Ann Althouse provides another piece of evidence that college faculties are collecting pools of chronic complainers. Of course, Althouse being Althouse will never admit explicitly that she spent her working life in an institution which functions to provide employment to damaged goods who would be fired or relegated to subaltern roles by any employer committed to accomplishing something.
Just another off-topic, open-thread comment about something I read.
N.S. Lyons writes a Substack newsletter entitled “The Upheaval,” an ambitious big-picture narrative analysis of our current … upheaval.
Lyons describes the upheaval’s basic elements like so:
“The world is being forcibly reconfigured by at least three concurrent revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.” (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-upheaval)
On January 18th, Lyons published a post entitled “No, the Revolution Isn’t Over” which was a pessimistic response to some of the recent conservative enthusiasm for the possibility of a red-wave election, and maybe even the decline of wokeism. (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-over)
I’m a pessimist by nature and probably too sympathetic to his arguments, but maybe there are other people here who’d have a more critical reaction and could pass it on.
Thanks
Eat your heart out ESPN. Commentating on violin playing and swerving into animated sword play is… well, oddly enough very entertaining. Thanks.
Those two guys in the video just crack me up.
Who is this Althouse referenced above?
Cornflour:
Thanks for the Lyons links!
I wonder if that’s the Gang of Four being crushed beneath the boot of the dynamic Maoist revolutionary in the poster shown by “No, the Revolution isn’t Over.”.
I’m one of the optimists Lyons calls out. He makes good points; however, I’m not so optimistic to believe that we are about to win. I would say, Churchill-style, that after many defeats, we have had some victories and we are “perhaps at the end of the beginning.”
The past two years Left tried to run the table in the US and they came closer than I’d like to think. However, they have overreached and the attempt failed. For the time being, with Biden and Harris at the helm, they are in retreat and our side is emboldened. Good.
The main danger I see over the next three years is the Left going wildly, desperately totalitarian. No one can say what’s on the other side of that.
Otherwise, we’ve got some breathing space to turn things around. We won’t be going back to the 50s or the 80s, but more and more Americans are seeing the Left for what it is and responding accordingly. The American Ideals are battered and to some extent in hiding, but they still burn in more hearts than Wokeism does.
I would add that I consider the 21st Century even more fluid than the 20th. As I keep asking, who saw the 60s/70s leading to the election of Ronald Reagan in the 80s?
________________________
And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin’
–Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A’Changin'”
It hasn’t been getting much coverage in conservative media but has anybody else been following the back and forth between Trump and Pence over whether Pence could have overturned the election results?
This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024. I sincerely thank him for doing a lot of great things in an extraordinarily difficult situation but enough, just enough.
This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024.
Griffin:
Yes. Trump revealed the strength of conservative opposition to Elites/Wokeism. But like John the Baptist he’s not the guy to take us to the next stage.
I still like the idea of him as Veep tasked to clean the Deep State stables with a vengeance.
Today’s sign of Hope – Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) has now made more money at the U.S. box office than Ghostbusters (2016), despite the former coming out during the pandemic and the latter getting WAAAAYY more media hype.
Small victories, people.
Mike
“This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024.”
Politics ain’t beanbag. Democrats were the majority party in the U.S. House for decades because they tolerated open segregationists in their ranks. No one should follow Trump down the rabbit hole but I don’t think you can hold it against him that he’s going to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 results any way he can, considering both how that election was conducted and how he was treated the previous four years.
Republicans and conservatives need to stop thinking of themselves as Caesar’s wife and start thinking of themselves as Caesar.
Mike
“The world is being forcibly reconfigured by at least three concurrent revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.”
Guy sounds like Alvin Toffler.
MBunge,
‘attack the legitimacy of the 2020 results’
For how long though?
Is there anything that could be said or done that would make him stop?
I have no interest in still harping on this during the ’24 campaign and there is nothing in Trump’s history that says he will let it go.
It happened, it was an abomination but it happened; work to make sure it never happens again and I don’t see how this thing with Pence does that in anyway.
“there is nothing in Trump’s history that says he will let it go“
They called WW II pilot George Bush a wimp…and we let it go.
They accused Brett Kavanaugh of being a rapist…and we let it go.
They told us violent riots across the country were “fiery but mostly peaceful”…and we let it go.
The first step in change is to stop letting things go.
Mike
Cornflour:
Thank you for the link to “The Upheaval” substack. I had been somewhat optimistic that we were witnessing the pendulum swing decisively away from the Woke insanity, but Lyon’s argues persuasively that such gains will likely be short-lived.
MBunge,
Yeah, there is a difference in continually harping on something that has happened and can’t be changed in an increasingly unhinged manner as opposed to making sure it never happens again.
What is Trump gaining with this entire Pence feud?
There are other candidates that can and will fight for these things because they are the right things to fight for not because they are some personal grudge against the candidate.
@Huxley:
Not the Gang of Four.
Guy with the big nose getting getting crushed is Liu Shaoqi. Looks like his wife Wang Guangmei is next to him.
It’s as if Roosevelt ginned up a mob to depose Henry Wallace and had him tortured to death. Except Liu was more popular.
What is Trump gaining? He’s reminding everyone he’s a fighter. They’re not flying Pence flags in Canada. And they’re not flying DeSantis flags. They’re flying Trump flags. Everywhere there’s a people’s movement, Trump flags are there. Trump 2024.
Eva Marie:
Well said. That’s not to be forgotten either.
This may be OT-OT, but I’m enjoying the new Amazon Prime “Reacher” show. I’ve already binged into Episode 4.
It’s based on the first of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” books and gets the gist of Reacher better than the two Tom Cruise movie adaptions. Which are good too, but Reacher is a 6′ 5″ mountain of man and even with Cruise buff plus tricky camera angles, Cruise is not. Besides, as I understand it, Child has refused to allow Cruise to do any more Reacher movies.
Reacher is a throwback to old Westerns and Mysteries. He is the principled knight errant, seeking truth and justice in a world of falsensess and evil. If you like that sort of thing, this is a thing you will like.
Hi, cornflour, huxley and deckhand_dreams. As to a critique of Lyons’ cold-shower view as expressed in that essay of his to which you referred, The Orthosphere has an attempt at a positive perspective at this post. I’ve read both and don’t find Ortho’s cheerleading fully convincing yet, though he has good points; my mind has been known to change over time. In any event, I certainly appreciate Lyons’ dose of realism, as I get tired of seeing all the fist-pumping that happens in certain quarters just because a Youngkin or Durr gets elected here and there.
Huxley,
I’ve been enjoying ‘Reacher’ also. I never saw the Cruise movies but the show is quite good.
Another show I really enjoyed is the Norwegian sci-fi show ‘Beforeigners’ on HBO. Basic plot is all over the world people from the past are appearing in current times. Some prehistoric times some from Norse times and some from 19th century and they have to be assimilated into modern society. It’s set in Oslo which is clean and modern at the beginning but soon the ‘Beforeigners’ are living on the streets and the gov’t has all kinds of programs to help the Beforeigners. Also a subset of moderns claim to be trans migrants and identify as from the past.
It’s really trippy show that is also a buddy cop show between a modern detective and the first Norse detective on the Oslo police force.
They must have never heard of Charlie Daniels.
I’ve mentioned retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley, who exposes fake SEALS, and as part of his website he shows examples of fake DD-214s (the key discharge document that summarizes his military service that a veteran needs to qualify for all sorts of veteran’s benefits—GI Bill, disability payments, vocational rehabilitation benefits, VA mortgages, etc.) and how to spot them.
Well, some of the dummies who want to pose as veterans run across his website, don’t read the fine print, and think Shipley is selling fake DD-214s.
Here’s Shipley taking a phone call from someone who wanted him to create such a fake DD-214.
P.S.-A lot of these phony veterans get out of describing the details of their supposed military service by saying that what they did–sometimes even their identities–were CLASSIFIED, and so they can’t reveal what they did, and it is impossible to find/get copies of their records, because, in essence, they don’t exist.
According to Don Shipley, this is a load of crap.
If you served in the military, general information–the fact that you served and your branch of service, how many days you served, whatever training you might have had, your ultimate rank, any awards, where you were deployed-would be noted on your DD-214.
Today I’m down to 163# on my diet, placing my “Body Mass Index” at 24.78% — firmly below the 25% boundary between “Normal” and “Overweight.”
Huzzah! I’m “Normal.” I’ve lost 43# since last August. I look and feel much better.
Since Sunday is my Cheat Day, I’ll be eating rich foods I’ve abstained from during the week, then feeling kinda sick by nightfall — which seems to be a secondary effect aiding the diet.
The primary intent of Cheat Day is to spike caloric intake so the body doesn’t decide it’s starving and down-regulate metabolic rate so it becomes harder to lose weight.
Cheat Day also relieves the psychological pressure of denying oneself favorite foods for long periods of time, which is no small thing either.
My sister has been dieting the past year. She lost 30#, yay!, then her progress stalled out, boo! She gained some weight over the holidays and managed to lose that, but still can’t break her last low. She’s going to try a weekly Cheat Meal and hopes to reignite her weight loss. Fingers crossed for her.
I got the “Slow Carb Diet” from Tim Ferriss, a popular blogger/podcaster from Silicon Valley, lately transplanted to Austin.
Since they’ve got all that house on Martha’s Vinyard and Oahu, maybe they do their neighbors in Washington a favor by moving out.
That’s splendid, huxley! I’m glad for your news. It’s an interesting point about Cheat Day.
huxley, congratulations! Your sister may be running into the same problem I have — being a female no longer young. My BMI is just a hair above 25, and it just won’t go down. I do work out with weights, and have more muscle than I used to, and my internist says I’m fine, so I think I have to be satisfied. I’m no longer pre-diabetic. Since you’re a guy, you might be able to get down to your college weight, but don’t worry too much if that doesn’t happen.
@huxley, congratulations on your Slow Carb Diet success.
And I too am greatly enjoying Amazon’s Reacher series. It’s very well done, and the casting and acting are excellent. I’ve only been able to watch three episodes so far–about three weeks ago I rescued an eighteen-month-old Blue Heeler from traffic, and caring for him is time-intensive, to say the least.
All the shelters are full, including the one local no-kill shelter, so I am fostering for now, with the hope of finding him a more expansive situation (room to run and roam safely) with younger people. But, wow, I certainly have become attached to him, as he has to me.
Kate:
It’s definitely tougher for women to lose weight than men. It’s a matter of muscle mass and testosterone. Testosterone declines with age more in women than men.
So I take your point. I wish it were otherwise. My sister has been dieting hard, off and on, since she was a teenager and I would dearly love her to put that battle behind her.
As it is, her BMI is ~28 and she’s 68, so she’s in much better shape than she was in terms of health risk. She looks better too. For Christmas I told her to pick a really nice winter coat. She hasn’t taken up my offer yet. I believe she’s hoping to drop down a size. I’ll be so happy for her.
I reallize it’s harder for her, but I’d like to think she can realistically lose some more.
I’m not sure I can reach my college weight either, but I’m still losing 1.0-2.4#/week, so, while I’ve got the discipline and momentum going for me, it seems worth a shot. I feel pretty sure I can drop another 10# to 153#.
Philip Sells, MollyG;
Thanks for the compliments!
And thank god for Cheat Day. In the past I’ve dieted a few times and lost ~20# in ~4 months. But by the time I quit, I was desperate to eat Bad Foods and I went back to Bad Habits and regained the weight I lost.
This time it’s a much smoother experience. Whatever Bad Foods I think about during the week, I know I can eat in six days or less. That takes a lot of the pressure off.
The weird interesting thing is that over the course of all my Cheat Days, I find myself less interested in Bad Foods. Oh, I will eat them, never fear, but I don’t feel so compelled. I even feel somewhat leery of them, since after a week of diet eating, I notice all the calories and sugar don’t feel that good.
At first I ate double-pepperoni pizza on Cheat Day, but after a few weeks of that I just didn’t want to anymore.
huxley,
Keep it up and no backsliding that was always my problem.
It’s been going on six years now since I lost about 75 lbs and I’ve managed to keep it all off and have been in 180-185 range which for me at 6’3″ is about right for the longest time in my adult life.
I still watch what I eat and I don’t have cheat days by design but I will have days where I pretty much eat whatever I want with the discipline to know I will ‘be better’ the next day.
I also don’t exercise quite as regularly as I did a few years ago especially in the winter when it’s too damn cold and rainy for golf or walking but I do try and to do something at least three days a week which seems to be enough for me to maintain.
Griffin:
Wow! 75#. I used to read stories of people losing that much weight and I couldn’t imagine it, given how hard it was for me to lose 5-20#.
Congratulations for doing so and holding the line!
I haven’t exercised much for my diet. 1-3 days/week, usually not too hard. Mostly kettlebell swings. Tim Ferriss says that too much exercise will hold back weight loss and that’s a mistake some people make on Slow Carb.
huxley, your sister has done well to lose 30#! Congratulations to her, and I hope the Cheat Day routine helps her. On that note, I may try it myself.
Thanks for the tips on the Amazon “Reacher” series. I saw it listed on Prime video and had a dismissive knee-jerk reaction. I really liked the first Tom Cruise film and while I didn’t like the second one as much, the choices they made in casting and plot were interesting. I had heard the complaints about Cruise being way too small to play Reacher.
_______
Last night I stumbled across a new Netflix true crime docu that is very good and quite fascinating for me anyway. “The Tinder Swindler” is a true story about a classic Don Juan con-artist swindler of women. The basic story is quite predictable if you are at all familiar with these things.
The first thing that fascinated me was how the Norwegian woman’s life was
immersed in smart phones and social media and how the swindler used that.
It was interesting that the swindler seemed to prey on Scandinavian women, except for the Dutch woman who happened to look very much like the Norwegian woman. Was he selecting his victim pool based on appearances and sexual preference, or did he gage these cultures as being more gullible? The Swedish woman actually rejected his romantic and sexual advances, yet fell prey to his financial scam. That one boggled my mind.
It was appalling how lax the criminal and justice system was/is in prosecuting these things. And finally, it occurred to me that this Ace swindler is only a couple notches removed from being someone who could have been an Ace politician.
huxley,
Congratulations!
huxley, your sister has done well to lose 30#!
Kate:
Truly.
Here’s the thing. When my sister was losing that 30#, she was so excited and happy. And I was so happy for her. It was a demon she had fought all her life and mostly lost. I wanted her to beat that thing to crap.
Then I stopped hearing from her. Then I started hearing that she had stalled. Then she became evasive about what has happening.
By coincidence I had started dieting because I stopped eating last August when I thought I had gotten Covid (probably did), stopped eating, then decided to continue dieting with Tim Ferriss’s “Slow Carb.”
My emails of dietary success probably made things harder for her, though that was the last thing I intended.
She mustered her support for me. Which I appreciated. Yet I hear her sadness that her diet has stalled. I know how much it means to her.
She tells me it’s OK. That she is happy to have achieved as much as she has and is willing to eat on her diet for the rest of her life, even if she never loses any more weight.
I hear her resignation and it hurts me. I want her to acheive her dream. She doesn’t want to be a model or thin. She wants to get below the 160s/150s. She’s 5’4″. Is that too much to ask?
She has the discipline. She has the desire. She has paid her dues as a fat woman all her life. Is that too much to ask?
At the very least with Cheat Day, I hope my sister can maintain her current weight with occasional gratification without throwing it all away.
Is that too much to ask?
huxley, I understand her frustration, and share it to some extent. I wasn’t “fat,” just somewhat overweight, with my doctor nagging me about prediabetes. I went keto, dropped 40 pounds, put fifteen back on, and there I sit, all on the same diet, as if my body has decided that’s where it wants to stick. Your sister should get her thyroid checked if she hasn’t already.
kate; huxley:
Kate, your body almost certainly has decided that’s where it wants to sit – at your setpoint.
It’s probably the same for huxley’s sister.
Especially difficult for women, and it gets more difficult as one gets older.
Then sometimes the very old start losing weight and get too thin. But that’s another process taking over – and not a good one.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
https://althouse.blogspot.com/2022/02/there-are-so-many-areas-of-our.html
Ann Althouse provides another piece of evidence that college faculties are collecting pools of chronic complainers. Of course, Althouse being Althouse will never admit explicitly that she spent her working life in an institution which functions to provide employment to damaged goods who would be fired or relegated to subaltern roles by any employer committed to accomplishing something.
Just another off-topic, open-thread comment about something I read.
N.S. Lyons writes a Substack newsletter entitled “The Upheaval,” an ambitious big-picture narrative analysis of our current … upheaval.
Lyons describes the upheaval’s basic elements like so:
“The world is being forcibly reconfigured by at least three concurrent revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.” (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/the-upheaval)
On January 18th, Lyons published a post entitled “No, the Revolution Isn’t Over” which was a pessimistic response to some of the recent conservative enthusiasm for the possibility of a red-wave election, and maybe even the decline of wokeism. (https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/no-the-revolution-isnt-over)
I’m a pessimist by nature and probably too sympathetic to his arguments, but maybe there are other people here who’d have a more critical reaction and could pass it on.
Thanks
Eat your heart out ESPN. Commentating on violin playing and swerving into animated sword play is… well, oddly enough very entertaining. Thanks.
Those two guys in the video just crack me up.
Who is this Althouse referenced above?
Cornflour:
Thanks for the Lyons links!
I wonder if that’s the Gang of Four being crushed beneath the boot of the dynamic Maoist revolutionary in the poster shown by “No, the Revolution isn’t Over.”.
I’m one of the optimists Lyons calls out. He makes good points; however, I’m not so optimistic to believe that we are about to win. I would say, Churchill-style, that after many defeats, we have had some victories and we are “perhaps at the end of the beginning.”
The past two years Left tried to run the table in the US and they came closer than I’d like to think. However, they have overreached and the attempt failed. For the time being, with Biden and Harris at the helm, they are in retreat and our side is emboldened. Good.
The main danger I see over the next three years is the Left going wildly, desperately totalitarian. No one can say what’s on the other side of that.
Otherwise, we’ve got some breathing space to turn things around. We won’t be going back to the 50s or the 80s, but more and more Americans are seeing the Left for what it is and responding accordingly. The American Ideals are battered and to some extent in hiding, but they still burn in more hearts than Wokeism does.
I would add that I consider the 21st Century even more fluid than the 20th. As I keep asking, who saw the 60s/70s leading to the election of Ronald Reagan in the 80s?
________________________
And don’t speak too soon, for the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who that it’s namin’
For the loser now will be later to win
For the times, they are a-changin’
–Bob Dylan, “The Times They Are A’Changin'”
It hasn’t been getting much coverage in conservative media but has anybody else been following the back and forth between Trump and Pence over whether Pence could have overturned the election results?
This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024. I sincerely thank him for doing a lot of great things in an extraordinarily difficult situation but enough, just enough.
This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024.
Griffin:
Yes. Trump revealed the strength of conservative opposition to Elites/Wokeism. But like John the Baptist he’s not the guy to take us to the next stage.
I still like the idea of him as Veep tasked to clean the Deep State stables with a vengeance.
Today’s sign of Hope – Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021) has now made more money at the U.S. box office than Ghostbusters (2016), despite the former coming out during the pandemic and the latter getting WAAAAYY more media hype.
Small victories, people.
Mike
“This kind of ridiculous, embarrassing BS is why I will have a very hard time supporting Trump in 2024.”
Politics ain’t beanbag. Democrats were the majority party in the U.S. House for decades because they tolerated open segregationists in their ranks. No one should follow Trump down the rabbit hole but I don’t think you can hold it against him that he’s going to attack the legitimacy of the 2020 results any way he can, considering both how that election was conducted and how he was treated the previous four years.
Republicans and conservatives need to stop thinking of themselves as Caesar’s wife and start thinking of themselves as Caesar.
Mike
“The world is being forcibly reconfigured by at least three concurrent revolutions: a geopolitical revolution driven by the rise of China; an ideological revolution consuming the Western world; and a technological revolution exacerbating both of the former.”
Guy sounds like Alvin Toffler.
MBunge,
‘attack the legitimacy of the 2020 results’
For how long though?
Is there anything that could be said or done that would make him stop?
I have no interest in still harping on this during the ’24 campaign and there is nothing in Trump’s history that says he will let it go.
It happened, it was an abomination but it happened; work to make sure it never happens again and I don’t see how this thing with Pence does that in anyway.
“there is nothing in Trump’s history that says he will let it go“
They called WW II pilot George Bush a wimp…and we let it go.
They accused Brett Kavanaugh of being a rapist…and we let it go.
They told us violent riots across the country were “fiery but mostly peaceful”…and we let it go.
The first step in change is to stop letting things go.
Mike
Cornflour:
Thank you for the link to “The Upheaval” substack. I had been somewhat optimistic that we were witnessing the pendulum swing decisively away from the Woke insanity, but Lyon’s argues persuasively that such gains will likely be short-lived.
MBunge,
Yeah, there is a difference in continually harping on something that has happened and can’t be changed in an increasingly unhinged manner as opposed to making sure it never happens again.
What is Trump gaining with this entire Pence feud?
There are other candidates that can and will fight for these things because they are the right things to fight for not because they are some personal grudge against the candidate.
@Huxley:
Not the Gang of Four.
Guy with the big nose getting getting crushed is Liu Shaoqi. Looks like his wife Wang Guangmei is next to him.
It’s as if Roosevelt ginned up a mob to depose Henry Wallace and had him tortured to death. Except Liu was more popular.
What is Trump gaining? He’s reminding everyone he’s a fighter. They’re not flying Pence flags in Canada. And they’re not flying DeSantis flags. They’re flying Trump flags. Everywhere there’s a people’s movement, Trump flags are there. Trump 2024.
Eva Marie:
Well said. That’s not to be forgotten either.
This may be OT-OT, but I’m enjoying the new Amazon Prime “Reacher” show. I’ve already binged into Episode 4.
It’s based on the first of Lee Child’s “Jack Reacher” books and gets the gist of Reacher better than the two Tom Cruise movie adaptions. Which are good too, but Reacher is a 6′ 5″ mountain of man and even with Cruise buff plus tricky camera angles, Cruise is not. Besides, as I understand it, Child has refused to allow Cruise to do any more Reacher movies.
Reacher is a throwback to old Westerns and Mysteries. He is the principled knight errant, seeking truth and justice in a world of falsensess and evil. If you like that sort of thing, this is a thing you will like.
Hi, cornflour, huxley and deckhand_dreams. As to a critique of Lyons’ cold-shower view as expressed in that essay of his to which you referred, The Orthosphere has an attempt at a positive perspective at this post. I’ve read both and don’t find Ortho’s cheerleading fully convincing yet, though he has good points; my mind has been known to change over time. In any event, I certainly appreciate Lyons’ dose of realism, as I get tired of seeing all the fist-pumping that happens in certain quarters just because a Youngkin or Durr gets elected here and there.
Huxley,
I’ve been enjoying ‘Reacher’ also. I never saw the Cruise movies but the show is quite good.
Another show I really enjoyed is the Norwegian sci-fi show ‘Beforeigners’ on HBO. Basic plot is all over the world people from the past are appearing in current times. Some prehistoric times some from Norse times and some from 19th century and they have to be assimilated into modern society. It’s set in Oslo which is clean and modern at the beginning but soon the ‘Beforeigners’ are living on the streets and the gov’t has all kinds of programs to help the Beforeigners. Also a subset of moderns claim to be trans migrants and identify as from the past.
It’s really trippy show that is also a buddy cop show between a modern detective and the first Norse detective on the Oslo police force.
They must have never heard of Charlie Daniels.
I’ve mentioned retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley, who exposes fake SEALS, and as part of his website he shows examples of fake DD-214s (the key discharge document that summarizes his military service that a veteran needs to qualify for all sorts of veteran’s benefits—GI Bill, disability payments, vocational rehabilitation benefits, VA mortgages, etc.) and how to spot them.
Well, some of the dummies who want to pose as veterans run across his website, don’t read the fine print, and think Shipley is selling fake DD-214s.
Here’s Shipley taking a phone call from someone who wanted him to create such a fake DD-214.
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmRR6tKzXzM
P.S.-A lot of these phony veterans get out of describing the details of their supposed military service by saying that what they did–sometimes even their identities–were CLASSIFIED, and so they can’t reveal what they did, and it is impossible to find/get copies of their records, because, in essence, they don’t exist.
According to Don Shipley, this is a load of crap.
If you served in the military, general information–the fact that you served and your branch of service, how many days you served, whatever training you might have had, your ultimate rank, any awards, where you were deployed-would be noted on your DD-214.
Today I’m down to 163# on my diet, placing my “Body Mass Index” at 24.78% — firmly below the 25% boundary between “Normal” and “Overweight.”
Huzzah! I’m “Normal.” I’ve lost 43# since last August. I look and feel much better.
Since Sunday is my Cheat Day, I’ll be eating rich foods I’ve abstained from during the week, then feeling kinda sick by nightfall — which seems to be a secondary effect aiding the diet.
The primary intent of Cheat Day is to spike caloric intake so the body doesn’t decide it’s starving and down-regulate metabolic rate so it becomes harder to lose weight.
Cheat Day also relieves the psychological pressure of denying oneself favorite foods for long periods of time, which is no small thing either.
My sister has been dieting the past year. She lost 30#, yay!, then her progress stalled out, boo! She gained some weight over the holidays and managed to lose that, but still can’t break her last low. She’s going to try a weekly Cheat Meal and hopes to reignite her weight loss. Fingers crossed for her.
I got the “Slow Carb Diet” from Tim Ferriss, a popular blogger/podcaster from Silicon Valley, lately transplanted to Austin.
https://tim.blog/2012/07/12/how-to-lose-100-pounds/
This diet has been magic for me. Now that I’m “Normal,” my next goal is 145# — my colllege weight. We’ll see.
Barack Obama is by news accounts building another beachfront home, this time in Hawaii.
https://www.amlu.com/2020/08/22/president-barack-obamas-hawaii-beach-house-being-built-on-idyllic-site-of-magnum-p-i-mansion/
Since they’ve got all that house on Martha’s Vinyard and Oahu, maybe they do their neighbors in Washington a favor by moving out.
That’s splendid, huxley! I’m glad for your news. It’s an interesting point about Cheat Day.
huxley, congratulations! Your sister may be running into the same problem I have — being a female no longer young. My BMI is just a hair above 25, and it just won’t go down. I do work out with weights, and have more muscle than I used to, and my internist says I’m fine, so I think I have to be satisfied. I’m no longer pre-diabetic. Since you’re a guy, you might be able to get down to your college weight, but don’t worry too much if that doesn’t happen.
@huxley, congratulations on your Slow Carb Diet success.
And I too am greatly enjoying Amazon’s Reacher series. It’s very well done, and the casting and acting are excellent. I’ve only been able to watch three episodes so far–about three weeks ago I rescued an eighteen-month-old Blue Heeler from traffic, and caring for him is time-intensive, to say the least.
All the shelters are full, including the one local no-kill shelter, so I am fostering for now, with the hope of finding him a more expansive situation (room to run and roam safely) with younger people. But, wow, I certainly have become attached to him, as he has to me.
Kate:
It’s definitely tougher for women to lose weight than men. It’s a matter of muscle mass and testosterone. Testosterone declines with age more in women than men.
So I take your point. I wish it were otherwise. My sister has been dieting hard, off and on, since she was a teenager and I would dearly love her to put that battle behind her.
As it is, her BMI is ~28 and she’s 68, so she’s in much better shape than she was in terms of health risk. She looks better too. For Christmas I told her to pick a really nice winter coat. She hasn’t taken up my offer yet. I believe she’s hoping to drop down a size. I’ll be so happy for her.
I reallize it’s harder for her, but I’d like to think she can realistically lose some more.
I’m not sure I can reach my college weight either, but I’m still losing 1.0-2.4#/week, so, while I’ve got the discipline and momentum going for me, it seems worth a shot. I feel pretty sure I can drop another 10# to 153#.
Philip Sells, MollyG;
Thanks for the compliments!
And thank god for Cheat Day. In the past I’ve dieted a few times and lost ~20# in ~4 months. But by the time I quit, I was desperate to eat Bad Foods and I went back to Bad Habits and regained the weight I lost.
This time it’s a much smoother experience. Whatever Bad Foods I think about during the week, I know I can eat in six days or less. That takes a lot of the pressure off.
The weird interesting thing is that over the course of all my Cheat Days, I find myself less interested in Bad Foods. Oh, I will eat them, never fear, but I don’t feel so compelled. I even feel somewhat leery of them, since after a week of diet eating, I notice all the calories and sugar don’t feel that good.
At first I ate double-pepperoni pizza on Cheat Day, but after a few weeks of that I just didn’t want to anymore.
huxley,
Keep it up and no backsliding that was always my problem.
It’s been going on six years now since I lost about 75 lbs and I’ve managed to keep it all off and have been in 180-185 range which for me at 6’3″ is about right for the longest time in my adult life.
I still watch what I eat and I don’t have cheat days by design but I will have days where I pretty much eat whatever I want with the discipline to know I will ‘be better’ the next day.
I also don’t exercise quite as regularly as I did a few years ago especially in the winter when it’s too damn cold and rainy for golf or walking but I do try and to do something at least three days a week which seems to be enough for me to maintain.
Griffin:
Wow! 75#. I used to read stories of people losing that much weight and I couldn’t imagine it, given how hard it was for me to lose 5-20#.
Congratulations for doing so and holding the line!
I haven’t exercised much for my diet. 1-3 days/week, usually not too hard. Mostly kettlebell swings. Tim Ferriss says that too much exercise will hold back weight loss and that’s a mistake some people make on Slow Carb.
huxley, your sister has done well to lose 30#! Congratulations to her, and I hope the Cheat Day routine helps her. On that note, I may try it myself.
Thanks for the tips on the Amazon “Reacher” series. I saw it listed on Prime video and had a dismissive knee-jerk reaction. I really liked the first Tom Cruise film and while I didn’t like the second one as much, the choices they made in casting and plot were interesting. I had heard the complaints about Cruise being way too small to play Reacher.
_______
Last night I stumbled across a new Netflix true crime docu that is very good and quite fascinating for me anyway. “The Tinder Swindler” is a true story about a classic Don Juan con-artist swindler of women. The basic story is quite predictable if you are at all familiar with these things.
The first thing that fascinated me was how the Norwegian woman’s life was
immersed in smart phones and social media and how the swindler used that.
It was interesting that the swindler seemed to prey on Scandinavian women, except for the Dutch woman who happened to look very much like the Norwegian woman. Was he selecting his victim pool based on appearances and sexual preference, or did he gage these cultures as being more gullible? The Swedish woman actually rejected his romantic and sexual advances, yet fell prey to his financial scam. That one boggled my mind.
It was appalling how lax the criminal and justice system was/is in prosecuting these things. And finally, it occurred to me that this Ace swindler is only a couple notches removed from being someone who could have been an Ace politician.
huxley,
Congratulations!
huxley, your sister has done well to lose 30#!
Kate:
Truly.
Here’s the thing. When my sister was losing that 30#, she was so excited and happy. And I was so happy for her. It was a demon she had fought all her life and mostly lost. I wanted her to beat that thing to crap.
Then I stopped hearing from her. Then I started hearing that she had stalled. Then she became evasive about what has happening.
By coincidence I had started dieting because I stopped eating last August when I thought I had gotten Covid (probably did), stopped eating, then decided to continue dieting with Tim Ferriss’s “Slow Carb.”
My emails of dietary success probably made things harder for her, though that was the last thing I intended.
She mustered her support for me. Which I appreciated. Yet I hear her sadness that her diet has stalled. I know how much it means to her.
She tells me it’s OK. That she is happy to have achieved as much as she has and is willing to eat on her diet for the rest of her life, even if she never loses any more weight.
I hear her resignation and it hurts me. I want her to acheive her dream. She doesn’t want to be a model or thin. She wants to get below the 160s/150s. She’s 5’4″. Is that too much to ask?
She has the discipline. She has the desire. She has paid her dues as a fat woman all her life. Is that too much to ask?
At the very least with Cheat Day, I hope my sister can maintain her current weight with occasional gratification without throwing it all away.
Is that too much to ask?
huxley, I understand her frustration, and share it to some extent. I wasn’t “fat,” just somewhat overweight, with my doctor nagging me about prediabetes. I went keto, dropped 40 pounds, put fifteen back on, and there I sit, all on the same diet, as if my body has decided that’s where it wants to stick. Your sister should get her thyroid checked if she hasn’t already.
kate; huxley:
Kate, your body almost certainly has decided that’s where it wants to sit – at your setpoint.
It’s probably the same for huxley’s sister.
Especially difficult for women, and it gets more difficult as one gets older.
Then sometimes the very old start losing weight and get too thin. But that’s another process taking over – and not a good one.