Open Thread

Open Thread #58

Aaron "Sleazy" Elias

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97 thoughts on “Open Thread #58”

  1. Aaron,
    I made a donation to your site. You suggested to use the friends/family option to avoid paying any fees. I wasn’t able to get around this. Apparently, Paypal makes users pay a small fee depending where the user lives. For instance, I live in the Los Angeles. Paypal only allows me to avoid the fee if I send money within the US or Canada. Outside of that, fee is added. It was a small fee.

    Reply

    1. Thank you very much, Chris! I really appreciate it. I have received donations from abroad, including the US, without any such fees, and some where a fee was deducted. It is not quite clear to me what the underlying issue is. In any case, had you not used the friends-and-family option, PayPal would have taken more money.

    2. I should clarify that if you haven’t seen the first episode, there are no spoilers about the rest.

  2. Have you guys seen Cobra Kai on YouTube? It’s a show that updates the Karate Kid movies. I’ve watched the first 2 seasons on Youtube Premium. I looked it up and apparently the third season is free 🙂 It should come out in a couple months.

    Reply

    1. I’ve heard it was surprisingly good. I enjoyed the first Karate Kid movie back in the day, can’t really remember the sequel.

    2. You don’t remember the sequels because they sucked 🙂 Cobra Kai is directed by the same guys that did the Harold and Kumar movies so there is actually a lot of humor thrown into it. It stays very loyal to the original story line, and fills gaps in a creative and interesting way. It deals with the vapid young generation, under dog stories, masculinity, morality, daddy issues etc. I won’t give any spoilers, but let’s just say there is a lot of grey area as opposed to the original.

      When I was a kid my friend and I spent a whole summer watching Karate Kid over and over. I would say that Cobra Kai does it justice and has many hidden references to the original that Karate Kid buffs like myself can appreciate.

    3. I just watched the first episode lol. I liked it. Definitely has me rooting for the underdog so far, which is Johnny now. The tables have turned.

    4. Exactly bro. *SPOILERS AHEAD* (only about the first episode). I’m on Jonny’s side so far. It gets more complicated, but I’m still with Jonny. In the 80s I could never image that happening. I love the part when he is watching Iron Eagle and Louis Gossit Jr.’s plane is going down. Gossit Jr. Tells his mentor that God doesn’t give people things that he doesn’t want them to use. And his mentor was born with “the touch.” Something deep inside in his guts (flash backs to Jonny kicking ass). And that’s all he needs to take back what they took from him. Jonny broke down in tears. This is the point where he realised he should take up Miquel’s offer and become a sensi. Then it goes to commercial for Daniel’s car lots: “BONSAI!” LOL comic relief.

      Have you seen all of the connections they have actually made between Jonny and Miagi? As well as Daniel and Miguel?

    6. I liked how they portayed the modern gender culture crap that teenagers today have to put up with in school. And ol’ Johnny from the 80’s is just not having any of that shit. You can sort of tell they wanted to appease the old school audience, which is a smart move. Unlike with Star Wars, for example, the core audience was completely alienated.

    7. What episode are you on? *SPOILERS ABOUT THE FIRST EPISODE*
      Being the Karate Kid nerd that I am I noticed many subtle similarities snuck into the plot. Johnny basically is Miagi. Maintenance man who trains a bullied teen with a single mom new to the area. Kicks the asses of the bullies (haha Johnny was one of them in the original).
      When Miguel first met Johnny he mentioned a water pressure problem in the building. Remember when Daniel first met Miagi their kitchen sink’s faucet was broken? Johnny initially refuses to train Miguel just like Miagi initially refused to train Daniel, but they both changed their mind. There are plenty more references throughout the season.

    8. I’ve watched a good bit of it now. Kind of lost a lot of interest as it focuses more and more on the high school kids. And also where it shows minorities and guys with deformities hooking up with hot white chicks and chicks beating ass and all that. Johnny’s story is the only thing I really care about.

    10. *SPOILERS AHEAD*

      Pickernanny, who did you want to win the fight between Sam and that other girl (forgot her name)? And did you notice that the Miagi Doe students won every fight? I think the theme of the next season will be that you can be tough and nice at the same time. Daniel made a reference to it in season 2. And that was Hawk’s downfall. Overdoing it kinda like PUAs over do it.

      I heard that the overweight black girl won’t be in the 3rd season and neither will be Alli.

    11. I’m not a huge fan of either Tory so far as she seems almost one dimensional so far. I can’t recall ever getting any decent backstory on her, so I don’t have much reason to want to root for her over Sam.

      There were like 3 massive cliff hangers in the last episode. Pretty sneaky! I would imagine all those kids would end up in juvenile hall or something, btw lol. Especially the one that assaulted a teacher.

    12. Minor spoilers ahead…….Yeah it was funny how the teachers couldn’t control the situation, and I don’t remember the cops showing up…I like Tory, well until she kicked Miguel. The season kinda seemed like Beverly Hills 90210. Aaron Spelling would always have characters like Tory. From the wrong side of the track, trying to fit in with the rich kids, misunderstood etc.

    1. He is on the right track with trying to stand out from the crowd, but the video kind of made me cringe. It comes off as a different way to beg. If he wants women then he needs to find a way to actually add value to their lives. This doesn’t add any value for a woman, and it kind of looks like a joke and desperate, like those homeless guys that come up with creative signs to beg for money; “Why lie? Need a beer. Thanks!”. Doesn’t matter how many ways you try to sell a turd. At the end of the day, a turd is a turd.

    2. ‘I’m a healthy 68. I’m looking for a woman born in any year from 1950–1995, who takes excellent care of herself.’ – Pahahaha

    3. The problem is reach. Even if those guys were 10s, how many women will find their websites?

    4. I heard that the first guy hands out business cards with this website to girls he meets. The second has YouTube ads which redirect to his website if I recall correctly.

    5. The first guy has it wrong. He is standing in front of a woman already. If he can’t attract her in person, he is bound to fail with his website as well.

    6. The difference between what kind of woman he wants to attract and what kind he will attract seems to be the main issue here. If you flash your professional success like him you get a gold digger. He’s one hymen reconstruction surgery away from getting f***** big time.

  4. You guys ever seen the movie Liar, Liar with Jim Carrey. Basically he is a lawyer who is a habitual liar, and after his son was stood up on his birthday by the dad, his birthday wish was that his dad could never lie again. The rest of the movie Carrey’s character only tells the truth. There’s a part where the son says to his dad, “My teacher says real beauty comes from the inside.” The dad laughs and says, “That’s just what ugly people say.” Then abruptly covers his mouth. Pretty funny and true. I wonder if todays Hollywood would even show something like that. Saying that looks don’t matter (especially when women say it) might be the biggest lie I’ve ever heard in my life. Why do people stop questioning myths after they learn Santa Clause isn’t real.

    Reply

  5. What’s the best value-for-money video game console right now? Xbox One X or something else? I just need a prop at home that I can “show” girls, maybe purchase a dance game with it.

    Reply

    2. PS4, probably. You don’t need a prop to get girls to come to your place. If she wants to come with you, more or less any pretense will do.

  6. Aaron,

    Would you mind taking a look at this?
    https://medium.com/@100trillionUSD/modeling-bitcoins-value-with-scarcity-91fa0fc03e25

    In particular, I’d like to hear your opinion about the below paragraph:

    “Fitting a linear regression to the data confirms what can be seen with the naked eye: a statistically significant relationship between SF and market value (95% R2, significance of F 2.3E-17, p-Value of slope 2.3E-17). The likelihood that the relationship between SF and market value is caused by chance is close to zero. Of course other factors also impact price, regulation, hacks and other news, that is why R2 is not 100% (and not all dots are on the straight black line). However, the dominant driving factor seems to be scarcity / SF.
    What is very interesting is that gold and silver, which are totally different markets, are in line with the bitcoin model values for SF. This gives extra confidence in the model. Note that at the peak of the bull market in Dec 2017 bitcoin SF was 22 and bitcoin market value was $230bn, very close to silver.”

    Thank you very much.

    Reply

    1. I’ll have a look at it later. My gut response is that the initial thesis is plausible, i.e. it makes sense that rare items are more valuable. Bitcoin wouldn’t be worth as much if there was a central authority that could just create billions of extra Bitcoins out of thin air. The latter is of course better if you want to devaluate a currency and make sure that a dollar in 2010 is only worth a small fraction of what a dollar was worth, in terms of purchasing power, in 1910.

    2. Yeah. Thanks.
      I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on the model, which “PlanB” built and if you think his statistical testing holds true.

      Also, there is another guy who ran quite a few statistical tests and comes up with the conclusion, that PlanB’s model cannot be falsified.

      https://medium.com/swlh/falsifying-stock-to-flow-as-a-model-of-bitcoin-value-b2d9e61f68af

      I trust, that , contrary to me, you actually understand what this guy is doing.

    3. I don’t have the time to go through those posts in detail, but I’ve had a cursory look now. The first one makes a fundamentally plausible point based on scarcity. The second one, though, I view a lot more skeptically. The guy just dressed up his presumably preconceived conclusion with a lot of fluff. Nothing of what he has done is in any way “scientific”. He’d need to state his hypothesis in advance and verify it afterwards. Instead, he is fitting models after the fact. This is trivial. In fact, there is a basic result in calculus according to which there is an infinite number of functions that fit any given set of points.

  7. Do you guys go to barber shops when you get your hair cut? It’s funny how these places are the last vestiges for “good old boys clubs.” I remember as a teen, before I got my driver’s license, my mom waited while I got my hair cut at this place in South Orange County that specialized in military cuts (on the border with Camp Pendleton Marine base). As we left my mom said, “I’m never going back to that place again! Bunch of dirty old men!” I think they intentionally drive the women out. We can’t have all men golf courses (even though women can have there own gyms). Sean Connery told Barbara Walters that he only prefers the company of men when he plays golf. Damn that guy’s a pimp…..its kinda like this place 😆

    Reply

    2. I love that movie. Best ending since Its a Wonderful Life IMO. I don’t know if everyone got what I got out of it (minor spoilers ahead). But I think it was actually about obsessing over racism when materialism and selfishness is the real problem with society.

    3. “But I think it was actually about obsessing over racism when materialism and selfishness is the real problem with society.”

      Naw, it was about an old bitter guy who actually knew right from wrong and wasn’t afraid to die for the right thing.
      And of course it was about some cultural enrichers who didn’t know how to behave.

    4. I don’t think what you took from it deviates from what I took from it. Our opinions are not mutually exclusive. But hey, it’s art after all. And maybe Eastwood wanted the viewer to take from it what he may.

      The antagonists in the film were IMO Eastwood’s son and his family. They cared nothing about race but were emerged in money, unempathetic and self absorbed. The thing that separates this film from others that deal with racism is that typically the racist NEVER knows right from wrong unless he changes his racist views. Clint’s character was a racist and died a racist. Yet, as bad as that is, being a self absorbed family member is WORSE than being of another race, even to a racist.

      Well that’s how I interpreted it. Cheers.

    5. Funnily enough, I literally just got my first cut at a barber shop ever recently. It’s a small shop in the woods ran by this 30’s something guy. I went in and sat down on the couch and started chatting with this old guy about stuff, it was pretty cool. The best part is that the guy literally charges $8 dollars and does an amazing job. I threw him a $20 just to make good relations as I plan on going back. I also managed to make a deal with him to do some work on his guitar in the shop while I’m basically waiting for a cut anyway. He offered to pay but I’m planning on just doing it for free and seeing if I can get a cut out of it.

      So, yea. Barber shops are pretty badass.

    6. I agree with that. I go to a barbershop run by a Moslem from the Middle East. This costs me a fraction of what I’d pay at a hairdresser and is faster. They don’t even serve women there, even though it’s against the law. For some reason, it’s not enforced. On that note, there is a barbershop in my city with a sign listing the various prices for kids, adults, and pensioners/students. It also lists “women”, and that row is crossed through. When I first saw this I had to do a double-take because I thought my eyes had deceived me.

    7. YEsss! I live in a trendy neighborhood where craft beer pubs, hamburger joints and barber shops are ubiquitous. The one I go to even serves you a free beer while you wait. And theTV is always turned on a sports channel, soccer, boxing, MMA, or whatever. The only chick there is the busty colombian cashier who serves the beers.

      Gone are all those days I spent as a lone guy looking at 6 month old Cosmo magazines (or similar) while middle aged women chattered inanely with their hairdressers while I was waiting for my turn (the place I lived growing up had few alternatives – there was another place attended by a very flamboyant gay guy, and another one by a not very convincing tranny).

  8. Can anyone recommend a book on different philosophical systems / beliefs. Preferably a compendium that lists and explains the most important ones.

    What would also interest me is western vs eastern-Asian philosophy…

    Reply

    1. Bertrand Russel wrote a book on the various schools of philosophy that is often recommended. Maybe check that one out.

  9. Hey Aaron,

    Long time lurker here. You’re the only one I still follow from the PUA scene. Just wanted to drop a comment saying that I’m pumped for Sleazy Stories IV! Your books are greatly inspiring and exciting to read.

    Reply

    1. Thanks for your feedback! Sleazy Stories IV has hit a road bump due to Amazon, unfortunately. I’ll write an update on this soon.

    2. No problem! That gives us more time to reread the first three. How many more books worth of stories do you think you have?

    3. I estimate that I have enough material for three further books, excluding Sleazy Stories IV.

      Which one of Sleazy Stories I to III is your favorite, by the way, and why?

    4. Wow! We’re not even half way through the full epic saga.

      And as for my favorite, I don’t have a particular favorite book among the three. Each subsequent book so far feels like a continuation of the initial awesome book.

    5. They are continuations. Assuming I am going to release all the books I have drafts for, there will be a break at one point due to my first marriage, and a new batch of women.

  10. I am a part-time paid male model but, I was not a male model most of my younger days and I only became a male model after turning 25 years old. I am also a 27 year old virgin now if you don’t consider escorts as real sex. The reason why I am still a virgin even after loosing my weight and becoming a model is that I lack the tact to attract and lead unpaid women to sex. I am a virgin but not for a lack of trying from both myself and girls to have sex with them.

    After considering that my looks are above average or even top 10% and that I am already well off due to family wealth and my own work as a nerdy finance professional, what do you think are my next steps if I want to sleep with few (about few dozen) women every year for the next few years until I settle down?

    For a bit of additional information, I go to clubs and bars once a week and there, I regularly see girls I would like to fuck. I was thinking of using the famous apocalypse opener (found at http://puarticles.blogspot.com/2008/01/apocalypse-opener.html) to approach girls who are seemingly interested (girls that locks eyes with me). What do you think?

    Reply

    1. Its nonsense

      You can tell from the moment he says looks dont matter and that Quasimodo could pull it off if he had the balls. Sure, balls helps a lot if you know what you are doing, but this approach is a non starter.

      I see you are new around here, or at least I have not seen you before. You should check out the forum, its not as active as is used to be, but there is plenty of good advice there to keep you reading for weeks.

      To make a long story short, in order to be successful with chicks, you need to focus on 3 things

      1) Factors of attraction: height, looks, money and status – you cant do much about your height, but you can take active measures to improve the others. This will make you desirable to a larger pool of women.
      2) learn to observe women and detect signals (verbal and non verbal cues) that indicate she is interested in you. This way you screen out women you have no chance with.
      3) practice approaching women who do show interest in you. Otherwise you are wasting time.

      Keep in mind most of the women will not be interested in you most of the time. Rejection is the standard baseline. Any player with experience will tell you the same. You dont approach random chicks and expect to get lucky with some technique, that is an enormous time waste and psychological drain. You need to focus on the narrow subgroup of chicks that will find you attractive at a given time. You will not always succeed, not even a majority of the time, but your chances go up significantly.

    2. I should qualify – I pressed “post”a little to soon. I think the blog post you linked is pretty dumb, and that might work only on chicks who are very interested in you… but if she is that much interested in you, pretty much any line would work. Girls can cut you quite some slack when they want to fuck you, but in that case they are sleeping with you not because of whatever you said, but in spite of it. I would favor testing the waters a bit more before going in for the deal.

      A chick locking eyes with you is not automatically interested in you. She might just be reacting to your stare. There are more signals you should pay attention too.

    3. Does testing the waters more make it more likely for her to go home with me?

      I am not asking whether it will work for Quasimodo but whether it will work for me?

    4. Testing the waters means that you won’t get harsh rejections and “burn out” the venue. It also makes your escalations smoother. You are giving her a chance to reject you without causing a scene and accept your advances without looking like a slut.

    5. Read Minimal Game. If you want tailored advice, book a consultation session with me, or a few.

      The “apocalypse opener” is b.s. If she wants to fuck you, she’ll fuck you without being that blunt. Worse, she may be so put off that she’ll reject you right away.

    6. I am able to identify women who are interested in me. Sometimes, they overtly smile with me after seeing me. Perks of being good looking I guess. But usually, those aren’t the women who I like. Am I actually ugly? What do you think is the solution?

      More importantly, how do I test the waters. Club game has three headings/chapters on approaches but I don’t understand how to implement any of those. Sorry for being a trouble.

    7. It should be spelled out quite clearly in that book. Did you actually try it in a club or bar?

    1. Great video, thanks for posting this no bullshit advice on the futility of dating and dating coaches. Always important to remember oneself comes first.

    2. I am binge watching this guys channel. It’s nothing new, but I just love his passion, attitude, and common sense. Helps get my mind right when I find myself slipping.

      And you can tell he is speaking from direct experience. I recognize his delivery is not for everyone, but I think it’s FIRE.

  12. What do you guys think about the whole introvert/extrovert thing? To me it is binary, simplistic, and stupid. Similar to the Republican/Democrat false choice. A therapist introduced me to it when I was a teenager. He told me that there are “two types of people in this world…….” Stops himself because he knows how dumb he sounds, plus the look on my face(I have no poker face, people read my expressions….he continues, “Well, I’m sure there’s more than two.” Then he goes on to explain this false dichotomy. People still try to prop this bullshit up. Psychology almost seems like a junk science, that doesn’t even agree with itself. If they want to make it binary. Maybe confident vs insecure, regardless of how much you speak.

    Reply

    1. Introversion-extroversion is only one of big 5 (possibly 6, there might be differences between cultures) personality traits. Jordan Peterson has some lectures on them on his youtube channel.

      Like everything in psychology it should be taken with a grain of salt, but evidence for the existence of personality traits seems pretty solid to me.

    2. Oh yes, I definitely see differences in personality traits. I just am emerced in the mainstream American binary thinking. My sister got her bachelors in psych. And nothing she said about it deviates from this “either, or” mentality. Plus my therapist. It was a long time ago, so maybe psychology has evolved. Or maybe I just had a shitty therapist lol.

      I’m too lazy to look into it, but maybe you can summarize the 5-6 personality types for me, please? Jordan Peterson puts me to sleep.

    3. The “Big Five” are an established but not entirely uncontroversial concept in psychology. There is a decent enough summary on Wikipedia. One of the issues with it, by the way, is that some of the terms psychologists use are not identical to what they mean in regular English. This distinction isn’t always made clear, which can lead to quite some obfuscation. For the record, psychology is a pseudo-science. Don’t take it too seriously, with the exception of IQ tests.

    4. You had a dumb therapist. Everything is a spectrum. Some people are highly extroverted, some are highly introverted but most are inbetween.

    5. @ Dude,

      My sister who majored in psych explained it that way, but once you get labeled something it is often seen in the extreme. The last I’ve heard about it from my sister (I’ve avoided her for over 3 years) she thinks I have social anxiety disorder. And that is absolutely bullshit. One of my coworkers calls me the “social ambassador.” Some of my coworkers actually think I talk to the customers TOO much. I always send them away happy, smiling, laughing, with a really great vibe.

    6. I thought what @Dude said was the common consensus: it’s a spectrum. I find that the usual description on an introvert fits me very well, while my younger siblings fit very well for extroverts (my older sibling falls in between).

    7. @GoodLookingAndSleazy
      I have social anxiety disorder, well acutally generalised anxiety disorder. Sometimes I feel very nervous and physically anxious before going to social gatherings but after a while being there I turn into the life of the party because I learned to deal with my disorder. There is not always a correlation between disorder and behaviour. Especially with anxiety because it’s very random.

    8. Well, can someone explain to me when an introvert is? Everyone I know calls themselves introverts. Yet, my therapist told me that 3/4 of Americans are extroverted. Which coincides with my family (my mom and my sisters being the “extroverts).”

      Honestly, introverted just sounds like a fancy word for shy. Which is definitely not a good thing. Like I said, my family labeled me this, and now they have taken in to the next level even though I’m more social than the average person.

    9. *I should have said socially capable instead of social. Sometimes I just DGAF. I guess I’m an introvert but I still don’t understand the utilities of these labels. Introverted is definitely understood by most peoe as a weak loser.

    11. Nope, do your own research. Google is at the tip of your fingers.

      I am not a psychologyst, I studied Political Science. But I have a more than passing acquaintance with psychology, its a field I like and read a lot about. Especially evo-psych. Therefore my statements on psychology are best evaluated not as expert, but as well informed opinion. That being said, there are plenty of online resources that can educate you on personality differences. I merely point out that their scientific basis seems to be more solid than 90% of the rest of psychology, a field which is very prone to confirmation bias and speculation.

    12. It’s not the access to information that’s the problem. I’m great at researching on the net. Just that reading about psychology gives me a headache. I remember when I took psych 101 in college I was baffled in chapter one in our text at how many schools of thought there were. There is probably TOO many resources online to figure out personality differences, because of the competing interpretations.

      I did research a bit, but didn’t find myself fitting in to the 5-6 categories. Like any social science psychology is very corruptable by political influence. The APA has changed its mind many times about what is and what isn’t a psychological disorder. Introversion has been taken on and off the table for a psychological disorder.

      That’s why I’m asking you guys. I respect your opinions more than mainstream psychology. Just like I would for politics, history, movies, and of course mainstream dating advice.

    13. Ok, I looked into it more. My problem with psychology is not that it labels people, but it just bores the hell out of me. I guess that there is a lot of concesus on the 5 personality types. Not sure which one I am and I’m not sure I care. I just know I’m not a quiet, shy loser, which most layman see introverts as. All I know is that I am an individual. I have the ability to learn, change, grow, improve. Not sure if being a “type” improves that drive. But I do respect the 5 types more than the binary introvert/extrovert thing.

    14. Agreed that psychology is (mostly) a pseudoscience – particularly personality theory. Furthermore, most therapists don’t even do what they’re taught to do in school, but rather, talk to you as if you’re their child or sibling, and give you God-awful advice based on their own personal belief system.

      Regarding personality, I think there is some truth to the extroversion-introversion concept, but one of my issues with categorizing people with a personality “type,” or even labeling them as as introvert or extrovert is that it takes away individual agency.

      A buddy of mine is a single guy and has a pretty similar background as me – nerdy computer whiz growing up, blue collar upbringing. I told him a story that involved me dancing shirtless at a night club, and he asked what my personality type is on the MBTI, because he would never do something like that. (The MBTI, by the way, is such bullshit that it isn’t even taken seriously by psychologists.) It turns out we both have the same personality type according to the MBTI, including the fact that we’re both introverts. But I made a serious effort to socialize with more people, particularly women, and he did not.

      There are plenty of people who would say my Zodiac sign destines me to a certain fate. I don’t want to get into the question of free will vs. determinism, but I would argue that for all practical purposes, human beings can make choices that dictate their fate in many ways. So rather than blaming shortcomings on one’s personality type, they’d be better suited figuring out what kind of person they want to be, and becoming that person.

    15. @Don Giovanni

      Good points!

      On the intra/extra-version thing I can say that I’ve always thought of myself as being an introvert. But in the past several months I’ve been going out several days per week to socialize and I’ve been enjoying it. The reason is that I’ve been able to deal with some anxiety issues. Am I now an extrovert? Has my natural extraversion been masked by anxiety?

      Is a hot young girl who gets lots of attention and positive reinforcement when she socializes an extrovert? And does she become an introvert when she hits the wall?

      Still I find the intra/extra-vert continuum is a helpful mental construct.

      ===

      The most important thing on free will in my experience: when I treat life as though I have free will, I am happier and I derive more meaning from life. When I fall into the deterministic/defeatist frame of mind I am more depressed (not sure what causes what, but they probably cause each other). As a counterbalance it is important to remember that all humans have limitations, so don’t beat yourself up over yours.

      ===

      Therapists can be a blessing or a curse. There are some chicks I’ve known socially who when I found they were therapists… I was just speechless. These chicks had obvious issues.

      A female friend of mine was working with a therapist on some marital issue. The therapist told her “girl… I got bigger problems than you.” The therapist was divorced and her personal life was a mess.

      But I’ve worked with two therapists who’ve been a big help and really accelerated my psychological healing.

    3. The text above is called SEXUAL UTOPIA IN POWER by F. ROGER DEVLIN. It’s about the transition of the West from traditionalism to feminism and all the changes in gender dynamics that it entailed.

      One part I highlighted:

      “Traditionalists sometimes speak as if monogamy were a cartel whose purpose was to restrict the amount of sex available to men artificially so as to drive up the price for the benefit of women. (That is roughly what the male sexual utopians believed also.) But this would require that men be able to raise their bid, i.e., make themselves more attractive at will. Monogamy does not get women as a group more desirable mates than would otherwise be available to them. In sex as in other matters the buyers, not the sellers, ultimately determine the price. And the buyers, by and large, are merely average men.”

      I still think there is a cartel effect in that the top 20% men are forced to invest more than they could on the “free market.” But for the bottom 80% their investment in marriage remains roughly what it is today, but it’s a less risky investment and they get more ROI. Personally, I wouldn’t want to marry even in a traditionalist society :))

      I was also reminded of AlekNovy’s concept of the Pussy Cartel. Aaron describes Alek’s pussy cartel succinctly:

      “It is quite obvious that feminists campaign against pornography and prostitution on a societal level. On the group-level, women commonly attempt to slut-shame other women, or bully their better looking peers. Arguably, the motivation behind these actions is to keep the price of pussy high. Alek Novy so fittingly calls this the “pussy cartel”, which colludes in order to artificially constrain the supply of pussy to the market.”

  14. You guys should give this movie a try. It’s about the western front from the American perspective in WWII. It is the most raw portrayal of that glamorized war I have ever seen. It’s called When Trumpets Fade. The troops seem miserable, frightened, untrusting of their superiors and desperate and their only motivation is to survive. They seem to be sent into a slaughter house. It shows WWII as any other bullshit war with no politics injected into it. It’s the best WWII movie I’ve ever seen.

    https://youtu.be/mFd3NhcPzJA

    Reply

    2. Cool, thanks Aaron. So far I bat 1 for 2 in movie suggestions with you, not bad I guess 🙂

      I’ve only seen war movies depicted this way about Vietnam until I saw When Trumpets Fade. I hope you like it. Hollywood hates The Vietnam War but absolutely LOVES WWII. My coworker at the time actually thought it was about Vietnam at the time because of the depiction. WWII is almost always glamorize by Hollywood. My cousin was shocked at the portrayal too. LOL he actually was shocked that the American GI’s cussed as much as they did back then . Then he said, “well, of course they did.”

      I’ve heard Tora, Tora, Tora is pretty accurate, but I’ve never seen it. The Pearl Harbor movie was stupid, and probably Midway that’s out right now but I haven’t seen it.

  15. I watch videos by YouTube atheists a lot. Because even after being a conservative, I am still an atheist. There seems to be a new phenomena among atheist that they are all going vegan all of a sudden. Supposedly, the science is settled on veganism as well. What’s happening?

    Reply

    1. Science is never “settled”. If you’re implying that the science behind veganism is settled just like the science behind man-made climate change is, you may need to do a bit more research. Veganism is great for ruining your body.

  17. No comment yet on the latest fiasco by the DEE (Dog-Eating Empire)? At the moment the coronavirus crisis looks pretty serious and not a conspiracy by envious Westerners, at all.

    Reply

    1. I should add, they could alternatively be labelled as BEE (Bat-Eating Empire) judging by the supposed origin story of the outbreak.

    2. Compared to previous outbreaks like SARS or Swine Flu, this seems to be easier to contain.

      Objectively, at this point I see media inflating the threat like usual, to sell more papers/get more clicks.

      This could still change of course, but for now it seems pretty manageble. No reason to worry, esp if (like in our case) we are as far away as the American continent

    3. The worry here would be the DEE’s transparency on the matter or lack thereof. The Donald vouches for it, but he likes to throw bones like that to USA’s rivals after he gets the deals he wanted. See Kim Jong-un, LOL.

    1. I would do three sets of very heavy weights for each exercise. Worked so much better than doing a bunch of high rep sets. Put on a lot of muscle very quickly. It feels like doing a lot of reps with lighter weights is a waste of time.

    2. @ Assam

      Check out the last natural on YouTube. I’ve been working out for 5-6 years. On and off but consistent. After starting this guys program I grew more muscle and strength then before. It’s basically back to basic compound workouts 3 times a week.

    3. The Last Natural workout is basically the Starting Strength program. That’s more or less what I’ve been doing except I prefer slightly higher reps (6-12 or so) because I believe it promotes better hypertrophy (vs pure strength adaptations), which is better for aesthetics imo. I could care less whether I could lift a car or not, so long as I look good with my shirt off.

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