Geoff's Miscellany

In the past 100 years, the world has experienced three major technological revolutions with respect to human industriousness and communication:

1. Mass availability of automobiles for personal travel.
2. Mass telecommunications for mass one-way messages via television/radio and telephone calls.
3. Mass availability of personal computers.

Instead, we’re in this bizarre circumstance wherein traveling to a central location (because it came first) is the primary work mindset and telecommunications and computers are used to make employees more aware of their work bureaucracy from home.

I train clients in basic barbell movement as a side hustle and while I’ve tried some unusual approaches to dieting that make sense to/for me, they are far from the mainstream of dietary practice or science. In other words, they’re not what I would recommend to the general population. That being said, I do think that for individuals trying to lose weight there are some pieces of the puzzle that could get you 50-80% of the way toward your goals without creating a major hassle in your life. These are the low-hanging fruit of weight loss:

I went on a very low carbohydrate diet several years ago to solve my heartburn. I’ve since experimented with various dietary subtractions/additions to help avoid the seemingly inevitable fatness of middle age and the constant complaints of people in their 30s about getting old.

What will this do to my training? Rip think it will make me sorer. Maybe he’s right for most people.

Every January, I always eat a steak and eggs diet with minimal dairy. It’s an easy way to shed any extra fat as Texas gets hot again. My carb intake is therefore between 10-20 grams per day. But I also have been trying to lift every day since mid-November. Having eaten very little carbohydrate in November-December and essentially none in January has given me some interesting personal insights into carbs and training. You don’t need them. I weigh 158 right now. At my heaviest, I weighed 173 in 2013. My max squat back then was 365. Every week since November I’ve hit 355 for a single rep. My deadlift max at 173 was 375. Now it’s 405. And my bench max back then was 200. Now it’s 205. And I’m almost never sore despite working up to heavy squats daily. But I will say this since I’m used to using fat as energy, if I were to say, binge on rice-full Chinese food and ice cream, I could perhaps more easily achieve a PR on a high-rep set the next day, but I seem to be far less sore in general as a consequence of eating so much more protein.

Ultramindset hack: listen to this while you do anything to make that thing feel more significant.

The Hitter is a good song about adventure, loss, memory, and compromise. It’s hard to to listen to several times consecutively when I periodically remember it.

I hope you enjoy it.

I pre-ordered Hart's most recent book as soon as I discovered it would be released. I like Hart's work and I found his New Testament translation to be mostly helpful despite its many shortcomings. His new book is thought provoking and contains at least three hard to beat arguments for apokatastasis (the doctrine that God will redeem every last living soul in the end). I'll write about it in the future. To be honest, I'm nearly convinced.

This song will obviously improve your quality of life or I wouldn't have posted it.

This is a good, brief listen for a big education:

I read a really good article on Servant-Benefaction here:

The Servant-Benefactor as a Model of Greatness

It's pretty illuminating for anybody wishing to understand Luke 22.

You can access it freely using "sci-hub.tw/"

Here's a good line from the conclusion:

Those who aspire to "greatness", but who are not yet called "benefactors" (v 26a), are advised to follow the example of Jesus, the servant-benefactor par excellence (v 27b), and that of those apostles who remained with Jesus throughout the Passion (v 28).