Open Thread

Open Thread #312

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45 thoughts on “Open Thread #312

  1. You guys ever heard the quote, “speak softly, but carry a big stick?” It was used by former US president Theodore Roosevelt. Basically, be a nice guy, but be prepared to whoop ass as needed. Teddy Roosevelt was probably the most masculine president in US history. He’s on Rushmore ????

    1. Yeah, I’m familiar with it. 🙂 Important to note that he was talking about international relations between countries and not interpersonal relations. Still not a bad policy for interpersonal relationships, though. 🙂

      Been planning to read The Rough Riders for a while. I’ve read a lot about him, but never anything actually by him.

    2. The Rough Riders are possibly the most bad as bad ass brigade in history. He used cowboys, football players and Indian warriors! I’ve also read that at San Juan Hill, he told the captain to break the stalemate and charge up the hill. The captain said he needed clearance from the Colonel. Teddy said, “I am the Colonel now! Follow me!!!!” He charged up the hill on horseback. The men did follow indeed. The Spaniards abandoned the hill. Teddy stood on top of the hill celebrating to cheering men 🙂

    3. Also I wonder if the “big stick” in a double entendre LOL. But some guys aren’t as blessed as others haha.

    4. Cool, I’ll look forward to reading the book!

      Using big stick as a euphemism sounds more like something Lyndon Johnson would have done, heh. 🙂

  2. Ok, so this is fucking horrendous.

    I went by the university where I graduated to visit a professor there. And I was fucking horrified by what I saw.

    Out of the 200 girls I walked past, a full 1/2 were OBESE. These are college students for fucks sake. And the other half were overweight or borderline overweight (like a few pounds away from classifying as overweight).

    I only saw one skinny girl (and no fit girls). And of course, the skinny girls was half-naked to show off her rare skinny body. Fucking atrocious. And there I was thinking that what I see in the streets is horrendeous.

    When I studied there last 15 years ago, at least 95% of the girls were skinny. They only got fatter after graduating. Now they’re obese as students. That’s a fucking huge colossal change.

    1. There’s this saying among college chicks called the “freshman 15”, basically saying that chicks will gain 15 lbs during their first year of university. It’s basically the fucking culture and is expected, basically giving a pass to girls to be fat all they want. The girl I dated seriously worked hard to stay fit throughout school. It was when she started working full-time that she started getting skinny fat.

    2. Yeah, the term has existed for decades, but in the past they went from a skinny teen to a not-skinny teen. Also I believe a lot of the girls I saw were in the process of enrollment (it was enrollment day today), so fresh out of high-school. I’m guessing those are the half that were “merely fat, and not yet obese”.

    3. This is not surprising. Btw, to answer your question from the other day, I recently just went to sort of a rare event last night and caught like 4 chicks staring dead at me within the span of a few minutes while everyone was clearing out. The place was packed. It’s also worth noting that eye contact is more common in less urban areas, I think.

      Also, as a side note, I recently started flirting with this slut from work. She’s like 23 years old and was texting me telling me that I’d be the first white guy she would ever slept with (she’s white). After a bit of probing she told me that she had been with 8 guys before, presumably all black dudes. Like, that’s fine and all but after learning that I noped right the fuck out of that proposition. It’s rough out there altogether, so it makes you wonder if any effort put into self-improvement beyond improving your quality of living is worth it.

    4. >it makes you wonder if any effort put into self-improvement beyond improving your quality of living is worth it.

      If chicks were the only reason,I definitely wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing now.

      On another note,I don’t want to sound as if I’m making excuses for lazy people,but I can understand why some people who are born with a very,very low starting point do not bother with self-improvement.

      Like if we take a fat guy who is a 1/10,and getting in-shape may only bump them up to 3/10,I can empathize on why they feel the effort and investment just wouldn’t be worth it. Nobody wants to work extremely hard for little (perceived) benefit.

    5. You must have had some bad luck, Alek, or maybe that particular university just has a lot of fatties? I looked at the obesity statistics for your country, and the rate is not even half of that (I won’t say the exact rate as I don’t want to doxx where you’re from).

    6. It’s possible that the obesity numbers are skewed for some reason, like perhaps younger generations are simply much fatter than previous ones, for example. The bar for what’s consider obese may have even got up, or perhaps will go up in the future.

    7. You’ve probably missed previous conversations.

      – The discussion was that recent generations have suddenly gone fatter. It wasn’t gradual.

      – We’ve noticed it everywhere, not in one place or location.

      – Stats for most places aren’t of current year, but 5-10 years old. This increased suddenly during and after covid.

      – Averages are brought down by the muslim population (they’re all skinny because they fast 1 month of the year and strict muslim diet). They skew the stats downwards. They live in separate parts of the city and don’t generally mingle or move in the same places, but are counted in stats.

    8. Muslims seem to adopt over time. I do not perceive them to be particularly slim in Western Europe. Even among the young you can spot a fair number of fatties. Plenty of Muslim kids even seem to be obese.

    9. I do imagine that’s the case in western countries. In particular certain ethnic groups are more hardcore about the diet part. So it’s not just about being Muslim. Its more that this ethnic group (which happens to be Muslim) is pretty hardcore about diet. Especially the girls. They’re not affected by the feminist mantra of “fuck looking good for men, get as far as you want”. They put in a ton of effort to look good. They don’t even go to the store without a ton of dolling up. Oddly girls fall into two camps. They either wear burqas or look like they’re headed for the porn awards ceremony. No hippie chicks, no chicks in sandals and messy hair, no “don’t give a duck what I look like” chicks. It’s either burqas or full on awards ceremony style.

    10. Alek:

      I know the population group you’re talking about. We have a few of them here too, but the vast majority of our Muslims are Arabs. I only met one from the group you are talking about, I think. She was pretty normal when I first met her, then got chubby over time, but that’s not too rare these days. I can’t really make any judgments

      The Arabic Muslims I’ve noticed are pretty much as Aaron says: they get fat over time just like the westerners. If you come to the west there’s no escaping its influence. I’ll never forget the time I was at the grocery store and saw a Muslim couple. She had an almost complete ninja outfit – basically full burqa except no face covering, but it was tight around the face so you couldn’t see a single strand of hair.

      Next to her was her husband, dressed in typical Muslim garb. And she’s scolding him and giving him an audible and visible dressing down in the aisle right next to the main “thoroughfare” of the grocery store. Everybody could hear and see what was going on.

      I felt bad for the guy. Even most “you go girl!” western girls wouldn’t treat their man that way so openly in public. At home, that’s another story, but not in public.

    11. So Muslim girls from Arab countries or Pakistan are not fit at all. Quite the contrary actually, especially after they get married. These women also mostly don’t dress like for porn award ceremonies.

      Muslim girls from the balkans are mostly fit though and mostly do dress like for porn award ceremonies. However, same can be said about Christian women from the balkans.

      Turkish women can be either be like other Arab countries (not fit, headscarf) or balkans (fit, porn stars).

      IMO religion is super overrated. What matters more is ethnicity. A Bosnian Muslim is closer to a Bosnian Christian in their behavior than to an Arab Muslim.

    12. @Alek

      I dont think I have seen it mentioned before, would you mind telling what country you mean?

      I spent quite some time around the middle east, and I concur that girls tend to be more skinny as long as they are young and single, but I would say in general terms they look healthier than in the west.

      I speculate that the reason muslims immigrants in western countries may get fatter is they are usually poor, so they eat worse diets in their host countries because processed foods are cheaper. It is my understanding that the same happens with poorer people in the US, but worse.

      Also, I recently spent time in the Balkans, I can certify that I barely met any overweight girls at all. I can recall only one really fat girl, a waitress at a restaurant i had lunch in, but otherwise it was one skinny girl after another. The men also look healthier generally, even in spite of a large number of beer bellies, they seemed otherwise pretty healty.

    1. R. Lee Ermey is a very interesting guy. He served in Vietnam. He was an actual drill sergeant in the Marines. His monologue was not scripted. He was honorably discharged here in San Diego because of injuries suffered during his tour in Vietnam. He went up to “Hollyweird” after that to pursue comedy and acting. They added him as a consultant for the movie Apocalypse Now. He has a cameo as the helicopter pilot in an iconic scene. He was also on a show on the History Channel called Mail Call. He has very good views on immigration. Including not “build the wall” bullshit. But GO AFTER THE EMPLOYERS!!!!

      The guy is my hero.

  3. American Krogan, one of my favorite creators, has thrown in the towel due to him having been demonetized:
    https://odysee.com/@americankrogan:3/Update:9a
    He had released several hours-long videos with very thorough analysis. I would not be surprised if some of them took 80 hours or more to make. It is unfortunate that this is the society we live in. On the other hand, in a less oppressive society, someone like him may never have had the incentive to produce any content at all. On a more positive note, I think he has inspired several other creators. There is now a small cadre of based gamers on YouTube who follow the Sandman model, i.e. releasing short and shallow videos very frequently, which have a wider appeal. This is not the content I care much about, but it surely seems to help to build awareness of how pozzed gaming has become.

    1. Oh damn!! I haven’t checked on Krogan in a while, but is truly a shame to lose him. We’re worse off without him for sure.

    2. He had not released any video content for many months. It is a great loss for sure. His analysis on Bioshock is the best work on the subversion of the industry I have come across. I wonder if American Krogan was one of the inspirations of Synthetic Man as he has a somewhat similar content creation model, i.e. fewer videos, but longer ones, and with based commentary. Compared to American Krogan, Synthetic Man is quite low-brow, and he is also more interested in entertaining the viewer instead of informing him.

    1. The Ruby Ridge massacre is one of the biggest red pills out there, revealing the tyranny of government. As it turns out, they really do not like it if you go your own way.

    2. At least in Ruby Ridge there was some justice afterwards. The federal government had to pay out almost $3.5M in damages, and the Weavers and Harris were acquitted of all siege-related charges.

      I read on the Wikipedia article that Randy Harris was charged with but acquitted of shooting and killing a Deputy U.S. Marshal (he did it, but it wasn’t criminal), and received $380K in damages. The feds said they’d never pay anyone who had killed a DUSM, but lost in court. 🙂

      I’m not surprised they went after Weaver, though – he failed to appear in federal criminal court, so a bench warrant was issued. That’s standard procedure when people fail to appear in those cases. The problem was that the feds just went nuts when they got to Ruby Ridge.

    3. Was the warrent for the sawed off shotguns that the undercover Fed suggested for him? Why couldn’t they send out a couple police to arrest him? If there were a trial the G men would have to come clean and be exposed under oath.

  4. Today finished the story mode of Natsuki Chronicles on “easy”, which was pretty challenging towards the end. On “normal” I am about halfway through. This is a really solid shmup; Mark_MSX also likes it, as I just learned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-NTKLF_RrA. I would rate it as an 8/10. For fans of the genre it is an easy recommendation. However, this game will probably not convert anyone who has not yet taken a liking to these games. This is in stark contrast to, for instance, Crimzon Clover, which blew my socks off.

    Qute, the studio behind this game probably did not make the best decisions. One was to sign up with Microsoft. Hopefully, this was worth it for them, but it seriously limited their exposure. On Steam, their games have sold very few copies. The other big mistake they made was not getting rid of their horrible character artist. With a bunch of cute chicks on the cover, they would probably have sold ten times as many copies.

  5. Question for PickerNanny.

    Did you get to exploring dynamic vs static wrinkles? I ran into this gotcha when I established that my smiling photos say I only look 2-3 years younger. My neutral expression photos say 7-9 years younger.

    Originally I thought it takes takes longer for the expression-wrinkles to reduce from this stuff. But apparently, it goes further than that. Retinoids (including tretinoin) primarily treat static wrinkles.

    In other words you look much younger only if you make no facial expressions, lol.

    1. Oh, no I haven’t. I’m not surprised by that, but the retinoids are still pretty nice all things considered. I’m guessing that the only real way to disappear dynamic wrinkles is botox or something. Assuming that’s the case then I’m personally not willing to go that far with the skin “de-aging” thing. Unless you know of something else that’s less invasive.

    2. Apparently peptides work on either dynamic or static. Oral collagen or hylaronic work on both dynamic and static. Can’t remember which one worked more on dynamic. And then there’s ultrasound. That’s zero-invasive, it’s like a massage. You get massaged with this device which emits ultra-sounds that penetrate the skin. You get 10 months of tretinoin results in 2 weeks in a single treatment. And it also works on dynamic wrinkles.

    3. I don’t think there is a home device. Besides there’s no need. You do it once, and it lasts for 5 years.

      But I’m just to keep going with the peptides, orals and retinoids.

      They don’t have zero effect on dynamic, just less than static, so I’ll keep going.

      I basically got insane results in just 2 months, results that they say you need 6-12 months for.

      I was going to do this stuff for 6-9 months anyway so I’ll continue with this stuff and see where I end up with the dynamic.

      I only wanted to look 5 years younger anyway. I don’t need to look 9 years younger when smiling (I already do at rest). So I’ll be happy if in 6 months the dynamic gets me to 5 years younger.

    4. You get 10 months of tretinoin results in 2 weeks in a single treatment

      I should probably clarify this part, as it sounds confusing as fuck.

      Basically, you only go ONCE. The ultrasound massage creates deep stimulation which makes your face go into collagen-production overdrive. And it keeps producing more and more collagen over the span of the next 2 weeks or so. You’re not actually doing anything over those weeks, you just wake up looking younger every day over the next 2 weeks after the treatment. And it lasts 5 years.

    5. I just click on the link. I’m familiar with this youtuber. Consider his bias. He’s a plastic surgeon who drives ferraris by selling people on facelifts. Noninvasive facelift options are literally stealing ferarris from him.

      *-I’m kidding about the ferraris. But he’s filthy rich. He also sells overpriced supplements and creams that are way more expensive than other brands. So by some coincident he only has bad things to say of the things he can’t monetize.

      He monetizes non-surgical options like supplements and creams by charging an arm-and-a-leg for them. He also charges for plastic surgery. Ironically he always has bad things to say about the options in the middle (like in this case ultrasound), where he has no way to monetize since he is a surgeon, not a dermatologist, and he can’t outsource to a whitelabel manufacturer like he can the overpriced creams and supplements.

    6. Tl;dr

      – The ultherapy site sells itself as the only FDA approved, non-invasive non-surgery way to replace facelifts

      – A surgeon who makes his wealth selling surgical facelifts warns you against using it

      No possible bias there at all (LMAO).

    7. That is a good point. I haven’t considered the financial angle / bias.

      However, keep in mind that there are actual fat removal treatments which use ultrasound to break down fat cells, which means it is possible in theory that HIFU or Ultherapy do the same as a side-effect.

    8. The hair loss industry is the same way. Generally, hair loss is caused by androgenic alopecia, in which case medications that suppress DHT levels are needed to halt the progression. Coupled with topical minoxidil, with which the exact mechanism of action isn’t entirely known, hair follicles are able to regenerate and grow thicker than before.

      The issue with the hair loss industry is that there are youtubers attempting to sell people so-called all natural alternatives in the form of supplements, bogus devices and other alternative treatments, as well as just plain bad advice such as the blood flow theory and scalp massages. The danger here is that if guys who are aggressively balding fuck around too long with ineffective treatments, they can lose so much ground that they’ll need a hair transplant in addition to having to start DHT suppressors and minoxidil anyways (what they should have done to start with) to keep their newly transplanted hair. The reason being because at a certain point in the hair shedding phase hair follicles will develop scar tissue, then no amount of minoxidil will be able to regenerate the essentially dead follicle.

      In regards to the US face therapy, a quick search shows me that the average full face treatment is around 3-5k USD. I don’t have any reason to doubt the efficacy of the procedure thus far, but something tells me that the price point should ethically be a fair bit lower.

    9. I don’t have any reason to doubt the efficacy of the procedure thus far, but something tells me that the price point should ethically be a fair bit lower.

      Yes, it’s only that price because they can charge that much in the USA. Over here ultrasound actually costs LESS than topicals.

      In my country you would be a retard to buy retinoids and all this other stuff if you’ve heard about ultrasound. In fact I laugh everytime I read that the only advantage of topicals is if you can’t afford things like HIFU pro.

      The most expensive provider in my country that services celebs does it for 300 euros (they are all fancy and its like a luxurious spa/hotel). The best medical dermatologist does it for 200 euros. And a lesser known office does it for 100 euros. That’s just a month’s supply of OTC weak retinol shit.

      So ironically, since cosmetics here cost the same as in the US, but labor costs much less, the professional stuff costs less. I mean so it costs 200 euros and lasts 5 years? Applying 5 years of that OTC shit is easily thousands of euros.

  6. I hate to bring up Cheeky Jamie again, but one thing that she obsessed about was men being assholes. I actually think that the toughest guys tend to have very big hearts. And the best artistic renditions of this were displayed by female writers. SE Hinton and Margaret Mitchell. Writers of The Outsiders and Gone With the Wind respectively. If you guys haven’t seen the Outsiders check it out.

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