Willpower is just an abstraction. It is not a “real” thing, consumed once you do something you wouldn’t.
That said yes, you can train it. Or rather, condition your behaviour so you do things that you’d otherwise avoid. The how-to is actually simple:
Choose a task to perform. Push it a tiiiny bit harder.
Did you manage to push it harder? If yes, reward yourself. If not, skip.
Repeat 1 and 2 for some time.
Gradually decrease reward frequency, make it a bit random. Oddly enough this makes the desired behaviour to stick further.
Eventually you won’t need the reward, but the behaviour is still there.
What you consider a reward is up to you. For example, for me snacking on cheese is a reward, but it might not be for you. With the right mindset, even mundane things can be a reward, like taking a comfy shower or playing some games.
It’s just a regular grocery store, albeit a rather expensive one. They give discounts for Prime members. In the back, there is an area where workers accept Amazon returns and you can also pick up orders there in the odd chance you would ever do that instead of having it delivered to your home at no extra cost…?
Edit: I remembered that some people might want packages delivered here if they’re frequent victims of package theft
If the VPN does not support port forwarding is it still possible to use for Linux torrents?
Yes with caveats. Torrent swarms need at least 1 connectable (port forwarded) peer for the swarm to exchange data. If all the peers are firewalled (not port forwarded) then all the swarm peers can see each other but cannot exchange torrent data so there will be no uploading/downloading in that swarm.
Generally speaking you won’t notice much difference in large torrent swarms since those swarms usually have some/many connectable peers. But in smaller torrent swarms you may have trouble since your odds are worse that you’ll find connectable peers in those swarms.
PS - Yes you are still seeding/uploading while firewalled (not port forwarded) just not very effectively. While firewalled your best connections will be with connectable peers in the torrent swarms. Not much to think about with public torrents but it’ll kill your ratio at private trackers for sure.
Mental health professionals are far and few between, are prohibitively expensive to see, and in many cases are working with an outdated education which leaves them unprepared to diagnose/treat certain conditions. That last point is really coming to light in the Autism/ADHD crowd, where if their therapist even knows/recognizes it (quite often people get misdiagnosed with anxiety, depression, bipolar, etc.) their outdated training may end up being harmful. With people who have these sharing not only their experiences, but also successful ways to handle and cope with their conditions, teens are able to get the help that is largely not available to them. That and the therapists that genuinely want to help as many people as possible are giving generalized advice on apps such as tiktok.
oddly enough, this tiktok explains many of these points and more better than I can
Yes, this! I live in a country where therapy is paid for by the state. But still, the various therapists I’ve talked to haven’t had any idea of ADHD or autism. One therapist told me “well, you think you have both, ADHD and autism? The odds of that would be tiny!” After I explained to him that it is actually very frequent and that both increase the chances of inheriting the other, he admitted that I apparently know more than him. He later told me that we cannot diagnose ADHD because he would have to cure my depression first (duh, what if I’m depressed because of AuDHD??) Another therapist told me that I couldn’t have ADHD because I could have a full conversation with her. Another therapist just laughed at my face in disbelief and another time told me “oh so now you also want to have autism?” One psychiatrist told me that he didn’t believe in the existence of adult ADHD. Another psychiatrist (a specialist for diagnosing ADHD!!) told me that I sure display symptoms of ADHD and autism but that I’m too complex of a case for him. A doctor told me that yes, the situation for diagnosis is dire, but that she can’t help me anyways. And with my current therapist I just avoid the topic altogether. I’ve been on waiting lists for ADHD and autism diagnosis since nearly two years. Doctors, therapists, psychiatrists in Germany are still back in time like 10-20 years with their knowledge of ADHD and autism. Meanwhile I listen to presentations and read papers by scientists about these topics (I’m a scientist myself). It is so infuriating!
So yes, I can totally believe how this massively adds to teens searching for answers elsewhere. Sure, in the US and many other countries just the inaccessibility because of high cost is a huge problem. But even if you have access to ‘professional’ treatment, you end up stuck. How can anyone trust in medical professionals when they are obviously telling you outdated bullshit?
To run through the examples given by Glubb one by one:
Neo-Assyrian - 859 - 612, 247 years
Achaemenid Persia - 538 - 330, 208 years
Macedonian - 331 - 100, 231 years
Roman Republic - 260 - 27, 233 years
Roman Empire - 27 BCE - 180 CE, 207 years
Arab Empire - 634 - 880, 246 years
Mamluk Empire - 1250 - 1517, 267 years
Ottoman Empire - 1320 - 1570, 250 years
Spanish Empire - 1500 - 1750, 250 years
Romanov Russia - 1682 - 1916, 234 years
British Empire - 1700 - 1950, 250 years.
Neo-Assyrian Empire
859 BCE marks the start of the reign of Shalmaneser III, by which point Shalmaneser's two predecessors have already made Assyria the dominant power of the region. Perhaps it would be fair to place the date sometime in the previous reign, but I understand this one. 612 BCE is the fall of the capital Nineveh to a combined campaign of Babylonians and Medes. Fair choice.
Achaemenid Persia
550 BCE is Cyrus' victory against the Medes, at which point he assumed control of the Medean empire. 538 BCE might have been chosen instead as the date of Cyrus' defeat of the Babylonians, perhaps marking that as Persia removing its last challenge to hegemony. Not sure about this choice, but if we do take the earlier one it actually moves the empire's span closer to 250 years. 330 BCE is when the Achaemenid capital fell to Alexander the Great.
Macedonian Empire
Now things get weird. 331 BCE is the battle of Gaugamela, which more or less marked Alexander's defeat of Persia. Seems odd to pick a different marker for this and the end of Persia, but it's only one year apart so whatever. The end date is a problem though. Alexander's empire shattered within a few years of his death in 323 BCE. By 100 BCE Macedonia had already been a Roman province for 46 years. I'm honestly not sure of anything that happened in 100 BCE that might mark the death of the Macedonian empire. The Seleucid empire, one of the most powerful successors, had been more or less broken by the Parthians a few decades earlier, and the other big successor in Ptolemaic Egypt still had 70 years to go before Rome annexed it. Either way, Alexander's empire broke in 323, lasting just 8 years, and if you include the Diadochi its either less than 200 or more than 300 depending on which you count.
Roman Republic
The author gives some attempt at justification for splitting the Romans in to two empires like this. I don't think they're very convincing, but let's take him at his word. 260 BCE is the battle of Mylae, the first time Rome defeated Carthage at sea. It seems to me that if you're going to mark Rome's ascendancy to empire status by when it defeated Carthage then you should pick the victory in in the second Punic war. If the first one made Rome hegemon, there wouldn't have been a second in which Hannibal tore up Italy for 15 years. Hannibal's defeat in 202 BCE seems a better marker to me. 27 BCE is the proclamation of the Roman empire under Augustus. With Hannibal's defeat as the starting point, it lasted 175 years.
Roman Empire
180 is the end of the period known as the "five good emperors". The author writes: "It is true that the empire survived nominally for more than a century after this date, but it did so in constant confusion, rebellions, civil wars and barbarian invasions." the western half of the empire would last for almost three hundred more years, and the eastern half for well over a thousand more, including reclaiming most of the western half under Justinian. Roman hegemony in Europe and north Africa would not be challenged for centuries and this date makes no sense at all.
Arab Empire
I think this is mashing up the Rashidun caliphate, Umayyad caliphate, and the Abbasid caliphate prior to the Anarchy at Samarra. This entire listing is ridiculous to call a single empire when he counts Rome as separate for the republic, the empire, the western empire, and the eastern empire.
Mamluk Empire
This one is fine, running from the mamluk overthrow of the Ayyubid sultanate to the Ottoman annexation of the Mamluk sultanate.
Ottoman Empire
Not sure why the author picked 1320 specifically, but the rise of the Ottomans isn't well-recorded and it was around this date so it's fine by me. The end date is utterly baffling though. In 1570, the Ottomans launched a war against basically every naval power in Europe, and they won it. How is that end of their power? They would, of course, survive until their defeat as a major power in the First World War for ~600 years.
Spanish Empire
Not sure why 1500 specifically was picked, but it's roughly when Spain got a foothold in the Americas so okay. Nothing of particular significance happened in 1750 either, though, and it would be another 58 years before the wars of independence from its colonies started (and Spain's defeat by Napoleon soon after). Spain's "lifetime" as an empire should be over 300 years.
I’ve listened to a lot of Darknet Diaries and some are incredibly interesting but the host is very slightly off-putting and I’d love to know if everyone has the same view.
There’s a weird naivety about him that makes him say some odd things.
I don’t get the gender neutral either (using Gboard on an older Android). Which is a bit odd because as far as I can tell gender neutral is the base character, and the male and female versions are customisations that are applied as if they were accented characters.
I’d rather have them all as no-gender, no-race, generic little yellow peeps but eh…
Pretty much every signature soda drink. Pepsi, Coke, Mountain Dew… none of the knock-offs taste right and some are just nasty. Oddly, root beer seems to be the one flavor everyone can do well, maybe because it’s a more common flavor with no patents on the general idea? I dunno but I don’t think I’ve ever had a ‘bad’ root beer.
Are people telling the truth if there are a lot of them?
The odds are that some of them at least are.
And my personal impressions after speaking to them over the decades on the issue is that most if not all of them are being truthful, to their belief system.
Don’t mean to be argumentative with you on this one, but I can’t buy into your assertion of that they’re all lying, that 0% of them are being truthful. It’s not what I’ve seen.
I was being glib, because I find our monetary system so ridiculous I have to embrace absurdity or it’s upsetting
Obviously the JFK conspiracy is light on evidence, but the entire situation is definitely a conspiracy - something happened, it could’ve been geopolitical or the people keeping tabs on Lee Harvey Oswald really messed up. His story alone is pretty crazy… But anyways, every time I dive into it I find myself leaning more towards it being related to his banking statements than the alternatives, but who knows.
The foreign interventions are mostly declassified though, they’re an absurd read. It wasn’t always the US, but it was always one of the 5 eyes who got involved when alternate systems started to gain traction.
The IMF/World bank piece wasn’t even exaggerated though. Obviously they make it sound a lot more innocent, but I don’t think I even exaggerated this - it’s a legitimate conspiracy working out in the open. It’s truly horrifying. I didn’t even know how it worked until I took an install in a relatively rich Caribbean country (aka big tourist Island with a large “white” population).
It was a tiny contract - I took it to help someone out and see somewhere beautiful, couldn’t have been more than $15k all together - literal hobbiest level gear. It’s not working and I’ve only got a day left to make it work (at least it turns out it wasn’t my fault), and this dude comes up with a big camera like he owns the place, says he’s from the world bank, and starts “politely” asking me to pose for the camera and do an interview about how this will help the country. I have no idea how to answer, I’m sunburnt, this isn’t really my field, and after seeing the computer center has all the computers on dirty blocks because it floods, I genuinely doubt this would be helpful in any situation… It’s basically a backup for if their Internet goes down, but in that case the place is probably flooded anyways
Turns out, the country was getting a pretty big uptick in income from tourism, so the world bank “offered” to fund a bunch of (from my perspective at least) unhelpful infrastructure projects. They’d had decades of austerity before that, their roads were worn out, the power grid was janky, obviously there was seasonal flooding in important places, and although tourism was their main income they didn’t have transportation or hotels… Just bed and breakfasts and a dude I could arrange to give me a ride in the mornings.
So instead of fixing anything critical, they had some plan to build a road straight across the mountain range, with some crazy long tunnel for an insane price and a multi-year time frame.
People were pissed. Their economy was basically government funding allocated by the IMF “recommendations”, which come with the stick of “we’ll pull out and downgrade your credit if you don’t pass this”, and people hanging around waiting for odd jobs from the people on the government payroll.
So the world bank was doing a bunch of little projects that changed nothing, and covering them like the staged rescue effort videos China loves so much.
This felt very weird to me. Google any 2-3 descriptions of the IMF (just read an and you’ll notice they allude to a lot Investopedia, first result, just read the IMF part carefully, then hit Wikipedia if you want to go down the rabbit hole). It’s pretty dark, it’s stuff you’d think was from a century ago, but it’s actively happening still.
So if anything, I think I undersold the reality of that real life conspiracy.
I’d be genuinely interested to know if I was actually wrong about any of this… I’ve found a lot of post-hock justifications why things are the way they are, but to me, monetary systems seem like layers of justifications for an organization too powerful to call them out on it when they cheat. Debt doesn’t produce value when housing prices go through the roof, when you take on credit card/payday debt, or when you get stuck with medical bills… It seems to me like it only works when you take out a loan for a small business, something that used to be big, but now more and more it creates nothing, expands no capability. It just flows upwards endlessly
Once, back in high school, I had a printer cable coiled up and laying on my computer desk. I put my keys in the center of the coil, and for some reason a piece of paper over the top. (Random desk clutter.) When I went to grab them the next day, I lifted the paper, and they were gone. This was the inside of a coiled cable, a circular area maybe 4 inches in diameter, so it’s not like I could just overlook them somehow. I figured that I must have moved them and forgotten about it, but when I searched again a few hours later, they were inside the coiled printer cable, under that sheet of paper. My family swore that they hadn’t moved my keys, and really, how would they even have found them in such an odd spot in my room?
Was taking an undergrad psych class. Teacher asked if we had any odd dreams. I mentioned that I had a dream where I was standing in a circle or benevolent strangers with my gf at the time. The song “brown eyed girl” was playing and then suddenly stopped. My gf and I turn to each other in surprise with a general “huh?” and the dream ends. The class has a fun time telling me I have a fear of commitment etc, we have a laugh and move on to the next person’s dream story.
That weekend, I visit my gfs college, we attend a huge bonfire. Ton of people gathered around. There’s a band. They sarcastically start playing brown eyed girl as a joke, as it was way off for their vibe, and then stop the song and make a joke. My gf and I turn to each other as if we were wanting them to play the whole song and we were surprised they stopped.
Then I freaked out! What made it wild was the fact I had shared the story a few days prior to my class.
I went back the next week and had to tell the class about the event. The professor was like “you have a gift”…
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday gave one of his most direct condemnations of the civilian death toll in Gaza and said more needs to be done to “minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.”...
The history of this conflict is pretty messy when you dig down into it, isn't it? It's long and complicated enough that either side can create a compelling narrative to justify their national interests. I appreciate that you delved into it. You might also be interested in the greater Cold war context of this conflict.
Nasser was keenly aware that his actions would trigger a confrontation and war with Israel:
At the end of May 1967, Nasser claimed in a public speech to have been aware of the Straits of Tiran closure implications: "Taking over Sharm El Sheikh meant confrontation with Israel. It also means that we are ready to enter a general war with Israel. It was not a separate operation."
He did it anyway. Claims that he didn't want war seem odd to me considering all of his public statements at the time. Perhaps he wasn't ready for war just yet, but his intentions seem clear.
annexation of land is a violation of international law, either in an offensive or defensive war. It is not a “grant”, it’s that state’s land to begin with.
Access to annexed lands would have to be granted by Israel because Israel controls and de facto owns them. International law is relatively meaningless if one cannot enforce it. Egypt got Sinai back via treaty and Palestine would likely have to do the same.
@actuallyautistic Who has disappointed you the most since coming out as #actuallyautistic?
My family's reaction was depressingly expected. However, it's close friends looking down on me and then fading away that really hurt.
Looking at you, Matthew Bingham.
I understand that fully. When my chronic got really bad some odd behaviors started appearing. I made a list of them and had an aha moment. Scored very high on the online tests. Consulted a therapist for confirmation. Only took 63 years but looking back, an entire lifetime of small and big decisions ( all mostly good) based on a very clear foundation.
Certainly we have different needs and consequently a different perception of what a stable product entails.
Nevertheless, from a product perspective, the variety of what Google offers is simply so broad that of course it will always mean that things are discontinued. Google builds and maintains a wide variety of products, from word processing, file storage, communication and creativity apps and services, to fully fledged operating systems and browsers, hardware including phones, tablets, watches and laptops, and of course web mastering tools for discovery and monetization.
Inevitably there will be gaps in individual needs when a product portfolio is so broad. (As an aide, I’d even argue it does so unrivaled since other tech giants don’t dabble in nearly as many areas.) My take on this is that the frustration scales with that breadth.
Equally so, there are ample examples of stable products at Google. There’s a strange sentiment on the web to make a tally of those that were discontinued, no matter how unused or irrelevant they had become. (I would challenge you to review that list and identify a handful that you would genuinely use today.)
None of this is to say that I mindlessly support this tech giant. I just find it so odd how this community continues to be an echo chamber where everybody just repeats something to the effect that everything used to be better. The mantra of this community appears to be the prophecy that every single household name in technology is currently in the process of certain death. In the case of Google, I personally find today’s Gmail, Calendar, Drive, YouTube Music, Pixel, Android, Android Auto and effectively every other Google service that I use to be the best version of that service and sufficiently safe, stable and reliable for my needs. In any case, I don’t aspire to go back to whichever early-2000s variant existed before.
Friend gave me access to his Adobe account (I’m never giving Adobe money again), and it looks like they don’t even support Firefox. That means I’m not using even the one remaining browser-based Adobe service that’s left....
Honestly, as a Firefox user, I agree. The Firefox evangelism gets too much for me that I’m genuinely concerned it’s going cult-like. There’s over-enthusiasm (in which I’ve fell victim to) and then there’s hounding people for bothering to choose a Chromium-based browser.
I use Firefox because it works best for most of my web-browsing workflows, but it has its issues - split screen tabs is one, it helps with my workflow for submitting database entries to MusicBrainz or RateYourMusic. Vivaldi has it, Firefox doesn’t, so I’ll use Vivaldi when I need to, even if I think Firefox has a bit more polish than Vivaldi. That being said, Vivaldi is more willing to add features that power users coming from Firefox or old, Presto-era Opera want.
I do feel like the evangelism is actually toned down in the Firefox-specific Lemmy community, oddly enough (at least on lemmy.ml). In fact, the top post as of this comment is complaining about the privacy issues with Firefox’s upcoming Fakespot integration, and the comments are in agreement.
More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the month since Hamas’ terrorist attacks inside southern Israel, the group’s health ministry in Gaza says....
Outside of dealing with the odd report on our instance, I don’t. I’m not sure what people get out of seeking communities they dislike/don’t care for.
I’ve muted hexbear and blocked some political leaning “world news” communities, programming.dev also hides political communities unless you specifically subscribe to them so that doesn’t show up for our users in all either.
Granted, I don’t see every report made on our instance, but from all the reports I’ve seen since Hamas’ terror attack, the worst one was someone wanting Israelis to leave the land and for the colonisers that are actively taking more land to repay the people they took the homes from with forced labour. Other than that one, even simple things like “Free Palestine” has been reported as hate speech. So you really can’t tell what a single person mean when they talk about hate speech or “supporting Hamas” without them elaborating on where they draw the line.
Of course there are places where people will defend Hamas’ terror attacks. You can also find people who claims Ukraine is ruled by nazis, that 9/11 was justified, covid is a hoax, Holocaust never happened, etc… The question is if you see those opinions popping up on “normal” communities and supported by upvotes.
@Rolando thanks, that's a good idea. I literally haven't written code in over a decade though (except the odd bit of css modification) so it would be a steep learning curve!
Oh definitely lots of places under hire, that wasn’t really what I was getting at. I meant if someone is in a full time role at a job and has enough free time to take a whole as other job without any apparent impact on his output, odds are good they have a lot more people on the team than they really need and a good proportion of people’s time gets spent on the illusion of work getting done more so than the substance.
Can willpower be trained ?
I have heard that willpower is finite and every person starts their day with a limited capacity....
Free returns disappearing from retailers | The era of free returns — an essential part of the rise of online shopping — is ending (www.axios.com)
VPN portfowarding?
I’m posting here because I assume a lot of you use vpns and this sub seems to have the most users to ask....
Bro, I have no fucking idea (startrek.website)
I’m tired of it all and need a hug
Why Do Teens Use TikTok for Mental Health Diagnoses? (theluddite.org)
Americans don't want to fight for their country anymore (www.newsweek.com)
Over 10,500 Killed in One Month as Israel Continues its War on Palestine (unicornriot.ninja)
How SIM Swappers Straight-Up Rob T-Mobile Stores (www.404media.co)
Video shot from a getaway car shows how SIM swappers have snatched worker tablets to help them take over phone numbers....
Why using the search bar to find emojis, does it display the male and female forms, but never show the gender neutral version even though such an emoji does exist? (lemmy.world)
May depend on what device you’re using, can confirm Samsung does this
What is a product that you won’t accept a generic alternative for?
For example, if you insist on buying Advil instead of store brand ibuprofen. I mean, you’d be wasting your money in that example, but you do you
Is there a setting to always open external links in another tab?
The "expand here"s are working perfectly for me....
Far-right hosts are blaming the GOP's big election losses on Taylor Swift (www.businessinsider.com)
deleted_by_moderator
Gonna be a great day! (lemmy.world)
What’s the strangest unexplained thing that’s happened to you ?
Blinken denounces civilian toll in Gaza, says ‘far too many Palestinians have been killed’ (www.cnn.com)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday gave one of his most direct condemnations of the civilian death toll in Gaza and said more needs to be done to “minimize harm to Palestinian civilians.”...
Google is moving Shopping List and other notes back into Google Keep (www.google.com)
Adobe tells you to use Chrome, not Firefox
Friend gave me access to his Adobe account (I’m never giving Adobe money again), and it looks like they don’t even support Firefox. That means I’m not using even the one remaining browser-based Adobe service that’s left....
Hamas leaders say they have no regrets after the October 7 attack and the goal was to 'overthrow' the status quo (www.businessinsider.com)
More than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in the month since Hamas’ terrorist attacks inside southern Israel, the group’s health ministry in Gaza says....
What are your favorite niche Lemmy communities that you want to see thrive? (sadanduseless.b-cdn.net)
ok fine I’ll allow kbin too...
It shouldn't matter if people work multiple jobs. The former VP of HR at Microsoft shares how to react to double dippers — 'get over it.' (money.yahoo.com)