946 karma · joined July 23, 2018
Calorie in calorie out is not false. It's just not useful. Like saying to go to the moon you need to go up.
Calorie in is appetite. Calorie out is metabolism. The specifics of how these are affected, and the solutions to fixing them, are a lot more fruitful than reaffirming the second law of thermodynamics.
The untargeted stimulus just enabled mob madness and scams paid for by tax dollars. Wealth redistribution from the tax payer to the dishonest and lucky.
Technology has enabled governments to grow massively, and law and order and prosperity removed the natural forces that kept communities together. Why put up with any communal norms you don't agree with when the community doesn't provide any additional safety or stability.
The strongest forces that once stood up to governments and markets are no longer relevant, in the West at least. Religion and tribalism are viewed as relics of the past, while the modern individual is naked and unarmed in the face of behemoth governments larger than the largest empires in human history.
I see it in the overreach of law enforcement because they correctly assume they're dealing with isolated individuals. In tribal societies, the tribe itself can stand up to the law. A person in such a society wouldn't be worried about being beaten by police because his family would beat the police.
> Ah, so then it's less about the delivery and more about the result?
Yes it's definitely about the result. The politeness of something is measured by the embarrassment it caused.
> I'm curious if this applies to not just flaws
So the origin of الستر is the Islamic command to conceal the sins of a Muslim, unless they're a known repeat offender. Here's an article about that: https://www.arabnews.com/news/480916#:~:text=If%20someone%20... So in Islam it's always worse to sin in public than to sin in private. This also leads to non-Saudis misunderstanding about rule of law and the penal code, because the punishment for drinking alcohol was whipping, but what it doesn't say is that no one was ever caught privately drinking alcohol at their own home. They get caught smuggling, producing, with alcohol in their car, at a large party, or publicly drunk. It is very rare for a victimless private crime to ever be investigated, and bringing it to public is itself a sin. You can apply that to apostasy, drinking, sex, homosexuality, etc.
So that's the Islamic origin, which is taught to grade schoolers. How it presents itself in culture is a lot more general. It's concealment of all flaws. So if you tell someone a story that makes you sound laughable, you might say استر علي (conceal me) which calls on this religious and cultural value to conceal flaws and therefore not retell this story. Or you called in sick and you coworker saw you taking a trip, etc. As far as what constitutes a flaw, it's anything embarrassing or puts you in a bad light. It could be anything.
I don't believe it extends to sharing any and all information. It's not a general tight-lipness. So it wouldn't apply at all to dreams and hopes, unless there's something specifically bad about them.
> Ah, yeah, I wonder about the etymology of that phrase.
It's not a religious text, but it's very popular to reinforces a religious and cultural value. It's also not literal in its comparison. It's an exaggeration to show how sacred livelihoods are. And in a sense there is a belief that they are sacred. Muslims believe livelihood (رزق) is granted by God, and so interfering with that is an ugly crime.
It present itself in a very funny way in today's world. You go to a small town baker's Instagram page, and then a customer would write a negative comment about stale goods or high prices, and the comments would gang up on the customer rather than the business! They would use that specific phrase, advise them to go private, if you don't like it don't buy, and so on.
> I'm curious, if one's reputation is tarnished in a part of Saudi Arabia
Yes reputation is very important. I don't have a concise description for it, but here's an example. If you're marrying outside of your tribe/community and proposing to "strangers", a lot of asking around will happen. Providing references is common. The bride's father will want to talk to your friends, your boss, and anyone in your circle. Before they ask them about you, they will remind them of integrity and honor, and tell them he's asking for his precious daughter, "imagine if he was marrying your sister or daughter would you accept him", and so on. People whose reputations are ruined, for example a man who's a known drunk or criminal, might not be able to marry any Saudi woman.
This kind of social investigation also happens for jobs to a lesser extent. What people say will be more important than the CV. It's commonly known that when you're asked such questions for a job seeker or marriage suitor, that the truth is a matter of integrity and honor, rather than concealment. After all they're asking in private.
In that sense it's not gossip. It's commonly practiced and formal. Gossip, of course still happens, but also seen as a sin against the value of concealment.
Although this all happens, I can say I don't know of anyone who's completely locked out of an industry that way, not for a small thing. I heard of a man who forged a contract at work once, and he got fired and became completely unhirable. He had to leave the country. But that case seemed exceptionally sensitive. Livelihood will always be more important than reputation.
Barring such glaring ethical issues, I think switching careers is not too difficult. The actual obstacle is that people kind of pigeon-hole you into your major/job like "you studied computer science we can't fund your agricultural business" kind of thing.
> Do you think that most people 1) see through the cover stories and 2) get annoyed with hearing cover stories all the time but feel afraid to say they feel annoyed?
It can be difficult when accountability is important. Everything can be systemized these days and information is abundant. I imagine it was extremely difficult in the past when your entire workforce colludes to hide their flaws, and the leadership colludes to hide the organization's flaws, and so on. But unless uncovering the cover story is of practical importance, you're expected to let it go.
Good kids caught by police doing dumb things being let go to cover for them, backstabbing and blackmail might hurt the person doing it more than the target, you feel safer because even your superiors cover for you, and so on.
But the incompetent, the lazy, the corrupt also abuse an environment where accountability is flexible. While a normal person with a conscience will appreciate the cover when they slip up, it's very hard to get rid of the people you need to get rid of. Everyone knows they're lazy but they keep their job to avoid scandal and cruelty.
For example, if a coworker is obviously and visibly missing, their teammates will still scratch their heads if asked about them. "I might have seen them. They're around." Saying they didn't come today when asked, out in the open, is as rude as it gets.
It's not specifically the way it's said because like I said informal speech is accepted at all level. I meant that the act of embarrassing others is very scandalous.
It's a concept called الستر (the veil or the cover) which has a high place in both the faith and the culture. Hide your own flaws, helps others hide their flaws, and if you see another's flaw don't look too closely. You could translate it to shame but it doesn't have the inner shame or guilt connotation. It's more about conducting yourself in public.
Another common concept is قطع الأعناق و لا قطع الأرزاق (rather cut necks than cut livelihoods) which puts affecting people's livelihoods on the same level as murder.
So if you criticize openly, and jeopridize someone's career, it probably won't matter whether you're right or wrong. You're violating many social contracts and there will be social consequences. The preferred way would be to approach someone privately, tell them what you think, and even better, provide a solution that includes a cover story for why things weren't done correctly in the first place.
The minimum of polite language is higher. Profanity can get you in trouble like getting a written warning, and graphic profanity can land you in handcuffs, like insulting someone's mother. Saying son of a bitch is a misdemeanor.
My experience in big corps is that the PDI is high but the power isn't so concerned with neutral formal phrasing. Phrasing in Saudi culture can be shockingly informal even at the highest level, since open tribal gatherings were the highest authority in the land until recently. The King and Princes still run open tribal gatherings where citizens can speak informally. Corporate speak is new and still seen as intrusive to how we do business.
How PDI would express itself would be preserving face, I guess. You can't contradict superiors or even coworkers too openly and directly, you can't openly disrespect or be irreverent. All possibly disruptive feedback must be private or you're bringing shame to yourself and others.
Startups are not like that at all. They're young, irreverent, and passionate. The young people really express themselves in those spaces with barely any hint of the old school social expectations. Guys and gals taking smoke breaks together and focusing on getting the job done.
On the other hand I will never know what it feels like to drive F1, so even though on the whole it's more impressive to drive a F1 car around the track, it will not amaze me as a StarCraft pro picking apart a Marine-Tank line, because I've tried to do that so many times I know exactly how hard it is.
So esports audiences mainly watch what they're playing, and it's better for it, and they won't be playing some standardized game.
It has a bulky monitor stand, but an Ergotron will allow you to mount it on an arm secured to the desk with enough range to move it right to the edge of the desk. You could also mount it on the wall.
So as long as you have a wider desk, like 27" which are available at Ikea, you're good to go. With a good window manager you can do magic with this monitor.
The meaning of choice is not just the single incident of a conscious verbal decision. There's a meta choice, where a choice is made many times over many attempts, until the associated action becomes subconscious. That's the only way we can choose to drive, read, speak, ride a bike, swim, and so on.
This extends to emotions. You only know you're angry after you've become angry. It feels like anger comes from somewhere outside of your control. Yet you can still choose to not be angry, even though you already failed. The more you choose not to be angry the less angry you would be.
It also extends to thoughts. Harmless intrusive thoughts, or distracting useless thoughts, or painful thoughts, all of these pop in without choice. You can still practice exerting choice over a subconscious process you can't control. Even though thoughts come from no where, people who meditate often (pretty quickly too in my own case) exert control over that subconscious area and stop thoughts from even happening.
Too many orgs go into do or die mode and try to do everything and do it poorly. Accepting risk is a liability no person in authority ever wants to sign, even if it's accepting the risk of an earth destroying comet. They will ask you to do what you can instead, when you don't have enough resources to even begin implementing the needed controls.
Often in info sec governance literally the only way for us to get leadership to accept a realistic scope is to do as much risk transference as possible.
When people are living their daily lives and interacting, but in the backs of their minds they have a loose grip on reality, to me it's a new low in spiritual degradation. Not only is reality meaningless, as a classical nihilist might affirm. Whether it has meaning or not is irrelevant because reality isn't real.
Aside from the philosophical argument, I think computer science has a good line of argument against simulation theory. Unless the metaverse transcends logic/computation itself, then computer science actually has a lot to say about the topic. Even universe size computers can't bend some rules.
I don't relate at all to anything you say about escapism. Depression doesn't mean hating the world and your circumstances. Most of my depressions came when I knew that objectively my life is great and I'm doing well. It's an internal total loss of joy that destroys the positive feedback loops that keep all of us motivated.
I don't think of games are more escapist than any other solo activity, like education or reading non-fiction or programming. It's just another type of joyful effortful focus. I don't forget myself and who I am and live in the game. I'm still me, playing the game.
I don't believe we'll be able to take cheap sources of power offline without affecting the bottom line for the developing world. Poor countries can't make the choice to regulate themselves into worse conditions.
Centralizing carbon capture at power plants can be cost effective. The tech is almost within reach. It will vastly increase the amount of available energy in the world.
Even with renewable energy and electric transportation, if we could keep using oil but not produce CO2, then we should. Cheap energy is lifting humanity out of poverty.
Focusing on equality is a distraction. If the poor are at the same level of poverty over 20 years, it doesn't matter whether the rich got richer or poorer. The fact is the poor are getting richer too, just not as quickly as the rich.
I'm not a free market ideologue. I'm just a practical person. If any system proves to be better at lifting up the poor I'll take it. Currently it seems a largely capitalist system with welfare and healthcare is a highly effective system. Certainly more effective than systems which try to destroy the markets.
I'm saying this even if I actually do agree with their cause.
One thing to note as with all lifting especially squats, depending on age, DOMS may be severe. The program starts as light as possible but even that may be too much. If starting from a very sedentary lifestyle it's probably best to start with a couple of weeks of cardio and light movement before lifting.
It's really nice to have something powerful to play with.
Tiktok is basically set up for remixing. You can splice your reaction, or add your dub, or lip sync, or more, and any of those would take less than 5 clicks to upload.