The Caveman Test

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on September 2, 2013

caveman-computerFirst you couldn’t have more than 10% fat in your diet, then carbohydrates became the source of all evil*. Slow-Carb waged war on the various Schools of Paleo. But the Food Pyramid continues to loom over them all like some kind of Eldritch abomination. 

Weight machines were once all the rage, but then free weights became king. Then Tsatsouline brought kettlebell back into fashion, while others urged us on to condition ourselves with our own bodyweight, like convicts. 

Eggs, coffee, and long-distance running caused perennial headaches to gurus all round.

So how does the layman observing this cacophonic monkeyhouse deal with all the noise? Simplify. Simplify the shit out out of all this crap and reduce it all to the following basic question: 

Would you have been doing this 10,000 years ago?

Diet fads and exercise methodologies come and go, but the human body remains constant – at least on the timescales that matter. Apply the Caveman Test – and you are unlikely to go very far wrong.

Should you count calories? Erm, lolzwut? No caveman would know what a calorie even is. Forget all those Weight Watchers programs that would have you obsessing over that extra 5 calories you ingested at lunch.

How often should you eat? Did hunter-gatherers eat 6 carefully portioned meals a day – or did they alternate between bouts of fasting and feasting in-between their hunts? There you go – intermittent fasting. Feel free to give breakfast the finger if you’ve never liked it anyway.

Did you eat grains? No, they ate root tubers. When humans started eating grains, life expectancy plummeted relative to the levels of the Paleolithic Age. But here’s the thing: Humans have adapted. Partially adapted. Some human groups have adapted more than others. East Asians have been cultivating and eating rice for more than 10,000 years, and it remains a major staple of their diet to this day; but they nonetheless boast some of the world’s lowest morbidity and obesity profiles**. It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that their physiologies have evolved to better process grains. Reinforcing it is the observation that some of the world’s worst obesity crises are among peoples that have only very recently adopted grain heavy modern diets – the Ameri-Indians, the Samoans, etc. If you are East Asian, you shouldn’t worry much about eating rice. You were doing it 10,000 years ago, after all. If you’re Europea, approach with caution – rice only arrived in Iberia only a millennium ago. And if you’re Ameri-Indian, flee for the hills. Other forms of grain however appear to be pretty much universally bad.

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From Office Slave to Paperless Ninja

This about Life, tagged , was written by for on August 30, 2013

I have already written on the joys of cleaning house and how less is more when it comes to possessions.

But possessions aren’t limited to the physical realm. Your digital files – documents, emails, music libraries, photos, etc. – share many features with property, especially as regards the need to keep them well organized and consistently backed up. Then there is the world of tasks and commitments. Left unchecked, they will proliferate, and come to weigh down you down as surely as a surfeit of trinkets. But most people devote nary a thought to this very important element of life, let alone approach it in an organized and systemic way.

Going paperless and streamlining everyday life certainly appeals to people. Banks, shops, and utilities companies offer electronic statements and receipts. Tim Ferriss preaches it in bestselling books. The tech giants offer clouds, companies peddle software and productivity apps, and entrepreneurial gurus hawk “systems.” But faced with this avalanche of information, many people don’t know how to bring it all together, and their work and life habits remain as ossified and unproductive as before.

I do not say I have the best or most comprehensive solution. I do, however, say that I have a pretty damn good solution, or else I wouldn’t have bothered writing about it. Even better, it is immediately actionable, and 100% free (barring your computer and cell phone). I promise you that if you implement even parts of it, you will not only see immediate increases in productivity but a newfound feeling of psychological wellbeing as automated routines begin to care of the myriad minutiae that are not immediately actionable (“Buy eggs”; “Do problem set 4”; “Write blog post on productivity”) that we nonetheless have no choice but to store up and let loose to wreck havoc in the recesses of our minds.

The end goal is to become a cybernetic paperless ninja. He is unburdened by surfeit possessions, but has exceptional access. He never looks at his calendar, but never misses a meeting or appointment. He doesn’t spend (waste) a single moment of his life reminding himself of minutiae, and instead uses his brainpower to learn and to focus on the big life goals. To paraphrase David Allen, his mind is like water.

The Power of Evernote

Download Evernote.

This is the central element of our system. Some of you might view is as just another note-taking program. We will transform it into nothing more or less than our second brain.

The one that keeps track of trivial but essential crap so that you don’t have to.

Evernote is a free program (though a paid upgrade is well worth it for power users). You can create notes there, as text files, or as images, videos, or other attachments. Crucially, these notes aren’t only stored in “Notebooks” (the equivalent of Folders) but can be linked together via “Tags.” This allows us to convert it into an exceedingly powerful task manager and organizational system. The information is stored in a cloud, which can be accessed and manipulated via a Desktop application (works offline), a web browser, and your cell phone.

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Translation: Cheap Food and Gambling in Belarus, but no Psychics

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on July 17, 2013

Two Russian travel writers, Natalia Ko and Nikolay Varsegov, share their experiences in Belarus – very positive ones, for the most part – with readers of Komsomolskaya Pravda.

You can Gamble in Belarus, but Seances are Forbidden

The first surprise on detraining in Minsk: The taxi drivers here don’t pester you, shouting, “Where are you going?” No bums can be seen either at or near the railway station. Even after driving throughout virtually the entire capital we had yet to see a bum. Nobody could explain why there aren’t any.

Nor are there any Gastarbeiters, interestingly enough. In our three days in the city we didn’t meet a single Caucasian nor a single Asiatic. What’s more, Minsk is a very clean and well-maintained city, although it isn’t quite clear who sweeps the streets, and plants the trees. There are no spokespersons in official institutions, even big ones, because all questions are settled quickly and directly with the managers. Red tape, according to the managers themselves, is punished. If a citizen complains that such and such a department is tardy in solving his problem, its boss is liable to be fired.

There are virtually no drunk people in the evenings. Instead of guzzling bear in the forest parks, young people ride on roller skates and play football instead.

That said, there is one parasite here: Legal gambling clubs, which we have long done away with. It’s said that Russian gambling addicts fly to Minsk on the weekends. They all return, of course, without any money. On the other hand, psychics, mages, and all kinds of enchanters are banned by a decree of Lukashenko himself, which testifies to the good sense of the Belorussian President.

Incomes in Belarus aren’t very high. The average salary, according to official data, is 18,000 rubles (our rubles). Pensions range from 3,800 to 6,500 rubles, with utility services consuming 10% of that. But food is cheap. A dinner in a cafe comes out to 180 rubles for two people. In the evening we had a hearty meal with meats and beer for two, and paid 1,000 rubles for it. In Moscow this would have cost 4,000-5,000 rubles.

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Escaping Shoggoth

This about Life, tagged , was written by for on April 8, 2013

The WHO has recently released a list of countries by their average BMI and it makes for interesting reading. Obviously of relevance to younger world travelers, “love tourists”, and mini-retirees. It confirms many stereotypes, but also throws up a couple of surprises. It is reprinted below the text for some of the bigger and more visited countries in order of the female BMI (because it’s more socially consequential than male BMI). But first, some general observations.

(1) The thinnest countries are Third World places like Bangladesh and Vietnam where it’s probably more due to malnutrition than anything else. Unless you’re into stick-like peasants in paddy hats, you should probably pass up.

(2) Japan is the best Asian First World country, and France is the best European First World country.

(3) No wonder Roosh is enjoying Romania so much.

(4) The observations about the Dutch and the Scandinavians (okay), and the Brits and the Americans (very fat) tally with my own impressions. And stereotypes. And the influence of gender feminism.

(5) Argentina WTF? Didn’t expect it to be so low.

(6) Also North Korea WTF? One might have expected it to be on the level of Bangladesh or something, if the photos of everybody there who is not called “Kim” are anything to go by. Maybe they only measured North Korean refugees in the South? Or maybe the malnutrition situation there isn’t as acute as we are led to believe?

(7) A consistent pattern is that the women in Muslim societies are consistently a lot heavier than their menfolk. This is what happens, I guess, when societal norms confine most of them to the house all day. It is also a great demonstration of why equity feminism (as opposed to gender feminism) is a really good idea – contrary to some retards in the manosphere who want to counter Gender Studies with jihad.

(8) Russia, virtually identical to Germany and Finland, doesn’t do perhaps as well as the stereotypes of leggy, high-cheeked blondes might indicate. They are forgetting another, older stereotype: That of the babushka.

(9) All the East Asian nations have managed to avoid widespread obesity (although South Korea appears to be a close case). What explains it? The cuisine, the fitness culture, or HBD? One possible explanation I’ve heard (I think on Peter Frost’s blog) is that East Asians have had millennia to adapt to eating rice – hence why they don’t get fat on carbohydrate heavy diets, in stark contrast to their genetic relatives the Native Americans. On the other hand, agriculture did nonetheless first appear in the Fertile Crescent, aka the Middle East, so logically the natives there should be just as adapted to eating bread without ill physiological effects. But they don’t, to the contrary even poor countries there like Egypt, Syria, and Iran are quite corpulent.

(10) One final, general note: A high obesity rate in a place like Mexico or Kuwait is far worse than an equivalent rate in a country like Germany or the US. Why? Because your average German or American is much older than your average Mexican or Kuwaiti, and obesity rates tend to rise with age. In other words, as its population continues to age, I will not be surprised to see places like Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey begin to greatly exceed even the United States (the fattest major First World country) in the size of their girths.

Book Review: Paul Wade – Convict Conditioning

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for , on March 15, 2013

Convict Conditioning by Paul Wade, published in 2010. Also Convict Conditioning 2, a followup published a year later. Rating: 4/5.

convict-conditioning-coverA couple of months ago, I was walking in a park with my dad. We passed an outdoor gym sort of place and decided, “Why not try out some of the exercises?”

It was quite embarrassing – for me, that is, not my old man. I eked out maybe two or three pull-ups, only the first of which was in perfect form. He did more than a half dozen without problems.

This I found to be strange, as I am not objectively a weak man. Until I stopped going to the gym – I can never be motivated enough to keep going at it for more than a few months without a break – I was doing 75 pound dumbbell bench presses and 50 pound dumbbell shoulder presses. This was significantly more than my dad could do though he doesn’t go the gym at all really. But he whooped my sorry ass at pullups, and even came close on pushups.

I recalled this episode when reading through Convict Conditioning, which had been recommended to me as a good intro to calisthenics. Paul Wade is an ex-con who, by his own admission, spent 19 of the past 23 years in some of America’s toughest prisons for various drug offences. (Some commentators have voiced skepticism as to whether the author is a real person. If I had to guess I’d say he is, but even if the whole jailbird thing was a marketing ploy, I honestly couldn’t care less; my interest is in effective information, not personalities). Most prisons don’t have much in the way of gyms. There are no free weights – for good reason, as you might imagine – while barbells only come in a very limited number of weight categories, which makes progressive training impossible. As such, the cons have to improvise and practice self-reliance to bulk up. And Paul Wade was one of the best at this.

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The Joys Of Cleaning House

This about Life, tagged , was written by for on March 12, 2013

The Buddhists say that attachment to material things is the source of much suffering in the world. In the past few days, I have been inclined to agree with them. Now I don’t of course mean to say that being an impoverished wayfarer is any better of a proposition than hoarding. That has tons of its own inconveniences. What I will say however is that having a few things, but high-quality ones, is the optimal solution – not to mention increasingly easy and feasible nowadays with the rise of e-books, online services, and cloud computing.

Take books. At one point I had about 250 of them, clogging up my storage space. Half of them I hadn’t read, and of the other half, I knew myself well enough that the vast majority would remain unread. What’s the point of keeping them then? I gave away 225 of them to the local library, keeping only the most useful, expensive, and/or sentimentally valuable of them. There are now far more books (150 and counting) on my Kindle library. So long as Amazon doesn’t delete them (but there’s a solution for that) and there’s no peak oil/zombie apocalypse, they’re as safe and permanent as any physical collection. Safer, if anything.

And best of all, they only ever take up the room of a laptop or tablet… if not a USB flash drive.

The fewer-but-better rule pretty much applies to everything. Clothes – yes. Far better to have two good changes of clothing than ten dingy T-shirts and nondescript pants. Cooking – yes; the best chefs tend to rely on a surprisingly limited stock of ingredients and kitchen utensils. Fitness – again, yes. You don’t even need a gym membership. Your own body and maybe a kettlebell will suffice. A bag of rice and a box of cheapish gold jewelry to round things off for the survivalists who worry about worst case of scenarios. Even most of your important documents can now be kept exclusively in an online application like Evernote.

Of course you’ll have other things for your hobbies. For instance, I ski, so I have my skis and ski boots. But as a rule, these things will occupy very little space relative to the general trash you find lying about.

I estimate I’ve disposed of about 75% of my possessions by volume in the past few days. The room is now much less cluttered, there are fewer things to distract me from productive activities. I think the key to actually going through with disposing of many things is to do it quickly, with iron-cast criteria such as, “Have I used this item in the past month? Will I realistically use it the next?” If it doesn’t fulfill them, then purge them ruthlessly like the NKVD. The problem with putting shit on sale is that much of the stuff you are going to sell is cheap and will earn you cents on the dollars you originally bought them with; furthermore, it will stretch the disposal process out to several months. This creates a lot of unnecessary bother over a period of several months and defeats the entire purpose of drastically de-cluttering your life.

I might have missed out on perhaps as much as $500 had I ended up successfully selling all my books on Amazon or eBay. It sounds like a big amount, but then when you think about the process of listing them all and then mailing them out to customers (some of whom may be unhappy and return them), not to mention the opportunity costs on energy and happiness levels such a dull and monotone task would impose, I’m sure the per hour rate would be very low. Probably close to minimum wage. For comparison some of the journalistic articles I’ve written have netted me $350 for the day or so that I spent researching and writing them.

The one place where hoarding is definitely worth it? Your bank account and other financial assets. They are not going anywhere but they will not burden you down either – as long as everything is properly insured and/or hedged.

What Is The Point Of Articles Like These?

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on September 5, 2012

Mashable tells students about 12 things they should never do in social media.

By now this doesn’t apply to me, as between my non-anonymous Russophilia, HBD-ing, gaming, and AGW-ing I’ve long ostracized myself from both liberals and conservatives and torpedoed myself any hopes of “respectable” employment anyway.

I do however wonder about the point of such articles even for more normal people.

(1) Of course unprovoked harassing/bullying of people is bad. Threatening violence is just idiotic. But you see, the kind of people who’d benefit from such advice aren’t really the sort who’d be reading these articles anyway.

(2) Quite aside from the inherent cowardice of gagging oneself to increase one’s attraction to corporate vultures, it is actually – objectively – useful. You read that right. From the same article:

“Whenever I evaluate a potential employee, I always take a look at what is publicly visible on their Facebook profile,” says Ryan Cohn, vice president of social/digital operations at What’s Next Marketing. “On two separate occasions, I have rejected entry level prospects (finishing their senior year of college) for featuring firearms in their profile picture. Both were qualified in terms of experience and otherwise would have been worthy of an interview.”

Would you want to work for a hoplophobic asshat like that anyway? Fact is expressing opinions in print and on the Internet doesn’t only degrade your job prospects with certain managers and companies – it allows you to screen out BS managers and companies.

In other words, it’s a two way street, in which benefits outnumber disadvantages. After all, as long as you view the job market not through a scarcity model, but an abundance model – which is what it really is – it’s not like you’re losing out on anything. Filter out the trash, I say.

Mystery Within An Enigma

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on August 23, 2012

mls13 writes:

“Anything goes,” eh? Okay, here’s an admittedly-asinine question for everyone: how is the Medvedev-back-to-Putin transition being addressed by Russia’s makers of political matryoshki? Are they doing Putin on the outside, then Medvedev, then Putin again and then Yeltsin, Gorbachev etc.; or are they being untrue to history by doing Putin-Medvedev-Yeltsin-Gorbachev…, or are they just cutting to the chase and omitting Medvedev all together? Personally, I can’t believe how they’ve managed to screw-up one of Russia’s premier products in the international-tchotchke industry! 😉

That is actually a very intriguing question. I suppose there’s a reason Matryoshka dolls weren’t invented in Italy!

Cavemen Gaining

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for , on July 3, 2012

Remember the advice to replace rice with more vegetables at Korean BBQ’s? Well, one place I sometimes go to (Steve’s BBQ) to my pleasant surprise now has a new dish made specifically of just salad and BBQed chicken, pork, or beef. It was specifically marketed as Lo-Carb. The paleo revolution is gaining.

Hell And Football

This about Life, tagged , , was written by for on July 1, 2012

UEFA should outsource Euro promotion to the Chinese in perpetuity.

PS. My money is on Italy tomorrow. Edit: 0-4, ouch…