There were two things that made me realize how difficult losing weight must be for most people. The first is that if you lose weight and get reasonably fit, you’re far less likely to die and you just feel better. It’s an enormous improvement in one’s life.

The other is that if you are not overweight or obese, you are automatically ahead of about 70% of people in the dating market.

That people do not do these things means that losing weight and getting a bit fit must be much, much harder than I experience. Otherwise, everyone would do it given the enormous and obvious benefits.

It didn't have to be like this. pic.twitter.com/dzBTQ6qpZN

— Alex Halpern (@HalpernAlex) June 24, 2020

Oh, it was always going to be like this in the US. See what I wrote here on February 29, 2020:

I suspect Covid-19 will likely reveal America’s true status as the world’s richest Third World nation as we’ll be completely unable to deal with the disease and its consequences.

Was I right or was I right? (I was right.)

I wish I had been wrong. I’d rather been revealed as an utter dumbass than what’s happening now.

The first ten on today’s playlist:

Was thinking earlier about how progressives seem to view all human relationships as predator/prey. Something I hadn’t considered before but that I believe plays a large part in that view is that nearly all relationships they experience with other entities are in fact this way: any interaction with the medical system, corporations, and with their workplace in fact consists of just this dynamic.

It’s natural, then, to apply this framework to relationships with other people. It might be invalid and a very weird thing to do but it makes sense considering that literally every other relation that people born after 1985 or so have known is essentially predator/prey. Why wouldn’t they perceive their own intimate relationships this way, and see it everywhere else they look?

You project what you experience, regardless of veracity.

Lots of men are genuinely abusive. This is indisputable. However, the “progressives” channel this into the idea that anything that any man has done that was in some context abusive is by some weird transitive property abusive in every context. It’s HR-like in its lack of nuance and lack of comprehension of very diverse circumstances and situations.

But — and I hope I don’t need to say this but I guess I do — dating someone of a different race could be an abusive relationship or not. There is no way to tell from looking and it’s also none of your damn business. And I think that dating someone much younger (especially if they are under 22 or so) is somewhat more likely to be abusive, but again, it’s impossible to tell and also none of your business. (No one above the age of majority should be dating minors, near-age peers excepted.)

I strongly, strongly resist a world where HR hive-minds are in control of every interaction, destroying all nuance and possibility of something interesting and remarkable. That is what I am fighting against.