If you play poker, can you talk about the hand from the other perspective ?

In the article, she covers a few things we’ve known for years, such as anchoring, avoiding zeros and even numbers (at salary negotiations, for example).

” Applying this idea to poker, value bets use precise sizes, while more splashy round numbers are used for bluffing (when still at level one of a leveling war, that is — at level two, the opposite could apply). I look out for this one at live tourneys, even when my only read is that my opponent is so annoying he bet 5,075 when I have no green chips.”

Jennifer Shahade

Shahade concludes her article with something I’ve said for many, many years: “too few risks is the biggest risk of all.“

I’ve listed some online resources for those who want to learn poker in the Book of The Underdog. Here are those listed in PN: Websites To Play Free Poker Games Online. (I have no affiliation to those sites)

I find great value in the talks and lectures of Alan Watts (1915-1973).

If you have 45 minutes, here is one of them.

Quotes from Alan Watts:

“You don’t aim and then shoot: it’s all one action. Not to decide and then act, but to act and decide all at once.”

” Live in such a way that nothing is advantage nor disadvantage.”

Practice fasting of the heart.

“Knowledge is much like the expansion of a flower from the stem to the bud.”

“I don’t know whether I was walking in the wind or the wind was walking on me.”

Most people live in assessment-hope living.

The invisibility of one’s head is the secret of being alive or Mushin = “no head” [Chinese]. If you want to see the inside of your head you keep your eyes open.

When your shoes are comfortable, do you feel them ? You don’t ! -That’s living.

And not you and “your life” -it’s the process. There’s nobody in the trap -it takes something trapped to make a trap.

Alan Watts

Dark from either dark matter or dark energy therefore essentially refers to invisible.

The source of everything, it seems, is dark energy, the invisible part seemingly making up 74% of the universe. That dark energy has an antagonistic force, the dark matter -emotions -which makes up 21%. To sum up the differences between the two, differences which are fundamental, we’ll look at the Cornell Univ. Ask an Astronomer. The explanation there is good enough for someone without a background in astronomy or astrophysics:

Given that Cornell gives us an alternate term for dark energy, “quintessence”, let us use them interchangeably moving forward. By now you will have understood the fundamental difference between the two.

The job of the alpha male is to reduce and eliminate emotions -the dark matter- which pulls things together. For the individual is the Cosmos and the Cosmos is still expanding.

Men and women are not “complementary” as commonly acknowledged by pundits and wags. They are adversarial. Dark matter vs. dark energy.

The Game

We are not going to talk about women today. Such a boring topic. Astronomy is better. Women exist for the purpose of reproducing themselves. Reproduction machines. That is their Prime Directive. We call that the Immutable Law of the Womb.

The Seasons

There are two best Seasons in life.

One is childhood, because there is little notion of time. Children have a different reality absent the chains of time.

The other one is adolescence, young adulthood. That’s when people question everything and disagree.

But there is a third Season. It is called the alpha male season. You say, Ok, they’ve given me a birth. Now I got to deal with my death, too. Thank you so much. You’ve given me emotions. Thanks for nothing. I might as well have driven to the city dump and have loaded up a truck full of smelly, slimy garbage.

Someone asks: Where can I go and load up on some dark energy…if it is also called quintessence…can that be that hard to get ?

Someone else asked (on Cornell’s Ask an Astronomer): “Can dark energy escape super-massive black holes ?

The answer: ” Dark energy can escape a black hole, no matter what size the black hole is and no matter how close the dark energy is to the center of the black hole. This is because dark energy is not affected by gravity at all. “

It seems to me there’s a connection between alpha male and quintessence. Over-investing in relationships is like saying I’m cleanest when I’m in big mountain of garbage in the city dump. The less people and concerns you have in your life, the cleaner you are. The less dependent on others -all others -the cleaner you are.

Eventually, the alpha male sees that in every relationship he has the other(s) make him invest into something he does not need. Every dependency is a chain.

But if that dark energy is all around me, how in the world could it be so hard to get and touch and fulfill ?

Look, I’m going to talk more in the future about dark energy. That’s enough for today. You understood the basics of it, that it is essentially a repealing force, that it is a non-feminine force, that it is responsible for the universe expanding. I’m going to sit on the edge of a black hole today and ponder.

Pollan documents the history of psychedelics in 1960s America, the early research work at the Spring Grove in the ’60s and 70s, the government long-lasting ban, the first “renaissance” of psychedelic research with volunteers in 1999 at John Hopkins. He then takes the bull by the horns and does experiments on himself, no more, no less.

In this review, I’ll assume most readers who have not read his book will want to know the experiences the author had himself, and the reports from the volunteers from the studies. A fair warning: I do not commend neither the use or experimentation with these substances. LSD, psylocybin (mushrooms), these are Schedule I controlled substances whose use is prohibited in the United States and other countries. Experimenters may find themselves on the wrong side of law enforcement, whether they use a “guide” or not. However, on the internet nowadays there are a lot of “reports” of user experiments with ayahuasca, etc. which are misleading coming from numbskulls who are half-wits themselves, they couldn’t testify to drinking a coffee if they tried. Those “reports” therefore are best to be ignored altogether. The reports in the Pollan book, on the other hand, are from people who aren’t drug users or publicity-stunt seekers; these are people who hold jobs and lead a normal, productive life. Pollan interviewed some of these people.

Report from the John Hopkins volunteer who was a 44-year old physicist with a security clearance:

“I could feel my body dissolving, beginning with my feet, until it all dissapeared but the left side of my jaw…soon after, found himself in a large cave where all his pat relationships were hanging down as icicles, high school friends, my first girlfriend…”

Some of the researchers tried it on themselves before engaging participants.

“Language represents a special case of synesthesia, in which otherwise meaningless sounds become linked to concepts.” -Terrence McKenna

In 1959, actor Carry Grant, then aged 55 told in an interview with Joe Hyams about his LSD therapy:

“All the sadness and vanities were torn away”

Michael Pollan’s experiences are documented in Chapter 4, Travelogue, where he interviews and selects “guides” and comes face-to-face with LSD, psylocibin, and the smoked venom of the toad, 5-MeO-DMT. DMT is a compound also found in ayahuasca.

“And then I looked and saw myself out there again, but this time spread over the landscape like paint, or butter, thinly coating a wide expanse of the world with a substance I recognized as me.” -Michael Pollan

“Rushing backward through 14 billion years, I watched the dimensions of reality collapse one by one until there was nothing left, not even one being. Only the all-consuming roar…” -Michael Pollan

Quote of the day: “Good luck, bad luck, no luck -they’re just mental concepts. They all fall short of reality.” -Max Cantor

You have to read the book to see, as best-as-words-could-describe it, what happened.

It seems that people experiences vary greatly, from bizarre to the absurd, and in some cases the ego-identity yet remains, while in most cases it gets dissolved. I will link to Michael Pollan website for further resources from the author, who hasn’t just landed psychedelics on his head, but has done research in nutrition and other topics. As an early book, you could also read The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell by Aldous Huxley.

When you hear that “breathing is movement” as the Feldenkrais practioners say, you know they’re unto something. However banal, we tend to overcome the essentials in this crappy information age

This method involves two forms: Movement classes , in groups, called “Awareness Through Movement^” and a one-on-one modality called “Functional Integration^”.

“Awareness Through Movement^®: These are verbally guided lessons of enjoyable, structured movement explorations. The classes are carried out in lying, sitting or standing each one taking a particular function or group of functions of movement as its theme. The intention is to add new possibilities of movement, regain effortlessness and ease in movement, reduce tension, eliminate pain, and increase our own awareness of how we unconsciously act to bring on unwanted states.”

Functional Integration^®:  “The practitioner can create sessions for the individual needs of the person. This is mostly hands-on work carried out in a respectful, gentle manner. The client is fully clothed and often lying down for a good part of the session. Through the interaction of practitioner and client new and improved modes of movement, action and thought can be discovered. ” -Source: Mark Keogh,
Irish Association of Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy , 2006
“The practitioner guides the student with his/her hands, skillfully finding the areas which are the most neglected in the student’s movement patterns. These areas are often missing from the student’s internal image of herself and the movements she makes. Through touch, these areas can “wake up” and become available to the student. ” -Boston Feldenkrais® Center

You can call your local or nearest chapter to get more information (Feldenkrais®) Article: Trying the Feldenkrais method for chronic pain, NY Times article.

The “Bates method” for eye health

If you haven’t, it’s over 120 years old. Aldoux Huxley repaired his vision with it without any drugs or corrective prescriptions at the age of 45.

This method involves palming, sunning, swings and the sway, according to Bates Method International.

But we’re not here to talk about the markets. We’re here to talk about you. At the start of the year I gave you my take on New Year’s Resolutions (Part I and Part II). If you’ve read those, you’ll know I don’t think in terms of yearly goals/accomplishments, because I prefer to work by the hour and, by extension, by the day. Let the hour be the measure of your mastery. 8760 hours in the year. There’s so many of them, you couldn’t fit them in a bag if you tried. Working with the hour (or minute) timeframes gets rid of the excuse “not having the time to___”.

Assuming you made certain yearly goals (and again, I am against those) and you’ve met only part of them, let’s say, 60%, or a specific area (i.e.: financial) came up short…what do you do ?

If you continue to work on a yearly-based goals..do you keep them, change them, or what ?

Do you have a sensitivity model for your goals ? Meaning a least/base/fantastic model ? Some people have those…like financial spreadsheets. Of course, that doesn’t work for “take a trip to Greenland” type-of-goals, you either took the trip or you didn’t. But sensitivity models would work for financial, or even skills-type of goals. (i.e.: my skills at golf, how often I played golf this year. Just make sure it isn’t how many tweets I’ve send or some nonsense).

If you’re working with yearly goals instead of fluid non-timely goals (which I prefer), the most important thing is not to beat yourself over the head over the goals that you did not accomplish this year.

When I talk about compressing time, it’s really about excluding linear time. The only time is NOW. You have no LOSSES. “Reflecting back” over last year’s is what losers do.

People take out the trash every day (every week) as it gets filled. Do the same thing…with everything.

It is the end of this year. Perhaps you take out things you no longer need to the local charity. These things were just sitting gathering dust in the garage. You need to take out of your life everything that’s been gathering dust.

Clean. Trim. Remove. Dispose.

And so it is with the goals you haven’t met. Say goodbye. (BTW, I’ve never met anyone who accomplished all of their goals. They either came up short or exceeded).

Remove the people, places, and situations in your life that didn’t go as you intended. Remove the distractions. Trim the deadbeats that don’t return your calls, emails and proposals. You must remove the people who are there in your life only for the joyrides. (That’s a biggie !) Whoops, you’re talking about my girlfriend, Max. If that’s the case, you know what to do.

Goals for the New Year must be new. If you didn’t make $ 103,230 in the old year, set a new goal for the new year. It can be higher or lower. Notice that is has to be specific (can’t be I’ll make 6 figures income next year). But to make any kind of goals, you must first be a good gardener.

Good luck in your gardening adventures and Merry Pitmas !

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