mrvanillasky
Future apocalypse survivor
User ID: 3273
I am alive, I have blocked youtube, twitter, Instagram (deactivated my account back in October), Reddit and everything distracting from my laptop and my phone. My co-working idea from 2023 finally took off, I co work with two other people, one being my mentor, the other being an extremely competent friend of my age who si may age.
Progress so far
I am nearly done with Math Foundations 3 which is MathAcademy's final pre-university module that also covers calculus right before Multi variable calc. I will head on to Logic and proofs followed by Discrete Math. Math for ML will follow these two. In the meantime, I will do some math that I learnt in Math Foundations 1, 2 and 3 from a rigorous textbook so that I have a decent level of mastery and fluency with regard to math. I ultimately want to be a really good research ML engineer.
My mathacademy total xp is now close to 11k, every xp is worth a minute or more, it feels trivial compared to people who do real STEM stuff at a high enough level but I know how hard differential equations, sub topics in integration was. It seems laughably easy once I have done it but I can never appreciate myself for doing any of it. Its way beyond what I ever did, I just dont like myself enough to say anything nice, not being whiny, I dont want to be known as the guy who considered basic math literacy to be a milestone. I hit 180 or 3 hours in an airport and one time in a fucking train with a pinhole light, without even having a seat to sit properly on. The same guy who could not study for a decade, pissed away his chances at grad school, flunked two classes was able to do something that. I do respect myself for that though, quite a bit.
I dropped Clojure and front end, opting to double down on Python instead. I do Boot.devs material; I finished their OOPs course a few minutes ago. I will do the Python workbook and aim to finish that in three weeks while doing my daily three hours of math and an hour of Boot.dev. I will still need money since I wont be able to afford meds after july but I will find some ways around that, my sabbatical will last at least 4-6 more months.
My life is boring in ways. I wake up, work out (three days), meditate, study, and sleep. My phone time is much lower since I track it and would be zero if I were not a massive coombrained person. Which is why I also nuked all the images I had of girls from my past life. That stuff will not help me live now.
If I am late in posting updates, know that I am in a better place than what I started in. 6 years ago I posted here and on slatestarcodex as a delusional cram school kid who was shit scared of failing his high school equivalent exams and never getting to a uni. It took me half a decade but I am at least on an ok track now. My co working mates are genuinely very good engineers and they do celebrate my progress but I cannot feel nice.
Maybe I will in some time. My time here has always been great, this is not a goodbye post, I will post, I am just not going to be as regular but I will update. People here saw me go through life and I think they deserve to read the good parts too.
Routines
Working out first thing in the morning kickstarts my concerta. I feel relief climbing out of the dingy pajeet gym I work out, the stairs connecting the basement to the ground, lit up with the sun. My mind feels clear after I meditate, I feel zero friction when I work. The day feels amazing, my only issue is sleeping on time, I must sleep by 11 daily and did that zero fucking times in all these months. It pisses me off and makes my bi onthly therapy session feel like a waste since she wants me to sleep by 11 every day to help fix my circadian rhythm. 1:30 am right now, fuck. Sleeping full 8 hours should do wonders for my life.
Birthdays
My grandad turns 92 this Saturday. We are throwing a party and it reminded me of my more recent Wednesday update about nostalgia. I remember watching movies with my cousins in late March, playing Holi and all four of us (the two of them and my younger brother) being there for grandads birthdays. We get the front yard done and throw a large get-together. This year, neither of them are turning up for his birthday, thier mom, my aunt is since she can't miss her dad's birthday but I do feel a little bad about it. You cannot go back, still for a moment, I wish they came. We even had a golden week where we saw holi, grandads birthday and a literal movie shoot happen in the same week. They shot a movie in our front yard since I live in a large old-fashioned house, ones built for feudal lords of the day. Remembering it makes me smile. We spent the entire night playing FIFA, saw a lot of decent movies and I got introduced to electronic music via Swedish House Mafias albums. Not the best music but I still mosty listen to electronic music, much better kind though.
Oneitis
The girl I was into out of my betaness and low status is now just another girl. A friend of mine recently told me about bumping into her in a nightclub in Delhi where she was coked out of her mind, chatting up everyone whilst looking fatter. In that moment I felt sad for her. Every girl I have ever always ends up worse once I lose my rose-tinted glasses and she seems the same honestly. Doing substances in a bar with your friends and going back home to your parents, working a dead-end job where you only make enough to live paycheck to paycheck because you have a lifestyle to afford (do not blame her here tbh, the Indian economy is the culprit). For the first time, I felt a lot of pity for her. I was 21, 4 years ago exactly when I posted about how she was sleeping around with other guys, being super emotional about it instead of manning up and just meeting her. Me from the past would not believe that I genuinely don't like her at all now.
Why post
Moreover, I am coming to terms with the fact that things have changed, the people I knew in the past, are well in the past and they should stay there. I am still unemployed, unskilled, skinny and living with my parents but I am better each day. Every day I try my hardest to be better, or at least try harder at trying my hardest. I am in the top 5 percent of both math academy and boot.dev, much higher in mathacademy, maybe top 5-10 people all time in terms of weekly volume done.
I just hope that I can continue my progress and that everyone around me is alive, happy and healthy to see me do well. I came to this place at a very difficult time in my life, everyone here helped me be who I am in a very literal sense. Strength training, meditation, pua, a pursuit of mastery, and the belief that I can do better, are things I picked up along the way. Some kind souls still read my life's updates and my new arc of being a guy who learns math and backend engineering to eventually do cutting-edge ML stuff is not all that exciting.
My bad days are about 4 hours and at about hour 8, I can no longer work, though I suspect with enough practice, I can stretch that to 12 but that will take a while. Working on hard things, learning this stuff, meditating, working out, all of it is extremely humbling. Every single session makes me aware of just how far behind I am from where I wish to be. The bright side is that each time, I get better. Many in life just mentally check out and live in deluded fantasy lands where they are too smart to do anything, only to wake up at 40 and realise that they have failed at life. There are days when my brain just gives out and it is satisfying in a way. Every time I drag myself out of the gym having struggled with benching less than 135, I get closer to benching 225 or dipping and chinning half that as long as I don't get injured and don't miss a session. 225 is not unreasonable in a year given I am quite untrained.
Coda
Life is not something that happens to me, I have some control over it. Everyone I know besides a few is out of shape, sad, not earning as much as they wished to, and living in total denial of reality. That was me too, for the longest time. @Standard_Order once told em to seek sun and steel, and chase natural happiness, I get what he meant now.
My posting history makes me cringe, a lot. Why would someone like me post about his life on a place dedicated to culture war discussion, why even would the people there help and how on earth did I not get banned years ago? I posted earlier because I had nothing going on in my life, the attention I got online helped soothe that, and now I am making some progress, which makes me care less about it, hence the abstinence from twitter.
Thank you, to everyone on the motte, to all the people I befriended here, everyone who cared enough to help me. Remember, mrvanillasky is going to get better. May the gods help me, may they help us all.
Hari Om!
mrvanillasky
11d ago
I saw her comment a few weeks ago too about laundromats. Haven't seen what she writes on CW stuff since I've been inactive internet usage.
My favorite threads are Friday ones besides the CW.
mrvanillasky
11d ago
Will check em out. People here don't have much in terms of understanding with regards to complex issues like emotional support so I want to help him out.
Interventions -
A close friend of mine who is doing his masters at a decent uni here has been doing pretty poorly and a whole bunch of us, his friends want to hold an intervention for him where we can convince him to start being honest with us and help him fix his life. I was able to get mine on track, so any suggestions as to how to do it would be appreciated.
Spring -
I'll meet some friends again at the golf club or maybe at their house. I look forward to the weekends now that I'm tired after working. It doesn't need much, The weather here is ideal as it's 30-35 degrees Celsius so you can sit out in the open and see all the trees come to life. It sounds strange but glass bottles of coke and just soaking in the weather go well if it's nice out.
Gaming -
Which reminds me, I fired up Quake Live after my last comment and had a k/d of 1/20, it's a dead game and I'm terrible at fps but it's so fun. Everything is fast-paced. I'm tempted to pick up video games again but it's hard just to play one match or play for just half an hour.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
My favorite was gow2, I just did not like it as much story wise since greek gods are still gods, so I never recomemnd that game lol. I would say that I really liked the combat there which is why devil may cry and Metal gear rising tempt me.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
Dark Souls is worth checking out, but I have been told it is super hard and frustrating. I have heard that they are making half life 3, I really wish valve never stopped, Half Life 2 was one of my favorite campaigns ever.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
My only point of disagreement is with movies. Literature sure peaked a few centuries ago but the oslo trilogy or drive or many other post 2000s movies are just amazing. The Dune and John Wick franchises are better than movies of the past in the same genre because they do benefit from the higher budget and better tech.
As for games, perhaps like hacking, the more people did it, the worse it got even at the top levels. This is a statement my friends who are good hackers make, I am unqualified for now.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
I was shocked by how clunky Far Cry 3 felt since I grew up playing arena shooters a little bit. PS2 saw some of the best games a console has seen. Console shooters, sandbox titles larping as RPGs became worse with each generation.
Quake Live feels like a different world compared to Valorant.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
I relate with what you say a lot since you are not much older than me and saw a fairly similar place growing up. Gaming is still unaffordable for most Indians, the same way a normal healthy diet, peace or anything good is. My dad, due to being a young professor at a top engineering uni (he is a humanities prof) caught on to computers, so we always had a slightly underpowered PC at our house where I could play pirated games in.
Today, I have a turbulent life, I cannot bring myself to game since I am unable to do anything but be a vegetable after a productive game and want to git gud, get a job and migrate out before the year ends.
More than just the energy, gaming is not as popular in my circles as it once was. People go out to cafes or unsuccessfully try to woo girls far more than playing video games since sexual liberation, much more of a thing now, even for early teens, phones and Instagram make it much worse. My gaming itch died when my dad refused to update our PC when I was 16 since I wanted to play doom but he realised that I needed to do my exams better so killing the gamer inside me indirectly helped me do better with the JEE.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
I made various comments about the comparisons for AAA games then vs now. I will say that peak game enjoyment was somewhere between late 2000s and early 2010s, but peak advances were made in late 90s to early 2000s.
Games are better, but by miniscule amounts, the gameplay jumps that you had do not exist and the slight improvements are not as fun for me. Gaming was much better when it was smaller, studios spending the same time and money on a game, the way marvel does on movies, gives you marvel movie like games.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
Dishonored and Prey are great immersive sims, unfortunately the studios behind them have been shut down. Immersive Sims always have their studios shut down. I am not that fond of the other Assasins Creed games. The advancements you saw in those with Ezio as the protagonist in a pre microtransaction, leftier than thou world was quite good. The sequels may be good but they are not that much better, and frankly, they are not even proper RPGs the way actual RPGs are. They are less RPG like than new Fallout games, which are terrible shooters LARPing as RPGs, except for New Vegas, which is awesome.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
I have not, I fear that the non-reboot stuff is better, so playing the worse game first would at least let me enjoy that, though a good chance I never get through this list either given that I just don't care about games as much now given my turbulent life is currently. I fired up Quake Live yesterday and an hour went by in a flash. I had fun despite like a 1/25 kd.
Devil May Cry series seemed to be much more fun than the God of War games, will check out others you mentioned too. Bayonetta is highly rated.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
They killed off Unreal tournament in pre alpha and I have lost interest since then. I suck at FPS, ability wise I am bottom 99th percentile, I still find these games so much more fun, I have quake live and I would pick that over any console shooter.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
On point. Games just suck and I am somehwat glad neural networks will at least keep graphic cards useful as I cannot bring myself to enjoy new games. You barely have any changes, id software shipped quake 3 in less than 2 years, a game whose engine was hailed as a marvel and was Carmack's last great hurrah, Carmack who is widely seen as one of the best hackers to ever touch a keyboard.
I am even fine with the lefty woke subversion if the gameplay is good. I just do not want to play the same game with a slightly different re-skin. Half Life, Quake 3/Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex were all first-person mostly shooting heavy games that all played extremely differently. 25 years later, modern games do not have any advances.
This reminds me of something a good hacker I know said which is that the average good hacker today is far worse than a good hacker 25 years ago. We fucked up big time somewhere. How do you take hundreds of millions and 5 years to make the same fucking game Ubisoft. Why is making another Elder Scrolls a two-decade long process when New Vegas was made in percentages of that by a studio you cucked out of payments.
Open worlds like Gothic 2 are much better than anything you get now, bigger just means worse.
mrvanillasky
18d ago
No, I solely mean games like half life, deus ex, the quake and unreal games at the turn of the century and they were much more fun because they were faster. I enjoyed a game like Arkham Asylum the most since it came out in 2009 but quake and unreal tournament were much more fun.
I cannot name a single game in this era as impactful as the ones I have mentioned. I second @SubstantialFrivolity here. I am 24 and mostly pirated games too. My taste is quite mainstream but Far Cry 3, Arkham Asylum, Assassins Creed 2 were way better games than Far Cry god knows what number they are on now, Whatever Beat em up DC game they made and the black samurai assasins creed.
Arkham Asylum was a step forward like how New Vegas was a step forward. Games today actively regressed. Ioper who I would have tagged had I not been blocked has made some good points.
mrvanillasky
19d ago
Prey is n the list, they fucking mangled arkane. The world cannot have studios that make immense sims.
Eidos, Arkane and Looking glass. It's ludicrous lol
I would love suggestions. My current to-play list includes
- Gothic 2
- Fallout New Vegas (played it a bit, loved it)
- Unreal Tournament 2004
- Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal
- Vanquish
- Metal Gear Rising
My malaise also stems from the fact that the IPs that I liked from the 2010s are either dead or should be dead. Assassin's Creed stopped being fun post Brotherhood, Far Cry got worse. The popular AAA summer blockbuster sorta games feel quite familiar, I wish we could experience breakthroughs in how the games felt.
The jumps from Wolfenstein to Doom, from Doom to Quake and from Quake to Quake 3 were pretty large. You could polish Arkham Asylum graphically, and a guy who has never played it would not find it old or clunky like you would have found Half Life after having played Vanquish.
Maybe I'll never recreate the rush of pizza, coke and old vide games with my cousin from 18 years ago. Welp
Edit - forgot to add immersive sims and some others I forgot
- Deus Ex (original and both the Eidos reboots)
- Prey
- Dishonored
- DmC
- Metro Last Light
mrvanillasky
19d ago
For me it's not really about the activities, but the times and places I've left behind. I often miss the easy serendipity of college, where I didn't need to create a partiful and blast reminders in order to get 10 people to show up to an event.
This is also why I liked Pai so much, it was a small town where you could just do what you wanted with other travellers without prior notice.
In my case, I never had a fun college or high school life, the last two years post uni were even worse due to my startup LARP so the bar for me is a lot lower. Good chance I do and think the way you do once I party a bit after my sabbatical.
I definitely do miss just being able to walk places and have events going on, but that's a choice I made in exchange for living somewhere I can actually afford a house, so c'est la vie.
Worth it imo, owning a house in a decent town and having savings really makes a difference. Unless its Manhattan and you are stuck with a 60 year mortgage lol. The US is quite unique this way, in India, you cannot buy a decent house unless you are involved in shady things. You get a third-rate run-down apartment in Delhi for the price of a ranch in a smaller blue state in the US, which would have a much better quality of life.
mrvanillasky
19d ago
Piggybacking off of my last comment, are there others who feel that modern games seem not to be as fun as games from late 90s to late 2000s? This may be nostalgia talking, but people around me game less than they did, and most games they play are MMO ones, as opposed to campaign-focused ones like Half-Life.
I have not played a whole lot of modern games, but their gameplay does not seem to be that big of an improvement over things I have seen before. In many cases, modern shooters feel quite slow compared to arena shooters like unreal tournament or Quake. I was looking at games to play and very caught my eye beyond the new doom games.
mrvanillasky
19d ago
Indo-Chinese food is excellent, and I prefer it over other varieties of Chinese food. Chinese food in general takes the cake here. I also had a soft spot for delivery pizza, but Domino's is hot trash now.
mrvanillasky
20d ago
General Updates
I finally made my first project and am a fourth of the way through with boot.dev, though real stuff begins now, it's still some progress. I have a GitHub account with repos, things I made, something I never did for the longest time. India is facing a concerta shortage, and if I cannot get any, I will still keep up with my work. I can crank out 9 hours max on a good day, after which I can barely read a book or even pay any attention to anything at all. This is a lot higher than what I expected, though I feel bad saying anything nice about myself. The entire process is extremely satisfying, my head is in a much better place when I can experience a real sense of progress in the right direction. A hard day of work feels nice, at least when I am done with it at night.
March
March is my favorite month of the year. My family was extremely invested in my academic success, March was when your academic calendar ended, so we would get a 3-4 week break where we had literally zero work. After exams, all the kids would visit these gaming parlors with PCs hooked up via LANs to play Counter-Strike with each other. I would watch movies with my cousins who would come to visit us for Holi. We would play video games all night on my pc, check out bougie cafes, discuss anecdotes from high school. I still feel some of that with my cousins, but I am not in touch with anyone from high school or even uni for that matter.
My strongest emotion for a long time was nostalgia, always wanting to go back in time. In uni I missed high school, in high school I missed middle school, in middle school I missed being in 5th grade. This pattern of thinking was parasitic because even if those years were better, I cannot relive them again. With enough effort, I actively look forward to the time I am in now and have a belief that the near future is genuinely going to be better. My love for video games died almost completely, all the cafes feel stale.
So, do you guys have any thoughts on what it feels like to grow apart from the people of your past life? Are there some things you did with them once that you no longer can enjoy? Many report a falling out with video games or partying.
mrvanillasky
22d ago
My experience was the total opposite, I only ever used them in South East Asia and everyone was helpful, cordial and happy to help. Being a girl makes a difference but we did have female expats there who reported the same things.
After 3-4 days of the same clothes it must have been a special type of smell haha.
I still bathed 1-2 times a day, so it was not that bad. Otherwise, I would have done worse with the girls there. Though there is something about worn clothes, some girls liked the smell of my t-shirt if they were into me, as it reminded them of me. I was too intoxicated to notice anything, honestly. Though I looked like a sitcom character with the raincoat and crocs and trying to shuffle whilst wearing that. I still cant believe I was able to dance for 7 days wearing fucking crocs.
Otherwise, I risk catching the attention of creeps.
Most dudes are creepy by default. If you live in the west, then some might even be homeless drug addict kinds who would scare any sane female.
mrvanillasky
23d ago
I have some traumatic memories with laundromats. I never used one back home since here we have domestic help who take care of all our laundry needs, but I did need to wash all our clothes (my ex-co-founder and I, I had two co-founders, talking about the younger, saner one here). For a few months, I forgot what it felt like to wear clothes that had been folded or ironed at all.
A funny incident was the time a friend of mine came to pick me up at my mud hut that I was vacationing in for a week. We both fell in the mud since the slipperiness was too much for his Vespa. All my laundry fell out of my bag. I spent 3-4 days wearing the same pair of shorts and t-shirts with a raincoat, to the point where most people I met would light-heartedly joke about it, including the PUAs reading my field reports.
mrvanillasky
23d ago
May Shiva bless you and your family, congrats.
I apologise, lemme find the link
edit - cannot find it
I am on a coworking space daily, 6 days a week. Helps a lot, I also track my screen time publicly, post my stuff done there daily. I cannot find where you mentioned me though
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