When did you finally start to feel like you were a man, and not a boy?

The first time I was put in charge of people in potential life and death situations as a paratrooper in the army.

That changes your perspective a bit.

Surveillance footage allegedly shows a Texas daycare worker forcing children to fight each other.

Got to get them ready early for being able to visit Waffle House. Can’t go in there without knowing how to throw down.

That was a very different world, but it was absolutely not mostly middle-aged men. It was largely male, sure, but most people were in their 20s and early 30s with a pretty large smattering of teens too.

I was there, though I didn’t spend much time on those areas of the internet then. Mostly, I was in stock/trading forums, car forums and in various PC enthusiast ones in 1999.

How do people read so fast? It takes me 1 hour to read 10 pages of novels!

It depends on how complex the book is (and some other factors), but I can generally read 10 pages in about 6-8 minutes. No, I do not speed read as speed-reading isn’t really a thing. Trust me, I understand with full comprehension what’s occurring. I’ve gotten a perfect score on every reading comprehension test I have ever taken.

My mom could read much faster than me when she was in her prime. She could burn through 10 pages (also with full comprehension) in 3-4 minutes.

So I guess it’s at least partly genetic.

What’s a sign or litmus test that immediately tells you someone is a bad person? Like, something they do that makes you instantly think, “Yeah, this person is bad.”

This goes for men and women: How they treat someone they don’t think is cute or they are not attracted to.

If they treat those people like trash, they themselves are trash. One of the best tests of character there is.

My honest and historically realistic land acknowledgement:

You used to be here; now you’re not. The land you dwelled on was taken. You were not strong enough to hold it so it is now ours. You lost. We won. History’s tide sweeps all away eventually. Thus it ever was and ever will be.

On the first official day of this conference¹, the talks were quite bad. I was like, “Why did my company pay all this money for me to attend something with people droning on about PowerPoint slides?”

But the second day the talks were really good. It pretty much made up for the first day of toneless zombies. It’s very much luck of the draw with these things.

I’m glad I attended in person, though. How people withstand virtual conferences I will never know. That’s just not for me.

1. I also attended a full-day more collaborative Sunday session that was well-done.

I am extremely smart. That is just true.

Still, that is only responsible for maybe 20% of my success. The rest is just pure-ass rhino-like stubbornness. That is the necessary component.

Anthropologically, this is correct. That said, cultures can evolve and different forms do emerge over time. However I also think it’s fair to say that feminization of low-status males is a large part of what is happening with the trans movement, but for somewhat different reasons than it does in purely patriarchal societies like exist in Pakistan.

I agree with that.

By the fall after high school, I was in the army, and a paratrooper. Many of my high school friends and acquaintances were already dead or in jail (for attempted manslaughter).

I understand neither meditation nor therapy.

Both seem fraudulent to me.

Interesting that this seems to be true cross-country.

My high school was very rough. (So were all my schools.) There were fights every day. I was in a large percentage of them. Bullying and hazing were extremely common. I was one of the main targets, but by no means the only one.

I fairly routinely got in 2-3 fights a day. And I mean real fights where one or both of us was bleeding at the end of it. That is not normal anywhere anymore. Nor should it be.

Good for Poland. Someone should resist feral third worlders parasitizing their nation.