I also sweat a lot and the best way I've found of dealing with the discomfort is a merino wool baselayer. And not just for sports: I will probably never buy another pair of cotton boxers or socks.
Cotton gets wet, then cold and clingy, which can exacerbate blisters (socks). All sorts of high-tech synthetics start to stink real fast (I don't have much experience with silver-treated fabrics though). Wool wicks very well, will not stink even after a week of wear, it retains 50% heat insulation and does not cling against the body even if it is saturated with sweat + merino wool is too fine to be itchy and it... (read more)
What about "war is OK for me"?
It really gets to me that when a bunch of people gather together under some banner then it suddenly becomes moral for them to do lots of things that would never be allowed if they were acting independently: the difference between war and murder...
The only morality I want is the kind where people stop doing terrible things and then saying "they were following orders". Personal responsibility is the ONLY kind of responsibility.
Your brain, like mine, might have trouble handling social interaction by default, but if you devote sufficient attention, you may well make progress, perhaps even significant progress. In my experience, many nerdy people who claim to have trouble understanding people don't direct anywhere near as much cognition towards social interaction as they do towards the things they are good at
The last part is certainly true but I'm not sure I don't enjoy socializing by default: when I was a kid I never lacked for friends and was pretty open and curious about them but growing up has changed me. By age 13 I felt I had too many friends, so I was... (read 403 more words →)
I hope it's true in the sense that I won't one day start thinking that I somehow understand ("grok") humanity and know what it means to be human (or just a sentient being) in a general sense.
In the specific sense, individual people are not that mysterious in their behaviour most of the time. But their motivations can be hard to understand from their own point of view. I guess it's mostly because I can't be bothered to find out...
I've always been interested in how stuff works and I've taken apart or built from scratch a lot of the stuff I've owned. I've built stuff as small as a molecule or as big as a hangglider without even considering asking for expert help - it's just so easy and enjoyable, I can think things through, do research and come to understand something new...
But I've never been interested in how people work. It seems to me it's impossible to understand things that are outside my experience and there's a lot I can never experience for myself, to understand. I've never know how to play or party - it's something I mostly have to pretend to do. People are fundamentally unsolvable to me. Friendship seems primarily a feedback loop, love a temporary form of insanity...
That is indeed true, but only because people have the ability to whip themselves into a >very sincere feeling of offense given the incentive to do so. Although sincere, these >feelings will usually subside if they realize that nothing's to be gained.
I'm reminded of how small children might start crying when they trip and fall and skuff their knee, but will only keep on (and/or escalate) crying if someone is nearby to pay attention...
... (read more)My current guess is that it's because of the increasing institutionalization of society, >which is caused by economic growth. When your tribe is made up of a hundred >people, you can model each person in high detail when you interact with them - >taking into account their personality, their strengths and weaknesses, their past >interactions with you, and so on. However, in a corporation with a hundred thousand >people, the CEO doesn't have time to construct complex models of each worker, >and yet he must ensure that all the workers cooperate effectively. How does he do >that? By making each worker simple to model - by constructing a set of rules which
Right. Or from another angle: people who do not have dogs are considered pariahs, so the dogless are getting a nocebo all the time. So when they take the placebo (dog) their increase in well being would mostly be through the elimination of the nocebo effect.
"Take up the White Man's burden-- The savage wars of peace-- Fill full the mouth of Famine, And bid the sickness cease; And when your goal is nearest (The end for others sought) Watch sloth and heathen folly Bring all your hope to nought." -Rudyard Kipling
an excerpt From Neal Asher's "The Gabble: And Other Stories":
"‘Same arguments apply,’ he replies, and of course they do. ‘God?’ I ask. He laughs in my face then says, ‘I try to understand it. I don’t try to cram it in to fit my understanding.’ He definitely has the essence of it there."