Taomeow

music of the spheres

zerostao

They don't pretend. They just remember that until 1861 there was no such thing as "Italians" (except in the area of the peninsula conquered by Ostrogoths, a Germanic tribe, which they named the Kingdom of Italy. Italians who lived there were actually Germans... except there was no Germany until 1871... European history is mighty confusing, but one thing is certain: most people believe they are what they are told they are, but if they dig deeper, they might find out that they are, almost invariably, something entirely else. Some simply remember who they really are... but those are the tiniest minority. Everybody else is something made up, mostly.)

We appear to be so unimaginative dividing the country according to only one principle... you know which one. Compare our dichotomy to the Eight Ways to Divide Italy:

Thank you, SZ! I'll definitely check it out! What I'm actually trying to figure out is exactly this -- 1.whether arts that do not engage deep muscles and "hard/external" arts are basically the same thing, at least on the level of physical structure (of course a lot more than that goes into internal arts, but internal structure must come first -- no structure, no function), 2. and if (1) is not true, then which arts do engage them, and how exactly, and 3. if (2) is true, i.e. hard arts do exist that engage these deep structures, how exactly do they go about counteracting these "huge imbalances." I've encountered only three people who managed to switch from external/hard arts to taiji and actually develop great core in a bunch of years, but they are, in my experience, the exception. (Coincidentally, all three are exceptionally smart, and two of them have hardcore scientific background, in biology.) But of course my exposure is limited... so I'm trying to expand my understanding, and correct it in case it's wrong. My current understanding is that it's a choice -- you can't have it both ways, you can't be "sung" and "hard" simultaneously... "sung" must extend to, and ultimately rely on, responsive inner structures, and you have to train toward this responsiveness in a way that overtraining the superficial muscles makes impossible.

Nah, not feeding. Seek your nourishment elsewhere.

Can someone tell me which (if any) hard arts might engage, develop, strengthen, or otherwise positively affect the internal muscles shown on the right side of this picture (as opposed to the external ones shown on the left)? What techniques, if any, would be used? Please be specific if possible.

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I would say deep state is national/local and shadow government is international/global, but there's areas where they completely intersect. Something like this:

Stiletto heels

It's true that "studies" are largely unreliable, and change seasonally, and then change again. One way to assess how much you can trust them is to go straight to "financial disclosure" first, before even reading the study. if it has been paid for by the soy lobby and it "proves" the benefits of soy, I don't read it and ignore whatever "conclusions" it may have arrived at. (An aside. This is the approach I use toward pretty much everything, not just nutrition. If a politician, e.g., takes a hard-line anti-pot position, fine, I look at who finances his campaigns. If it's a pharmaceutical company that will lose customers from legalizing cannabis, another one that has been selling or developing drugs for the same conditions or even based on the same isolated synthetic components, or a company like DuPont that produces synthetic fabrics which hemp fabrics could compete with, and he himself comes from a family that holds a monopoly on importing booze from Britain and Scotland, and so on, I know why the politician has taken the position he has taken, and it has nothing to do with good or bad things about cannabis itself. Soy, wheat, margarine, national security, international relations... whatever it is, follow the money and power and find out if you are dealing with fake or real information. Sometimes you need to look deeper, e.g. into the investors into the investor. You'd be shocked what you can find. Basically there's four investment companies -- that's f o u r -- which you may never even have heard of -- with a finger in 90% of all pies out there... I don't eat those pies with my eyes closed or starry-eyed or otherwise gobble them up with such trust as though my own grandmother has baked them while having nothing but my best interest at heart. But the story of how I go about assessing information toward a far more accurate picture than any one or ten or a million "studies" or "press releases" can create is beside the point. The point is, you can't possibly know what you're dealing with in any one case or ten cases or a million unless you don't take anyone's word for anything and turn yourself into a... er... an organized crime investigator. That's what looking into "nutritional science" and scores of other subjects boils down to... alas.) Besides, nutrition, as I said more than once before, is the single most complex subject in existence. I'm not kidding. No one is an expert. It's too biologically, biophysically, historically, socially, culturally complex, this process of "not-me" being transformed into "me" in a given species, a given individual, and a given individual at different periods of his or her life and under different conditions. I've been studying it for the longest time, in an unbiased and comprehensive interdisciplinary fashion, and I believe I understand more than anyone who hasn't, but I don't consider myself an expert. I can see the tip of the iceberg. Most people are the Titanic in this respect, they don't even know the iceberg is there... So, anyway, I eat soy a few times a year. That's safe enough. Beyond that... I know my ancestors never did. And they were around for 2.5 million years, while soy eaters... let alone soy lobby... Time will tell. But I believe I've already heard what it has to say whispered in my ear, and saw it in a crystal ball...

You're either kidding or relying on very sketchy sources for this assertion. Nope, not flawed. I read it -- have you? https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/5088/06b1c13b86c98c02a686878d05f5db579664.pdf "Most of East Asia" eats it in tiny amounts, as condiments rather than meals, and mostly fermented. Not the way American vegetarians eat it "to replace" meat. It is used with meat, fish, vegetables, or in soups as a small addition to the meal -- either to take on the flavors of whatever else is cooking and increase the volume of the dish (it is much cheaper than meat or fish but can take on their flavors when they are cooked together, which is the original idea behind including it in the diet -- to feed more hungry mouths than they otherwise could), or as a sauce (fermented, i.e. pre-digested and teeming with live beneficial bacteria, and used even more sparingly -- a sauce is not a meal.) As for "healthy until old age," for one thing it's not true "everywhere for everybody" in Asia -- you would have to get a lot more specific and take into account a lot more factors. E.g. India has the highest rate of cardiovascular disease and heart attacks in the world, while Okinawa has the lowest -- but Okinawa is interesting in that, as a result of their having had the American military base there for some 70 years, the population was exposed to the Western way of eating much earlier and to a much greater extent than the rest of Japan, in particular their consumption of red meat and dairy has been consistently much higher. The outcome of combining their wonderful (fish and seafood on a daily basis, and extremely fresh at that, to name one) local dietary habits with some sensible goodies from another culture (ours, believe it or not) proved to be the best health and longevity scores in the world. Small amounts of soy they eat (alongside with konnyaku and shirataki serving the same purpose but performing way better nutrition-wise) can't break them. But try making it into one of the staple foods, increase the volume, exclude dozens of other nutritionally sound choices... and refer back to the study I referenced.

The Panther His vision, from the constantly passing bars,has grown so weary that it cannot holdanything else. It seems to him there area thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,the movement of his powerful soft stridesis like a ritual dance around a centerin which a mighty will stands paralyzed.Only at times, the curtain of the pupilslifts, quietly--. An image enters in,rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,plunges into the heart and is gone.- Rainer Maria Rilke English translation by Stephen Mitchell

Edit: moved to PPD

Lapis lazuli. A big chunk thereof. It's sooo hot. I had a small collection of minerals and semiprecious stones as a kid. It was rare at the time and place. No one had that. My dad used to bring them to me as souvenirs from his frequent business trips to the Ural Mountains region famous for this kind of goodies. My classmates used to come play with them, they fascinated everybody. One girl, when we had a falling-out (at the age of about 8), yelled, "I wouldn't even be friends with you if it wasn't for your minerals!" It was amusing -- I never considered her a friend and only let her in because of her fascination with my minerals -- but also educational. It was one of my first lessons in added value people gain in the eyes of other people due to their material possessions. It caused me to think long and hard and come to the conclusion that I despised that. Not much has changed since.

Vanilla and chocolate

The world belongs to Trisolaris.

Love it. Is it for sale?

Kryptonite will only make it stronger.

Today my teacher was cooking the traditional dish eaten in China in the "New Year's month" (that's now, before the Chinese New Year) and treated me to a sample. It is known as the Eight Treasures congee, and it had the following ingredients: sweet rice, black beans, red beans, peanuts, jujube, goji, sesame seeds, and candied ginger (used to make water for the congee, then discarded, if I understood correctly). There's a bunch of other versions too, but this one is what he made. It hails from his home town of Penglai and used to be prepared in one central location in huge cauldrons and then distributed to all local restaurants which always served it this time of the year, and also given to people for free, to start generating kindness and benevolence in the new year. Interestingly, salt was not added, I asked about it and he said that you are supposed to taste this as is, not changed with salt. I liked it a lot, but me being me, if (or rather when) I make it myself, I'll do what I always do -- put a lot of butter in it. Sorry tradition... can't be 100% compliant 100% of the time. But anyone who is not as much of a butter fiend as me (I put butter even in my coffee) is likely to find that it's wonderful as is.

I don't intend to use it for self-defense in "real life" unless life turns more weird than I can predict. Einstein once said that he didn't know what weapons WWIII would be fought with, but WWIV will be fought with sticks and stones. If it comes to that, a sword can be vastly superior to sticks and stones. But taiji is my real life, at least a large part of it, and Chen style mastery requires a weapons form thrown into the mix. Can be just one, but once you've chosen, you make it your own. (Of course there's many practitioners who collect styles and forms and weapons, but I'm not one of them. I'm more along the lines of that kung fu saying -- "I don't fear the ten thousand different kicks you've practiced. I fear that one kick you've practiced ten thousand times." ) And of all the things I've tried, jian seems to suit me the best, also it's most compatible with my bazi that is in need of Water. Chen jian is not the kind of stiff Metal that is set in its Metal ways -- no, it's palpably Metal-to-Water transitional phase... A water cannon would suit me even better, but that's a different Chen form, Cannon Fist, which I am working on turning into a Water Cannon Fist.

don't watch the movie

Arthur C. Clarke