100ProofTollBooth
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User ID: 2039
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
I will read the rest of your post if you can confirm that you’ve understood why you are incorrect per the above
I'm far too dumb to do that.
It’s not always possible to drive with an open cup of water in your car, depending on cupholders and road conditions
Is this why my pants are wet?
100ProofTollBooth
9mo ago
"...contribute significantly to the rural character..."
"...the stewardship many feel for their communities."
This reads like the preamble to some hardcore NIMBY organizations' charter. Amorphous phrases that point to "character", "community" and (unelected) "stewardship" don't trump personal property rights. They're not even in the same neighborhood.
And when is the "character" of a place set in stone? This is straight up No True Scotsman 101. This is such a literal trope the Simpson have a hallmark episode about it. The only constant is change and no person or group gets to self-appoint as "arbiter of the good character of a place and community." That's a well paved road to localized authoritarianism.
I definitely code traditionalist conservative, but trampling on individual and property rights "to make sure we keep the Main Street Habdashery up for another 100 years" is the same as when progressives want to outlaw parental choice in schools so that "we can end bigotry forever by forcing Ibram X. Kendi book reports."
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Mostly pretty young women crying very loudly.
Or their male counterparts who vociferously swear allegiance to whatever is the object of that crying or, on the other political extreme, high volume chauvinists who trade content and persuasion for volume and repetition. #I'm-With-The-Orange-Man-All-Women
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Part of me wants to report this for being incendiary.
But, a larger part of me just sort of likes to contemplate it as a kind of internet modern art.
I am now Cameron from Ferris Bueller at the museum.
100ProofTollBooth
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
3mo ago
and some moral frameworks attribute little or no moral value to beings that have never achieved sapience, regardless of their status as humans or as probable future sapients.
How do you objectively measure "sapience"?
If it is discrete, what's the dividing line?
If is is continuous, this leads to the conclusion that the "less sapient" are less human than the more sapient.
If this is your position, exactly where is the cutoff point for disenfranchising already living humans from their right to remain alive?
If you can identify that point, where is the point (necessarily further upstream) wherein we disenfranchise humans in a democracy from being able to vote because of their substandard sapience?
tl;dr Eugenics and explicit genetic tyranny all the way down.
(Some of the other comments in this thread are straight wild. I can't tell if they're LARPing, triple-nested irony or finewine shitposting, or just ChatGPT hallucinations.)
TLDR on how heterosexual women choose mates can be reduced to "social proof." This isn't all encompassing, but it's the single most important factor. The more you can put yourself in an environment with demonstrable social proof the better. I've written about this before, sorry for the self-link.
I think a lot of guys screw up the first date by making it far too 1-on-1 and not somehow building in that social proof. In my experience, there is a very simple way to get reliable massive social proof without having to stress on logistics or complex arrangements:
Become a regular at a bar.
A couple ground rules. 1. The bar has to be a pretty fancy cocktail bar or hipster style joint. Think rough wood paneling, low lighting, and a bearded gent who knows too much about agave plants behind the bar. 2. You don't become a regular by showing up a few times on your own and getting hammered and tipping heavy.
Here's how you become a regular:
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You have to spend time (and money) going in on off hours and figuring out which bartender works on core date nights (Thur, Fri, Sat). The economics of bars being what they are, it's pretty rare for even the "Prime Time" bartenders to not work at least one afternoon shift. I find luck on Sundays and Tuesdays the most. You go in right after work (or as early as about 4pm if you can work remote or have the flexibility). Sit at the bar, get the menu etc. etc.
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Have a personality and interesting things to talk about. I know this can be very difficult. Here are some tips - start out by asking their recommendation for a drink / cocktail. They're going to recommend something that's pretty inoffensive (usually a slight modification to a basic manhattan, martini, or old fashioned and their various tequila cousins). If they ask what you like, have an answer ready. When they make it, compliment it and find a road to go down. What does that mean? Don't say "oh, it's fruity!" or "oh, yeah, I like that!" Those are dead ends. Make an observation, and then make an extending comment on that observation; "There's some smokiness in there ... what's another drink where there's more of that (or) what can complement smokiness (or) do people like that smokiness." Oh, goodness, you've just started a conversation. Remember when I said that you should look for a fancy spot where the guy behind the bar knows a lot about agave / bourbon or whatever? This is because if you can differentiate your comment on the drink enough, you can get that guy to shoulder the conversation for the next 30 minutes by letting him go on and on about .... whatever. Listen, ask leading questions, offer light opinions ("I never really liked whiskey because I think it has a bad aftertaste" is fine "GIN IS FOR PUSSIES" is not). Just ... talk.
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Ask the guy when he's on again (meaning, when he's working again). Show back up, do the same thing. You'll know you've made a (good) impression if they start saying "What's up, dude?" after you've walked in but before you've sat down. You'll know you're really in if they start to make you custom drinks without prompting to see what your reaction is.
3a. I wouldn't recommend this step if you haven't done this kind of thing before, but I just recently did it at a new bar I've been checking out and it was a lot of fun. If the bartender works an off evening (Tuesday/Wednesday night for instance) and you can afford the day off / hangover the next day - go in and just get hammered. Because it's an off night, it should be slow and they're likely to drink a little bit with you, comp a couple rounds, and open up the conversation topics a little more. This is kind of a "stars have to align" move, but, if you can pull it off, it's awesome.
After regularly (you know, like a regular) showing up to this bartenders shifts for three - four weeks, AND maintaining a good rolling conversation, you're set. Now back to dates and where the fun comes in.
You setup the date to meet at the bar for casual drinks. That's not hard and it's seems a little basic however She'll do the research on the bar and find out that, at the least, it's a trendy cocktail bar and she's not going to some horrible sports / dive bar with awful bathrooms and warm beer. But the magic happens when the two of you walk in and your partner in crime, the bartender, says, "What's up, TollBooth?!" and means it. You'll probably get a better seat at the bar than what the host/hostess would default to. Bartenders interact with and watch people for a living so he'll understand it's a date right off the bat. You're golden. From here, just have a normal conversation with your date and enjoy things like the following, ranked in order of most to least likely:
- Off menu drinks (that aren't anything special, but the "off menu"-ness makes them appear so)
- Unordered (but free) appetizers or deserts
- Unsolicited comments about how funny / wild / smart / "different" you are from the bartender to your date
- Totally made up stories the bartender tells to wingman you
- Even more outlandish lies like "Yeah, last time TollBooth was in here, I ended up serving him like four drinks that these girls were buying him, it was crazy."
You have to remember that at these craft cocktail places, the over-knowledgeable bartender is running the show in the eyes of the patrons (it's actually still probably either the head chef or just the GM who's really doing it, but, whatever). So, in the eyes of your date, the most "important dude" in the building is now pumping you up like a hype man. Your date will feel like she's in the center of the attention of the place without feeling like there's a spotlight on her. She gets to feel self-satisfied that she's snagged the most popular dude. What's more, because the bartender is going to make sure service is snappy, it can even come across like you've got some sort of special pull and the dinner is somehow just better than it could be anywhere else. She'll be telling her friends about it and just drink in their envy. Your friendly bartender will also act as a constant refrain point for the conversation if you hit a weird silent phase and run out of things to say. "Rodrigo is such a cool dude," can be said again and again to restart the conversation, and it's also a subtle cue of "remember my social proof."
After the date, you do what you want. After many years of operating out of the cut-and-dry bachelor dating playbook, I don't try to move towards sex. I don't care. I want to see if I've actually captured durable attention (which is the most fought over commodity nowadays, right?) and, more importantly, if I enjoyed the conversation, feel some chemistry and compatibility, and genuinely want to see her again. Maybe a quick kiss or something and then it's part ways / separate Ubers.
Even more than dates, this works well for (casual) work dinners or happy hours. Although I'm a little hesitant to recommend it for client / sales meetings because some people get the wrong idea and think you're an alcoholic who shows up there everyday.
Some closing thoughts:
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Why is the bartender actually doing this for you? One, by showing up regularly for a few weeks and many shifts before the date, you are spending some money and signalling you'll probably keep doing it. This is a transaction to an extent. The larger point, however, is that you made good conversation. 80% of bartender conversation is them listening to people talk about themselves and their own lives, or having to navigate petty small talk on sports, politics, and pop culture. And they're on their feet for 8 - 10 (or more hours). If you can break that monotony, they're going to love you.
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Tip heavy always. This is a business.
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Throughout this write-up, I've used "he" as the pronoun for the bartender and obviously assumed the bartender is male. That's the harder scenario.
You can do all of this with a female bartender too and, if you do, your date is guaranteed to end in fireworks.
100ProofTollBooth
27d ago
Awesome. Thank you for the well articulated reply.
One more piece of anec-data to take or leave; It seems to me that my strength training (heavy compound lifts, think Starting Strength protocols) directly improve my runs as well. I'm sure there's a frontier to these when additional weight starts to retard progress. However, as of now, it feels like a free lunch.
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
Korwa.
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
The vast majority of kids don't abuse knives. Why can't it be the same with recreational drugs?
The intent of recreational drugs is to "use it on yourself."
The intent of a knife is never to "use it on yourself" except for exceedingly rare medical emergency situations or incidents of self-harm that are universally recognized as bad.
I think that porn has helped me to become more comfortable with my sexuality.
Bully for you.
I don't think that there is anything shameful whatsoever about watching porn.
Would you be alright with a stranger watching porn next to you on an airline flight? Or in a library? Or around children?
100ProofTollBooth
2mo ago
And it was worth it. LED lights with good CRIs are better in every way that matters when compared to incandescents.
If I believe that incandescents are "better" in a "way" that you believe does not matter, is it alright for me to own and operate one?
100ProofTollBooth
3mo ago
How do you envision a proof of a moral/ethical principle as valid or invalid to actually proceed?
The hard requirement is that there's some sort of moral absolute from/to which to trace validity. Moral relativism is chaotic meaninglessness. You can't "prove" anything from chaos.
More generally, however, I'm not sure that I see much value in wholly secular moral / ethic philosophy. I see it failing in one of two directions. Either (a) You get into a sort of recursive set of definitions. This is the Sam Harris issue as he tries to define "good" morals as "those things that help to realize human flourishing." Okay, well, what does "flourishing" mean? And what if two people, or groups, use it to mean different things? The other failure mode (b) is when you do create an internally coherent rubric that seeks to maximize some sort of measurable norm. Enter utilitarianism and, eventually, effective altruism (Singer et al). You can concoct some sort of scheme that lets you say things like "in order to maximize the happiness function, in aggregate, of all humanity .... it's totally alright to unalive the following criteria of already existing humans ..."
Furthermore, secular moral philosophy seems to me to be amazingly epistemically arrogant. The complex system of systems of 7 billion people (with different languages, cultures, etc.) is on its face impossible to model with any accuracy, let alone to make normative recommendations for. But, the EA types have revealed themselves to be bad at the smart thinkin'. When you start to worship the Chubby Behemoth, you can update your priors all you want, but dividing by zero was probably when it all went sideways.
100ProofTollBooth
5mo ago
If you're in a powerlifting cycle of any sort, you've already move past the beginner lifter phase which, I believe, was OP's situation. We're talking about two different things.
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
5mo ago
I apologize if this is better suited to a Sunday thread, but it's top of mind for me right now.
Any recommendations for reactionary reading? I want to be specific that I have no interest in the "Dark Enlightenment" Yarvin/Land side of things as I've read enough of that to know it really is permanently-online neo-reddit-Edge-Lord content.
To maybe give a bit of a Customers Also Liked vibe; I'm moving through the works of James Burnham and have read a lot of Russell Kirk and Willmoore Kendall. I know these folks would be more in the traditionalist conservative camp, which I have enjoyed. Wondering if there's anything beyond them that doesn't actually drop into out-and-proud monarchism / theocracy.
100ProofTollBooth
11mo ago
I can't say with a lot of specific certainty as I don't know those policing systems much at all.
I know that the concept of civil liberties and privacy are fundamentally weaker. For instance, I know that there has been at least an official police visit to folks who have posted offensive language on twitter. Not an arrest, per se, but an official sanctioned visit to the domicile. The threshold for what would take a warrant in the USA is much lower. I believe the language is "vital to an ongoing investigation" at the discretion of the police themselves - no judge needed.
So, assuming I'm not wildly off base with my statements above (which are, admittedly, fuzzy at best) ... A constable in the UK would hear that Leroy Brown is a bad dude from the local toughs and then, presumably, launch and official investigation. This would allow Constable Fish-N-Chips to surveil Mr. Brown and search his domicile (again, I think) with near impunity. No such thing as off-limits or 'non-pertinent' information. It's a 24/7 (or as much time as the cops feel like) surveillance and waiting game until Mr. Brown somehow commits a crime with prosecuting.
100ProofTollBooth
11mo ago
Largely, yes. The bright side, however, is that there is more than enough good stuff that you'll never have to fall back to the personal novellas.
I'd personally recommend jumping in the deep end: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy. Remember it was published in the 1980s and probably penned throughout the 1970s. I wonder if any editor at a publishing house today would even read draft chapter nowadays.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
Just wanted to say this is a legit AF post.
100ProofTollBooth
1yr ago
This is a great point. Also love the phrasing. Bravo.
100ProofTollBooth
14d ago
Some of the best examples of this are the Millenial/Gen-Z Catholic YouTubers who post video monologues with clickbait thumbnails and have been cycling through the zesty topics of Porn, Exorcism, and anti-Feminism recently.
But I guess they have a point - The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius mostly involve sitting quietly for several hours. There can't possibly be an audience for that
100ProofTollBooth
23d ago
I'm with her
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
I agree with your sentiment wholeheartedly even if it looks like there is some distance between us semantically.
I would also say that your (again, God forbid) wife-in-coma scenario reveals what I believe to be the fact that all humans have a natural impulse towards what we would term faith. It may be utterly a- or even anti-religious and its often poorly developed and formalized, but the innateness of that desire remains. I think it has to to propagate the species. There are certainly times where things look forlorn and all available data might point to hitting your own off button to unalive yourself. You need either a strong intuitive volition to not do that (faith) ... or have the mental acuity of Mr. Big Brain himself Sam Harris to jiu-jitsu rationalize your way into it.
100ProofTollBooth
1mo ago
How do you say where one color ends and another begins if there's a smooth transition between them, how do you draw precise boundaries two races or two languages?
You can't / it's really hard. But this is why my post began with the intent to avoid a semantic argument which eventually gets where it starts; nowhere.
How do you come up with precise criteria ...
In this context, I would say the line of demarcation is "was this content produced with the intent to serve a market demand of consumers using the previous demand signals of those very consumers to design it (the content)?" If yes, then Porn.
I put "art" as a meta-concept closely related to "truth." Anything that earnestly tries to reveal the truth of something could be called art (but could also be called something else - "analysis", "philosophy" what have you. I'm just saying "art" is one possible label). But something that is designed, constructed, and broadcast solely to cater to the consumerist preferences of a group of people fails this test. To give an example; I love sports and love the emblems of certain sports teams. I think the crossed "NY" of the Yankees is almost like the Coke logo in terms of human universal recognition. Yet, I wouldn't quite call it art. Another post in the thread discussed Warhol and Campbell's soup. Although I think it was self-indulgent and eye-rollingly "hip," I can at least contemplate the argument that it was an attempt to reveal some truth about mid 20th century consumerism.
I don't even trust myself to be able to make the distinction
Combined with the intro sentence of that same paragraph, it appears you are close to saying "I don't trust anyone to make a distinction besides those who call themselves pro-porn and art experts?" Perhaps that's not charitable, but that's how I'm reading it. Regardless, I've set forth to you my explicit criteria (above). Also saying something like "I don't trust myself on x, but I can also spot other folks who can't be trusted" seems to be a little bit of a double-reverse. I can't quite put a finger on it, but I think this is rhetorical sleight of hand.
Although we must of necessity classify various works as superior and inferior, such judgements are always in the last instance provisional; it is impossible to guarantee that you have exhausted all the possibilities inherent in any given work, and all judgements may be overturned by new evidence or future developments and recontextualizations.
Yes, the future may change how we look at the past and we cannot predict the future. I don't know what point this proves other than to retreat to a milquetoast "who's to say?" Nevertheless, I do actually think it is, has, and always will be easy to designate something as porn / filth (though I don't believe we should ban it). Take James Joyce's infamous letters to his wife (or maybe mistress, I can't remember). Even when you're one of the greatest writers in 100 years, when you talk about fucking the farts out of you "shitting like a pig" girlfriend, you're getting fuckin' gross, dude. Ditto for Lord Byron and his frat house "So, I was banging this one chick, right?" poems.
I would also say that I believe that a certain wellspring of unrestrained sexual energy is necessary to counterbalance the encroaching technocratic, hyper-rational global order.
The technocrats pretend to believe in that so that they can trick normies into hypersexual practices that obliterate communities. This is exactly the objective and outcome of feminism - It says young women should "express themselves" and "have fun" .... so that they then end up bitter, unmarried, childless, and neurotic at 35. It ruins souls and beauty.
What's needed is a fundamental respect for the human body across all of its dimensions, including the sexual. That's the whole point. That's what everyone anti-porn is arguing. Pornography is not only demonstrably extrinsically bad because, as the Irish study says, it turns people generally and broadly unhappy, it is intrinsically bad because its production constitutes a fundamental disrespect for human beauty and authentic sexuality or what would may be called eros. This is a little too meta to be a serious demarcation criteria, but that's what I would submit for the porn/art distinct even outside of the modern internet hyperscale context.
It is bewildering to me that so much explicit sexual content in society is broadcast out to people of all ages, without their informed consent, and then mass reaction to it is sort of a squirm-and-look-away at best. This is bad for everyone involved and everyone watching.
the left - they are deeply mistrustful of sexuality
Couldn't agree more.
Well not with that attitude it won't.
I laughed.
"Which is more important in an internal combustion engine? Oxygen or the flammable substance?"
It's diet and exercise. You have to have both. Together.
These pills won't make people healthier. They will make people feel better about themselves. They aren't weight loss drugs, they're NextGen antidepressants. Metabolic syndrome often does not present as visible obesity. Major stomach and liver issues can go undetected for years. People will start taking these drugs and remain at a lower body weight. Then, one day, they die suddenly and any autopsy performed with reveal superfluous amounts of visceral fat, a leaking stomach, and a liver close to non-function.
Physical fitness is, among many other things, an information feedback loop. If you are in bad shape, you have been making poor health decisions. Sometimes, this can be unavoidable (late nights during crunch time at work or school, what have you). But, mostly, it's a clear indication that you're making poor, poor choices. Using something that covers up the effects of these choices does nothing to alter that decision process. I'd wager that habitual users of Wegovy etc. probably will also habitually (ab)use other substances - alcohol, narcotics, sugar, social media. This is not a road to health.
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