Abs Are Not Worth It, And Other Facts
Welcome to What We Learned This Week, a digest of the most curiously important facts from the past few days. This week: Getting abs is hard, we're never going to retire and mining cryptocurrency can keep you warm.
The Abs Aren't Worth It
It's currently butt-ass cold (meteorological term) for a large swath of America. In some places, there's a fair amount of snow and in a few locales, there's an absurd amount of snow. It feels so easy to just submit to the cold. Pair this with the usual — and arguably necessary! — holiday binge and you have a very specific sort of anxiety about losing all those hard-won fitness gains from the past year.
Let's unpack this anxiety. Whether rightfully or not, the six-pack is the gold-standard of fitness. Consciously or not, most toiling away during their leisure time all aspire to have a set of defined abdominal muscles. It's sort of like the American Dream of Fitness. Work hard and long enough and you too can achieve this arbitrary symbol of success.
But it turns out it's all a bit of a sham, as Graham Isador has found out for Vice. Isador worked his ass off for 80 days trying to achieve the Ideal Male Physique and failed. Like the American Dream, some people find success easier than others and trying to a achieve a singular, and frankly unrealistic, goal is definitely going to alienate those you love and foster a hefty hatred of yourself.
That's not to say that trying to be more healthy is a waste of your time, but if you're going into 2018 demanding a transformation of who you are, you're going to end up disappointed.
[Vice]
If The Elderly Are Already Struggling In Retirement, What About The Kids?
Earlier this week, the Sacramento Bee published a heartbreaking story of former McDonnell-Douglas employees who, after working for decades and relying on a company pension for retirement, saw their retirement benefits snatched out from under them in 1994 when a Tulsa plant closed.
The Sac Bee found that most of the 998 would-be retirees are still working into their 70s. All because the company felt it needed to cut costs.
Sadly, it's yet another tragic story in a long line of tragic stories of employers viewing labor as just another expense. We all shrug our shoulders and admit that, "Hey, that's just business." And we all doubt our efforts to be wholly self-reliant, looking over our shoulder to make sure we get ours before anyone else. How is this any way to live?
Cryptocurrency Can Keep You Warm
This might seem obvious to anyone who's owned a computer, but, hey, did you know that computers generate heat? Did you also know that a cryptocurrency mining computer sporting six high-end video cards and two large power supplies throws off a lot of heat? It's almost like you could use that heat in lieu of your own home's heating system.
This is what TheNextWeb wants you to know about the Comino, a $5,000 prebuilt crypto mining computer whose sole selling point is that it will last decades. Sure, it probably won't generate enough heat or mine enough to totally offset your heating bill. But, hey, if this totally speculative magic internet money thing does indeed go belly-up you can still rely on the heat it generates!
You know what else you can burn to keep warm in the event of an economic collapse? Paper money.
There Was Actually Good Stuff Online In 2017
I don't know about you folks, but for me, 2017 was an unmitigated nightmare year. It was the first year in which throwing my phone into a drawer the second I left work went from a luxury to a necessity.
Thankfully, my colleague Joey Cosco is a bit more optimistic about being online. In a week in which most of us are very ready to forget 2017, Joey reminded us of all the good things that hit the web this year.
Things like a sad man embracing a brand new puppy, a baby elephant not knowing its own strength and a naked clay humanoid assuring you that everything is going to be okay. It's going to be okay.
[Digg]
