No Alternative to Sustainable Agriculture: How Community-Supported Farms Show the Way to Food Security in an Uncertain World | naked capitalism

No Alternative to Sustainable Agriculture: How Community-Supported Farms Show the Way to Food Security in an Uncertain World | naked capitalism



We've been getting CSA boxes for many years.  Sometimes it's a pain in the butt to figure out what to do with a bunch of, hmm, what are these anyway?  But in general it's great to get organic, in-season produce delivered to the doorstep!  We eat plant based generally.

Nutrition Related Topics

Having had a long journey learning nutrition and having been bamboozled by propaganda... I'm now (at age 65) reaching enlightenment.   



It's pretty clear that whole-food plant based diets are healthy.  Nutrition / diet is not simply weight management.  Body weight is mostly thermodynamics of calories consumed vs. calories expended.  Although there are complications on both sides.  Calories consumed are not all the same, and calories expended depends more on resting metabolism than the calorie expenditure of any specific exercise, although exercise (and weights to build muscle mass) does alter the metabolism, as do a variety of nutrients.  But.  Keto, low carb, paleo etc can produce weight loss.  However they many not be promoting health.



NutritionFacts.org | The Latest Nutrition Related Topics

Dr. Greger has a lot of phenomenal evidence based research.  He is the author of How Not to Die



There is some great documentary propaganda available; e.g. the Game Changers (Presented by James Cameron, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jackie Chan, Lewis Hamilton, Novak Djokovic and Chris Paul — a revolutionary new film about meat, protein and strength.) and Forks over Knives



Pretty simply, as Michael Pollan puts it, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”



Blue Zones has slightly varied diet/nutrition advice (less vegan but mostly plants; pro "Mediterranean diet" including red wine [yay!]) as well as overall lessons from the Buettner journalism covering Okinawa, Nicoya (Costa Rica), Loma Linda, CA (Seventh day Adventist community), Ikaria, Greece, and Sardinia, which have large numbers (per capita) of healthy centenarians.  We are excited because Monterey County is a target of the Blue Zones project.

How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It)

 “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.”



How to See What the Internet Knows About You (And How to Stop It) 



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The Blog of James Clear

science-based ideas for mastering your habits and living an optimal life. 

some interesting articles helped me with getting better at self discipline.  It's hard to make the annoying or painful near term investment in order to get the long term payoff.  I like to get better at skills, and in general it takes "deliberate practice", which turns out not to be quite as much fun as playing.

America in decay?

Sources of political dysfunction in the US

Fukuyama nails it. Nonpartisan, systemic analysis arguing for why government and administration are in decline.

No real halcyon strawman, though the Forest Service is his key example.

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Making food appear

Munchery - San Francisco Delivery, East Bay Delivery, Peninsula Delivery, and North Bay Delivery | Munchery:

Some low carb &/or organic/healthy meals

http://www.healthychefcreations.com/index.html

these look pretty good

http://www.personalcheftogo.com/menus.asp

most of these look pretty good, some have 30 carbs or so

http://www.magickitchen.com/menu/lowcarb.html

low carb and generally claim to be healthy but I don’t see “organic” plastered all over like the other ones…

Oh, maybe they do, “we try wherever possible to use organic and natural products in our entrees and side dishes.”

And here is some general low carb stuff, not sure how healthy it really is…

http://www26.netrition.com/low_carb_products_page.html

Ma

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Repetition -> musicality

What is music?

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The Big Five

Five dimensional personality test, which seems to be well founded in modern psychology.

I'm a O70-C74-E18-A74-N1 Big Five!!

O is openness to new ideas/experiences
C is conscientiousness
E is extrovert vs introvert
A is agreeableness
N is neuroticism

I scored at the extreme for "calmness" vs neuroticism, no real surprise.

Quite high on openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness and pretty far tilted towards introvert vs extravert.  No one who knows me will be very shocked, though a lot of people call me extraverted.  I do tend to like people, but love my alone time.  I guess I'm a gregarious and not shy introvert, which seems like a good thing to me.

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Tools for finding stuff

Relating to many topics, but especially
Info security

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We’re The Good Guys | Antiwar.com Original Articles

We’re The Good Guys | Antiwar.com Original Articles:

it is hard to be a good guy when you are killing American citizens without any trial and wiping out wedding parties

Professor Michael Brenner provides a partial explanation for how otherwise sensible and moral people can be delusional about America’s role in the world. He describes it as "Ur Imperialism," a process whereby the public comes to believe certain things both about itself and the actions of its government and is resistant to alternative explanations. Brenner does not use the phrase "American Exceptionalism," but that is perhaps another bumper sticker expression that suggests the same mindset.

Brenner describes the core value of imperialism as being "permissive of actions directed at taking charge of others without their approval." He identifies a number of features of the imperialist mindset, to include "a strong sense of superiority," "a predisposition for intervention" that is largely unrelated to the cause of the intervention, comfort "with taking charge of other people," "an absence of empathy," and an inability to accept resistance or rebellion by someone being dominated as anything but "ingratitude." He also notes an inability to put oneself in anyone else’s shoes and cites the example of Iraq, where the involvement of coreligionist and neighbor Iran was denounced as destabilizing while the US dominance was considered somehow both acceptable and appropriate.

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What We’re Reading and Writing » TripleCrisis

What We’re Reading and Writing » TripleCrisis:

The world is experiencing three simultaneous crises in finance, development, and the environment.  A number of economists are questioning the mainstream narratives and analyses of these crises.  Some of us have joined to create the Triple Crisis Blog to contribute to a more open and global dialogue around these three crises. - See more at: http://triplecrisis.com/about/#sthash.lQdCXTtR.dpuf


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A guide to happiness

Best practice: happiness!


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A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom | Farnam Street

A Lesson on Elementary, Worldly Wisdom | Farnam Street:

Charles Munger, USC Business School, 1994

I’m going to play a minor trick on you today because the subject of my talk is the art of stock picking as a subdivision of the art of worldly wisdom. That enables me to start talking about worldly wisdom—a much broader topic that interests me because I think all too little of it is delivered by modern educational systems, at least in an effective way.

And therefore, the talk is sort of along the lines that some behaviorist psychologists call Grandma’s rule after the wisdom of Grandma when she said that you have to eat the carrots before you get the dessert.

The carrot part of this talk is about the general subject of worldly wisdom which is a pretty good way to start. After all, the theory of modern education is that you need a general education before you specialize. And I think to some extent, before you’re going to be a great stock picker, you need some general education.

So, emphasizing what I sometimes waggishly call remedial worldly wisdom, I’m going to start by waltzing you through a few basic notions.

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Vickrey, William. 1996. 15 Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism

Vickrey, William. 1996. 15 Fatal Fallacies of Financial Fundamentalism:

Much of the conventional economic wisdom prevailing in financial circles, largely subscribed to as a basis for governmental policy, and widely accepted by the media and the public, is based on incomplete analysis, contrafactual assumptions, and false analogy. For instance, encouragement to saving is advocated without attention to the fact that for most people encouraging saving is equivalent to discouraging consumption and reducing market demand, and a purchase by a consumer or a government is also income to vendors and suppliers, and government debt is also an asset. Equally fallacious are implications that what is possible or desirable for individuals one at a time will be equally possible or desirable for all who might wish to do so or for the economy as a whole.

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Fix anything

Repair manuals for lots of stuff. It seems like most things are made to be replaced. Why waste stuff and add to landfill?

Right to Repair
iFixit is a global community of people helping each other repair things. Let's fix the world, one device at a time.

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It's not just about me...

Another from Farnham street, on
Building rapport

I'm not naturally empathetic and may be narcissistic ... As I grow older I'm trying to make sure I have healthy relationships...

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It's not always about me...

Getting better at conversations

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Money and banking

It's hard to believe, but
S&P understands money!

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Info sources

Lots of clutter but these have better signal-to-noise than most

Wired business recommendations

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I've probably linked to this before...

Cullen Roche critique of
Modern monetary theory

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Rise and limits of AI

Aeon magazine

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Some distilled 17th century wisdom

A review of Gracian

The Art of Worldly Wisdom: A Pocket Oracle

a book of three hundred aphorisms for making one’s way in the world and achieving distinction.

It provides advice not only for modern “image makers” and “spin doctors,” but also for the candid: for those who insist that substance, not image, is what really matters. “Do, but also seem,” is Gracián’s pithy advice

The book was imitated by La Rochefoucauld, cherished by Friedrich Nietzsche, and translated into German by Arthur Schopenhauer. Nietzsche observed that “Europe has never produced anything finer or more complicated in matters of moral subtlety.”

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Some thoughts from the guru of stats viz

Tufte

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R incantations

This is great! I love R and use it a lot but am always learning new tricks. Here is a nice recipe list for many simple, useful, common tasks.

R spells for data wizards

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A step forward in interfaces

Better brainwave sensors
Development will probably advance fast. I bet this technology leads to amazing capabilities

EEG control

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Do it yourself secure cloud storage

OwnCloud

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On forecasting

I think forecasting is very important. Of course, most of the past 20 years or so of my career have been spent actually making a living forecasting...
Good resources abound. Here is a free Forecasting textbook


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Follow your passion vs. get really good at something

Book review from Kevin Kelly

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Cool cloud service for writing

Includes versioning tools and a lot more that supports collaborative writing

Draft


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Privacy plus convenience

I don’t know what balance the US government hopes to strike, but what I do know is that privacy and convenience are technologically possible, and we need not relinquish security to attain it.

Jeremy Kun

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