The Open Thread is a place for open discussion among my readers. Post anything you feel like sharing! From now on, the Open Thread will no longer be monthly. Instead, there will be a new Open Thread whenever it is adequate. The stage is yours. Go ahead!
The latest Open Thread is made ‘sticky’ to improve access.
Please consider throwing a few coins into the tip jar, and buy my books! They are great. Your support is greatly appreciated.
I just came across these guys. They’re pretty good. Plus seeing a punk like Bill Maher get crushed is epic:
https://youtu.be/q-IWAQsGiB8?si=vshQC2Fjso0STggN
Bill Maher is a massive cuck!
You know he is on (((their))) payroll!
He’s also half Jew.
“He’s also half Jew.”
What do you call a kike who “got a ‘lil more taken off than he shoulda” at his brisk, when he turns into a teen and starts skateboarding?
A half kike.
get it, half kike like half pike , hehe
hahaha, remember that cunt Lauren Southern?
Has not aged well and is skinny fat, or maybe just fat fat, hahaha…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrr53ZpTVfA
I think “abuse” is telling these goddamned feminists and quasi feminists like Southern too putt down the goddamned fork!
Look at Anna tell King Cuck to “hold on!” I guest this is the new virtue signaling where he openly gets cucked, what’s next, Anna bitch slaps him? I suppose that the next thing we here is Andy Huberman got nailed with a strap on from his empowered feminist wommynz!!!!
Look at King Cuck try to “mansplain” at the end too prove he has a pair, hahahahahaha….
Elon Mollusk is a total turd, but these middle aged women making jokes about impotent men….
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y40RU5Nx6U
well, I’d be “impotent” with nasty women like this!
Lady Boys All the Way!
I just had a big realization that might be interesting to the regulars on here who are developers. I think that developers are underpaid (or others are overpaid, however you want to take it).
The reason I say that is since I’m very happy with my coding abilities, I’ve decided to move onto other things I’ll need to know for my businesses (design, videography, UX/UI).
I was fucking flabbergasted how much less there is to learn in order to have a usable skill. For example, if you work really hard on it for a couple of months, you could have a sellable (usable in business) skill in things like photography, graphic design, UX-UI (etc etc…)
In development it’s a ton more work before you can produce anything useful to a business. Like you gotta learn this piece here, then you gotta learn that other thing, then another… and it takes a while before you go from zero to like being able to build an actual app. I’m talking about an app that has real business-value. Toy-micro apps for learning purposes don’t count for what I’m talking about here.
However, if you spent a couple of months of learning you could understand graphic design well enough to produce stuff usable in real world business (or ux/ui, or any of these other softer skills).
I don’t know why I’m so surprised, but I didn’t expect it to be such a big difference. It begs the question why so many people want to be developers (and hence lowering the pay for developers)… They could instead go and learn design or any of these other skills, and start making money much sooner, with much less work.
Only thing I can think of is that maybe it’s just a lag where historically developers were paid a ton (much more than designers), which caused too many people to want to be developers, which lowered the pay, but people just kept flooding development despite it no longer being true. So now you have a skill which requires 10x more study to become usable, yet it is not paid 10x more.
I’m sure someone has better theories.
Your observations are correct. The bar for entry for software engineers is a lot higher and the pay is higher, at least for the time being. Now that ZIRP is over, I think that salaries for engineers will stagnate if not decline. In fact, I know of a few companies that have already adjusted their pay scales downwards in response to the supply glut. However, the market for engineering-adjacent roles has been flooded for a long time. It is incredibly difficult to break it into the industry if you work in design or UX. Even roles like Product Management, which is often filled with DIE hires, are very difficult to get. A lot of people in such roles have been leaving the industry in recent months. Even laid off engineers are having a hard time with securing a new role.
To be fair I’m approaching this from the perspective of making money, not so much job hunting.
My bias is more towards getting gigs (working for yourself, as a freelancer, or opening your own agency and selling services to business).
It doesn’t seem easier to get coding gigs than photography or graphic design or writing or marketing gigs, yet the latter are 10-30x easier to learn up to a level where you can start to sell services.
This is where my confusion lies. Why would people even bother with development (which is 10-30x more work to gain a sellable skill, but can’t charge 10-30x).
This does not really change anything. I would be very surprised if anyone can get design work more easily than software engineering projects. In fact, with design/UX a very significant problem is that credibility is often only based on what kind of company you have worked at. In software engineering, though, you could work at a relatively unknown company, work on hard problems, and be fine. Your CV will get looked at.
Well, I chose to get comp sci degree without thinking about how much it pays, just because I loved maths and coding. And since people who’s idea of fun time is proving theorems tend to have very high IQs, it was no wonder that I was making good money by the end of the second year.
Also don’t forget that working as a salaried engineer is much easier than a freelancer/contractor. As a contractor, your whole value comes from building things. As a salaried worker, much of your impact comes from knowing legacy systems, which is a passive knowledge requiring very little time to maintain once gained.
Also, even if you can make money faster as a UX/photographer, it still may make sense to be a developer if the ceiling is higher there, and if you planning to work long enough
And finally, you have to be either pretty experienced or very smart to realize that doing things which pays the most is a great strategy. Most young people follow passion instead, or things they are “naturally” good at, without reflecting which part of their talent is, indeed, natural (IQ) and which is just a prior experience .
I do agree than people trying to be software engineers at all costs is insane, though. Especially people who are not made for it. You need IQ high enough to deal with abstract bullshit all day and antisocial treats high enough to not feel lonely without human interaction. Otherwise you are gonna have bad time.
My anecdotal evidence is that a lot of women and POCs are currently getting washed out of the tech industry. They were hired when money was free but tied to ESG/DIE mandates. Now that this gravy train is over, companies need to hire people who can actually do the work. The way laid off female software engineers use LinkedIn is quite something. Often, they post a picture of their face or a full-body shot and write that they are looking for work. Some do not even mention skills or experience at all. Well, they did not need to in the past, so this is perhaps not that surprising. Being a woman was enough to get hired.
Yeah, those are the ones I’m wondering about. I also think it might be because they’re looking at the ceiling of what coding get you to (which is many times higher). But they’re not getting anywhere near this ceiling.
I think coding was marketed to people who shouldn’t be in it by misleading everyone that they’ll get to this ceiling. Which is why the market is flooded.
Realistically if you don’t enjoy coding or solving problems, you’re better off (and should be) in one of these other fields.
@Aaron, I’m not saying it’s easier to find work in companies (i’m mostly focusing on gigs), but even then, i’m not focusing on how easy it is to find work (in absolute terms). I am talking in relative terms.
Like the amount of work to reach “minimum viable skill” as a developer is 30x higher, yet, it’s not 30x easier to find work? Make sense?
If I was interested in just making money as soon as possible (and am not ambitious person, nor love coding), I’d pick one of these easier sexier skills, and invest more time in networking and marketing/selling myself.
Let’s assume the same number of hours invested (let’s say you have a budget of x hours). If you go the development route, you spend your entire budget just to get to “minimum viable skill”, and have no hours left over to build a portfolio, network, learn marketing and selling skills etc.
If you go toward one of these easier skills, you only spend a fraction of your budget on getting minimum viable skill, and with the rest of your hours you can build an impressive portfolio, network, and learn how to sell and market your services. You’ll even make more than the developer if you go the “working for yourself and selling to end clients directly” route.
Of course, the ceiling (what’s possible on the high-end) is much lower than if you go the development route, but I’m talking here about unambitous minimum-viable-skill people here. Namely, the people who get into development and don’t enjoy it, but are under the mistaken assumption it’s a quick way to start making decent money.
tl;dr = people who aren’t ambitious to go beyond minimum viable skill and don’t enjoy development, should not go into development. They’ve been misled.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1cvk1an/is_way_too_fucking_easy_to_get_accused_of_sexual/l4px9qy/
________
I’m decent looking and a poc, I’ve said so many inappropriate things to women at work and they laugh it off..
My older white and bald colleague got reprimanded for saying that women are better at emotions..he’s also a very tree hugging leftist which makes it funnier because he’s the least sexist guy I know.
_______
So you can’t even give a non-sexual genuine compliment anymore in this day and age in the US if you are deemed unattractive.
Technology is getting better but people are getting worse. What gives?
https://youtube.com/shorts/Q7oAGLxhbrk?si=k6RmB3bMBghoR9DX
He should name this song “Delusion”.
She’s gonna be looking for a long time. But, to be fair, she could meet an ugly nerd who makes good money and is 6′ 5 with blue eyes.
Even that is rare.
Surprisingly catchy! Strong late 90s feel. 🙂
When I replayed the video, I couldn’t hear the girl speak without also hearing the music. 😀
This reminds me so much of a girl I know that got on Match.com and wanted a man with at least a master’s degree, and making good money. They sent her engineers, doctors etc. But she didn’t like how they looked so she contacted match demanding her money back. They explained that they had a no refund policy. She kicked and screamed until she got her refund. She eventually got her 20$ back. True story.
There are several German fairy tales about women who are never content with what they have, until they end up with nothing. This is arguably the most famous one:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fisherman_and_His_Wife
Too bad we stopped reading these to little girls.
@Gerd
Great video! It led to an article:
https://blog.aaronsleazy.com/index.php/2024/05/23/female-delusions-about-rich-men/
I was surprised to see that there isn’t a section in that wikipedia article about how that tale is misogynistic and the tale should be banned or something.
Jordan “Benzos” Peterson gets owned by some nerdy goys!
https://nitter.poast.org/yoalexrapz/status/1791875041287614824#m
“Over half of men 18-29 have willingly opted out of the dating pool ENTIRELY. No marriage, dating, hooking up. They’re just OUT.
It’s fascinating to me the amount of blame placed on single women who literally say they WANT to be married and yet no accountability to men.”
tl;dr: Women drive men out of mating market; men to blame, women hardest hit.
She then links to an article (author: Olivia Reingold) whose subhead is “Young men today feel they must be six feet tall, make six figures, and have six inches downstairs to get a girlfriend—so many have given up trying.”
Silly men, where do they come up with these things? It couldn’t possibly have come from observing women’s behavior.
The one reason for the extreme difference in realities is that there are some subtleties nobody is mentioning.
For example women say “it’s not true we only want 6’5 and or rich and or famous guys”
The guys say: “Yes you do, you fucking liers”.
And both are telling the truth.
How can that be? Simple.
Women won’t admit it, but they only show clear and unambiguous interest to top tier men. When they’re interested in giving a chance to a guy more their level, they make it 10x harder and more ambitious. To keep the story short, you have to be a professional player with that amount of experience to effortlessly lay chicks (or be top tier).
At the same time guys are bombarded with messaging from feminist-run societal institutions that you MUST NOT express interest in a girl if she’s not throwing herself at you. Subtle signals don’t exist, and even mentioning the idea makes you a rapist. According to feminists a woman is only interrsted in you if she throws herself at you. But they only do that with high-tier men (or experienced players on a positive feedback loop).
I just went through that thread and sub threads. Fascinating stuff.
“Women won’t admit it, but they only show clear and unambiguous interest to top tier men. When they’re interested in giving a chance to a guy more their level, they make it 10x harder and more ambitious.”
Yep. When they’re going for resource extraction instead of tingles, they want to see persistence, so they know the guy will stick around and keep supplying those beta bux.
Of course, they also reserve the right to destroy said guy’s life over said persistence if they decide it’s unwelcome. This is on top of how hard it is for the average guy to approach women to begin with.
So the guy is supposed to break his ass (for which he’s also derided as a “simp”) AND risk a career-ending accusation for some gal who meanwhile openly gives it to Chad and Tyrone for free. What’s shocking is that the dropout rate is a mere 50%.
No problem, we just need to blame and shame men harder and they’ll come around.
OK, more Richard Nixon. What was so significant was how badly he destroyed literally the first of many liberal Democrats in 1972, George McGovern. This election is not given enough historical significance. Even McGovern said, “I opened the doors of the Democratic Party and 20 million people walked out.” Another interesting tidbit is that the liberals fought for the voting age to be lowered from 21 to 18………they amended the Constitution and the newly enfranchised voted for Nixon!
https://youtu.be/YMvDilnfJ2U?si=gFQuuLiohH5MFSwd
You interested in some old school Flash Games,Aaron?
https://theromp.biz/
Check out the “Booty Call” series here. While I’m sure not everything depicted here is realistic, I have a feeling you might be able to relate to some of the stuff that occurs in the games. The player protagonist seems to be the total opposite of you though in regards to Recreational Substance consumption.
Let me know your thoughts should you decide to play some of the games. at the very least,I’d be curious to hear what you think of the first entry of booty call.
This site does not seem to work in my browser. Anyway, the Flash gaming era came and went without me being really aware of it. Towards the end of Flash as a platform, my then-girlfriend now-wife played a bit of Tetris Friends. I know that today’s Zoomers and Alphas have nostalgia for Flash games, though, just as I look back fondly on the Super Nintendo.
Would like Alek to answer this,its about skin aging…
Is this one aspect of life where having spent one’s youth being an introverted indoor kid is an advantage? After having lost a good deal of weight,gaining some muscle,and applying lotion (not the specific ones recommended here though,so it may well not be doing that much. I’m definitely not as consistent as I probably should be) semi-regularly…
Some people have been surprised after I told them my age,that I look more like I’m around 25. I definitely spent my youth with people thinking I’m older than I really am,but thankfully that impression is reversing these days.
But I only started using lotion and actively caring for my skin recently. I have to wonder if having been mostly indoors allowed me to evade most of the damage that others usually suffer as they age,even if I hadn’t been using lotion in my youth.
All else being equal, avoiding the sun is better for your skin than burning it.
Not quite. Avoid intense sunlight while enjoying morning gleam is fine.
In small amounts, yes. But burning your skin is always bad. Contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as a healthy tan.
As I commented a while back, for which our skincare guru made a slight misinterpretation, it baffles me to learn of how much the Sun harms the skin. I used to think 100% protection for any exposure was only a necessity for people with conditions (like bad acne) or guys like me, fair-skinned in tropical countries, where higher amounts of melanin come in handy. And we still need some Sun for the vitamin D. But how the hell did our ancestors manage? Were a lot of them dying from damage by the Sun, even skin cancer, while being mistaken as lepers or something?
Our chad ancestors didn’t have to looksmax. But if you wanna postpone the crusty boomer look as long as possible, then spending 2 minutes in the morning to put on sunscreen is not a bad idea.