Everything from simple stuff like drink more water, observe and correct posture, etc all the way up to reading more often, reducing time wasted, correcting automatic negative thoughts, etc.
For small stuff, pick one thing and try to do it every day for three weeks. Once it is a habit, it should have momentum of its own. Rinse and repeat. (Keep a log book or you will forget and feel like nothing has changed.)
Negative thoughts can be more complicated. I will recommend you start by drinking a glass of water, having a bite to eat and/or taking a short nap. Negative thoughts can have multiple causes, but they tend to be more persistent when you are hungry, tired and thirsty.
For "bad habits," it generally works better to find a better way to meet your needs than to try to deny yourself something. For example, trying to eat healthier is generally a better approach to weight loss than restricting how much you eat.
Really minor nit: You could drop one of your nows.
Tangentially, my sons told me that when they start card tricks with an unopened pack of cards and strongly highlight that fact like it proves the cards have not been tampered with, the trick there is that card decks all start in the same order. So an unopened deck will come with a particular card order and they can know the order of the cards and can use that fact to help them with their card trick. It is part of how they fool the audience.
>> ... because now it would now take 31.5 dominos.
> Really minor nit: You could drop one of your nows.
Good catch - change in the process of being uploaded.
WRT cards in an unopened deck, there are two different orderings that are used. Sometimes there are "kissing kings" and sometimes not. If you always use the same make of cards, probably the order is always the same.
Hi, I'm Viktor. More to come, in the meantime you can contact me via twitter, linkedin, or via email at <my name> at <the domain this site is on>.
More links and a pgp key at Keybase.
Made with ️ in Nice.
Should say something more like:
Welcome.
Hi, I'm Viktor Vojnovski. I do (stuff you do, reasons why people would look for you online). You can also find me on twitter @vojnovski. Here is my linkedin profile. You can email me via ViktorVojnovski at <this domain name>.
I can also be found on Keybase.
Made with ️ in Nice, France.
As others have said, it really should be ViktorVojnovski.com.
Edited to reflect updated location info.
Re your update. My suggested edits don't add a lot more words. But they do replace completely empty fluff ("More to come, in the meantime ...") with actual useful info. That empty fluff is apparently also a lie if there is no intent to actually add more info.
Diet for a Small Planet also found that at the time the book was written, there were no countries incapable of feeding their people. Starvation mostly had roots in political problems, including civil war. It wasn't due to an absolute lack if food.
Sending food to starving countries often isn't a panacea. Frequently, the same political problems that caused the starvation in the first place prevent the food from getting distributed to the people who most need it. If it does get distributed, it can change the tastes of locals, who will now want to purchase a Western diet that they can't really afford. This leads to more hunger as people reject a diet of affordable local traditional foods and spend money on meat and wheat and other products beyond their means.
The first half of the book is a political piece. The second half is a vegetarian cookbook. It is one of the best books I have read.
There is one problem with your theory: There is a serious shortfall of affordable housing in the US. So a lot of Americans are having trouble affording even the basics.
No there's not. Move away from the fancy cities. Move to country and places like Detroit. I did, I'm in Detroit metro. You can buy houses here for what folks pay for a car
I basically did the same thing. I developed a portable income and moved to a small town to get myself back into housing.
But most people can't just up and move wherever they want. The jobs are mostly in the expensive big cities. Even services like Task Rabbit, Amazon Flex or Uber are mostly only available in a short list of very large cities.
Meanwhile, we have torn down about 80 percent of SROs and the like and the default expectation is that young, single people should get a roommate. There is a dearth of genuinely affordable housing near jobs that would allow people to live alone and make ends meet working an entry level job. Those options mostly do not exist.
Pretending this isn't a problem because you found a solution that works for you is pretty LA LA LA not listening. Detroit has affordable housing because so many locals are in dire straits that a charity was created not that long ago to pay the water bills of people getting their water cut off: https://www.detroitwaterproject.org
So, basically, your life works because you saw opportunity amidst this debacle, not because everything is fine in the US.
My father drank a lot. He quit after he left the army. I think he drank to suppress nightmares and he was able to quit -- without any kind of program, like AA -- once there was no threat of returning to a war zone.
I also have known people who were apparently drinking to treat some undiagnosed medical condition and drank less or quit drinking after the condition was properly treated.
I think it would help to assume you have some reason for drinking so much. Now you need to figure out why that is and try to solve the underlying problem.
I like the book "The truth about addiction and recovery" as a resource.
As far as I can tell, this is only an effort to create new parts, not find volunteer service people. If there are zero available parts, it is better to have parts than to not have them. No replacement parts = guaranteed death at some point. So, the way to bet here is to support the creation of replacement parts.
Helping out where their money really can make big difference.
First do no harm. We don't necessarily know what works. We have rich folks who are pro UBI and that ticks me off. I don't think it is a good solution. I think it just helps salve their guilt at helping to destroy jobs. I don't want their guilt salved. I want them to focus on redistributing work. We should view the trend towards automation as the Second Industrial Revolution, not the start of making most people charity cases dependent on a handful of "generous" rich people or some nonsense.
I was homeless for nearly 6 years. Most programs to help the homeless are completely sucky. I am against growing more homeless services. I am trying to come up with answers that shrink the problem of homelessness.
But a lot of people are not interested in shrinking the problem. Many are fine with growing it, because it serves some sick emotional need of theirs.
I recently talked to someone who wanted to 'share their vision' of taking over an entire downtown block with homeless services. I cut them off with "I have an appointment. I gotta go."
This person said they had "a heart for the homeless." Sounds more like some sick hard on for the homeless. That isn't actually caring about the welfare of other people. That's some twisted desire to make them feel good about themselves. If you care about other people, help them get off the fucking street. Come up with solutions that shrink homelessness, don't build more soup kitchens. Geez.
But solutions that shrink the problem of homelessness are hard to create. It is a hard problem to solve. In contrast, programs to "help the homeless" (like soup kitchens) are easy to dream up, but often help entrench the problem rather than resolve it.
No matter who you are, trying to find something that actually works is challenging.
Bill Gates said that automation of an efficient system magnifies the efficiency. Automation of an inefficient system magnifies the inefficiency.
I think that same paradigm applies to throwing money at problems. I would hate to guilt rich folks into throwing more money at programs that actually make the problems worse and entrench them. They can just keep stuffing it under their mattress or whatever until we have some concepts for how to actually improve things. Then someone can go try to convince rich folks to invest money in real solutions.
> First do no harm. We don't necessarily know what works. We have rich folks who are pro UBI and that ticks me off. I don't think it is a good solution. I think it just helps salve their guilt at helping to destroy jobs.
Rich people don't destroy jobs, efficiency / innovation / increases in productivity destroy jobs. Society doesn't need jobs that are no longer required, and it makes no sense to pay people for things that can easily be done by a machine.
Now, that said, the problem you describe is real and it is an issue. But I don't know what a viable solution aside from a properly implemented UBI would be.
The first industrial revolution shortened work weeks, in part to redistribute work. People worked really long hours. That was the norm. With automation, unemployment levels rose while those with jobs continued to work inhumanely long hours. Then people pushed for the 40 hour work week.
I think we can again work to lighten the burden of work for the average worker without disenfranchising large numbers of people.
I used to write about that on my old blog, but I probably won't continue to write about it. Here is at least a partial list of those writings:
That's a very classist remark. It implies that having been poor completely nullifies the value of my opinions.
I mentioned being homeless as shorthand for "I used to go to homeless services, so when I say that most of them suck, that is firsthand testimony." I have also had a college class on homelessness and public policy, I have six years of college, yadda.
Someone homeless for a long period of time is likely to have valid input on topics such as neo-socialism. Their views are arguably going to be more relevant than what you may be able to share (assuming you’ve never been homeless for any non trivial length of time nor spent a lot of time directly working with homeless folks).
One of the problems you run into with any lung related mechanical devices is the need for proper sterilization. From what I gather, this is much less of an issue with negative pressure ventilation.
People in iron lungs are people with fundamentally compromised immune systems. Exposing them to germs forced into their lungs by positive pressure while potentially damaging their lung tissues in the process strikes me as a great way to give them a deadly infection, sooner or later.
Are you sure they are substantially immunocompromised? they're opening and closing their mouths and breathing through their noses on a regular basis while exposed to room air. There is no bacteria filtration like there would be with a properly configured positive pressure ventilator's circuit. The mucous membranes in the airway and nasal passages actually provide a significant amount of filtration themselves, and some circuit configurations are non-invasive which enables these natural filters to function.
There is potential for barotrauma in improperly configured devices, especially with volume-controlled ventilation, but it's possible to configure the device to ventilate safely, otherwise we wouldn't use them. Modern devices do have safety features like high pressure cutoffs and direct pressure controls which can prevent barotrauma. Some of these have to be configured correctly by the clinician for each patient.
Regarding the link to positive pressure HVAC, I'm not sure what that has to do with medical ventilation. HVAC provides a constant flow into a room, but medical ventilation cycles to an inspiratory pressure or inspiratory tidal volume repeatedly either on a patient trigger or on a set timing schedule.
I'm still really curious if there are any Respiratory Therapists or Physicians who can speak to this?
From what I understand, they are partially paralyzed. Every partially paralyzed individual I have personally met was pretty ill, basically. I have a compromised immune system. Being around paralysis victims is a big problem for me.
So, yes, I feel quite confident. Though what I know and what I can prove are very different things.
Edit: I will add that I have come to believe that breathing problems inherently impair the immune system. Oxygen is one of the things the body uses to kill stuff. If you can't breathe, you are pretty vulnerable to microscopic warfare. (Another thing I know but probably can't prove, fwiw.)
You find that paralyzed people are immunocompromised or harbor infections at a greater probability than the general population?
I wonder if this is due to lower rates of lymph circulation, which relies on the body being in motion. The lymphatic system is a key part of the immune system.
Yes, in my experience, they are chronically infected and it is dangerous for me to be around them.
I imagine there are quite a few factors, but I think that is a good thought. Walking a great deal -- sometimes on the order of many hours a day -- has played a large role in my successful efforts to improve my health. I am convinced that moving lymph is a very big part of that.
If necessary, do it cheaply. This does not have to involve 5 star hotels. It used to be a tradition to do things like backpack across Europe. Couch surfing also potentially works. I did a lot of travel by visiting friends and family in my twenties.
