100ProofTollBooth
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
I will read the rest of your post if you can confirm that you’ve understood why you are incorrect per the above
I'm far too dumb to do that.
It’s not always possible to drive with an open cup of water in your car, depending on cupholders and road conditions
Is this why my pants are wet?
100ProofTollBooth
10mo ago
"...contribute significantly to the rural character..."
"...the stewardship many feel for their communities."
This reads like the preamble to some hardcore NIMBY organizations' charter. Amorphous phrases that point to "character", "community" and (unelected) "stewardship" don't trump personal property rights. They're not even in the same neighborhood.
And when is the "character" of a place set in stone? This is straight up No True Scotsman 101. This is such a literal trope the Simpson have a hallmark episode about it. The only constant is change and no person or group gets to self-appoint as "arbiter of the good character of a place and community." That's a well paved road to localized authoritarianism.
I definitely code traditionalist conservative, but trampling on individual and property rights "to make sure we keep the Main Street Habdashery up for another 100 years" is the same as when progressives want to outlaw parental choice in schools so that "we can end bigotry forever by forcing Ibram X. Kendi book reports."
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
Mostly pretty young women crying very loudly.
Or their male counterparts who vociferously swear allegiance to whatever is the object of that crying or, on the other political extreme, high volume chauvinists who trade content and persuasion for volume and repetition. #I'm-With-The-Orange-Man-All-Women
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
Part of me wants to report this for being incendiary.
But, a larger part of me just sort of likes to contemplate it as a kind of internet modern art.
I am now Cameron from Ferris Bueller at the museum.
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
if I knew that someone expressed the degree of contempt for my wife that OP is expressing towards Alice, I wouldn't just want to defriend them, I would want to beat the shit out of them in the process.
"I would respond to someone's principled, albeit harsh, verbal condemnation with physical violence." I'm really not sure that's the kind of argument you want to advocate.
Trying to bridge interpersonal gaps can certainly be a good thing, but being friends with a guy that has contempt for you is just going full quokka.
I don't read OP's comment as having contempt for Bob. He has a sincerely held belief that marrying Alice is a bad move based on his sincerely held values regarding prostitution and promiscuity. He's try his best to articulate that to his friend, Bob. This seems, in fact, like the opposite of contempt. Contempt would probably take the form of a quiet chuckle followed by, "You do you, man" on the part of OP.
Slippery slopes are greased by the shrugging nonchalance of the agnostic and conformist.
100ProofTollBooth
4mo ago
and some moral frameworks attribute little or no moral value to beings that have never achieved sapience, regardless of their status as humans or as probable future sapients.
How do you objectively measure "sapience"?
If it is discrete, what's the dividing line?
If is is continuous, this leads to the conclusion that the "less sapient" are less human than the more sapient.
If this is your position, exactly where is the cutoff point for disenfranchising already living humans from their right to remain alive?
If you can identify that point, where is the point (necessarily further upstream) wherein we disenfranchise humans in a democracy from being able to vote because of their substandard sapience?
tl;dr Eugenics and explicit genetic tyranny all the way down.
(Some of the other comments in this thread are straight wild. I can't tell if they're LARPing, triple-nested irony or finewine shitposting, or just ChatGPT hallucinations.)
TLDR on how heterosexual women choose mates can be reduced to "social proof." This isn't all encompassing, but it's the single most important factor. The more you can put yourself in an environment with demonstrable social proof the better. I've written about this before, sorry for the self-link.
I think a lot of guys screw up the first date by making it far too 1-on-1 and not somehow building in that social proof. In my experience, there is a very simple way to get reliable massive social proof without having to stress on logistics or complex arrangements:
Become a regular at a bar.
A couple ground rules. 1. The bar has to be a pretty fancy cocktail bar or hipster style joint. Think rough wood paneling, low lighting, and a bearded gent who knows too much about agave plants behind the bar. 2. You don't become a regular by showing up a few times on your own and getting hammered and tipping heavy.
Here's how you become a regular:
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You have to spend time (and money) going in on off hours and figuring out which bartender works on core date nights (Thur, Fri, Sat). The economics of bars being what they are, it's pretty rare for even the "Prime Time" bartenders to not work at least one afternoon shift. I find luck on Sundays and Tuesdays the most. You go in right after work (or as early as about 4pm if you can work remote or have the flexibility). Sit at the bar, get the menu etc. etc.
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Have a personality and interesting things to talk about. I know this can be very difficult. Here are some tips - start out by asking their recommendation for a drink / cocktail. They're going to recommend something that's pretty inoffensive (usually a slight modification to a basic manhattan, martini, or old fashioned and their various tequila cousins). If they ask what you like, have an answer ready. When they make it, compliment it and find a road to go down. What does that mean? Don't say "oh, it's fruity!" or "oh, yeah, I like that!" Those are dead ends. Make an observation, and then make an extending comment on that observation; "There's some smokiness in there ... what's another drink where there's more of that (or) what can complement smokiness (or) do people like that smokiness." Oh, goodness, you've just started a conversation. Remember when I said that you should look for a fancy spot where the guy behind the bar knows a lot about agave / bourbon or whatever? This is because if you can differentiate your comment on the drink enough, you can get that guy to shoulder the conversation for the next 30 minutes by letting him go on and on about .... whatever. Listen, ask leading questions, offer light opinions ("I never really liked whiskey because I think it has a bad aftertaste" is fine "GIN IS FOR PUSSIES" is not). Just ... talk.
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Ask the guy when he's on again (meaning, when he's working again). Show back up, do the same thing. You'll know you've made a (good) impression if they start saying "What's up, dude?" after you've walked in but before you've sat down. You'll know you're really in if they start to make you custom drinks without prompting to see what your reaction is.
3a. I wouldn't recommend this step if you haven't done this kind of thing before, but I just recently did it at a new bar I've been checking out and it was a lot of fun. If the bartender works an off evening (Tuesday/Wednesday night for instance) and you can afford the day off / hangover the next day - go in and just get hammered. Because it's an off night, it should be slow and they're likely to drink a little bit with you, comp a couple rounds, and open up the conversation topics a little more. This is kind of a "stars have to align" move, but, if you can pull it off, it's awesome.
After regularly (you know, like a regular) showing up to this bartenders shifts for three - four weeks, AND maintaining a good rolling conversation, you're set. Now back to dates and where the fun comes in.
You setup the date to meet at the bar for casual drinks. That's not hard and it's seems a little basic however She'll do the research on the bar and find out that, at the least, it's a trendy cocktail bar and she's not going to some horrible sports / dive bar with awful bathrooms and warm beer. But the magic happens when the two of you walk in and your partner in crime, the bartender, says, "What's up, TollBooth?!" and means it. You'll probably get a better seat at the bar than what the host/hostess would default to. Bartenders interact with and watch people for a living so he'll understand it's a date right off the bat. You're golden. From here, just have a normal conversation with your date and enjoy things like the following, ranked in order of most to least likely:
- Off menu drinks (that aren't anything special, but the "off menu"-ness makes them appear so)
- Unordered (but free) appetizers or deserts
- Unsolicited comments about how funny / wild / smart / "different" you are from the bartender to your date
- Totally made up stories the bartender tells to wingman you
- Even more outlandish lies like "Yeah, last time TollBooth was in here, I ended up serving him like four drinks that these girls were buying him, it was crazy."
You have to remember that at these craft cocktail places, the over-knowledgeable bartender is running the show in the eyes of the patrons (it's actually still probably either the head chef or just the GM who's really doing it, but, whatever). So, in the eyes of your date, the most "important dude" in the building is now pumping you up like a hype man. Your date will feel like she's in the center of the attention of the place without feeling like there's a spotlight on her. She gets to feel self-satisfied that she's snagged the most popular dude. What's more, because the bartender is going to make sure service is snappy, it can even come across like you've got some sort of special pull and the dinner is somehow just better than it could be anywhere else. She'll be telling her friends about it and just drink in their envy. Your friendly bartender will also act as a constant refrain point for the conversation if you hit a weird silent phase and run out of things to say. "Rodrigo is such a cool dude," can be said again and again to restart the conversation, and it's also a subtle cue of "remember my social proof."
After the date, you do what you want. After many years of operating out of the cut-and-dry bachelor dating playbook, I don't try to move towards sex. I don't care. I want to see if I've actually captured durable attention (which is the most fought over commodity nowadays, right?) and, more importantly, if I enjoyed the conversation, feel some chemistry and compatibility, and genuinely want to see her again. Maybe a quick kiss or something and then it's part ways / separate Ubers.
Even more than dates, this works well for (casual) work dinners or happy hours. Although I'm a little hesitant to recommend it for client / sales meetings because some people get the wrong idea and think you're an alcoholic who shows up there everyday.
Some closing thoughts:
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Why is the bartender actually doing this for you? One, by showing up regularly for a few weeks and many shifts before the date, you are spending some money and signalling you'll probably keep doing it. This is a transaction to an extent. The larger point, however, is that you made good conversation. 80% of bartender conversation is them listening to people talk about themselves and their own lives, or having to navigate petty small talk on sports, politics, and pop culture. And they're on their feet for 8 - 10 (or more hours). If you can break that monotony, they're going to love you.
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Tip heavy always. This is a business.
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Throughout this write-up, I've used "he" as the pronoun for the bartender and obviously assumed the bartender is male. That's the harder scenario.
You can do all of this with a female bartender too and, if you do, your date is guaranteed to end in fireworks.
100ProofTollBooth
18hr ago
Would recommend posting this in maybe the small scale thread for today asking for pointers on how to do things like this.
100ProofTollBooth
1d ago
Non-consensual mind control is a capital crime, at least if you're not on a leash by a state.
So, uh, asking for a friend (that friend is the Culture War Thread)
What are your thoughts on social media and porn?
100ProofTollBooth
1d ago
Best books (including audio books) on serial killers?
True crime, fiction, non-fiction are all fine. Doesn't need to be haute lit-ra-ture ... can be a dime store novel as long as it good.
Please and thank you.
100ProofTollBooth
3d ago
Unlike what you're saying I eat many more vegetables now, as well as fruit.
Wait, I think this is what I am saying?
100ProofTollBooth
3d ago
- Why did you fail? Make a list of reasons. Pick one or two to try and improve on.
- Pick a different project. Maybe make it related to your failed website.
- Project plan --> execution --> log and journal --> repeat.
There's no shortcut here and part of the only way to progress is to encounter and then surpass failure. This is a short comment because all of the content you actually need is in it.
This is the same content density of 98% of all self-help books.
100ProofTollBooth
3d ago
Saying one party is the party of the working class because slightly more than half of voters go for the other party while slightly less than half go for the same seems like it's drawing too strong a conclusion from too little evidence. Whichever poll you reference, characterizing the conflict as one of pure class comes across as slightly farcial. It is, however, consistent with my theory that the liberal-conservative conflict is sectoral (in particular, merchants and gentry versus professionals) and normative.
There's some parts of this that I might try to nitpick or reframe, but, broadly, I think this is well argued and an astute analysis.
100ProofTollBooth
4d ago
- Simply watching one's weight is sufficient to lose weight
- Survivorship bias: only the people who lost weight report it
Pretty much these two things. Most diets fail because the diet-er just stops.
100ProofTollBooth
7d ago
For somebody like me, it probably wouldn't.
From what you said it seems to me that you do not understand how people that are very different from you work.
Could've gone other way, you never know.
No, that was pure luck in my opinion.
But sometimes the best way to the goal is not rushing at that direction headlong, but instead walk some roads not taken.
Continue to amble along amiably, meandering through life, wishing providence smiles on you. Is this an accurate representation of your preferred strategy?
100ProofTollBooth
9d ago
a higher fraction of socially conservative tradcaths.
I have been summoned.
100ProofTollBooth
11d ago
But yes your overwrought "I can't even leave my red state or I'll be persecuted" schtick is silly, false and just wrong at an objective level.
Why do you need to say this?
Up to this comment, I think you could summarize the exchange thusly:
TollBooth: Something something, I'm a red stater, get off my lawn
French: "That's goofy. You're goofy. Stop being goofy"
TollBooth: "Fine. You got me. Here's me being tongue-in-cheek and a reasonable cessation to our mostly pointless disagreement"
And then you have to go "you are just wrong at an objective level."
Y tho?
100ProofTollBooth
17d ago
This just makes me want to start sponsoring Knight of Columbus Taverns all across the country. Bolt 'em on to the local parish. Have to be a local or sponsored by one to attend.
Perhaps the Holy Spirit - in the form of the fully alcoholic blood of Christ and its various Irish and Scottish cousins - can move the younguns to form holy unions.
100ProofTollBooth
17d ago
I really like this response, I just want to pull out some more details.
"The missing step A" -- Is this the initial meeting between two young people? From what I can gather, it looks like you're saying that tradcath communities are great for getting a young couple on rails into a marriage, but bad at getting Harry to meet Sally at the dance. Is this accurate?
100ProofTollBooth
17d ago
- In several of your other replies, you bring up demographics. I'd take the optimistic viewpoint that demographics are always in favor of those who are both pro-natal and able to raise their children with stability into adulthood. On the left, it's fair to say that those with the means are often minimally natal (single kids) or actively anti-natal. The new NPR lady has a bunch of tweets about the "moral hazard" of bringing children into the world. Those without the means to raise children, the accidentally pregnant a lot of the time lower class of any and all colors, don't tend to place their children in a position to thrive in life, let along seize the reins of power. The most well organized of those - evangelicals - are broadly in agreement with my social policies. So, I'm counting a lot of wins. I don't see the 35 year old purple-hair DEI consultants married to bicurious cucks suddenly deciding to raise a brood of their own. They may try to indoctrinate my kids, but see more about that below.
The current PMC populated by boomers, some Gen-Xers, and woke millenials is, historically speaking, a weird outlier. That the PMC even exists, let alone the level of power and influence it enjoys, is a direct byproduct of the amazing economic conditions from 1945-2005. DEI departments and woke education master's degree holders only exist in a society that has so much extra wealth that these people can do their non-jobs and not starve. In a real economic depression, a lot of them get canned quick. In a period of re-expanding growth, you'll see the actually productive surpass them and, frankly, hold a louder microphone. Examples: Mr. Musk and Mr. Thiel.
Returning to the primary point, who are those communities who have both the fecundity and financial-ity (i really wanted to rhyme to work, sorry) to build the next leaders of society? Well, we already told you.
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You bring up the "that's a lot of ifs" argument quite a bit. I'd say that any large scale strategy is predicated on risk-adjusted decisions about how to allocate resources and then conduct operations. If you're waiting for an absolutely bulletproof plan that is blindingly obvious in its multi-decade efficacy, I think you might want to talk to some dead Chinese fellows about how that works out.
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"The state is coming for your kids and will also maybe kill you." Although a bit dramatic, I agree with you. I have faith that that tide will turn back and, in some pockets, already has. Glen Youngkin won in VA largely because he said "Hey, stop teaching kids woke stuff in public school." The college protests of late are also great fuel to the fire for school choice and hefty parental veto rights. The most indoctrinated kids are paralyzingly anxious and fail to continue to exert the same level of cultural influence their parents did. If working more than 3 hours a day creates "trauma" for you, I'm not worried about you outbuilding me.
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"What if it is already too late and we're fucked." Well, then we're fucked. And I get to die and go home to Jesus, which is already the point. I know that's an argumentative cop out and I truly am sorry for it, but when people keep going down the recursive rabbit hole of "what if you're wrong about that? and that? and that?" Then, I guess if so many of my past, present, and future assumptions are all horribly flawed, I deserve the apocalypse. The Good News (read that capitalization carefully!) is that I, like Lizzy Warren, Have A Plan For That.
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Awesome. Thank you for the well articulated reply.
One more piece of anec-data to take or leave; It seems to me that my strength training (heavy compound lifts, think Starting Strength protocols) directly improve my runs as well. I'm sure there's a frontier to these when additional weight starts to retard progress. However, as of now, it feels like a free lunch.
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
Korwa.
100ProofTollBooth
3mo ago
I don't let it make me support policies that aren't supported by statistics
I think you might want to take a little peek at the theory of black swan events. "Stats say this crazy man only has a 1% chance of ending my life. No need to worry!"
or utilitarianism.
You mean the philosophy that leads to eugenics and "global optimization via local genocide." Fuck outta here with that nonsense.
'toxic masculinity' and 'the patriarchy hurts men too'.
Spoke too soon. Fuck outta here with THAT nonsense.
@Mods: I'll self-penalize here with a one day self-ban for this "boo outgroup." I should've not engaged. But I failed.
100ProofTollBooth
3mo ago
The vast majority of kids don't abuse knives. Why can't it be the same with recreational drugs?
The intent of recreational drugs is to "use it on yourself."
The intent of a knife is never to "use it on yourself" except for exceedingly rare medical emergency situations or incidents of self-harm that are universally recognized as bad.
I think that porn has helped me to become more comfortable with my sexuality.
Bully for you.
I don't think that there is anything shameful whatsoever about watching porn.
Would you be alright with a stranger watching porn next to you on an airline flight? Or in a library? Or around children?
"Which is more important in an internal combustion engine? Oxygen or the flammable substance?"
It's diet and exercise. You have to have both. Together.
These pills won't make people healthier. They will make people feel better about themselves. They aren't weight loss drugs, they're NextGen antidepressants. Metabolic syndrome often does not present as visible obesity. Major stomach and liver issues can go undetected for years. People will start taking these drugs and remain at a lower body weight. Then, one day, they die suddenly and any autopsy performed with reveal superfluous amounts of visceral fat, a leaking stomach, and a liver close to non-function.
Physical fitness is, among many other things, an information feedback loop. If you are in bad shape, you have been making poor health decisions. Sometimes, this can be unavoidable (late nights during crunch time at work or school, what have you). But, mostly, it's a clear indication that you're making poor, poor choices. Using something that covers up the effects of these choices does nothing to alter that decision process. I'd wager that habitual users of Wegovy etc. probably will also habitually (ab)use other substances - alcohol, narcotics, sugar, social media. This is not a road to health.
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