced heaven no more than these our brothers whom the gods have dispatched to hell?”
In this speech from Steven Pressfield’s gripping, well-researched re-telling of the Battle of Thermopylae (Gates of Fire), the Spartan King Leonidas addresses his troops after a victory. He is reflecting on the fact that when you do battle in chaos, Lady Fortuna and skill have an equal say in the outcome. Pressfield explains this dynamic in his equally worthwhile non-fiction work, The Warrior Ethos: “In the era before gunpowder, all killing was of necessity done hand to hand. For a Greek or Roman warrior to slay his enemy, he had to get so close that there was an equal chance that the enemy’s sword or spear would kill him. This produced an ideal of manly virtue – andreia, in Greek – that prized valor and honor as highly as victory.”
Andreia meant that judgment was based on actions taken — not outcomes. Society understood that the outcome was, at least in part, in the hands of the gods. What was in a man’s control was how he acted.
We tend to mix this up. There is an army of authors studying “successful” people and writing lists of 5, 7, 10, or 20 things that they did to become successful. All you have to do is emulate the list and you, too, can be successful.
That’s like looking at the living Spartan soldiers and explaining why they survived. Leonidas would laugh at their idiotic arrogance.
We have become so focused on results that our actions have become a secondary concern. We judge men based on what they have instead of what they do. We signal our ideals instead of embracing them.
In his short book Do the Work, Pressfield relates a New Yorker cartoon that cleverly skewers our preference for thinking about things, rather than doing them:
“A perplexed person stands before two doors. One door says HEAVEN. The other says BOOKS ABOUT HEAVEN.”
He’s perplexed. He’s considering the book. It’s funny because it’s absurd… and because we know we’d have the same consideration.
That’s where we are as a culture. We run desperately to abstraction and avoid action at all costs. Thoreau’s man of “quiet desperation” has never been so prevalent.
The world is full of men who are “stuck” in life. There has been some mass paralysis. Modern man has forgotten how to take action.
The culture is beginning to shift, though. The popularity of Nassim Taleb and his Incerto series, beginning with Fooled by Randomness, has brought an appreciation of randomness to a large segment of society. As we’ll see soon, a focus on action is dominating the business world as well.
The economist and author of Average is Over, Tyler Cowen, agrees:
“The more information that’s out there, the greater the returns to just being willing to sit down and apply yourself. Information isn’t what’s scarce; it’s the willingness to do something with it.”
A world that is increasingly confused, uncertain, and paralyzed is calling out for men of action. We need to stop thinking and start acting. Stop looking at the big red button and push it. Stop planning and take a step forward. Stop talking about grit and take a hit.
In short, the world needs men. I’m not sure if you’ll answer the call. I do know some will, though, and that’s all we need. I’ll be out there, too. You’ll probably find me facedown in failure. I’d appreciate a hand.
The next section will provide 10 powerful and mostly overlooked truths about the nature of action.
The final section will provide two specific practices that will force you into creating a habit of taking action.
1. Action is Cheaper Than Planning
Do you know why the Wright Bros. beat out all the mega-corporations they were competing with in the race to taking the first flight? Action.
Robert Greene explains in Mastery that the Wright Bros. had a tight budget and were forced to make small, cheap tweaks to each model. They would fly a plane, crash it, tweak it, and fly it again quickly.
The corporations had budgets that allowed them to go back to the drawing board (i.e. abstraction) with each failure. They spent a ton of money and time on each redesign.
The Wright Bros. had a hundred test flights in the time it took these big corporations to complete a handful. Every test flight taught lessons – the one who failed fastest gathered the most information.
This philosophy of failing fast has spread through Silicon Valley and beyond thanks to Eric Ries’ work The Lean Startup. We can imagine the Wright Bros. writing this passage from Ries’ book:
“I’ve come to believe that learning is the essential unit of progress for startups. The effort that is not absolutely necessary for learning what customers want can be eliminated. I call this validated learning because it is always demonstrated by positive improvements in the startup’s core metrics.”
Technology has reached a point where building is often cheaper than planning. We can build the thing and know the answer before we can plan for all the possibilities and determine how itmight work. Ries writes:
“The question is not ‘Can this product be built?’ In the modern economy, almost any product that can be imagined can be built. The more pertinent questions are ‘Should this product be built?’ and ‘Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?’”
These are questions that cannot be answered in the abstract – they must be tested in the physical world.
The key is to make the tests cheap and quickly make small improvements.
This applies to everything. Especially your life.
Planning has paralyzed me time and again. I was taught to always have a plan before taking action.
That led to a deep depression. I didn’t know what career I wanted to dedicate my life to and so I did nothing. I didn’t know what girl I wanted to marry and so I didn’t give any a real chance. I didn’t know what fitness plan was the best and so I stayed out of the gym.
Now I do the opposite.
I don’t let myself plan or research until I’ve taken action.
I’ve tried a ton of careers and found which I hate and which I love. I’ve let myself love the imperfect girl and have the best relationship I’ve ever had. I’m not allowed to read anything about fitness until I’ve worked out that day. I don’t let myself learn about a new diet until I’ve stopped eating sugar.
Most of the time, planning is procrastination. It’s based on theory. It’s going to be wrong.
Plans are useless without action.
That’s why Step 1 is to take action based on what you already know. Then improve bit by bit.Then begin forming a plan.
2. Action Allows Emergence
Taking action creates possibilities that didn’t exist before.
We always look out at our future from the place we’re standing. Yet we forget that this is only one spot.
Imagine walking in New York City. All you can see are skyscrapers, neurotic humans, and taxis. You turn down the next street and you’re looking out into the trees of Central Park.
A completely new possibility has emerged.
If you’re obese then you probably don’t see a possible future where you’re fit. But, after three months of working out and eating well there will be a possible future of physical fitness that didn’t exist before.
These possibilities seem to “come out of nowhere” but they actually come out of action.
If you’ve only failed then it’s impossible to see the possibility of success. The trick is to keep trying. That next step might be the key to a better future — you just can’t see around the corner yet.
3. Inaction is Scarier
The pain of action is acute. It’s right in our face.
Inaction tempts us because it’s slow.
We don’t consider refusing to choose to be a choice. We think we’re safe if we don’t expose ourselves to failure. We don’t appreciate the consequences of inaction because they are slow, chronic, and less obvious. That’s what makes them worse.
You don’t get to escape pain.
The pain that comes with action is acute, gives you scars, and makes you grow.
The pain that comes from inaction is low-grade, makes you soft, and makes you decay.
4. Motivation Follows Action
I had zero motivation when I began writing this. I had nothing to say. I wrote a book about action but for some reason I couldn’t think of the words to tell you.
It’s 1,600 words later now and I can’t stop thinking of new things to say.
It’s always like this.
I don’t feel like working out until I’ve been at the gym for 15 minutes. I’m too tired to have sex until we’ve started. I don’t want to go to the party until I’m there.
Motivation (and passion) will follow you if you have the balls to go without them.
5. Action is an Existential Answer
I’m a professional when it comes to existential crises. I’ve spent a large portion of my life in “what is the meaning of my life?” mode. I’ve come up with a lot of clever answers. Some of them even felt original.
The only one that ever really works is disappointingly simple: do something.
The meaning of my life cannot be summed up in a pithy quote or even the most complete philosophy.
It is impossible to give yourself a satisfying purpose in the abstract.
It is only in the flow of action that life can make sense. There are no abstract ideals there, just life.
6. Action Creates Courage
“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” -Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath
My business partner and I didn’t charge for anything for more than a year. We gave out some of the best content online and never asked for anything in return.
We didn’t believe that what we had was worth anything.
Intellectually we knew that we deserved to be paid. Something was holding us back, though.
Finally we put down a date. We scheduled a webinar and more than a thousand people showed up.
The webinar was a technical disaster. We started late, laptops went out, our business password was exposed to hundreds of people, and we didn’t know how to run the software. Everything went wrong that could have.
We offered our course for $497 – a price we thought was too high.
It turns out it was too low. We sold more courses than we ever thought we would and, in the process, made more money in a single night than we did in the previous year.
Forcing ourselves into a corner made us ballsier than we thought we could be.
People were amazed at how cheap we offered our course.
Our fake courage became real. Now we know in our bones that we can deliver value to people in a way that they are grateful to pay for it. We know that we are delivering something worthwhile.
Now I’m looking for the next corner. What’s the next abyss to jump into? What is something else I “know” I’m capable of but don’t know I’m capable of?
7. Explanations Follow Actions
Neuroscientist David Eagleman told the participants of a 2004 study to, “Move your finger when the impulse grabs you.” He reports on his findings in Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain:
“Long before a voluntary movement is enacted, a buildup of neural activity can be measured. The ‘readiness potential’ is larger when subjects judge the time of their urge to move, rather than the movement itself.”
They made the choice before they were conscious of it.
Earlier in the book he reports on the findings of a study on people playing a gambling game:
“The interesting part came when I interviewed the players afterward. I asked them what they’d done in the gambling game and why they’d done it. I was surprised to hear all types of baroque explanations, such as ‘The computer liked it when I switched back and forth’ and ‘The computer was trying to punish me, so I switched my game plan.’ In reality, the players’ descriptions of their own strategies did not match what they had actually done, which turned out to be highly predictable. Nor did their descriptions match the computer’s behavior, which was purely formulaic. Instead, their conscious minds, unable to assign the task to a well-oiled zombie system, desperately sought a narrative.”
This urge of ours to create cohesive stories where none exist is called the narrative fallacy.
Knowing you have this need should help you act freely when no story exists. Or at least realize that the story you’re telling yourself is probably wrong. Nassim Taleb makes this suggestion inThe Black Swan:
“The way to avoid the ills of the narrative fallacy is to favor experimentation over storytelling, experience over history, and clinical knowledge over theories. . . . Being empirical does not mean running a laboratory in one’s basement: it is just a mind-set that favors a certain class of knowledge over others. I do not forbid myself from using the word cause, but the causes I discuss are either bold speculations (presented as such) or the result of experiments, not stories. Another approach is to predict and keep a tally of the predictions.”
When we know our stories are probably wrong we can give them less power. Don’t let your scary stories paralyze you. Act and let the narrative follow (just as courage and motivation do).
8. Action Beats the Odds
“Spartans do not ask how many are the enemy but where are they.” –Plutarch,Sayings of the Spartans
More information rarely helps unless you are ready to act on it. The perfect plan doesn’t exist.
The great Warren Buffett biography The Snowball shows that Buffett had no grand plan when he was younger. He just knew that he wanted to make a lot of money. There was no early master plan, just a powerful urge and the willingness to take opportunities as they came.
The uber-successful venture capitalist Ben Horrowitz says in his new book The Hard Things About Hard Things that:
“Startup CEOs should not play the odds. When you are building a company, you must believe there is an answer and you cannot pay attention to your odds of finding it. You just have to find it. It matters not whether your chances are nine in ten or one in a thousand; your task is the same.”
You don’t need to know if it will work (you probably can’t know), you need to try and find out.
Your obstacles are yours to face. It doesn’t matter how they compare to the obstacles in history or those of your peers. It’s a waste of time to consider anything except how you will overcome them.
9. Action Makes You Humble
Teenagers think they know everything because they haven’t tested their mettle. They don’t know anything and so they feel like they know everything. They are just beginning to learn about theories and possibilities. They haven’t done anything so they feel like they can do anything.
In Gates of Fire, an older warrior, Dienekes, addresses a younger:
“My wish for you, Kalistos, is that you survive as many battles in the flesh as you already have fought in your imagination. Perhaps then you will acquire the humility of a man and bear yourself no longer as the demigod you presume yourself to be.”
Action carries the potential to bring imagination and reality together. But only when taken consistently and powerfully.
After the young realize they can’t do everything they become disillusioned. They stop tryinganything. They fall into inaction.
This is why most adults end up so dull. They don’t do anything because it’s probably going to fail. They mistook early failures for a sign that they should stop trying.
That’s why they’re bored, depressed, and lethargic.
Instead, our failures should strengthen us. We should recognize that failures are how we learn and grow.
Just ask, “What would Leonidas think?”
10. Action Isn’t Petty
“Suckers try to win arguments, nonsuckers try to win.” –Nassim Taleb
Action isn’t concerned with opinions, it’s dedicated to reality.
Action doesn’t leave room for gossip.
Action couldn’t be small if it tried.
Practicing Action
Here we will explore (briefly!) two specific ways you can train yourself to take more action.
I. Systems Over Goals
Nassim Taleb offers an explanation to the mental perils of non-linear rewards in Fooled by Randomness:
“Our brain is not cut out for nonlinearities. People think that if, say, two variables are causally linked, then a steady input in one variable should always yield a result in the other one. Our emotional apparatus is designed for linear causality. For instance, you study every day and learn something in proportion to your studies. If you do not feel that you are going anywhere, your emotions will cause you to become demoralized. But reality rarely gives us the privilege of a satisfying linear positive progression: You may study for a year and learn nothing, then, unless you are disheartened by the empty results and give up, something will come to you in a flash. . . This summarizes why there are routes to success that are nonrandom, but few, very few, people have the mental stamina to follow them. . .Most people give up before the rewards.”
If you train yourself to be emotionally rewarded for actions taken rather than outcomes you may be able to lengthen the time you can spend in active “failure” and increase your chances of success.
A possible solution is to reward yourself for following your system rather than achieving a specific outcome. Select a system you know will lead to success and follow it.
Eating right vs. losing 20 pounds. Building a business vs. achieving financial independence. Going on dates vs. having a successful relationship. The first are systems, the second are goals.
Scott Adams, the creator of “Dilbert,” champions this idea in How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big:
“Goal-oriented people exist in a state of continuous pre-success failure at best, and permanent failure at worst if things never work out. Systems people succeed every time they apply their systems, in the sense that they did what they intended to do.The goals people are fighting the feeling of discouragement at each turn. The systems people are feeling good every time they apply their system. That’s a big difference in terms of maintaining your personal energy in the right direction.”
When I set a goal of “210 pounds and 13% body fat” I stopped going to the gym and began eating stupid amounts of ice cream. When I decided on the system of “work out every day” I began a real path to fitness success.
That’s the easy step. The next is the real challenge.
II. Input Deprivation Week
Go an entire week with zero information consumption.
I first tried this last year and it was wildly successful. I got more done in one week than I had in the month prior. I also ate the best I had all year and solidified my meditation practice. It was so effective I offered it up to the readers of my blog, StartupBros.
Most of the people mocked me or called me naive. A few actually tried it, though. And many of them are still practicing it to this day. It’s the most effective way I’ve found to boost output.
It’s also the most painful.
You are going to, for an entire week, live without information input.
Stay with me on this.
For one week:
No reading books.
No reading blogs.
No reading newspapers.
No going on Facebook (even just to post).
No watching TV (shows, sports, news, anything).
No watching movies.
No listening to talk radio.
No going on Reddit.
No going on Twitter.
No information input – only output!
You must force yourself to spend an entire week with yourself and the people immediately surrounding you.
This will, first and foremost, force you into action by stripping away every activity you run to in order to avoid actually doing the work you know you should be doing.
Besides that, it will increase mindfulness, increase the respect you have for your own ideas, you’ll have more ideas, unsolvable life problems may begin to make sense, you’ll have an increased appreciation for the news that actually matters, you’ll become more social, you’ll gain perspective, and you’ll become more original.
It sounds too good to be true but it’s not. It’s what happens. The only way for you to appreciate this is to do it.
When I first suggested Input Deprivation Week I provided the following 5 steps to start strong, and they still work just as well:
Install StayFocusd or its equivalent and put all your time-sucking websites on there. ALL of them! Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (??), reddit, Digg (??), Chive, EVERYTHING!
Delete your consumption apps. I deleted Facebook, Pulse, and Twitter off my phone. Delete the apps that you reflexively go to when you have a minute of free time.
Move your books and magazines. They will just taunt you if they’re sitting on your bedstand or at your desk. Make a stack and put it out of sight.
Carry a notebook with you. You’re going to begin having ideas pop up in your head; make notes of them. I like notepads more than phones because we associate them with creating instead of consuming. It’s risky to take notes on a smartphone if you’re trying to avoid inputs.
Take the batteries out of your remote. When you have the urge to flick on the TV you’ll have to go get batteries for the remote. This is a barrier to TV that will save your willpower pool from draining as you stare down the remote thinking about all the Game of Thronesand Mad Men you’re missing.
This may be the hardest thing you do all year. The benefits may not be obvious on Day 2. By Day 6 they’ll be undeniable.
Your focus will turn to production instead of consumption. You will become a giver instead of a taker. You will see your addiction to novelty and useless information plainly.
Remember that this is only a week and not a suggestion for a lifestyle. I love books. I love learning new things. I consume information like crazy. And it’s valuable! Input Deprivation Week is about creating a better relationship with information, not denying its importance.
Like a girlfriend that you didn’t fully appreciate until she was gone, your relationship to information will be forever changed. You will appreciate quality information and be more able to ignore the rest. You won’t be an addict to useless information.
If you need any support or have any questions, comment below or even email me (info below).
Godspeed
This was a long post on something that is actually quite simple.
I wanted you to know Action deeply so that you have the confidence to push when others don’t. This isn’t comprehensive, but it is a great place to push off.
Remember:
Failing can be progress if you use it.
The wisdom you receive from action often remains invisible.
Judge yourself based on the actions you take – not their outcomes.
I hope this is the last thing you read for a week.
Quote of the Times;
A 2008 study found that 28 percent of marriages in urban Syria and 36 percent in rural Syria are between first or second cousins. In Afghanistan, another major source of newcomers, the national average in 2010 was 42 percent. First-cousin marriages among Pakistanis in Britain are so prevalent that Pakistanis now account for 30 percent of children born with birth defects in the U.K.
Link of the Times;
http://thesurvivalmom.com/rural-survival-retreats-not-safe-refuge/
Targeting?
Replace one word in an existing movie title with the word "Hitler":
There's something about Hitler.
Along came Hitler.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Hitler.
Hitler's List.
Willy Wonka and the Hitler Factory.
Hitler Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Little Hitler.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hitler.
Fifty shades of Hitler.
Hitlers.
2 Fast, 2 Hitler.
RoboHitler.
It's a Wonderful Hitler.
A nightmare before Hitler.
Big Hitler 6.
Big Hero Hitler.
Hitler the Extra-Terrestrial.
I Heart Hitler.
Hitlernado.
Hitler does Dallas.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hitler.
*.*
A Newfie was loading cases of beer from the back of his pickup to his fishing boat.
A woman passing asked him if he’d swap some beer for sex.
He looked her up and down then said “I dunno, what kind of beer have you got?”
*.*
Heroic Veteran From Oregon Shooting Just Glad He’s Not In VA Hospital
PORTLAND, Ore. — Real-life hero and Army veteran Chris Mintz, who took seven gunshot wounds while protecting classmates at an Oregon college last week, says he considers himself truly blessed to get treatment in a civilian hospital.
“As I got in the ambulance, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Dear God, please don’t let them take me to a VA hospital. I don’t want to die waiting for treatment,'” Mintz told reporters from his bedside at Mercy Medical Center, where nurses actually check on him periodically to ask whether he needs anything, such as a blanket or a snack from the cafeteria, and bring it back to him within minutes, despite him not filling out the proper DA-7022 Form, Meal Replenishment paperwork. “When I think about my brothers and sisters in arms that started waiting for Veterans Affairs service before I was shot, and will still be in the waiting room after I’m discharged, I have flashbacks of my week-long VA eye exam.”
In recognition of Mintz’s heroism, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter offered to transfer Mintz to any active military hospital of his choice for continued care, sources confirmed. “No thanks,” Mintz reportedly said, according to an unnamed physical therapist who started working with the Army veteran almost immediately after a doctor requested his services instead of waiting for paperwork to make it through the system over a period of five to seven months. “If I can’t stay in a civilian hospital, just go ahead and drop me off at my car and I’ll drive home.”
While many have speculated about the VA’s response to Mintz’s statements, the department has so far remained silent. When reporters attempted to reach the VA for comment, they were put on hold, then after a seven-hour wait, the line was cut off.
*.*
I am most likely never going to experience what hotels are like in my hometown.
Sam Elliott's voice is the white version of Morgan Freeman's voice.
They should name selfie sticks 'narcissisticks'.
Why don't bars do a "sharp dressed man" night in addition to ladies night?
When listening to 'Uptown Funk', does anyone else imagine a young Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks executing an over-the-top hair brained scheme just crazy enough to work?
Marshawn Lynch is kind of like the "Groot" of the NFL.
It would be fucking sick if Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar, and then didn't accept it.
In America, neighbors judge each other on the quality of their lawn. In Canada, we judge each other on how well we plow our driveways.
Hair is like those indicators on Duracell batteries. The more grey, the less energy remains.
Someone should invent a cocktail and name it "Can I get some water?"
*.*
In the traffic court of a large Midwestern city, a young lady was brought before the judge to answer for a ticket given her for driving through a red light. She explained to his honour that she was a schoolteacher and requested an immediate disposal of her case so she could get to the school on time. A wild gleam came into the judge's eyes. "You're a schoolteacher, eh?" he said.
"Madam, I shall realize my lifelong ambition. I've waited years to have a schoolteacher in this court. Now sit down at that table and write 'I will not drive through red lights' 500 times!"
Issue of the Times;
One theory behind the fact that jihadists been targeting Europe instead of just America
My question is: Why are Muslims attacking Europe at all?
Well, of course, part of the answer is that, like the scorpion, jihadists attack and kill because it’s their nature. But the targets bewilder me.
It’s hard to find more Palestinian and Muslim friendly nations than in Europe. European nations loath Israel and they’ve shown themselves increasingly willing to give up their self-identities to appease the growing Muslim masses within their borders.
That last phrase “Muslim masses” is certainly part of the answer. Wherever there are growing Muslim masses, violence follows. But while America may not yet have the same percentage of Muslims as Europe, it certainly has enough Muslims to cause trouble, as we saw with the Boston Marathon bombing.
Since 9/11, though, what we’ve had instead of mass attacks have been those so-called “lone wolf” attacks, such as the one at Fort Hood or in Boston. They’re horrible, deadly assaults, but still different in nature from the fully planned attacks in Europe. In scope, what’s happening in Paris, with one major attack followed by smaller attacks all over the city is reminiscent of Mumbai, not America.
It occurred to me that one reason might be that more Americans (increasingly more Americans) are armed. Even hardened, blood-thirsty, martyr-status-seeking Muslims prefer soft targets. That thought led me to search through my emails and find the one below. I don’t know if the numbers are accurate, but I like the principle:
Some time ago, I read that the Japanese Govt in 1942 or 43 gave up any idea of trying to invade the USA because they knew that the US had hundreds of thousands of armed civilians who would instantly be part of the Army.
So here is a rough estimate of today’s civilian “army” so long as the people don’t give up their guns or allow a govt take over of all personal arms, and thus a government take over of all the states and their populations:
A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion:
There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin …. Allow me to restate that number: 600,000!
Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world.
(That’s more men under arms than in Iran .. More than France and Germany combined.)
These men, deployed to the woods of a single American state, Wisconsin, to hunt with firearms, And NO ONE WAS KILLED.
That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan’s 700,000 hunters, ALL OF WHOM HAVE RETURNED HOME SAFELY.
Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the Hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.
And then add in the total number of hunters in the other 46 states. It’s millions more.
SO, what’s the point…? The point is …..
America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower!
Hunting… it’s not just a way to fill the freezer. It’s a matter of national security.
That’s why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed.
Food for thought, when next we consider gun control. Overall it’s true, so if we disregard some assumptions that hunters don’t possess the same skills as soldiers, the question would still remain… What army of 2 million would want to face 30 million, 40 million, or 50 million armed citizens? For the sake of our freedom, don’t ever allow gun control or confiscation of guns.
AMERICA! Designed by geniuses!
Throw in ex-mil (those that Progressive states haven’t disarmed) and other gun-loving Americans, and you’ve got yourself a pretty formidable bulwark.
Quote of the Times;
“Generalized, near-universal sociopathy is the background condition of modernity. You can’t fuck 10 different people without breaking your ability to pair-bond. You can’t move from one neighborhood to another 10 times without breaking your ability to community-bond. The freakishness of modernity can’t be overstated. Everyone is a sociopath.”
Link of the Times;
http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/federal-bureaucrats-are-paid-78-more-than-private-sector-workers/
There's something about Hitler.
Along came Hitler.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Hitler.
Hitler's List.
Willy Wonka and the Hitler Factory.
Hitler Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Little Hitler.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hitler.
Fifty shades of Hitler.
Hitlers.
2 Fast, 2 Hitler.
RoboHitler.
It's a Wonderful Hitler.
A nightmare before Hitler.
Big Hitler 6.
Big Hero Hitler.
Hitler the Extra-Terrestrial.
I Heart Hitler.
Hitlernado.
Hitler does Dallas.
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hitler.
*.*
A Newfie was loading cases of beer from the back of his pickup to his fishing boat.
A woman passing asked him if he’d swap some beer for sex.
He looked her up and down then said “I dunno, what kind of beer have you got?”
*.*
Heroic Veteran From Oregon Shooting Just Glad He’s Not In VA Hospital
PORTLAND, Ore. — Real-life hero and Army veteran Chris Mintz, who took seven gunshot wounds while protecting classmates at an Oregon college last week, says he considers himself truly blessed to get treatment in a civilian hospital.
“As I got in the ambulance, I kept thinking to myself, ‘Dear God, please don’t let them take me to a VA hospital. I don’t want to die waiting for treatment,'” Mintz told reporters from his bedside at Mercy Medical Center, where nurses actually check on him periodically to ask whether he needs anything, such as a blanket or a snack from the cafeteria, and bring it back to him within minutes, despite him not filling out the proper DA-7022 Form, Meal Replenishment paperwork. “When I think about my brothers and sisters in arms that started waiting for Veterans Affairs service before I was shot, and will still be in the waiting room after I’m discharged, I have flashbacks of my week-long VA eye exam.”
In recognition of Mintz’s heroism, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter offered to transfer Mintz to any active military hospital of his choice for continued care, sources confirmed. “No thanks,” Mintz reportedly said, according to an unnamed physical therapist who started working with the Army veteran almost immediately after a doctor requested his services instead of waiting for paperwork to make it through the system over a period of five to seven months. “If I can’t stay in a civilian hospital, just go ahead and drop me off at my car and I’ll drive home.”
While many have speculated about the VA’s response to Mintz’s statements, the department has so far remained silent. When reporters attempted to reach the VA for comment, they were put on hold, then after a seven-hour wait, the line was cut off.
*.*
I am most likely never going to experience what hotels are like in my hometown.
Sam Elliott's voice is the white version of Morgan Freeman's voice.
They should name selfie sticks 'narcissisticks'.
Why don't bars do a "sharp dressed man" night in addition to ladies night?
When listening to 'Uptown Funk', does anyone else imagine a young Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks executing an over-the-top hair brained scheme just crazy enough to work?
Marshawn Lynch is kind of like the "Groot" of the NFL.
It would be fucking sick if Leonardo DiCaprio won an Oscar, and then didn't accept it.
In America, neighbors judge each other on the quality of their lawn. In Canada, we judge each other on how well we plow our driveways.
Hair is like those indicators on Duracell batteries. The more grey, the less energy remains.
Someone should invent a cocktail and name it "Can I get some water?"
*.*
In the traffic court of a large Midwestern city, a young lady was brought before the judge to answer for a ticket given her for driving through a red light. She explained to his honour that she was a schoolteacher and requested an immediate disposal of her case so she could get to the school on time. A wild gleam came into the judge's eyes. "You're a schoolteacher, eh?" he said.
"Madam, I shall realize my lifelong ambition. I've waited years to have a schoolteacher in this court. Now sit down at that table and write 'I will not drive through red lights' 500 times!"
Issue of the Times;
One theory behind the fact that jihadists been targeting Europe instead of just America
My question is: Why are Muslims attacking Europe at all?
Well, of course, part of the answer is that, like the scorpion, jihadists attack and kill because it’s their nature. But the targets bewilder me.
It’s hard to find more Palestinian and Muslim friendly nations than in Europe. European nations loath Israel and they’ve shown themselves increasingly willing to give up their self-identities to appease the growing Muslim masses within their borders.
That last phrase “Muslim masses” is certainly part of the answer. Wherever there are growing Muslim masses, violence follows. But while America may not yet have the same percentage of Muslims as Europe, it certainly has enough Muslims to cause trouble, as we saw with the Boston Marathon bombing.
Since 9/11, though, what we’ve had instead of mass attacks have been those so-called “lone wolf” attacks, such as the one at Fort Hood or in Boston. They’re horrible, deadly assaults, but still different in nature from the fully planned attacks in Europe. In scope, what’s happening in Paris, with one major attack followed by smaller attacks all over the city is reminiscent of Mumbai, not America.
It occurred to me that one reason might be that more Americans (increasingly more Americans) are armed. Even hardened, blood-thirsty, martyr-status-seeking Muslims prefer soft targets. That thought led me to search through my emails and find the one below. I don’t know if the numbers are accurate, but I like the principle:
Some time ago, I read that the Japanese Govt in 1942 or 43 gave up any idea of trying to invade the USA because they knew that the US had hundreds of thousands of armed civilians who would instantly be part of the Army.
So here is a rough estimate of today’s civilian “army” so long as the people don’t give up their guns or allow a govt take over of all personal arms, and thus a government take over of all the states and their populations:
A blogger added up the deer license sales in just a handful of states and arrived at a striking conclusion:
There were over 600,000 hunters this season in the state of Wisconsin …. Allow me to restate that number: 600,000!
Over the last several months, Wisconsin’s hunters became the eighth largest army in the world.
(That’s more men under arms than in Iran .. More than France and Germany combined.)
These men, deployed to the woods of a single American state, Wisconsin, to hunt with firearms, And NO ONE WAS KILLED.
That number pales in comparison to the 750,000 who hunted the woods of Pennsylvania and Michigan’s 700,000 hunters, ALL OF WHOM HAVE RETURNED HOME SAFELY.
Toss in a quarter million hunters in West Virginia and it literally establishes the fact that the Hunters of those four states alone would comprise the largest army in the world.
And then add in the total number of hunters in the other 46 states. It’s millions more.
SO, what’s the point…? The point is …..
America will forever be safe from foreign invasion with that kind of home-grown firepower!
Hunting… it’s not just a way to fill the freezer. It’s a matter of national security.
That’s why all enemies, foreign and domestic, want to see us disarmed.
Food for thought, when next we consider gun control. Overall it’s true, so if we disregard some assumptions that hunters don’t possess the same skills as soldiers, the question would still remain… What army of 2 million would want to face 30 million, 40 million, or 50 million armed citizens? For the sake of our freedom, don’t ever allow gun control or confiscation of guns.
AMERICA! Designed by geniuses!
Throw in ex-mil (those that Progressive states haven’t disarmed) and other gun-loving Americans, and you’ve got yourself a pretty formidable bulwark.
Quote of the Times;
“Generalized, near-universal sociopathy is the background condition of modernity. You can’t fuck 10 different people without breaking your ability to pair-bond. You can’t move from one neighborhood to another 10 times without breaking your ability to community-bond. The freakishness of modernity can’t be overstated. Everyone is a sociopath.”
Link of the Times;
http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/federal-bureaucrats-are-paid-78-more-than-private-sector-workers/
Several animals were savagely beaten in the making of this page, including but not limited to; kittens, rabbits, zebu, skunks, puppies, and platypus. Also several monkeys where force fed crack to improve their typing skills.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.
And someone shot a duck.
An Images & Ideas, Inc. Service.
No Vegans were harmed in the making of this site. We're looking for a new provider.