Sep 23

Class Clowning

The same books, articles and essays they’d teach in those classes are available to read any old time, many of them for free.

Want to learn something, there’s nothing stopping you now except the will to do so.

Sep 23

The Imposs

I know I’ve observed this before, but I really do wonder how much of the “it’s impossible to ever lose weight” belief is itself responsible for people being unable to lose weight. If instead we had a culture of, “Here’s how you lose weight, it’s not that hard, etc.” I bet many, many more people would be successful.

Of course, other cultural-level changes would be needed and nothing happens in a vacuum, so there’s that.

Sep 23

Quanto

This is a macro view of what I’m on about when I discuss the poverty and barrenness of algorithmic dating and algorithmic everything. For some reason, indiscernible to me, people (mostly liberals) believe if they have “all the data,” then the decision wil be obvious and correct.

But the decision isn’t in the data and has little to do with it! The data captures only a very small fraction of the real factors present and those are mostly non-quantifiable — even in principle. So it’s all a waste of time and an illusion, but it’s one that way, way too many people are completely convinced of.

Sep 17

May Him

Great thread. I also grew up in an “honor culture,” of course. It’s still very much alive in me, as it is with Christopher. Where I grew up, tolerating disrespect was the ultimate sign of weakness. It was something you did not do if you wanted to have any sort of viable social future. I learned that lesson early, that it was better to fight and lose (which I did, often, before I got good at fighting) than it was to back down or just take it stoically.

To this day there’s still part of me that feels more comfortable with violence than with just letting things slide. To be clear, I don’t resort to my fists now and I haven’t been in a physical fight in two decades. But still…the violent disposition, however small a voice it becomes, is always there; it feels like home in a perverse way.

A friend of mine once asked me how many fights I’ve been in. I literally could not remember, it was so many. That’s how I grew up, and how you experience the world as a child and young adult doesn’t just go away, as convenient as that would be.

Sep 17

Like a Vandal

Get yourself a Schoeps CMC64 Set Modular Small-diaphragm Condenser Microphone with Cardioid Capsule.

Good general-purpose and the cardiod capsule suppresses noise from other directions besides (mostly) right in front of the mic. What, you don’t have a spare $1700 lying around to spend on such a mic? Buddy, that’s your problem, not mine. 😉

Sep 16

Mask-scare-a

When the pandemic ends, wearing a damn mask will continue as a liberal virtue signal. I hate the fucking mask, so this is terrible for me. But I know this is going to be true.

You hate to see it.