I've never had a computer problem I couldn't solve with googling. I'm convinced I could be an IT person just with the power of Google.

— Luke Nogueira ☭ 🇵🇹 🇨🇷 (@orphanboy_emoji) January 16, 2019

Yes, you could probably be a support person. A level one or two support person. Not beyond that. Even when I was just doing support, I often solved problems that whole teams of people had been working on for days because I had lots of background knowledge and experience and they didn’t have a single clue even what to search for or what was relevant. Being a level one or two support person is all that most people are familiar with IT-wise and so they, as this person does, think that’s all the IT staff there is.

This person also reminds me of the people who think they because they can, for instance, click “next, next, next” on a SQL install on their personal computer that it makes them experts on SQL optimization and design, or that because they know what an IP address is (vaguely) that they are network architects and designers. I can tell you these people are so extremely and ridiculously incompetent in these areas that they don’t even know how incompetent they are and often their “solutions” are so terrible that it’s all I can do to avoid laughing out loud when I am forced to discuss with them.

So, yeah, a person like this can probably do a google search for “how do I fix my Dell printer” and get the right answer, much of the time. But I can also tell you if they Google “how do I configure BGP multi-site failover” that what they get is going to be 80% wrong, and/or inapplicable to their situation, and that furthermore this person would not understand 90% of what they do find if not more. And if they tried to set this up, it’d fail and fail so hard it’d be utterly laughable (I’ve seen this in person). By the way, this is something I can and have set up in less than an hour in the real world because I know what I am doing and have spent many, many, many hours studying this and related topics.

Another case of not knowing what they don’t know. In a way, I like that these people exist because I spend a whole lot of time and get paid a whole lot for cleaning up their messes and fixing the consequences of their enormous and easily-preventable mistakes.

#EatLancet recommend we eat only 7 grams of red meat per day. Here it is, 7 grams of beef mince on a plate. Are these people stupid! #Yes2Meat pic.twitter.com/PaAVlVYilq

— ActivatedNutJob (@ActivatedNutJob) January 17, 2019

That EAT Lancet report seems to be pure corporate propaganda from what I can tell, in the guise of helping with climate change (haven’t read it all, will later).

I could not meet any of my fitness goals eating 7 or 14 grams of meat a day. In fact, I’d become gravely unhealthy and probably be unable to continue.

Here's what the global bureaucrats want you to eat (from The Guardian)

A feast of sugar, seed oils, and grains.

Guaranteed to make you weak and depressed with a low sex drive.#Yes2Meat pic.twitter.com/YX4kHoW6na

— P. D. Mangan 🇺🇸 (@Mangan150) January 17, 2019

Fuck that noise. I’d be weak and starving on that diet. Which, I guess, is part of the point. I will continue to eat meat if I have to raise the chickens or whatever else myself. I’d rather be fit than whatever the hell that corporate malarkey is.

I’ve noticed that I’ve gotten mentally sharper since I’ve been working out. It’s quite apparent. Didn’t realize how much that mattered. Won’t make that mistake again.

Lately, I’ve been thinking of writing a book. Previously, it was going to be about how to learn quickly and with accuracy, and about how to find valid information and then how to use it. The idea first gestated when one of my colleagues at work who was quite intelligent herself asked how I learned things so quickly, after she watched me go from almost no knowledge to near-expert on something in about a week. I told her part of it was just that I was pretty intelligent by accident of birth but another part is that I’d taught myself over the years how to learn effectively. This book, then, is to be for a general audience, not intended for academia but rather for people who recognize that one can improve one’s abilities in this area (I certainly have, so I know others can, too).

But after the past few months working out and realizing that it’s caused me to level up cognitively a great deal, I don’t think just writing about how to sift through the vast piles of information our society throws at us is enough. If you’re not training your body and your brain at the same time, you’re shorting yourself and won’t be able to reach your full potential.

And I want the title to be “offensive.” That has the benefit of automatically sorting my readers out. With the right title, those who don’t want to improve won’t even pick it up; those who do want to better themselves will be drawn to it. So it’ll probably be called How Not To Be Fat and Stupid.

I have no interest in making money off this or getting it traditionally published. It’s just something I’d like to do because I want to, like this blog.

The weightlifting community has better diet and nutrition advice than 99% of nutritionists and those who are “experts” in this area. If you want to learn how to eat the most healthily, that’s where to look.

The reason is that they care about results and the results are obvious. And they have skin (and muscle) in the game. If you are eating correctly, you’ll be able to lift 150 pounds this week and 170 pounds a few weeks later. If you aren’t eating correctly, you won’t. In fact it’s likely you’ll even get worse in many cases.

I discovered this in the army when I worked out a lot and it’s really obvious when you get back into it again.

I’m only a bit into it, but without intending to be this is a decent précis of Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism:

The modern struggle

Lone individuals summoning inhuman willpower,

fasting, meditating, and exercising,

up against armies of scientists & statisticians weaponizing abundant food, screens, & medicine into junk food, clickbait news, infinite porn, endless games & addictive drugs.

— Naval (@naval) January 14, 2019

Quite describes the modern condition, yes?

Tried to get a McGriddles with just egg and cheese. After explaining myself five different times and eventually having to order “a sausage McGriddles with no sausage,” they gave me two pieces of bread with nothing in it. Good shit!

— Jeff Gerstmann (@jeffgerstmann) January 16, 2019

Fast food workers aren’t paid much, and most rely on a mental script of sorts to put in orders. When you deviate from that script, putting in an order is exponentially more difficult mentally and since most don’t care as they are paid jack, bizarre things like this happen.

One time at a Burger King I spent half an age attempting to get something other than American cheese on a burger (as that is not cheese and is fucking vile), as I knew they had it for some other meal, but it was nearly impossible so I just gave up.

If the workers (the same workers) were paid $20 an hour, I bet these problems would not exist. It’s hard to care for $7.50 an hour.