Things I Want to Communicate to the Human Species Before I Die

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it A long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists Whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable Than my own meandering experience, I will dispense this advice now

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth, oh, never mind You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth Until they've faded, but trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back At photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now How much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked

You are not as fat as you imagine

Don't worry about the future Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing Bubble gum The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind The kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. On some idle Tuesday

Do one thing every day that scares you

Saying, don't be reckless with other people's hearts

Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours

Floss

Don't waste your time on jealousy

Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind The race is long and in the end, it's only with yourself Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults, if you succeed in doing this, tell me how Keep your old love letters, throw away your old bank statements

Stretch

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't

Get plenty of calcium Be kind to your knees You'll miss them when they're gone

and so on

Stay with your cart. That's the only way you'll be available to notice it (and you) are in someone else's way.

Also, the "lived" in "short-lived" absolutely does not rhyme with "dived." The word you're talking about would just be "short-lifed." That's why 100% of native English speakers would raise an eyebrow at you if you pronounced it the way you've written out in the article. The noun "life" does not ever become "lived" when joined to an adjective.

This is useful advice.

Plain vegetables taste nice once your palate adjusts. You're allowed to stop running and walk for a little while, and you don't have to run so hard you get a stitch. If you're on a diet then it's going to work better if you find foods that make dieting easy rather than eating microscopic portions of your usual meals.

"No pain no gain" is often completely wrong; you can usually do something easy and painless rather than push yourself hard, and still get 80% of the gain (plus be more likely to form a habit and stick to it).

So now that I know I can be cart jacked!, nah, I'm good.

From there, everything else follows.

2: I believe this is possible in the US where I am. I've seen conservatives argue for queer rights, all across the alphabet, from conservative first principles. Even the bible-thumpy religious ones. The hard part is finding enough people who aren't completely brain poisoned by red vs blue thinking to form an effective party in a system that seems to only be able to support two parties who communicate with attack ads and lies.

This system portrayed moderate liberal Bernie Sanders as a seething, foaming at the mouth Marxist, maybe even the dreaded tankie. It was like this long before I was old enough to vote, and it's only gotten worse. I don't know what to do about it.

3: Exercise doesn't give me the good feels its loudest advocates insist it does. It just makes me tired. It most certainly doesn't help with mood or sleep. There are things that do, and I do those things.

4: This is the mantra of people who want me to ignore the person standing on my neck. Especially when it's them, or someone they derive benefit from. Bad actors can exploit the tendency to refuse to (accept) blame and address harms as easily as they exploit the tendency to blame.

7: There it is. A dull, typical misrepresentation. Your failure to listen fairly and with an open mind does not mean activists are misguided. You just aren't listening.

>Religion is not “ancient superstition.” >The great religions caught on because they successfully communicated something vital about the human condition to a large number of people. Their founders are probably some of the wisest and most insightful people our species ever generated.

So the only wise people that ever existed lived 1400 or 2000 years before today? There has been nobody wiser since? That nobody has communicated something vital since, that speaks to the modern world?

Or is it that there is a thing called inertia? That once started, it is almost impossible to bring something as large as the biggest religion to an end. Parents teach their children from birth about religion, and if you don't follow it correctly, you will burn in hell in the worst torment that you can't even imagine.

It hasn't "stood the test of time." It is inertia. Another example: we still use the 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in an hour since 3500 years ago. We still basically use the Julian calendar from 2000 years ago, with the upgrade in 1582 with the Gregorian fix. I could name all kinds of things like that.

So, no, This is just some kind of mysterioso "the ancients" non-argument that people use all the time.

>Hardline atheists and hardline fundamentalists make the same mistake when they regard religious texts as collections of factual claims, rather than instructive works of literature.

Does this dude even know anything about atheism? No. Atheists don't make that mistake. He is the one who mistakes atheists for making mistakes.

Atheists are some of the best educated in the USA when it comes to religion. This is because most started as religious, but logic'ed there was something wrong, so the former religious study their religion in great detail to understand and try to avoid becoming atheists, until they just can't support the illogic of religion anymore and must therefore be atheitic.

Atheists know full well that religious texts can be read as metaphors and analogies and allegories. The issue is that we use it as literal in order to mock the religious. And it is hilarious because the religious will quote the bible as literal if it serves their ends, but say it is a story if that fits their goal.

I personally could interpret Matthew 14:13-21 many different ways. Dozens of ways. But most christians DO take it literally. And the biggie, most Christians think that Jesus literally died and rose from the dead, which is ridiculous.

How is thinking Jesus being a necromancer - bringing the daughter of Jairus (Mark 5:21-42), the young man from Nain (Luke 7:11-17), Lazarus (John 11:1-44), and self-necromancy of bringing himself back to life - any different than a talking snake in Genesis?

Finally, almost every single person is an atheist, no lie. Christians are atheists of Vishnu, Kali, Brahma, Ishtar, Zeus, etc. Almost everyone is an atheist when it comes to L Ron Hubbard. I'm exactly like the religious who are atheist about other gods, except I just am atheist about one more god.

Some will smugly say that they are are different versions of the same thing, all of them are manifestations of the same god, but almost all don't, except when it is convenient to say it.

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Here is a muslim that seems urbane - but he says literally that Mohammed split the moon in half and went to heaven on a winged horse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQ-Y5NWV9kc&t=870s

Religious code switch back and forth between religion being literal and it being a story, as it suits them at the time.

And I don't mean all religious, there might be one or two out of the billion christians in the world who don't.