Sigh

So, here's today's XKCD.

Now, I don't really have (that much) of a problem if people just outright disagree with Ayn Rand.  But misinterpretation on this scale gets pretty annoying.  Or, worse, if it's not actually misinterpretation, and people somehow believe that letting people bear the consequences for their actions equates with "be a huge asshole".

Since the general consequences of being a "huge asshole" to people are that you wind up bitter and alone, I'd have to say that the philosophical recommendation of Objectivism (inasmuch as there is one) would be "don't be a huge asshole".  Why do people think that it's in your self-interest to be a hateful jerk?  It's so much easier to get people to do what you need when they have a reason to give a damn about what happens to you.  Heck, if you're enough of a jerk, people may not even be willing to help you out when it's otherwise in their own personal, immediate interests, because they'd rather suffer a little than tolerate you.

This doesn't mean you should go around handing out bits of your life and soul door-to-door, desperately trying to buy the affections of people who mean nothing to you.  It CERTAINLY doesn't mean that you should do this to try and buy the affections of people who are actively out to harm you.

If that's being an asshole, so  be it.

What I'm On

So, I've been taking a lot of pills lately.


With breakfast I take:
1 Multivitamin
3 Vitamin D
1 Probiotic

And at bedtime I take
2 Melatonin

I've only just started taking the probiotic and the melatonin.  I think my gastric flora (or fauna?  Are bacteria plants or animals?  Wait, they're neither.  Hmmmmmmmmm.) have been a bit messed up and starting to recover, and I think taking the probiotic will help speed this process.  In any case, I plan to only take it a until I run out of what I bought.  It doesn't make sense to me that probiotics would be something you should take forever.  To refresh your gut, yeah.  But if your internal environment is in such condition that you can't support the bugs after reintroducing them, I suspect you need to change something ELSE instead.

The melatonin is an experiment to see if it can help me sleep better.  I sleep a LOT (like 12 hours a day, consistently), and I've always had problems falling asleep and then later, waking up.   I'm not insomniac, exactly (once I am asleep, I STAY THAT WAY), it's just that my body seems to have a hard time switching between "I'm tired" and "I'm awake now", and vice versa.

Some of this I suspect is related to body temperature regulation.  If I take a hot shower either first thing in the morning or last thing at night, it kicks me over into either "I'm awake" or "Sleepy now".  Eating first thing in the morning actually seems to make me MORE sleepy, although I do feel better later in the day if I have some kind of breakfast.  Plus I need breakfast so I can take my pills.  Long experience has shown me that if I take pills without food, I feel ill.

I'll try to report later on whether the melatonin seems to be having any kind of effect.  Thus far it seems to have helped me reset my sleep cycle so I'm going to bed at a reasonable-ish time (1 am) and waking up at a reasonable-ish time, (9 am) but it's too early to tell.

50 lbs!

So, I've lost 50 lbs. Not bad, although considering I started this, what, sometime last June, it's not exactly stellar weight loss, like 5 lbs a month. I've fallen off the diet a couple of times (for a day or two), so it might have been better. But my clothes are all quite loose now, and I'm about a quarter of the way to my goal weight. That's a substantial percentage.

Now to keep on keepin' on.