I admit to cheerfully badmouthing Ramsey based entirely on him looking and sounding like someone I would hate to spent time with. That Suzy Ormond too, for the same reason.
They would probably both approve of my 401k, but that's not me being frugal. It's because I worked for a university that offered a 150% match instead of paying a reasonable salary.
They would approve of the generational wealth that I was born/married into. "It's a wise child that chooses their parents," as my grandfather used to dryly say.
That helped too, yes. But Pitt's 401k matching was great.
Anyway you can see the Calvinism seeping into everything. Like environmentalism, where some are focused on urging austerity among the poor as a fix for problems mostly caused by the richest.
I really think that it's subpar as a strategy.
One interesting thing that this comparison (analogy?!) brings to mind is that human psychology can really struggle with obsessing about numbers specifically. I recently found ways to hide seeing my number of unread work emails, and it's been a significant psychological improvement. You see advice about how to gauge weight without seeing a number (e.g. using a string, but not a tape measure, for waist measurements), and I could see that credit scores (as well as bank balance) could cause similar problems.
With money, weight, exercise, resting heart rate and recently with alcohol consumption, I have become an obsessive tracker of numbers in the way that I think Upetgi is critiquing here, and for me it has been hugely useful. I have, for instance, cut my alchohol consumption in half since I started tracking it last July.
I have a rather unfortunate competitive streak that nonetheless serves me well when I am competing against myself. I recently bought a blood pressure cuff, and I've just started tracking that, too. I betcha I can bring those numbers down.
I track my blood pressure because my doctor wants me to because it is high. It's up like 20/10 since the election.
You can lower your blood pressure by emptying your bladder.
Doctors are always very impressed with my blood pressure, like I'm somehow doing something about it.
"It's up like 20/10 since the election"
Two points seems like it's within measurement error.
My family has a history of high cholesterol, my mom and siblings are all on statins, every time the doctor checks my cholesterol it's high even after I lost a lot of weight. But every year the advice (maybe autogenerated by the EHR system) is "please eat healthier, less red meat, more vegetables fruits and whole grains." MFer I live with vegetarians, I eat red meat maybe once a month at a work event, give some goddamn Lipitor.
That's how constipation advice goes. It's so infuriating. YES I'VE CONSIDERED DRINKING MORE WATER AND EATING MORE FIBER. I come from a long line of stopped up pipes that are not going to respond to that kind of weenie advice!
My doctor used to tell me that I needed to eat less to lower my cholesterol. I asked if I should eat more fish, he said eating less was the key and what I ate was secondary. But I think he gave up.
I start most mornings with oatmeal (mixed with dried cranberries) and coffee. That way, I poop on the regular during working hours.
Literally, fruits/vegetables/oatmeal won't cut it for me. Large quantities of metamucil and magnesium will do it. I started taking it really seriously after my mom's bowel rupture due to being stopped up.
Also, my system freaks out if I do anything abnormal, like take a long car ride. It's really absurd.
Also remember the woman with the local politics blog (not in my town) who is being threatened by the local council to shut up? They followed through with a cease-and-desist letter for defamation.
Would a local light-rail system help?
Isn't there an ADHD/constipation link? I always imagine it as your gut isn't moving the poop along because that's boring and it's busy thinking about more fun things, but that's probably not exactly it.
My vague understanding from some IBS treatment that was suggested to me by a doctor, but which I haven't done, is that a lot of gut stuff is actually very amenable to 8-style gamification. You can train your muscles to move things along at a better rate if you could actually see what they're doing, but there's not good technology to see what your gut muscles are up to cheaply at home.
Before cell phones, people with ADHD had to poop infrequently because it's hard to take more than one book into the stall.
WHAT. That is wild. That's two ADHD weirdo things today - the other one is a funny way of sleeping with your hands. Jeez.
I don't consider myself that ADHD anymore. But as I was backing up my blog, I got to the last two years of graduate school, and jesus christ I was a mess. I would have strongly benefited from the conversations around today about treatment and strategies. It's all extremely textbook ADHD - can't find anything, utilities get turned off for non-payment, overwhelmed by executive functioning type things, etc etc.
It very possibly might have kept me on the research track, instead of flaking off for teaching. But on the other hand, I genuinely love teaching, so who cares.
Somewhat relevant to this thread, for the past couple months I've been trying to lose weight for the first time in my life. For three reasons: my lab results have started creeping into the low pre-diabetes range, I started playing frisbee again and felt slow (which was mostly being out of shape, but I think moving more weight also played a role), and I got interested in paying a bit more attention to clothes and it's much easier to find clothes that aren't too long on my short limbs if I could wear smalls instead of mediums. (Though I have since realized that buying women's clothes in boxy cuts is a great way to deal with the last one.) Of course since I literally have never thought about it before, that does mean there's a lot of extremely low-hanging fruit, so it's kind of easy mode, which I get is a privileged place to be. I don't have a scale or any easy way to access a scale, so in some sense I don't know how it's going (hence being aware of the stuff in 7, because "how do I know if I lost weight without using a scale" gets you to people who've had eating disorders), but there's been some success with clothes fitting better, and today I have frisbee again for the first time so we'll see how that goes. Won't see lab results until May though.
The liberals don't want you to know this, but the scales in the produce section work for people too.
That gave me a recovered memory of actual human scales, big green metal ones with the upright back part, just outside the grocery store under the awning. Was this actually a thing?
OMG!! It was specifically a Publix thing!
They're exactly as I remember! What an unbelievably satisfying turn of events.
Giant Eagle makes you climb inside the little metal bowl.
They don't allow living birds in the store.
Aren't all Eagles Giant? Like if a raptor is giant then you call it an Eagle.
Giant Eagle is like Mara Rooney in having a double-NFL name.
Dead giant eagles aren't much fun. They don't come when you call. They don't chase squirrels at all.
Speaking of squirrels. Something in our attic this week has started making noises that sound almost exactly like a smoke alarm low-battery chirp. It seems to starts around midnight. One single sharp chirp, then a long pause (20-60 seconds), then another chirp. I'd have thought maybe it was a smoke detector (the ones in the house recently got low on batteries, so if there's one in the attic it would be low too), but the spacing between chirps isn't regular, so I'm pretty sure it's an animal. I'd think baby bird, but it's a weird time of year for it. I was also thinking maybe a squirrel alarm call, but that doesn't seem to sound right. I'm really kinda baffled. Apparently there's frogs in Texas that would explain it, but I'm not in Texas, and again a weird time of year for frogs.
The main thing is that it got very cold and snowy here this week, which is maybe related in some way.
The real no-fooling most giant eagle was Haast's eagle in New Zealand, which fucking preyed on moa.
Basically the ekranoplan of eagles.
One of my favorite questions, that unfortunately we'll almost certainly never learn the answer to, is whether when the Maori showed up in New Zealand, the Haast's Eagles were like "huh, new giant bipeds, maybe I should try to eat one?"
35. I recently read that squirrels in California have developed a taste for meat and are hunting and eating small animals, so I wouldn't go up there, Upetgi. I'm pretty sure it's a trap.
Well, it was either that or fly them to Mordor.
Though I guess you could just drop the bipeds near Mt Doom for a little while until they get nice and crispy, and then pick them up again to eat.
The stories like 39 that I remember most vividly are pelicans eating pigeons and cows eating rabbits.
Speaking of pigeons, I forgot to mention that we'll have luggage when we go to Queens. Are a couple of suitcases going to make it hard on the subway (non-rush hour)?
What kind of suitcases? Accessibility in the subway is pretty terrible, you should assume that you'll need to carry whatever luggage you have up two flights of stairs.
Probably like a carry-on sized backpack each and maybe a laptop bag. Or maybe a rolling bag. A couple of flights of stairs aren't a problem, though.
What are you worried about then?
The only real rule is that dogs must be in a bag. Otherwise anything goes, you see furniture, standup basses, whatever.
Obligatory dog pics:
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/s/PJJgE13Qwe
People with luggage get in the way on the bus. I guess the subway is wider.
Try to avoid rush hour.
Unless everyone in NYC could agree to be to work by 8:30 on Friday.
You'll just have to be bold. People will make space.
14: Crestor kicks Lipitor's butt and is is available as a generic.
I am told that diet-wise red beans are one of the best natural ways to lower cholesterol but it's not enough if you've got a serious family history like that. If it's truly terrible cholesterol, the big guns are the PCSK-9 inhibitors. The other "natural" way is red yeast rice extract, because it's a natural source of lovastatin. Not recommending that route at all.
That's what they want you to think.
My sister says I should ask for something besides Lisinopril, but I don't mind the occasional cough.
The luggage on the subway is no problem. It might be a little irritating for you to juggle if it's super crowded, but you won't be violating any norms (assuming you take the backpacks off rather than wearing them like crazy people).
Operation deal faster reasonably successful. Still old and out of shape, but at least I can sprint again when needed.
"Feel faster" autocorrect got me because I can't spell "feel." Still looks wrong.
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Thanks to whoever it was here who menyioned Austral. Good plausibly depressing read.
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