> It should always be a person's #1 priority to live as long as possible.
Not for me. Living healthy yes - and then dying quick and painless. I don't care if that happens with 50, 60 or 70. Another 10 years to go would nice, still.
> unless I can devote more time in the gym to bulking.
I have experience with IFing as well as with bulking. And if you ask me - especially with respect to the specific reasons why IF is good for you - bulking is one of the worst and unhealthiest things you can do to your body.
> that there's still no scientific consensus and it still has a fad smell to it.
Do you not feel the difference? When bulking I feel heavy and bloated - it's tiring. Especially when dirty bulking - eating crap just to get those additional calories? Pushing and squeezing more and more food through this delicate and soft tube (your gut) in your stomach. It's more like plumbing than eating.
Having said that - I might do some bulking again at some point - but for aesthetic reasons - not because I believe it's good for me.
So the study measures relative fitness on the treadmill and associates that with cardio respiratory health - but isn't this pretty much just the two sides of the same coin? If you measure 1000 people's performance in some fitness exercise - isn't it obvious that the result will correlate with the observable health?
I would assume that your best bet is to reflect about your own stance on materialism. Usually children develop in the long run towards very similar personalities as those of their parents.
Personal observation - I cannot provide a study for that. As far as I can tell parents (or who ever raises a child most of the time) is the reference point for personal development. That either manifests in emulation or rebellion - depending on the quality of the relationship and the phase a child is going through. But in the long run the similarities outweigh the differences. A bit like a photo and its negative - both convey the same information but look very different.
Actually I think the interior looked really awesome. Nonetheless some more thinking should have been put to a scenario in case a fire starts. But still I think the problem is that modern media coverage causes every hazard to be a reason to implement even more rules and regulations for how a building or room has to be designed to be fit for a public event. That's another reason why those non- or semi-professional happenings become rarer - it's just too complex and expensive. Too many laws that you need to keep in mind to do anything nowadays pretty much.
It's the usual question on how to balance the trade off between safety and freedom. I myself am more inclined towards the latter.
The Ghost Ship didn't have smoke detectors, a fire alarm, or emergency lighting. It did have blocked staircases and cluttered pathways, and the available staircase was fairly flammable. It had people warning about some of these problems; they were ignored.
It looks cool/arty, and OK to wander through in an afternoon, but it also looks like the last place I'd expect to find a party.
The closest place I can think of for a similar labyrinth of clutter is Camden Stables Market in London [0][1]. But it's a daytime clothing, art and antiques market, not an event space. You can see the green emergency exit signs in some of the photos; doors have notices things like "This door to be open during trading hours".
For your tradeoff, how low do you propose we go?
[0] Camden Town has several markets. If you've been, this is the one you're least likely to have visited, and it's furthest from the station.
Freedom requires responsibility. And probably checking the electric facilities and placing some smoke detectors should be considered self-evident. Laws try to make sure everybody acts responsible by placing lots of obstacles to trip over long before anything bad can happen. Now in this case it would have been a good thing - then again though, the laws existed - now the consequence is that dozens of people are still dead just that the guy gets punished harder.
In Hamburg we have really nice planetarium. Recently a guy in a wheelchair wasn't allowed to just attend the show sitting next to a seating row because in case of a fire he might block the corridor and who would be able to quickly evacuate him? Of course the reasoning makes sense but where do we end up when everything needs to be extremely safe or is otherwise forbidden?
This development is a systemic effect which cannot be stopped as far as I can tell. The desire for freedom will be satisfied simply by people refusing to be super strict in practice. Also too many regulations usually will be harder to enforce.
I think that what you describe as doing is definitely small talk. It's just not the dumbed-down type expected by many people in the US or some anglo saxon societies. Also the message of the article is actually contradicting your observation b/c it insinuates that Finnish people pretty much don't talk in such situations - which you did. And I hope you can unlearn again b/c as a German I really prefer people with your take on conversing! Those people should rather learn from you.
> “Laura,” she told me matter-of-factly when I asked why we had bonded so quickly, “The Finnish don’t believe in talking bullshit.”
I believe this is characterizing the sentiment of the article much better than what the title conveys. In my experience there are different types of small talk. The infamous kind found in the US is not the only definition of small talk. In many cultures small talk simply means talking without getting too personal - in the US this seems to be accomplished by exchanging what the Finnish girl refers to as "bullshit".
> With two million saunas in the country, which are enjoyed fully nude (generally gender-segregated, although that rule tends to be thrown out in the company of friends), the Finnish seem to have no problem with getting up close and personal. But when clothes are on, the bets are off.
Also an exaggeration in my experience. You can very well talk to strangers in Finland. Just that talking too shallow stuff is maybe not that popular.
> Thanks to television and films (which are mostly broadcast in English) she was already acquainted with non-Finnish communication styles.
That is such a dumb and sad thing to say. I really love the downtoearth friendliness of Finnish people. There is really no need to educate them - and certainly not by means of television.
> When asked for an example of how she wishes Finnish society were more open,
Now we go from talking less to a claim that Finnish society should be more open. It couldn't be further from the truth. If you have been to Helsinki you will have noticed that the society is super open and embracing refugees as well as people with handicaps. Almost everything is accessible to blind people or those using a wheelchair.
> There are more hypotheses than answers for why Finnish culture has a veil of silence permanently stitched in place.
And that is a good thing. Silence and the ability to maintain silence when there is no need for attention seeking behavior is such an important thing. It's awesome.
> “When I was [back] in Finland, I was almost offended when I went to get a cup of coffee from a coffee shop and they didn’t say anything,” he recalled. “It was just ‘what do you want?’. How can you say that? Are you not going to ask anything before that? Oh, yeah. This is my home country. This is just the way things are.
That is just half of the truth. They just won't pretend to be your super-nice new friend like it can be observed in Starbucks for example. But they will be actually very friendly.
In no country I have been treated consistently exceptionally friendly by customer serive in shops or bars than in Finland / Helskinki. It's absolutely stunning how authentically friendly Finnish people are.
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I would rather tend to label typical Finnish communication as "healthy" - and there is a simple reason for it being like that. Finnish society itself is super healthy - just take a day-trip to Helsinki and you will feel it immediatly that Finland is doing something very right with regards to equality in the society and presence of culture.
This sounds a lot like the Greek culture, and I always find it a bit uncomfortable to engage in smalltalk when I travel to a country that does it. It's a very specific type of smalltalk, like what you'd do at a bus stop or at a house party, where you're just talking to the other person superficially without any intent to continue any sort of relationship after you've gotten to know them a bit.
I can't explain it very well, but smalltalk is talking to just pass the time until something else happens. We tend to think of talking to someone as a bit more meaningful, and meant to create or deepen a relationship, so if we know that we're never going to see someone again, we tend to just not make an effort to talk to them.
Your point about the "super-nice new friend" rings especially true, as that's what I find most uncomfortable. It just seems extremely fake, and that's not to say there aren't friendly people in the US, it's just that specific interaction where they're being fake-super-friendly as part of a transaction or business relationship.
correctiv.org is producing phantastic investigative journalism on a regular basis. one of their most important revelations recently was about a pharmacist who was selling heavily diluted cytostatic agents for chemo therapy. several people died because of this [1].
really awesome about correctiv is that they not just release their findings - they really make sure that something is going to be done about it. for example the government didn't do much about above mentioned case - they didn't even bother to inform the patients. so correctiv rented a shop in that town (Bottrop) where people could inform themselves about the matter.
the one thing I find most concerning about these kind of revelations is that it seems that journalism is more and more responsible for work police should be doing.
For people in “democratic” countries, get involved in civic duties. Register to vote, stay informed, volunteer to canvass and spread the word for campaigns. I donate monthly to causes I care about supporting. Corruption reform has taken place through these routes.
youre not her slave or subject really though are you? you havent been scrubbing her shoes or done anything at the request of the royal entourage im guessing. shes just a placeholder for tradition and has no say in anything. so really, it doesnt matter. stop getting your knickers in a twist over something so unimportant and irrelevant
Embrace the trend and take responsibility for solving unsolved crime and peacefully bringing about justice and/or resolution (ie- inform the uninformed) to the problems for which you have solved.
the one thing I find most concerning about these kind of revelations is that it seems that journalism is more and more responsible for work police should be doing.
The police are generally bound by procedural rules that prevent them from doing these kind of investigations, especially where much of the direct evidence (or in many cases, the actual crime itself) is based on entrapment.
However, once journalists have done the dirty work, the police can use their reporting to find evidence that would survive legal challenges to the means through which it was collected.
While I echo your appraisal, they have a hard time not to come across as biased.
for instance:
- In the article you've linked, I'm sure there were better images of a conservative politician to choose from. Small thing, but not for professional journalists
- In the CumEx-article, what information do I gain, when they state that one of the perpetrator's lawyers is a famous face of the German pro-market party FDP - other than that it's good that they aren't part of the government? BTW this politician is known to be a lawyer for defendants in cases with a lot of press coverage. Is he guilty by association? Is thus his party, the people voting for them?
- Their focussing so much about the new right-wing populist party AfD
And what of course will always make the tinfoil hats spin:
Agreed. I understand everybody's got biases, and that many in media lean left. But doing pretty stuff like that, clearly intended to score a few cheap points, might turn many people off some truly high-quality content.
Agreed, but it goes even further, as it open up attack surface for the other side to discredit a story, and more importantly, the story teller, tainting all future stories. I understand that media writes for their readers, but I think it's a lesson one has to learn to actually affect change and convince the other side.
There is no such thing as an unbiased press; the choice of what to report and what counts as "news" is inherently an opinion. It is also ridiculous to pretend that there isn't a substantial rightwing bias in a large number of media organisations, through their funding, ownership, and clickbait willingness to support manufactured "controversies" that harm real people.
Given this the only thing you can do is find reporting that does a reasonable job of finding the answers, is consistent with your own values, and doesn't have to issue too many retractions for obviously stupid things they got suckered/biased into printing.
The choice between "holding power to account" versus "supporting the existing power structure and its prejudices" is both a key partisan divider and the only reason for press to claim a public interest defence in the first place.
> Given this the only thing you can do is find reporting that does a reasonable job of finding the answers, is consistent with your own values, and doesn't have to issue too many retractions for obviously stupid things they got suckered/biased into printing.
Alternatively, you can just read multiple news sources (ideally some from other countries as well) and compare them on their coverage of the same event. It's pretty enlightening to see what each source covers and what is their take on it.
Coverage by foreign reporters adds another dimension: stories that embarrass both of the domestic political camps. A recent example would be British coverage of a Democratic legislator playing a cell phone game during Trump's address to Congress.
"In Denmark, journalists and the authorities are also investigating the cum-ex trades. Tax payers have lost up to €2 billion * , that’s nearly €350 for every Danish man, woman and child."
