Yes! Cannot stress it enough. Move. It doesn't even have to be intense! Running can be traumatic. But calories don't care if it's a walk you're doing or a run.
Unless you have some fundamental food-related disorders it's not that hard. Our bodies were meant to gain weight weight quickly - and lose it if necessary. For most people losing 10-20 kg is a question of 3-4 months, or even less.
If it were that simple, most people would be able to do it. The actual evidence shows it's far more complex than you think.
There's no cop out here. Many people's bodies simply refuse to burn fat until their metabolism has gone so low it has other dangerous health consequences.
Also, as for "move more", the evidence shows that people generally eat even more after exercise to compensate. Exercise is great for general health, but it's a terrible strategy for most people for losing weight. It simply backfires.
I think the world more or less understands that American politics oscillates between periods of conservative control and liberal control.
I don’t think the world has forgotten about America’s massive military or its massive economy.
To say Trump has “ended America’s standing” is extremely short sighted... Whether you like him or not, he has not changed in any material way the military or the economy or the political systems that form the foundation of America.
Imagine the world in only 10 years from now. 2030. Will the American economy still be intact and humming along? Will the military still be well funded? Will the political system still be the same?
Am I the only one to consider US massive economy as a lightyear remain ? It really seems that US (politics or companies) lost their ways and can't handle their own power. Inertia is not good enough.
The US economy has produced multiple new world-changing businesses every decade in living memory. The idea that it's solely coasting on inertia just doesn't make much sense.
Probably, I have only shallow gut feelings about this, but the financial blunders, the changes in education and technological differences around the globe (asia is becoming more and more independant and creative), the very very strange political state.. I'm not sure the thing will hold itself. I have this model where everything is non linear and if you stop claiming your position on the ladder, everything else will evaporate under your feet.
But what Trump represents to allies is not just an oscilating to conservative control. It represents the willingness of the american public to put someone in charge of foreign policy that has a complete disrespect for America’s allies, and a strong willingness to turn America more isolationist and less supportive of free trade.
Ultimately, I don’t think Trump alone will really effect things long term though, no. If it becomes a pattern in the sort of person the conservative party elects, or even more so if the liberal part also swings that way, other countries could definitely start banding together more strongly against the American hegemony.
When Germans elect a Chancellor who doesn't make sure that Germany meet their NATO commitments are they being disrespectful to their allies? I understand that the comment may come off a bit incendiary, but I'm genuinely asking.
In as much as the other members of NATO (particularly the US, who is the primary funder of NATO) care about those commitments, yes. Which is to say, I’m not sure how much it maters historically when the US did not seem to particularly care. Now that the US has brought up the matter, to not make an effort to spend more is disrespectful to me.
(But the concept of disrespect aside, I would consider allies not fulfilling the agreements of a treaty made to lower my trust in them to fulfill the obligations of current and future agreements. And that trust is also quite important.)
We're in a cold war with China and our manufacturing base has eroded over the past 40 years thanks to free trade. Now we are in a relatively weak position to be fighting a cold war. Say what you will about Trump, but he did start calling out China with his 2016 run. I have no doubts about the U.S.'s adaptability but often times we have to get punched in the face before we really appreciate the gravity of the situation. Covid was that punch. If free trade costs you your autonomy and resiliency, then it's not worth it.
Functionally, I agree with you on China in many respects. Ultimately no trade with them is really free trade regardless due to the way they manage their own economy. The problem with Trump in this regard is that he didn’t just call out China. He called out everyone, starting trade wars not just with China, but Mexico, Canada, more general sweeping sets of tarrifs, and also weakening our alliances separately. And this is a big deal if one actually wants to take on China economically. A big block of allies all getting into a trade war with China would have a substantially higher chance of success than the US just going it alone. Instead it was just us vs them and nothing really came of it. The cold war was not just US vs USSR. It was the western bloc vs the eastern bloc, and all other allies those groups picked up along the way. And any geopolitical fight between entities the size of China and the US would need to be carried out similarly to be successful.
To the final point on whether free trade is worth it, that’s a decision that can be made. But it is a decision, and would have pretty extreme effects on the US’s standing on the world stage, along with tons of other knock on effects on how the economy works. Whether that’s a trade off that’s worth it is a much more complicated discussion, but certainly far from simple.
> High functioning teams start with high functioning individuals.
There's a spectrum between a team with no high functioning individuals and one with all high functioning.
In my experience, only 1-3 people in the team need to be "high functioning". Also in my experience, if the whole team is high functioning, then the chances of dysfunction go up significantly.
In my career, I've been in a bunch of teams that were full of high functioning folks. And not one of those teams acted as a team. The management almost always graded you based on your individual achievements and not on how you helped the team. As a result, every one of those teams had instances of individuals doing brilliant things that hurt the team effort, but would get rewarded for it. Everyone of those teams had the majority of team members working against each other to get their idea to the fore, due to the reward structures.
In every one of those teams, when something went wrong, the focus was on finding out which individual(s) were responsible.
I don't believe that what I saw will always be the case, but the correlation is high and I think it is the natural state unless actively guarded against. In other teams where not everyone is high functioning, the focus on working as a team was much greater, and much more successful. It wasn't "Who is responsible for snafu X?", but "How did we allow snafu X to occur?"
But of course, a team with no high functioning individuals will be mediocre.
I'm not sure "high functioning" is the right term when discussing individuals rather than teams. I suggest using "leaders" or "mentors", since "high functioning" as in personal contribution productivity is, as you pointed out, often a toxic thing to optimize for.
Consider this: a team with one insanely productive contributor and three new/less-than-productive folks is tasked with a bunch of projects. As expected, the productive person does most of the work. The others might learn a bit by example, or not. Productive person moves on/gets bored/gets significant non-work commitments/burns out/gets hit by a bus. The team is no longer productive or functional.
Then consider this: a team with one person with a talent for teaching and leadership, and three new/less-than-productive folks is tasked with a bunch of projects. At first, they aren't that high-functioning as a team. The teacher/leader spends a lot of their time mentoring, going over the basics, reviewing, and planning. Over time, they get more productive. If the mentor/leader leaves the mentorship/leadership role, at worst they leave a high-performing team behind. At best they leave a high-performing team of people who are additionally prepared to assume a mentorship/leadership role in the future.
Depending on how "10x" (ugh) the developer in the first scenario is, the team in the second example might never reach their productivity. But I think it's pretty obvious that organizations are benefited more by second-example-type teams.
More specifically, some folks like to teach because it makes them feel like an expert when they're not. That's bad.
Some folks like to teach because it helps them learn-by-teaching and helps their pupils learn-by-questioning (and learn by questioning and receiving an honest "no idea/I might be wrong!").
The quantity that's in short supply is not expertise. It's humility.
> In practice it is more complex - people with a talent for teaching and leadership and are experts are incredibly rare.
Not in my experience. While there are obviously fewer people who have both traits, they're not at all rare. In practice, what I see is that such people shift away from teaching/mentoring as it takes time/effort that their manager does not reward.
If you want talented people who mentor well, make sure such mentoring is rewarded.
> what I see is that such people shift away from teaching/mentoring as it takes time/effort that their manager does not reward
I don’t think it’s that simple. I work with tons of talented engineers who put a huge amount of effort into tasks that management doesn’t care about - like refactoring our codebase.
In contrast everywhere I have worked management has cared about being able to level up new developers and under performers (assuming it’s a skill deficit).
To add to this one of the most soul crushing tasks I’ve had to do is to manage out good people who are under performing.
If I could say “BeetleB, I’m pairing you with Joe for the next 6 months - I don’t care if your output halves but I need you to bring him up to speed or we have to let him go” and you could train him up - well you would be worth your weight in gold.
> But yeah I think the incentive structure helps determine outcomes like the one you describe.
Yes - most of the behavior likely is due to the incentive structure. My point was that such incentive structures seem strongly correlated to teams/orgs with very talented people. At least in my discipline, I attribute it to the incentives in academics/universities, which is where most of such folks come from.
Is "talent" some immutable, innate, static thing? If so, no: teams that do well don't have to start with individual talent.
Does "talent" encompass the ability to learn and grow and change what you're best at/what you enjoy? If so, then sure, having members with the ability to do those things is important to a team's success. But that's not what most people think of when you say "talent".
In a good environment, a team of novices can grow and learn to produce great things--even without the presence of talented/experienced/whatever mentors/leaders. In an unhealthy environment, not only are the novices doomed to failure/making things worse, but so are experienced folks. Determining what constitutes a good environment (and how to foster one) is important--that's what I think the article is saying.
So can I. But I don't think I'd call those environments/teams high-functioning.
This is roughly the same reason that LoC or features delivered/day are bullshit metrics. They can be skewed by a tiny minority of people doing most of the work. When that is the case, you don't have a high-functioning team or organization; you have a few massive liabilities tipping the scales.
Edit: what I mean is that experienced folks in those environments are "doomed" in a different way than novices. Novices won't gain new skills. Experienced folks will instead feel unappreciated and burn out, or feel over-appreciated and succumb to narcissism. Both outcomes happen at the expense of the team.
There are many actors that want to convince you something bad, is good. Historically, cigarettes, sugar, even cocaine were advertised as healthy, or as better substitutes to things. Hell, even grain is still pushed by industry and government, when low-carb has a lot of evidence backing it.
Guess what happened when we decided "telling people sugar is great for kids" was bad? The government now regulates the information people are provided regarding nutritional content in food.
Speech isn't so easy, which is why the analogy still doesn't work.
I do agree, I wish we could live in such a world, but we indeed do not. That's why economics professionals receive nobel prices for their investigations into nudge economics and imperfect trade systems
Cows are not perfect spheres, and people are not perfect rational agents and that won't change for the foreseeable future so policy makers need to handle things with their avaliable policy tools, not the tools they wish they had
Facts by themselves aren’t political or have an agenda.
The decision to present certain facts, the other facts you compare those to, and the manner in which they are presented, however, invokes agendas and politics.
No matter how much people claim otherwise, doctors presenting facts have agendas. This includes Dr Fauci.
You can’t bring a new business or new hires up to speed instantly. Not only are the lockdown months already lost but there’s a ramp up period. Further, some of the companies in the index likely won’t survive. Even if they will be replaced down the road that shouldn’t be reflected in the prices of currently existing companies.
Pandemics, emergencies, and tragedies are usually what gives us the best indication of what our politicians actually want. For some strange reason, it's not usually the will of the people...
It’s not that more disease and death is desired by one side, rather there’s political momentum behind not believing that it’s as severe as it’s being reported.
We no longer live in a world with shared truths, and this is the most remarkable manifestation of this new reality.
Duranty got the prize for being one of a very small number of Western journalists allowed into Stalin's Soviet Union, and writing about a visit to Ukraine.
He made no mention of the mass famine ongoing at the time, the Holomodor. Wikipedia lists the death toll as "3 to 12 million", because it was a totalitarian state and real measurement was impossible.
So the answer to "is it possible for millions to die and it simply not be reported at the time" is "yes".
Being allowed to return to work or a business you run, being able to pay rent, feed your family, etc.
These are positive outcomes of lockdowns being lifted.
The danger in looking at this as a binary “opening kills people” is that you miss the trade offs and in doing so you miss the other nuanced policy options that sit in between complete lockdown and no lockdown.
It's possible that "looser lockdown with mandatory masks" might work - it seems to have done so in Eastern Europe and some of the South Asian countries. But for some reason that doesn't seem to be on the agenda in the US or UK?
You should be looking at one woman over those five years.
For companies, you are probably looking at multiple developers and if you do only have one opening then even if more than one is good there is going to be a best.
For a few people losing weight is complex. For most people, it’s simple.
Eat less. Move more.
Saying otherwise is a cop out.