The Successful Addict

america invictus. dad bod fitness. a man of monstrous appetite.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

I have always been a man of appetite. Food, booze, women. If some was good, more was better. For years, I sought to regulate myself, often swinging between rigid ideologies and unrestricted gluttony. In neither phase was I happy.

For the past several years, I searched for a solution to my “problems”, trying numerous frameworks and philosophies. None worked.

Over the last six months, I have discovered and explored a detailed model of the dopamine system. The model is not mine, but by applying it and aligning it with my own beliefs, knowledge, and preferences, I have created my dream life.

I gorge myself every day while shedding weight. I only work on things I want to and have better business opportunities as a result. I wake up every day excited and motivated, knowing that everything I will do will be filled with enjoyment.

Follow me to learn how you can too.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

america invictus

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. A Mexican restaurant. We had not yet ordered anything, and the food was already arriving.

Chips. Salsa. Unrequested. Free.

I stopped the waiter. "We have not earned these."

"They just come with the table, man."

They come with the TABLE. In my land, hospitality is a debt. Every gift creates an obligation, weighed carefully, returned in the proper season with interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you can pay for dinner.

This is not an appetizer. This is a declaration: we trust you. Eat.

I ate with the gravity the moment deserved. And then — I must report this calmly — the basket emptied, and a new one appeared.

"Did we…?"

"Refill," the waiter said. "It's bottomless."

Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined.

My friend warned me. "Don't fill up on chips, dude."

Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished — an unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man.

I was not hungry. I was not comfortable. I had been defeated by a courtesy.

Generosity that arrives before the request cannot be repaid. It can only be survived.

I know the rule now. I have made my peace with the basket. One basket. Two at the most.

Who am I deceiving. There is no number of baskets I would refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa, and I intend to honor all of it.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

america invictus

[Brad Smith @CommishSmith]

Five things I've found almost no Europeans know (and lots of Americans don't either) that warps the view of America vs. Europe:
- The distance from NYC to LA is as great as the distance from Moscow to Lisbon;
- If you measure across all of Europe (excluding Russia, which would make the comparison worse for Europe), not just within each country, income inequality is greater than in the US, even though Europe is geographically smaller;
- The overwhelming majority of Americans have much greater access to insured quality healthcare than the median European;
- Disposable household income in the poorest US state, Mississippi, is higher than in any country in Europe that is as large or larger than Rhode Island;
- How federalism works in the U.S.

Ignorance on these 5 simple issues alone explains much of how people (incorrectly) view life in the U.S. vs. life in Europe.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

america invictus

[Josh Billinson @jbillinson]

Florida to California via the Moon is a domestic flight until another country proves otherwise

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

america invictus

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

when it’s 1am and you're trying to get to the word count for the essay.

[Eddy Quan @waronweakness]

Writing gurus : "Write short sentences and don't use big words"

Charles Dickens in the first sentence of Oliver Twist:

"Among other public buildings in a certain town, which for many reasons it will be prudent to refrain from mentioning, and to which I will assign no fictitious name, there is one anciently common to most towns, great or small: to wit, a workhouse; and in this workhouse was born - on a day and date which I need not trouble myself to repeat, inasmuch as it can be of no possible consequence to the reader, in this stage of the business at all events - the item of mortality whose name is prefixed to the head of this chapter.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@verge

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

life should be 90% chilling. 10% high leverage, violent action

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@TheCustomerGuy "I'm a dreamer"

same profession as a chinese immigrant to sf in 1870

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

AI solved SQL first because it's a declarative language.

Most programming languages tell the computer what to do. SQL just asks for what you want. Prompting is the same.

As AI continues to improve, declarative languages will only become more valuable.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@AGEMO___ the only lindy punishments:
- if minor: fine
- if more serious: exile
- if very serious: death

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@RodeoProfessor america invictus

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

the replacement of simple, powerful concepts with complex words is a plague.

"will" becomes "agency"
"cruel" becomes "narcissistic"
"ugly" becomes "unaesthetic"

just say what you mean. words have power for a reason.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@fastrlife what about armpit hair?

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@cynomel the enjoyment lifestyle 🤝

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@owroot all my most beautiful memories are from the real world, usually when the digital world is completely absent (phones hidden or impossible to use).

beauty in the real world is the true north star.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

america invictus.

it's fun and easy to mock us. meanwhile we keep the sea lanes open, the satellites in orbit, the transactions settling, and the bison on the range.

[RodeoProfessor @RodeoProfessor]

There’s so much anti-American propaganda out there in schools and the media that I get messages like this daily. It’s always “You Americans fail your wildlife,” when that couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s actually mystifying how people come to that conclusion.

Almost every major wildlife protection tool used in the entire world comes from the USA. I’ll go through the big ones here, but this is a small list relative to what we’ve done. Make sure and thank an American today for being the global powerhouse in wildlife conservation (especially you Canadians)!

First and foremost, Americans invented national parks. What’s known as the “American model” has spread worldwide, every country on earth has national parks explicitly modeled off Yellowstone. Yellowstone was the first place with legal protections purposefully placed on wildlife and ecosystem functioning. If you move in these professional circles, working with people from South Africa (Kruger) to New Zealand (Tongariro) they will say explicitly, “we used the American model.”

America also created the idea of a National Wildlife Refuge system, first enacted by Teddy Roosevelt at Pelican Island specifically to protect migratory birds. Today we have over 500 publicly owned wildlife refuges which have inspired the creation of similar systems in Canada, Australia, India, Kenya, most of Europe, and in many countries in Latin America. Again, when you meet these managers, they talk openly about using American refuges as a template.

Almost everything we know about captive breeding programs to restore endangered species comes from American universities and federal agencies. Condors, black footed ferrets, whooping cranes, bison programs have all been widely mimicked by other counties. China’s panda program, Saudi’s oryx program, Mongolia’s tahki horse program, Spain’s lynx program, all used the American condor and black footed ferret program templates. Shout out to Meeteetse, Wyoming for showing us the way.

America’s Endangered Species Act was the world’s first law that could put the brakes on economic activity if that activity risks species extinction. This law had never existed anywhere else before, and was nowhere near as powerful anywhere else. This type of thinking around extinction was invented in the US. And of course, it’s the template for endangered species laws in Australia (EPBC), Canada (SARA), the equivalents in east Asia (Japan’s ESA and South Korea’s) and Latin America. There’s over 100 countries with endangered species laws based on America’s ESA. Also, our ESA has been around since the 70s, even Canada’s has only been around since the early 2000s! Catch up Canada.

America invented the legal concept of “Wilderness” and just the state of Alaska has more of what we call “capital W wilderness” than the next country down on the list (Canada). This is a law that designates some of the strictest wilderness on earth, truly untrammeled by man, that we passed in ‘64. This type of thing was unheard of back then.

The USA wrote the very first international wildlife treaty which later became the model for every other treaty related to wildlife that exists (Migratory Bird Treaty with Canada).

The USA invented the concept of the duck stamp where waterfowl hunters pay for stamps and the money is used to buy new wetland habitat for ducks. Many countries have copied this model: Canada, Russia, Australia, NZ, Denmark.

America was the first to ban whaling under the Marine Mammal Protection Act; which was copied by dozens of countries including Australia, New Zealand, and the EU.

Be proud of what you’ve done, American.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@caesararum america invictus

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

because*

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@Empty_America perhaps I'm biased because I'm from New England, but I think the coastal village looms just as large in people's imaginations when I talk to them about their stereotypes of it.

[The Successful Addict @sucessfuladdict]

@GestaltedApe one of America's great gifts to the world