Random Thought Thread

Moorik said:
I just walked almost 12 miles.
And stepped in poop twice.
Damn, I walk in the woods a lot, but so many paths are overgrown — hardly anyone uses them anymore — and the poop hides sneakily under the leaves.

How do you guys manage to avoid stepping in poop when walking in the forest?
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I wish I had a forest to walk in. All I have around me is swampy terrain that gets pretty tiresome after only a few minutes. Not to mention the no-see-ums, biting flies, and mosquitos.
 
SharpBits said:
I wish I had a forest to walk in. All I have around me is swampy terrain that gets pretty tiresome after only a few minutes. Not to mention the no-see-ums, biting flies, and mosquitos.
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Man, honestly, for me the forest is something extremely important.


Whenever I need to get lost in my thoughts, or I feel like I need to recharge, I can just go into the forest — even stay overnight there or whatever.


No joke, I’m genuinely convinced that this pull is some kind of genetic thing.

The trail where guys ride their mountain motorcycles got blocked by fallen trees after the storm. Today I cleared three fallen trees from the path. No one asked me to do it, but I felt like that kind of superhero with a K18 for the guys who will start riding here again in a couple of months.


I’m planning to clear the whole trail.


Awesome
 
Matthew Gregory said:
I assure you that there’s nothing lazy about my statement. You can take it that way, if you choose, but it isn’t.

I’ve made personal decisions in my life to address the things we’re discussing. Probably stricter choices than most. What would you have me do? Inflict my choices on you? There are people in this country that will choose the wrong decision simply because you told them that they can’t. We see it every day.

I assure you that I probably agree with many of your positions. So much so that I’ve changed my entire life to combat these things. But, I’m pretty sure the very fabric of this country has created a cloth that runs in a direction counter to the degree of control you’re suggesting. I want more than anything for there to be accountability for these things, but I don’t for one moment believe that anyone else does.

My perspective on freedom is very different than that of the average American, right now. I think freedom is being able to choose to do whatever I want to do, but always choosing to do the right thing. Call me a morbidly idealistic optimist.
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Yup.

A government trying to ensure the average person has easy access to plentiful food at obtainable prices is a good thing.

People CHOOSING to overindulge, and/or eat overprocessed high calorie crap is their own fault.

“But it’s delicious…”
Have some self control.

“But it’s cheap”
Have some self control

“But I’d rather sit comfortably on the couch for hours. Exercise is uncomfortable, and takes effort!”
And there it is; make the effort, or make excuses. One is easier than the other, which is why so many choose that option.

Again, fat control is 80% what you eat/drink, and 20% activity. You don’t have to burn what you don’t eat/drink.

“You lose fat in the kitchen. You get fit in the gym”

“You can’t outrun the spoon”.
 
bluemax_1 said:
Yup.

A government trying to ensure the average person has easy access to plentiful food at obtainable prices is a good thing.

People CHOOSING to overindulge, and/or eat overprocessed high calorie crap is their own fault.

“But it’s delicious…”
Have some self control.

“But it’s cheap”
Have some self control

“But I’d rather sit comfortably on the couch for hours. Exercise is uncomfortable, and takes effort!”
And there it is; make the effort, or make excuses. One is easier than the other, which is why so many choose that option.

Again, fat control is 80% what you eat/drink, and 20% activity. You don’t have to burn what you don’t eat/drink.

“You lose fat in the kitchen. You get fit in the gym”

“You can’t outrun the spoon”.
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Food has become too accessible.
Way too accessible.


Like, you can just press a button on your phone and order a ton of food delivered to your house — groceries, whatever you want.


By the way, a lot of people actually don’t really understand calories.


Recently I was buying Cola Zero, and when I asked for it in the store they didn’t have any — only the regular one with sugar.
And the cashier told me something like:

“Do you really think there’s no sugar in it? That’s just a scam.”

Honestly, I was expecting something more like Timmy-style conspiracy stuff or something like that — but no, she just thought that sugar-free Coke is a scam
 
Blues said:
Absolutely. Even in places like Paris and Rome, you see the natives out walking and it shows. The women have lovely toned legs, and the majority of the men are much slimmer than those back home.

When you get back off the plane it's like, WTF happened?
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I think I recounted this before, somewhere in this thread, but we were visiting my aunt in Switzerland, and she threw a dinner party to introduce us to her friends and coworkers.

Everyone either walked to her house (even from the other side of town, 6-7 miles away), or rode their bicycles with ONE exception, the couple who came with their elderly mom who used a wheelchair. One couple even rode their bicycles from the next town over (maybe 10 - 15 miles?).

After dinner and conversation, as people began leaving, we offered to drive anyone home in the rental, even telling the folks with bicycles, that we could put the bikes in the back. Everyone politely declined. One common comment was, “A nice walk after dinner is good for digestion”. This seems to be a somewhat common concept in the EU; going for a stroll after a meal.

It also seems to be a far less common thing over there, to eat so much at a meal, that a person goes, “Ahhh… I’m so stuffed! I don’t even want to move”, to the point they can’t go for a walk after a meal.
 
Moorik said:
Oh, really?!
Cool. I don’t have an aunt like that — I have an uncle.


He taught me how to open a beer with the spine of a knife and how to play Warcraft.


Where’s my uncle/aunt from Switzerland?
🥺
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Oh, another funny anecdote about self control.

My aunt in Switzerland worked for Nestle. In fact, from what she told us, most of the people in her small town worked at Nestle.

As employees, they get discounts on Nestle products. One of the things I noticed, was the bowl of chocolates on the table near the door.

She said, “Oh yes. Please, help yourself. Those are for guests. No one here eats them, because everyone has their own bowl of Nestle chocolates by the door, for guests” 😂😂😂
 
toker said:
images
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I sort of feel like you’re stalking me.



If you show up, bring cookies.




🤣
 
bluemax_1 said:
Oh, another funny anecdote about self control.

My aunt in Switzerland worked for Nestle. In fact, from what she told us, most of the people in her small town worked at Nestle.

As employees, they get discounts on Nestle products. One of the things I noticed, was the bowl of chocolates on the table near the door.

She said, “Oh yes. Please, help yourself. Those are for guests. No one here eats them, because everyone has their own bowl of Nestle chocolates by the door, for guests” 😂😂😂
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So, in Eastern European culture (mostly due to the historical poverty of all these countries), there’s a standard thing that many people have to deal with.

Basically, everyone was raised with the idea that you must always finish all your food. Why? Well, leaving food unfinished is considered really bad — always eat everything!

I can understand why this was done 40–50 (even more then 40-50,but lets say like this ) years ago, for example, because there was a real chance that meat or other food might only appear on the table once a week, if at all.

But now, it’s kind of become part of the culture — you’re not supposed to leave any leftovers.

And this is even like a kind of eating disorder that many people from Eastern Europe have. A person doesn’t want to, but they force themselves to finish everything.

This is how culture can lead to excess weight.
 
Moorik said:
So, in Eastern European culture (mostly due to the historical poverty of all these countries), there’s a standard thing that many people have to deal with.

Basically, everyone was raised with the idea that you must always finish all your food. Why? Well, leaving food unfinished is considered really bad — always eat everything!

I can understand why this was done 40–50 years ago, for example, because there was a real chance that meat or other food might only appear on the table once a week, if at all.

But now, it’s kind of become part of the culture — you’re not supposed to leave any leftovers.

And this is even like a kind of eating disorder that many people from Eastern Europe have. A person doesn’t want to, but they force themselves to finish everything.

This is how culture can lead to excess weight.
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Very true. It's not just Eastern European, BTW. Many people here in the States had parents or grandparents who grew up with similar food issues and were taught the mantra of cleaning your plate. Food excess for the common folk didn't really start here until the 1950s. Everyone was addicted to nicotine back then so that helped control some of the weight issues.
 
SharpBits said:
Very true. It's not just Eastern European, BTW. Many people here in the States had parents or grandparents who grew up with similar food issues and were taught the mantra of cleaning your plate. Food excess for the common folk didn't really start here until the 1950s. Everyone was addicted to nicotine back then so that helped control some of the weight issues.
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Do you even know what the thing is?
So, as my great-grandparents used to tell me…
Even if you were well-off, you couldn’t always just buy something. Like, even if you had money—or even plenty of it—you couldn’t simply go and buy sweets, or a certain type of meat, or something like that.
You often had to travel far just to get some basic food.
Even though, paradoxically, you had the money for it.


Nowadays, there’s basically nothing you can’t buy, even if you have very little money. I mean, in terms of food.


I consider myself extremely lucky to have known a generation that lived through the war(s).
And I’ll never forget this moment:
I asked my great-grandmother, “What was the most delicious thing you ever ate?”
She answered:
“The first time I ever tried chocolate.”


Even though she later experienced a huge variety of foods and things like that, her strongest memory was trying chocolate as a teenager.
Of course, we’re not talking about eating a whole bar, lol.
 
Moorik said:
Food has become too accessible.
Way too accessible.


Like, you can just press a button on your phone and order a ton of food delivered to your house — groceries, whatever you want.
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I have to disagree with this assertion.

There is no issue with food being “too accessible”. Humans aren’t goldfish. Goldfish are too dumb to know better, and as opportunistic feeders, will continue eating far more than they should, as long as there’s food available.

Humans should know well enough to exercise some self control (genuinely mentally handicapped notwithstanding).

Just because it’s abundant doesn’t mean you have to stuff it in your mouth.

I can somewhat agree with the old school mentality of “clean your plate” potentially resulting in eating habits that can result in weight gain, but again, people can choose not to load up their plate, then go back for seconds, or order 2,500 kcalories of fast food for lunch, then do that again for dinner.
 
Both of my adopted parents were products of the Depression. We always had plenty to eat growing up, but the food was terrible, and we were expected to clean our plates. One time, I was served the same plate of lamb and kraut for 3 days in a row until it was determined to be unfit for consumption. I couldn't eat it, it was one of the foulest things I can recall (though I like lamb and sauerkraut today, I don't eat them together).

My dad always bought the poorest cuts of meat and never trimmed anything, so any meat we got was way beyond well done, and full of fat, gristle, and whatever other bits that a reasonable person would trim off. I swallowed a lot of meat gobbets whole because I couldn't abide the texture.
 
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