George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
18hr ago
I have some life advice that will work wonders for you, perhaps phrased poorly by me, but its essence has been passed from father to adolescent son for generations, to excellent effect: Stop being lazy, and grab the goddam reins. Because no one else is going to.
I say that, but it actually seems to me that you do a lot, and are not one of the perpetually unmotivated. Your substack is active, and mine has only one lonely post, so you're way ahead of me there. You mod here. You're a friggin' doctor.
Gym time will ultimately make you feel good. I am sure there is a physiological reason and I am equally sure that you know what this reason is probably better than I do, but perhaps haven't reached that point of that good feeling, and you perhaps doubt that it is a point you will likely reach.
Have you read the studies suggesting there could be a relationship between macular degeneration and regular use of semaglutide? Admittedly there are many caveats by the authors (admirably so) regarding the design of the study and how it was not designed to establish causality. But still. How are the peepers?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
18hr ago
Glad to have somehow helped. I haven't seen that either, alas.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
18hr ago
Interesting. I may have the least time of anyone on here, at least I feel that may be true when I read about the gaming that occurs and the books that are read. I feel like between work, trying to get in my gym time, taking care of daily household needs (cleaning, making sure my plants don't die, routine maintenance of our house, feeding our pets, spending time with my sons, having reasonably long daily conversations with my wife) and getting in enough sleep (typically six hours) I have no extra time. Yet I cook probably four nights a week (for the four of us) for dinner, and often sort out my next day's meal the night before.
As for anhedonia I have no answer. It's a term I learned on reddit, meaning at first I assumed it was just a pretend word meant to be a catchall excuse for not getting out of fucking bed. I'm not unwilling to believe it is a real thing, but I would suspect finding the root cause of this and sorting it out should be any one individual's main goal in life if he finds himself suffering from it for any length of time. Of course for the anhedonic there is always the convenient excuse: They simply don't have motivation to do anything. I cannot imagine a household where anyone would accept or tolerate this without taking some action to sort it. Of course these people may live alone--but then how are they paying rent?
Not enough time is a flimsy excuse. There is nearly always enough time for anything that matters. We carve out time for what is important to us. We do what we have to or need to do before we do what we want to do. That is one of the first rules of being a man (or adult.)
But as you say, you're offering a hypothetical.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20hr ago
Riddle me this, Doc Wonder: If you want to keep trim and build muscle, why rely on Ozempic and why not eat clean or at least eat something besides junk food 90% of the time?
Use the bananas for banana bread.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
20hr ago
I haven't seen any of those except the first few episodes of Breaking Bad.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
You could be making up all of these terms and I'd be reading and nodding yep, yep, sounds right, I kind of get where he's coming from here. Anyway good on you, I have been seeing some progress in the gym but still haven't gotten a foot in the door of BJJ. I believe there's a class (?) locally but haven't looked into it. Mildly daunted. Even in aikido there was a certain kind of guy who seemed to look at me and think "Ah, an excuse to hurt this one."
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
2d ago
Thank you. Why in the world is he dead set on winter? Assuming it's not all posturing, which of course it may be.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
Or you could just attempt The Hock, I guess?
Chuckled. Anyone have updates on Skookum? I feel a lot of time has passed. If he were going to Hock it now is prime Hock time.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
In the old days this would mean you'd immediately meet someone and be so unburdened by expectations that the two of you would hit it off and begin dating. But that was pre-online matching. In any case, good luck.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
If I am not mistaken that wasn't the kind of post he was making. I would suggest you're responding to post along the lines of "We should figure out how to stop these disasters or bad things from happening to children." That may be a post worth making, but wasn't made by OP.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
You don't think "evolution" works fast enough to make you more likely to be attractive if you had an attractive mother and grandmother?
Natural selection doesn’t cause population-level shifts in attractiveness in just a couple generations. Natalya might (or might not) inherit aspects of her mom’s good looks, but that’s genetics. Evolution needs sustained selective pressure across many generations to change the frequency of traits in a population. If evolution worked that fast, we’d see dramatic changes in appearance across just a few generations any time a war or famine hit. Traits like attractiveness are polygenic and influenced by culture, grooming, health, etc.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Oops I guess ABC, at least now. Thanks for that, his voice takes me back. Odd how he looks so much the same. Edit: This is so my kind of thing to listen to, thanks again.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
Interesting. My own parents' home, the home of my birth, was the only house in a three block radius not damaged or destroyed by those tornadoes. I remember the photos from my dad. Houses left and right had been obliterated. Trees--the forest surrounding our house--had fallen like pick-up sticks in angles all around the house--but the house still stood. When I visited months later, the shade trees of my youth were all gone and our front and back yards were getting the sunlight of a golf course. I remember people really admiring James Spann (weather man on the NBC channel). It certainly gave the town a facelift.
I don't use and never have used apps for various reasons (mostly age) but this is a very detailed post of reasonable advice, good on you taking the time.
Edit: Age and (obviously) marriage.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
This sounds similar to the armchair "war filter" theory that current day eastern european women are mostly attractive due to the fact that so many men were slaughtered in the 20th century that those who remained could choose only the most attractive as mates. I'm not sure evolution works that fast.
As @ZanarkandAbesFan suggests, there may not be a clear consensus on whether the median European (white?) woman is more attractive on the whole (and I'll use your phenotype term, meaning basically clear skin, facial symmetry, good straight teeth, healthy hair, etc but correct me if you mean something else) than her counterparts in other ethnicities. I assume we're talking about women of a certain age range?
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
What's with beards these days? I feel like beards came back hard over the last 10-15 years.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
6d ago
I've also been seeing the "worst wildfire of the year" in California articles. I keep thinking how LA almost burned to the ground in January and wondering how worst is being measured.
people of slanted eyes are too.
Are smart enough? I'm parsing your sentence but the general tone seems dismissive, whereas this seems complimentary. The slant eyes bit is an odd moment of bluntness for you.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
7d ago
The second person (narrative voice) in a story is very interesting. I tried it once many years ago after reading Bright Lights, Big City. Thanks for sharing, I like reading things like this. I have no answer to your question. Probably I'd be intransigent and not cooperate just because, but that could be mental bravado.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
I think that's true but far less so in a family, and if the family is tight and remains so. That helps a lot. I see a lot of fractured families and disaffected youth, who become rudderless adults (unless they bind themselves to some group or club or other activity). Jobs can fill this role Another thing people often don't get about work culture here.
It's the 5th here but enjoy the 4th.
We usually do barbecue or mashed potatoes or black-eyed peas or something close to my roots, and hang the US flag out. This year the boys were going to be at sports clubs and wifey was going to be late, so I detoured through Osaka and headed in instead of out, and went alone and caught the Mission Impossible film before it leaves theaters.
It's always odd going to a movie alone. For me at least. Sitting through previews I am reminded of the banality of Japanese films. I think some Japanese actors and actresses are actually capable of amazing range, but most Japanese directors are hamfisted hacks.
Cruise had recorded a message for the Japanese audience in preview. He has a massively loyal following here, though obviously he's not as young and current as he used to be (I can relate).I came up watching his movies (he is only a few years older than I) and he's always reminded me of my best friend back home.
Watching the film I was, as usual, floored by his stunt skills. I've enjoyed the whole franchise (except MI:2, which remains for me unwatchable) and felt this ended it well. The plot itself took what had been caricature-like of AI in the immediate prequel and dialed the absurdity up to 11. But I didn't mind turning off my brain for that. It was a welcome relief to not have to ask myself how realistic the plot might be (answer: not) in our current AI-ubiquitous age.
I finished and walked out into the crowds in Shinsaibashi, mostly Chinese or Korean or other Asians, a few European couples or families, maybe some Americans with tattoos and blue hair. No one seemed to take any notice of me whatsoever. I took the elevator down with a dozen Chinese and on 1F wended my way through short shorts and miniskirts out into a warm wave of humid air and trees done up in purple LED lights lining Midosiji boulevard. I walked. Stayed on the surface and street briefly, then descended again into the underground, walked past more Chinese pulling roller bags, past Starbucks where inside the lonely hearts read at individual tables their little paperback books with plain paper slip covers to keep the title anonymous. Walked the walking escalator through to the Yotsubashi line. So many people staring at phones, or holding out their phones to selfie themselves, or live stream--I imagine I will be digitally removed as a background figure from many photos.
Walk more, walk through the subway turnstile that doesn't turn, down another escalator, wait, wait, the slightly overweight American girls in very tight clothing drag their luggage past. Soon I'm on a subway. There's a pretty blonde Japanese girl showing her midriff wearing these striped socks pulled to her knees She taps the pads of her fingers on her phone, long green fingernails on her index, middle and ring fingers. On her bag is a plastic tab with the black and white face of what's probably a boyfriend --he looks like he belongs on a wanted poster. Across from her through the thick of other riders is a beautiful young woman stepped out of a different movie, wearing a very nice dress you'd expect Audrey Hepburn would have approved of. But then we're near Kitashinchi.
An hour later and the surface train has thinned of people and it's just me and an old man who seems quite asleep. I disembark, take the up then down escalator, passing a high school couple who appear to be breaking up--he's looking at her, she's looking straight ahead. They're both very pretty.
The night is still warm and I forego the bus, which will not arrive for another ten minutes anyway, and walk the 20 minutes and 2225 steps home, where my family is finished eating and watching a music show where they all know this music that I've never heard sung by these groups I don't know. I eat some leftovers of steak rice I made the day before--no barbecue or peas, and I had forgotten to hang the flag in the morning -- and it's not nearly as good as I had felt it was when making it.
I'm asleep by 11. And now it's tomorrow. Hope your 4th there in your timeline and other dimension is more festive, but as equally peaceful as mine.
Edit: A fortuneteller predicted a massive earthquake today. So, hope that doesn't happen.
Edit 2: It didn't happen.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Toxic empathy
That's a good one.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
Perhaps add "and legs" to your username. Do let us know how you fare.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
Depends on the quality of the take-out. In any case my illustration was an example of the usual man's lack of gumption when it comes to certain aspects of life. With a wife, certain aspects change, and I'd argue mostly for the better. Of course YMMV.
It's here. Do not have high expectations.
As for the important part, the banana bread: All you need is one perhaps over ripe banana. Also flour, sugar (brown or granulated white), an egg, some vanilla essence, butter, baking powder or soda or both, an oven, and a thing to hold it in that is bread-shaped. Throw in some chocolate chips. It's good. All sorts of quality ways to make it. I have to watch my potassium due to dubious kidneys, but I recommend making it and eating it. Maybe in the winter when it's cooler. With some coffee. Invite your latest complication over and while chatting, make that bread and serve it. Then the sweet sweet romance. Or something.
My romantic meal that I strategically prepared for mt then gf my now wife consisted of cold beer and some homemade kebabs with basmati rice on the side. I marinated them, had the skewers all ready. The one food my wife doesn't like on planet earth? Lamb. My kebabs were made of lamb, which is itself hard to come by here. Plus never serve anything but regular Japonica rice to a Japanese person, unless you are calling it something besides rice (eg risotto). But we did get married.
I take all your points. I was drinking cognac when I wrote my previous reply, which is itself pretty pretentious but I want a new thing and I think a cognac before bed is it. But yeah I take your points. I think I just hate semaglutide. I feel like if we were in a 70s movie semaglutide would be Soylent Green. Or similar. Something out of one of the darker Ray Bradbury stories. Just a hunch. Probably I'm wrong. Do let me know.
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