I did all of my note-taking on paper in school. I felt like I had to to keep up with complex visualizations and concepts. The habit has carried with me.
I still keep those notebooks for reflection on what I studied. They're very valuable to me, even though I get teased for it. To me, it is like looking at a photograph of your younger brain.
Queen-size bed with memory foam. Bed frame from Ikea.
3 blankets: one soft fleece blanket, one comforter, and one 25lb weighted blanket to keep me from kicking in my sleep. The weighted blanket has been the biggest QoS improvement for me personally.
2 comfy pillows, double-stacked.
Honorable Mentions:
My heat-pad I throw into the microwave that comes out smelling nice is fun to throw into the mix when it gets cold at night.
My super long phone-charging cable for when I want to flip sides and not worry about charge.
More usually (in the UK) it's forward and back, which make more sense as direct opposites. It's a little confusing though because pushing something back means move it later and bring it forward means move it earlier, whereas when talking directly about time the meanings are usually reversed (e.g. "back in time" means earlier).
in this case i'd interpret "forward/backward" as "closer towards you / further away from you", with the metaphor being that you're standing on a timeline looking "in the future direction" and moving stuff closer/further.
when using "back" to talk about the past, it's "backwards" as in "behind you". "further back" = "further behind you" = "more in the past"
I did, yes. I moved with my wife and two dogs and most of our stuff to Hamburg.
The startup paid for the flights, the visa fees (if any, I don’t remember), the container to put our crap in (it was a logistics startup so they knew how to do this rather well), and prepaid for an AirBnB for 3 months for us to find housing.
We had hang ups in getting my wife recognized such that we could get on the more lucrative tax schedule of tax class 3 (one earner). The Germans are sticklers for the details but common sense prevailed and our paper work was finally honored and we got a blue card which means my visa is tied to my working and making a minimum amount.
We live now in Berlin and absolutely love it here. We don’t interact with the government much so maybe that’s why but all-in-all it’s awesome out here. I don’t worry about getting shot or anything like that.
Germans complain a lot about the government and lengthy procedures because they mostly haven't experienced what its like in other countries. Stickler for details but if you get those right everything is smooth and swift and no one asks for under the counter money or sends you away just because they don't like your face.
thank you for your detailed response. I have some family in Germany and have thought about trying something similar, so I love to hear others' experiences.
Yes. In Portland where I lived we didn’t make enough to live in the nicer parts of town so we lived in the north east near Gresham and crime was a problem out there. Lots of gang violence.
My comment was a bit flippant. But it was something I thought about from time to time. Here not at all.
As a fellow east Portlander who stayed in Berlin a couple Summers ago and absolutely fell in love with the place, I really appreciate the story and applaud your successful relocation.
Well, for some additional anecdata: I've been mugged/attacked twice as much in Berlin (where I live) than I was in Detroit (where I grew up).
I think perhaps the perception of risk in the US is blown way out of proportion due to the media frenzy around shootings, which are still pretty rare overall in the US. If you consume mass media, you will generally overestimate the risk by several orders of magnitude. (This is, for example, why many Europeans believe the stereotype that the US is so dangerous, when the vast majority of it is actually much safer wrt violent crime than most large cities in Europe.)
If you were afraid there, you should be afraid here. (I personally don't think you should be afraid in either place.)
I could hear the sirens and the shots in the backyard of my house. :/ though my perception of their frequency could be biased.
I’m sorry to hear you were mugged and twice, too! That’s crazy. Not crazy that crime happens just that it blows away my thesis that I’m more or less free from having to think about it living here in Berlin.
I did have a fancy road bike I bought in Hamburg stolen. But I think that’s more or less me being stupid.
It's much higher in about five specific counties in the US. The vast majority of the US has less violent crime overall (guns, plus everything else) than most large cities in Europe. For a simple example in Berlin you get pepper sprayed by stick-up kids, whereas in the US mountain west there isn't much mugging at all (due to the fact that a mugger is about 50/50 to get a wallet or a bullet in response).
The mistake is to think of the US as uniform. Most of it is extremely peaceful.
Lowest homicide rate in a US State is 1.5 in Maine, average is 5. Germany has 0.9 on average.
In general poverty (which is more common in the US) leads to violence and other crimes. Bringing weapons into conflicts usually escalated them and leads to worse outcomes.
I don't really care one way or the other, but my impression is the group offers a setting for like-minded (read 'higher-IQ') individuals to come talk about anything and not just the thing they are there for.
The irony is: by your own definition, what makes you like minded is that you are all in MENSA.
Hey, let's start a "people who wear blue shoes" society. We're all like minded, I bet the conversation will be fascinating.
Put another, less sarcastic way: there's no guarantee they will be interesting because there is literally nothing guranteed to be in common except we're smart. But a chess club will be, because everyone talks about chess. This is why I found MENSA dull.
But also, this isn't a subjective analysis: it is a logical deduction. I'm identifying sets and drawing conclusions. You know, rational Ayn Rand stuff.
I'd rather hang out with dumbasses who can woodwork, or dumbasses who can tune car engines, or dumbasses who can cook, or dumbasses who can run marathons, over smart people who have no other connection to me other than we all scored high on an arbitrary test.
But what topic are they of like mind about? "High IQ" individuals might be left-wing or right-wing, religious or secular, capitalist or communist, etc. The only theme likely to be in common among all Mensa members is a pride in their IQ.
I think most people in that category love having people to have intellectual conversations with. I've been in a space with people who are naturally incredibly high IQ, and there's a special kind of comraderie that comes from not having to go through the lonely exercise of scaffolding everything that you're deeply passionate about.
It's community. Pride in IQ != The main reason to be centric around an IQ.
I've tested well in that sphere. It's an incomplete measure, but it does measure something, and I like being around/with people at that caliber in the "IQ" arena.
I want to be challenged. I want to have community where my heart is in intellectual things. I don't want someone to just absorb my information-excited rants, I want someone to fight me on them and challenge me to grow.
Most of all, I don't want to feel isolated or lonely in my experiences. We all desire community around what makes us us. It's a fundamentally human thing, I think, and denying it because it's some measure that some people use to prop up their insecurity feels a bit hurtful and/or harmful to people really seeking community there.
Not currently a member of any sigma-type IQ-only organizations. Just my thoughts. I love other kinds of people too. But people who think in that level and way are my safe people, and I can feel seen and heard with them.
Note: there's EQ and a host of other things not mentioned here. I'm just talking about the above specific insight in general. :)
If it's a group in real life, then you also have the common factors that you wanted to join a social group and you live near each other.
That can mean a lot - it's why meetup.com has always worked for me when I've tried it, even if the group has no official topic. (Of course I stopped after I'd gotten enough out of it.)
> The only theme likely to be in common among all Mensa members is a pride in their IQ.
This is wrong in two ways. 1) IQ is not among the most discussed topics, not even close; so presumably other themes are in common. 2) Pride is not the prevalent emotion, generally or specifically with regards to the own IQ.
I'm thinking about more typical clubs and interest groups. In a chess club, you can talk about chess without worrying about whether the person is interested in chess. In an underwater basket weaving club, you can talk about underwater basket weaving without worrying about whether the person is interested in underwater basket weaving.
If you've been to Iceland you've probably been near volcanoes, just not necessarily active ones. This volcano that is currently erupting is only about 10 miles from Keflavik Airport (and maybe 5 miles from the Blue Lagoon, if you went there).
I want to piggyback off this comment and also throw in HL:Alyx for VR Games. I was honestly blown away by how good VR felt, VALVe did an amazing job and I think/hope it sets the standards for all other VR Games.
I still keep those notebooks for reflection on what I studied. They're very valuable to me, even though I get teased for it. To me, it is like looking at a photograph of your younger brain.