Mindconnection eNL, 2019-11-17

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Item 1. "A massive solar farm with battery backup will provide electrical power cheaper than coal, gas, or nuclear" according to John Blinke is his Supplementally column of the Mensa Bulletin (his source is Science Magazine). Unfortunately, this plant won't be online until 2023, as it's being built in the People's Republic of California where excessive government is a huge problem.

Item 2. Law-abiding gun owners are still boycotting Dick's Sporting Goods. The bad news is DSG is still giving us several reasons to do so.

This fake outlet can replace any outlet in your home. The WiFi camera hidden in the outlet can you have you live streaming and recording in minutes! Plug this unit in or hardwire the unit into your existing electrical wiring and recess it into the wall, just like an actual outlet!

Smartphone application: Once this unit is hard wired or plugged in, simply download the application the manual recommends and you are on your way to live streaming and recording within minutes!

• Full HD 1920x1080 video recording resolution.
• High-resolution images taken at 2560x1920.
• Change your settings easily using the included A/V cable and your TV or monitor.
• External SD card up to 128GB.
• Supports loop recording for unlimited recording potential.
• Date/time stamp.
• Motion detection sensitivity adjustment.
• Video resolution: 1920x1080 @ 30 frames per second.
• Video format: .MP4 Photo resolution: 2560x1920.
• Photo format: .JPG.
• Memory capacity: 128GB (class 6 or higher card).
• Power: hardwired.
• SD card storage usage: 1GB per 10 mins.
• Min illumination: 1 LUX.
• Viewing angle: 90°.
•  Includes 1 each of OmniWallOutlet, 16GB MicroSD card, MicroSD card reader, tweezers, manual, A/V cable, remote.
• Compatible with Windows XP and up and with Mac OSX and up.

This electrical outlet is a decoy that provides no original functionality as a power outlet - it is a high tech video surveillance system only! It is powered by hard wiring it into your existing electrical wiring and recessing it into the wall (just as you would a real outlet) for a completely covert setup. Professional installation is highly recommended. MGI will provide technical support only for the camera unit, not for the installation of it into the wall.

Buy yours now.

In the process of going through her many blog postings and videos of her rambling speeches to the City Council (she started making those a few months before the election), I noticed that she consistently talked a whole lot but never really said anything. She used buzzwords often, though. She'd sprinkle her ramblings with words like "transparency" or "fairness". She clearly borrowed from the playbook of Sharice Edwards, a pathological liar who is still lying since defeating her A+ rated successor Kevin Yoder by spewing bald-faced lies, baseless accusations, and terrible innuendos about him.

Like the Congresswoman, she offered nothing. Also:

• On her blog she revealed precious little about herself.
• She spent a great deal of her time making false accusations against her opponent and his supporters.
• She even advised people to call the police on her opponent's supporters if they were hanging door flyers.

This got me to thinking about a good brainpower tip for y'all.

When other people speak, don't evaluate based on feelings generated by positive buzzwords. Those buzzwords are often not at all related to what the person is saying. Also, they are usually used to cover up the opposite. For example:

• Transparency. When executives and politicians use this word, you can bet they are hiding something.
• "I'm not going to lie to you" is code for "Here comes a whopper."
• "Trust me" is code for "Bend over baby, because here it comes."
• Safety. Typically, libtards use this word when seeking to constrain free speech (First Amendment) or self-defense (Second Amendment).
• Affordable. You should probably look for more ways to cut your own expenses, because here comes yet another rip-off, tax increase, or other financial loss.

An honest person does not need to gild the lily. An honest person does not need to cover his/her real message with assurances. For example:

• Instead of "transparency" this person gives you all the relevant facts or points you to where you can find them.
• Instead of "I'm not going to lie to you" this person provides a rational support for whatever is being said. That might be a logical proof, an analogy, a link to a primary source document, or some other reference. Or, this person makes the point simply and clearly; that lone is usually an indicator that truth is being spoken.
• Instead of demanding your trust, this person earns it. That can be through previous actions or a sincere gesture. When we mess up with a customer (mistakes happen), we don't expect them to just trust an apology. We provide something additional of value. That can be a nice rebate, free advice (good advice that is useful, not just something stupid), or some other gesture that shows we mean what we say.
• Instead of invoking the word "safety" to cover some kind of punishment for the innocent, an honest person provides an actual solution that improves safety.
• Instead of telling you that something costly is "affordable" an honest person admits there's an additional cost. The honest person may communicate why that cost is worthwhile (the value proposition), why it's unavoidable, or how you might mitigate the cost or cope with it. But an honest person never tells the "affordable" lie.

When evaluating what another person is saying, look at the substance of it.

• What is this person's point?
• Is it reasonable?
• Is it verifiable?
• Is this person making leaps of logic or does the conclusion follow from the premise and supporting evidence?
• What is the other side of the story?
• What might be the hidden cost of what this person is proposing? There is no free lunch.

If you're like most people, you don't particularly like your job. You aren't passionate about it, or even "merely" engaged. So you spend 10 hours a day (if the typical white collar worker) not being particularly happy. Your life on this earth is finite, yet you waste such a huge portion of it drudging through the work week and TGIF has real meaning for you.

Now imagine you are the boss. You have ten direct reports. Nine of them exhibit little or no joy until it's time to go home. But there's the one. She is so happy to be at work that you deliberately swing by her desk near the start of your day to get your positive energy jolt from her. You've lost count of how many times she's come up with a creative solution without even being asked. Her work isn't perfect, but it is close. And she knocks it out at three times the rate of her next fastest coworker. She's the one you send to trade shows, because she is always "talking up" your industry, your company, your products, and your department. The other nine, if they say anything about your industry, your company, your products, or your department, provide faint praise or outright criticism.

Vendors and customers like her. People in industry trade associations like her.

Now, as her boss you have already decided that if there's a layoff she won't be the one to get canned. But maybe you haven't thought about the fact she's layoff-proof. If she did get canned, she'd have at least three job offers before she got home. Or maybe you have thought about this and you sometimes lie awake at night wondering how much of a raise you can get her so she doesn't leave.

You can see this one person has prospects that are very different from those of her nine coworkers. And that's because she truly cares and is totally engaged. She loves what she does. This attitude colors her thoughts, emotions, and actions while on the job and off. She's happier all-around, and healthier too, because she has decided to love what she does. Maybe she chose that job because it's what she loves to do, or maybe she got the job and decided to fully commit to it.

You can read all kinds of books about playing job interview games or how to write undetectable lies into your resume. Those books are for the 78% who are disengaged. If you are fully engaged at work, you won't need to go to job interviews to get hired and you won't need to send a resume. I know this, because when I worked on a W-2 I was fully engaged and I got job offers without an interview and without a resume. All the time. These were offers from people at other companies in my industry. If you're a "hot property" people want you on their team and they aren't going to toss those kinds of barriers in front of you.

If something is holding you back from being like this one worker, change whatever that is. Maybe your boss is a total jerk; in that case, network within your company (e.g., serve on committees or do interdepartmental projects with gusto) and open new opportunities. Or network within your industry to open new opportunities with another employer. Maybe your commute is stressful; in that case, car pool with someone and/or get a remote work situation set up for at least one day a week. Whatever it is, get it out of the way. Don't allow anything, not even your best excuses, to keep you in the land of the disengaged.

Today, people are increasingly ripped off by some scammer who started the scam by simply calling them. In addition to this hazard, there's the annoyance of receiving many unsolicited "sales" calls from various scammers and others you'd rather just not talk to.

So should you get an unlisted number for your phone? There's an extra charge for this with most phone carriers, yet it means only that THEY won't list your number in THEIR directory. Unlisted numbers (along with the names of those who have them) are still available from a variety of sources, some paid and some free. For example, you can sign up for a reverse phone number search service for a modest fee and look up almost anybody. Also, IRS employees routinely steal and sell confidential taxpayer information including names and phone numbers. On top of that, robo dialers do brute force phone calling not from a list but from every potential combination. If your number exists, robo callers will call it. So this is no cure-all.

What about Caller ID blocking? This doesn't prevent people from discovering your phone number, it just hides your name when you call. Because robocallers and con artists use Caller ID blocking extensively, most people either automatically block Caller ID blocked calls or don't pick up if they see them. So this option is really for the bad guys, not for the potential victims.

There are some things you can do:

• Don't show your phone number in (anti) social media.

• If you put your resume online, do not include your address or phone number; use a gmail or yahoo e-mail address that exists solely for contacting you in response to your resume. Same for LinkedIn, etc.

• Don't sign up for free sweepstakes or give-aways; these things are nothing more than data bait.

• Consider using a fake name with your phone number; scammers do this all the time, so this option is available. Some calling cards and cellphone plans do this automatically; my number once showed as Dave something for about six months. Your friends will know it's you, and if you make a phone appointment to call someone you can tell that person that Caller ID will show [whatever name].

• When answering the phone, don't use your last name. If the caller does not have a legitimate business reason to have your last name, don't give it out even if asked. So instead of "Jones residence" say "This is Jennifer, how can I help you?" (unless your name actually is Jennifer or you are a guy, in which case use a guy's name). Also, "Hello, who is calling please?" works just fine.

• Check your outgoing message on your voicemail. Does it have your last name? Unless there is a business reason for this, change your message.

• Don't feel pressured to answer questions when someone calls you out of the blue. Scammers will often say they are with the IRS or the police department or some other government agency, and then pepper you with questions. If that happens, ask for their number and say you will call them back. If they don't agree to this, just hang up.

• Buy a call blocker device such as the CPR Call Blocker (landlines, only). Every time you get a spam call, press the big red button to block further calls from that number.

• Use your phone service's call blocking.

• If you find yourself totally bombarded with spam calls, you can try changing your phone number. This is problematic these days, for many reasons. Use it only as a last resort, and don't allow call forwarding from the old number to the new.

Always remember that the person calling you is just calling you. That person cannot pose a physical threat, unless that person is an IRS employee or similar degenerate with access to unlimited resources. Phone call harm nearly always depends upon bullying the victim into doing something stupid. You never have to argue with that person or justify yourself, and you always have the option of just hanging up. Use that option without feeling the least bit abashed about doing so.

Photo taken a couple of weeks after my 59th birthday.

Note that the information provided here will likely conflict with the "fad of the moment" and other unsustainable, unproductive ways of looking at health and fitness.

Article appears below.

See my climbing videos here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCyb67uKOxW_TsG6BVPbBIQ/videos

The traditional approach is low reps, to avoid increasing muscle size. Heavy weight, slow reps, and you build muscle without unnecessary size. Sounds right, get a higher power to weight ratio by not increasing capillarization the way competitive body builders do. But is it the best way for an athlete to train?

No, because there are two flaws with this approach:

1. Look at the typical performance athlete and then at the typical competitive bodybuilder. The performance athlete has much more body fat. That extra fat does not improve the power to weight ratio! What if the athlete replaced the fat with capillaries and kept overall weight the same?
2. Increased capillarization means greater blood flow to the muscle fibers. This means more oxygen is available to burn more fuel in a given time, which means more power. It's the same principle as turbocharging an engine. Recovery from exertion is also noticeably faster, not recovery as in endurance but as in sustained ability to repeatedly produce peak power. And the time to depletion is improved even before recovery is needed, allowing the muscles to contract stronger and longer.

My faith in the low rep for performance concept took a big hit when I watched Usain Bolt train in the 2016 documentary "I Am Bolt".

I followed the traditional approach from the mid-70s until last year, and then switched to the higher volume, higher speed with expert guidance from Robert Wichman. This change gave me the "dreaded" capillarization, but it also resulted in a noticeable increase of instantaneous power. Not only that, I recover from exertion far more quickly, and often do gnarly climbs back to back. For someone who is about 30 years older than most of the people I climb with, you'd think I'd have one of the lowest climbs per hour rates instead of one of the highest. Before I changed my training, I was in about the middle--but that high only because I have been training since the early 1970s and haven't missed a workout since 1977.

A fellow climber was filming me climb this V4: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fTh372svh1M. He filmed it twice. On the first attempt, I messed up on the last move and fell. He was surprised that I wanted to make the second attempt right away without resting. You can see in this climb how my back muscles are popping; it requires a great deal of tension in the core and across the back to maintain that precarious balance. This creates a significant cardio load and *should* require me to rest a good 5 or 6 minutes between climbs to get my strength back. But my strength never left me, thanks to that capillarization.

When I was very active in martial arts, we avoided building much muscle because "it slows you down." Yet look at today's MMA fighters; very different from how Bruce Lee looked. Similarly, take a look at Usain Bolt. Many people are surprised to learn he is 6'5" because of his proportions. He also has a look that is more like a competitive bodybuilder than like a 1970s martial artist. If you watch the documentary "I Am Bolt" and see how he trains, you'll understand why. Mr. Bolt is widely recognized not just as the world's greatest living athlete but as the greatest athlete of all time. His training is not the traditional low reps, "avoid capillarization" training.

Increasing muscle fiber size is only one part of building a stronger muscle. Stimulating the growth of capillaries within the muscle is the part that many performance athletes miss, on purpose, due to a misconception about "dead weight".

All that said, can you reach a point where those capillaries cost more in weight than they contribute in strength? Theoretically, yes. But not if they grow in proportion to the muscle fibers. Absent something extreme, such as freaky "1 in a billion" genetics or a truly whacky training program, your body will grow both in the correct proportions if stimulated to grow both. Not only will you never develop "dead weight" in terms of excess capillaries, you also raise your ceiling on how much muscle fiber growth you can get when you have more capillaries to support that growth.

So for a performance athlete, rep restriction for training makes as much sense as calorie restriction prior to competition.

Just to avoid a misinterpretation here, I do not advocate "cardio" because it trains the body to conserve fuel (store fat) and reduce weight (catabolize muscle). If you watch Usain Bolt's training, you will see how he developed awesome cardiovascular capacity without "doing cardio." People who "do cardio" to get more cut (for appearance) or lose fat (for performance) actually do the opposite of what they intended. If you train properly, the "cardio" is integrated into your workout because of the sheer demand placed on the body (it's all about intensity).

If you "need" the "cardio" anyhow, it means your workout is defective in some way. The typical culprit is too much rest between sets. The cause of that is usually a failure to focus on the workout. You get distracted doing something to occupy your time during the rest period and before you know it several minutes have gone by. One cure for this is to stack related exercises. For example, I do a set of chin-ups then immediately grab a set of dumbells to do biceps curls. Then I stand there, with nothing to do, for 15 or 20 seconds before hitting the next set. It may seem like I am wasting time for 15 or 20 seconds, but what I am doing is reaching deep into my "bucket of try" for my next two sets. Then I bring my A game to those two sets, making them as productive as I can.

To get your best body for performing in your sport, use the techniques competitive bodybuilders use. But change your focus from physique symmetry to strength specialization. If you don't have a clue on how to do this, some really good trainers are out there. But so are some posers and players. Check out Mr. Wichman; he has a system for remote coaching that many people are using. I don't get any remuneration from that endorsement, I'm just making it to help any of my readers who want to take their athletic performance up a notch or three.

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

One fourth of the USA's homeless population lives in the People's Republic of California (source: The Economist). This should not be surprising.

Political campaign managers have learned that voters typically make their choice based on fear and other emotions rather than rational analysis. That's why election campaigns are full of lies and negativity, with the least qualified candidate usually winning. How can you help change this dynamic? Begin by seeing the D-R con game for what it is, and bypass that false choice system entirely. Next step? Gently persuade others to apply some critical thinking, asking them questions to stimulate that process.