WhiningCoil
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
4d ago
Best of luck man, kids are the best.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
Man, somebody's fucking phone was listening in on my conversations, because Facebook has been shoving balance bike ads into my feed up the wazoo. Jokes on them, my daughter doesn't need one anymore!
WhiningCoil
4d ago
governed like a radical
Well... somebody governed like a radical. Jury is still out on who.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
Side note, my highest aspiration these days is to earn enough unrealized capital gains to retire, and live off the 0% tax rate on the first $100,000-ish I realize a year. Even after that it's only 15% up to $500,000. Fuck paying into this system that hates me and my family.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
I think a lot about gambling apps in this context. There has been a lot of talk about them, how frictionless they make it to part with literally all your money. How if you actually do make money off them, they ban you. How, against the law, they personally call their worst addicts and entice them to gamble more. There is an argument I've seen made that if we are going to allow gambling, we need to add as much friction as possible to the experience to try to save people from themselves.
Similar care needs to be taken with those of us who end up in the returned goods bin. We don't need tiktok gassing us up about our worth, or dating apps dangling imaginary chads or stacies in front of our noses. We need examples of how non-broken people act in healthy, fruitful monogamous relationships treat one another, and maybe even the fear of god to scare us straight. Or something, anything. Just not this. Anything but this.
WhiningCoil
4d ago
I don't think you understand. In order to work at a Fairfax, VA McDonalds, you need to speak spanish in order to communicate with the rest of the staff. They literally won't hire you.
Well, that's not 100% true. I saw a single white teenager working at a Burger King around 2009 in Reston, VA. His coworkers were laughing and carrying on during the lunch rush flipping burgers, and he was all alone, head down, working the fry machine. Couldn't understand anything anyone was saying around him. One of the most depressing things I'd ever seen in my life.
Last time I was in Loudoun County, 2015-ish you could still find entry level work as a native English speaker. The Roy Rogers in Leesburg was staffed entirely by very polite local highschoolers. That may have changed in the last 10 years though.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
Man, I sincerely hope you don't strike out on an app for chubby chasers. Because if fat chicks have so much brainrot they are shooting you down 99.99% of the time, I'm not sure I want to see the creature you become.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
This is a long story, but I'm getting to a point, I swear.
A buddy of mine in college converted to Mormonism to date a girl. He was a character, but this story is going to be winding enough without getting into that. One day we went over to his girlfriend's house to meet before we all left to go see Lord of the Rings in theaters. I forget which one, maybe Fellowship. It doesn't matter.
It's around Christmas time, and this huge Mormon family is bursting at the seems with wholesome energy. Every little girl wants to show you want they've been baking with their mother. Every little boy wants to show you their somersault or some trick. The house is decorated, the Christmas tree is up, good times. So me and a buddy of mine are awkwardly sitting in the living room, not really sure what to do or say because this is not a vibe we grew up with. In addition to our usual awkwardness I might add. And two of these kids are throwing a little toy football closer and closer to the Christmas tree. My buddy and I, we don't say anything, but we're looking at each other with a panicked expression that needs no words. We are both thinking, if that ball actually hits that tree, a kid is gonna die in front of us.
Anyways, ball hits the tree, ornaments fall, train doing loops around the base falls over aaaaaaaand.... nothing. Dad chuckles, asks them to take it outside, life carries on like nothing ever happened. The boys clean up the mess they made and go throw the ball around outside. After my buddy and I piled into the car to go see the movie once everyone had arrived, we talked about how Christmas was at our homes growing up. How the house was transformed into a veritable museum of Christmas, and our mothers would fly into a violent rage if they so much as heard an ornament jingle due to a single heavy step within 20 feet of the tree. And it slowly dawned on us, that we were the fucked up ones. That family we just visited, they were the happy well adjusted ones.
It sucks realizing in your 20's that you were raised wrong. And not just "could have done better, but basically OK", but fundamentally the opposite of how you should have been raised. With all your intuitions about family dynamics and how to view and treat loved ones horrifically and possibly permanently miswired. It sucks watching the increasingly small demographic of well adjusted, family oriented peers you may have politely filtering you out and pairing off. It sucks getting older and realizing, you've been left behind with the other rejects, and now you've got to find the least damaged item in the returns bin to try to build a life with, knowing full well that's all you are to someone else as well.
I have no fucking clue how I did it. I have no fucking clue how anyone else is expected to do it today, except that it seems even more impossible, and the odds even more remote. But it sucks seeing all the "good ones" taken, and it hurts even worse realizing that goes for you too.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
I do, but you don't. Telling people "git gud" without any notion of how they do is less than worthless. You don't even have proof that they can. Who do you point to to show it's possible, if not yourself?
Can I let you in on a little secret? You know what me and my married friends sometimes talk about? We aren't bragging about how much better than our younger contemporaries we are, or patting each other on the back about how we "got gud". We talks about how fucking lucky we are to be 40 and married, and not 20 or 30 and single. That we met our spouses before swiping, and tiktok. Before Andrew Tate. On both sides! Men and women both are clinging to their spouses like the last lifeboat on the Titanic, because it doesn't take a genius to see how utterly fucked the dating landscape is. The sheer hellscape of modern dating and gender relations has probably done more for the security of my marriage, and many others, than anything else.
I'm on the other side, and even I don't see how anybody is expected to do it if they haven't already these days! Y'all are fucked.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
Single, childless, drifting somewhat aimlessly, generally an emotional wreck on a daily basis. But what of it?
You don't actually know how to "git gud". You have zero proof that your diagnosis of the problem, nor the way out is correct. You should not be giving advice to anyone, nor judging anyone else for how they are handling it.
First you ascertain how gud the "git gudder" actually is, and then you have two options. If they're gud, then you say "well yeah, easy for you to say, you're already gud, and you probably got there by luck or natural talent anyway, so you don't know what it's like to suffer as someone who's not gud". If they're not gud, then you say "well what do you know anyway, you don't know anything about being gud, so just stay out of it."
Because you left out the 3rd option. If the people saying "git gud" is good, and has actionable advice, you actually do it. People are not limited to the cacophony of narcissistic rage.
You have neither.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
"I'm a weirdo autist. That's not going to change. That's what we have to work with. So it's time to figure out how to make the best of that, rather than getting all mopey about it."
Do share. How did you make the best of that? Did you manage to land a wife? Have you had kids? What did you have to settle for? It's all well and fine to say "Git gud", but it helps to show your work.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
So, I know a couple that tried to do a good thing. They adopted a young ghetto boy as an infant, removed him from all the bad influences that afflicted his community, and raised him in a middle-upper class environment with the best private schools, institutions and cultural guidance western civilization could provide.
The boy has terrorized that poor family for over a decade now with no signs of relenting. If this were a nature versus nurture debate, nurture is in a fetal position, ribs kicked in, begging for death as nature relentless curb stomps her.
It's all well and good to want to plant seeds, and failing to plant your own, nurture what you can find. Just make sure you aren't nurturing some virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
So, a funny story about how motivation is contagious.
I was working on some chairs. I keep trying to make steady progress, because the longer I go without working on them, the less motivation I feel to get back in the saddle and just finish the damned things. My wife waylaid me with a task of making some floating shelves, which I knocked out in about a weekish. The finish is currently curing and then they go up on the wall.
Anyways, I'm explaining how I stay motivated to my daughter, and I ask her "Is there anything you wanted to do, but then got distracted and now it's hard to get back to it again?" She goes "Yeah, riding my bike without my training wheels." This apparently lit a fire under her five year old butt, and she's been going hard at it. After we got the driveway redone on Thursday so it's nice and flat and smooth, and every single day since she's been out there with her training wheels off. Friday I was giving her a push before she fell 5-10 feet later, Saturday she was pedaling down the driveway but couldn't make it uphill. Sunday she was making it uphill. Monday she was making it uphill and downhill and turning at the bottom. Yesterday she frustrated herself to hysterical tears trying to get going all on her own without a push, and by the end of the day she'd pulled it off. Not 100%, but she got her foot in the door. Couldn't be more proud of her.
And it was seemingly kicked off by me having a candid conversation with her about putting effort into staying motivated.
WhiningCoil
5d ago
Is it a free market? Are you factoring in the market distortions of women taking out massive loans for fake degrees that don't pay, and then lobbying to have the taxpayer just forgive them? Or the weaker market distortions of income based repayment? Are you factoring in the cartel like behavior of HR which is predominantly run by overly educated women? Are you factoring in all the assistance programs women get for almost every facet of their life?
There is a lot going on, but at no point would I claim it's the "hand of the free market at work".
WhiningCoil
5d ago
My Rules > Your Rules Applied Fairly > Your Rules Applied Unfairly.
This is "Your Rules Applied Fairly". Congratulations, the left has completely and thoroughly won! Rejoice!
What? This isn't what you wanted after all? Huh.
WhiningCoil
6d ago
All of this navel gazing makes sense when you realize that the authors want the freedom of the tyranny of the human biological condition: which, barring incredible advances of technology, is impossible.
Sometimes I think we should bring "back" the likely fictional "Rule of Thumb". Have minders in the street with rods. And not unlike how a slave rode behind Caesar during his Triumph, repeating in his ear "Remember you too are mortal", if they hear anyone neurotically bitching at the cafe, over brunch, at the bar, they run up and start striking them across their back and shoulders shouting "Perfect is the enemy of good!!".
Maybe the beatings should continue until morale improves.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
If you're incompetent and unteachable enough that you need to be governed with direct intervention, and restricted from handling your own affairs, you're also not really equipped to tell if your overseer is making good decisions on your behalf, and even if they aren't actively exploiting you, they can of course be making decisions that are suboptimal for your personal wellbeing, simply because they are not as motivated to do the best possible job.
IMHO, this is a perfect is the enemy of good situation. Is someone managing your decisions better than you, such that you are having even marginally better life outcomes than you were before them telling you what to do? Well, then how much of that added value they skim off the top comes down to competition between overseers.
Shit, I think we just reinvented the labor market.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
I keep trying to break into Captains of Industry, but the tutorial is so dry, hand holdy and long I just get bored and wonder back to a game I know better. I get maybe an hour to play a game a night, and not even every night! I can't spend the whole hour being locked out of the interface until I click the exact button the tutorial tells me it's time to click, over and over and over again!
I really wish there were two levels of tutorial sometimes. The "Yes, I've played a game before" type where it has a much lighter touch, just gives me some short term objectives and a quick summary of how to get there. Then there could be the "wHaT iS cOmPuTeR?!" tutorials that explain what a mouse and keyboard are, and how to click on buttons and shit.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
But the natural slave cannot ultimately be freed; they can only be managed well, or managed poorly. Left to their own devices, they will manage themselves poorly. Aggressively managed ("literally enslaved"), they will lash out against the strictures of the arrangement, often violently (the free citizens of slave societies live ever in far of revolt). How much of the history of "government" is the history of developing increasingly sophisticated methods for obfuscating the nature and extent of the bondage imposed on the "mass of men," not only for their own ultimate benefit, but for the benefit of all? And--to what extent might we as a people be slowly forgetting that, as we seek to "liberate" those masses, by continuing to give them the resources of life, while withdrawing (or declining to enforce) any guidance?
Maybe this calls for an inverse catch-22. If you have enough executive agency to successfully organize a slave revolt, you clearly do not belong to the slave class. Welcome to the ranks of the masters brother.
Maybe it's less important that slavery is abolished, as there exist class mobility out of the lowest rungs of society.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
So I read Blindsight in about 4 days ish. That was a ride. Waaaaaay less comfortable of a first contact story that Mote in God's Eye, which was the last novel I talked about which brought recommendations of Blindsight. Here, and also a buddy of mine who just lent me his copy.
I liked it... but I didn't enjoy it. Like, it was rich in concepts and took the story in directions I never saw coming. But I felt like it spent more time trying to fuck with me thanks to the layers of unreliable narrators than it did advancing a story. And then of course it's just a total downer from a humanist perspective. I feel like Blindsight is a better recommendation to go along with something from HP Lovecraft than an almost Star Trekkish "Rah Rah Humanity!" first contact story like The Mote in God's Eye.
I guess if you love hearing about how much we suck and are doomed and the universe will trample us with it's indifference, Blindsight is pretty good. But something in me says Lovecraft did it better. Probably a matter of taste.
WhiningCoil
10d ago
Now, the biggest hurdle holding back the poor family in the story I've linked to is a simple one: the Overton Window. If, for some unfortunate reason, the number of women crazy enough to act that way rose significantly, society would probably develop memetic antibodies or legal solutions. This might, sometimes, become strong enough to overcome the "women are wonderful" effect, if such women are obviously being the opposite.
Ah ahahahahahah.
Hah.
Oh man, that's a good one. That's a really good one. You really aren't from around here. Our society's worship of women is downright pathological at this point. They can do almost anything and it's excused. I mean even in your own home away from home, there are plans to just get rid of Women's prison. Women are too good to spend time in jail for their crimes you see? In fact, their reasoning is that since more women are being sent to jail, something must be wrong with the legal system, since women are wonderful obviously. So we'd better start shutting down the women's jails so they can't be sent there.
WhiningCoil
11d ago
There is one guy who should have been, if what his wife says is true. (I am sceptical, but she is the blood relative, so I believe her in public)
I repeat
It's like either you've seen it, or you have some sort of mental blinders on that make what you've seen "not count"
So someone in your social circle has had that happen, despite your claims that nobody has.
WhiningCoil
11d ago
You know, it might have been a fluke. I think whatever script they have to block part of the article failed to load on me one time from that snapshot of archive.org. Sometimes it's weird like that I guess.
WhiningCoil
11d ago
Right?! It's like either you've seen it, or you have some sort of mental blinders on that make what you've seen "not count".
Yeah, so this art book is what I let my daughter browse through while I read the novel to her. But another friend of mine read this illustrated version to her son. Probably advantages to both. Giving my daughter a separate book I think worked for us because she had some control over what she was looking at while I read.
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