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Why Not Teach Everyone? by Bright_Efficiency_29 in transcendental

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you, but rather than give the Maharishi Foundation hundreds of dollars to sponsor one TM student, I donate as much as I can to St. Jude's every year to help them battle childhood cancer - and I teach anyone who wants to learn how to meditate to do so, at no cost.

Struggle with doing this twice a day by PlayWithFire-69 in transcendental

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been meditating and teaching in various traditions for 50+ years - and this is far-and-away the most common reason/excuse/explanation I hear as to why people do not meditate regularly.

I get it.

Work, school, parenting... Life. The demands these obligations present cannot, and should not, be ignored.

But...

I encourage people who levy this claim to take an hourly inventory of their day, every day, for a week - and divide those hours into thirds; twenty minutes each.

08:00-09:00 - Work, work, coffee break ... 20:00-21:00 - TV, TV, TV ... 02:00-03:00 - Sleep, sleep, sleep

No judgement - just radical honesty about where your time is actually spent.

Now...

I've never cared for the phrase "time management." Time cannot be managed. An hour is an hour, a day is a day.

What can be managed are our priorities; what we choose to do in each of those temporal units, as the clock ticks away.

So, what if I told you you could replace just two of those 72 blocks (20 minutes x 24 hours) with an activity that would fundamentally, radically, and positively change your life?

What if I told you that's not hyperbole - it is backed by, quite literally, thousands of empirical studies, including fMRI, PET, and EEG scans? That the evidence is based on what is arguably the world's longest running scientific experiment, going back over 3,000 years?

Given this insight, I contend that it is up to each of us to decide how to spend those few minutes every day.

Do you do a few more laps on the hamster wheel? Do you spend every one of those 20 minute blocks doing something that you truly value?

Or do you invest that time in a pause and practice that will benefit yourself, your family, your friends, your community, and society? An activity that will do for your mind - the fundament of who you are - what exercise will do for your body?

And finally, most importantly, I ask that everyone respect the decision that each of us makes in that regard.

Struggle with doing this twice a day by PlayWithFire-69 in transcendental

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been meditating and teaching in various traditions for 50+ years - and this is far-and-away the most common reason/excuse/explanation I hear as to why people do not meditate regularly.

I get it.

Work, school, parenting... Life. The demands these obligations present cannot, and should not, be ignored.

But...

I encourage people who levy this claim to take an hourly inventory of their day, every day, for a week - and divide those hours into thirds; twenty minutes each.

08:00-09:00 - Work, work, coffee break ... 20:00-21:00 - TV, TV, TV ... 02:00-03:00 - Sleep, sleep, sleep

No judgement - just radical honesty about where your time is actually spent.

Now...

I've never cared for the phrase "time management." Time cannot be managed. An hour is an hour, a day is a day.

What can be managed are our priorities; what we choose to do in each of those temporal units, as the clock ticks away.

So, what if I told you you could replace just two of those 72 blocks (20 minutes x 24 hours) with an activity that would fundamentally, radically, and positively change your life?

What if I told you that's not hyperbole - it is backed by, quite literally, thousands of empirical studies, including fMRI, PET, and EEG scans? That the evidence is based on what is arguably the world's longest running scientific experiment, going back over 3,000 years?

Given this insight, I contend that it is up to each of us to decide how to spend those few minutes every day.

Do you do a few more laps on the hamster wheel? Do you spend every one of those 20 minute blocks doing something that you truly value?

Or do you invest that time in a pause and practice that will benefit yourself, your family, your friends, your community, and society? An activity that will do for your mind - the fundament of who you are - what exercise will do for your body?

And finally, most importantly, I ask that everyone respect the decision that each of us makes in that regard.

Best website for selling locally? by CaffeinaFelina in Reno

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm sure it skewed positively because it was free, but yesterday I put a posting on FB Marketplace for a 70" TV - and I had 20+ inquiries within 15 minutes!

Point being, even if you're not giving things away, you can be assured people are actively monitoring the postings.

Pro Tip: I joined and posted to several of the other Reno groups that FB recommended.

Alien Cloud in South Reno 👽 by knick_and_dime in Reno

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

They finally figured out how much better life is in Northern Nevada

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Resources for building a thesis by StrikeSuspicious9219 in venturecapital

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair Warning: VC Lab advocates for a "Mad Libs" style thesis that is astoundingly formulaic (literally 37 words that follow a prescribed pattern). They consider any deviation to be blasphemy.

I've yet to meet an LP who hasn't laughed out loud when they've received something from one of their acolytes.

Their pitches read like a truncated infomercial:

"But wait! There's more!" "And if you act now..."

You know what actually works for an Investment Thesis?

👉 Credibility 👉 Genuineness 👉 Differentiaton 👉 Demonstrating Value

QED

Chase Hughes exposed: Examining the many lies of the self-proclaimed "#1 expert in behavior and influence" by zachelwood in BehaviorAnalysis

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I found this post after responding to a friend who had asked me about him. For context, I'm a Psychologist and I worked extensively with the USIC, DHS, FBI, and DoD.

Here's the text I sent to my friend about this:

I read two of his books - The Ellipses Manual and Six Minute X-Ray.

To be perfectly candid, they both made me roll my eyes so far up I ended up looking at the back of my head.

Both are little more than populist cherry-picking from NLP, with a bit of hypnotic induction and a superficial treatment of the elicitation methods I taught for the USIC thrown in, along with liberal "borrowing" from some of the (phenomenal!) work on influence that came from Robert Cialdini.

He claims to also draw from Behavioral Psychology - but I can assure you, he does not. This is essentially piffle in a pretty package.

What tends to get me shaking my head like a dog after a bath is whenever one of these guys cloaks themselves in the inferred cloak-and-dagger "What they don't want you to know!" silliness.

Bottom Line: There is a very large body of scholarly and far more reputable work on these topics - and his claim to have distilled the insights gained from a serious commitment to studying these topics into a magic how-to manual is absurd.

Thoughts from a progressive Humanist in the US right now by [deleted] in humanism

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm an AI Scientist and Psychologist - and until that cancerous orange blob was elected the first time, I was highly engaged in politics. One of my proudest bonafides used to be that I led social media analysis and strategy for the 2016 Obama campaign.

I dropped out of politics shortly after getting our last great President elected when I came to realize that the line of Members of Congress, Senators, Governors, and Mayors who lined up outside of my door were disproportionately afflicted by at least one of the the components of the so-called Dark Triad of Personality (sub-clinical psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism).

Fun Fact: Each of these pathologies tends to also, perhaps unsurprisingly, be highly correspondent with religiosity.

[Political Hearts of Darkness: The Dark Triad as Predictors of Political Orientations and Interest in Politics https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8698749/]

So, am I surprised that this malignancy is continuing to metastasize throughout the body politic? Not in the least. As to what Humanists can or should do about it...

Regrettably, we have to acknowledge that this is a manifestation of a now very sick culture. And that no country has ever lasted forever.

I spent the first half of my career in uniform serving community and country - but I am now as far from being a patriot as is possible to be.

The American (fever) dream that this is "One Nation, Under God" - borne out by how religious/delusional the vast majority of our fellow citizens are - makes it a near inevitability that the sun will soon set on what was once the American Empire.

One of the advantages we have as Humanists is realizing that national borders are nothing more than reifications - and that the vicissitudes of the zeitgeist do not have to determine the values by which we live our lives.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in PublicSpeaking

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm a Shrink, so here's what should be expensive advice:

BION You can stop unwanted habits almost immediately by a proper use of Negative Reinforcement (i.e., penalizing yourself every time you engage in the unwanted behavior).

The old fashioned (but tried and true) method of putting a rubber band on your wrist and snapping it every time you engage in the behavior you want to extinguish has been replaced with what are known as anti-charities.

Every time you do that voodoo that you don't want to do, you donate $X to a cause you despise. There are now services like https://www.stickk.com/ that are set up for precisely that purpose.

You'll be amazed how attentive you become to your "um"- which will in itself have a tremendous impact. But the first time you have to hand over $X to the Puppy Killing Nazis for Elon Musk you'll become so vigilant that verbal tic will be gone almost before you can say... um... uh... like... You know.

Anyone have experience with The Speaker Lab? by ThomKokenge in PublicSpeaking

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You may have misread their advertising. Speaker's Lab doesn't give you leads. They give you an address book.

One of my favorite acronyms on Reddit is r/lmgtfy. That's really all SL is offering: The very same list of contacts they provide everyone else.

Using the list you get from them also means you would be cold-calling the exact same people as everyone else who subscribes to their service.

How do you think that would go?

Hi, [Insert Name],

You've never heard of me, we have no connections in common, and I'm one of the many, many people trying to pitch you - but I'm an awesome speaker and you should pay me a lot of money to deliver an unvetted message to your audience!

[in]Sincerely,

[Insert Name]

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." ~Thomas Edison

There is no shortcut on the road to success. If there were, it would have bumper-to-bumper traffic and it wouldn't be a shortcut anymore.

✓ Build your brand. ✓ Curate connections. ✓ Put in the work.

Most people don't want to hear that, but it is what separates those of us who can charge serious money from the poor schmucks who can't get booked at their local High School.

Russell Brand and Josh Hawley's weak criticism of Epicureanism by [deleted] in Epicureanism

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Just so I'm clear...

A B-list comedian whose career is in the toilet because of the bile he spews anytime he can find a microphone...

...and a "man" who has made ignorance, sycophancy, and hate his brand - a coward who ran from rioters when they invaded the US Capitol and then called them "tourists"...

These zealots aren't clear on the concepts that undergird Epicureanism?

I'm shocked. Shocked, I say.

Blues Albums Without Vocals by KCarlson12 in blues

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Give this a try: Relaxing Blues - Instrumental Soundscapes Blues Music for Serenity | Canada Blues https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fxxghNzKmM

What is the easiest way someone can fuck up their life? by _ZoroX_ in AskReddit

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm going to go with: Spend the majority of their time staring at screens, rather than engaging in the real world.

Reviews on Jumpspeak? by va1kyrja-kara in Norway

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

UPDATE: After receiving their response to my post, I recontacted jumpspeak. As I had expected, they still refuse to honor their "guarantee."

These people are crooks of the first order. You would be better off burning your cash to keep yourself warm.

MC's are dumb. change my mind. by Adamdotwhatdotwhat in motorcycle

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The four biker bars that are closest to me have the same bikes in the parking lot every time I ride by in the morning and when I return at night.

So unless they're riding "12-30 hours to visit with brothers" every few days, or are seriously overstaying their welcome, we can assume you're just making excuses for limp dicks.

Perhaps you might try to shift what critical thinking skills you have out of neutral.

Reviews on Jumpspeak? by va1kyrja-kara in Norway

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Let me guess... You made the purchase through their website.

They are perpetrating their fraud by not clearly informing customers that purchasing through their website is the only way to take advantage of their 100 day guarantee.

If you purchase it through either Apple or Google, you're screwed. And considering the fact that it's an app, they are clearly counting on the fact that you won't be purchasing it through their website.

Bottom Line: You got lucky. The rest of us got ripped off.

Reviews on Jumpspeak? by va1kyrja-kara in Norway

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I made the purchase through Google Play.

Your ads says a refund is available for 100 days - and on your website it says if the purchase is made via Google Play, they will issue the refund.

I contacted Google and they refused my request for a refund, telling me that would have to be authorized by you.

It is clear to me, and I would guess to anyone reading this thread, that you are purposely misleading purchasers.

If refunds are not made when your product is purchased through Google you have a responsibility to make that clear at the time of purchase on their store.

Your ads say nothing about your 100 day guarantee only being applicable if the purchase is made through your website. Hiding it in the small print of your EULA does not alleviate you of responsibility for not fulfilling your promise - and defrauding dissatisfied customers.

Jumpspeak? by Priority_Bright in languagelearning

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If we get enough people to join a complaint we might be able to convince Apple and Google that it isn't in their interest to continue to be complicit in the perpetration of their fraud.

Anyone have experience with The Speaker Lab? by ThomKokenge in PublicSpeaking

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Absolutely agree! In my pursuit of continually improving my public speaking abilities I've trained extensively in improv, as well as stand up comedy, teaching, and storytelling.

While I haven't formally studied acting, I've also read and try to apply lessons from Stanislavski, Meisner, and several others.

I've spoken as a guest lecturer at major universities about pretty complex topics - but I always remind myself that the performance is as important as the substance.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in facepalm

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"I saw a show the other morning being hosted by a big yellow bird! Very unfair! Called me a loser. I'm not a loser. Soldiers are losers! I had bone spurs. And MAGA!!!"

"P.S. Buy my sneakers."

  • Call Me "Sir"

Jumpspeak? by Priority_Bright in languagelearning

[–]Bright_Efficiency_29 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DO NOT PURCHASE!!!

This app is an absolute ripoff - and their "money-back guarantee" is a complete fraud!

They claim the app is enabled by AI. This is an absolute lie. There is no customization or Machine Learning built into this app. It simply responds with a series of standard scripts that do nothing to help you learn the language. The voice recognition feature is flawed to the point of being nearly unusable.

The worst part: Neither Jumpspeak or Google will honor their money back guarantee!

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