Massive Strategy Game - basically has raped my life for the past week and a half... Also Victoria II but not the same extent.
Not sure how I missed this game but fuck it's good, would be cool to get a big LP CK2 multiplayer game going sometime :3
I'll get another Music You Should Hear blog next week - been listening to a few really cool tracks that I've liked a lot thus far.
Anyways <3 LP
ps i just found out that red green put up whole seasons online http://www.youtube.com/user/RedGreenTV?feature=watch
one of my favorite childhood memories is sneaking downstairs after bedtime and watching a few episodes of red green with my dad. Awesome Show!
"If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."
Just won a 1$ 45 player sit n go. First prize was $12.73. It is my biggest score in a tournament to date. My previous biggest cash was 1st in the .25c 45 player for like $3.23 or something like that. $12.73 is nothing to the majority of you, but it's 1/4 of my bankroll so it means a lot to me and I just wanted to share. Maybe someone is interested.
the wealth of nations and ted talks.by Stroggoz, April 11
So an interesting coincidence came across me today
i was reading a noam chomsky excerpt which basically says the chicago school of economics ignored a huge part of adam smiths philosphy when nobel prize winner, geroge stigler wrote: selections from the wealth of nations.
'It's likely he never opened The Wealth of Nations. Just about everything he said about the book was completely false.'
'Everybody reads the first paragraph of The Wealth of Nations where he talks about how wonderful the division of labor is. But not many people get to the point hundreds of pages later, where he says that division of labor will destroy human beings and turn people into creatures as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human being to be.'
so i take another attempt at reading the wealth of nations. One of the most difficult books i've tried to read to be honest. I look up division of labor on wikipedia.
so i find that quote in the wealth of nations at page 410.
'The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life... But in every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the labouring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it''
adam smith goes on to talk alot about more about this, but i don't want to quote a whole chapter. You can read this yourself.
Karl marx also has a very similar view, you can find this on page 4 of his economic and philisophical manuscript.
'The accumulation of capital increases the division of labor, and the division of labor increases the number of workers. Conversely, the number of workers increases the division of labor, just as the division of labor increases the accumulation of capital. With this division of labor on the one hand and the accumulation of capital on the other, the worker becomes ever more exclusively dependent on labor, and on a particular, very one-sided, machine-like labor at that. Just as he is thus depressed spiritually and physically to the condition of a machine''
The 2nd interesting part is that straight after i this i watch a good ted talk about motivation in work.
The last two minutes of the ted talk is the interesting thing, he doesn't really bring up that Adam Smith was as much into meaning as Karl Marx was. So this is just another very subtle example, imo at how even the most intelligent, scientific people are indoctrinated.
Im just going to delve into my own speculation now.
Our indoctrination is partly from a massive surplass of information. If we are to even try to decipher history and indoctrinated public opinion and attitudes it takes a lot of reading. Something that almost no one can do as they have too many distractions in their life already. There is also an increasing amount of concision in todays media, people have degrading concentration spans. Twitter only allows you to post 140 characters for example. it seems to me that indoctrination is just going to become more and more easy as information increases and the dehumanization of the human concentration span increases too. There is an interesting opinion written about the distintegration of humans aljazeera, which covers this a little bit. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332882423542636.html
07:30 - EST here 10/04/13
Anyone else having trouble logging into stars this morning?
Do I have a problem with my settings or are other ppl having problems?
My internet is obviously working (as I am on LP right now!)
As the sun dims and the night takes hold, wafting cool air tickles the nose. Chills on the arms move towards the soul, while memories dance to the fore front with a mindful glow. Play is pressed and feelings unfold: old times, good times, best times began to mold the reality once seen from the eye -- captured, compressed and archived.
Joy and sadness, depression and gladness but no pain. Pain, once gone, is gone for good; merely just a feeling understood. Pain, though powerful and piercing, does not break through the barrier of projection. Pain is here for the moment and then is nothing. Nothing, as yesterday passes on to today. Nothing, as today passes on to the present. Nothing, as the present passes on to the last breath. Nothing, as life passes on to death.
Have you ever had this weird feeling ?by Gawuss, April 09
I experienced it today after a long break. I was never able to describe it to anyone really accurately but this is something along these lines:
The whole room seems to have a new feeling to it- everything im doing whether it be walking or typing seems to intensify and become louder yet the actions are very exaggerated and almost speed up (only perceived this way).
Okay
I am telling you a story that is 100% true despite being hard to believe.
Its a really crazy story.
Long read but really lolz if you are into MMA
It all began in 2006 when a little guy (me) joined a Kyokushin Karate club because he wanted to learn how to kick butt.
At the Karate Dojo was a big Guy who had fought many successful local tournaments.
This guy was 117kg and 195cm and allthough he was a really good kickboxer had had grown interest in MMA.
He had pirated some Bas Rutten Instructional DVDs on the net and asked some of the other Karate Guys if they had any interest in practicing some MMA with him and learning ground fighting.
besides me some other guys applied and besides kyokushin which was our main practice we started to learn some Groundfighting moves from Dvds of Bas rutten.
1-2 times a weak after Training whe stayed and practiced basic stuff like RnC , Kimura etc.
IN 2007 after 1 year of practice our group was eager to test in competition if what we did learn so far was any good.
We were Full contact karate fighters but since we knew about the power of BJJ and Wrestling in MMA we did not dare to fight in MMA competition yet.
So in 2007 we as a group applied to many mixed fight events.
These were Events with MMA like rules but without MMA fighters.
The big Guy who started the Group was called Panda.
Then whe had a pole in our group that we named Braindamage
Then there was a greek to which we simply referred as the greek
and then there was me. Everybody used to call me apefist
So we were 4 karate guys with skills from selftough bas rutten Dvds that competed in many mixed fight events.
And boy did we beat on this Wing Chun/karate/Allstyle and Taekwondo guys
haha
The Panda went 5-0 in his first year
The Greek went 4-0
I went 3-0
and the pole went 2-0
The Events where this took place were called "FAC"
It was not MMA ! It were MMA rules with a helmet against Karate,Wing chun,Taekwondo and Japanese Jiu Jitsu guys
Since we went 14-0 in our first year the Big Panda asked the other guys if we may take stuff a little more serious and do less Kyokushin but more MMA training so that one day we might compete in real MMA.
And so we did.
The Panda from there one did concentrate on coordinating our training sessions while the other guys allready realized that bas rutten alone ist not enough.
I joined a BJJ school
The greek downloaded 80GB of MMA instructionals
and the Pole stopped training after some injuries
However we got a new addition in a young tunese guy who had seen us fighting at FAC and wanted to join. (This guy since 2012 is a professional fighter now
So we trained and everyone did try to get new input and bring our grind fighting skills from bullshit level to more serious level.
In 2008 the greek had his first MMA fight.
He lost by submission in the first round and after that left our group.
2 guys from our group however
Me and the tunese guy did very well though.
We had some MMA fights and destroyed our opposition left and right.
Mainly because we were very athletic for our weight classes + fast learners
The Big Panda had not much influence in that but since he started the group at events he would be there as our choach and quickly he gained some local reputation as being a good coach since his boys won MMA fights. (LOL)
Due to our success some other guys joined our group and we soon made our departure from the karate dojo official and declared our own MMA gym.
In 2010 we had a new height in success.
I won the FFA New talents show and my tunese friend won some major fights at Outsider cups and Respect FC.
Additional to that some of the new fighters who had joined us made their MMA debuts and won their fights.
We also got a new Coach who was one of Germans best MMA fighters in the past and did fight some international events.
He fought Jonas Billstein (Bellator) and also participated in a Tournament with Eduardo Rocha (UFC)
IN all that fights the Panda who started the Group was there as a coach.
And since we had lots of success he gained some reputation that he must be a good trainer.
Truth is that he is a good organizer and his main work was getting us fights and organizing our training/ camps.
From a technical aspect he was in many aspects much worse than we guys.
nevertheless props to him.
he did a fantastic job at getting us good training camps and great fights.
And he was/is our friend.
he put a lot of effort into our careers without getting any money for that.
Only thing to remember is that during that time he was always an organizer and not a fighter
He had fought lots of kyokusin fights but never any MMA fight.
Concerning my MMA career the story ends hier since i got sick and injured too much and only had 1 fight after that... and havent fought in quite some time. I concentrated on coaching the other guys.
We meanwhile had grown as a gym and probably had about 70-members with ~ 15 MMA fighters.
Our Tunese guy got a training camp organized with Peter Sobotta (former UFC) and his skill exploded.
After that Panda organized a camp in San Diego for him and Tunese guy got insanely good.
he got so good that after only 1 month Dean Lister himself gave him a blue belt in BJJ since he had tapped many brownbelts in the gym in San Diego.
Success of the other guys however got a little stuck.
We basically had no real trainer and were mostly selftought from DVDs and experimenting.
So we had a lot of fights ...
we won some we lost some...
overall progress was marginal.
But when our tunese guy came back from 1 month San Diego with Dean Lister and Jake Shields he was a monster.
He won many big fights in Germany and also became the superior FC Campion.
Panda who originally started the group meanwhile had made many contacts in the german MMA sceene.
I dont know how he does it but he basically got to make friends with everyone who was important in the German MMA sceene.
Our Tuneese guy got a pro contract !
meanwhile another Pro MMA guy had joined our Gym.
In 2012 we got voted 5th best MMA gym in Germany by the biggest German MMA magazine since we had 2 sucessful pros and lots of amateur fighters + some fighters who had won many amateur fights in the past.
The thing was that in my honest opinion allthough we had made some big progress compared to were we started we were far away from being as good as others thought we were :
basically we had 1 really really good pro fighter (the tunese)
A medicore heavy weight pro fighter (heavy weight competition in germany is a joke)
Than we had an ex pro fighter who was the guy who joined us as a coach midway through this journey. Guy is retired as a fighter
Then we had me who had won many fights but was basically retired, too
besides that we had like 10 guys who were 1-0 or 2-1 or 1-2 against local soft competition.
So we were okayish but nothing special.
And most important we were basically 99% self tought from DVds and try and error sparring.
Panda managed to give us a reputation far beyond what we really were.
But in early 2013 it become really crazy.
He listed his FAC fights as MMA fights on sherdog (lol wtf)
he told everyone that he was the main sparrig partner of Semmy Shielt in the past years (Me and him visited Semmy shielt for 1 weak on a seminar and he sparred a bit with him....1 year later he (without me) visited semmy again and did some 1 weak sparring thats about it. We took many pictures though which probably came in handy)
He told everyone that he had many mma fights before sherdog ranking.
Also when asked why he didnt fight from 2008-2013 he said that he had health problems and was busy managing the carrers of his fightes.
The later one is kinda true to some extent. And he had some health problems for ~4 months ... but besides that he was simply to lazy too train his ass off ^^
There was a reason we called him Panda.
Some week ago we got a call that
Jeff Monson and Magomed Malikov are both out of M-1 Global Grand Prix and they need someone to fight against Nikita Krylov.
The management of our tunese guy is also best friends with the Panda and i am not sure if they believe all the stuff he made up or if the simply dont care
But fact ist.
Our Panda who never had an MMA fight
Who mainly was a "coach" and organizier
Who had not fought since 2008 (mixfight and kyokushin)
Who doesnt really train MMA and therefore has stamina for ~100seconds.
whos grappling skills are mainly from Bas rutten DVds of late 2002 or something
Was to fight Nikita Krylov at M-1 Global Heavy weight Grand prix in front of 15.000 people (and Fedor himself) today.
second of all i still cant believe this really happend.
but it did
He stepped into the Octagonring thingy today
he had his first MMA fight
And he did good considering it was his first fight.
Ofc he lost
ofc he dindt have stamina for even 1 round.
I am not sure how he will react in case he ever finds out i did write this here.
But i only tell the fucking truth.
Weather he will laugh at it and we will drink some beers with me or weather he releases me as a trainer from his gym.
I dont fucking care.
I had to share.
Its the crazy guys that make their dreams come true when others say you cant
Every day seems to melt into the next. A seamless transition from session to session. A classic time lapse scene plays in my mind as I recall the past few months; my body sits at the table while I watch from above, my opponents are nothing but a blur of faces.
A force is at work that I haven't felt in some time; not confidence, as I always strive to be confident...something else...something that takes confidence and amplifies it into an aura. A drive to wake each day light as a feather, ready to take out the Incredible Hulk if he happens across your path. There is no grogginess, there is no effort in the daily routine. There is only momentum.
Now I haven't gone on an epic run in the past few months, but things have been working out both on and off the felt. I am stringing wins together and feel very sharp at the tables. As far as results go, I've played 500 hours of cash and 50 hours of tournaments year to date. I can't really explain the effortlessness that comes with momentum but these months have flown by despite a losing January. http://www.liquidpoker.net/user_pictures/6b220c4ab57ba819a67a4295cc20eb71.jpg
As for life off the felt, things couldn't be better. I feel very confident with the direction that I am heading in my investments outside of poker, and the family has never felt stronger.
P.S.
My opinion on the world economy as a whole has turned fairly pessimistic since my last investment-related post. I haven't sold any of my stocks, but all new money that I have put toward investment has gone straight into defensive, wealth preserving vehicles. Might talk more about it in a future post. I've also been speculating in bitcoin a bit since its recent run up. Can't leave that out in a blog about momentum!
Up until last year i was extremely ignorant about how the world works, i still am pretty ignorant. To actually be well informed about the world you need to learn a huge amount of information about history, economics, science. Ect. This usually involves reading a ton of books. This is extremely hard for 99.9% of people to do when we are distracted by 8 hour work days, school, ect. Fortunately for me i play poker and have no job to distract and exhaust me for 8 hours a day, and with this huge amount of privilege i allow a big amount of time towards learning about how the world functions.
Whats the big problem with the world?
The problem is that people who care more about gaining power, and don't care about anyone else are more likely to gain power over someone of the opposite personality.
In the tv show the wire we see that the use of fear in the chain of command system is used to marginalize the people that are trying to change the system: cedric daniels in the police force for example. Cedric daniels refuses to falsify the crime stats for the mayor and is forced to retire. On the other hand you have valcheck who does juke the stats, empowering himself and the mayor becomes a governer because of this.
If we analyze cedric daniels moral choice we can see it has no impact on the power system at all. An infinite number of unscrupulous people could take his place, and valchek is merely the first in line to do it. So in fact, daniels has no effect and valchek makes society worse off. The command system used here is designed to dehumanize the population.
We see lester freemon and mcnulty use the power system against itself to try and catch the drug dealer and murderer marlo. But we can see this also has very little effect long term, as another drug dealer just takes his place. These are isolated struggles.
The wire only shows a small part of the problem of todays power system. it does not show the self-indoctrination of the power system which i might expand on later.
Now, let me talk about something a little different. I want to criticize some poltical/social science beliefs which i think are heavily resulted from the power system( i will possibly expand on this later)
i'll start with an interesting quote from noam chomsky that i found reading his latest book power systems.
'There was a recent study done at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics on attitudes of young people from ages eighteen to twenty-nine. It was pretty striking. There’s a lot of commitment to what in the United States are called libertarian ideas. Libertarian in the United States is pretty close to totalitarian. If you really think through what are called libertarian concepts, they basically say that we’re going to hand over decision making to concentrations of private power and then everybody will be free. I’m not saying the people who advocate it intend that, but if you think it through, that’s the consequence, plus the breaking down of social bonds. A lot of young people are attracted to that. For example, less than half of the people in the Harvard survey felt that the government should provide health insurance or “basic necessities, such as food and shelter” to those in need who cannot afford them'
i'd also like to add that in the survey just 13% of people trust wall street to do the right thing. Yet libertarian ideas of minimal regulation on authoratarian power systems like businesses in wall street would allow wall street complete freedom to do anything they want.
I mean this is so contradictory you could almost compare it with religion.
A lot of economics to me also seems to have extremely faithful tendencies.
Here's a quote from ha joon chang. An economist from south korea and critic on the neo liberal policy.
'Daniel Defoe’s fictional hero, Robinson Crusoe, is often used by economics teachers as the pure example of ‘rational economic man’, the hero of neo-liberal free-market economics. They claim that, even though he lives alone, Crusoe has to make ‘economic’ decisions all the time. He has to decide how much to work in order to satisfy his desire for material consumption and leisure. Being a rational man, he puts in precisely the minimum amount of work to achieve the goal. Suppose Crusoe then discovers another man living alone on a nearby island.How should they trade with each other? The free-market theory says that introducing a market (exchange) does not fundamentally alter the nature of Crusoe’s situation. Life goes on much as before, with the additional consideration that he now needs to establish the rate of exchange between his product and his neighbour’s. Being a rational man, he will continue to make the right decisions. According to free-market economics, it is precisely because we are like Crusoe that free markets work. We know exactly what we want and how best to achieve it. Consequently, leaving people to do what they desire and know to be good for themselves is the best way to run the economy. Government just gets in the way.''
I haven't taken an economics course since high school, but this is completely absurd if it's taught anywhere.
There is a ridiculous assumption here for a free market to work. It requires that humans behave like emotionless pre-programmed beings. No such humans exist.
If you stuck stalin on an island next to Robinson Crusoe would there be a free market? Unlikely, you would have Robinson Crusoe wake up to find all his food stolen.
I saw Croods tonight. There was two women in the row behind me. During the scene, the same time the two characters romantically touched hands, the women kicked my seat. Is this kick unconscious cue for me to fuck her?
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