#Truth

"...when the protesters all wear pink hats. You can pretty much ignore that movement. Unless they get better hats."

Battle of the Hats | Scott Adams' Blog: "Colors influence people directly and irrationally. Trump’s red hats spoke of power and certainty and sex. That’s what red gives you. Pink gives you the opposite. Pink will lower aggression and make you want to cuddle with a kitten. That’s what the studies say. So pink is not a fighting/protesting color if you want to keep the base energized. I’m also having a hard time figuring out what the pink-hat people are protesting about that they don’t already have. I understand that abortion is in the mix. But the hats seem to have some sort of generic anti-Trump message that to my mind is conflated with an anti-alpha-male vibe. It’s a confusing message and not completely positive.  Compare that to Make America Great Again. Simple, universal, and memorable. Now let’s talk about the shape of the hats. I understand that the hats are supposed to evoke cat ears, as in pussycat, as in female genitalia...

If the movement was designed to generate sympathy, it worked. I feel sorry for the men marching in those hats. On a symbolic level, that’s as close as you can get to eunuch status. The science would say that those men did not go home and have amazing sex that night. On average. Philosophically, I’m in close agreement with the protestors in the pink hats. I like equal rights in all its forms and I think women should have the best healthcare they can get. I also think men should sideline themselves on questions of abortion and reproductive rights. Women take the major physical burden of reproduction and I think society is most stable when women take the lead in crafting those laws...

I mention all of that so you know my analysis of the hats is separate from my political preferences. On a persuasion level, Trump’s hats were a base-clearing home run. But the pink hats are emasculating for men (literally and chemically) and that’s not the unifying message that I assume the organizers planned.

...if someone associates you with a weak color, such as pink, and the science says the color influences people toward weakness, don’t take that as your brand. Run away from pink unless you are trying to persuade people to drink some herbal tea and take a nap. If you are the new President of the United States, and you see hundreds-of-thousands of protesters marching in the streets, what do you do? Well, in most cases you would treat that as the nation’s top priority. You don’t want it to escalate to social collapse. I can think of only one scenario in which such a large and vocal movement should be ignored until they run out of steam. That rare situation is when the protesters all wear pink hats. You can pretty much ignore that movement. It will fizzle out on its own. Unless they get better hats."

Baker-Miller Pink - Wikipedia: "Baker-Miller Pink is a tone of pink claimed to reduce hostile, violent or aggressive behavior. The color is also known as P-618 , Schauss pink, or Drunk-Tank Pink and was originally created by mixing one gallon (3.78 L) of pure white indoor latex paint with one pint of red trim semi-gloss outdoor paint. Alexander Schauss did extensive research into the effects of the color on emotions at the Naval Correctional Facility in Seattle, and named it after the institute directors, Baker and Miller...

In the late 1960s, Alexander Schauss, Director of Life Sciences at the American Institute for Biosocial Research in Tacoma, Washington, did studies on psychological and physiological responses to the color pink. Schauss had read studies by the Swiss psychiatrist Max Luscher, who believed that color preferences provided clues about one's personality. Luscher noticed that color preferences shifted according to psychological and physiological fluctuations in his patients. Luscher asserted that color choice reflects emotional states. He theorized that one's color choices reflect corresponding changes in the endocrine system, which produces hormones. Schauss then wondered if the reverse might also be true. Could color cause emotional and hormonal changes? Could various wavelengths of light trigger profound and measurable responses in the endocrine system? In early tests in 1978, Schauss observed that color, surprisingly, did affect muscle strength, either invigorating or enervating the subject, and even influenced the cardiovascular system. Schauss began to experiment on himself, with the help of his research assistant John Ott. Amazingly, he discovered that a particular shade of pink had the most profound effect. He labeled this tone of pink P-618. Schauss noted that by merely staring at an 18 × 24 inch card printed with this color, especially after exercising, there would result "a marked effect on lowering the heart rate, pulse and respiration as compared to other colors.""

"I don’t support Trump... but I don’t support mass hysteria, either."

Listener-Blue — "Boy, you sure are going out of your way to defend the guy.": "Not really defending Trump as much I am saying that I don’t like people panicking and doomsaying about Trump. I mean, I think it’s clear that I don’t like him as much as the next guy. He’s a self-indulgent egotist who surrounds himself with cronies and people who are smarter than him to compensate for his lack of intelligence. He only got this far because his opponents managed out-stupid even him...

I find his plans on trade to be extremely flawed, and while I’m not doomsaying, I feel we could run into several trade problems with China...

While I’m not a fan of the ACA (this may come from a personal bias, considering I live in somewhat small city, and me and my family knows a several people who either can’t afford it anymore, or now have health bills as almost as big as their house notes), I don’t think it should be gotten rid of cold turkey, and more amended and fixed so it doesn’t screw over people as much...

I don’t think he’s a giant white supremacist (anyone who even thinks that, be they left-wing or right-wing, is giant dumbass), but I would be lying if I didn’t think he was at least a really insensitive asshole when it comes to things regarding race and creed, with there being some hints of xenophobia, though not as big as Tumblr makes it...

I have no doubt that Trump is not going to be as great a president as his more rabid supporters think he will be (which, in fairness, I find to be just as annoying and fanatical as Hillary and Obama’s rabid supporters), but I’m definitely not going to completely lose my head over him being president, and I’m just going to wait a while until I decide to make my full verdict on him as a president. I don’t support Trump or endorse, but I don’t support mass hysteria, either."

It's okay to light people on fire if they have the wrong politics.

Apparently.

This dude gets it. "Trump protesters quieted at UW."

#Triggered - “How the Women’s March’s ‘genital-based’ feminism isolated the transgender community.”

Women's March 'Dangerous Space' With 'Oppressive Message': "Transgender activists are upset that the women’s march over the weekend was not inclusive to biological men who identify as women, as the protest presented an “oppressive message” that having a “vagina is essential to womanhood.” Saturday’s event to oppose the inauguration of Donald Trump was largely a “white cis women march,” with too many pictures of female reproductive organs and pink hats, according to trans women and “nonbinary” individuals interviewed by Mic.com. A fight is brewing between “trans-exclusionary radical feminists,” or “TERFs,” and transwomen, according to the article, “How the Women’s March’s ‘genital-based’ feminism isolated the transgender community.”"

"City Councilman Sworn In With Captain America Shield."

Nicely done.  Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movie, TV News: "Diep is the son of Vietnamese refugees. He was born in Houston where his parents first settled and moved to San Jose in 1999 where he graduated from Independence High School before going on to UC San Diego to get his degrees in political science and history before getting his law degree from University of the Pacific."

Merry Xmas!

Gotta figure out this work/life/blog balance thing, but until then...

Training - "Everything that has happened to you is just a story."

11/30 - deadlifts, ab circuit, 5T, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 11

11/29 - 5T #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 10
11/28 - press, chins, dips, fat bar curl, 5T, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 9
11/27 - 5T, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 8
11/26 - 5T, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 7
11/25 - power clean, squats, 5T, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 6
11/24 - stretch, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 5
11/23 - #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 4
11/22 - #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 3
11/21 - bench, chins, pushups, #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 2
11/20 - #22pushups for #22KILL - Day 1
11/18 - deadlifts, ab wheel, backxt
11/16 - press, chins, dips, pike press, speedbag
11/11 - squats, bench, chins, pushups, leg raise, stretch
11/9 - deadlifts, press, chins, dips, situps, backxt
11/8 - stretch
11/7 - stretch
11/4 - squats
11/3 - stretch
11/2 - bench, chins, pushups
11/1 - deadlifts, situps, backxt
10/28 - press, chins, dips

700 lb Deadlift @ 60 years old...195 lbs bw and Drug Free! | Powerlifting Watch: "Tee Skinny Man Meyers - 60 year old Deadlifts 700 lbs @ 195 lbs Drug Free! The skinny man has been around a long time and he is still one of the nation's best pullers! Here he is pulling a number 1 ranked masters deadlift! It couldn't get much easier!"

allyouneedisyogaandtea: It’s amazing what a diet...:

\

Before After Female Muscle Bodybuilders and Weight Loss:

Before After Female Muscle Bodybuilders and Weight Loss:

Skinny To Strong: Karina Baymiller's Complete Fitness Journey:

It's Not the Years, It's the Miles: Training After 50 | Breaking Muscle: "Live Long, Die Fast. 

Time goes on, as do we. Since age eleven, I have accepted the fact that I am going to die. Robb Wolf once told me: “Live long, die fast.” I can’t disagree.   I have my wills, living wills, and DNRs already written, signed, and co-signed. Death will come knocking one day, but I hope I have left early to compete, laugh, and dance at a Highland Games.   I expect Death to share a toast or two before we do a Challenge Sprint into the next life...

John Powell, former world record holder in the discus, once gave me some advice for older athletes at breakfast in Orlando, Florida. He noted older athletes need to rediscover two things: “muscle” and passion. He envisioned that we should train in two phases:   Phase One: Hypertrophy and rediscovering the joy of movement Phase Two: Reigniting passion   For phase two, “Passion” comes from the root, “to suffer.” Whenever we speak about passion, we tend to jump right into the bedroom, but we also have to learn to suffer for what we love. It could be as simple as sore body parts after training or cutting checks for trips to championships...  If the over-fifty athlete can only do one thing, I would recommend three days a week of push, pull, and squat. You will look good, which tends to lead to feeling good, which seems to help you keep moving good (well)...

I have always found solace in the phrase: “It’s not the years, it’s the miles.” Research from Germany in the 1950s taught us that strength, if trained, remains long into the early fifties. But, after that, things happen. Joseph Campbell described aging like the pieces of an old car suddenly falling off: first, the side mirror; now, the bumper.   Aging is inevitable. Every calendar year, your age will increase by a factor of one, and you can look that up if you don’t believe me. But, aging doesn’t have to be given the victory. With a little thinking and some reasonable training, you can keep the side mirror and bumper on for a long time."

Your Fitness Truths Are Just a Story | Breaking Muscle: "People have sold their dogma and pushed their respective agendas at us since we were small children. Your parents are the grand architects of how you think. In fact, if you think back on your entire set of values, ideas, and way of looking at the world, you can probably trace it back to one of your parents. That means most of your thoughts don’t belong to you. You are simply recounting something your parents taught you. Original thoughts rarely happen.   When you come to this realization, it can be quite upsetting at first. Over time, it becomes incredibly liberating. My reasoning? We don’t have many geniuses, gurus, or true movers and shakers amongst us. Most everyone, myself included, just regurgitate the things someone else taught us. But knowing this gives us the freedom to reject established norms. Conventional thinking, in a lot of cases, is not compelling or inspirational in any way. And the good news is, you don’t have to be a slave to it anymore...

Everything that has happened to you, from your childhood to the moment you started reading this article, is just a story. It’s nothing. It has absolutely no substance whatsoever. In order for you to even spend the energy on recounting any of it, you have to formulate your understanding of what it was, and then create a narrative around it to give it life again. Most of us are so dedicated to the story that we not only re-write what happens in our minds, but then follow through by talking about it, brooding over it, and in many cases, allowing ourselves to become prisoners to it."

"So, uh, how come you don't care where you're going?"

"Cause how you get there is the worthier part." RIP Ron Glass.

'Barney Miller' actor Ron Glass dies - CNN.com: "Actor Ron Glass, known for his role on the police sitcom "Barney Miller," has died, his agent says. Glass, 71, died on Friday night, Jeffrey Leavitt told CNN. "It is with a very heavy heart that I confirm the passing of my dear friend and client Ron Glass," Leavitt said. "Ron passed late last night of respiratory failure. Ron was a private, gentle and caring man. He was an absolute delight to watch on screen. Words cannot adequately express my sorrow," he said."

He got there with grace, humor & enormous heart. He was, among so many other things, my Shepherd. Raise, appropriately, a glass. Rest, Ron. pic.twitter.com/yzPly7TmgE

— Joss Whedon (@joss) November 26, 2016

The Persuasion/Negotiation Frame has been the most interesting way to look at this election.

For me, anyways.  Pacing and Leading, NLP and psych 101.

Unhypnotizing a Clinton Supporter | Scott Adams' Blog:

#TheStruggleIsReal

It got me.

She Gets It.

Well played.

Choose your optimization.

When you cultivate oppressed victimhood as an identity, you find it everywhere it isn't.

The continued bullshit of victim and outrage culture.

"It is precisely in a traditional understanding of manly pride and honor that we will find the only sure basis for respect between men and women."

THE CRISIS OF MANLINESS | The Weekly Standard: "The last 30 years have witnessed a prolonged effort at social engineering throughout our public and educational institutions. Its purpose is to eradicate any psychological and emotional differences between men and women, on the grounds that any concept of manliness inevitably leads to arrogance and violence towards women and to rigid hierarchies that exclude the marginalized and powerless. This experiment was meant to reduce violence and tensions between the sexes...

 As the recent book by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead confirmed, absent fathers are one of the strongest predictors of violence among young men in the United States, at least as important as poverty, lack of education, or minority status. The ease with which men of my baby-boomer generation have abdicated our roles as fathers is undoubtedly connected with feminism and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Boomers were told that we shouldn't be hung up about providing masculine role models for children and should do whatever made us happiest, including escape an unsatisfying marriage. After all, to hold things together for the sake of the children would restrict both men and women to old-fashioned "patriarchal" responsibilities. The results of this hard, bright credo of selfishness are today's under-fathered young men, many of them from broken homes, prone to identify their maleness with aggression because they have no better model to go by...

It seems plain enough that we are missing the boat about manliness; for there are forms of pride and honor that would be good to impart to young males. Indeed, manly honor, and shame at failing to live up to it, are the surest means of promoting respect for women. Equally, manly anger and combativeness can provide energy for a just cause. Horrified as we are by the cult of warrior violence in the Balkans or Rwanda, we may have gone too far toward the opposite extreme in the Western democracies. As Michael Kelly recently observed, "There are fewer and fewer people, and they are older and older people, who accept what every 12-year-old in Bihac knows: that there are some things worth dying and killing for." Abolitionism in the ante-bellum United States, the Allies' defeat of Nazi Germany, and the civil-rights movement of the '60s would never have succeeded without the legitimate expression of anger against injustice. The point is not to eradicate honor and pride from the male character, but to re-channel those energies from the nihilistic violence of Fight Club or the Arkansas schoolyard to some constructive moral purpose.

...the first step toward a sensible debate about manly pride is to rescue the positive tradition of manliness from three decades of stereotyping that conflates masculinity with violence, hegemony, and aggression. We have to recognize that men and women are moral equals, that decent and worthy men have always known this, and that, while men and women share the most important human virtues, vices, and aptitudes, they also have psychological traits that incline them toward some different activities. 

According to the regnant orthodoxy, men and women should have exactly the same kinds of capacities and ambitions. They should be equally interested in becoming tycoons, winning battles, driving tractors, and nurturing children. But this is not reality. In general, men don't want to work in day-care centers or teach kindergarten, and women don't want to be truck drivers or join the military. Moreover, women are far more likely than men to leave successful jobs to devote time to families, and women under 30 are more eager for lasting marriages and numerous children than women of their parents' generation (doubtless yearning for what their parents denied them). 

We should recognize at last that, as long as women are guaranteed an equal opportunity to pursue whatever occupation they want, it does not matter that men and women on the whole still choose different vocations. Remaining injustices should be addressed by procedural liberalism, which has always brought the most solid progress. We should stop trying to reengineer the human soul to prevent boys from being boyish, while encouraging all forms of self-expression in girls. All that 30 years of behavioral conditioning has done is drive maleness underground and distort it by severing it from traditional sources of masculine restraint and civility. The gurus of sensitivity have tried to convince men to become open, fluid, nonhegemonic, and genderless beings who are unafraid to cry. But little boys still want to play war and shoot up the living room with plastic howitzers, and we can't give them all Ritalin. Psychologists have begun to express concern about our educational institutions' readiness to pathologize what once would have been regarded as boyish high spirits -- rough-housing, "hating" girls, locker-room language -- and to treat ordinary immaturity with powerful drugs...

Again, the point is to channel these energies into the development of character. Boys and young men still want to be heroes, and the way to educate them to treat girls and women with respect is to appeal to their heroism, not to try to blot it out. Look at those kids performing daring flips on their skateboards, or sailing on their Rollerblades into the heaviest downtown traffic like warriors contemptuous of danger. They are almost always males. Look at that squeegee kid with his shaved head and horsehair plume, decked out like some road-warrior Achilles. Walk into one of those high-voltage computer emporiums, selling our century's most potent icon for the extension of human mastery over the cosmos. Who are the salesmen? Almost always cocky young men, celebrities-in-waiting in dark suits and moussed hair, hooked on the sheer power of it all...

And what else would one expect, since so many of the families into which they were born ended in divorce? By denying and repressing their natural inclination to manliness, we run the risk of abandoning them to such infantile posturing...

Having failed to find an authority they can respect, someone to guide them from boyish impetuosity to a mature and manly vigor of judgment, they confuse authority with oppression. Still, cast adrift in a world without any limitations, they want there to be a price to pay for their hedonism. Since no one will lead them back to the great ethical and religious traditions that set these limits on the highest intellectual and spiritual level, they pierce their bodies in a crude simulacrum of traditional restraint. And, in that, they reveal not only the wondrous capacity of spirited young people to see through the aridity of the governing orthodoxies but also the potential for an ennobling transformation. It is precisely in a traditional understanding of manly pride and honor that we will find the only sure basis for respect between men and women. 

The best way of convincing young men to treat women with respect is to educate them in the traditional virtues, which make it a disgrace to treat anyone basely, dishonestly, or exploitatively. Moreover, the surest way of raising young men to treat young women as friends rather than as objects for sexual exploitation is to appeal to their natural longing to be honored and esteemed by the young women to whom they are attracted. When our erotic attraction to another is properly directed, it leads us to cultivate the virtues of moderation, honesty, gratitude, and compassion that make us worthy of love in the eyes of the beloved. We try to be virtuous because we want to be worthy of being loved."

"If the way to respond to outrage culture is to be outrageous... then so much the better."

"What I do want to do is desensitize people to this offense-taking, grievance and victimhood culture."

"The First Amendment is extremely important.  It's the fundamental underpinning of American civilization."

"There's a sense in the media in America also that the range of acceptable thoughts and opinions... is becoming narrower and narrower."

"If you're not prepared to read the comedy into that statement and you think that is a literal expression, then I can't help you."

"I mostly ate burgers covered in cheese, mayonnaise, bacon, and mustard."

Nice.  My Zero-Carb Update--and a Call for Your Stories | My Zero Carb Life: "My recent eating habits have included eating at around eight quarter-pound beef patties every day, and if I’m still hungry, I’ll have some eggs, bacon, roast beef, or whatever meat I have on hand. If I ever start craving fat again, I’ll go back to adding it, but my body just doesn’t want extra fat at the moment. I think adding fat is a very meal-by-meal and person-by-person decision. If I desire more fat, I have it!  If leaner meats appeal to me, then lean it is. I don’t calculate micros or try to force anything.  As long as I’m just eating from the animal kingdom (mostly meat with some eggs and a little dairy), I know I’ll be fine.   Yes, I was zero-carb during my third pregnancy. I’ve written about my first two pregnancies before, but wanted to share that my third pregnancy was a smooth one. I had some food aversions and nausea in my first trimester, but I just ate the meats that appealed to me and avoided the ones that made me gag.  (Chicken wings. *barf* What was wrong with me?) I mostly ate burgers covered in cheese, mayonnaise, bacon, and mustard. My favorite pregnancy meal was a bunless Monster Thickburger from Hardee’s, which is why you may have noticed an increase in their stock prices. (The Hardee’s drive-thru people recognized my minivan and knew my order by heart. At three locations.)   So I kinda eat at McDonald’s every day.  Life with three kids is super-busy, and since ThickBurgers are pricey, these days I mostly eat burger patties from McDonald’s. Every day I order eight quarter pound beef patties, just the meat. That gives me two pounds of beef for $8.00 (prices vary from store to store; I live in North Carolina), meaning that I can get my patties for $4/pound. I can barely get raw meat in the grocery store for less than that! I also love hitting the drive-thru daily because my kids take naps in the minivan while I’m fixing my breakfast/lunch/dinner.  Multitasking at its finest."