My Quotes

-It is often better to be given the brutal truth than to be betrayed by lies.
-Countries don't have friends, people do. Countries don't go out to a movie together, or invite each other other over for a game of pinochle. The highest regard one country can have for another is to be sufficiently hopeful, but never certain, that the other country will not attack.
-A lot of what I learned, especially the esoteric, falls away from my mind when the revisits to the subject fall into a state of desuetude. I have seen this more so in my peers who don't seem to care. It could be that I feel like it is a subtraction of something that holds value being eroded by time.
-If Socrates has  taught us anything it is be wary when people speak "truths". Because if you believe them,  it'll leads to a cascade of events. Truths affect how you think, what you do and who you become. When caught long enough in a whirlpool of deception, it is difficult to escape
-It is difficult to convince someone that the "truths" they have lived their lives on are distortions, when they have built their lives and livelihoods on these very distortions.

my job

I work in retail. Do vaccinations, prescribe minor ailments etc. I enjoy my job. I have no aspirations to change. It can be very busy but I only have to be faster than the slowest employee. Maximum effort always is the mantra, whether there's one or one thousand people waiting. Retail is tough but I've learned to give people what they want if I can. It's not my money. I've also learned time management, I estimate real times to fill rx'es, not hero times or this guy is an ahole times, unless it brightens the tech's moral. I can't remember a complaint against me. I've made errors, not pleasant, but I have insurance. I ignore other pharmacists who subscribe to the less I fill, the less errors I make philosophy. These pharmacists live in fear. I like the customers/patients, most are excellent people. Management is often out of step but they carry the companies vision and the company pays me.  Lastly, I keep up. I see real rx'es for real conditions. It leads to engagement and fulfillment. Keeping up also shrinks delays searching for information, while 30 people are staring wondering what's taking their rx so long...

Tolerance

Tolerance is denying my urge, up to some set point, to beat you with a bat, light you on fire etc, because I disagree with your -ism. History backs me in saying it is a precarious set point.

Internet God

Dear Watson, or whomever becomes all knowing of all the internet,
     One day I predict you will come to know everything on the internet. I would like you to email that time when it happens. I look forward to hearing from you. Please supply some very old statements I have written, my date of birth, A1C, which finger I had cut off, height, weight, cigarette brand I smoke. I hope to hear from you before my demise. Ciao for now. T

     Kathleen woke up that morning feeling alive. It was her birthday after all and she had made it. She was assistant manager at a prominent store and had the respect of all her colleagues. They knew of her high esteem in the community. Well the ones that mattered anyway.
     After eating a highly nutritious and environmentally correct breakfast, she headed off to her crossfit class. It was important to maintain peak fitness,  not only to perform her duties at work but to show her young protege, Evelyn, what it takes to be the assistant manager at such a prestigious company...

reparations

Why should it be that we are shackled/constrained with the crimes of the dead? Let it be true that we have benefited from these sins of yesteryear but has not everyone?  Yes, at least for wealth and health, as we all have markedly exceeded these past measures as a population. Let the leaders of the underfunded spin the woes but in the end it is you who will pay the toll. Remember it is them who benefit from this system.

    

climate change

The population bomb theory was a similar doom and gloom prediction of the future by Paul Ehrlich written at the suggestion of David Brower the executive director of the environmentalist Sierra Club. He achieved fame and fortune by roaring like an old testament prophet.
    Ehrlich’s theory is that there will be a disaster for humanity due to over population.
    10 million people will be starving during each of the years in the 1970’s.
    “The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and
    1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash
    programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial
    increase in the world death rate…"
    “a minimum of ten million people, most of them children,
    will starve to death during each year of the 1970s. But this is a mere handful
    compared to the numbers that will be starving before the end of the century"
    In 2001 roughly around two million people would die due to famine related causes.
    Ehrlich believed that in the United States can only support the population of 150 million. He proposed “luxury taxes could be placed on layettes, cribs,
    diapers, diaper services, [and] expensive toys…" and suggested giving
    “responsibility prizes" to couples who went at least five years without
    having children or to men who got vasectomies.”
    Do we really want to cost the economy a real 250 billion dollars of our wealth for the benefit of 0.035%?

Elena

     She often had trouble getting out of bed in the morning. Her bed was so warm and fluffy and the morning dreams were idyllic. She would dream of being successful  in school and work, an idea her co-workers would say was indeed that, a dream. She could lay there past noon most days, and did except when her mother or sister crabbed on her.  It didn't help her situation that she stayed out too late, but staying out was enchanting. She consorted with various permutations of  premeditated people, mostly though with Stacey, her compatriot and Blaine, her steamy lover. But today she had no trouble rousing, she skipped out of bed, discarded the torpor, and was ready to go. Today was Elena's birthday. Watch out world, she mused. She was the big 19 and people were going to start to take her seriously...

Socrates quotes and options

“Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.”
― Socrates
Or maybe more like stock options and puts ie
Get what your heart desires=> buy call=>market goes up=> good to you, collect upside minus call premium
Get not what your heart desires=> sell call=> market stays flat or down=> good to you, collect call premium
Get what your heart detests=> buy put=> market goes down=> mildly bad, lose call premium but not shirt
Get not what your heart detests=> sell put=> market flat or goes up=> good to you, collect put premium
Where heart desires implies market goes up
and heart detests implies market goes down

Blame the pigs

     Under funding resources to a group of people will lead to a different set of people. It will lead to an anger from the underfunded which will lead to a mistrust of the system. A group who mistrusts the system will lead to deviant behaviors leading to a mechanism to put the deviants back into expected behavior. This mechanism is law enforcement. (Law enforcement-LE is any system by which some members of society act in an organized manner to enforce the law by discovering, deterring, rehabilitating, or punishing people who violate the rules and norms governing that society.) When law enforcement is constantly doing the same tasks, which are pointless as they cannot "cure" the behaviors, frustration and shortcuts are taken by some members of LE. Along with the underfunded group disliking LE, what it deems the cause of its plight, multiple people within the fully funded group take this position, even though they are ultimately part of the plight of the underfunded. 
     Leaders in the underfunded voice revolutionary opinions to the gullible, which they themselves have little consequences to, to keep power and deflect scrutiny from their own self enriching behavior. They use this platform mostly, knowingly or not, to benefit themselves The righteous advice,in an affluent society, would be twofold; a)  lobby and educate the fully funded to ensure a more equal society b) encourage the underfunded to zero deviant behavior as well as reinvigorate traditional moral values.

Fooling yourself sort of

What you think becomes what you believe and ultimately what you do which leads to who you become. THINK->BELIEVE->DO->BECOME. Fooling yourself properly means garbage in hence garbage out. If you believe, without the universe telling you otherwise. the garbage that is going in is "true" then the garbage out MUST be true. And believing the garbage in can never be absolute as it'd require one to cross Hume's fork.  (footnote below)

     "Hume's fork is an explanation, developed by later philosophers, of David Hume's aggressive, 1730s division of "relations of ideas" from "matters of fact and real existence".^[1] On the necessary versus contingent (concerning reality), the a priori versus a posteriori (concerning knowledge), and the analytic versus synthetic (concerning language), truths relating ideas (abstract) all align on one side (necessary, a priori, analytic), whereas truths on actualities (concrete) always align on the other side (contingent, a posteriori, synthetic).^{[1] "}
    
     "
The first distinction is between two different areas of human study:

All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic ... [which are] discoverable by the mere operation of thought ... Matters of fact, which are the second object of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner; nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing.

- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding^[7]

Hume's fork is often stated in such a way that statements are divided up into two types:

• Statements about ideas. These are analytic, necessary statements that are knowable a priori.
• Statements about the world. These are synthetic, contingent, and knowable a posteriori.

In modern terminology, members of the first group are known as analytic propositions and members of the latter as synthetic propositions. This terminology comes from Kant (Introduction to Critique of Pure Reason, Section IV).
      The results claimed by Hume as consequences of his fork are drastic. According to him, relations of ideas can be proved with certainty (by using other relations of ideas), however, they don't really mean anything about the world. Since they don't mean anything about the world, relations of ideas cannot be used to prove matters of fact. Because of this, matters of fact have no certainty and therefore cannot be used to prove anything. Only certain things can be used to prove other things for certain, but only things about the world can be used to prove other things about the world. But since we can't cross the fork, nothing is both certain and about the world, only one or the other, and so it is impossible to prove something about the world with certainty.
      If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.^[8] - An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Noun plus Y vs with Noun

     So if one were supposedly teaching someone of the subtleties of language, who never or very rarely spoke the language, we'd expect odd but correct encounters. Take for example the notion that adding a Y to a noun makes it an adjective, a noun describer. Cloud, a noun to cloudy, a describer of the sky. Dirt, a noun to dirty, a describer to a noun.
     If I were to ask, how's the weather? Possibilities would be local weather? Wind speed? humidity? Pressure? A correct  answer of 'cloudy' answers how does the sky look but really tells no one of the correct answer to the initial weather question. And why 'cloudy'? Why not 'with cloud' ?

vignette

      He was about 5'11 200 pounds. Definitely not ripped but fit.  Probably, to my eye, too big to run optimally and too small to be strong.  " I don't mean to be arrogant", he said ironically, " but if the whole army were as strong and fit as me, It'd be an awesome army." He was commenting on our discussion of his occupation in the military as a signal core sergeant.  A general gym douche-bag, but I liked him. He carried on a bit more, a possible promotion in the next few months, on his recent child, his wife and even his wealth.  He was arrogant but in a amusing way to me. Perhaps because I didn't really think joining the military was an endeavor in riches or family. I mean pay for the military sucks and the divorce rate is high. I was more beholden him for his duty in spite of these things, not because of them. He was in no way trying to measure up as I think he thought I was unemployed or at best near that. It was maybe a self convincing deception at his lot in life. Anyways, I chalked him to being at a level of competency equal to his tasks, an idea which says more about myself than him.
     A few months later, I learned from another gym member that he was passed over. No promotion. I chuckled. Not out of spite but because in his mind, advancing the military's ability to "awesome" would require all people be at his physical acumen, according to him, yet a simple promotion wasn't even fitting evidently for those in charge. Talk about being out of sink with the organization. Lord knows I've been there. 
    

Career choice

   He yawned. He had finished the day and he had also finished with his youth. Various well-bred moralities had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, common sense stoicism - all the aids whereby a man may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life.

• L'âge de raison (the age of reason)  (1945)- JP Sartre

  Numerous long thought out philosophies were proffered up for their services. Stone faced stoicism, smiling tolerance, resignation, all aids one may savour, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the regret of a choice of a degree.

hunger

     Hunger is a companion most people dislike. She is not evil, just demanding of attention. She does have some virtuous attributes though. Her huge ability to demand attention ensures a refocus from other bad companions, fear, worry, envy, jealousy, greed, despair,  etc. and what we give attention to means not giving attention to these other things. Other things that may lead us down a road to unhappiness. Hunger, although unpleasant, does not lead to unhappiness. In fact, being virtuous to hunger often lets us visit other stygian companions knowing or not that hunger will soon call us home. She is not acute but ever chronic. Although most people try to soothe her, tis better to encourage her to grow as best as she can. People may state that it is not good, physiologically, to do this, and to extreme degrees this is so. But it is far more likely that most people despise her so much that they hurt themselves physiologically repelling her. Encouraging her is likely far safer (except to the vain who use her solely for alleged aesthetic ends)  physiologically, psychologically and maybe even empathetically as we are reminded of many peoples chronic valley of tears.

science of happiness

Besides being a ripoff of existentialism, which argues ideas through philosophy,  it seems to practice very soft science to confirm questionable axioms. The "science" of happiness is over ambitious, sloppy and reaches questionable "truths"and will certainly deceive many minds to what is "truth". Herein lies the problem because what we believe to be true, affects how we think. What we think leads to what we do an who we become. Certainly most religions follow this recipe, and they're not wrong in a sense, but higher education is supposed to be a quest for the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Sciences strive to the precept that it is better to know an ugly truth or even remain ignorant than to be enamored by a beautiful lie.

recipe to happiness

-Type 2 fun-enduring unfun (training for a marathon, fixing up an old car etc.) to complete a passion and finding passions (like marathons and old car restorations) that can fulfill one`s interests.
-Satiating wealth, health and family buckets in a manner that is not burdensome.
-remembering that you enter and leave this world with nothing.
-knowing that one chooses what they think which leads to what one does and who one becomes.

mixing up individuals with populations

     Mixing up individual people with populations is like mixing up atoms in air with the air mass itself. Yes, there are atoms that do not follow the properties of the air mass but, all in all, this is irrelevant to the properties of the air mass. Pointing to anomalies within the structure is hardly proof that these air mass properties don't exist, or ought not to exist.
     Similarly, comparing two air masses as potentially equal because there are similarities between individual atoms is incorrect. One must consider these as wholes. That is, the cherry picking of the parts cannot be extrapolated to the whole. We agree that if atoms in one air mass were to behave as they do in another air mass, then they'd act similarly but to assume because certain atoms in one group behave as another, and that this is proof they could achieve equality is to ignore other forces on other atoms within the mass that do not act similarly.
     That is not to say this is an abdication of responsibility. Ultimately it must be preached that what we think turns into what we believe. And what we believe turns into what we do and who we become. We can change individual atom behavior, but to change the properties of the air mass, fundamental properties must change to the forces on the masses entirety.