Tell us about your feed reader of choice.

I've been using Feedly since Google Reader went away, and has enough faults (buggy interface, terrible bookmarking, awkward phone app that needs to be online all the time) to motivate me towards a new one. Any recommendations?

In my small fourth grade class of 20 students, we are learning how to write essays, and get to pick our own thesis statements. One kid, who had a younger sibling, picked the thesis statement: "Being an older sibling is hard." Another kid did "Being the youngest child is hard." Yet another did "Being the middle child is hard", and someone else did "Being an only child is hard." I find this as a rather humorous example of how people often make it look like they're being oppressed.

Does anyone know why people do this?

Maybe a better question then would be, "How do you identify?" Philosophically the question is far from bullshit. The question is to make you analyze what is yours (what have you actually decided to do) over what society, peers, or family have told you that you should be. We like to play this game on freshmen philosophy students because most of them haven't yet analyzed their entire life to figure out why they are doing what they are doing and who they really are. The point of the exercise is to decide what is your motivation for doing things and acting the way you do.

Thank you for this, very informative!

I am definitely interested in getting better at both "talking with other people" and "observing"; how would you measure your progress in these two cases?

I would say consuming mass amounts of media, learning an instrument, talking with other people, and spending time observing.

How do you measure your progress?

Something I'm looking for:

A list of habits to take up, to improve my life, that are vetted and recommended by the community. Preferably in order of most useful to least useful. Things like "start using Anki", "start meditating", etc.

Do we have list like this compiled? If not, can we create it? I'm a big believe in the things this community recommends, and have already taken up using Anki, am working on Meditation, and am looking for what other habits I should take up.

FYI, I thought of this as I was reading gwern's Dual N-Back article, in which he mentions it's probably not worth the time, as there are much higher-potential activities to do.

(Here's the relevant excerpt from gwern: N-BACK IN GENERAL

To those whose time is limited: you may wish to stop reading here. If you seek to improve your life, and want the greatest ‘bang for the buck’, you are well-advised to look elsewhere. Meditation, for example, is easier, faster, and ultra-portable. Typing training will directly improve your facility with a computer, a valuable skill for this modern world. Spaced repetition memorization techniques offer unparalleled advantages to students. Nootropics are the epitome of ease (just swallow!), and their effects are much more easily assessed - one can even run double-blind experiments on oneself, impossible with dual N-back. Other supplements like melatonin can deliver benefits incommensurable with DNB - what is the cognitive value of another number in working memory thanks to DNB compared to a good night’s sleep thanks to melatonin? Modest changes to one’s diet and environs can fundamentally improve one’s well-being. Even basic training in reading, with the crudest tachistoscope techniques, can pay large dividends if one is below a basic level of reading like 200WPM & still subvocalizing. And all of these can start paying off immediately.)

Stirfries can be cheap, fast, convenient, and healthy. Dahl (lentil stew) is slow to make, but cheap and convenient.

I'm afraid that it largely depends on your initial diet. For me, paleo was a net disaster (3 months with quality of life substantially reduced, and 3 kgs gained), but probably because I came from an already healthier diet.
If you factor in that in a high proteic diet you have higher than normal insuline spikes and you may lose the ability to process gluten, then you might actually gain some benefit.

In my admittedly small social circle, I've seen though more people benifit from a vegetarian diet than from paleo.