100ProofTollBooth
No bio...
User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Sooooooooooooooooooo.......
Can we get another one?
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
I'll meet you half way.
I think you're right in that there does appear to be a double standard on Carroll's allegations (which a jury denied) and Trump's ability to say whatever he wants (at whatever volume he wants) about it. I'm not an expert enough in defamation to say where the line is.
But I still stand by my "own-goal" analogy because either a lot or all of this (past the first jury trial, to be specific) could've been avoided if Trump just STFUs and relies on milquetoast cliches - "The justice system functioned and I abide by the verdict." He keep creating new opportunities for potential attacks. The fact that these attacks are/may be politically motivated is irrelevant because (a) He keeps creating the opportunities and (b) It is impossible for him not to know how much certain groups have made it their existential purpose to hunt him through the courts. When you mix egotism with a martyrdom complex, you get a lot of frivolous legal activity.
To refer back to the One True Gospel, The Wire;
"Keep it boring, String, keep it real fuckin' boring" - Prop Joe
And, from the Prophet Lil Wayne;
"Real G's move in silence like lasagna"
100ProofTollBooth
6mo ago
The core of this is a concept called "Mark to Market." The Enron documentary (The Smartest Guys in the Room. 10/10 would recommend) spends some time on it.
It's also the same core mechanism that fucked the whole mortgaged-backed securities market in 2008-2009.
Mark to Market was never really intended for intermediate goods with weird cashflow and long-term appreciation dynamics (like houses). It definitely was never intended for use with Magic Internet Money.
Mark to Market was originally conjured up as a way for oil extraction companies to better value their inventory (oil) as daily markets could fluctuate pretty wildly. The thing there, however, is that that oil was both (a) a thing you had on hand that had a long established market and (b) a commodity that functioned ... like a commodity! There was a spot price and ... that was kind of it. Yeah, there are futures markets, but it's not like a house that has a monthly cashflow (rent or mortgage) but also an asset appreciation profile determined by all sorts of things (mainly location, but also real improvements and hyper local supply/demand profiles). There's just so much more inherent complexity in things like houses that Mark to Market can't really be a stable valuation scheme. [:1]
For a digital currency with zero non-digital assets backing it you're marking-to-a-made-up-market with a formless thought experiment of an asset. Yes ... that's really, really, really obvious dumb as shit.
[:1] To be fair, there are people who will disagree with this and make a (good) point that as long as markets stay liquid enough, they can perform accurate price discovery. I actually think 2008-2009 strongly supports that argument. The crisis point wasn't mortgages going down in value per se, it was in the lack of overnight and short term cash to help firms shift their positions and recapitalize. Firefighting by Bernanke et al. goes into the (quite technical) details of this. To "yes, but," one last time, there are also those who would say that the sheer size of the MBS market and all of the related assets and liabilities made it impossible to "soft land", regardless of any amount of short term credit and liquidity. I can't really refute that because we decided not to test it out back in '09. If we had, and gotten in wrong, we'd be having this conversation in person beneath the rubble of Midgar.
(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
3mo ago
I think there's a lot of romanticization of individual geniuses, especially when those geniuses were purported to (or actually had) turbulent personal lives. In both the purely creative pursuits (fine art, literature, dance, film, whatever...) and in hard sciences, economics, politics, etc. I think there's a difference between a vision and its realization. Let's say Isaac Newton was just a real son-of-a-bitch 24/7. Yes, his contributions are immense, but the realization of his ideas and concepts was born on the backs of hundreds of thousands of anonymous individuals who had to be far less rotten. Woody Allen's cinematic brilliance is super, but didn't it take the existence of Hollywood production teams and a corps of actors to make it "real"?
The internet is pretty good at showing that a lot of people have really damn good ideas, but lack the ability to execute on them. If you're an asshole with an idea, you're an asshole. If you're an asshole who execute (@FiveHourMarathon might say) .... should you be forgiven or, at least, tolerated? I think this is a red herring - nobody really executes on their own save for some pure creative types (authors, painters, etc.) and even these folks are "executing" in a realm that almost completely abstract ideas anyway.
I'm not sure if this helps - as off the top of my head as my own posts are, my comments are even more half baked. I'll admit that @FiveHourMarathon's inquiry did make me stop and think. I hope the screed above repays you in kind.
100ProofTollBooth
4mo ago
I get my mother a Santa Claus figurine each year.
I will be shopping for the "IMMORTAL PAGAN GOD" version this year. Thank you.
100ProofTollBooth
4mo ago
at the ripe old age of 5
Show off!
I found out what sex was and fervently desired it well before I was at the legal age to have it.
Did you, though? In America, we have this weird legal duality wherein sex isn't illegal so long as you and the partner are both below the age of majority or both above. Normal caveats about state by state variation and allowances for 17/18 or 365 days age difference limits.
I'm not sure I can think of another activity like this. What is something else that's legal to do with other minors, but not when crossing the minor-age of majority threshold?
To be CRYSTAL clear: I am totally in favor of maintaining these age of majority laws and am zero percent consent-only in sexual ethics. The Trans movement, beyond its anti-scientific stance, has insane flirtations with the "minor attracted persons" predators.
100ProofTollBooth
4mo ago
Thank you for this. Learning has occurred.
I feel like game theory is almost like the German language in its ability to constantly create useful and concise labels for complex/abstract ideas.
100ProofTollBooth
9mo ago
Social work instead of policing is a false premise to begin with. They aren't substitutes - that's the point and the whole problem.
Policing is about addressing (swiftly) and preventing (through disciplined proactive action) violent or otherwise extremely damaging anti-social behavior. It's very immediate and constant. Social work is more oriented proactive and cooperative skill building and promoting pro-social behaviors.
A good analogy is to use the cousins of Police, firefighters. Firefighters (putting aside their EMT roles for a moment) is about stopping a fire immediately and quickly (hoses etc.) Additionally, fire departments have to proactively prevent fires by requiring buildings to be up to code. The whole point is about stopping fires, not about building new buildings or fixing up older ones that just need a little paint and spackle.
If you run over to me and go "oh my god, my house is on fire!" and my first response is "Well, let's pick up the trash in your yard, repaint the walls, and plant some new trees!" You're going to be furious. That is exactly, however, the argument for "social workers instead of cops."
100ProofTollBooth
11mo ago
Plus one to the above, and I'll double down on it.
Befriend some of the women. Which ones? The ones you find most attractive. Why? If you make it completely clear you are friend-zoing her utterly at the beginning she'll eventually invite you out with her friends and now you're in a 1-male to x-females situation with a heap of social proof from the start of the evening. There is also an extremely good chance that she is "covertly" setting one of the friends up with you.
The key here is that you're doing this within the context of a group dynamic wherein you can (hopefully, and also necessarily) demonstrate some higher status. It's not about being a wallflower and then awkwardly asking to be friends on the side. Demonstrated status and social proof are the coins of the realm. The problem is when guys try to spend them the same place the make them. This is how, at best, you get into a potentially risky office romance or, at worst, get escorted out of the office by HR and/or security.
In group social proof and status is not, however, easily transferrable. Think of groups as countries with different currencies. It's hard to spend it directly in a group within which you did not build it. Have you ever heard a guy in a bar talking about how he has such-and-such a fancy job or was friends with Johnny WhoDat, the biggest waterbed dealer on the West Side? That's an attempt to currency exchange social proof / status. It fails. What you have in your book club is an exchange agent. She, as a trusted member of multiple groups, can port all of that built up social proof and status you have from the book club out into other groups. In fact, that you arrive at these new groups with such a high endorsement introduction automatically jump starts your relative status within the new group. Go for it.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
Starting Strength. Has a YouTube channel and a few related books.
Important caveat: Stick to the program, but adjust at the margins based on your own feedback loops. Rippetoe gets dogmatic and I understand why [^1]. Do your thing ... but also be aware of the extent to which you've drifted from the program. Bicep curls are the devil.
I would recommend against the marathon. It occupies this place in western pop-fitness as a great symbol of overall health and fitness when it is, in reality, a hugely specialized performance. For overall fitness, resistance training is the base and cardio should be varied but mostly below 45 minutes in terms of duration. If your 5-mile time falls below 35 minutes, then you can go train for a marathon, which will mostly be a lot of boring long runs.
[^1]: Rippetoe exists as the anti "amazing new fitness routine" anchor of the world. His entire career is "do the basics right and consistently for years." Which is what is appropriate for >95% of people. When Muscle and Fitness publishes an elite bodybuilder's routine, it make no sense for the average lifter because that bodybuilder's routine is designed to move him or her from the top .1% to the top .07% of lifters. They're extreme because they're at the very limits of diminishing returns. Most people will never get there, so using it as a starting point is useless. Where Rippetoe fails, imho, is in letting people who have put in a baseline of work with the basics tweak based on their own feedback loops.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
I think an interesting approach could be making National Guard membership way easier with different cores of seriousness. You're an aimless 25 year old who smoked weed all through high school and is now semi-employed. Great, you're going to PT a lot and learn basic discipline. You're an IT dude in his 30s who's looking for something like a Mannerbund connection and also want to serve? Awesome, you're now part of a Cyber Protection Team. You're former active duty SF, but your knees are weird from too many jumps and you want to actually see your kids? Permanent Training cadre.
The problems here are that
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The Military still makes Reserve/NG just as difficult to join as Active Duty. Endless paperwork, multi-month delays, weird waiver requirements for tattoos etc. Age limits are also weird. If you're 35+, in good shape (to where you can crush the PFT), and have no medical / criminal record it's still bizarrely had to join.
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Goldwater-Nichols while overall extremely good for the professional force, did make the place of the Reserve/NG a bit of a head-scratcher. Combine this with that fact that doctrinally, the Army still goes to war with Reserve/NG.
Mostly for the better, imho, the military is now a professional bureaucracy. And the American way of war is a lot more overwhelming logistics and material advantage than "warrior spirit" (expect for tiny elite units). Again, this is a great thing for running a technologically advanced super military that needs to be always ready for nation-state conflict. Culturally, however, that means the military is a lot more distant for men who just want basic feelings of purposeful camaraderie.
I'm pretty sure I read it in another thread on here and I apologize for not citing ... but someone said "Traditional male roles have been torn down over the past 30+ years. Good or bad for society is up for debate, but what isn't is that no replacement have been provided."
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Couldn't agree more.
What is off handedly dismissed as "domestic female labor" is really "the construction and maintenance of basic pro-social behavior patterns that enable society to function."
Outsourcing those duties to the state has been a disaster. This is as obvious a fact as one can summon. The state does not care about you and never has. The level of involvement and personal sacrifice necessary for humans to raise their young is bananas. No other mammal comes close. It requires an emotional bond that is nearly transcendent. Some of us would call this a "holy" connection and duty.
But others would say "just add water" to make the family.
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
I think this really quickly devolves into a semantic argument on the definition of pornography. So, let's avoid that and take it to the level of use or consumption.
If, like you, people are reading obscure Japanese doujin sites to try to explore the new depths / heights of frontier fiction, that's all well and good. I definitely don't subscribe to the idea that "Art" is only what The New Yorker deems worthy.
But hyperscale internet porn is not being used as an exploratory medium. It's an utterly cheap consumptive good that users mainline to meet base biological urges. The best comparison is absolutely processed sugar. It's such an overwhelming stimulant to the "yes, good, more!" part of the brain that it creates an almost addict like behavior pattern. When you're hyper-circuiting your brain by overcharging your endocrine system, there are no cycles left to devote to metaphysical pondering of the high concepts of art. My 3 hour jerk-fest to Backdoor Sluts 9 does not conclude with a new appreciation for the masculine-feminine dynamic.
So, this leaves us with the question of is it possible to separate and independently evaluate the medium from its most common consumption pattern? Can we look at "tasteful" amateur porn and draw some interesting conclusions about art and sexual behavior while casting away the comments section with such profound gems as "tits are meh. good bj"
I'd argue no - because the feedback loop in internet porn is inherently based on the consumption patterns of the users. PornHub makes money through data mining and algorithm building. Content creators there surf trends just as much as YouTube content creators. Indirectly, the consuming user today is the trend-setter for tomorrow. Operating at the speed and scale of the internet, this creates the insane feedback loops that lead to weird niches suddenly bubbling to the top. (faux-cest etc.)
So, is porn bad and are people who call themselves anti-porn worth taking seriously? Yes. Because they're not talking about the content in isolation, they're talking about the larger patterns, systems, and societal outcomes surrounding it. The Irish study presented above literally ends by saying "people who use porn a lot have bad lives. We don't like that they have bad lives." This is a far, far cry from the trope of a Nancy Reagan look alike waggling her finger at a few playboys found under a mattress. This is not a rejection of the primacy of human sexuality in culture. This is not puritanical rejection of the body. This is a principled stand against the degradation of beauty, intimacy, and pro-social functioning.
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
You have no fucking idea how horrible some people are. And I'm seeing the ones who aren't at the level of "well here we are in the courthouse again".
Genuine question (that I've asked myself and thought about for over a decade)...
Given that these people do exist, how ought society deal with them? Right now, we've come to the de facto arrangement of cycling them in and out of the criminal justice - incarceration system. At best, this does zero to solve the problem and costs billions of tax-payers dollars and creates perverse incentives and cottage industries. At worst, it may actually contribute to a downward life spiral of increased criminality and antisocial behavior. Anyway you slice it, it isn't working to improve things.
Of course Tollbooth, he of the hyper traditionalist bent, isn't going to be advocating for drug legalization and more spending on social workers (ha!). Yet, I certainly cannot advocate for some sort of boot camp semi-incarceration for "at risk" youth or some such nonsense. The government using "data" to select the "most in need" for its benevolence is a Great Leap Forward towards evil, IMHO. But, the status quo remains disappointing.
Hive mind of the Motte, led by @FarNearEverywhere, ..... what do?
100ProofTollBooth
1mo 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
2mo 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
2mo ago
I’ve read enough PUA material and know enough high body count guys that I feel like I know how they think.
Let's remember that there is online PUA (un)reality and actual physical world PUA/high body count guy reality.
Online PUAs go hard into things like "last minute resistance" and "anti-slut defense." These are absolutely rapey and awful. And they're pretty much theoretical rationalizations and analysis created by soy boys LARPing as "PUAs" (any online subculture that has lots of acronyms is often populated by the same basic template nerds with various extra skins and other DLC attached.)
Actual, real life "PUA" types experience consent in absolutely black and white scenarios like "has she leaned over and asked me to f**k her? Is she actively unfastening my belt? Has she already gone ahead and leaned in for the kiss herself?" Real life PUAs look at a grey zone not just as a potential risk, but as a failure at the application of their skills. The idea isn't to jump her bones as she is perhaps just beginning to imagine an encounter, but to push the pre-physical seduction to such an extent that she is actively soliciting it in no uncertain terms - and will look back on it with genuine happiness. The parallel between real world PUA stuff and corporate sales is undeniable; don't sell them, make them want to buy the thing so bad they're shoving money at you. And make them happy to see you when you come back for a second time around (am I talking about sales or sex here .... I don't even know anymore).
Real life seduction / PUA / whatever you want to call it is about the challenge of generating real and powerful desire. It's not about weaseling into a grey area to be the sex-bandito who's in and out in a flash.
This is also why lots of (again, "real") PUAs leave that subculture - they want to level up to the next stage of generating real, powerful, and enduring desire over a long term relationship.
Because that is incredibly hard. And supremely worthwhile.
100ProofTollBooth
3mo ago
You hit it on the head when you said "a single dad's romantic market value is much higher than a single mom's." The only place where this isn't necessarily the case (although, mostly still is) is in the PMC, wherein divorces are so common, along with professional single women running the household, that single motherhood is seen as no-big-deal to almost-a-badge-of-honor.
Very different situation for a working-class woman with children trying to date/re-marry.
This is another reason in favor of the theory that many products of the sexual revolution (no-fault divorce, abundant and common contraception) disproportionately benefited an upper-class that we now call the PMC, while disproportionately penalizing the working-class. You have a whole group of highly educated 1960s women who've tricked themselves into thinking they're oppressed, aided and abetted by the sexually and ethically incontinent Don Draper types. The latter now has no conflict of responsibilities in sleeping around, because the baby no longer has a say. The former can pursue endless responsibility-free self expression and simply jump in and out marriages when the flavor's gone.
All this happening just when the poor (of any color) were able to develop more solid family structures and starting to enjoy the benefits of escaping an agrarian hand-to-mouth existence. Emphasis, there, on family instead of individual.
Within a decade, it all get's ruined for them. Then, by the 1980s, those just above them (the mythical steel / auto factory workers and longshoremen types of the Rust Belt and industrial Northeast) become tragic characters in Bruce Springsteen songs because it turns out they weren't that far ahead. 2023: "Rich Men North of Richmond"
100ProofTollBooth
5mo ago
entering the shadow realm
Peace be upon you, fellow gym-meme brother/sister.
Re: "20 pullups, but no deadlift?" The case that comes to mind was a long distance runner who I saw doing a PFT. Rail skinny, but did kill his pullups. By sheer insane coincidence, ran into him at the post gym later that day. 2 plate deadlift, had to cat-back it by the third rep. My theory is that the hyper-specifically trained for his pullups on the PFT by doing .... a shit ton of pullups for several months. I can see how that would over emphasize biceps-to-lats but not actually develop the full posterior chain through the glutes and hamstrings. I think you're also probably correct in the "form" argument - he had no conception of how to use his legs to start the rep.
Now, would've been able to rack pull 225? Hey, maybe.
100ProofTollBooth
6mo ago
I'm a Big Man.
I don't mean fat. I'm 6'8" and go about 245. Through almost all of my 20s, I was maybe 200-210. In college and before I was below that and so noticeably in the "bean pole" range of skinny. A late 20s dive into lifting paired with finally hitting the big metabolical downshift means I'm no longer "potentially a basketball player" but firmly in the land of "hey, that's a Big Dude!" No tattoos, but do have a trimmed beard and close shaved head. I've been called Nordic-looking often (I'm not).
Question is; what are some things I should be aware of in terms of perceptions by other people. I don't want to come across as utterly clueless - I already go out of my way to be a little goofy / ice-breaker-y when meeting new people. I smile (and am concious of it) a lot when dealing with bartenders / cafe people / passers by on a day to day basis. Still, I think I may be oblivious to some things. I'm especially worried about professional context. COVID had me fully remote for two years and Zoom meetings take a lot out of relative physical size awareness. New job (as of the summer) has me in a suit 4 days a week in a more conservative / traditional setting and I'm wondering if that's modulated my smiley/goofiness. FWIW, I don't think I perceive much hesitation from coworkers, and I'm getting a normal level of invitation to informal drinks after work etc.
Would also appreciate any insight on NON-romantic male/female dynamics. On the dating side of things, there is a consistent volume of women who straight up tractor-beam to Big Dudes. (Yes, it's Daddy issues and Lumberjack fantasies as far as the eye can see. SNL had a skit about it with dudes from the Chiefs after the won the Superbowl).
100ProofTollBooth
11mo ago
Any sort of legislation mandating nutrition facts at sit-down restaurants would end with class action lawsuits.
"Why does it taste so much better at Applebys / Cheesecake Factory / Ruth's Chris / Nobu than what I make it at home, I'm a good cook!" Because that stuff is straight up loaded with salt, fat (usually butter), and sugar (the white death) to levels you would never even consider at home. The big "fancy" Italian spots like Maggiano's (spellcheck) are especially egregious here where their seemingly large menus are the same half dozen ingredients recombined and then coated in some variety of unbelievable fat-and-sugar sauce.
Quick aside: I fucking love all of those kind of places and consider them to be the crowning achievements of Western Society. Fight me
But the fact that people eating there don't have to actually look at the quantifiable hated they're laying down on their gastrointestinal and endocrine systems means that the meal is guilt free. In some weird backwards-economic-behavior way, I think the mid-tier expensive ones make people think that, because it was so pricey, it must be some level higher on the health scale. I believe this to be false. I think on a value-and-health adjusted basis, McDonalds/Chipotles are probably the best on the planet. I think prom-dinner-fancy places (Maggianos, Cheescake factory etc.) are heinously expensive and disaster for the body.
But fuck it, lava cake makes Mrs. Tollbooth frisky AF and your boy can go HAM on those breadsticks.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
I agree with your final point about the evolution of human relations. People do own their own labor and time to a degree never before possible.
However, @FiveHourMarathon has a point I don't think you can totally dismiss as "relativistic nonsense." Take an example that hasn't fundamentally changed in at least 100 - 150 ears; the Military.
A 2nd Lieutenant is typically between 22 and 25. A Platoon Sergeant (typically somewhere between E-5 to E-7 depending on factors and how fucked up the enlistment cycle has been) is within just a few years of age of that 2nd LT .... probably late 20s.
On paper, the 2nd LT is utterly superior in everyway to the Platoon Sergeant. Short of physical violence, the 2nd LT has dictatorial control. In real life, the platoon sergeant has about a decade of experience (and, for this generaiton, a lot of that in combat if its a combat arms MOS). They know then ins and outs of the organization, the duty station, the personalities up and down the command. If the 2nd LT does not strike a balance of experience deference to the Plt Sergeant while not looking weak in front of the men, he's going to have a bad time. A lot of self-conscious but very gung ho 2nd LTs will totally blow off the subtle suggestions of Plt Sergeants ... and learn some hard lessons about leadership the hard way.
The point is, even in a situation where, yes, you have close to absolute superiority in every way over a "subordiante" (fun fact the etymological root of Sergeant is Servant) if you're going to have a long term or just a non-transactional relationship with that person, you have to invest in the relationship somehow.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
The length of my reply may not communicate it, but I've been thinking about this question pretty much daily since 2017.
The answer is that if either a Man or Woman is looking at what the other can "bring to the table," the relationship is going to fail at some point. First, remember the passion-to-companionship cycle. At the outset, both parties generally want (and receive) fireworks. Somewhere pretty early on this gives way to a more "fun friends who have sex" situation. If it makes it two years (look around at your social circle and mark this as a milepost for breakups) then a lot of couples will get married if both parties are 28+. 7 Year itch within a marriage, 50/50 in America make it. Kids show up a lot of marriages are effectively dead but keep on going for the kids. Divorce late in high school or early college is most common for upper-middle class suburbanites.
The point of the above paragraph is that a romantic relationship and marriage that last 10,20,30 years changes so much that it is not possible for either party to meaningfully say "Yes, I'm in this for life" at the outset if the rubric is simply the "match score" for the other partner.
What's required is a personal commitment to the idea of a long-term relationship before you even meet the other person. And a recognition that the relationship will drastically change multiple times and require constant work. If that is the starting point, you've got a shot and then you can sort of grocery list for all of the matching attributes. If that is not your starting point, I think you can still have a decent enough romantic life, but you shouldn't think you're going to make it long term.
I don't blame this totally on the failing character of contemporary western folks. Most of marriage in human history (and, I would submit, the majority of it today worldwide) is basic economic survival and co-dependence. The idea of learning to love whichever person you ended up shaking up with to not starve to death is far more common the world over than "omg, this is how I met your mother" fairly tale stories. For a trip, read up on the emotional development of the arranged marriages of first generation Indian Couples in the U.S. from maybe the 1970s or so.
The idea of deep emotion, long-term pair bonding as the everything of marriage is a product of the massive growth in personal wealth the western world experienced after World War 2 and is also a good outcome of the mid-century feminist movement. It's just super, super rare. The bad outcome of this has been the destruction of the nuclear family since the 1960s. When the primary motivator is personal emotional satisfaction in a highly individualist society, the family is going to have a bad time absent some very strong microsocial pressures (i.e. high religiosity communities, or hyper invested "helicopter" parents who see the performance of their children as reflective of personal worth).
To conclude, however, I wouldn't call myself a marriage / long-term relationship cynic. In fact, I still think I want to get married (I just think the odds are low). I'm slightly optimistic that there's going to be some level of Gen-Z backlash to the crazy 4th wave feminism we see now and that may prompt new personal commitment to having a nuclear family and shedding some of the "but how do I maximize my own personal emotional state?" thinking. I am not Gen-Z, however, and their customs and ways are strange to me.
TLDR; It isn't about your partner, it's all about you.
76 Days sober.
Jan 1 - present.
I didn't have a rock bottom moment or full on dependency, but I was undoubtedly drinking far too much and for not good reasons. My estimate is somewhere just north of 1,000 drinks for 2023.
Expected: Energy, mood, discipline, mental health all far,far better. Everyone says this and it is true.
Unexpected: Quitting was easier than I thought. After day 10, I felt genuinely confident I could maintain sobriety. After day 20, I started to feel proud. After day 30, I actively started thinking about how much it would suck to relapse. After day 50 .... I just don't think about drinking anymore. I've been to dinners, bars, and hangouts with friends where everyone else was drinking and have had to turn down offers multiple times in one night. It just hasn't been hard. This was very unexpected.
There have been zero downsides. Social life hasn't suffered. A (minor) additional unexpected - the number of people who genuinely give you a "Good for you" style response and mean it. Some of these people, I think, may be struggling themselves.
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