EDIT: I actually updated it to omit the day when it's the first day of the month. So instead of A1, it's just A. In the visual progression, seeing "A" seems to be enough to imply "we're now in August (1st)", and it's a little less visually cluttered when quickly scanning. Hopefully it's still clear, happy to adjust!
There's more than one that I can think of, and the best I've ever done is the "imaginary deck" one.
Setup: shuffle an imaginary deck, fan the imaginary deck, tell someone to pick an imaginary card and remember it, shuffle it back into the imaginary deck and put the deck in your pocket.
Remove a deck from your pocket, ask what the card was, fan the deck out, and - it's the only upside down card in the deck!?
This is one where if you have the time and effort to dedicate to it, can be simple. You memorize your deck, so when they tell you the card, you thumb to it and flip it so when you fan it, the card they picked is upside down.
The "Invisible Deck" is a very famous trick. It can be purchased[1] for about $10 and just about anyone can master it in about 10 minutes. With the standard method, you don't need to memorize the deck or flip the card.
If you have a sustainable solution to provide you'll be rich. I default to squelching thoughts of my mortality. That is at the top of the list of mental frames that have improved my life. I otherwise lived in constant existential panic from the ages of 12 to 25. Thanks a lot Nietzsche...
What works for me is negative visualization. Thinking of the worst possible thing that can happen, and how I'd feel in that situation. It's kind of like exposure therapy.
I had the same issue I think, struggled with it up to around 25 when a doctor asked me to try melatonin.
It actually changed my life, now I can sleep and be like a normal person. I used to joke that I was a C-type person (instead of A/B) when it comes to sleep.
I thought so too. I have at least 150 hrs of meditation under my belt. I can't say I'm worse or better, just another silly thing for my ego to carry around.
Take it from me. Ignoring your mortality is a lot easier.
150 hours over how long time? Those who aren't "naturals" may need more than that to "get it" and start seeing benefits (coming from someone who after several attempts in various forms finally "broke through", in lack of better words, on day ~6 of a 10 day Goenka-Vipassana retreat. That'd be ~10 h / day during that time).
After that I was able to do 30-60 minute sittings at home and experience the associated change. If you're also a very cerebral person you may also need a similarly concentrated "boot camp" or similar to get to some base level.
In a similar vein, if someone has extremely weak physique, it's not really convincing when they claim that physical exercise doesn't work for them, as they did spend 150h at the gym machines ;)
That's a great point. I guess hype made my expectations unrealistic. I have it on my to-do list to get the habit going again. I'll try this weekend!
I've wanted to do a retreat very badly. I would need to work to organize my current world to fit it in but it's something I have in the back of my mind.
Or by making getting citizenship something that's attainable in my lifetime. Everyone complains about the US immigration system and of course it's not great but when I came here I kinda knew what the path forward was and how long stuff will take, for a lot of European countries there's no way to ever get citizenship and the path to permanent residency changes every three or four years.
I emigrated to Canada pretty much on a whim (using a fiance visa) and have fared quite well there. We (my partner and I) are weighing the possibility of emigrating again to Portugal which offers a rather reasonable golden visa - with a wide variety of European countries offering "trial" visas for workers under 30 with the most bare of requirements.
As a US citizen I've contemplated getting my wife residency down there and it's simply ridiculous - as are the hoops I'd have to go through to relinquish my US citizenship and that only matters because the US feels entitled to own me even though I haven't resided there for nearly a decade at this point. US immigration, from the working visa angle, is extremely unpredictable and only really estimable if you've got a large corporation with a whole bunch of lawyers to get your back - spousal visas aren't terrible but most come with some seriously onerous lifetime costs to execute (like taking a year off working).
I know there are a bunch of European countries and they've all got their quirks to immigrate into but you can really trivially get an EU passport and then move around within the EU.
Switzerland and some nordic countries make it impossible. Portugal wants me to marry a Citizen, otherwise it's only residency. Luxembourg and the Netherlands wants me to learn their language, which is not something I would need to work there and in my experience visiting neither to be able to live there. It's not great.
On the other hand Italy denied my application once already, after my great grandparents basically left the country because Italy was not defending their town from Germany. They rejected my application because they say my great grandparents were not Italian but Austro-Hungarians. The lady at the consulate was super racist to my grandmother about it, in my face. After that now there's another way I could get my Italian citizenship by birthright by suing the government because of another racist thing they use to do where women were not transferring citizenship.
Again the US is not great but a lot of this things make me feel whatever "racial tensions" I may be a victim of in the US are mostly the media blowing stuff out of proportion, when most of the "racial tensions" I felt dealing with the EU are actual racial violence or discrimination that either me or my family where victims of.
> Luxembourg and the Netherlands wants me to learn their language, which is not something I would need to work there and in my experience visiting neither to be able to live there. It's not great.
That seems like a very reasonable requirement. How can you expect to participate in society, especially elections, without a decent command of the local language?
> How can you expect to participate in society, especially elections, without a decent command of the local language?
By hiring a local accountant and paying a small fortune in taxes? If I learn the language then yeah cool maybe I'll get into their politics thing but it's not that if I don't vote I'm not going to be a productive citizen. A lot of countries let you become a citizen without learning their language, most notably the US.
> By hiring a local accountant and paying a small fortune in taxes? If I learn the language then yeah cool maybe I'll get into their politics thing but it's not that if I don't vote I'm not going to be a productive citizen.
Being a part of society is a lot more than working and paying your taxes.
> A lot of countries let you become a citizen without learning their language, most notably the US.
Speaking as a US immigrant to Finland (a Nordic country), the citizenship requirements here seem quite reasonable to me. Minimal language proficiency, a civic knowledge exam, and at least 5 years drama-free residency.
Switzerland is 10 years and then you need to pass a language and general knowledge test. The contents of the test depend on the region you live. Honestly I don't see it as that ridiculous.
Well, the exact requirements depend on the canton and commune you happen to be in. If you're in a village in Appenzell Innerrhoden it's going to be more tricky than if you're in one of the more international cities like Basel, Zürich, Geneva etc.
> Changing a couple of bytes in a file? Don't change the style. Writing something new? Figure out what's best. Rewriting a big chunk? Make reasonable formatting choices.
This is exactly the type of arguably useless effort we don't want to spend any time on. Having to think about what is "reasonable", "allowed", or "best" is non-negligible cognitive burden for both the writer and reviewer/reader.
When I use black or other formatter, I have to exert cognitive effort to anticipate how the formatter will format the code so that I can avoid the inevitable stupid formatting decisions.
I often then tweak the code in a way that is not necessarily better, it's merely rendered better by black.
It just feels like I'm fighting against the tool half of the time.
Added: https://github.com/hoffa/year-on-a-page/blob/main/renders/20...
EDIT: I actually updated it to omit the day when it's the first day of the month. So instead of A1, it's just A. In the visual progression, seeing "A" seems to be enough to imply "we're now in August (1st)", and it's a little less visually cluttered when quickly scanning. Hopefully it's still clear, happy to adjust!