Mindconnection eNL, 2018-12-16

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Item 1. Bill Gates has taken on toilets as his new mission. The modern toilet is a failure in design and function, so perhaps Mr. Gates will be able to fix that. Of course, we must remember he was the main force behind another failure in design and function, Microsoft Windows.

Item 2. During the last week of November, President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a temporary trade ceasefire, halting significant tariffs on imported goods.

Read the full story here: https://nsba.biz/u-s-china-trade-truce/

This is wonderful news, because nobody wins a trade war. The tariffs are merely consumption taxes on US citizens, and they are very high taxes. We are already the most heavily taxed people on the planet (by a large margin), so further punishing us for being stupid enough to vote for the same old crime syndicate crooks (Democrats and Republicans) really is not necessary.

This failure on the part of President Trump reversed much of the economic gain produced by last year's badly needed tax reform act. Let's hope he has truly come to his senses and drops this whole thing. Take a moment to write to him, thanking him for stopping the insanity and encouraging him not to revive it.

Item 3. Dick's Sporting Goods decided earlier this year to systematically and egregiously disrespect law-abiding gun owners, a core demographic of its target market. Dick's even went so far as to deliberately engage in the crime of age discrimination by refusing to sell firearms and ammunition to people aged 18 to 21. The good news is Dick's is feeling the financial pain from the national boycott they stupidly did not see coming. Please encourage others you know to boycott Dick's.

Circuit City was brought down by boycotts over its illegal racial discrimination. Let's bring Dick's down with the boycott over its illegal age discrimination and other bad behavior.

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• Helps with reading fluency and comprehension.
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• Easy to use. Recommended for adults and children age 10 and up.
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If a bat and ball together cost $1.10 and the bat costs $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

Go ahead and write your answer down or just try to remember it.

I'm going to illustrate something here, and it is one reason people so often make bad decisions or go with an incorrect answer. Your mind has a quick, intuitive system and a slower, rational system.

The first answer that popped into your head was probably $1. Then if you thought for a couple of seconds, you'd have seen that could not be correct because if the ball is 10 cents that would make the bat $1.10 which would add up to $1.20. So clearly, the ball must cost 5 cents. Adding $1 to that to get the cost of the bat, we add $0.05 to $1.05 to get the total cost of $1.10.

But a surprising number of people cannot solve this problem even if told their original answer is wrong. Instead of looking again and dong the forehead slap thing because it's obviously wrong, they will defend their original answer. In other words, they make a decision to not think.

This is why we have libtards, for example.

Your first impression of a situation may be wrong. Your intuitive answer may be wrong. If you go down the path of confirmation bias instead of reasoned analysis, you will stay wrong.

The best thing you can do for your brainpower is to make a point of using it. The vast majority of people make a point of not using it. Think of the competitive advantage you can have in your workplace, if you are standing out from your coworkers and even your boss by being someone who makes a point of using your brain. Think of how much better you can do in your interpersonal relationships, time management, food choices, and other areas.

Using your brain's rational part is very much worth the effort. Make that effort often. You won't regret it.

• Avoid using the garbage disposal. In fact, using a drain screen in the sink the disposal "serves" is a very good idea.
• Clean your garbage disposal once a week: put a few ice cubes in it and run it. Then pour some baking soda in it and follow that with vinegar.
• Don't use powdered dishwasher soap; it can clog your pipes.
• Use drain screens in tub, shower, and sinks to prevent hair from going down the drain and clogging it.
• Clean sink and shower drains throughout the house monthly; pour some baking soda down the drain, then follow with vinegar.
• Periodically, add vinegar to the toilet tank. This will help prevent parts failure due to water hardness. It will also help clean the bowl.
• About once a month, shut off the toilet supply valve. Flush the toilet. Pour vinegar into the bowl and let it stand overnight.
• Never toss condoms into the toilet. Same for used facial tissue, paper towels, and other large items.
• Don't wad toilet paper up to use it; that's inefficient use of the paper and it also creates greater clog risk. Fold it instead.
• Don't skip meals. Staying with the six meals per day your body is designed for also means you greatly reduce the likelihood of one massive bowel movement that results in the embarrassment of calling a plumber to fix the clog while you explain about the fictional guest you are never inviting over again.
• Never put cat litter into a toilet, even if the litter container says you can (the manufacturer is lying).
• Once a year or so, remove the trap under a given sink and clean it. Then, of course, replace it. If you schedule a different sink every few weeks, that'll make the task less onerous. And be sure you do this when hardware stores are open, just in case....

What can you do about the unwanted phone calls that interrupt you, waste your time, and pose a security risk? We've addressed that in previous issues. Here's another look at the subject: https://blog.malwarebytes.com/101/2018/09/phone-spampocalypse-fighting-back-in-the-age-of-unwanted-calls

Let's talk about toxins. One in particular, and it's widely consumed. It has these claims to fame:

• The number one cause of dental caries.
• A leading cause of gingivitis.
• The cause of 99.999% of incidences of esophageal cancer
• One of the top causes of osteoporosis.
• A leading cause of halitosis.
• A leading cause of adult onset diabetes.
• A leading cause of dehydration (and thus loss of cell elasticity, which means premature aging of the skin).
• Heavily contributes to high blood pressure due to dehydration.

From that list, can you determine which toxin I am referring to? The typical supermarket allots over 200 times as much space to this toxin as it does to the superfood we call broccoli.

The USA has over half the world's prison population, and most of those folks are there for selling pot or some other "drug offense" yet not a single purveyor of the toxin I'm talking about has even been indicted.

If you guessed soda pop, congratulations.

Photo taken about one week before 40th High School Class Reunion

• The best workouts are short and intense.
• A good diet contains far more flavors and satisfaction than the typical American diet.

Research shows that libtards, who advocate massive and unaffordable social programs run by the government, are among the stingiest of people when it comes to their personal giving.