Batman Gets It.

Training - "We are creatures of habit. We are products of our environment. We are the average of the people we associate most with."

1/8 - bench, chins, pushups, speed bag, stretch
1/7 - stretch
1/6 - deadlift, hanging knee raise, back xt, stretch
1/5 - shadowbox, stretch

 Nerd Fitness: "“Well I told myself I wanted to run more and eat better, and I was motivated for a few weeks, but then life got busy and it kind of faded away. Oops” Sound familiar?

...Motivation can get you started, and that’s great! I don’t care what gets you started or how you got here, just that you’re here. Remember, Rule #1 of the Rebellion is “We don’t care where you came from, only where you’re going.” But motivation wanes, and inspiration fades quickly when life kicks in. If you are going to succeed this year, there are three truths that you NEED to learn immediately before we move onto anything else: We are creatures of habit. We are products of our environment. We are the average of the people we associate most with. To accomplish things this year, you need to build systems that deliver success. Systems take willpower out of the picture and set you up for success by routine: Instead of always trying to remember where you put your keys, you hang a nail by your door and always hang your keys up when you walk in the door. Instead of trying to summon the willpower to cook healthy food each night, you cook five meals on Sunday to quickly reheat daily. Instead of having to remember to follow up with people a month from now, you set up google calendar reminder to do it for you, automatically. Systems don’t rely on motivation, willpower, or inspiration to operate once they’re set up. They are emotion-free. Systems make your default behavior: “I’m going to do this [awesome] thing.” Want to actually get things done? Screw motivation, manufacture discipline...

So, what’s a nerd to do? Take control and alter your environment to remove the Dark Side from the equation. Build systems that automate healthy behavior. Out of sight, out of mind. It’s tough to fall back on old habits when those old habits are literally impossible to continue doing. We call this Building Your Batcave at Nerd Fitness: Just like Bruce Wayne uses his Batcave to improve his chances of being a better Batman and protecting Gotham, you are going to build your batcave to improve your chances at being more awesome at life.

Step 1: Increase the steps between you and a bad habit you’re trying to get rid of. This is just like the above examples – make it harder to do the old habit. Changes that fight your old habits might include: Throwing out all junk food in your house. Blocking time wasting websites on your computer. Canceling your cable and Netflix (after you’ve watched Daredevil and Jessica Jones). Putting your TV in your closet. Giving the power cord to your Playstation 4 to your friend. Putting your alarm clock across the room so you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Moving your cell phone charger out of your bedroom so you can’t lie in bed and check it. Step 2: Decrease the steps between you and a good habit you’re trying to build. The fewer the steps, the greater the chance you’ll actually do it. Examples include: Only stocking your fridge with healthy food. Sleeping in your workout clothes. Packing your gym bag and leaving it in the back of your car always so you can work out before work/after work. Buy a Kindle with books loaded on it and bring it everywhere so you read more. Put the instrument you’re learning in the middle of your living room. Changing the language on Facebook to the language you’re trying to learn so you’re always practicing. Remember, screw willpower. Don’t leave it up to the whims of inspiration or motivation. Create your own success by structuring your life and building your batcave so your life is a system designed to change for the better."

How to Build a Batcave for Habit Change | Nerd Fitness: "There are probably two places you spend most of your time: Your home Your office/cubicle/lab/spaceship The objects in these environments craft your behavior far more than you realize.  Your brain is constantly taking stock of what’s around you and what you do when you see those things: If you see a vending machine, your brain might think, “I get snacks here.” If you see candy on a desk, your brain might say “I get a sugar rush here.” When you see your comfy couch and giant TV, your brain might say “I get hours of entertainment here.” If these are decisions you’ve made dozens and dozens of times, your brain has to do minimal work to make those connections. Now, compare these mindless activities with a new habit you want to build, or getting rid of a bad habit: If you want to go for a run when you get home from work you need to come home (after you’ve used up all of your willpower at work), walk past that comfy couch, Grand Theft Auto V, AND your refrigerator (FOOD! HAPPY!).  Then you have to walk into your bedroom, take off your work clothes, put on your workout clothes, lace up your shoes, and then walk past all of those amazing distractions all over again. If you want to cook a healthy meal you need to drive past Burger King, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Jack-n-the-Box, Pizza Hut, Arby’s, and Chik-Fil-A just to get to the grocery store. Then you must walk past the cookie aisle, grab vegetables and chicken, come home (while avoiding the in-home traps above) and set aside time to actually cook! If you want to stop checking Facebook, Twitter, ESPN, Gmail and other sites 25 times a day you need to try and force your brain to say “I will focus on the task at hand.”  This is essentially the equivalent of trying to type a report on a laptop while sitting in the middle of Times Square...

Here are some other of my favorite examples from a few of my friends: Derek Halpern lost 25 pounds by putting his scale in front of his Refrigerator.  Every time he went to the fridge to get a soda, he saw the scale, remembered he was trying to lose weight, and chose to drink water instead. James Clear started flossing by buying floss picks and put them in the middle of his bathroom counter, telling himself he only had to floss 1 tooth. Tyler Stanton stopped watching TV by putting his TV in his closet. If he wanted to watch a show, he had to carry the tv out of the closet, plug it in, set up the cable box, etc.  95% of the time, he’d say “Screw it, I’ll do anything else.” 

Want to run every morning? Sleep in your running clothes! Put your alarm clock across the room, with your shoes right next to it.  Make the alarm as ANNOYING as possible. Want to exercise after work?  Pack your gym bag the night before and leave it by your front door so you never forget it going to work.  Don’t give yourself the option to come home before going to work out. Play too many video games? Unplug your system.  Add ONE step between you and 14 hours of GTA V, Skyrim, or League of Legends.  Yes, video games rule, but it’s important to not forget the real life video game we’re all playing together. Tired of stuffing your face with junk food?  Get it out of your house. Throw it all away.  It’s a lot tougher to binge on crappy food when it’s 9 PM and your only options are healthy things."

Dennis Quaid, 61.  No Excuses.

How Star Wars Made Me a Better Person | Nerd Fitness: "In the book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, the #1 regret voiced by those on their deathbeds, having the ability to look back at what they had done or not done in their lives, is that they wished they’d had the courage to live lives true to themselves, as opposed to the lives others expected of them. Let that sink in for a moment. These are not philosophical or hypothetical ponderings, but rather real-life reflections from people who know they’re down to their last quarter in the arcade, so to speak. These people didn’t live the lives they wanted to live; they felt a call to adventure or a call to a path that challenged and fulfilled them, and yet refused the call because they didn’t want to ruffle any feathers or were scared of what that path might reveal. They were the Lukes who never left home. They chose the easy, safe, non-conflicting path; a life that others expected them to live, and they would give anything now for an extra life to try again and take the more adventurous route. Until we develop time machines, older folks at the end of their lives will never have the luxury of trying again, but you can certainly learn from the wisdom of their words...

Start with this: stop thinking of what others want for you, and instead start asking what you want for yourself. Regardless of where you are now, you have a choice. No matter how old you are, or far down a path you think you might be, you can always turn back or change course. Whether or not you realize it, YOU ALWAYS HAVE A CHOICE.

You might be overweight and in a job you hate and a relationship that sucks, simply because you’re worried that this is the best it’s going to get. Or that you should be thankful in this economy. Choose to take care of yourself and live the life you feel you deserve. And you deserve better. I promise you. You might think you’re too old for adventure. That you’re too out of shape to ever do the things you want to do. That you’re too far down a career path to ever change, even though it stopped being fulfilling a decade ago. Be honest with yourself. What’s the life you really want? What’s the choice you need to make? Yep, there will be consequences either way, but you always have a choice.

...it may be years of bad habits holding you back. It may be an addiction. It may be an unfulfilling career, a failed or unhappy relationship, overdue bills, medication, or depression. Yours may be mental… physical… professional… or personal. And the faces of the Dark Side are always evolving. The Sith, the Empire, the First Order… you may have several hurdles to overcome on your adventure. This is a labyrinth, not a sprint. If Han Solo taught me anything, it’s where ever you are now, how far down a certain path you might be, you can redeem yourself and find a way to succeed, just never listen to the odds."

7 Ways to Slow Down Your Perception of Time | Mark's Daily Apple: "I’m committed to living well over living long. I’ll take a long life, but I’m more interested in compressing my morbidity—the end-of-life inability to take care of oneself and appreciate the good things this world offers. If a long life means being hooked up to life support for the last ten years, I’ll pass."

5 Ways to Instantly Become More Productive | Nerd Fitness: "Just because you CAN do eight things at once doesn’t mean you SHOULD do eight things at once. I used to pride myself on multi-tasking, and being REALLY good at it. Little did I know (or want to admit) that multi-tasking makes you suck at everything. We have a finite amount of awesome in our brain.  Every time we have to shift back and forth between tasks, we use up some of that awesome to get back on target.  Because we’re constantly changing our focus – from writing or problem solving, to email reading and gchat conversing – we never get good at the thing we really need to do. There’s a simple solution: STOP MULTI-TASKING. "

"The alternative is you being eaten alive inside."

"The ability to say 'no' is a skill you can develop."

"If your first instinct was to set up a mental balance sheet... You don’t know shit about relationships of any kind."

JudgyBitch: "Babies are time sucking assholes who need their mamas fulltime for YEARS, and in order for a woman to do a good job raising her offspring (and no, hiring an illegal immigrant to raise your child is NOT doing a good job), she needs a man...

During our 18 months at grad school, I continued to do his laundry.  I learned what he liked for breakfast and had a tray ready for him every morning.  I fetched him hot food when he was tied up in long meetings, got him coffee when he looked tired and rubbed his back after eight hours of lectures in a chair designed for someone six inches shorter.  I folded his laundry, made his bed and listened to his frustrations. What did he do for me?  It doesn’t matter.  The answer is:  LOTS!  But we’re not talking about quid pro quo here.

If your first instinct was to set up a mental balance sheet and make sure all of YOUR thoughtful actions are being returned in EXACT PROPORTION to your outlay, you might as well give up now.  You don’t know shit about men, or relationships of any kind. As our relationship progressed, I made sure that Mr. JudgyBitch knew I had a deep care taking instinct.  At the beginning of our relationship, we lived in student housing and went to a cafeteria every day.  In actual fact, I CAN cook.  I’m a terrific cook, but he didn’t know that until we had been married for over a year (we lived in China for our first year and ate out pretty much every meal).  What he DID know was that I cared about what he ate.  I cared if he was hungry.  I would not hesitate to trudge across campus in rainy, shitty weather to bring him a hot dinner. 

And he loved me for it.  Sucks, doesn’t it?  Food, clean clothes, tidy room, sex and a shoulder to lean on.  Yep, it’s really that simple. That’s how you compete with sluts.  Be a wife.  Be a woman.  Look at the man, and care about him deeply.  Don’t create a scorecard.  Don’t keep tally about who brought coffee to whom.  Let the balance swing in his favour dramatically. What will you get in return?  Oh, just a husband.  A man who loves you completely.  Loyalty, protection, honesty, reliability, dependability.  A rock who will weather any storm for you.  Who lives for you.  As long as you live for him."

"We are products of evolution."

Sharing meaningful love as meat-puppets « Random Xpat Rantings: "Our emotions, no matter how authentic and holistic and integrated, are products of evolution. We have emotions for reasons. If you love someone, it’s because your brain has evolved to retain the instinct and programming to do so...

We are meat puppets. Meat machines. I know it sounds harsh and derogatory to talk about real genuine emotions as being manipulative, but that’s because we believe in falsities about what the self is. We identify with our emotions, and take them at face value. And while that’s common, it’s also extremely naive. We have agendas underneath our emotions. Biologically programmed agendas...

It is not an insult to see things clearly. There is only slander when there is untruth. You can have the most sublime and perfect love possible, and underneath that is still agenda. We have instincts. Primal instincts. We have many evolved agendas.  For men the big ones are: 

* the search for a youth and beauty in mates 

* power and wealth 

* social status and influence and networking 

No matter what is on the surface, underneath is agenda. It is no insult to know this...

Women do what they do mostly out of evolved drives also. It is not fair, it is not good, it is not right. It is not unfair, it is not bad, it is not wrong. It just is. That’s the real world we live in. We have selfish agendas, and it is not always win win...

Agenda is below emotion; evolved drives are below and ruling our current emotions. Next time your pupils dilate due to love, know that this is manipulating the person in front of you.  You will be completely unconscious of your pupils dilating, because the evolved processes are agendas BELOW and RULING our conscious emotions.  Your emotion of love DOES manipulate others, and knowing that might feel insulting, but only if you completely misunderstand what your self is..."

Being authentic and honest is only a few onion layers deep. Below that is agenda. « Random Xpat Rantings: "Getting older is a series of transitions of perspective, and I’ve noticed a general trend that age makes people more pragmatic about competing interests. At first it’s painful to even acknowledge them; “Can’t we all just get along? Isn’t there a mutually beneficial solution? Does it have to be zero sum? Let’s find a symbiosis.”

 But there is no perfect symbiosis that lasts between men and women. That’s debatable of course – some old married couples somewhere may have it...

We have competing agendas, plain and simple. We get jealous. Even within our own mind we have competing interests for intimacy and independence. If you get what you ideally want, the girls will not get what they ideally want. You are doing a hell of a great job in getting what you want, which necessitates them being at least satisfied enough, but preferably thrilled and addicted and profoundly and happily attached to you...

Underneath it all is the same thing; agenda. Women do want monogamousnhess out of their mates, no matter what they say or do. Every single act they perform is a spontaneously choreographed movement to elicit monogamoushness. Men want sex and devotion out of women...

You are genuine. But don’t let that genunineness fool you. Kids genuinely cry in front of their parents, because we are biologically programmed to seek attention from care givers when under duress. The emotions are real, but conditional...

But authentic is only the top layer. There is another layer below authentic, and it is agenda. It’s difficult to come to terms with this. Because we want symbiosis. We don’t want to cause suffering. Love is supposed to be about making each other happy. Unfortunately, love is also a battle of competing interests. If you choose to maximize the girls happiness, it can only come at the expense of your own, in some areas of your life. 

These are negotiations people make with themselves, usually unconsciously and explained by our internal press secretary with pretty rationalizations. “It’s not right to cheat” “Marriage takes work and sacrifice”. “I don’t want her to cheat, and so I respect her emotions and won’t cheat also”. These are all very popular and workable strategies. Workable for most people...

I no longer see empathy and intimacy as inextricably intertwined...  Take away the upheavals and the pain, and you also take away the love and the passion and the drive and the bonds. It’s a gestalt, and that’s what you signed up for...

The real situation has evolved biological constraints to our emotional responses... I remember the first time I had your deep insight that you can’t choose what you want. That was a biggie. You can’t. And from that insight, it follows that you can’t choose not to have competing interests. "

"Suddenly, just as it seemed we women were about to have it all, a new wave of feminists has begun to portray us as feeble-minded — unable to withstand a bad date, let alone negotiate a pay rise."

Feminism is over, the battle is won. Time to move on » The Spectator: "It should be celebrating its triumphs. Instead it has descended into pointless attention-seeking...

It would be easy to believe from the papers these days that women have never been more oppressed. From the columnist Caitlin Moran to the comedian Bridget Christie, a new creed is preached: that we are the victims, not the victors, of the sex war. Feminists claim we are objectified by the builder’s whistle, that a strange man attempting to flirt with us is tantamount to sexual assault. Suddenly, just as it seemed we women were about to have it all, a new wave of feminists has begun to portray us as feeble-minded — unable to withstand a bad date, let alone negotiate a pay rise. Worse still, they are ditching what was best about the feminist tradition: solidarity with the sisterhood and the freedom of every woman to do as she pleased. Feminism 4.0 consists of freely attacking other women over, erm, crucial issues such as bikini waxing, wearing stilettos and page three of the Sun. Moran writes that it is childbirth that ‘turns you from a girl into a woman’ (causing every woman in my office to snort involuntarily) and that feminism will only triumph ‘when a woman goes up to collect the Oscar for Best Actress in shoes that aren’t killing her’. The revolution will be televised, with ‘Nicole Kidman in flip-flops’. Well, if this is feminism, then feminism is dead, and the triviality of the fights feminists pick is the surest proof of its demise. What started as a genuine crusade against genuine prejudice has become a form of pointless attention-seeking...

Today, girls outperform boys at school — and have done since the mid-1970s. They are more likely to get five good GCSEs. A third of them go to university, compared with just a quarter of men. Once in university, they do better and are significantly more likely to graduate with a first or 2:1 degree. And equality? In many courses, it has gone a bit beyond that. Last year, women constituted 55 per cent of those enrolling in courses in medicine and dentistry and 62 per cent of those enrolling in law."

Since the suffragettes won us the vote, women have made greater strides than men have made in millennia. In fact, the demographic doing worst in schools is white boys on free school meals — only a quarter of whom gained five decent GCSE grades. So yes, there are gender equality issues — but they are deeply unfashionable. Who will wave placards, or lie on the carpet of film premieres, for the cause of under-performing boys?

Most self-styled feminists argue that we still struggle in the workplace. On close inspection this isn’t borne out either. Women in their twenties have out-earned men in for the last few years; now the under-40s are doing so as well. The speed of our trajectory is startling. Across Europe and America, and particularly in Scandinavia, women are pushing their way on to executive boards and into the seats of power. The French government has passed a law which will require that two in five executive board members of the largest public companies are women. Feminists argue we need quotas in this country, too, but isn’t there a sweeter triumph in the sisters doing it for themselves?

So the next generation have everything to play for — if only they aren’t encouraged to view themselves as helpless victims at the mercy of an insuperable patriarchy. Only 19 per cent identify as feminist nowadays, which perhaps isn’t surprising since it’s become so dull. In the 1970s, feminists were ball-breaking, ass-kicking, devil-may-care thinkers — the likes of Greer, Gloria Steinem and Susan Sontag. Now the ‘voice of a generation’ is Harry Potter star Emma Watson, who delivered a highly praised speech to the UN, lamenting that her girlfriends had given up competitive sport because they were worried it might make their arms look ‘muscly’.

But while Watson frets about the tyranny of the male gaze, it’s being eyeballed by a feminist which is truly terrifying. These middle–class aesthetes love to boss other — particularly working-class — women around, sneering at how they dress and behave. They disapprove of Beyoncé and Rihanna flaunting their beautiful -bodies in pop videos with a vehemence you might expect from the Taleban. In April, an advert featuring a busty model appeared on the Tube, with the tagline: ‘Are you beach body ready?’ Within hours it had been defaced; within days 44,000 signatures had been appended to a petition demanding it be removed. Making sure women are covered up in public, so their bare flesh doesn’t offend anyone, is something you’d expect in Saudi Arabia, not here, where we should be free to dress as provocatively as we please.

Why shouldn’t we wear make-up, stockings and suspenders if we like? From Elizabeth I to Bette Davis, women have considered lipstick, high heels and killer hairdos to be legitimate weapons in our arsenal, as effective, in their own way, as crossbows and bazookas. But new feminists are determined to drain the fun from life, and illustrate how awful it is to be a woman in the UK.

Another challenge girls apparently quail at is trolling on the internet. So let’s say you have received threats from some maladjusted loser who disagrees with something you’ve said. Should you call the police? Abandon Twitter? Or perhaps relish the insults, in the manner of Maggie, who said: ‘I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding. It means they have not a single political argument left.’

Alternatively, you could remain impervious to insult entirely, like rock goddess Chrissie Hynde, who last month was trolled by feminists after confessing that she had suffered a sex attack aged 21 and took ‘full responsibility’ for it. Twitter lit up with the unedifying spectacle of hundreds of women attacking her for expressing her honest opinion, until even the Guardian’s Julie Bindel felt moved to point out that Hynde herself was ‘not a rapist’. Hynde’s magisterial response? ‘If you don’t want my opinion, don’t ask for it.’

But when it comes to sex, new feminists are excessively squeamish, so much so that one timid male, Samuel Fishwick (24, 6ft 3in, GSOH) has compiled a guide to romance in the age of equality. Approaching the -Vagenda blog for advice, he was roundly informed that a man must never ask a woman to meet him for a drink at a location near his abode: ‘It makes women think you’re going to turn their skin into a lampshade.’

Does it, though? Or are feminists exaggerating ridiculously — spending so much time dwelling on their own vaginas that they fail to use their brains? Surely we should be revelling in the fact we’re the ‘second sex’ no longer, and teaching our girls how to rely on what Emily Bronte called our ‘no coward’ souls."

"Today's feminists are so out of touch with how most women live they might as well be on another planet." - The Telegraph: "I spent most of the evening being lectured on how to be a proper feminist by a 17 year old fellow panellist.

If only I could have met her before I became the third ever female political editor of a national newspaper in Britain! If only my mother had been able to seek her advice when, as a divorced mum of two, she decided to become a doctor in the 1970s! If only we had known then what that 17 year old knows now!

She was, to be fair, a very bright, articulate and sincere 17 year old but, nevertheless, a teenager. Luckily that didn't stop her knowing that women only become the main carers for their children because they are forced to be, by their limited life choices, dominated as they are by the patriarchy.

It definitely isn’t because women, by and large, really quite like being mothers and enjoy spending time with their kids. No, that would be silly – despite the fact that poll after poll has shown that most women would prefer to work part-time and take a pay cut precisely so they can see more of their children. But what do they know?

According to some of the angrier audience members, women are also being forced to do all the housework. Presumably, all of these women's husbands are standing over them, threatening them with violence if they don't do the laundry. My suggestion that they either choose to marry different men or simply stop doing the housework was met with utter incredulity...

All in all, I learned a lot from the evening, mostly to remember to turn down invitations to future such events. But I also learned that the women who are leading the feminist cause in 21st century Britain are so out of touch with how most ordinary women live and think about their lives that they may as well be on another planet.

I'm not saying there isn't further to go for women's equality, but I just don’t see a lot of the key feminist cause celebres as “women’s issues”. Childcare, for instance, is a parents’ issue, and rape and domestic violence aren’t crimes against women, they’re simply crimes.

And, yes, of course there are vital concerns like FGM, forced marriage and access to education for many girls and women in developing countries. But are we really pretending that a woman's lot in life in 21st century Britain is so bad?

I'd have thought that when feminists are spending their time complaining about pictures of women on banknotes and having to pay 75p a year in VAT on their tampons, then life is probably pretty good.

Frankly, after an evening debating the role of feminism in today’s Britain, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry (but that's female hormones for you).

Either way, I have a funny feeling that my nine year old daughter will choose to live her life the way she wants to live it, whether the Patriarchy or the Sisterhood likes it or not."

"HawaiianBioDiversity" - "local humor" and "equal opportunity racism."

Hawaii's the best.  At least it was when I was there.  [Damn, 16 years ago.]  Hawaiian libertarian: HawaiianBioDiversity: "We got a special word for you melanin-deficient and solar-sensitive folks here in Hawaii: Haole (pronounced "How-Lee").  Most folks that have never been to Hawaii, or who have only visited briefly on vacation, have usually only heard of the word haole associated with only negative, racist connotations... the equivalent of the "N-word" for white folks. That's simply not true. It's a very versatile word and can be used as a simple adjective, a term of endearment or employed as a provocative epithet. As a fair-complexioned (but not totally pale) hapa-haole mutt, I've had the term used on myself in all of these contexts at one time or another. Yet, whenever haole folks come to Hawaii and find themselves being referred by that term, they almost always take immediate offense... To the credentialed classes, haole is it's own Hawaiian word, and it simply means foreigner: So if we are to literally go by the textbook, haole really doesn't have anything to do with white skin. In theory, yes, but in practice, no. Thanks to the deluge of immigration from all corners of the globe mixing and miscegenating for a couple of centuries, Hawaii is the so-called ideal "melting pot" our modern day SJW's and progressives say they are supposedly working towards with the rest of the world. In such a chaotic environment of so many different skin tones, hair and eye colors, race is the first way we immediately identify each other, and in that context, haole means white.

I do believe Hawaii is the ideal "melting pot" society....but there are two distinct features about what we have here that makes it much different from the progressive/SJW ideal. First thing that makes it "work" is we are all race realists, race conscious and racist to the core. It's the only way we can all get along. We don't try to uphold some unrealistic, mystical feeling of holiness attributed to the supposedly ideal paradigm of  "color blindness." In fact, we have the exact opposite. We're more color aware, we're all equal opportunity racists. We LOVE our stereotypes and our racist jokes. At least that was the Hawaii I grew up in. Because of this, we all have similar words like haole that are used to designate all the various races that call our islands home. We got similar words for the Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Samoans, Micronesians, Filipinos, Puerto Ricans, Vietnamese, and Hispanics. Most of these terms are just like haole - they can serve as simple adjectives or spitefully intended perjoratives. In most cases, you just add the word fuckin' in front, and the harmless adjective turns into hateful, bigoted and racist invective."

"For decades, local stand up comedians made entire careers out of night club routines and television specials making fun of all the races that made up the multi-ethnic society of 20th century Hawaii. There were no sacred cows. We were all fair game...and it had us all laughing our asses off. Yeah, we may have been laughing at you...but then one minute later, it was my turn and you were now laughing at me too. And thus, we were all both laughing at and with each other."

Andy Bumatai!  Haven't seen him in years.  Awesome.

"Andy Bumatai, was one of the most popular stand up comedians and local tell-a-vision personalities of the 80's. In 2015, this kind of comedy is increasingly coming under fire. Note his disclaimer at the beginning of the clip. Even 5-10 years ago, such a disclaimer would not have been necessary. Times they are a changin'. More and more of the younger generations of Hawaii's locals have been assimilated into the PC-SJW Borg by globalized mass media programming and public education brainwashing. No siree, it's the 21st century, and we can no longer hurt anyone's FEEEEEEEELLLLLIIINNGS.  Everybody is so fuckin' sensitive. It sucks. I want my openly racist society back.

More and more we see letters to the editors and magazine articles and tell-a-vision programs pushing the "colorblind" paradigm and that all of the racist stereotypes that bonded us all together in common racism in 20th century Hawaii, are now being considered more and more to be  thoughtcrime and badthink that must be expunged from our consciousness.

...here in our island paradise, we embraced bigotry and race-based differences whole-heartedly and without reservation.  Our code word for it nowadays is "local humor" I've been to parties where people asked if it were okay to tell "local jokes," basically asking permission from all present if it's okay to tell race-based stereotypical jokes. Most are still down with the program...but more and more people are starting to reject what was once a proudly and openly racist society...and from where I sit, we 'aint better off for it. See...one of the reasons our society of mixed races "works" is because no matter what race you are or what culture you come from, we have this overriding culture of  "ALOHA SPIRIT" that most people quickly assimilate to. 

In many ways, it's similar to how all the different pale face crackers assimilated into the AMERICAN DREAM in the 19th century. Anglo-Germanic-Iberian-Mediterranean-Slavic-Aryan-Nordic migrations all arrived with different cultures and languages, with the only thing in common being melanin-deficient and solar-sensitive skin. But buying into the American dream eventually gave us what many now consider simply as white Americans (or Canadians)...

"Just as the miscegenation of all those Euro-strains of paleface resulted in a generic, homogenized race called "white" we have the same thing here in Hawaii....but it 'aint called Hawaiian. Only those of us with actual Half-Savage Aboriginal blood in our veins can be called Hawaiian. Those who are born and raised here, but have no Hawaiian blood, and are for the most part the Oriental descendents of the plantation workers imported by the haole sugar barons as third world serfs, they are something else - "local." 

...The "melting pot" ideal can only work when their is a common ideal that various racial stocks strive to assimilate to.  As the comedian stated in the preceding clip, there are two kinds of haole, local haole and haole. I believe it actually goes further than that. In terms of use as a harmless adjective, haole just means white skin. No more, no less. As a perjorative, however, it really means a white skinned person who doesn't conform to local norms aka "No more aloha." Most of us mixed race mutts and half savage racists of Hawaii got no problem with local haoles...or even haoles who are not born and raised, but demonstrate an affinity for the Aloha spirit ethos.  For real kine...some of my best friends are Japs, Pakes, Soles, Kanaks, Pordagees, Buk Buks, Yobos, Haoles and Popolos. I also know folks of all said races who I wouldn't piss on if they were on fire. I once got into a scrap with a filipino kid in middle school, because he called me a fuckin' haole. I told him to fuck off, I'm Hawaiian, and that he was a dumb flip buk buk whose parents came here to pick pineapple for $.05 a day and that he should take his ass back to the Philipines. We punched each other in the face a few times, the teachers broke us up, and we later became friends when we had to serve detention together. He would often greet me as "haole boy" and I'd call him buk buk, and we'd laugh as we shook hands. It's pretty much how we roll here in Hawaii. In summation, racial awareness plays an important role in Hawaiian society, but it's not the be all end all. If you "get" what Aloha means, you can fit and find a comfortable space amongst others, regardless of your race. "

"Being raised... by single mothers and mostly female teachers means often times, boys have grown up feeling ashamed of themselves just for being male."

Feminism Appeals to Female Losers the Same Way that PUA Appeals to Male Losers: "When “Better Call Pauls” covered the topic of pick-up artists, I thought they were spot-on by saying that these people are scam artists taking advantage of the fact that men/boys of my generation were raised with poor social skills. And not only that, but being raised in a feminist environment by single mothers and mostly female teachers means often times, boys have grown up feeling ashamed of themselves just for being male. They tend to grow up being made to feel that masculine and dominant behavior is yucky and rapey, and so any urge to be authentically male is stifled in them, until all that energy bursts like one of their zits. So young men feel like if they can’t live up to the feminists’ standards for male docility, they must instead overcompensate by swinging the other way, becoming total misogynists, and then wondering why their obvious attempts to “score” women as if they were some kind of video game currency usually fail. It’s a nightmare, and the ease of getting laid for women is one reason I’m glad to be one.

But, while it’s easy to get laid if you’re a woman, women are hard wired to screen potential mates and select only high-quality ones, which leads many of them to be just as sexually frustrated as a man who can’t get any. And when this happens, feminism steps in to tell these lonely, depressed women, look honey, it’s not you. It’s not that he can smell dick on your breath from another guy on the first date. It’s not that you dress with nothing left up to the imagination and, being on public display like a Christmas tree, makes you easy to get and therefore not worth pursuing. It’s not that you look like a misshapen cross between a particularly ugly termite queen and an Oompa Loompa and make no effort to lose weight, smell good, or otherwise improve your appearance. It’s not that you offer nothing he needs that he can’t get for cheaper chatting with a stranger online than he can get after blowing $40 or more on you for a dinner date. It’s not that while on said dinner date you’re lousy company because you can’t keep up a basic fucking conversation for 5 minutes without staring at your phone. It’s not because you don’t give a damn about him or any other guy and only ever use them for sex and occasional favors and free drinks/meals. It’s not because you don’t have any genuine interests or hobbies or contributions to society that make you noteworthy. It’s not that you lack skills and talents that go beyond speed-texting and walking in really high heels.

Nope, it’s that damn patriarchy. See honey, because you’re not a Barbie and therefore not living up to the impossible standards the patriarchy places on women (you know in case having like 50 advanced degrees while still looking 24 didn’t tip you off to the fact that Barbie isn’t anyone’s “standard” of what they expect a real woman to be), that and only that is the reason why your dream guy won’t call you after a one-night stand. See, while the cultural message to the male who fails at getting laid is “work harder and improve yourself”, the cultural message to the female who fails at landing her dream guy, even if he’s way out of her league and she has nothing to offer him, is always “it’s everyone’s fault except yours”. 

Feminism perpetuates this idea. Dieting for your New Year’s resolution or to get a beach body by summer? The thing on display won’t just be your toned abs, but also your sad, pathetic case of internalized misogyny and fat-shaming, your desperation to conform to patriarchal perfectionism. Plucking those eyebrows or waxing that cooter? You’re just conforming to “the patriarchy’s” expectation that you look like a child as an adult, because all men are pedophiles and that’s why they prefer a smooth body to a hairy one. (Can’t have anything to do with the fact that smooth skin shows signs of estrogen and femininity as well as youth which signifies fertility, no it’s all about how men are evil for having certain aesthetic preferences.) Basically, what we’re being told as young women is that every guy we could possibly want should be grateful that we want him, and therefore not reciprocating our feelings for him makes him the bad guy. The onus is not on women to make themselves more attractive or more presentable or even more quality company in general, it’s solely on men to force themselves to gracefully accept even the most unwanted of “gifts” in this regard.

...Start looking in the mirror and assessing, both inwardly and outwardly, about yourself needs to change. And then commit yourself to making those changes. The feminists want to tell you a seductive lie; that you don’t need to change yourself at all, because you’re already perfect. Do they know you at all? No? So why are they saying that? They’re saying that because sexually frustrated single women are their biggest target for recruitment. I’ll make no secret out of it, I was at my most feminist when I was also at my most hopelessly single. I was alone, I was miserable...

Reading and sharing feminist memes and literature became a crutch for my wounded ego. I was too socially retarded to talk to men in real life, but I had no problem projecting my baggage onto them so that I would feel less inadequate. Feminism rests entirely on this belief in omnipotent, omnibenevolent, omniscient femaleness. If you are biologically female (or sometimes, psychologically female), you are a powerful, wise, and sexy goddess no matter what nasty boys say about you. Everything to the contrary is a patriarchal, capitalist lie designed to make you feel like crap about yourself to buy more concealer and hairspray. They protect every bad, or simply unfortunate, woman out there in an ego-cushioning cocoon of compliments to their sex and disparagements to the other sex. But that kind of thing actually does more harm than good, because it’s really just learning self-mastery and self-improvement that helps someone in the dating realm, not false hope from phony feel-good memes and slogans."

"I Dare You To Watch This Entire Video."

"When Beatlemania Is a Microaggression..."

When Beatlemania Is a Microaggression... - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "...a tale that sums up the low stakes of much debate over political correctness, microaggressions, and the like. Forget about mediocre ethnic food served up in cafeterias, claiming that "America is the land of opportunity," or saying yoga is yoga, rather than "mindful stretching." It's Beatlemania that is culturally insensitive and intolerant. Psychology professor Adam J. Rodriguez of California's Notre Dame de Namaur University tells the story of a friend who "is a really, really big Beatles fan" and "insisted that I dedicate time to listen to them." Summarizes Timpf: Rodriguez, who is Puerto Rican, explained that his friend was part of “the dominant culture” that makes people Beatles fans — and the fact that he dared to criticize Rodriguez for not being one was insensitive and meant he just didn’t recognize the “power and privileges” he had as a white dude that Rodriguez did not have. “All cultures contain within them many subcultures, with one cultural dimension often dominant,” Rodriguez wrote. “When one is a member of the dominant culture, that person enjoys particular power and privileges, including the freedom to not have to consider other perspectives.”... According to Rodriguez, his friend was just not culturally literate enough to realize that while he “grew up a white middle-class male in the 70s and 80s, to parents who grew up on the Beatles,” Rodriguez grew up “a Puerto Rican lower-class male in the 80s whose parents played guajira, salsa, and Motown/classic R&B/soul...

To be sure, Rodriguez's friend, like all friends who have a band or performer they absoutely insist that YOU MUST LOVE, sounds like a real pain in the ass (however well-meaning he might be). What bothers me ultimately in all this is the sheer banality and humorlessness of Rodriguez's complaint, the hypersensitivity to real and imagined slights, especially at a time when the most serious and punishing forms of racism and cultural insensitivity have mostly been vanquished from everyday society. Which isn't to say everything is peachy. 

I suspect he would agree with me that the drug war continues at least in part because of institutional racism that views black and dark-skinned casualties as less worth of concern than, say, Al Gore's son. Immigration policy has always been influenced by manifest and latent racial prejudice and that certainly still is the case. White Americans tolerate and even insist on maintaining godawful urban public schools because the mostly minority kids who go there don't matter to them (this is changing, of course, and many advocates of school choice talk about the issue as the civil rights struggle of our day). And on and on. Yet on virtually every level, things are vastly different than they were when, say, my Italian relatives in the '30s and '40s were dismissed out of hand as not being college material due to their ethnicity and lower-class status. If you're getting that bent out of shape because your friend (friend!) is forcing you to listen to the French horn solo on "For No One" or pretend that "Revolution 9" doesn't totally suck, you've got nothing left to complain about."

“How Feminine Am I?” Copyright 1967.

That's just funny.

Ah, history.  not number six: " The Correct Thing in Good Society, by the Author of “Social Customs”, 1888"

AoS: Evolution.

Via whedonesque — agents of shield episode 1: skye, coulson, ward,...:

Mac Gets It.

"I'm going to go with the explanation that grants women a little intelligence and agency..."

The 'Pink Tax' Is a Myth - Hit & Run : Reason.com: "And while the pink razors with the butterflies on the packaging my be marketed toward women, no one's forcing us to buy those over basic blue Bics. If the products in this study really were identical save for some totally non-desired factors, it seems likely that women, or at least a larger proportion of women, would simply choose the products marketed toward men.  Since they don't, one can jump to one of two conclusions: either women are so brainwashed by marketing that they choose products against their own best interests because of it, or women find some discernible appeal in the women's products—be that different ingredients, cosmetic factors, or whatever else—that make them worth paying more for. I'm going to go with the explanation that grants women a little intelligence and agency...

While a few outlets focused on consumer choice, highlighting how women should go with men's products where they can, more went the "Ladies, prepare to be outraged" route. "That face wash you're holding in your hand is most likely a marked up version of an identical men's product" said millennial women's site Bustle. "Pretty much everything we women buy costs more than a man pays," lamented The Stir. And Femsplain described "the insidious gendered pricing" as a "cornerstone of toxic masculinity."  

Think it's just women's media? "As if sexism, discrimination, and a 21 percent wage gap weren’t infuriating enough, a new study reaffirms that being a woman is just flatly more expensive," starts a story at Vocativ. "Ever heard of the 'pink tax'?" asks Upworthy. "It's real and cutting into women's finances in a big way." The New York Times editorial board even floats the idea of "legislative relief" from the "gender tax. Alas, this sillier yet more regulation-friendly narrative has also been embraced by government officials. Because if manufacturers can use gender to turn a profit, why can't the government use feminism for its own aims and gains? "Women should not have to pay more than men for our everyday items," DCA Commissioner Julie Menin told Broadly. "Combating gender pricing is a key issue in the fight against inequality in our country."

"It stands against any authoritarian, from the Right or the Left, who sucks fun and freedom from the world... and who uses faux grievances and exaggerated victimhood to get what they want."

Coming 2016: All-Out War On So-Called 'Social Justice': "In 2016, battle lines will be drawn. On one side, people of all colours, genders and orientations are rallying around the flag of freedom of speech. On the other, a nasty set of authoritarians are rallying around a flag that identifies as a flag only on Mondays, uses they/them pronouns and will try to get you fired or expelled from school if you forget it. 

Let me explain. In 2015, I saw the seeds of a movement begin to sprout. Across the internet, and even in fear-gripped halls on campuses, young people began to stand up and challenge the humourless, divisive, identity-obsessed elites that have taken over our cultural discourse. People of seemingly disparate interests and politics — gamers, pundits, metalheads, comic book and science fiction fans, atheists, Catholics, conservatives, libertarians and even many disaffected liberals — came together to agree on only one thing: art and culture should be left alone. 

That movement is called cultural libertarianism. It stands against any authoritarian, from the Right or the Left, who sucks fun and freedom from the world like some kind of vampire without the cool factor, and who uses faux grievances and exaggerated victimhood to get what they want. Cultural libertarianism rejects the fainting-couch feminism and race-baiting of the Left in favour of deliberately provocative joyfulness and exuberance. It also predicates facts over hurt feelings, versus the social justice crowd who want to turn harrowing anecdotes into “lived experience” — which we are then expected to treat like scientific data...

While college campuses retreat into safe spaces, emotional coddling and treating the leaders of tomorrow like primary school children, cultural libertarians think of new ways to provoke and offend people. In a culture of control, conformity, and coddling, cultural libertarians are the true counterculture. 2015 was the year victimhood and hurt feelings became social currency — but cultural libertarians are putting an end to the madness...

In a world where looking righteous is more important than doing good, making pure, socially-just art is preferred to, say, discussing the sex slaves of ISIS. Policing Twitter is more urgent than policing a neighbourhood. Superficially kind words and intentions replace genuinely kind acts...

It’s now clear that progressives, lecturing the rest of us on how we ought to live from their bully pulpits in the media, academia and the entertainment industry, are terrified of the internet and don’t want to know what we have to say. Well, tough. In 2016, it’s time for the counterculture to go to war. Over the past year, I’ve seen people from all over the world stand up and fight back against the authoritarian, censorious world being built around us...

The public is getting sick of nasty, spiteful rants from people who pretend that their objectives are nice-sounding things like “diversity” and “equality” but who are really just bullies. “Why does no one like me?” cries the SJW. Maybe because without regard to your race, creed, colour, gender, sexual orientation, et. al., the content of your character just sucks. Here’s a tip for social justice goons: sometimes when you think the rest of the world is mad and evil… it’s not them, it’s you...

Unlike radical progressives, cultural libertarians will never give you a banned book list. We want you to expand your mind, not your obedience to a rigidly-defined cult of conformity. Read your enemies, too. Listen to their media, browse their books, read their columns. Scout, probe, learn the ways of people you can’t stand so you know their arguments before they make them. Over-read, over-prepare, then win so decisively nobody forgets it. Forge unlikely alliances."

Danny DeVito Speaks Wise.

"Female Freedom Has an Expiration Date: Being 35 and Single" - The New York Times.

You try to be open minded, but wow, what an oblivious narcissist.  

"

The comments on the vid were brutal.  Accurate, but brutal.  

"...claiming that "female freedom has an expiration date" is deceptive language. The truth is, this girl realizes she can no longer attract the kind of men she wants"

"She's still "free" to do whatever she wants - but she will have to do it alone."

"Why women can't exploit men and get by on their looks after 35"......should be the title."

"Title should be: Men's Patience Has an Expiration Date"

Remember when Jennifer Lawrence got paid less on 'American Hustle'? Yeah, not really.

Report: Men Made LESS than Jennifer Lawrence on 'American Hustle': "When looking at the math, Lawrence earned about $65 thousand per day working on the film, whereas Bale and Cooper both earned about $55 thousand per day."

Bart & Fleming On Jennifer Lawrence’s Ballsy ‘American Hustle’ Payday Rant | Deadline: "While it’s refreshing to see Lawrence put herself out there for a worthy cause, I’m not sure that American Hustle is the movie to use as Exhibit A...

Lawrence worked 19 days and was paid $1.25 million and got $250,000 in deferred compensation. She also got seven points in a back end pool that kicked in after cash break zero. Christian Bale worked 45 days for $2.5 million upfront and nine points; Bradley Cooper worked 46 days for $2.5 million and nine points. Amy Adams got $1.25 million and seven points for working 45 days, so if anyone has a beef, it would be her...

American Hustle got 10 Oscar nominations, including for all four of those actors and Russell for directing and co-writing. From Adams on down, all got momentum from success that benefited them in subsequent film negotiations. That includes Lawrence, who I hear got paid $20 million to star in Sony’s Passengers, a fee that was $5 million or $7 million more than her co-star Chris Pratt got, and he’s undeniably the fastest rising male actor in Hollywood."

Training - "Everyone wants to be motivated, while few take the time to consider discipline. That’s a mistake."

1/4 - press, chins, dips, speed bag, stretch

1/2 & 3 - stretch

1/1 - treadmill, stretch

12/31 - chins, pushups, db side swings, stretch

12/27 - skip rope, stretch

12/26 - stretch, chins, pushups, bw squats

Closing out '15 & first real training session of '16 in the books.

Motivation is Overrated - RossTraining.com: "It is rare that a day passes without someone inquiring about how I’ve stayed motivated after so many years. Ironically, I can’t recall the last time anyone asked me about discipline. For some reason, motivation always gets more attention. Everyone wants to be motivated, while few take the time to consider discipline. That’s a mistake. Discipline > Motivation One of the biggest myths of all is that successful people are constantly motivated. The online world that we live in certainly perpetuates this false assumption. Social media only captures what a person wants you to see. As a result, certain people have created the illusion that they operate in a fairy tale land that’s devoid of bad days and bad moods. The reality though is that no one lives in a constant state of motivation. We all experience ups and downs, and moments when we don’t feel like doing what needs to be done. Successful people don’t just work when they feel like working however. Instead, they are disciplined enough to get the job done regardless of their mood...

If you always wait to feel a certain way before you act, don’t expect to ever accomplish anything worthwhile. Too much time will be spent procrastinating as you sit around waiting for the perfect mood to arrive. Meanwhile, your successful competitors will be busy putting in the work whether they want to or not. Embrace the Grind One of the keys to becoming more successful is recognizing the simple fact that life is tough. There is no such thing as a perfect time to work or start a new task. Therefore, rather than constantly seeking out motivation to begin or continue, your time would be better spent cultivating habits that will eventually lead towards enhanced productivity...

In summary, don’t give motivation more credit than it deserves. You don’t need to be motivated to succeed. What you need is the self-discipline to put in the work whether you want to or not. Successful people don’t waste time looking for motivation. They are too busy putting in the work that will eventually allow them to enjoy the fruits of their labor."