Fruit Instructions

Congratulation! You have a fruit!

A fruit is not ready currently. You must prepare a fruit. The color of a fruit is green. The color of a fruit to taste great and put inside your body is red.

-Zack Parsons, from Something Awful

Jean Reno Arrives

Je suis Victor. Nettoyer

(I am Victor. Cleaner)

-La Femme Nikita, directed by Luc Besson

Brazilian Bachelor On Confidence

To get respect, you have to demand it. Not in the old sucker way "YOU RESPECT ME OR ELSE", but by not tolerating bad behavior.

This includes women. Women KNOW that they want a man who is able to decide things with confidence. They may TALK about "repression", but that's just talk.

Never lose your temper. Act like you can take care of anything. In fact, you can. You know you do. You are the only one who have power over your life. Never give it away.

Your woman says: I AM LEAVING YOU!
You: well...ok!

(supposing you're not marriage/co-habitating, cause if you do... well, god bless you!)

You can NOT control NO ONE -- EXCEPT yourself. Remember that.

Brazilian Bachelor

Frost On Good Neighbors

Mending Wall

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

-Robert Frost

Christians' Moral Compass

Suppose Omega makes a credible threat that if you ever step inside a bathroom between 7AM and 10AM in the morning, he'll kill you. Would you be panicked by the prospect of Omega withdrawing his threat? Would you cower in existential terror and cry: "If Omega withdraws his threat, then what's to keep me from going to the bathroom?" No; you'd probably be quite relieved at your increased opportunity to, ahem, relieve yourself.

Which is to say: The very fact that a religious person would be afraid of God withdrawing Its threat to punish them for committing murder, shows that they have a revulsion of murder which is independent of whether God punishes murder or not.

The fear of losing a moral compass is itself a moral compass. Indeed, I suspect you are steering by that compass, and that you always have been. As Piers Anthony once said, "Only those with souls worry over whether or not they have them." s/soul/morality/ and the point carries.

-Eliezer Yudkowsky, heavily edited from Overcoming Bias

Dawes On What Doesn't Matter In Therapy

First, they discovered that the therapists' credentials - Ph.D., M.D., or no advanced degree - and experience were unrelated to the efficacy of therapy.

Second, they discovered that the type of therapy given was unrelated to its effectiveness, with the possible exception of behavioral techniques, which seemed superior for well-circumscribed behavioral problems.

They also discovered that length of therapy was unrelated to its success.

-Robyn Dawes quoted by Robin Hanson of Overcoming Bias.

Ell On Dexterity

I'm Good With My Hands

I’m good with my hands
I can make, grow, mend and tend things
I can embroider and darn and crochet – knit, paint and draw
My fine motor control is very fine indeed
One finger tip on my clit, a zero to orgasm high speed chase
I am good with my hands
My slick grip, my swirling, steady stroke
Makes him sigh and moan and groan and spurt great streams
I am very good with my hands

Ell at Wilful Damage

Ell On Bedroom Athleticism

lucky I'm bendy

Krueger On Terrorists

Hassan concluded that “none of them were uneducated, desperately poor, simple-minded, or depressed. Many were middle class and, unless they were fugitives, held paying jobs. Two were the sons of millionaires.”

[C]ountries with fewer civil lib­erties and political rights were more likely to be the birthplaces of foreign insurgents. Distance also mattered, with most foreign insurgents com­ing from nearby nations.

The evidence suggests that terrorists care about influencing political outcomes. They are often motivated by geopolitical grievances. To under­stand who joins terrorist organizations, instead of asking who has a low salary and few opportunities, we should ask: Who holds strong political views and is confident enough to try to impose an extrem­ist vision by violent means?

Heavily Edited From Alan Krueger's "What Makes A Terrorist"