I haven't voted on this comment yet, but I was very tempted to. While I do disagree with it, I'm more irritated that it makes several unsupported generalizations. You admit that there's a bias involved in the arguments against life extension and then say that it's to stop hubris, then you handwave away any evidence that you could provide to back up your argument. Sure you might not be able to prove that it's hubris, surely something led you to believe that that could also persuade others right?

The rest of my complaints run in a similar vein; average life expectancy has been increasing for at least 50 years now, surely there's evidence showing how people have damaged the common good in the name of life extension (Ballooning healthcare costs comes to mind). You generalize that all LWer's have a fear of death... how? Who have you seen talking about being afraid of death? Why would rationality be insufficient? How do you know your views are getting downvoted on the sole basis of expressing an unpopular opinion?

If your other comments were of similar quality to this one, I wouldn't have a hard time imagining why they were downvoted. They come off more as rants than as carefully measured attempts at argument.

I will say though, that if you do try and provide arguments that I'd be happy to upvote it.

I have. I had something like 50-30% adherence to it during June-September, something like adherence 4 days out of a week from October until the start of December, one month off during December because of family obligations and then mostly bulletproof from the new year onwards, with me ordering the coffee and everything. I would say that I go "off" the diet about one meal per two weeks, but as much as possible "slightly" (for example, a single meal with enough rice in it to take me out of ketosis).

Since I've started the diet, I've also made other adjustments, such as striving for at least seven hours per night, scheduling my time better to reduce stress and not going hungry because I'm too unmotivated to make food. Keep these in mind on top of all the other 'wacky' self experiment biases. (Alternatively I CAN PRIME YOU TO ASSOCIATE ME WITH LOW STATUS BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS!!!1)

1. Last year, I weighed about 177 +/-3 pounds. Now I weigh about 145 +/- 2 lb (Edit: actually 135 at the time of the post. Reweighed myself and that was the new weight.). I reached 145lb during late September while not fully on the diet and maintained it, except for an unknown period in late December - mid January where I went up to about 152lb, I think that implies something back home caused me to gain weight, although whether it's food or vacation loafing is hard to say.
2. I used to have consistent problems staying awake in morning classes, and large amounts of brain fog after meals. These problems have largely vanished, except when I take a meal off the diet or have had insufficient sleep for other reasons such as (see 3).
3. I, unlike wmorgan, have been food poisoned. I think I narrowed the likely causes down to either eating factory eggs from chickens without antibiotics used on them or improperly preparing chicken livers. Since then, I have replaced the factory eggs with pastured ones with cooked whites (which also happen to taste better) and replacing chicken livers with beef.
4. I feel a lot more focused on days where I have bulletproof coffee to pull me through, until the coffee wears off anyway. Note that days where I take the coffee are also days where I feel I've had insufficient sleep.
5. I took a blood test during the latter part of December, which indicates that my numbers are stellar. Now, I realize that I was off the diet by then and not adhering particularly well before, but at the very least, short term consumption of this diet wouldn't damage you more than half a month's worth of a standard diet could fix you. At most, it can heal you for more than half a month's worth of a standard diet!
6. On occasions where I deviate from the diet (social events, dashing out without breakfast, cravings for pizza), the effect is very noticeable: About 20 minutes after eating, I get steadily increasing brain fog, then get nearly knocked out for the next 15 minutes. A headache then persists for two hours after. Sometimes I wake up with headaches the next day. This is either an effect of the diet, or me simply noticing I have a gluten allergy (I haven't been tested yet). Either way, if you value gluten products, pizza and soda more than you expect to gain from this diet, it's something you should be aware of.

Notes: My meals consist of one of the following: 5 cups of steamed broccoli + 3-4tbs grassfed butter, 4 softboiled eggs / Sunny side up + Bulletproof coffee. ~2/3rds a pound of liver + 2 sunny side up eggs + 2-3tbs butter, two baked sweet potatoes + 4tbs butter. Carb cravings are stopped with a handful of berries at night when I get them (once a month). I eat only twice per day, with no substantial pangs from hunger unless I skip breakfast or I end up staying 8+ hours at school (ah, the wonderful experience of a physics undergraduate on a quarter system.) It's not hard to stick to the diet when you know you lose two hours of the day to it and feel terrible to boot.

The one weekend where I made the bulletproof ice cream was a pretty damn decadent weekend of my life. If time and the spirit of adventure are available, I'd say it's a go.

If you use Firefox Rikaichan is an option (Note, I'm not sure if it's compatible with the latest version; haven't upgraded in forever). Chrome has a version named rikaikun is also an option. Also, install an IME so that you can type in the language, I would personally recommend google IME because it's much more comprehensive than the default microsoft one. You can use this to check words if you think you know how they're pronounced, typing it out in a text field and rikaiing it if you want a super quick reference on the computer.

For getting faster at dictionary lookup, memorize the basic radicals and understand how the strokes are done. You can use Heisig to do this (Be warned, while Heisig advertises itself as a kanji learning tool, it doesn't actually teach you anything you would want to know, such as proper usage, pronunciation, nuance and cultural context) or you can work through Kanjidamage (WARNING: PERHAPS, MAYBE, CONTAINS MANY PENIS JOKES USE WITH CAUTION ).

I have a recommendation for works you could read and which are compatible with all the tools I have outlined so far but have a preference against revealing it. PM me if you want to know.

Other helpful resources: A dictionary

Phrase lookups

Both are completely in Japanese, although the dictionary has both E-J and J-J options (英和 and 和英 radio buttons).

Unfortunately I have no answer to the Chinese question, or rather, the answer is "grow up in China and then let your reading and writing atrophy because you like English better." There's a dictionary http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php but otherwise I'm at a loss at what else would help.

Hi Helloses! I'm also new, so I'm not too sure of community norms, but you might have wanted to post in the welcome thread where first comments are usually voted up a few points by other users on this site and allow you to ~integrate~ into the community in a pop and fun manner*.

I've voted your post up already so you're halfway there! Although you might not want to make a habit of asking for karma.

• Neither pop nor fun is guaranteed.

I don't see why Alexei should be concerned about most of your points, because they're based off of several unexamined conditions.

Not finishing the game only matters if he plans to implement DLC or microtransactions, the customer has already paid for the game, why should the seller worry then? Of course, the main point is that if the customer hasn't finished the games he has, why should he pay for more games? While this seems like a reasonable assumption, I don't quite think it's quite clear cut. Anecdotally, I've seen people with 50+ game backlogs continue to purchase new games. On top of that, I don't think it's clear to think a backlog of any amount game precludes or even dissuades a consumer from all games; just because I have a 80 hour long jRPG unfinished on my PS3 doesn't mean I won't purchase a cheap iPhone game like Angry birds. So we need to look at rapidly growing sections of the industry where relatively few startups have been formed.

I don't view criticism as a major problem. You can't criticize a game until you've purchased it for one, and considering that most video game sales take place within a narrow timeframe of release (two weeks I believe), large amounts of criticism on forums appears to be a mark of successful video games! Of course, this isn't including hits that become successful after a long period of time due to word of mouth--Disgaea coming to mind, but Alexei is aiming for a more short term strategy rather than a long term series so word of mouth is not a strategy he would want to employ.

Mass Effect 3 in particular is a bad example, because Bioware is likely going to profit off of the complaints (Read: We made a mistake, now you're going to give us money, I'll admit I'm simplifying this because I'm ignoring opportunity costs incurred for working on other products.) This isn't including other cases like the outcry against Left4Dead2, where most of the complainers signed a boycott petition and brought the game anyway! In light of this information, I see no reason to suppose complaints have a strong correlation with reduced consumer spending.

The videogame industry still remains resilient and profitable despite hits to other entertainment industries, indicating that if saturation is a problem it hasn't been enough of one to stop the industry's growth. Of course, you can claim that it's a few large companies such as Nintendo, Blizzard and Valve expanding the industry (and they have been aggressively expanding) but in the end we still need to look at how well VG startups do.

Just to mention, tc would need to look for distribution channels other than the traditional 'send it to a brick and mortar store and hope it sells'. That would be the place where first movers have the greatest advantage relative to him and where the profit margins all lie within a exceedingly short timeframe. Microtransactions for a free or nearly free game, a la Riotgames, would be a good distribution model to investigate (I confess to availability bias on this one; I haven't looked at other companies who have tried the model and failed).

They say that God created the world in a week didn't they? That's way too irresponsible. If he did create the world, surely he made some comment like 'This isn't something I would've made.' or perhaps 'Hold on! It's not done yet!'

~ Sca-自 Subarashiki Hibi ~Discontinuous Existence~ (personal translation)

So just curious, has anyone seen the 8th episode of Nisemonogatari and had the same mixed reaction of awkward, shock, disbelief but most of all hilarity because they noticed what their brain was doing? For all I've said, I still have no idea what I felt toward that particular episode.