Under FDR and the conditions of the great depression, labor was able to get a seat at the table. 1940s onward the ruling class (corporate executives and corporate-aligned members of the political class) worked to dismantle the great society projects, the red scare was also used to this end.
By the 1970s labor had lost its seat at the table, unions had been demonized by the corporate class and their wholly-owned media organizations. Capital demands ever-increasing profits, those profits would be achieved by workers finding ways to increase productivity, and workers receiving an ever-decreasing percentage of the benefits.
This accelerated in the 80s under Reagan, Clinton being elected in 92 represented the democratic party fully abandoning labor.
Capitalism has a ways to go in China but is exhausted in the United States and Europe. Seeking increasing profit where none exists, it's now eating away at the base infrastructure like a starving body eating away its own muscle.
Historian podcaster Matt Christman has talked about this subject a bit in recent months on twitch streams, for example in this clip:
https://youtu.be/DwH9i1yZR6E?t=1549
This is actually a rather bad time to buy a high-end monitor because if you get one right now it will likely be outdated by the end of the year.
If you want a monitor that can do all of the cool things at once (2160p, hdr, 120Hz+, freesync) without using hacks like dual cables or realtime lossy compression, then you need both a video card and a monitor that support hdmi 2.1 or displayport 2.0.
Currently there are very few monitors that support the newer hdmi/dp standard, and there are no video cards that do. However both of the new consoles scheduled to be released later this year (xbox series x, ps5) will support hdmi 2.1. This also implies that upcoming discrete gpus will support this as well.
This means if you want a monitor that can do everything, right now there are only a tiny number of screens, and no video cards. Barring any delays, the situation should be very different in a few months.
I've got an old gmail address with pop3 enabled that my main gmail account pulls emails out of. Hadn't logged into the old address in a couple years because everything was working. One day I decided to rotate all of my passwords, got to that old gmail account and it refused to let me log in and wouldn't say why.
"No big deal" I thought, I use a password manager, have all historical passwords, have the 2fa device, same phone number, same address, I have access to the recovery email address, and pop3 still works so I know I have the current credentials. I'll just reset the password.
Nope, wrong. Even though I have every possible form of identification the account will not let me log in via the web interface and will not let me reset the password. I get stuck in a loop that eventually ends with "Thanks for verifying your email. Google couldn't verify that [email protected] belongs to you."
The pop3 functionality still works, but the password can never be reset and the web interface can never be logged into. I suppose this will continue until the day google decides to ax pop3 and imap, no doubt accompanied by a blog post with comments disabled explaining it's for our own good, at which point that address will be lost to the sands of time.
The researchers obviously have to keep the scope narrow in order to get numbers at all.
That said, we should be aware that a tech nerd audience will find simple answers to complex non-tech questions appealing, and we should not over-estimate our understanding here just because we have a number.
There is a large amount of data transmitted through sub-communication and context, particularly during an in-person interaction, which is what people are wired for.
Overall tone, body language, eye contact, and various social cues make up the bulk of data being transferred in many interactions. There's a reason why talking to some people feels exhausting and others invigorating, and it's not just the transcript.
The 3.5" desktop and server Hitachi drives are all manufactured by Toshiba. WD wanted to buy Hitachi's drive division so there would be a WD/Seagate drive duopoly, European regulators said they had to sell Hitachi's 3.5" to someone else before they would approve the merger. Toshiba stepped up and got it.
So yes it is somewhat confusing. You buy one of these drives and it will say "HGST a Western Digital company" on the box, when in reality it's all made by Toshiba, probably in an old Hitachi factory.
This is very interesting. 128kbit is fast enough for Google Maps which is good enough for me.
I know they said the free overseas data is only for contract customers but I wonder if they will allow us pre-paid people to add on the "packs" they mention before going on a trip.
I agree with the points he makes and have had a similar experience. I have worked desk jobs with minimal movement for the last 10 years and getting into resistance training plus cardio has made a huge difference in the amount of energy I have, mood, posture, etc.
One statement I take issue with is this line "I put on 40 pounds of muscle one year alone...". This is essentially impossible barring a malfunctioning thyroid. I don't doubt that he put on 40 pounds of weight in a year but I can guarantee it wasn't all muscle.
If you are 17-20 and finishing up puberty, using anabolic steroids, working out incredibly hard 5-6 days per week, and eating 4000+ calories per day every day _maybe_ you could put on 30 pounds of muscle in a year. If you are in your late 20s early 30s as he was, not using steroids (I assume), and working out hard your max muscle gain in a year might be around 20lbs. For a normal 30 year old working out 3x a week it's closer to 12-15lbs/year after newbie-gains have ended.
I say this not to discourage but rather to give people realistic expectations, I believe the most common reason people fail at exercise is they are overly ambitious and burn out quickly when they don't look like Hulk overnight.
If someone was looking for a good starting point for fitness I recommend scooby1961 on youtube, he has been around a long time and has a ton of videos on fitness and nutrition aimed at newbies, and takes the perspective of an engineer looking at the body as a machine.
As someone who has been into this for a while my advice would be:
1. Start small and ramp up, if you do nothing currently start with walking 20 minutes per day.
2. Do not spend a bunch of money on fancy equipment, like all hobbies until you get deeper into the game you won't even know what you should get.
3. Avoid injury, esp your lower back and shoulders. The best way to do this is perfect form. Always have perfect form, cheating with bad form to get one extra rep is only cheating yourself, the goal is to work the muscle to failure, not hit some number.
4. If you want to do a home gym you can work 95% of your muscle groups with dumbbells, a barbell, and a pullup bar. The only thing you cannot work out well with these is your quads. For that you need a leg press machine or a squat cage (ie: a gym).
5. Most suppliments are unproven snake oil that waste your money at best, and at worst destroy your kidneys/liver or give you heavy metal poisoning. The only supplements I consider proven effective with minimal side-effects are caffeine (pre-workout) and creatine. I will not recommend any brands but look for ones that are quality tested by independent labs (like USP).
6. Cardio with resistance (weights) is best, but if you only have time for one make it cardio. This is more important for your long term health.
7. Sticking to a routine is not about will-power, it's about habits. The first time you work out with weights it's intimidating as hell and you feel like a bumbling idiot, you do that 2 or 3 times a week for a few weeks and it feels like a chore, you do it for a year and it happens on auto pilot, you don't even think about it.
"University of Phoenix...They are a company that makes it easy to get the same quality diploma that you would get at the local college."
It damages the credibility of the author to make a statement like this. University of Phoenix degrees are less marketable than those of public universities. If someone wants specific evidence there is a Frontline episode on education that features UoP heavily.
In addition, UoP is basically a parasitic entity exploiting a loophole. They take federal money intended to provide access to useful education, and people who think a degree will improve their marketability, fail to deliver to either party and pocket a percentage.
Perspective from a stone-cold atheist/philosophical-materialist that started daily meditation in recent months: there's nothing magical to it, but there is something to it.
There are many different explanations as to "how it works". These range from greater connections with supernatural beings to just giving your brain some quiet time to perform various housekeeping activities that it doesn't get a chance to do when constantly stimulated with computer/phone/tv.
If you want to know "what can meditation do for me besides waste my time?", here is my attempt at describing what it feels like and how it's beneficial. This is just my subjective experience.
The first benefit of meditation for me has been to make me aware of the near-constant mental chatter going on in my mind, and presumably the minds of many other people in society. I knew it was bad but I had no idea how bad until I tried to shut it off for a few minutes. It's like when someone points out every time you say "umm" in a conversation and you suddenly become aware you are doing it constantly.
As for the second benefit, imagine how you feel when you are in a pleasurable and carefree mental state. For example you are at a bar or a party talking to someone you just met who has similar interests and after 20min you have sort of a full body buzz going even if you haven't been drinking, the rest of the world falls away, and time flies by. Or if you go to the gym or do martial arts and you enter the gym stressed about work, then two hours later you walk out and are driving home, feeling great and the things that were bothering you earlier seem insignificant. Meditation builds a mental muscle that allows you to more easily slip into that groove. I'm still a newbie but there are times that I can slip into that state at will, walking down a crowded street surrounded by people.
"Arrgg! stop wasting my time and tell me how this is this going to get me money/sex/stock options!"
If you are still looking for the immediately tangible benefit of meditation in terms of (input x) -> (output y) that will depend on your situation. I can however give you an example. If there is a room full of of stressed out uptight people and someone walks in who is more relaxed and "present" than everyone else in the room, other people in the room will notice this, they will subconsciously assume there is a reason, they will be more inclined to listen to that person. They are walking around with empty cups and that person acts like their cup is overflowing.
The joke is the first time this happens you will have the thought "omg it's working, the 'trick' is working!" and instantly your new found charisma will evaporate. If you chase it you cannot have it, there are many things in life like this :]
As for method, I don't use candles, music, darkness, unusual sitting poses, or any other props. They obviously help some people but I have not tried them. I simply put my phone on silent, set my phone alarm to vibrate in 20min and put it on a table behind me. Sit in a chair and look at a point on the wall, be sure there aren't any screens or clocks in your field of vision to distract you.
Once you are sitting looking at the point on the wall let yourself be present and not thinking about anything in the past or the future. The first two or three times you try this it will feel like the longest 20 minutes of your life and you will find yourself constantly thinking of chores, imagining interactions, and berating yourself for thinking. Don't judge yourself and don't "try" to not think. Newbies are often told that if they really need to focus on something, to focus on their breathing.
Normally when you have a thought your mind seizes on the thought like a shark seizes on its dinner. Rather, be like the stone at the bottom of the sea and the thought is like a jellyfish. The thought appears, you are aware of the thought, but you don't engage it, you just let it drift by.
Your pet hypothesis and mine are quite similar. Hey there pet hypothesis buddy.
Once you get a good routine down, you figure out the best grocery stores for everything, find the best routes to and from work/school, punch a clock for half your weekday waking hours, days start blending together.
The time spent doing things like washing dishes, doing laundry, prepping meals, shopping for consumables, your brain is on autopilot for most of that time once you have done those things 100+ times.
Variety being the spice of life and all, doing new things forces you to actually engage your surroundings and have memorable experiences.
I like this post a lot. It perfectly sums up why I quit reading Slashdot. There was a time when reading Slashdot posts could expose you to new ideas, real world examples of technical solutions, and other people trying to learn more.
Now it's mostly pedantic sniping, and lame cliched jokes from socially frustrated wankers.
I do most of my reading on Reddit (front page reddits are just cotton candy, but there are good ones to be found). I only started reading HackerNews about a year ago, and mostly just for the articles from lesser known blogs that don't get posted on Reddit. Being something of a HackerNews newbie I haven't been around long enough to notice a change, but I hope it doesn't go the way of Slashdot.
By the 1970s labor had lost its seat at the table, unions had been demonized by the corporate class and their wholly-owned media organizations. Capital demands ever-increasing profits, those profits would be achieved by workers finding ways to increase productivity, and workers receiving an ever-decreasing percentage of the benefits.
This accelerated in the 80s under Reagan, Clinton being elected in 92 represented the democratic party fully abandoning labor.
Capitalism has a ways to go in China but is exhausted in the United States and Europe. Seeking increasing profit where none exists, it's now eating away at the base infrastructure like a starving body eating away its own muscle.
Historian podcaster Matt Christman has talked about this subject a bit in recent months on twitch streams, for example in this clip: https://youtu.be/DwH9i1yZR6E?t=1549