ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
No bio...
User ID: 1012
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
if you are going to home school you'll need to dig out chances for your kid(s) to socialize adequately
Yes, this is key. We're hoping to have them out of the house doing something with other kids their age at least 3-4 times per week, plus playdates, playing in the park, etc. One of the two is very outgoing, so we're already thinking about how we're going to handle this and looking for homeschooling groups and activities that are not tied to schools. We very much want to avoid the "house arrest" model of homeschooling.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Thank you!
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Thank you. And you make a good point. I have also had early deaths in my family due to alcoholism, so I try to be very critical of my own rationalizations. Still an uphill battle though. I'll try to post about it again in a few weeks.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Any good homeschooling resources that TheMotte would recommend?
I want to start homeschooling my two elementary school aged kids from this year (one is early elementary, the other late elementary). What are some good resources for learning at home? I'm interested in online tools (Khan Academy, stuff like that) but also premade programs and curricula, mail order/correspondence programs, anything like that. Also, any resources on being an effective homeschool teacher without formal training in education.
I want to teach the usual basics skills, but I'd also like to teach formal logic, Latin, computer skills/coding, and handwriting.
I think there was also a recent thread about homeschooling experiences on here... I'll have to dig that up as well.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Okay, that sounds pretty cool. I like the idea of taking as the narrative of a British man rather than that of an omniscient narrator. I'll pull it off my shelf and give it a read.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Thanks, I appreciate it. And yeah, it gets really expensive. Never start drinking scotch or cognac, boys...
Re your question, I mentioned it in another post, but listening to the Huberman Lab episode on alcohol helped me quit. He actually talks about the glass of red wine a day idea here. tl;dl the effect of the good compounds in red wine is so small that you'd have to drink a ton of wine to get any benefits, and the physical effects of alcohol are so negative that there's really no "healthy" amount. But he does acknowledge that you should weigh the social and QoL benefits of an occasional glass or two against the effects and use your judgement (e.g. a glass or two of wine at wedding is probably okay of you're not an alcoholic).
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Yeah, definitely alcoholism, though unfortunately there are people who will gatekeep the term and claim that you need to get blackout on 20 beers a night or something. IMO it's more about the effect that it has on you mentally and physically than the volume of alcohol, and the effects on me were becoming increasingly negative.
I hadn't heard of naltrexone, but I'll look into it. That said, quitting booze is part of a bigger "detox" I'm trying to do. I'm also planning on cutting down my caffeine intake (2 cups of coffee a day) and my sugar intake to find out what my body's baseline is like.
My final push to quit for a while was listening to the Huberman Lab podcast about alcohol. It's not just "not good" for you, it's not just "bad" for you, it's really, really damaging to your body (gut, liver, and brain) in ways that AIUI scientists didn't even fully appreciate until relatively recently, even at what are commonly considered "safe" levels like a 1-2 drinks a night.
I realized that while I used to be able to accommodate a bit of light drinking in my life because my life had more "slack," I was now older and had significant responsibilities at work and home, so I really didn't have excess time and energy to spend on alcohol anymore.
ETA: I read that Huberman is known for playing fast and loose with the facts, so it might be wise to take the podcast with a teaspoon of salt.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Yes, but I actually like it neat. I have a bottle of Wild Turkey 8 in my cupboard that I'm trying not to think about right now, ha.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
The ritual aspect is a huge part of it. Since I'm WFH, my routine is: finish last meeting and clock out (lol Japan) -> pour drink -> family time. I think I use it to help me transition between my work and home life since the shift can be pretty jarring. I've started going on a "pseudo-commute" where I go for a 20-30 minute walk directly after work before coming back home and going full dad mode. That seems to have helped.
I'm hoping you're right about the first few days. This morning (Day 5) I've felt the best yet, so perhaps the worst is already behind me. Though when quitting addictions and habits, I find that it will feel like smooth sailing for a bit until some unexpected stressor pops up, and then the temptations will come back stronger than ever in that moment. So I'm trying to be mindful of that.
When I've gone for my company-mandated health checkups here, I usually get a mild, friendly chiding from the doctor about my liver and my drinking habits (and also my weight... BMI 26.0 is pretty fat in Japan). It might have to do with my clinics being in hip, modern areas of Tokyo where the doctors are all younger. My experience with older docs here has been that they mostly just want me to GTFO ASAP.
Also chuckled at your wife's reaction. My wife also thinks I'm fun and outgoing when I drink, and she says that she thinks it's cool that I can hold my liquor far better than any of our family friends. I think you're right that drinking is seen as just part of (male) life here, although I've also spent a lot of time wondering how that's so considering the high rate of alcohol intolerance among Japanese.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Cool post, thanks for writing it. Should I read Shogun? It's been recommended to me a thousand times for obvious reasons, but I'm a jerk about historical accuracy and I'm worried it's going to be full of anachronistic nonsense or magical oriental Mr. Miyagi characters. Maybe I'm approaching the book too seriously and should suspend disbelief?
For 2025, I want to read some self-help books, strange as that may sound, to get some of the books that are always being recommended.
FWIW, I'm reading King Warrior Magician Lover by Moore & Gillette, and it gets recommended fairly often in some manosphere corners. I'm only about halfway through and I'm not sure I'm totally sold on (what appears to me to be) all the Jungian psychobabble, but it's kind of interesting and different, and I could see how the framework might be useful for men. That might be one to check out.
Tim Ferriss gets recommended a lot. I read the Four Hour Work Week back in college, but it didn't leave a huge impression on me. All I remember is that he became a "kickboxing world champion" in some weight class by somehow exploiting a loophole in the rules and... that proved some point about hustling, or something. But a lot of people seem to like his stuff.
I quit drinking cold turkey 4 days ago.
I feel mild anhedonia, experiences I normally enjoy are muted or feel like they're happening to someone else and I'm only watching, if that makes sense. I have too much energy during the day and it's hard to relax fully in the evening. My appetite has dropped a lot, but I still want to eat because I've increased my lifting recently. It's kind of the way you feel hungry when you have a cold. You feel your body's need for sustenance, but no foods are particularly appealing. My libido has dropped considerably, though that may also be due to the extra fatigue from increased lifting. In the evening, light is too bright and noises are too loud, kind of like when you have a bad hangover. My baseline stress level feels higher; on a scale of 1-10, I was previously around a 3 or 4 most days, and now I feel like I'm stuck at 6 all the time. Sometimes I suddenly feel exhausted during the day and want to rest, but I'm too wired to actually relax before bedtime, sort of like when you've had too much caffeine to sleep.
On the bright side, my feels like it's working at 200% speed. While I was doing well at work before, now I'm absolutely crushing it. I don't have heartburn or any other gastric trouble anymore, I don't have much appetite for junk food, and I find temptations to my various vices almost trivially easy to resist. Getting up in the morning is getting a lot easier. I have the focus and the patience to listen to chat with my kids in the evening after dinner. I can handle more chores. I can take care of my wife better. I can control my temper much more easily. I spend probably 1 hour less per day lying on the couch. I picked up a physical dead tree book and started reading it for the first time in many months. I'm not thirsty all the time, and my body doesn't hurt as much when I wake up in the morning. My heart rate gets back down to the low 50s when I sleep at night. My sleep quality is much better. And maybe best of all, I don't feel the sense of guilt and self-loathing I've learned to live with every night when I go to bed and every morning when I wake up. That's probably what keeps me going each day more than anything, I don't feel like I suck anymore.
I was (am? well, hopefully was) a 5-8 drinks a night kind of guy which, while clearly not good, doesn't really seem like "real alcoholism" when you google alcoholism and read stories from people downing a fifth or two of vodka and blacking out every night. But that amount was apparently enough to slowly change my mind and body over months in ways I hadn't even realized, and I'm dealing with the aftermath now. It's very... sobering.
I wrote this as a personal reflection and thought I'd share it in case any other folks are on the same path.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
For what you're looking for, I would pick up a cheap CompTIA Net+ book and maybe a Cisco CCENT book and read through the chapters you're interested in. They're written to provide the practical understanding that a junior IT tech would need to perform basic network-related tasks and they got me through the first few years of my tech career. You can probably find a ton of them on libgen. I would steer clear of single-topic books (e g. just TCP/IP) since they go into way more depth and detail than you'll ever need (though they are extremely interesting IMO).
Are these people just straight up lying? Are they so influenced by ideology they can't see what is obviously true or false? I honestly don't know what evidence they are looking at that makes them think what they think
My understanding is that it goes something like
MOTTE: There were a nonzero number of black people in England and so we should represent them. Look, here's a document from the 16th century that says "Lord Featherstonhaugh's goode and faithfull servant, Thomas, was a manne of darke complexion hailing fromm the distant continents" which clearly means that there was at least one person who was quite possibly a sub-Saharan African living on the island of Great Britain in the last 500 years.
BAILEY: There were probably lots of black people toiling away in England but the bigoted white English whitewashed them or refused to record them in history so we don't have any evidence, but we do know that's just the sort of thing the racist English would do, so we're justified in additing a lot of extra black characters to media. And even if that turns out not to be true, it's the right thing to do, because English history is the story of racist colonialists who abused the rest of nonwhite world, and so we should dilute, subvert, and erase history in revenge and to ensure that Never Again will whites threaten innocent POCs.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Fair enough, I'm not a business owner so I wouldn't know.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
I feel as though I'm reading the beginning of a Murakami Haruki novel. Fun read.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
No, there was actually just some dust on the cover.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
That would be surprising since I've heard that the great majority of Yakuza members are over 50 now.
If they can't pay 105k, they either don't really need that employee or they're in dire financial straits. Consider the cost of an $15k/year to retain a competent, productive employee willing to upskill, versus the saving $15k/year but incurring the cost of:
[a team short one engineer for 3-6 months (time to become fully productive, maybe more) + X months to find and vet a suitable candidate + >90k salary because the last guy negotiates his salary two years ago and the market raise has risen since then]
Not to mention you're taking a gamble on the new hire, who despite vetting may turn out to be incompetent, lazy, and/or an asshole. Maybe I'm missing something, but it sure seems easier to just pay 15k and avoid all that pain, plus you might even get some loyalty in return. Certain members of my team are fairly loyal to me since I go to bat for them regularly.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
I don't disagree at all.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
But where are your feats, your accomplishments? What have you done, besides praising Russia and calling Jews poison and publishing links to a bunch of crappy old Paladin Press books?
Hey, he rode a motorcycle around and camped outdoors that one time, that's gotta count for something
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Yeah, a lot of Substack subscribers do. Good gig if you can get it.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
@Corvos See, this is exactly what I was talking about.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '24
5mo ago
Because if my salary is 90k before I learn AWS, it will be 91k after I learn AWS and get my annual 1% raise. But $COMPETITOR is looking for AWS skill and is paying 105k. I'd probably stay at your company and take 100k, but I'm sure that asking a raise will either get me laughed at, or I will be successful but will get marked as "greedy"/"not a team player"/. So instead of dealing with the drama and politics, I'll just jump ship. Why did you make me do this? I would have been happy to continue working at your company if you had only been willing to recognize my increased value as an employee.
FWIW, I'm a manager and I deal with this issue all the time. I actually push to pay ambitious engineers more and do my best to make their work lives rewarding. It's a lot more expensive (in money and time) to replace a skilled employee than to simply give an existing employee a 10% raise. But alas, not everyone realizes this.
Thanks. I'm especially interested in the textbook series, it looks more interesting and serious than others I've seen, like the Minimus series.
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