How Steroids Produce Rage in Users

I pride myself on never losing my cool I've never screamed at anyone I've never gotten physical with anyone but the ideas in my head that tell me to do things tell me to do unspeakable things like what they're unspeakable I'd have to speak them you really want to know Mum I'm also [ __ ] weird so just remember that no we bit most people uhprobably don't have this severity but I'll read a comment on social media directed at me I guess about me um and it's from like you know nameless faceless ...

 Aurelius Quotes on Mindfulness

2.8 Rarely is a person seen to be in a bad way because he has failed to attend to what is happening in someone else’s soul, but those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own souls are bound to be in a wretched state. 2.11 Let your every action, word, and thought be those of one who could depart from life at any moment. 3.4 Do not waste what remains of your life in forming impressions about others, unless you are doing so with reference to the common good. For you are...

 Multiple Forms of Surprise

1-46. A strong correlation exists between deception and surprise. The more forms of surprise built into the deception plan, the more likely it will overwhelm the target. These forms of surprise include size, activity, location, unit, time, equipment, intent, and style. One effect of surprise is the cry-wolf syndrome in which repeated false alarms have the potential to desensitize an enemy. A pattern of behavior lulls an opponent into a sense of normal behavior to allow a friendly action to oc...

 Magruder’s Principle

1-42. Magruder’s principle states that it is generally easier to induce the deception target to maintain a preexisting belief than to deceive the deception target for the purpose of changing that belief. Magruder’s principle exploits target biases and the human tendency to confirm exiting beliefs. Magruder’s principle alludes to two paths. A path of the deceiver changing the belief of a target and a path of maintaining a present belief. The principle then advises the better of the two p...

 Counterinsurgency

At its heart, a counterinsurgency is an armed struggle for the support of the population. This support can be achieved or lost through information engagement, strong representative government, access to goods and services, fear, or violence. This armed struggle also involves eliminating insurgents who threaten the safety and security of the population. However, military units alone cannot defeat an insurgency. Most of the work involves discovering and solving the population’s underlying iss...

 Hiroshima's Remarkable Recovery

Other examples of remarkable societal resilience are more recent. We can consider, for example, the atomic bombing of the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945. The bomb the United States dropped was 1,500 times more powerful than any previously used.32 The fireball at the hypocenter of the blast reached several thousand degrees Celsius within one-ten thousandth of a second before igniting all flammable material within one and a half miles.33 Ninety percent of the city’s buildings were at leas...

 The Success of Spaceguard

For years, many scientists warned of the dangers that asteroids pose to life on Earth, but for many years they weren’t listened to. Even after it was first proposed, in 1980, that the dinosaurs were killed off by a huge asteroid striking the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico,1 there was, in the words of leading astronomer Clark R. Chapman, a “giggle factor” associated with the risk from asteroids.2 This all changed in 1994 when comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 thudded into the side of Jupiter with th...

 A 1700s Rich Man in Britain

The best that we have seen so far is a poor guide to what is possible. To get some inkling of this, consider the life of a rich man in Britain in 1700—a man with access to the best food, health care, and luxuries available at the time. For all his advantages, such a man could easily die of smallpox, syphilis, or typhus. If he needed surgery or had a toothache, the treatment would be agonising and carry a significant risk of infection. If he lived in London, the air he breathed would be seve...

 Thought Experiment: Living Every Human Life

Imagine living, in order of birth, through the life of every human being who has ever lived.1 Your first life begins about three hundred thousand years ago in Africa.2 After living that life and dying, you travel back in time and are reincarnated as the second-ever person, born slightly later than the first. Once that second person dies, you are reincarnated as the third person, then the fourth, and so on. One hundred billion lives later,3 you become the youngest person alive today. Your “l...

 Games Turn Play into Work

‘Play’ was once a great slogan of liberation. Richard Neville: “The new beautiful freaks will teach us all how to play again (and they’ll suffer society’s penalty).” Play was once the battering ram to break down the Chinese walls of alienated work, of divided labor. Only look at what has become of play. Play is no longer a counter to work. Play becomes work; work becomes play. Play outside of work found itself captured by the rise of the digital game, which responds to the boredom...