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Noom

Instructions: Pay seventy dollars a month to count calories in an app and receive daily reminders that celery is less calorie dense than cake frosting.

Pros: Fleeting sense of accomplishment from signing up and paying for a service.

Cons: Ruin brunch by assessing the calorie density of your friends meals; targeted ads for Noom for the rest of your life.

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Instructions: Eat minuscule portions of your favorite foods with a vintage seafood fork. Serve poached pears at dinner parties. Start wearing scarves and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; hiss at fat people.

Pros: A single tarte tatin from the farmers market can last up to five days.

Cons: Clarins anti-aging serum is no match for cigarettes. Also, youre starving.

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Instructions: Incorporate large intervals of not eating into your day and/or week (e.g., eat all meals within a window of six to eight hours).

Cons: Ruin brunch by skipping it in favor of a twenty-ounce buttered coffee and telling everyone about your new podcast. Hangry mood swings.

Pros: Unlike with other diets, hangry mood swings happen at predictable times.

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Instructions: Eat 70 percent fat by combining eggs, bacon, nut butters, and artificial sweeteners into uncanny valley analogs of real foods. Say, Im in ketosis, to excuse a host of unpleasant interpersonal behaviors.

Pros: Finally put all those leftover mayonnaise packets to use; weekly grocery shopping can eventually be replaced by a single Arbys party platter and a bag of almonds.

Cons: Excruciating bowel movements once every six days; scurvy.

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Instructions: Add half a grapefruit to every low-fat, low-calorie meal. Add whole grapefruits in between meals to maintain homeostasis.

Pros: Generous bulk discount from Sunkist; no more scurvy.

Cons: Ruin brunch by explaining how grapefruits interaction with Zoloft has sent you to the ER multiple times; soft teeth; diarrhea.

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Instructions: Practice portion control by eating only free samples. Get upward of 15,000 steps per day by walking laps through a cavernous warehouse.

Pros: Discovery of Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters.

Cons: High risk of derailing diet and over-drafting checking account from regularly purchasing Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters; Wednesday samples are mostly Tide Pods and flavored seltzers.

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Instructions: Consume only uncooked, plant-based foods (e.g., fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds soaked in water). Maintain unblinking eye contact with anyone eating bacon.

Pros: God-like sense of superiority.

Cons: Impossible to talk about eating nut cheese with a straight face; blood transfusion for iron deficiency not covered by insurance; targeted ads for the ASPCA; ruin brunch with horror stories about concentrated animal feeding operations.

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Instructions: Before your Costco membership expires, order a fifty-pound bag of Purina Complete Rabbit Pellets. Eat them like popcorn. Drink a gallon of water a day from a bottle with a ball bearing at the end of an angled metal spout.

Pros: Simplest meal planning of any diet; siblings estranged during raw vegan phase may reconcile during rabbit pellet intervention.

Cons: The level of vitamin A in rabbit pellets causes blurred vision and hair loss in humans in an order of magnitude worse than from a weekly Tide Pod washed down with mango-lime seltzer.

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Instructions: Eat only prime, organic, grass-fed beef and drink only water. Hiss at French women.

Pros: Diseases you were never diagnosed with have magically disappeared.

Cons: Excruciating bowel movements once every ten days; meat sweats; ruin brunch by talking about Jordan Peterson.

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Instructions: Emulate our paleolithic ancestors by eating only foods that could be obtained by hunting and gathering.

Pros: Local cave system maintains baseline temperature of 50F year round (expedient housing option after going bankrupt from all that Jordan Peterson beef); new bow-hunting skills useful in the event of societal collapse.

Cons: Local cave system inhabited by Burning Man enthusiasts; no electrical outlets for your podcasting equipment; ruin brunch by trying to take a sponge bath in the First Watch bathroom.

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Instructions: Once a week, inject your abdomen, upper arm, or thigh with the contents of an unlabeled syringe delivered by mail.

Pros: No targeted ads on the dark web.

Cons: Semaglutide takes twenty years off your body and adds them straight to your face; DEA watchlist; pancreatitis; you are no longer invited to brunch.

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Instructions: Eat what appeals to you when you are hungry. Stop when satisfied (or not).

Pros: Regained hours of time and attention.

Cons:

More:
The Pros and Cons of Diets I Have Tried - McSweeney's Internet Tendency

Sports Illustrated is featuring Kim Petras, a biological man who identifies as a woman, as part of its Swimsuit edition.

Petras, a transgender pop star, is shown wearing a series of swimsuits and bikinis as part of the magazine's campaign to empower women that launched this week.

BIDENS DEBT GAMES ARE ALL PLAYED OUT

The Coconuts singer is a true change-maker who uses her platform to uplift and inspire the LGBTQ+ community, Sports Illustrated said of Petrass Swimsuit feature.

Earlier this year, Petras, who was born in Germany, became the first transgender female to win a Grammy Award for best pop duo/group performance in recognition of her collaboration with Sam Smith on "Unholy."

While shes proud that the trans community is inspired by her work, she uses her platform to encourage others to reach for the stars, regardless of gender or sexuality, the magazine also said.

In response, many have taken to social media to blast Petrass Swimsuit cover feature.

Im old enough to remember when men thought @SI_Swimsuit models were hotmaybe because the cover models werent dudes with boobs, a Twitter user posted, including past Sports Illustrated Swimsuit cover photos.

Why do you all hate women? another Twitter user commented.

Another user pointed to the marketing debacle facing Anheuser-Busch after it partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney, saying: There's literally no market for this. What on earth are you people thinking? I hope what's happened to Anheuser-Busch happens to you.

Last year, Sports Illustrated featured Japanese-Dutch plus-size model Yumi Nu, drawing criticism from controversial author and former psychology professor Jordan Peterson.

Peterson called the magazine cover photo of Nu not beautiful and faced backlash, causing him to walk away from his Twitter account.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

Petras, who was photographed by Yu Tsai in Los Angeles, joined Martha Stewart, Megan Fox, and Brooks Nader as part of the 2023 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue's featured lineup, which hits the stands on May 18.

In 2020, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue featured its first transgender female with Brazilian-born model Valentina Sampaio.

Read more here:
Sports Illustrated features trans woman Kim Petras on Swimsuit ... - Washington Examiner

I have a friend who is pretty successful but works in a high-pressure job. Every few years, when the work grind is getting too tough, he has an antidote.

I take the rest of the day off and go watch Office Space, he says.

Office Space is that kind of movie. Written and directed by the legendary Mike Judge (of Beavis and Butthead fame), the 1999 dark comedy stars Ron Livingston as one of three disgruntled office workers who struggle to cope with the monotony of their jobs at a Texas-based software company. Though the movie did not break the bank at the box office, it has become a cult classic and iconic representation of cubicle life and corporate bureaucracy.

Peter Gibbons (Livingston) loathes his job, TPS reports, and his many bosses, particularly his martinet supervisor Bill Lumberghhilariously portrayed by Gary Colewho has a habit of asking rhetorical questions before piling more work onto Peter.

Hello Peter, what's happening? Ummm, I'm gonna need you to go ahead and come in tomorrow. So if you could be here around 9 that would be great, mmmk... oh oh! and I almost forgot ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some people this week and ah, we sorta need to play catch up.

Its a relatable problem, and a frustrating one. Peters company, Initech, is canning people. This not only has everyone freaked out about losing their job, but now Peter is being asked by his boss to work on weekends to make up for it.

Peter naturally feels powerless in the situation. Telling your boss no is hard. And his inability to push back on Lumbergh compounds his misery at work.

Peters life takes a turn, however, when he goes to see a hypnotherapist named Dr. Swanson with his girlfriend (who all his friends seem to think is cheating on him). During the session, Dr. Swanson has a heart attack while hypnotizing Peter. But before he keels over we see his hypnotherapy, which was designed to relieve Peters work stress, has workedbut a little too well. Suddenly Peter doesnt care about anything. He sleeps in, misses work, loses his girlfriend (who indeed was cheating on him)and he couldnt be happier about it.

We expect this is going to cause problems for Peter. Instead, his life improves in every way. Hes more relaxed and better rested. He picks up the beautiful waitress at Chotchkie's, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), and they start to fall in love and watch Kung Fu together in the evenings. He renovates his cubicle and impresses the Bobstwo consultants hired to assess which employees are expendable and should be firedwith his candor.

Peter: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Bob Porter: Don'tdon't care?

Peter: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Instead of getting fired, Peter gets promoted.

Things cant stay this good, of course. Especially when we learn Peters co-worker friendsMichael Bolton and Samirare among those slated to be axed at work. The three devise a hair-brained scheme to get back at Initech by stealing from the company in a plan that is foolproof. Except its not. And thats when things begin to unravel. First, Peter is told Joanna slept with Lumbergh, his boss. She didnt, but they get into an argument when he confronts her about it. They break up. Worst of all, it looks like Peter and his friends are going to prison because they were not laundering from Initech as discreetly as they thought.

This is where the moral that everyone misses in Office Space comes. You were right about that computer scam. That was a bad idea, he tells Joanna, explaining that hes returning the money and going to take blame for the illegal scheme.

Taking the blame is of course the right thing to do and a sign of Peters growth, as is his admission that he had no right to get angry at Joanna when he mistakenly believed she had slept with Lumbergh. But what he says next is the single most important sentence in the movie demonstrating Peters change.

Lumbergh is not my problem, Peter says.

Office Space is a comedy, so naturally Peter doesnt go to prison. Through a funny turn of events, Initech burns to the ground. The evidence that could implicate Peter, Michael Bolton, and Samir is incinerated. But the arc of the story and of Peter Gibbons comes from his realization that Lumbergh is not really his problem, which helps him discover his own agency.

The best-selling author Robert Mckee, author of Story, says the purpose of a story is to express how and why life changes. And these five wordsLumbergh is not my problemrepresent Peters change moment. He leaves Initech, finds a new job, and tells Joanna how he feels.

In a sense, Peter is taking the advice of Jordan Peterson, the best-selling author of 12 Rules for Life. The primary lesson of Petersons book is that, in the words of Norman Doidge, you must take responsibility for your own life. Period. As I wrote a few years ago, this lesson is embedded in Petersons philosophy and best-selling book.

When Peterson says stand up straight, make good friends, set your own house in order first, tell the truth, make your bed, be precise in speech, etc., hes not really concerned about how clean your room is. He is instructing readers on how they can take control of their own lives. Hes reminding them of their power. Their agency.

This is what Peter Gibbons ultimately learns: how to take control of his own life and stop blaming his unhappiness on Lumbergh and Initech.

This is the lesson many people, particularly younger ones who see America as a capitalist hellscape, can take from Office Space. Its not that Lumbergh and Initech werent awful. But the truth is, youre going to encounter awful people in life. Whats important is to not give ones power and agency over to others by seeing oneself as a victim of external forces beyond ones control.

This is precisely what Peter was doing at the beginning of Office Space. He turned Lumbergh into his personal boogeyman. Instead of directly engaging his pushy boss, he was hiding from him (quite literally) and feeling sorry for himself. This was making him miserable.

Peter had walked into what Ayaan Hirsi Ali, author of Infidel, calls the resentment trap.

It is probably the worst mental prison in the world, says the bestselling author. It is the inability to let go of anger and the perceived or real injustices we suffer.

Note that Ali says perceived or real injustices. Like Peterson, shes not saying injustice isnt real. It is. But we must not allow injustices to consume us, or allow them to strip us of our agency.

The truth is, there are plenty of Bill Lumberghs in the world. (In fact, there are people much, much worse.) Sometimes we have to deal with these people, and that can be difficult. Weve all had to work with and perhaps report to people who are challenging at one time or another.

But the point of Office Space is an important one: do not relinquish your power to the Bill Lumberghs of the world by seeing yourself as a victim. That is a path to misery.

This article was adapted from an issue of the FEE Daily email newsletter. Click here to sign up and get free-market news and analysis like this in your inbox every weekday.

Read the original post:
The Moral Lesson in 'Office Space' Everyone Misses | Jon Miltimore - Foundation for Economic Education

In atypical episode of Succession, food is everywhere, side-order to the plotting and scheming which forms the backbone of the show. Pastries line conference tables in Waystar Royco meeting rooms, canap platters float across the screen at parties, breakfast buffets sit on crisp white restaurant linen. Considering the amount of food on display, however, its rare that we ever see the wealthiest characters Kendall, Shiv and Roman, those born into genuine one per cent wealth actually doing anything so exposingly human as actually eating.

As such, the way different Succession characters relate to food in aliteral sense also reveals something about their place in the shows metaphorical food-chain.

Primarily, foods appearance on Succession signposts the general atmosphere of acasual approach to excess. The countless six-star hotel platters might as well be potpourri for all anyone on-screen actually eats them witness Connors funeral management committee power-breakfast meeting in season four episode seven (Tailgate Party), where a three-day griefathon is ducked, and so are the croissants. Food in Succession usually isnt there to be eaten. Instead, it implies that eating and indeed gluttony is always possible: where there is food, there is abundance and, crucially, money.

In the context of the Roy siblings relationship to it, having food around about demonstrating wealth, because its actual basic function sustenance is so entirely taken for granted. When youre abillionaire, theres no reason to consider hunger. Food, then, becomes decorative. During the episode Tailgate Party, in which Shiv and Tom throw amixer the night before the election, aparticularly fine point was put on this, with passing shots of fussy snacks tiny sliders pierced with US flag cocktail-sticks being prepared.

It follows, then, that when some characters on Succession do actually eat, its sometimes considered to be vulgar, symbolic of the class divide between the shows real one percenters the Roy family and the rest. Think of Hugos mountainous continental breakfast at the GoJo retreat in Norway, or the siblings snarky comments about Willas mother as she loads up her plate among Logans mourners at Marcias apartment.

Even Shiv, Roman and Kendall, however, get ataste of their own medicine any time they come up against the shows oldest money of all: their mothers. When Lady Caroline serves them freshly-shot pigeon in the second series seventh episode, its not anourishing meal delivered up by amother to her children with love. Rather, its asevere reminder of her position as countryside landed gentry (whose tastes are generally more earthy than lavish), the grandeur of which far outweighs her childrens, mere new-money billionaires that they are. As Roman recoils from the dish, his mother side-eyes what she views as his tacky New York preferences, cuttingly scoffing when she asks if hed rather eat truffle fries.

Link:
Succession is full of food, but no one is eating it - The Face

As St. John XXIIIs papal encyclical Pacem in Terrisan essential document in the Catholic social thought traditionhits its 60th anniversary, its worth reassessing the status of social justice in contemporary political culture. In brief, its not faring well. To the progressive left, social justice has become an object of idolatry, a self-justifying meme whose very utterance, like the incantation of a spell, has the power to silence all dissent. To the establishment right, social justice has become (or always has been) a dirty word: at best, the vocabulary of nave devotees of wokeism; at worst, code for advancing a new breed of authoritarianism.

Beneath the rhetorical bomb-throwing of this ideological trench warfare, the authentically Catholic conception of social justice has lain mostly dormant. Whether due to timidity masquerading as humility (being nice so as not to cause offense) or ignorance of the traditions moral and political riches, the Church has regrettably, in the words of Catholic Worker Movement founder Peter Maurinin an example that Bishop Barron frequently citessuppressed the dynamite of her social teachings. Its high time to let it blow. Both the left and the right are misguided about the meaning, purpose, and power of social justice, and were all suffering because of it.

The errors of both stem from faulty anthropology, that is, their respective understandings of the nature of human existence. To the left, human nature and the human good are wholly products of individual and, more recently, group will. This conception of malleable humanity is expressed abstractly in the subjective epistemology, This is my truth or This is our truth, and concretely in LGBTQUIA+ ideology (especially the TQIA+ part), which asserts that individuals feelings contain the moral authority to justify radical alterations to the human body itself, including the bodies of children.

Morality and the will-to-power have been completely collapsed, one into the other.

An additional variable makes this ideology even more politically potent: victimhood. If an individual or group can effectively (even if deceitfully) claim to be the victim of a disembodied yet malevolent collective power (e.g., the patriarchy, systemic racism, heteronormativity, cisnormativity, etc.) then, when combined with progressivisms subjective epistemology, it can claim that the system has a moral responsibility to do whatever we (the victim group) demand. It is this incoherent sludge of relativism on the one hand (All individuals/groups have their own truths) and chauvinistic coercion on the other (We will ruin you if you dont publicly celebrate us) that produces the progressive lefts conception of social justice. Its how you get the assertion that government-subsidized extermination of unborn children (marketed as reproductive justice) is a form of social justice; that state-funded child mutilation is a form of social justice; that state-funded and easily accessed suicide (euthanasia) is a form of social justice; that punishing those who pay their bills on time is social justice; even that racist discrimination against those of Asian descent is social justice. In the progressive rendition of social justice, in other words, there is not a sliver of light between, This is the right thing to do and This is what we want, and you must do it (or else). Morality and the will-to-power have been completely collapsed, one into the other.

Does the right have a point, then? Yesif the point is that the progressive lefts vision of social justice is perversely up-side down and totalitarian in method and scope. But that shouldnt lead to the conclusion that social justice itself should be jettisoned from moral and political concern. The problem is not with social justice per se but, rather, with its definition (a problem that recently went viral on Twitter when Jordan Peterson critiqued Pope Franciss call for social justice; Peterson had the lefts definition in mind, when, as well see, the Catholic conception is something else entirely).

There are two preliminary questions to ask the right about its rejection of social justice: 1) Are they claiming that social justice cannot ever be attained? or 2) Are they claiming that it doesnt exist (that is, that there is no true definition)? If its the formerthe belief that, expressed theologically, there can never be a heaven on earththen the Catholic social tradition is 100% in agreement. As Pope St. John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Centesimus Annus,

When people think they possess the secret of a perfect social organization which makes evil impossible, they also think that they can use any means, including violence and deceit, in order to bring that organization into being. . . . But no political societywhich possess its own autonomy and lawscan ever be confused with the kingdom of God.

In other words, if social justice means a conceited, doomed-to-fail quest for utopian perfection, you can count Catholicism out.

But thats not what it means. Heres a Catholic formulation of social justice from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church:

By means of her social doctrine, the Church shows concern for human life in society, aware that the quality of social life . . . depends in a decisive manner on the protection and promotion of the human person, for whom every community comes into existence. . . . [A]t play in society are the dignity and rights of the person, and peace in relationships between persons and between communities of persons. These are the goods that the social community must pursue and guarantee.

Whats crucial to note here is the relationship between a) the dignity and rights of the individual, and b) the good of the social community. The individual and the community are irreducibly different and should never be conflated. However, the good of each is inextricably intertwined: If individuals do not live properly ordered lives, society will suffer; yet just the same, if society is not properly ordered, then individuals will suffer. This interdependencea fact grounded in human natureis at the heart and head of Catholicisms conception of social justice.

And its precisely what so much of the political right gets wrong about the validityindeed, necessityof pursuing social justice properly defined. To reject social justice as a false moral category, or to say that it should have nothing to do with a societys laws and policies, is to embrace a preposterously abstract, disembodied anthropology. It is a claim that individuals can be free to realize their full moral, economic, and social potential independently of how society is morally structured.

One could critique this position on metaphysical grounds, but how about just looking around? Is it reasonable to conclude that nearly 100,000 drug overdoses per year, many of which occur in the most economically desolate regions of the US, is due entirely to autonomous individuals making free choices? Should we think that our laws and policies have no causal impact on the explosion of young people with depressive and anxiety disorders, including the desire for self-harm? How about the fact that many young people cannot perform at or even near grade-level in basic reading, writing, and math skills? How about the statistic that nearly one in five pregnancies in the US ends with the killing of the unborn child, with that number skyrocketing to two out of three for children diagnosed with Down Syndrome (often inaccurately)? How about both parents needing to work (more than one job each) to have any hope of attaining financial stability, requiring many of them to pay strangers to raise their children?

These, and many more, are social justice issues. To reject the category of social justice as false or politically irrelevant is not only unwise strategically (the rights islands of individual autonomy will eventually shrink into oblivion as societal collapse swallows them up). It is to deny, contrary to common sense, that public policy is causally related to the political and cultural turmoil happening before our own eyes.

In the end, the Catholic conception of social justice comes down to asking and answering two fundamental questions:

If honesty leads us to answer yes to both questions, then weve got a social justice issue on our hands and societythat is, all of us togetherhave an obligation to address it. To those understandably still squeamish about associating with social justice because of how wokeist and conservative-corporate ideologies have polluted it, heres one candid way to frame your position in a way that will confound left and right alike: I fight for social justice because I believe in the sanctity of human dignity and the protection of individual rights.

The rest is here:
Rehabilitating Social Justice - Word on Fire