Actually, yea. Many people do. It's relatively common. This is an element of personal responsibility. Granted, I know how to cook and I'm not a big fan of boxed, processed foods. This makes the gamut of foods I care about easier to track.
Plus, knowing that grapefruit helps metabolize different things helpful and cheapens your bartab. You'll get drunk faster after eating a grapefruit or two. Animal derived fats help slow down the inebriation process, like butter and a really greasy beef patty.
Agreed. When your job requires you to meet new people often or do trade shows, business cards with a qr code are the way to go. At one trade show I collected about 80 cards. About 10 people had special app vcards. Each with a totally different app. I'm not downloading an app for your information. Give me the fucking piece of paper.
However, pro tip. Blank back cards. People want to write notes about you and vice versa. Stop over designing cards with a back. A typical card is not a flyer. You should only hand them out to people you've met and talked to. That same card will fail as that hybrid business card/flyer. You'll never have enough info to justify expecting someone to go "huh, I just found this card somewhere without context and suddenly I'm compelled to talk to them".
The only version of meditation I can speak to is probably better called focus training.
Just sit in a darkish room, no noise, close your eyes and just say in your head "breathe in" as you breathe in, hold for like 3 sec and think nothing, then breathe out saying in your head "breathe out", hold for 3 sec while thinking nothing.
Repeat.
You wont get to round 2 without your mind wondering and thinking about something else. Just focusing on your breathing without thinking about work, friends, politics or when you stubbed your toe yesterday is an incredibly hard task.
That's 1 part of meditation.
Another part is then doing the same idea with your breathing but then to an "idea". I find when I try to do focus training, I run into thoughts that "bother me". Well, I'd say it's my subconscious trying to warn me about something. Thus, I'll do the same thing with just that thought, and funny enough the wandering thoughts will relate heavily to whatever that issue is. I then start to analyze the issue in now a really calm state. Eventually I come to either the conclusion to the problem in a way that brings me closure to never worry about it again or what my next step is, which again, gives me a sense of closure/stop worrying.
Breathe in/breathe out, my subconscious brings up another stress/anxiety ridden issue tormenting me. Time to meditate on that.
A lot of it is like surfing a wave. You're just letting your mind bring up thoughts. You cant consciously force it without inflicting a bias. Once you feel like you have all the evidence, then you can put it together. Eventually, you do this enough, the amount of time you spend focus training will be on your breath as you've dealt with all the things your subconscious is pressuring you about.
The second part is what I think is closest to traditional meditation, but I cant see how to get there without the first part.
Fyi, you are then a "professional driver" even in a normal car driving to the grocery. If you get a ticket, many states will instantly double the fine because as a pro, "you know better". Plus there's the medical aspect and other bullshit.
Unless you're going to actually use it, dont get it. Learn to drive an 18 speed with air brakes etc, sure. Just dont get the actual cdl.
to add to this, if you dont actually use your SCUBA or first responder or pilot skills on a regular basis, those certs are worthless at best, and dangerous at worst.
I don't have wilderness first responder but I do have wilderness first aid and keep it more or less up to date.
I wouldn't try something complicated like a traction splint unless there was really no other option and possibly even then--not sure they even teach it in WFA any longer. But, for the most part having a weekend class to refresh a lot of first aid isn't a bad thing even if you don't practice it all the time, may have forgotten some of the details, and maybe your splints aren't the world's greatest. But so long as you're cognizant of your limitations having some even somewhat stale first aid training is probably better than having none.
[Of course, if you act like your 10 year old WFR or W-EMT cert means you're qualified to charge in and take over because you're "certified" that of course can be an issue.]
Most of the wilderness FA certs have a 3-year expiration. IDK if this was always true, but it's definitely a thing now.
If you're using your certification to qualify for a professional or volunteer position, then they usually defer to the expiry period set by the issuer of the certification.
In my experience, basically nobody gets any first aid practice, in between re-certifications. And these are perishable skills, so I wouldn't trust in the ability of most people to execute anything complex after even a year has gone by... But that has to be balanced against the cost of re-training. WMR is usually an 80-hour course (IIRC) and re-certs more like 30-40? That's an absurd time investment for most working people.
Yeah... I'm trying to work out how to fit it in, later this year. I have a 40hr cert that's expiring, later this year, but the stuff I'm really interested in doing requires the full 80hr WFR.
I hope that more of these courses can evolve into a hybrid online model, where you can use distance learning to spread some of the coursework out, ahead of time.
This is true, but I do try to keep the training up. I'm certainly not doing it every weekend, but I train a minimum of 3-4 times per year for W-EMR. Scuba, honestly so long as you do it once or twice a year you're fine, it's really not terribly hard.
i have an open water cert and dive 4-6 times a year. it's fine for just myself, but if you have a higher level cert like rescue, then you may be asked or expected to assist others in emergencies.
thankfully, most places are very careful not to take cert cards from unfamiliar faces at face value.
I thank that is a crappy attitude. If I am on a dive and there is a lost diver or some other incident in the area, I want to have the skills to be able to help.
I would note that "asked or expected" is different than "required", so there really is no downside to doing a rescue diver class or a divemaster program. In fact, I highly recommend it and it was a lot of fun.
There is a negative, though, and I have experienced it diving. Diving is often a razor thin or no margin business, and selling cert courses can be easy money. Few scuba schools will fail students who are not up to snuff, because they might have to issue a refund or endure bad reviews. Some of these certifications will give incompetent divers a false sense of ability, and in an emergency situation, rather than staying out of the way, they create another problem.
The solution to that would seem to be recommending that people choose dive schools that take their Job seriously and don't pass people who haven't mastered the skills. Recommending against getting training is throwing the baby out with the bath water.
If you have no experience, just a cert, then you should stay out of the way with those with experience and help as requested.
However, with many dive accidents, you don't have the luxury of waiting for a more experienced diver and having that training will give you a better chance of saving your buddy's life.
The people should definitely get the training, but probably without the cert. The cert for certain things, like rescue in particular, should probably be validated by an external agency that isn't the school
On the flip side, if you have never tried to rescue an unconscious diver and have to do it for the first time without any training, you are not going to have the luxury of making all the mistakes you will make in the rescue class.
While a cert is no substitute for experience, if you are going to gain that experience, it is much better to have a cert than not.
For recreational scuba this is misleading. The cert is proof of going through training at some point, which differentiates you from someone who has never been breathing under water, cleared your mask and reg, and knows basic buoyancy control. These skills are not intuitive so the main thing is exposure, which the cert proves to a large extent.
Dive shops with more advanced dives ask for total and recent experience as well, and sometimes require you to do a refresher or dive with them once before they take you on the advanced dives (deep, night, high current, overhead obstacles etc). The OW cert is a big contributing factor, but it's not the only data point.
That said most other recreational certs are useless and just a money grab, even including advanced, imo. Shops generally rate OW+30 recent dives higher than OW+AOW, and rightly so.
I think the problem with "political beliefs" is do you really believe in them or do you want to be apart of a club? Pretty much anytime I've had a calm political discussion with someone, I've found out that they're a scatter chart on that political leaning grid instead of a solitary point. Yet they still say I'm this party. Or they're just a parrot for whoever is the poster child that week for whatever party.
Political beliefs when parroted as a clear cut, right/wrong for every situation is what makes people's stomach churn to projectile levels.
Political beliefs when presented as a complex flaw of the human condition that makes us all realize we're better off burning it all to the ground and sleeping on grass again... then enacting a system to severely punish anyone who tries to bring it all back, which would require a group to enact said system with then another group to oversight that group... oh shit wait...
I can second this fully. Figured out the same thing when I spent a solid week nazi tracking my eating.
The thing that blew my mind. I always used heavy cream in my coffee. 150cal per 2 tablespoons. I would use like a quarter cup. I switch to milk, just 150cal per cup.
This hasn't been a secret for a long time. Yet when anyone says someone needs to put the fork down and go for a walk because they're fat... granted general diet changes need to dramatically change due to modern "foods".
I say this again like in another post, generally the same people who scream the political rhetoric of day 1 covid prevention are the same ones who think anything less than fat acceptance is fascism even though their same source also says obesity is just about as deadly.
It truly is hard to care now when people dish out "scientific illiteracy" like they're arms dealers dishing out guns during a war.
Way too much of covid rhetoric is rooted in vote swaying, on all sides. The "correct" tie colors are in charge and nothing really changed.
Plus, let's please stop and remember why any pharmaceutical takes time to become widespread... wait, sorry, pharmaceutical companies have a perfect track record of business practices. Sorry, my bad. No one claiming to have a cure for anything has ever done so out of malevolent greed.
> generally the same people who scream the political rhetoric of day 1 covid prevention are the same ones who think anything less than fat acceptance is fascism
Since fat is beautiful, does that make covid more beautiful? Maybe we should stop stigmatizing it.
PS: I vomited in my mouth after typing that. But my general point to that sarcasm, putting any "problem" on a pedestal is stupid. Is covid dangerous, absolutely. 1 death is one too many. But a lot of the same people who go hysterical about covid, claim obesity is fine... and wear masks while alone at home during zoom meetings. There was no way to day 1 avoid deaths no matter the "scientific illiteracy". That's just political rhetoric to sway votes. Just like student loan forgiveness.
Yet correct. "Fat is beautiful" is and had been killing far more people than COVID could dream of, year over year, and contributes mightily to the unabashed consumerism that destroys environments and hurdles everyone into misery through climate change from their dietary habits.
Supporting obesity out of some misguided "don't be mean" morality should be treated with disgust.
Agreed, extreme concepts are not hard. But I think the fascinating part is the salesmanship involved. Something I've noticed, really high concept artists are fantastic salesmen... and really shitty artists (80% of the time). They can convince people that a duct taped banana on the wall or just splatter paint can emotionally transcend you. Dont get me wrong, I like some abstract art when there is an aesthetic quality to it. But the worship status given to something like this, one incredibly slow note every however months... come on. You could do the same with Vanilla Ice's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 song from the 90s. Doesnt mean anything... other than that song still slaps :)
I'll take listening to an amateur messing with guitar chords while drunk in a shitty bar over something like this. Because I can actually experience the shitty bar music. You literally cannot experience this "art project".
The artist as messenger - through inspiration or otherwise to bring us a new way of looking at things; the artist as theoretician - to build on work that has gone on before and progressively expand our horizons; the artist as performer - acting out a role in society.
I'd suggest all three are present in artists across the ages, but in recent times the last seems to have become more prominent.
Plus, knowing that grapefruit helps metabolize different things helpful and cheapens your bartab. You'll get drunk faster after eating a grapefruit or two. Animal derived fats help slow down the inebriation process, like butter and a really greasy beef patty.