I’m officially in the 99th+ percentile, but IIRC your score gets less accurate the farther you deviate from the mean. And a high reasoning ability is absolutely no predictor of success in life.
Plus, I feel like a douchebag when I say shit like, “oh, my IQ is 140…” as if that’s some kind of achievement or worth something all on it’s own.
IMO personal relationships kind of depend. Some people have unrealistic beliefs and expectations such that any consumption of pornography would be perceived as harmful. That’s pretty often the case with people that are religious fundamentalists.
Call my parents and my very few friends and let them know, and make sure that they understood how much they’d meant to me. Then I’d spend the rest of my time with my partner, making sure that I’d tied up loose ends, gave them full access to all my accounts so that they didn’t get nasty surprises after my death, and then just talk to them.
Honestly, according to IQ tests, I’m already in the 95th+ percentile for intelligence. I’m also on the autism spectrum, and just got diagnosed with severe ADHD late last year. I’ve accomplished fuck-all by being smart, and it’s mostly made me depressed. I’d pick being slightly dumb, but hot.
That’s one of the major issues that I have with corporations; there’s very little interest in sustainable profitability, and a laser-like focus on growth for the sake of growth. And sometimes the product that a company makes isn’t even “sustainable” per se. That is, if you make certain durable goods, eventually you should be reaching a point where demand will slow to a trickle as the market becomes saturated, and that’s okay.
Sadly, I am too old as well. I tried to join a number of years ago, but was unable to due to a medication I was on. Waivers would have let me join during GWOT, but I was pretty opposed to our wars of choice.
IDK; my partner has met ppl that have become very close friends at their workplace. I’ve become more and more isolated as I’ve worked as an adult, to the point where I have zero close friends.
I hope to fix that this year though; I’ll be trying to get my handgun and rifle instructor cert so I can work with the Pink Pistols and Operation Blazing Sword, and connect with my local SRA chapter. E.g., try to do something good in my community, and also meet people.
IMO, it might be a good idea to compare those prices against relative purchasing power of a dollar. I don’t know how those prices stack up to the overall rate of inflation or CPI, or even the cost of the specific ingredients. I would have less of an issue with price increases if a) McDonald’s profit margin–as a percentage of cost–remained steady, and b) the cost held steady against the relative value of the dollar overall. If it’s just arbitrarily raising prices because they can, then that’s bullshit.
Truth. The time I spent in retail made me much more patient.
Not just kill; being in the military tends to teach people to work together, even if it for mindless, stupid make-work projects. Hell, most people in the military–in the US–are in support roles, rather than being front line combat troops. That said, I thnk that mandatory service should be expanded to include roles like peace corps, habitat for humanity, food banks, etc.
Unlikely. The cost/benefit doesn’t work for an assault on the EU. Most countries in the EU have to import oil and gas (Norway being a notable exception), which is why cutting off gas from Russia has been such a big deal. The cost of invading wouldn’t be offset by the oil gains unless oil got really scarce. A smarter move–if we had a president that didn’t give a fuck about our European allies–would be abandoning NATO, stop selling arms to EU members, and then buy oil and gas from Russia at a discount while Russia invades EU countries. (If, say, China didn’t beat this entirely hypothetical US president to the punch.) As far as water goes, it would be cheaper to built massive desalination plants than it would be to move water by supertanker.
'Course, climate change is going to render most of this moot in 50 years or so.
Countries built their generational wealth on the backs of slaves though. Look at how, for instance, Belgium enriched itself though the horrific abuses in the Congo. While it’s true that no one alive was directly responsible, they still benefit from it.
Getting a sponsorship to get a work visa in the first place is quite difficult in most EU countries; companies don’t want to be on the hook for a foreign worker that doesn’t work out for them. In many cases, you need to be able to demonstrate that you can support yourself entirely for a certain number of years before you can even attempt to get some form of permanent residency.
I’d happily sign up for active duty service in Finland–despite my age–if it meant I could move there permanently.
America here. I think that mandatory service is fine. Living in a largely democratic country should come with a price tag, not just be something that you get for free. E.g., immigrants that naturalize have to put a lot of effort into naturalization; as a result, they’re usually much more personally invested in their civic life, on average, than typical citizens. Maybe ppl here would care more about fixing the country instead of just making sure they got theirs if they had to work for a year or two as conscripts.
Hate speech is not protected by the constitution
That is 100% false. Hate speech is absolutely protected speech. The only speech that is subject to criminal penalties is speech that incites people to immediate violence, and obscenity (e.g., child pornography). I’m not going to cite all the case law, but this is a good starting point
About $750, IIRC. It was a resized copy of a piece that I’d made for a runway show. I think it took me about 60 hours in fittings, patterning, cutting, and sewing to make. (My sewing process wasn’t very efficient, since I was working with a single machine, and had to keep changing it attachments, folders, feet, etc.)
It still takes me a long time to make my first piece–when I sew at all–but I’m faster now.
I knew a guy–Ola Bini–that fled the US, and emigrated to Ecuador, because he was afraid that he was going to be targeted by the US gov’t. I think he made it less than two years in Ecuador before he was arrested for ‘hacking’ Ecuador gov’t computers; he was jailed during the entire judicial process, almost a decade, before all the charges were dropped, and he was released and deported to Sweden. Best guess is that despite not having a extradition treaty with the US, the US still put a ton of pressure on Ecuador to detain him. (Maybe he actually committed crimes? IDK, it’s possible, but all charges being dropped after all that time in jail without a trial seems iffy. )
Point is, there aren’t a lot of places you can go if the US wants to fuck your life. Russia and China are the best options, and both are not great.
Having done both, it’s simple: you can’t have a deep relationship without time. Not just quality time, but quantity time as well. The more relationships you try to juggle, the less you can spend with any single person, and that limits the amount if emotional intimacy that you can achieve.
Yes, yes, love is infinite. The time that you have to be alive, however, is not.
That is even if you intentionally ignore any issues of jealousy.
…And yet, people tend to despise brutalist architecture.
Hit up exrx.net and look for weight lifting exercises that target back muscles specifically. For lower back (erector spinae), thing like weighted hyperextensions are going to target it specifically. I would suggest doing about 12 weeks where you start you back workout with basic compound lifts–deadlifts, squats, bent over barbell rows–and progress to more isolating lifts like hyperextensions at the end of the workout. I would suggest doing that 12 weeks with just 1-2 sets of 12-15 reps for each exercise, with rests of 30-90 seconds between sets and exercises; that will get your body ready to progress to more sets at higher weight and reduced repetitions. And yes, you need to change you workout every 3-4 months or so; that’s a basic principle of periodization. Changing your workout will mean more or fewer sets, with lower or higher numbers of repetitions, and different weight. In general, you’ll do a few sets of high repetitions with lower weights, and more sets of low repetitions with higher weights.
Also, don’t forget to do abdominals; those are important stabilizing your back.
For cardio, rowing is going to be your go-to choice for a strong back.
I would strongly suggest getting a personal trainer for a few sessions specifically to work on your form for squats, deadlifts, etc. If you do that though, be very, very firm with them that the only thing you want is direction on form; PTs will have a strong tendency to try and sign you up for months or years of training that may or may not help with your specific goals. Look for trainers with ACSM or NSCA certifications only (most other certs are barely worth the paper they’re printed on), ans a BS in kinesiology or exercise science.