Today's Internets - "...optimism, as I practice it anyway, is an attitude and a strategy, not a description of the world."

My Beautiful Bubble, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: "Since childhood, I've struggled to psychologically and socially wall myself off from "my" society.  At 40, I can fairly say, "Mission accomplished." Why put so much distance between myself and the outside world?  Because despite my legendary optimism, I find my society unacceptable.  It is dreary, insipid, ugly, boring, wrong, and wicked.  Trying to reform it is largely futile; as the Smiths tell us, "The world won't listen."  Instead, I pursue the strategy that actually works: Making my small corner of the world beautiful in my eyes.  If you ever meet my children or see my office, you'll know what I mean...

Many people will find my attitude repugnant.  They shouldn't.  Yes, I step to the beat of my own drummer.  But I'm not trying to push my lifestyle on others.  I don't pester people who identify with America as it is.  Indeed, I wish outsiders the best of luck.  My only request: If you're not happy with your world, don't try to pop my beautiful Bubble.  Either fix your world, or get to work and make a beautiful Bubble of your own."

Always nice when you find out you're not the only one who thinks something...
The Rules Revisited: Posture And Attractiveness: "...a woman's posture accounts for 3% of a woman's external attractiveness. And because posture is 100 % controllable  ...in the same analysis that it was worthy of 5 % of the time that a woman spends on her appearance. This might not sound like much, but that 5 % was second only to fitness, hair and makeup. In other words, once you take care of those three (obvious) things, you should be shifting your attention - not to your nails, breasts or even the color of your clothes, but to your posture. Posture is important because it is a direct projection of your sense of self-worth."

The Cynical Optimist, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: "I've thought of myself as a cynic since junior high at the latest. But I've also long considered myself an optimist. Is it possible to be both? At least as I use the terms, it is...

In large part, I think of cynicism as the view that the average quality of human beings and the world is a lot lower than it could and ought to be. Professors should be passionate about answering the Big Questions of their fields, but most of them are boring careerists. Movies and tv ought to be creative and thoughtful, but most of it is derivative claptrap. And so on...

So how can I think this and remain an optimist? Because optimism, as I practice it anyway, is an attitude and a strategy, not a description of the world. As an optimist, I try not to dwell on boring careerists and derivative claptrap. Instead, I seek out the exceptions to the rule and appreciate what I find. Just because the average is low doesn't mean that you can't personally consume high quality. And even when the quality I consume is far from ideal, I try to mentally change the subject to another dimension where I have blessings to count."

Why You Can’t Trust the Weight Loss Advice of a Dietitian | DietDoctor.com: "Here’s a photo from a symposium for dietitians. It is not a joke. This is why you can’t trust weight loss advice from a dietitian. He or she may have been trained by The Coca Cola Company. The largest professional association of dietitians in America have sold out to the junk food industry, as previously reported. If you ask a dietitian for weight loss advice you’ll probably just be told to eat less calories. You can keep eating junk food once in a while and even drink soda, as long as you count the calories. This is exactly what the Coca Cola Company wants you to believe."

Make Your Own Bubble in 10 Easy Steps, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty: 

"1. Amicably divorce your society... 

2. Stop paying attention to things that aggravate you unless (a) they concretely affect your life AND (b) you can realistically do something about them...  

3. Pay less frequent attention to things that aggravate you even if they do concretely affect your life and you can realistically do something about them...

4. Emotionally distance yourself from people you personally know who aggravate you...

5. Abandon your First World Problems mentality... 

6. Now that you have emptied your life of frustration, you are ready to fill it with joy.  Start doing things that make you happy even - nay, especially - if most people in your ex-society disrespect them...

7. Actively try to make more friends with people who share your likes...

8. Find a career you really enjoy...

9. If you're single, stop dating outside of your sub-sub-culture...

10. Now that your own life is in order, you are emotionally ready to quixotically visit your ex-society.  Maybe you want to publicly argue for open borders, abolition of the minimum wage, or pacifism.  Go for it.  Bend over backwards to be friendly.  Take pride in your quixotic quest.  Then go home to your Beautiful Bubble and relax..."

Dedroidify: LOL preach on Russell Brand:



Anarchism Really Does Begin at Home: The Short Version (and why Agorism gets the most right) | Free The Animal: "No human being, nor any number of human beings, have any right to make laws, and compel other human beings to obey them. To say that they have is to say that they are the masters and owners of those of whom they require such obedience."



You'd have thought Dunkin' Donuts, but no.
Upset by a Long Wait, Cop Pulls Gun on McDonald's Customer | PoliceMisconduct.net: "A police officer who was waiting in the drive-thru line at a McDonald’s restaurant in Forsyth County is accused of pulling a gun on the customer ahead of him because the officer was angry at having to wait for his food."

Joe. My. God.: Ex-Gay Poster Boy John Paulk Apologizes: I No Longer Support Ex-Gay Movement: "John Paulk, the man many "credit" with launching the "ex-gay" movement in the United States, has apologized for his past and denounced the "ex-gay" industry.  From an interview with Portland's PQ Monthly...

John Paulk was at one time the most well known and influential person in the “ex-gay” industry, appearing on the cover of Newsweek with his wife Anne in 1998 under the headline, “Gay For Life?” He was instrumental in forming the Love Won Out “ex-gay” roadshow, which subjected countless LGBT youth and their families to misinformation, indoctrination and lies, and which destroyed many families in the process. In 2000, Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, photographed John Paulk coming out of a Washington, DC, gay bar, and the lies began to unravel. Though John resigned from the board of Exodus International following this incident, the Religious Right continued to use the Paulks’ story as evidence that the “ex-gay” life was a fairy tale rather than a nightmare, and many LGBT people and their families have been damaged or destroyed over the years as a result."

Having grown up in the SEX=AIDS=DEATH era, this is pretty interesting.

Risk Realities Related Articles: Whatever Happened to AIDS and Straight Men?: 

“Health officials have known this for years, but the politically incorrect truth is rarely spoken out loud: The dreaded heterosexual epidemic never happened. The result is a conspiracy of silence. And it’s not in anybody’s interest to clear this up.”

...Straight men and women make up 90 percent of the population, but they account for only 15 percent of non-childhood AIDS cases. Only 6 percent of men with AIDS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, contracted the virus from straight sex. And even that figure doesn't hold up to a closer look. Several studies now suggest that most men who claim they got the virus this way are lying. They got it from sex with other men or sharing needles with addicts. Those studies also show that many women listed in the straight-sex category are either IV-drug users themselves or have likely contracted AIDS from sex with an IV drug user...

Health officials have known these things for years. A growing pile of federally funded reports on HIV transmission, published over the past decade and available to anyone who has the time to read them, shows that men almost never get HIV from women.  In fact, according to a 1998 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a disease-free man who has an unprotected one-nighter with a drug-free woman stands a one in 5 million chance of getting HIV. If he wears a condom, it’s one in 50 million. He’s more likely to be struck by lightning (one in 7000,000)...

America may be winning the war on AIDS, but not without collateral damage. After two decades, we are still overwhelmed with misinformation and misconceptions about how the virus spreads. Straight men are still haunted by the notion that old-fashioned sex can be lethal. Among the biggest fear factors, some AIDS educators say, is shoddy federal health data. The CDC statistics are only good as the local health departments that gather them. But many of those departments don’t have time or resources for “surveillance” staff to investigate every person’s claim of how they contracted the virus. If a man wants to lie about having had sex with other men, he can, and that makes it look like more people get AIDS from straight sex than really do. By re-interviewing victims, their doctors, and their families, Chicagohealth officials found in 1997 that in 85% of the cases the city had blamed on heterosexual transmission, other risk factors were present. This phenomenon became a source of black humor at New York City’s overworked health department in the late eighties. “What do you call a man who got HIV from his girlfriend?” the joke went. “A liar.”

Clearly, a single death from this illness is one too many. But AIDS is not killing Americans at the levels of cancer (554,000 deaths in 2001), diabetes (71,000), or Alzheimer’s (54,000). In fact, the CDC has not put the disease on its list of the top 15 killers since 1998...

In parts of the third world, AIDS has, in fact, exploded among heterosexuals. But it has taken hold only in some regions, and among people whose immune systems are already crippled. For instance, the African epidemic is largely confined to the sub-Sahara, where malnutrition, poor health care, and such diseases as malaria and tuberculosis are rampant. In addition, because of their country’s history of apartheid, many South Africans live and labor in squalid camps hundreds of miles from their homes. There, men with untreated STDs will often have sex with HIV infected prostitutes, contract the virus themselves, and bring it home to their wives, who, when they get pregnant, pass it along to their children. (Rural China, where similar conditions exist, is also suffering.) Oprah and Bono have lured TV crews to blighted African villages where the heterosexual epidemic is real. Viewers at home are left with the impression that AIDS—always the equal opportunity killer—could yet make its way into their own bed if they’re not careful.

...HIV has indeed crept into American bedrooms, but only those within pockets of poverty, malnutrition, and poor health care. It has become “ghettoized,” and is spreading fastest among black and Hispanic men (some of them hiding their bisexuality) and black women. The CDC duly reports these facts, but in media coverage the behaviors that put people at risk are glossed over.   Many of the new cases involving black women are simply blamed on heterosexual contact. But it turns out that a number of these infected women have resorted to prostitution to make ends meet. That means they are having unprotected sex, often anal sex, with needle-sharing drug users, and are likely using drugs themselves. But when the New York Times tells us in a front-page story on July 3, 2001, that HIV is taking a toll on rural black women via heterosexual sex, we have to wait until the 36th paragraph to learn that they are turning tricks."

What You Need To Know About Life, But Haven’t Been Taught | TuckerMax.me: 

"The fundamental truth that every young adult must face is the realization that the rules of society do not help you. The rules are made by those in power for their benefit, not yours, and this is hidden by rationalizations and lies. Essentially, everything you are told by the institutions that are supposed to be protecting you is bullshit."

...Why do parents tell the tale of Santa? Get their kids to behave. They perpetuate a lie to control them (because thats the only way you can control people is to lie to them). You probably think that’s ridiculous, right, Santa Claus is for kids, and I’m an adult, I don’t believe that. OK, thats fine. Here’s a fun thought experiment: Imagine you are talking to an alien. Now imagine explaining two things to them: Santa Claus and Christianity. Would they be able to tell the difference between what a parent tells a child about Santa Claus…and what Christianity tells you about heaven? Obey your parents or you don’t get presents…obey your church or you don’t go to heaven. Whats that you say, religion is true, but Santa isn’t? Really? So what would you show an alien to prove this? Exactly. They’re both lies that control you.

You want another, maybe less ideological example? Why do you think drug trials exist? We’re told they are about protecting the public good. Hmm, OK. Well, they don’t have them in Europe. Are the Danes less human than us? No. In America, we have huge and very powerful pharmaceutical companies, and they actually WANT it to be difficult to create new drugs, because it limits competition. If there is only one statin on the market, they can charge WAY more. It keeps the small guy out. How do they justify this? They lie.

The rules are made by those in power for their benefit, not yours. They say its for your own good, but its not. Thats a lie. Thats how they get you to accept shit that is obviously bad for you. The rules are for their benefit.

...Here’s another great example: College athletics. Why the focus on amatuerism? If you start pulling on the why thread, and follow it all the way back, you see where it leads: Football makes a ton of money for schools, but only if the players are amateurs. By having college athletics operate under amateurism, it restricts labor costs and the colleges don’t have to pay taxes on the profit. Do you ever hear this? No. Why not? Because the only way they can get people to accept this is to lie to them, to convince them that its about other things, while they make all the money.

...I’m not telling you this to be depressing, I don’t mean that we live in a vast orchestrated conspiracy to controls our thoughts. I don’t have a tinfoil hat on. This is a natural evolution of all institutions and bureacracies, it happens everywhere that humans exist in modern societies. 

Most people who tell these lies don’t even know what they’re doing. 

They’re just repeating what they were told, because they never asked why.

Remember this: If someone can’t explain “why”, then they are a pawn in someone else's game. There is always a reason why…the only question is if you know it. Like the poker saying–if you don't know who the sucker at the table is, then the sucker is you. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, then someone else is probably profiting from your effort more than you are. You are the sucker."