Basman

Self-help is more about expanding your mind and ability to act on your passions, so a lot of self-help is worth reading, but not necesarilly worth studying. I can only think that a handful of books are really worth studying as they essentially cover the breadth of the topic.

Studying is often necessary to develop valuable skills and insight. Studying isn't always worth it though depending on the material.

Russia doesn't want peace and isn't interested in diplomacy unless it is sufficiently destructive for Ukraine's governability. This is why Trump's negotiations fail. He thinks Putin will be happy with a "good deal" of material substance, but Putin doesn't want peace. Russia can only be prevented from further escalation by being stonewalled military. Ukranians themselves are going to rely less on western countries when there's a lack of support. It doesn't help that Trump is ideologically allies with Putin. It's an unfortunate development if Ukraine goes nuclear.

That Mexican alien was pretty small.

Proves that nobody questions you if you just walk around in reflective vest.

According to this theory, Atlantis was an actual city, located at the "eye of the Sahara", or the Richat Structure, a one of a kind geological formation located in western Sahara of modern day Mesopotamia. Atlantis was supposedly a hub for international trade. The amount of evidence provided is mindblowing. The only thing I'm not quiet so sold on is how the natural disaster that wiped out Atlantis could exactly happen. According to the theory, a giant tsunami essentially washed over the breadth of Northern-Africa which moved diagonally south-west, but what exactly caused that? Keep in mind that the Sahara was much more lush and green at the time when Atlantis would've existed (also true for ancient Egyptians and ancient Greece).

Genuinely. The most painful period of my life was objectively not that bad. It was 95% just how I interpreted my situation and chose to react. I was driving myself to feeling suicidal over how I focused my mind. You don't really need to transcend it. You just need better mental hygiene. Awakening the Giant Within is full of strategies for making your mind more constructive and solution oriented. Jordan Shanks on Youtube also shares a bunch of strategies for being more constructively oriented.

How do you know that?

Thanks for the input. I'll check out the book. It's a difficult question for sure. I hope going more in depth with the LP course will help clarify things.

My life purpose is art related and doesn't have any formal degree requirements, therefor I was considering a degree in something else as a sort of day job. This could reasonably give a lot of security, especially because art can feel like such a precarious field, both financially and especially now with AI. But I'm quiet split on this idea. On the one hand, it's kind of a safe bet from a pure survival perspective and which makes parents and councilors alike nod their head in approval (because its so safe), but on the other hand, it takes away time I could be spending really immersing myself and learning my craft, which I'll ultimately need to actually get good at it. The idea was that a day job degree could act as a kind of linchpin and fail safe, but It's also hard to find something I actually find interesting. One of my main frustrations is that I feel I don't get the time to just focus on my thing. A dayjob degree would be safer but also distract from my life purpose. The argument against an art degree is that they are objectively terrible return of investments relative to how expensive they can be compared to anything STEM related. I used to think that you can effectively learn everything you need yourself, which is originally why I considered this path, but I recently changed my mind on that a bit. I think art training can be really valuable, but the majority of courses/degrees are expensive, which means I would have to go into debt for it. An art degree can also be very hit and miss and be more about the networking/experience rather than just learning technique compared to workshops/coursers (though I could be wrong about this). Sometimes I feel like being creative is kind of a curse. It is such a privilege to be making art. Literally. It would be way easier and more obvious what to do if I was autistic about programming or something. Thoughts?

It's hard to get into books in general. A lot of people aren't reading despite wishing to. I myself don't really read for fun for the most part. I get myself to read because I want to learn. That I mildly enjoy it just makes it easier.

It's worthless to negotiate any kind of peace without security guarantees. Russia can easily just breach those guarantees at a later date. This has been argued for extensively already. Certain Europeans are going to be biased towards sacrificing Ukraine to Russia to get it over with because they can't effectively mobilize against Russia due to political incapability. But Russia is at war with Europe as well through hybrid warfare, trying to undermine democracy, so it is in the interest of Europeans to fight back as well. This is why I think Ukraine might go nuclear in the near future.

What worked for me to build a reading habit is reading 5 minutes every day, then adding 5 minutes every week. I'm now at 50 minutes of reading every day. It lets you build positive associations and get used to reading as you gradually increase your intensity. You will forget most of what you read, I believe, but the overall idea will stick to you in my experience. A handful of concepts will stick in your mind, usually the most important ones. But when you re-read, the information tends to stick much better and more clearly also. If you want to maintain information like a fine comb catching lice then you need to study the book which I consider to be different from just reading. In my opinion, just reading is sufficient in most cases unless you think the book is particularly important. You reading/comprehension skills will improve as you read more books. Non-fiction books that are just information are harder to comprehend than stories though. I think humans are naturally geared toward story telling, so that makes sense. Good writers weave storytelling into their writing to better carry the meaning of their ideas. Audio books tend to have less emotional impact for me. It is much more of a passive experience compared to when you read and are focused on the book's content. There's also just that nice feeling when you are well into a book and reading happens effortlessly. Usually when you past the half-way point.

Humans have been reading and writing for thousands of years. It's just a form of communication. Your doing it right now. Communication and language is as human as it gets. I think a major reason why reading is so hard for many is because it is a focused activity and slow, unlike TikTok. You solve the bias problem by just reading lots of different books and perspective. Social media in comparison curates content into a personalized echochamber if you are not careful.

Being a victim is a fact. A victim mindset is just that, a mindset.

I think many progressive end up taking the liberal tradition for granted because they are so fixated on criticizing the establishment.

Can you tell me more about your exact experience? I agree that you don't need credentials to be an artist but the training experience can be quiet valuable in of itself. That would be my main motivation. I'm pushing 30 and I don't have any kind of degree, so I do feel the urge to just figure out and get going. I am considering something trades because I can't stomach a long academic education unless it is specific to something I want to do, like if I suddenly find out I want to become an doctor.

AI was already being used for gooning purposes to a significant degree. This is just opening the floodgates more. Not sure if that is necessarily a sign of desperation.

How did China make you miss democracy exactly?

Page count: 154 Either a self-help book with a holocaust account attached or a holocaust account with a self-help angle depending on who you ask. That is not to say that either aspects are somehow diametrically opposed, quite the opposite. The holocaust account is an essential vehicle to frame the concept of logotherapy, or in laymen terms, having a strong purpose to deal with life's hardships. Such a concept would very easily end up as mental masturbation if not grounded in lived suffering. And there are few experiences as dehumanizing and miserable as the holocaust for its victims. I would go so far and posit that a book like this wouldn't really work if its author didn't live through and survive something like the holocaust. At least it wouldn't have the same impact. A concept like logotherapy needs to be "hard earned" for it to have any emotional resonance, as brutal as that may sound. About 2/3 of the book is dedicated to accounting his experience as a prisoner of Auschwitz and several other camps. While the book is clearly divided chapter-wise between the account of prison life and explaining logotherapy as a concept, the content itself interplays organically. The most illustrative passages of logotherapy are arguably during the holocaust account, where the author reflects on his spiritual attainment during the ordeal and what it meant. The logotherapy section contrasts in how much more informational and jargony it is as opposed to the more storytelling and reflective prose of the holocaust account. The author is clearly intelligent and educated and you get a sense that he is in his element when he discusses psychology especially. Originally, the author intended for the book to be anonymous because he didn't want the sensationalism of the holocaust to overshadow the important concept of logotherapy (he was eventually convinced to publish as himself by a friend). It illustrates how the holocaust account is more or less meant as a reflection as opposed to a sensationalist piece, though some sensationalism is unavoidable due to the cultural significance of the holocaust. The account doesn't delve deeper into the experience more than the essentials. Most of the time is spent reflecting on how this environment changes a man and forces them to cope with this brutal reality. How prisoners became emotionally numb, retreated into themselves for comfort or how the harsh environment exposes a person's morality. Certain people became viciously sadistic when in position of power over someone else, be it SS guards or kopas, who where themselves prisoners, while others where fair people. There is one excerpt of an SS captain who spent his own money buying medicine for the prisoners and was so well liked that the prisoners hid him during the liberation from the American soldiers. The experience culminates for the author down to what he would essentially coin as logotherapy by the time of the book's publication. My favorite passage of this book, which reflects the essence of its core concept of logotherapy: It should be noted that the author stresses multiple times the distinction between unavoidable and unnecessary suffering and that you should do your best to avoid unnecessary suffering. Just in case of any misunderstandings. 8/10

LLMs can become your own personal echochamber if you are not careful. Being highly identified with your stream of consciousness is correlative with insanity in my opinion, which LLMs will gladly help facilitate without you realizing. You want to use this technology responsibly to avoid the danger of becoming mentally ungrounded.

It works just fine for Australia. You can just vote blank if you don't want to vote for anyone. It should really be mandatory in every democratic society because you can't have a functioning democracy if people aren't voting. A cool one third of the population in America don't even bother voting at all. Parties are incentivized to cater to tribalism, as they are the only one who cares. You get a discourse dominated by extremes. Of course Americans are going to dislike the idea of mandatory anything that impedes with their freedom to be lazy and irresponsible.

Voters are responsible for needing politics to be a reality drama for them to even care. I think if voting was mandatory it would help make politics less tribalistic.

Taste like what you think dirt taste like. And you have to chew them thoroughly. Truffles are good for contemplation in my experience. Makes you hyper present and your thoughts accelerate in a way that they seemingly implode into themselves. On higher doses you might see patterns and feel like your steering your body like your a marionette pulling its own strings. I look forward to using truffles for personal development soon myself. They won't undo your autism I'm afraid.

Those things actually fit neatly into design, which you mentioned earlier you where interested in. But design isn't something that requires accreditation. How long into your CS degree are you? If you are close to finishing, it pragmatically makes more sense to just finish and then pivot towards design. Design you can learn autodictatically. CS will help you understand the coding as you bridge it with aesthetic design, so you don't become an airhead designer. You'll have more hard skills to implement your ideas with too.