How to change levels – the fun part

Fuck it / Float it (bow) (levels)
Tongues connect God the Father (slide) (faith)
Voidbounded 3 seconds breath
Manifest His Will (Kingdom) (value)
Thumos (attn boredthrufeel) (noballs) (lekksuck/shamesod)
Revkinas flicker deeper (assume) (goodtime)

Edengard
1. Extend the reviving hand of friendship
2. Build a tribe
3. Heal the sick

Common errors with Tongues – Wrong sound, wrong soul

So apparently the magic phrase that instantly gets people to do tongues correctly is this:

“Can’t you just do it in your regular voice?”

Your regular voice is the one you use when talking to friends you’re comfortable with, ie not feeling awkward or stifled or nervous.

I don’t mean that God is just your buddy that you should feel totally comfortable around. But I do mean that you can speak to him in your regular voice without getting all dramatic about it.

For 3.5 years, I suffered and built systems to resist the harshness of my circumstances.

Finally, my efforts paid off. Via continuous improvement, meticulous record keeping, expansive reading, and endless self-experimentation, I drove my health above the “employable” threshold.

As they say, “Physician, heal thyself.” That is what I’ve done.

With the health bottleneck cleared, the other systems I’ve built are showing their mettle. Systems for info organization, meditation, and face reading have combined to produce outsized results.

I’m currently putting in the extreme workload I deem necessary at the new job. But that will taper off after a month or two.

Nothing has stopped re Koanic Soul; newly generated info is simply being queued into my files rather than posted, due to time constraints.

When I return, I will be serious this time. Not ranting through a pain-addled haze, gripping sanity with bloody fingernails. Organized.

Reality is subjective! Mind over matter! Never quit! Never say die! Stay positive!

Ha very ha.

Volunteer at a nursing home or hospice. That is your endpoint. You are mulch.

The only question is how much screaming there’ll be inbetween.

Reality regulary takes people riding in their cars without a care in the world and shows them their insides for long minutes before they helplessly expire.

How people fail to respect reality is beyond me. I fear reality. I know it can break me.

Fortunately, human beings have a bad memory for pain. I’ve been broken many times, and forgotten it just as many.

But that is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about drowing.

If you let the water into your lungs, you are done. Game over. But don’t think you can skip the end cutscene. Lizard panic sets in, breathing/coughing goes autonomic, you are unable to scream or signal for help, limbs flail irrationally, you sink and die quietly in incredible burning pain and terror, brain shutting down well after the rest, face a rictus of horror.

You cannot drown with grace. In fact, most ways to die involve no grace whatsoever.

Try accepting that right now. I actually can, but it’s because I’ve been broken enough times not to care anymore. Except while it’s happening, of course – then I care intensely.

To return to the topic, how does one not drown?

If there’s a hard bottom, say 12 feet or so, it’s incredibly simple. You close your eyes, sink, undress calmly, and push off. One breath. Repeat. You can last for days.

No bottom? Then you float, face just barely above the water, taking shallow breaths, chest distended. Or lazily backstroke towards some distant shore, resting at intervals.

When you get to land, you instantly feel that the trip was worthwhile. The difference between water and land is night and day.

But the only way you will get there is by not panicking about being in the water. By remaining calm, applying intelligent effort, and conserving energy. By accepting that you are in the water. By letting its waves cover your face and dictate your breathing. By adapting your whole locomotion to it. By stripping naked and defenseless against it. By accepting that you must move at an undulating crawl.

That is how you avoid drowning.

Of course, the smart thing would be to learn how to swim from someone who knows how, well before the need arises. And go nowhere near deep water.

In my previous post, I criticized the positive thinking and subjective reality schools of thought.

There is always more advice on self-improvement. The trick is to apply the advice that best fits your situation.

I generally recommend the following sequence:

Level 0:
1. Basic health
2. Non-self-judgment
3. Basic self-tracking

Level 1:
2. Basic cashflow
3. Basic social
4. Basic meditation

Levels 2-99:
Lots of options.

If you are at Level 0 and biology is compromised, it is a bad idea to attempt positive thinking / subjective reality techniques. You will overextend and crash, creating a bipolar life pattern leading to burnout and negative inflection points.

The key to Level 0 is to stop self-blame, eliminate all willpower wastage, and focus on fixing biology by driving continuous improvement through self-tracking and correct paleo nutrition.

If you are at Level 1, positive thinking / subjective reality can be useful. But it is still dangerous. You are not yet Mr. Winning. You will suffer major setbacks. It is more important to lay a solid, stable foundation, than to rev up to max RPM.

At Level 1, I recommend cultivating equanimity, humility, basic social interactions, and any sort of job that will support your minimal comfort level compatible with sanity and health. This is to avoid going back to Level 0.

Once you are securely at Level 1, take stock. What is your critical path to the next level? Maybe it’s improving social facility, or raising income, or productivity systems, or whatever.

Invest in that with your FREE resources. Do NOT overinvest and compromise your Level 1 status. Be patient and steady at first. Later, as your free resources increase, your rate of leveling will also increase.

Mr. MCDONOUGH, finding that his slaves worked for themselves on Sunday, for want of time on other days, proposed to give them Saturday afternoon to work for themselves, if they would keep the Sabbath.

He was soon struck with the amount of labor they performed during the half day they had to themselves, and with the sums of money they contrived to derive from it.

It occurred to him that it would be a good plan gradually to sell them the remaining days of the week, on condition of their paying him certain sums out of their wages, at appointed periods. So far as appears, the plan was suggested solely by financial policy, uninfluenced by any conviction of the wrongfulness of taking other people’s wages. He called his slaves together, eighty in number, and proposed for them to work for him on Saturday afternoons at small wages, instead of working for themselves.

He advised them to draw upon these wages as little as possible, and leave the remainder in his hands to buy Saturday for themselves. That the terms he offered them were pretty hard, is evident from the fact that he told them he calculated it would take them seven years to buy one day. But he reminded them that the first part of the process would be the most difficult; for when they had the whole of Saturday to work for wages, they could, in less time, buy Friday for themselves; and the facility would go on increasing with every day of the week they succeeded in purchasing.

He told them that according to the terms he could offer, and the calculations he had made, it would take them nearly fifteen years to buy their entire freedom.

Undismayed by the tediousness of the process, the slaves seized his offer with eagerness. They went to work so zealously that they bought the whole of Saturday in less than six years. Friday was bought in four years, Thursday in two years and a quarter, Wednesday in fifteen months, Tuesday in one year, and Monday was bought in six months

I have wandered far afield from my original intention in writing this post. So let’s wrap this up.

If I am right and biology takes precedence over mental techniques, then the following experiment will work:

1. Buy 50-100 grams of frozen shrimp.
2. Put frozen shrimp in a bowl
3. Microwave frozen shrimp in own juices until they have a zesty snap crunch texture. (Not underdone or overdone). Takes about 2.5 minutes in my microwave. Time will vary.
4. Eat the shrimp and drink the broth (crucial).
5. Wait 30 minutes to 1 hour.
6. Note how you feel. Is your mood happier, your energy higher, your productivity better?

If so, you had at least one of a host of possible nutrient deficiencies common to Westerners who do not regularly consume seafood. Begin eating 50-100g shrimp (and drinking the broth) daily. Eating more is fine, of course, but for frugality the above is the minimum recommended dose.

Why does this work? A host of reasons, including the paleo diet, the aquatic ape hypothesis, the fact that the mineral composition of seawater is close to human blood, the superior bioavailability of unprocessed animal products versus anything processed or plant based, potassium, sodium, iodine, B vitamins, C vitamins, bla bla bla.

Just eat the shrimp, in exactly the way described above. Do not, for example, boil the shrimp in a pot on the stove, unless you are prepared to drink the entire pot of water afterwards. Why dilute your expensive ocean water?

Note 1: If the ingredient list has anything else on it besides shrimp, such as trisodium phosphate, pick another brand.

Note 2: Do not worry about whether the shrimp was farmed or what country it’s from – shrimp is an omnivorous ocean cockroach, and unaffected by pollution (no biomagnification) and grain-based feeds.

First, the problem. Moldbuggian Cliff’s Notes:

But this act of brutal Machiavellian thug politics, larded as usual with the most gushing of sentimental platitudes, is picayune next to the ordinary practice of democratic governments: to elect a new people by re-educating the children of the old. In the long run, power in a democracy belongs to its information organs: the press, the schools, and most of all the universities, who mint the thoughts that the others plant. For simplicity, we have dubbed this complex the Cathedral.

The Cathedral is a feedback loop. It has no center, no master planners. Everyone, even the Sulzbergers, is replaceable. In a democracy, mass opinion creates power. Power diverts funds to the manufacturers of opinion, who manufacture more, etc. Not a terribly complicated cycle.

This feedback loop generates a playing field on which the most competitive ideas are not those which best correspond to reality, but those which produce the strongest feedback. The Cathedral is constantly electing a new people who (a) support the Cathedral more and more, and (b) support a political system which makes the Cathedral stronger and stronger.

For example, libertarian policies are not competitive in the Cathedral, because libertarianism minimizes employment for public-policy experts. Thus we would expect libertarians to come in two flavors: the intellectually marginalized, and the intellectually compromised.

Must man, then, resign himself to the cyclical leftist singularity of all institutions, government being the greatest?

No. There is a solution. But first, let us examine the proposed solution of Jim, chief inquisitor of the Dark Enlightenment:

Jim proposes a new English Restoration – without the Christianity that was its basis. A ludicrous hope.

After they executed the King in the English civil war, they theoretically disestablished the official church, but it was of course immediately obvious that they instituted an officially unofficial church that was vastly more intrusive and oppressive. When, with the restoration, officially official theocracy was reintroduced, people celebrated it with pagan festivals such as Maypole dancing, recognizing the introduction of official theocracy as ending the oppressive theocracy of ostensible lack of theocracy.

And today, the successors of those that executed the king have officially unofficial theocracy. To go to the best universities, to run for political office, to be employed in the government service, you have to submit essays and evidence of your commitment to one thousand and one points of progressive doctrine, much as in restoration England, you had to swear allegiance to the thirty nine articles and the second book of homilies.

Missing from Jim’s analysis is the void where the religious spirit resides. It is a curious deficiency that seems to afflict aspies and occipitals, albeit in different ways. The aspie is militantly atheist; the occipital simply lacks the capacity to be religious in the same way as neurotypicals. That is not to say that occipitals cannot be Christian – look at Tex Arcane. But they will arrive there by very different paths, and with different meanings, than a melon back such as myself.

Jim must be neurologically atypical in some profound way. Despite his awesome ability to see reality as it is, he does not understand the impossibility of enacting his proposal without some unifying, grand, impassioning cause/religion/faith.

With the English restoration, it was God, faith, church and country. Plus good sense. But good sense alone could never have prevailed. Good sense does not go to war. Young men are not willing to die for good sense.

And what cause remains, in this most utterly nihilistic and weary of worlds? A world where a realist like Jim can observe that God is dead? (Meaning, dead in the hearts of men. Meaning, the hearts of men are dead.)

Where there is vacuum, there is pain. Where there is pain, there is power. Trace the pain to its root, give it a name, and the fires burst to life, a supernova ex nihilo.

Here is my proposal:

People: those bearing traits of original Melonheads and Neanderthals. E.g., must possess two or more of the following:
widespace, deepsock, bigeye, occipital, melon back, ?longface/thallowerface?.

Cause: Alienation amongst the Cro Mags. Disgust with the Cathedral. Bonding with true kin. Identity. Separatism.

Blood racism is a powerful motivator. But in the atomized, interconnected world, nationalism no longer cuts it. We want something more targeted. Edenism can supply that. Hardware is the new ideology.

I intend to mimic the developmental path of the Goonsquad from the Something Awful Forums. Through the efforts of The Mittani, Goonsquad defeated BoB, the strongest force in Eve Online. Read about it here and here.

If you didn’t read the links, know that the BoB event had a major real-world financial impact. I selected the Goonsquad example because it reveals the critical path from online loose network to tighter effectual network. There are many other examples of effective dissident minorities to choose from – the Irish, the Jews, various Marxist movements, etc. However we are not yet at that stage. The Goonsquad example bridges that gap.

Stages:
1. Facial recognition theory – done
2. Create forum – done
3. Segment into small groups by affinity – to do
4. Start cellular Eve Online guild to facilitate small group cooperation and bonding
5. Start offline cooperative network
6. Insular advantaging, simular to many minority networks
7. Grow and avoid persecution
8. Infiltrate organs of power, ala Marxists
9. Develop teeth, keeping them hidden
10. Take advantage of coming geopolitical chaos to carve out a homeland

That is our internal sequence of action. It doesn’t cover recruitment and PR activities intended to spread the concept of face reading and its implications.

If we capture a significant percentage of the Thal and original Melon population, which seems feasible given their psychological disaffection, alienation, and/or desire to bond with their kind, then we will eventually enjoy a position of infiltration and immunity more privileged than the Marxists on their rise to power within the USA.

As fits the Muslim example, early efforts should be pacific, plaintive and pathetic, rather than imperial and aggressive. It will be plenty if we can simply be left alone.

Note that this plan is very thin on ideology, religion, etc. All we need to do is agree that, whatever the best government is, it is in our interests to determine it amongst ourselves, rather than in conjunction with the leaden weight of the Cro Mag masses.

Very likely the TT’s will want their own tribal independence and the melon hybrids will want something different for themselves. No problem. The point is mutual cooperation and defense to escape the current swamp.

As a Christian, I have determined that it is my duty to the Creator, in the critical path to the best-possible implementation of God’s Kingdom on Earth, to develop this Neanderthal-Melonhead alliance. It is the only feasible counterweight against the Cathedral, the cycle of history it represents, and the captured Thal, Melon, and Cro Mag masses it controls.

I hereby renounce all allegiance to the United States of America, for gross breach of contract and bad faith. I pledge allegiance to the Edenic Alliance. If you are a Christian of the requisite bloodline, it is your duty to enlist. We will build a society that glorifies the Creator: an everlasting Sparta, where the purity of the blood does not fade. Where lies cannot prevail, because the truth of the soul is written on every man’s face. Amen.

EDIT:

The mentions of God and Christians are just my nature expressing itself, not movement requirements. I am not the leader of this movement, I’m the fucking medic. Anyway, here’s the non-believers version:

Join the Edenic Alliance because you want a tribe to belong to, a cause worth fighting for, and a people you can love. And because you’re tired of the fucking Cro Mags.

This post will explain how to enhance willpower and motivation by writing short words on the back of your hand, and making tally marks throughout the day.

On my left hand, I have written my long-term life purpose. This is a constant reminder of my purpose on Earth. It focuses and motivates throughout the day. Every activity must be connected to this purpose.

My left hand reads “Edengard”, which means I serve the interests of the Thal/original-Melon alliance.

I rewrite this mantra in ballpoint pen on my hand daily, a ritual of recommitment.

My right hand is dedicated to habit instillation. I target the highest-value habit. It must be critical to attaining the next level of life competence, and directly advance my life purpose.

My right hand currently reads “Lord’s fast,” and has tally marks beneath.

A bit of background to explain, so you understand what a critical path habit looks like:

I’ve narrowed one aspect of my health problem down to either malfunction of liver bile production/release or pancreatic enzyme production/release. Various medical tests have turned up negative, however stool color doesn’t lie. Practically speaking, this means I must limit the quantity of food I eat daily. The limit allows me to maintain a healthy weight, but bulking up is impossible.

I cannot simply stop eating. Therefore I cannot alter my environment to remove temptation triggers. Limiting my food production creates risk that I will go off diet if the just-in-time delivery is interrupted. Thus I must continually exercise willpower. So this is a hard willpower problem.

The consequences for failure are severe -fatigue, cramps, pain, etc. This crashes my willpower, which reduces my ability to maintain my regimen, and etc. Hunger and the desire to binge eat actually increase during crashes. You will often find that negative habits induce failure cascades, and this one is no different.

I identified the failure cascade pattern via daily journaling, which I do in a simple text editor file. I will cover journaling in another post. Journaling is important because it is crucial to identify the root causes of failure cascades, so that you can correctly select the next habit on your critical path to leveling up. At low levels, these habits are usually related to health.

Onwards to the meaning of the phrase: “Lord’s fast” is a personally meaningful acronym. Beyond the obvious religious meaning, it also stands for “Low Residue Simple Diet”. I suggest you be similarly clever with your motivational phrases.

Now for the practical implementation. To avoid hunger buildups that might lead to binges, I eat regularly, carrying food with me if necessary. I have clear rules for what times of day to start and stop eating. Whenever possible, instead of eating I drink water or smoke, at least until hunger affects productivity. Lastly, I eat small portions, and try to eat only one per sitting. For each portion, I add a tally mark to my hand.

The last part made the difference. The act of tracking, and of constantly being confronted with your performance, greatly strengthens motivation. And I needed a major strengthening. Most of the time, willpower is fine, but there are little downward spikes during which it goes to hell. Those windows are what start failure cascades.

The hand tally technique is strong enough to focus the brain even when it is stupid-tired and momentarily inclined to give in to temptation. The brain knows that it will have to look at the consequences of its failure – accusing tally-marks – for the rest of the day. This recruits the ego to maintain a consistent self image. At those moments, the ego can do a better job of silencing the rationalizer than your superego can.

You might be tempted to use this technique on low-value habit change, such as checking email less or quitting porn. Those activities will not level you up. Saddling yourself with meaningless willpower expenditures will lead to burnout and depression. You need to be able to justify the sacrifice, so that you are refreshed by victorious adherence, rather than drained by it. The error here is not in using the hand technique, but in focusing on a habit that will not alter your life.

Typically, if you are having major problems controlling minor habits such as procrastination, you have some larger problem in your health, productivity methods, social skills or life strategy.

Legit uses of the hand tally technique would be approaching girls (tally for every one you wimp out on), dietary cheating during the first weeks of adopting paleo, or procrastination (counted during working daylight hours ONLY – don’t make this impossible).

Some habits seems structurally ill-suited to the tally method. Perhaps they only happen once per day. In that case, consider checking off the day in 4 parts, with a 5th tick at bedtime. Getting to 5 ticks means you completed the habit for the 24 hour period. 35 ticks and you’ve done a week.

So for example, maybe your habit is lifting 3x per week. Your off days get automatically ticked off if you lifted the previous day. If you skipped your last lift, you can’t start ticking off until you hit the gym again.

There are advantages beyond adherence. Writing the habit on your hand forces you to focus – to attack the problem from every angle, so that you can win and move on to the next one. The constant visual reminder stimulates your creative right brain to mull over the problem in the background. Otherwise your right brain is apt to think about whatever’s in front of it, which is never as important as the next habit on your critical path.

Plan to keep each habit on your hand for at least a week – that’s how long it takes for a habit to gel. If you’re successful, reward yourself by picking the next critical habit. If not, ask yourself whether you’re attacking the correct habit in the first place. Perhaps the problem is upstream. You have given the boulder a hard shove, and it hasn’t shifted. Time to shift angles.

The hands are a locus of self-efficacy. Try clenching your fists. You feel more powerful. Now try clenching your fists with your life purpose written on the back of the left, and your next key habit written on the right. Suddenly you feel powerful, focused, purposeful, self-effectual. Now you are motivated to dominate that habit, to maintain this rewarding self image.

I just had a blinding realization: the melons aren’t the problem.

Jim has identified the problem, the cause of leftward drift and the cycle of history described by Sir John Glubb:

The incarnation of evil, the defining example of collective evil

Instead of Nazism-discrimination being the incarnation of evil communism-covetousness should be the incarnation of evil.
…

The various communist democides should be described in the context of wanting to have what is someone else’s (envy and covetousness).
…

All the various envy based ideologies, such as feminism or anti racism should be tarred as neomarxist, much as today anyone who disagrees with any tenet of envy based ideologies is a fascist or a neonazi. Feminism shall be dismissed as penis envy, and illustrated by various efforts to give women equal, but unearned, honors in fields where males have a natural advantage.

This is why institutions drift ever leftward. Every worthwhile Aryan society I can think of collapsed due to this cycle, except Spart, which collapsed due to depopulation from war. (Not coincidentally, the Spartan model heavily informs my vision for the Edenic Alliance.) Probably all the worthwhile Asian ones too, in fact. The rest of the races I don’t care about, because low IQ can’t be fixed.

Whence comes this envy? From the melons? No!

Thals are egalitarian, but it is altruistic – generosity rather than crabs in a bucket, pulling each other down.

Melons are competitive, hierarchical and dominating, but envious? Not really. They tend towards warmth, benevolence, and win-win.

So who is envious? Cro Mags!

What happens when you take away intelligent Melon rule, and just have a pure Cro Mag population? You get Africa! A continent of envy, unable to advance an inch in ten thousand millenia. Crabs in a bucket constantly pulling each other back into darkness, squalor, blood, disease, horror and misery.

The Cro Mags are why the visible Melon influence is so malign. Melons either do what works, or don’t matter. The ones who do what works, tap into the great vein of envy to cement their rule.

Even the worst Melon overlord was actually providing a beneficial service. Stalin, Mao, Hitler – they all provided a stopping point for the Left Singularity, by killing everyone lefter than them. Otherwise that Singularity continues indefinitely, until everyone is living in communal villages in grass huts again, murdering any neighbor who appears uppity.

In Africa, whenever someone gets an iota of wealth, it is feasted and drunk away with all one’s friends until one is dead broke again. And perfectly equal. That is Cro Mag man.

Cain is the father of the Cro Mags, who murdered his brother Abel, the Thal, because he was jealous of God’s favor.

No Melon would slave away in the dirt, raising grubby vegetables, when he could instead enjoy the thrill of the hunt, exercise his innate facility over animals, or simply command underlings to feed him.

Nor would a Thal till the Earth, when he could hunt and keep herds.

Only a Cro Mag would multiply until toiling on a single patch of ground was his only option for survival.

Cain the firstborn – child of the melons and an earthly, hominid mother? The X chromosome is older, more Earthlike than the Y. Or perhaps something engineered from monkey genes, a servant? Listen to what this asshole does:

Adam[a] made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain.[b] She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth[c] a man.” 2 Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.

Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. 3 In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. 4 And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, 5 but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.

A butthurt bitch. He goes off sulking. God tells him to shape up, that he has no one but himself to blame:

6 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? 7 If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”

How does he deal with this real talk from the Almighty? With as much stupidity, envy and random violence (towards family!) as ever a Cro Mag has wrought. He might as well have been trailer trash or a ghetto crack fiend:

8 Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.”[d] While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.

Could anyone be so stupid as to plan this, having just talked to God, who had revealed knowledge of one’s innermost thoughts? Talk about lack of impulse control and foresight. Cro Mags are immune to dialectical reasoning and verbal improvement. Punishment and fear is all they understand.

9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The Cro Mag has no conscience. He is shame-based. He will not feel internal pain until he is exposed. Then he will cry like a bitch.

10 The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. 11 Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”

Haha, stupid. Now you’re not even a competent farmer anymore. And ever since, Cro Mags have been dirt poor.

13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”

Commence bitch tears.

15 But the Lord said to him, “Not so[e]; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. 16 So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod,[f] east of Eden.

And God blessed Cain, making him the A#1 r-selected spear chucker. He certainly works in mysterious ways. Perhaps he wanted the population density that only Cain was asshole enough to create.

17 Cain made love to his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch. 18 To Enoch was born Irad, and Irad was the father of Mehujael, and Mehujael was the father of Methushael, and Methushael was the father of Lamech.

Cain and his spawn proceed to carpet the Earth and build the first cities – stinking hovels, no doubt.

Presumably with the assistance of Abel’s wife, Cain founds a line of somewhat industrious and competent progeny, who are however still complete assholes:

19 Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. 20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. 22 Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of[g] bronze and iron. Tubal-Cain’s sister was Naamah.

23 Lamech said to his wives,

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
a young man for injuring me.
24 If Cain is avenged seven times,
then Lamech seventy-seven times.”

Gentlemen, I give you the line that will halt the Leftwards Cycle of History:

Envy is for Cro Mags, the children of Cain, the men who think like women. Brother murderers, lying weasels, stupid and incompetent. Cannot be trusted or reasoned with. When caught, cries like a bitch. A nigger at heart. Here because he murdered better people and raised loads of crappy kids.

It is this great reservoir of scum that has sunk every civilization the genetic aristocracy of the West has ever managed to produce. Time to drain the swamp.

Now that I’m clear on this, I finally realize that the Melons will want to separate from the Cro Mags almost as much as the Thals do. It’s either that or keep dancing to the Cro Mag tone-deaf tune indefinitely. And only the worst of them will win that game.

If you doubt, listen to Joe Rogan talk about the people who chant, “USA! USA!”, and his opinions on who really built the pyramids. Truth – it wasn’t the swarthy cousin-fuckers living there now.

First let’s define our objective:

Complete the critical path to the next level in the shortest possible time.

Towards the fulfillment of what set of interest do your levels progress? That is defined by your faction. Think World of Warcraft factions – orcs, elves, humans, etc:
- If you are a selfish bastard, you may have a faction of one. Simple enough.
- If you are an abstract selfless bastard like me, your faction is an ideological cause.
- If you are a selfless deep-bonding introvert, your faction may be your close relationships, aka tribe. Hopefully you have some that are worthwhile.

In practice, most people are a blend. The important thing is to pick a faction that fits your hardware and software.

Now we can roughly sketch our level progression. But what is the critical path to the next level?

That is an optimization problem. Finding the answer requires a good grasp of life strategy. Hackers such as Tim Ferriss, Ramit Sethi, MJ DeMarco, Cal Newport, and David Allen, and knowledge domains such as the paleo diet and Game are relevant.

However, it turns out that since we are all human beings, there are some rules that apply regardless of faction or current level. Here is the first:

If you can make a non-trivial health gain, expend no willpower on anything else.

Most expenditures of willpower are just that – expenditures. You use the willpower and it is gone, unavailable for anything else. Health is different, in that it is a willpower investment, not a willpower expenditure.

The limiting factor in your leveling is quality sustained effort. The more willpower you have, the more and better quality sustained effort (QSE) you produce.

This chart from XKCD gives an idea of the investment / payoff chart.

The chart is talking about tasks. Obviously if you gain working time by improving health instead of optimizing tasks, the result is the same.

But actually, we can view health as a task. It is the default, #1 priority task that cannot be bumped – your autonomic biological functioning. If this falls below a certain level, no QSE occurs, no matter what. The better it functions, the more and better QSE you produce.

Consider a 10 point health scale, where 0 is dead, and 10 is the most biologically superhuman version of yourself possible. Think roided out on smart drugs, high on life, perfect nutrition, perfect sleep, perfect physique, “on” all the time, etc.

There are 24 hours in a day. So here is your productivity function:

QSE = (waking hours)^health

If you are dead, you are never awake, and your productivity function is undefined at O^0, since we do not presume to judge the afterlife.

If you work 15 hours a day, and get a crappy 6 hours of sleep a night, dropping your health to optimistically a 4, you are at 15^4 = 5.1 * 10^4 daily QSE.

If you cut down to a lazy 8 hours of work per day, and get your full 9 hours sleep, then use the remainder of the time to optimize your health up to a 6, you are at 8^6 = 2.6 * 10^5 daily QSE.

For the math challenged, that’s a 4x improvement while working 7 hours less per day and feeling vastly better.

To make this formula work, you need to be familier with principles such as Pareto’s Law. If you are just a widget monkey, you only need to be awake enough to make widgets. Learn how to use your higher creative capacities, so you can justify the expense of maintaining them. Learn how to use your social charisma, so you can justify being healthy enough to exert it. Learn how to manage your information, so you can justify being clearheaded enough to grok it. Etc.

Otherwise being healthy will feel good and improve performance per time linearly, but may not deliver exponential results that dramatically outweigh the advantages of grinding in half-crappy mode.

Interestingly, you can’t learn the things that will change your results curve while you are overworked and below a 5 on health. They are too cognitively demanding. So in order to learn how to make use of being healthy, you must first be reasonably healthy and have available time.

For most people, this means making deep, painful cuts. Do less. Let your current performance level drop. There’s no other way to free up capacity.

Then, focus all your willpower on raising your health. Let everything else slide, as far as non-disastrously possible. Disaster being defined as, would prevent you from raising your health.

Let me repeat: Focusing your willpower means exerting no willpower on anything else. Let it all go.

It should take about a week to instill a new health related habit. Your habits should carry you through the induction period, preventing the deprecated areas of your life from going totally haywire.

** Case study

I noticed that I was having trouble going to bed, falling asleep, and that I was also waking up too early, resulting in mild to moderate sleep deprivation. This resulted in an unacceptable decrease in productivity, mood, willpower and acuity. I know this both as medical fact and by self-observation.

There are many pressing concerns and claims on my time. However, they are all possible expenditures of willpower. The sleep problem is a willpower investment opportunity. Therefore I dropped all other concerns and focused exclusively on sleep.

To start my solution process, I thought obsessively about the problem. I analyzed and reviewed it from end to end. What was I looking for? A root cause, one thing that was driving the entire cycle – an easy point of change. In order to do this, I had to understand the entire causal chain, compare historical periods, etc.

Any time I started worrying about something less significant, I aborted the thought and returned to the sleep problem. No willpower expenditure = no worrying. You will find it quite freeing to only worry about the next habit on your critical path.

I identified a few different secondary causes, but as usual there was one prime cause: a habit of staying too late at the office. This initiated the cascade, and had to be fixed, or else the problem would be intractable. If I made fixing the office departure time my primary focus, the easier secondary ones would fall also into line.

So I had found my critical path. Now to design my habit change method.

I copied the appropriate mnemonic phrase to my hand (“sundowner”), and resolved to write a tick mark beneath it for every 15 minutes past the official stop time that I stayed at the office. I plan not to worry about anything else except this for a week, or until the habit is locked in.

I know that this severe prioritization is worthwhile, because I have observed that when healthy my natural work ethic, natural intelligence, and learned life strategy produce outsized results. Therefore I can safely “let go” of the general willpower expenditure, and focus on the specific.

** Conclusion

When I was young, abstract conscientiousness was perhaps my defining feature. Thus I attempted to douse everything in willpower, out of a powerful sense of all-encompassing duty.

Now that I am older, I know far better just how all-encompassing duty is. But I understand that willpower is much more like a hammer than a garden hose, and a well-run life more like a wooden house than a vegetable garden.

Each nail is a habit. Placed correctly, the nails will hold up a house. But you can only pound one nail at a time. And if you don’t give your complete attention to the current nail, you will probably ruin the nail and smash your fingers. But the most useless thing is to run around a lumber pile, smacking random pieces of wood frantically with your hammer, as if things like nails and architect’s blueprints didn’t exist.

And be suitably suspicious of doctors bearing pharmaceuticals, in general:

The interesting thing is you can get similar (albeit much less dramatic) effects from eating wheat, sugar, and processed food. That’s why the first step on my powerleveling plan for those I counsel is to clean up the diet by going paleo.

As a dualist, I envision a biological brain with two inputs – biological and spiritual. Your spirit is tethered to your brain and affects it at some quantum-whatever level. This is your “free will”, in the most narrow, limited, “God can definitely judge you for this decision and it’s completely fair by any standard,” sense.

However, this free will effect is quite weak compared to overriding negative biological influences. There is no way to meditate away the effects of a bullet to the head, or of drinking bleach, or of ingesting mind-altering substances. What most people don’t realize is that food itself is a mind-altering substance.

Be sure that what you’re eating and drinking makes your biological brain more receptive to the spiritual exercise of free will, rather than less so. You don’t want to spend your allotted four score and twenty locked in a spongy torture chamber of your own creation.

This topic is a bit of a dead horse, since Illuminatus has recently recanted his Magic Bullet thinking, and acknowledged that level 0-1 is all about basic health, social, and security. But as long as many are suffering, it bears repeating.

Thus we shift to an anthropology founded upon the Edenic Multiple Intervention Theory, rather than solely upon Tex’s Edenic mythos. A fusion of Lloyd Pye and Tex Arcane, with a dash of Koanic anthropometry thrown in.

We must also alter our rating system, to reflect a generalized facial anthropometry.

Most features will be given a major and minor rating, on two axes:

Prosocial vs. Antisocial
Small group vs. Large group

Rarely, a feature will be given a third rating on this axis:

Functional vs. Dysfunctional

At the extreme pro-social end, expect crippling life problems stemming from the toxic modern social environment. At the extreme anti-social end, expect shocking low criminality.

At the extreme small group end, expect introversion and social awkwardness. At the extreme large group end, expect ADD, extroversion and social grace.

At the extreme dysfunctional end, expect functional retardation. There is no extreme functional end. This axis is for developmental dysfunctions such as biological Asperger’s and autism.

An incomplete list of the features, with major and minor ratings.

Eyes
Wide eye spacing – major: prosocial, minor: large group
Large eye size – major: prosocial, minor: small group
Deep eye sockets – major: small group, minor: pro-social
Cro magnon bone flanges – major: anti-social, minor: large group, minor: dysfunction
Eye asymmetry – minor: anti-social, minor: large group, minor: dysfunction

Mid and lower face
Thal lower face – major: pro-social, minor: small group
Forward jutting chin – major: large group, minor: anti-social
Vertical facial compression – major: anti-social, minor: large group
Unusual/extreme midface spacing elongation – dysfunction & small group, strength unknown
Aspie/autistic characteristic faces – varying dysfunction & small group.

Top, back and sides of skull
Occipital – major: small group, major: pro-social
Melon back – large group, strength depends on angle. Further back, weaker; higher up, stronger.
Starchild sides – major: medium group

Note: For the characteristics of the opposite feature, e.g. narrow eye spacing, simply reverse “prosocial” to “antisocial” and “large group” to “small group”. Major and minor stay unchanged.

I didn’t attempt to rate Melon and Starchild as either pro- or anti-social. In the melon case, there is a will to good and order, and also a will to ambition. In the Starchild case, collaborative value/memory/personality weaving is coupled with a less aggressive ambition. These attributes can be either pro or anti social, depending on the context.

I can no longer ignore the areas of overlap. Both Melon and Neanderthal had large, wide-spaced eyes. Both Neanderthal and the other hominoids (and modern black Africans) had bulky Earth-adapted frames and large occipitals.

Thus we can say that there are melonhead black Africans and occipital Africans, and yet neither have Neanderthal DNA. Interesting implication – we can see similar basic spiritual motivations in Africans and white TT’s. The difference is in the brain volume and frontal facial characteristics. But the concrete simplicity and the small-tribe lostness of the TT and the African has the same root.

Onwards to the Edenic Multiple Intervention Theory:

1.1 Evolution of bipedal hominoids well adapted to Earth gravity and climate. Large bones, thick waists, powerful ape muscles. Note that 1.1 probably did not occur without intervention, especially in light of the compatibility implied by 1.2.

1.2 The first ensoulment. Alien Y-DNA spliced into hominoid mother egg. Sentience results. It is unclear at what point in the hominoid chain 1.2 occurred. But every human alive today and maybe Bigfoot has this.

2.1 Melonheads born – the gods descend. Humans with heavily alien characteristics, including massively oversize skulls, appear. The Nephilim? From a lower-gravity planet, and thus weaker muscles? Adapted to waterside life?

2.2 A weakened slave race is born in Africa, to serve the above Melonheads. This may have occurred in multiple locations and times, but Africa was the first template for the slave race. Fast breeding, vegetable eating spear chuckers designed to follow orders and worship Melon religious hierarchy. Monkey social genes, small bones and weak muscles.

3.1 Destruction of Melon civilization by catastrophe(s) and/or angry gods/aliens. Unclear whether 3.1 or 3.2 happened first.

3.2 Slaughter of the hominoids by Melon / slave alliance. Deliberate Melon design? Or runaway slave riot? Cain killing Abel?

Whoever or whatever has been gardening this planet, seems to return at key intervals, once certain developmental stages have been reached. One wonders whether we are approaching such a nexus, or whether we are perhaps expected to toodle along under our own steam for a millenia longer. Either way, the approaching solar minimum will not give this civilizational iteration nearly so much time.

But it is very interesting that certain seemingly very bad events were permitted to occur, and these seem to have been necessary sacrifices to achieve the population density and cosmopolitan ferment necessary for technological and civilizational progress. See Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment.

“These things must come, but woe to those by whom they come.”

EDIT:

For the more literal minded: The title could be rewritten to “The occiput is not SOLELY Neanderthal”. The white Neanderthal can still be considered the pinnacle of Earthly evolution, and that is what you are. No identity crisis intended.

To put it even more explicitly: Neanderthals are a subset of hominoids. Lloyd Pie draws a sharp distinction between robust hominoids and weakly Homo Sapiens Sapiens, who appears to be partially from a lower gravity planet with more abundant water and a milder climate. In other words, Eden.

EDIT2:

It is of course difficult to ignore our low-gravity neighbor in the same habitable band, that once enjoyed flowing water and an atmosphere, until some catastrophe rendered it a wasteland. Visions of tall aliens with conical heads…

As for where the Starchildren came from, the likely answer is: not this solar system. As the DNA sequencing so far indicates.

Also, forehead verticality/slant wasn’t mentioned above because it doesn’t really fit into the above axes. Pro ethical universals != pro social. Nor does it map neatly to large group / small group, at least in the extrovert / introvert sense. Best dealt with elsewhere. Ditto for noses.

Seth Roberts has been touting the impressive effects of percentile feedback on productivity. I concur. The problem is twofold:
1. What to measure?
2. How to adhere to measuring?

It is settled that we should track percentile improvement. The question is how.

Seth tracks time spent working on a key project. He tracks it with an R program that presents a nice graphical display.

There are some problems with this:
1. You have to be at the computer to input tracking data
2. Time spent working on main project is a poor proxy for overall life performance.

As I’ve been leveling up, I gradually found the purely strategic aspect of the leveling game was insufficiently motivating. I also needed daily self-competitive measurement at a tactical level.

At first I considered running three stopwatches on my Android phone – one for time spent being shitty, one for time spent being ok, and one for time spent being good. I decided that these should be relative ratings, with e.g. “ok” meaning equal to yesterday’s average. This would focus me on self-competition and continuous improvement, much like the bedtime hand koan did.

But my phone had no way to easily support three concurrent stopwatches. I considered ways to use just one stopwatch and track time increments on my hand. Then I realized I should just track “incidents” on my hand, and forget the stopwatch.

I had troubleshot away the problems that necessitated the hand koans described in previous posts. So I had some empty hand space. This is the tracking system, implemented on my left hand, as of this morning:

As you can see, I’m having a pretty good morning, relative to yesterday.

Note that no computation is necessary before results are displayed in a way the brain can understand. Either I have more hashmarks for “good”, and I am improving, or more hashmarks for “shitty”, and I am getting worse. As everyone knows by now, the more immediate the feedback, the better.

Meanwhile, on my right hand, I want to track the strategic level. I’ve identified the key step in leveling up as Tim Ferriss’ “deconstruction” step, of his DiSS system, as described in his book, “The 4-Hour Chef”.

I want leveling up to be a stressless process. So I put the koan “E4D” on my right hand, which stands for “Easy [level-number] Deconstruction”.

This reminds me to apply intelligence to solve my life problems. Doing so requires focused, relaxed learning, rather than cortisol/adrenaline bursts, which are an unsustainable growth model.

Whenever I complete a deconstruction step relevant to the targeted level, I make a hash mark. For example, this post represents one deconstruction hashmark.

I am not actually at level 4 right now. That will take a day or three longer. However I have completed all the deconstruction steps possible at level 3, so my focus has shifted to stabilizing level 4. I will not attempt to deconstruct the critical path to level 5 until I am actually at level 4. It’s important never to get ahead of oneself.

I will track performance on both these hand koans in my journal at the end of each day. Or, if I am not journaling, I will take a photo of both hands with my phone, which I can easily transfer to my journal later.

Failure to transfer tracking data to a medium that permits analysis of long term trends does not destroy the usefulness of this system. But I want to at least “save” my progress somewhere so I can go back and be proud of myself later, if I want to reconstruct the past. Given this inherent motivation, I doubt I will forget to record my daily performance in one way or another.

A brief refresher, and then some new points on power-leveling your life.

** How do we define life levels?

0 is too sick/dysfunctional to work or do anything much even personally productive
1 is some personal productivity, but not enough for any but the least intensive paid work
2 is ok ability for paid part time work
3 is good ability for part time work, ok-ish for full time.
4 is good ability for full time work

Levels 0-4 are pre-defined. Why? Because people below level 4 tend to be locked in a bipolar hope-despair cycle. They will thus make mountains of molehills, and award themselves undeserved levels constantly, if permitted to do so. Then they will despair because their life has not materially changed, despite “gaining levels”.

Furthermore, the spacing of these first four levels helps calibrate how far apart future levels should be. This also combats level inflation.

The purpose of a level is not to celebrate every epiphanic euphoric rush. Many of those simply fade away with no objective impact on long term performance. Therefore, a level can have subjective components, but it must also have objective components that are strong enough to stand alone.

Past level 4, people’s level markers will begin to diverge. At this point, we start measuring levels by “imaginative break”, which is inherently subjective.

What do I mean by “imaginative break”? Consider levels 0-4. If you have spent a year at level 0, you can no longer imagine life at level 1. Your neurology, your expectations, your habits, have all adjusted to level 0. When you achieve level 1, it is literally a whole new world. Much of what you were doing at level 0 no longer applies.

That is what I mean by an “imaginative break”. If the gap between future levels is not comparable to the gaps between levels 0-4, you are probably engaging in level inflation.

I don’t know exactly how these levels will play out. But I can say pretty confidently that if you are not earning $100k/yr by level 20, you are inflating your level.

** Deconstruct and chunkxecuteback your critical path to the next level

As a deepsock MT, I am ambitious and obsessively analytical. Thus at level 3, one of my primary sticking points is overanalysis. To combat these tendencies, I have been developing koan paradigms. Here is the latest iteration.

First, let’s review:

The concept of levels itself is intended to combat overanalysis. Focus is limited to just the critical path to just the next level. This massively reduces the scope of the information required.

Next, I tried to apply massive deconstruction to this narrow scope. But it turns out that my capacity for deconstruction is so extreme that, even with a narrowed scope, I can still burn all available time deconstructing. I mean this literally – two nights ago I pulled an all-nighter deconstructing a training video by transcribing it word for word.

Now, while I do eventually want to get that word for word level of deconstruction done on that particular category of training videos, it was not the highest priority for my immediate prep needs, and thus the all-nighter was an error.

Therefore I needed a new paradigm, to limit the magnitude of deconstruction within the narrow scope of focus permitted.

This forced me to consider the nature of skill acquisition, and whether it was materially different than execution. I decided that it was not.

This is my new model for leveling:

“Deconstruct and chunkxecuteback lvl 4 critical path.”

Expanded, that is:

“Deconstruct and chunked execute feedback the critical path to level 4.”

Expanded further, that is:

“Deconstruct ONLY enough to begin chunked execute feedback on the critical path to level 4.”

There are significant hidden implications to this:
1. Minimal, just-in-time information
2. Learning is primarily doing
3. Chunk scope for 80/20 improvement & resource limitations
4. Remove all barriers to immediate, lossless feedback and feedback integration

Essentially, this is an application of the leveling model to skills. In an RPG, your character has an overall level, and levels for various skills. Skill levels are gained by doing the skill.

When you are at life level 3, you can only work on gaining level 4.
Likewise, when you are at x subskill level 1, you can only work on gaining x subskill level 2.

Thus, limit your deconstruction to the scope necessary to kickstart the chunkxecuteback loop to the next subskill level.

As always, I recommend Tim Ferriss’ book, “The 4-Hour Chef,” which is about learning. I will be reading the full text shortly; I’ve already seen talks and outline notes from it.

Naturally, there is a hand koan for this. My right hand now reads “DC4″, with hashmarks underneath for the day’s strategic advances towards lvl 4. The model contained in this post represents one hash mark.

Ah, whistleblowers. I’m 0 for 1 so far, due to the Sal Conte scandal. Let’s see if I can apply the lessons learned to today’s exercise, John Snowden.

Tex, the Daily Bell, and Apocalypse Cometh have proclaimed that Snowden is a psyops plant. Somehow, some faction of the government wanted him to release this information, and set him up for it.

They say that his PR is too smooth, that he is too calm, that he was coached, that he was provided the information and handled to release it, or else in on the whole thing.

Less sophisticated intelligences one may meet in daily life consider him a traitor, scared, a coward, someone in need of killing, an enemy of the USA.

I am going to contradict them all, and say that Snowden is an honest Thal, who is exactly who he says he is, and knows what he knows exactly how he says he knows it, and has gone public for exactly the reasons he says he has.

My error of judgment in the Conte case stemmed from two sources:
1. Not understanding that it is difficult or impossible to distinguish between legitimate nervousness tells and deception tells. If the waters are roiled, it’s hard to know whether a fish or a turtle lurks beneath.
2. Trying to read socket depth without a profile shot, and video lens fisheye.

Fortunately, in this case we can avoid both sources of error. Snowden is quite calm, and only flashes a few significant microtells during his interview. Supporting this, we have some interesting and pretty clean anthropometric and biographical truthfulness tells. Note that biographical honesty tells were completely absent in the Conte case. Note also the massive immediate government reaction to Snowden’s revelations, versus total silence for Conte’s.

Check the video:

The bio is delivered cleanly, without eyebrow raises indicating liar’s surprise, wide eyes indicating liar’s fear, or lip curl indicating liar’s contempt.

We see essentially identical delivery between giving his name and age and giving his work history, except he accesses more for details. The delivery for the most recent job title requires no accessing; previous titles in the middle require deep accessing.

Note that at 1:30 and throughout, you can see the back of his head in the mirror, and he has a major projection out of the back of his skull. This is somewhat exaggerated due to the angle and hair, but is nevertheless a major indicator of occipital honesty compulsion.

Let’s take a look at his other profile pics. Here’s the first one:

This one shows an occipital bulge as well. However, angles play major tricks, and none of these angles are perfect. So I’m not able to determine whether his occipital bulge is above or below the eyeline. Above would be fauxcippital, verging into MT territory. Fully below the eyeline would be deep Thal, well into dysfunctional territory.

I suspect he is probably at the eyeline or slightly above it. Two more profile pics:

As you can see, the last “profile” pic is from such a forward angle it presents a completely different curvature. The sunset pic shows a decent lowslung bulge, although we can’t tell how much his head is turning.

So he has some occipital mass, for sure. And we’ll see later in his bio how that impacted his personality. He’s probably in the same category as Tim Ferriss, Neal Strauss and Ramit Sethi on occipital expression. Here’s a vid for comparison. And yes, FYI I consider all three of those to be quite honest, in the ingenopathic sense.

Back to the Snowden video:

Big nod on “when you see everything”, 1:35. The only tells coming through are congruent and calm.

Downward looks, swallow at “more you’re ignored, more you’re told it’s not a problem.” 1:59 narrowing eyes.

Everything calm about description of NSA activity until “collects them, analyzes them and it STORES them” – eyebrow raise, particular objection to this.

Calm through describing his ability to wiretap anyone, eyebrows only lift on “even the president” which he then qualifies “if I had a personal email”. Lips pressed together in anger after this.

In general, muted, calm body language. Sal Conte managed to hide deception tells behind faux Italian animation, scenery chewing. I’m not calibrated to Italians, but this guy is standard American nerd; that I speak. Well, a very polished, 300k/yr nerd.

Talking at 4:40 about general political views and publicly known treatment of whistleblowers – good baseline opportunity, same gestures with shoulders and eyes as when he’s talking about his own unverifiable info.

7:00 moral speechifying, learned not to evaluate this from Conte. Can be sincere morals even with a false backstory. But it’s obviously sincere morals.

Contempt half-smile flash at mention that #1 enemy of United States is China – he doesn’t agree and proceeds to refute this. 8:21

“The questioning of the choice of Hong Kong” similar gesture group as flashed before when talking about how CIA could come after him, and also seen at least once before.

More speechifying to ignore, except as baselining.

9:50 key point – asked whether he could’ve harmed the US if wanted to. micro flashes of honesty – briefly furrowed brow and quick eye flash up left, with head toss – a micro flash meaning “roll eyes, of course, head toss dismissal”. goes on to describe how badly he could’ve hurt US intelligence operations if he wanted to. This is a key indicator, it can’t be faked. And note this was ASKED by the interviewer, so it is a spontaneously generated, unrehearsed microexpression.

“as we do” 10:11 unconfident gesture cluster, with single shoulder shrug and large eye raise – admitting something kinda shady about US espionage practice. Good baseline for lying there.

More speechifying 11:10. Obviously sincere. After a vehement bit, flashes a pain expression just before the video cuts out at “turnkey tyranny”.

Ok, that’s enough video analysis. We could go back through it again with a fine tooth comb, but there’s no need.

We can see that he’s sincere in his convictions, which rules out the traitor and the plant hypotheses. That just leaves patsy.

But if you engage his text, he says that he came by the info simply from his role as a system administrator, seeing everything by the necessity of his role, and how that bypassed the usual safeguards against someone getting too complete of a picture. Someone has to run the network, even if the network is classified. That casts doubt on the idea that he could’ve been handled – he says he was getting the info firsthand, and says it in a convincingly honest way.

We’re not done yet. Let’s finish the anthropometric and biographical picture. To review: we’ve got some occipital bulge of indeterminate angle, an honest and clear body language transcript, independent corroboration in the panicked government response and cascading scandal generated, which is now even threatening Obama’s position. Next let’s take a look at his frontal pics, and then we’ll dig into his bio.

Here’s the best pic available for socket depth:

I’d call this moderate socket depth. By itself, maybe not enough to make a call. But combined with an occipital, very likely that any deception would be accompanied by major distress tells. Which of course we didn’t see. Contrast that with Sal Conte’s flush eyeballs.

As we can see from frontal pics, there is definitely some brow overhang:

v

But note that strong chin. Tim Ferriss has the same thing. This is a social functionality and aggressiveness indicator. It helps balance the occipital and socket depth, and explains why he’s making 200 or 300k /yr, whichever was the correct number.

Note also the long, narrow face – another honesty and logicalizing indicator. And indeed we see someone quite calm, rational, and intelligent. I liken those with the longface and socket depth to Mr. Spock, and we see that here in the unbelievable calmness under pressure he exhibits.

He’s also good looking, with a goodly amount of testosterone – more functionality indicators to compensate for his Thal traits. And lastly, a high vertical forehead suggests processing emphasis on ethical universals, which we certainly see in his rhetoric and decision to sacrifice everything for the greater good.

Ok, now let’s look at the bio. Based on the reading above, we should expect to find a period of early dysfunction and a consistent pattern of introversion, ingenopathy and intellectual activity. Do we see it?

* Biography

“I really am a nice guy,” Snowden wrote on his profile page. “You see, I act arrogant and cruel because I was not hugged enough as a child, and because the public education system turned it’s [sic] wretched, spiked back on me.”

source

Hm, arrogant and cruel doesn’t sound too right. But the dysfunction episode adds up. Maybe he had a chip on his shoulder. That’s common for those who lean TMish. And indeed he did drop out. The only way he got to his current wealthy status was by getting a job as a SECURITY GUARD at the NSA. Security guarding is perfect introvert work. From there he rose on his introvert merits, in technical roles where objective skills were important. And he had the necessary social graces to be functional, outside a Cro Mag heavy environment like high school.

In the earlier postings as an 18-year-old, Snowden wrote on his profile that he liked online role-playing games, or RPG. “I always wanted to write RPG campaigns with my spare time, but I’ll get about three missions in and scrap the world for my next, better, powergamin’ build.”
source

These two quotes together sound sort of TM’ish. Moderate socket depth, big occipital. Let’s keep going.

Snowden said he liked playing the popular fighting video game Tekken. He was so skilled that he attracted a gathering of fans at the 2002 Anime USA convention, a co-worker wrote on another part of the site. “He tends to spontaneously be a ray of sunshine and inspiration. He’s a great listener, and he’s eager to help people improve themselves.”

source

OK, anime, videogaming. Charismatic but introverted nerd, ingenopathy – it’s starting to show. Keep going.

He was an avid gamer. Back in 2003, when Snowden would have been 19, he offered a review of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne. “Graphically, it’s par for the course,” wrote TheTrueHOOHA. “The storytelling really saves this game. The plot, while very noir and angsty, is exciting with rock-solid pacing. I finished the game in one sitting.”

source

Man loves a good hero story. I like the Max Payne story myself. And that’s some serious focus.

In 2008, TheTrueHOOHA started a thread in Ars forums in which he announced he “had… a vision.” HOOHA continued to give himself a new gamer name:

I woke this morning with a new name. I had had a vision. A dream vision. A vision righteous and true. Before me I saw Gamers, Gamers shrouded in the glory of their true names…

Step forth, and assume your name in the pantheon. It’s always been there, your avatar’s true name. It slips through your subconscious, reveals itself under your posts, and flashed visibly in that moment of unrestrained spite; in the indulgent teabag. You’ve felt it, known it, recognized it.

Now realize it.
I woke this morning with a new name. That name is Wolfking.

Wolfking Awesomefox.

Visions of grandiosity are MT, but those tend to be deadly serious. This is whimsical and has a more TM flavor.

* Too polished? Or just obsessed?

I’ve saved the “too polished” objection for last, because it was raised by the smartest people – Tex Arcane and Bill Powell of Apocalypse Cometh.

Yes, he’s polished. But he’s seen what happens to whistleblowers who AREN’T polished.

This is not a rush job. He’s sitting on the data indefinitely, as system administrator. In fact, the whole project was delayed YEARS by the election of Obama, which he hoped would change things. So he has had time and overtime to think through.

And in the meantime, he’s seen what’s been happening to whistleblowers such as Susan Lindauer (check out her Wikipedia page for what the CIA PREFERS to happen to whistleblowers), Bradley Manning, Julian Assange etc. These people get bent over and fucked hard. He knows this. You better believe he is coming with his A-game. This is the performance of his life, literally.

You don’t make 200-300k/yr in government intelligence agency without being able to communicate. And since he is a member of the intelligence community, so he should at least understand the existence of PR and read some books on media management. That is his only hope of survival, not only for himself, but potentially for protecting his loved ones.

You better believe someone with a big occipital will work overtime protecting loved ones. That is about the only motivation they understand.

And where is the evidence that he has been cogitating on this subject for years? Ars Technica provides:

He also worried about corporations and government actions that could make society less free. In 2010, Snowden responded to a post about a system built by Cisco, meant for government wiretappers, that was found unsafe. He wrote:

It really concerns me how little this sort of corporate behavior bothers those outside of technology circles. Society really seems to have developed an unquestioning obedience towards spooky types.

I wonder, how well would envelopes that became transparent under magical federal candlelight have sold in 1750? 1800? 1850? 1900? 1950? Did we get to where we are today via a slippery slope that was entirely within our control to stop, or was it an relatively instantaneous sea change that sneaked in undetected because of pervasive government secrecy?

And he was worrying about covering his tracks all the way back in 2003:

Alright, I’m familiar with the layman’s version of how remote proxies can be used to make yourself more anonymous. However, while I have a fairly deep understanding of networking, I’ve got some serious holes that need to be filled (without pr0n references) regarding how the different protocols come into play with each other ESPECIALLY when you’ve got a slightly masked IP address.

Fellow Arsians, further my education!

Question 1: Is it possible to reroute -all- traffic through a remote proxy? By all, I mean traffic such as SMTP as opposed to the standard HTTP/FTP/SSH/Socks. How could you go about doing this (Is special software required)?

…

That’s about it for now… Ultimately, my goal is to further my own understanding of what would be logged at any given point during transmission. I wouldn’t want God himself to know where I’ve been, you know?

Collective thanks,
-HOOHA

So what we’re seeing is the masterplan of a master Thal, with tinges of Melon here and there.

Gentlemen, stop doubting. Just sit back and enjoy the Neanderthal fireworks. And we wonder why the Melons tried to kill us off…

Family resemblance? Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden

UPDATE

Snowden was absolutely right to pick Hong Kong. The court case will drag on for years while he enjoys exile in the digital capital of the world:

“Hong Kong is one of the safest places in the world, certainly the safest major world city. We’re gun free, and there were only 27 murders last year (in a city of 7.4 million), most of them organized crime hits and domestic violence. Murders are so remarkable that they remain in the headlines for weeks. In Hong Kong, the idea that someone might shoot a fugitive spook, John leCarre-style, with a high powered rifle through a hotel room window, or grab him on the street, toss him in a van and spirit him off to the airport for rendition–well, such things are always possible but realistically highly unlikely. We’re a city of islands and peninsulas, surrounded by water, with tightly controlled borders, and the highest ratio of police to citizens in the world.”

“Legal aid. Partly because it is the first haven for mainland Chinese dissidents, and partly because the local democracy movement here uses the courts aggressively for judicial review, to test and challenge government’s actions and policies, Hong Kong has an unusually large cohort of superb and distinguished lawyers specializing in Human Rights and Civil Rights law. Snowden need not worry about his defence; most of these lawyers will be salivating to take on such an important high profile case, pro bono. My guess is that not only has he found his legal advisor, but that he’s staying with him, or her, right now.”

Holy shit, I just went from level 4.0 to 4.5 with a single change: polyphasic naps. Not only did it give me a half level as soon as implemented, it also will permanently increase my speed of leveling, and largely replaces my need for nootropics. Plus it feels much better, results in greater alertness and productivity and mood.

Background:
Over the years I’ve experimented with polyphasic sleep, with very bad results. My health wasn’t sufficient to support good sleep anyway. Attempts at polyphasic adaptation resulted in weeks of lost productivity.

Now my health is much better. I have a regular, predictable work schedule. My main problem was that the beginning of my new test prep job is frontloaded with prep work. This resulted in me having to pull two all nighters in a week recently. I managed it, but there were inevitable productivity lulls on off days, lowered quality of life, reduced health. In sum, an all nighter could put me down to a high level 3 temporarily, something I don’t want.

I started working on this problem from various angles. I continue to improve my prep efficiency by targeting effectiveness first, efficiency second. I regimented my entire routine with a set of org-mode checklists: morning, lunch, work leaving, evening, cooking yogurt, and test prep. I focused my hand koans on measuring performance. I also ordered more supplements to improve overall health level.

Part of the problem was time waste in the evenings due to fatigue and inability to smoke in my apartment, which led to sessions of smoking outside watching videos while doing no work. Also, my uncomfortable apartment desk made long work sessions there difficult, tiring, and lowered adherence.

Improved prep methods and checklists helped, but it still came down to going to bed on time, and being faded in the evening made that difficult. Also, the midafternoon lull was shifting my test prep work into the evening, thereby shifting bedtime later. This was a biological problem. When you fadeout, there’s not much willpower can do. It’s like swimming against the current.

Quite by accident, I arrived at the solution. I decided that if I was going to fadeout immediately upon arriving home at 6:30 – 7pm, I would simply schedule a 20 minute vampire nap then. I did so and voila, the evening fadeout disappeared. I marveled as I sped through my evening routine.

The next day I applied this same method to my afternoon fadeout. Rather than stay in the office through lunch, I walked home and took another 20 minute nap. Voila, the semi-productive afternoon internet wanderings were replaced with speedy focused regimen execution. (Of course, this is only possible if you live close to work. As always, logistics is paramount.)

The next day, despite my improvements, an avalanch of prep worked forced me to study past 12am. I was accomplishing more, but doing it to a higher quality – work expanding to fill the available time. So I decided to try napping through the all nighter. Result – one nap around 12ish, worked fast, in bed by 2:30. Woke 8am next day, not fatigued, continued to adhere to regimen.

I estimate that I can drop from 9 hours sleep needed to 6 hours simply by spacing three 20 minute naps through the day. But the advantages are greater than a 2 hour gain would suggest. The brief naps constitute mini REM sessions that allow for more iterations of intuition and memory consolidation. In terms of r-mode processing, I am tripling the numer of days I can live. This results in a major insight and sharpness boost, and a major increase in productivity bandwidth, beyond what linear extrapolation would suggest. Since insight is usually the limiting factor for leveling speed, this is very important.

As you can tell from the cognitive gains described above, napping mostly replaces my need for nootrophics. I don’t want to take any long-acting stimulant that would reduce my napping quality. Many nootropics would do just that. Cigarettes are great for this, in that the high doesn’t interfere with REM sleep immediately afterwards, and probably enhances it.

Note that I needed to be a bit sleep deprived, rushed, and have a very regular schedule to pull this off. Polyphasic napping requires Circadian stability and existing sleep debt for adaptation.

I also needed to be able to calm and clear my mind completely when getting into bed. The koans help do this. I particularly like a recent edit – “3 seconds breath” has now become “3 seconds smoke”, evoking the calming sensation of a long cigarette drag all the time. But also, Cyborganize and thorough checklists allow me to complete “download” everything into my trusted system and just fall asleep. If anything uncaptured pops up, I simply use my phone to email it to myself and then go back to sleep.

How do I wake up from naps? There’s always a moment of dicey suckage when the alarm goes off, but I’ve found an excellent method that uses the addictive smartphone for productivity jiu-jitsu. When the phone’s alarm first goes off, I’m not allowed to touch it until my eyes are open. I will half-sleep through the alarm as it gradually wakes me up to coherence. Then my next action is to open the phone, which has its screen set to maximum brightness, and start reading my email.

People LOVE reading email. It’s like crack. So of course the more tired I am, the more willing I am to do it. Meanwhile, the bright blue light from the screen is pouring into my wide open retinas in the dark room, pumping “daytime” Zeitgeibers into my sleep brain. After half an email or so, I’ve gone from groggy meth addict to German efficiency expert, and am zooming out the door.

Next let’s talk napping mechanics. The Polyphasic Society is the best site on the web for polyphasic sleep. Here’s their napping mechanics – I suggest you start there. Since I am not fully polyphasic, I can’t recommend going full. I would say if you try a schedule, go for Dual Core. But I would get comfortable with 20 minute napping first, and ease into it. A failed adaptation attempt is a massive toilet flush of productivity, but napping more is a risk-free gain.

Anyway, here are my rules of napping:
1. Minimum 3 hours between naps.
2. Naps can be between 15-26 minutes long. I’d keep it to 20 to avoid oversleep. If you go too long, you’ll wake up tired and stay that way, which sucks.
3. Nap at Circadian lows

In general, having a nice stable Circadian with a large amplitude is key to good sleep. Therefore you want lots of sunshine exposure and consistent waking / sleeping times. I get the sunshine by smoking outside in the heat, standing directly in the sunlight, looking at the sky. You don’t have to smoke, or you can smoke an e-cigarette with just water vapor, but do stand outside. Sunlight on naked skin and pinpoint irises is how you’re supposed to do it. Otherwise your body thinks it’s time to hibernate, Mr. Neanderthal.

Ok, here’s a recommended book to flesh out your background knowledge. It’s an affiliate link for copy paste convenience, but my account is long defunct (due to an Illinois shipping address):
Chronotherapy: Resetting Your Inner Clock to Boost Mood, Alertness, and Quality Sleep
Basic science and prescriptions. Solid.

That and the Polyphasic Society website should be enough, unless you have really persistent insomnia of some form. Barring that, I’d recommend a paleo book and The 4 Hour Body for further insights into sleep hacking. Paleo for diet, 4 Hour Body for supplements and hacks.

Don’t let me catch you not napping.

UPDATE:
Since apparently I’m a moron when it comes to setting phone alarms, some additional rules:
1. Upon awakening, set the alarm forward 3 hours. This will signal your next nap time.
2. When setting your alarm for a nap, test the alarm by setting it one minute ahead. This will fix AM/PM problems and silent ringer problems.
3. Then set the phone for 20 minutes ahead and go to sleep.

3 months before the oar and I’m back as promised, loaded down with the plunder of foreign lands. A new Viking, hardened by sea salt, braced by cod liver oil.

I am working through the Neanderhall applicant backlog. Lots of interesting and well-suited people.

Shadowromeo, your email address no longer works, to my disappointment. If you’re reading this, please get in touch.

I’ll do as many as I can per day. It may take a week to get through them all, at most, but I’ve finished a good chunk of recent applicants today.

It would probably not be in my interest to mention that emailing again will bump you to the top of the queue.

Long live the original humans.
Koanic

I have defended my proof of the existence of the supernatural for some time now, and am satisfied with its strength. However, I grow tired of batting away the cogitations of those unable to syllogize their way out of a Euthyphran dilemma. Therefore, I have converted the proof into a more accessible, dialogue form.

Cartesian: I doubt all. Yet doubting, one fact remains: Cogito ergo sum. For if I did not exist, then I could not be deceived.

Hippie: The mind is simply a manifestation of physical properties. My impressions are neural states. Qualia are an interpretation of the real world, but are themselves merely physical.

Cartesian: Hold, Hippie. Physical world? What ingenuous babble is this? I doubt it exists. You are a credulous fool, to speak of it with such certainty.

Kantesian: Indeed. The physical may merely be an illusion. How do we define the physical? Ask any physicist. It is made of atoms, quarks and whatnot. Relativistic space, wave particles, and whatever. Has anyone experienced such? No.

Hippie: We do not experience the atom qua atom; the ding an sich. Of course! But it is the substrate of our qualia. If we subdivide consciousness sufficiently, we arrive at neurons, then atoms, electrons jumping synapses, and so on. Turtles all the way down. You cannot see the electrons in consciousness for the same reason you cannot see the scales on a butterfly’s wing.

Kantesian: Dimwit. Have you already forgotten the definition of consciousness? Or did you never define it at all? Here is the definition: Consciousness is that which I am aware of, that which I experience. And nothing more.

No doubt, Hippie, you would like to define consciousness as "the process by which the mind interprets reality" – or somesuch. A tautological definition, pandering to your cause: Next you will tell us the mind is the physical brain, and voila, you win. Why not simply say it outright in the definition: "Consciousness is a physical process, and nothing more."

Hippie: Whatever, man. Fine, consciousness is what you experience, and nothing more. Doesn’t change a thing.

Kantesian: Certainly it does. Subdivide your consciousness. Do you find an eyeblink awareness of a synapse? No. Therefore consciousness contains no synapsi.

Hippie: Well that’s just because I don’t have the processing power to subdivide it sufficiently, man. A neuron can’t be aware of itself.

Kantesian: One could say the same for a Hippie, yet this changes nothing. If you’re not aware of it, it’s not in your consciousness. See the definition. Therefore, no synapsi in consciousness.

Hippie: That’s retarded. Everyone knows that it takes a brain to be conscious. I have a brain. That’s where my consciousness is. It’s science.

Kantesian: You pile of ignorant horse crap, that is neither epistemology nor philosophy. Go watch your daytime television, and trouble yourself no more with matters beyond your ken.

(Aside) He would only lose himself in this maze, if he was ever unlucky enough to find its entrance.

Kantesian: Now that the fool has departed, let us review our knowns:
1. Consciousness is what I experience, and not what I don’t experience.
2. I find no "matter" within my experience.
3. From 1 & 2, if I don’t find it, it isn’t there.
4. Thus consciousness is not material.

Sophist: Your proof follows, granted. But it is a tautology.

Kantesian: No, you idiot. The ontological argument is a tautology, because existence is implicit within the definition of an omnimax God. Existence is not implicit within the definition of consciousness as that which I experience, and nothing more. The knowledge that I experience is available only a posteriori. My proof of the supernatural fails if written in a book that no one reads, or if stored in an AI bereft of spirit. Only when comprehended by a conscious subject does it hold.

Sophist: [bla bla bla... it's still a tautology]

Kantesian: Fuck off.

Engineer: You’ve forgotten operator error.

Kantesian: I haven’t mentioned it, true. So?

Engineer: Humans are fallible. Your proof is complex. It’s possible you made a logical error somewhere. Therefore you haven’t proved anything.

Kantesian: Do you believe in math?

Engineer: Well, yes.

Kantesian: Then believe in my proof. Assign it the same level of confidence you give to complex geometric proofs you haven’t personally verified. Granting of course that mine has not yet received the acceptance of the academic community, and thus remains controversial to those unqualified to follow it themselves. Go your way, and peace to you.

Serpent: Hail, my fine fellow.

(Aside) Sssso, a classicist would bring those unfashionable colors, black and white, into my postmodern nest. How gauche. Let us hypnotize him, and then devour him sssslowly.

Kantesian: Finally, someone intelligent AND qualified. What say you?

Serpent: A fine effort, fine indeed. Let us explore this interesting space.

Kantesian: Gladly.

Serpent: [bla bla bla ]… and thus we cannot be certain that any "I" exists. And failing that, we must doubt the appended "o"’s in cogito ergo sum.

Kantesian: Clever but irrelevant. Qualia, erg sum. That is sufficient for my purpose.

(Aside) which is to prove the existence of the supernatural. A gauche goal indeed, against which every blackheart will rebel.

Serpent: Ah, well, perhaps. In any case, we are making progress, finding sssome common ground.

Next, I must object [bla bla bla bla, something somehow invoking the possibility of illogic, e.g.:

And thus, as flawed and limited observers, it may be possible that we are deceived by the strictures language itself, and thus your proof does not hold, being merely a linguistic artifact, which need not correspond to reality.]

Kantesian: Indeed.

[here follows much wriggling and writhing, as Kantesian demands that Serpent do one of two things:
1. Grant that the proof holds, given language, or
2. Identify a specific logical error

At some point Serpents agrees to forego 2 and entertain 1 "for the sake of argument".]

Kantesian: Wonderful. So my proof holds, but does not necessarily correspond with reality, for x reason, x being irrelevant.

We may restate thus: Something which is logically necessary may not be actually true. Or, A must be A, but is not actually A. Thus, in some way, for some reason, in some specific qualified condition, in a certain possible scenario, with whateverthefuck other qualifications, we reach the statement: A!=A.

Let us examine this scenario/possibility/substrate/ding-an-sich/whatever. A!=A. Of course, if this statement is true, then it itself does not hold. Therefore, (A!=A)=(A=A). Logic restored. Or perhaps you are just babbling incoherency.

[A battle of regression here ensues, with many drawn and redrawn brackets. We mercifully elide.]

Serpent: You are unreasonable, impolite, maleducated, and a boor. I depart to my laurels, my kin, and my livestock.

Kantesian: Yes, leave. I have your rattle on my doornail.

And now, let us review our knowns one last time:

1. Consciousness is what I am aware of, and isn’t what I’m not aware of.
2. Consciousness certainly actually exists.
3. I’m not aware of matter.
4. Consciousness is not matter.
5. That which actually exists, but is not matter, we must call supernatural. A real incorporeal entity with personal characteristics is the quintessence of "supernatural".
6. Just as we can be certain that something (Descartes’ "I") exists, we can also be sure that the "supernatural" exists.
7. Materialism is therefore epistemological illiteracy.

QED.

Perplexed: I didn’t follow all that. You seemed quite rude for no reason. Do you really believe that we don’t have physical brains?

Kantesian: I was rude because the greatest evils of the last 200+ years stem from Materialism. Every corpse in Communism’s pile, every body heaped on the WWI-WWII pyre of European Christendom, cries out for retribution against the snaketongued philosophers who lead the West astray. Hippie or hackademic, they must all be intellectually eviscerated.

Of course we have physical brains and physical bodies. Of course our synapsi correspond exactly with our experience of consciousness. We are amphibians, half spirit, half flesh. By supernatural means, God knit body and soul together. We are mud made in His image. Some golden continuous strand, stronger than steel cables, subtler than spider silk, binds us to fleshly prisons – for a time. Like the jaunty protagonist of a Clockwork Orange, we are strapped, eyeballs prised wide, into our seat on Theatre Earth – bound to suffer every pleasure and terror on the screen.

That is, until the brain halts with death. Then the strand rebounds like a severed suspension cable, and the spirit, so closely bound to this material world, hurtles off to Judgment and Void.

You and I are quite genetically similar. Same green eyes, pale skin, deep eye sockets.

If you test your DNA on 23andme, you will find you are roughly 90th percentile Neanderthal DNA or higher.

Neanderthal genes are being heavily selected against since the advent of agriculture. The prevalence of the occipital bun, a key Neanderthal morphological trait, has declined drastically over the course of modern European anthropological history.

The Neanderthals were Ice Age hunters and ill-adapted to an agricultural grain-based diet. You would be well advised to test for 1 week the elimination of inflammatory agents such as refined sugar and wheat.

I have personally observed psychological correlates to deep eye sockets. Namely
1. Honesty, directness, truth compulsion, logic
2. Increased attention span
3. Night owl
4. Obsessive internal monologue
5. Ingenopathic social dysfunction – difficulty socializing with strangers, making small talk, susceptibility to depression, internalization of negative social feedback, especially from close relationships
6. Surface emotional toughness and disassociation
7. Courage stemming from 6, e.g. physical daring, social boldness if not crippled by 5.

Facial morphology develops from the same embryonic stem cells that become the frontal cortex – the “neural crest”. Therefore the face conveys general information about the seat of personality. Neanderthals had exaggerated socket depth, and were small tribe hominids. Neanderthal tribes were much smaller than Homo Sapiens tribes. This suggests that the deep eye socket trait is a marker of adaptation to a small tribe environment, and that people with this trait will have difficulty navigating more fluid, larger social contexts. They will prefer a few stable long-term bonds over shifting alliances and a large, wide, loose social network. E.g., the characteristic introvert who becomes depressed after losing his close circle of friends due to a move, versus the characteristic extrovert who thrives on going out to the bars in a new city and meeting lots of new people.

Of course both introvert and extrovert can become depressed due to a move; this is just one illustration of a difference in processing style. The difference becomes plain over any extended period of observation. Most people fit in the middle, somewhat/sometimes extroverted and somewhat/sometimes introverted. However those on the extremes exhibit a marked bias in one direction. The definition of an introvert need not include handicapped social skills if the general trend of preference/need for small tribe vs large tribe style interaction holds.

The girlfriend visited, so I watched some movies.

Man of Steel 2013 was good. Lot of paralells to Thal alienation. Not too many cheeseball moments – at least, not enough to ruin things. The initial alienation sequence and family background are believable. I loved that. The classroom freakout sequence and bullying are what every single Thal kid goes through growing up.

This is the first Superman whose heroic reserve and character I actually appreciate. His backstory is better done than the new Batman, although the new Batman’s action and villains are generally better (not counting the annoying 3rd installment).

Superman’s acting is believable because Henry Cavill actually has deep eye sockets. He understands the man he’s portraying; they are the same. He has the high-forehead nobility of a Superman dedicated to ethical universals; perhaps even the occipital bulge for the initial aimless ambivalence; I can’t tell. But you can definitely see the socket depth in this profile shot.

An appreciably old Spartan Krypton. Its collapse doesn’t make sense – population collapse and resource exhaustion due to geographic stasis. But call it dramatic license. Can’t very well mention race mixing on the silver screen.

General Zartan vacillated between cheese and righteous MT fury. The Russian warrioress was enjoyable. Some silly CGI, but not too bad.

Here’s how I watched it:

• Go to Primewire.ag
• Find a working link.
  • For Veehd links, register on the site, login. Then you can watch without downloading the adware plugin.
  • Otherwise, the DaClips link works as of writing.

Next up, I’ll watch World War Z.

Don’t watch Iron Man 3. The feminazis and catamites finally managed to glom onto the franchise’s success and castrate the hero. It’s more Home Alone 5 than Iron Man 1. We go full circle from grit, sand and genocidal warlords to fake Cherokee Bin Laden and pacifist unilateral disarmament. Tony Stark blows up his suits because they make his girlfriend feeeeel bad. And she shows him up in physical combat. It is a wish fulfillment fantasy for the feminine imperative: neutering and housetraining the captured alpha. Downey Jr. is a meloney faggot for going along.

“I’ll always be Iron Man.” No you won’t. Without your suit you’re just a helpless fleshy target. An idiotic inversion of the message of the franchise. Empowering self talk does not stop bullets, dipshit.

He goes from PTSD over fear of an alien return, to blowing up every suit he has so his girlfriend can approve of his emotional progress. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck you.

The only decent part of the movie is Downey’s adept melon co-opting of the little boy into servant role. Melon skills in action.

My diet:
1. White rice
2. Whiteleg shrimp, microwaved, drink the broth
3. Water

Supplements:
1. UDCA 1.5g/d (unnecessary unless liver damage)
2. Source Naturals Daily Essential Enzymes (specific to me)
3. Colostrum powder
4. Andro-Plus testosterone cream
5. Cigarettes
6. Blue Ice Fermented Cod Liver Oil / Butter Oil Blend – crucial for everyone. Take in the morning. Low initial dose.

Readings on the true Sparta.

Below are the wrist koan clusters I described in my video.