Bartender_Venator
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User ID: 2349
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
I'm at my most attractive when I feel full of will and energy.
You already know the most important thing. And the second most important, which is to learn how to be gregarious. The third most important thing is to dial in your dating logistics. Think like Napoleon - logistics enables everything else. For a classic drinks date, find a spot you like, ideally classy-ish but chill and quiet (I like wine bars), with tables/bar where you can sit close to her, somewhere nice you can walk to nearby to sit and talk in the dark. That's first date and first kiss sorted, and if you're within walking distance to your place often more. For coffee dates, find a place with a park nearby you can walk in with your coffee. Concerts most of your logistics are sorted for you but try to get a drink beforehand so you can have some time but not too much time to talk. Etc. etc., but the main failing I see for guys once they can get dates is that they sit down for 'job interview' first dates and never build up a real rapport because they're not comfortable in their surroundings.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
Glasses on men are like short hair on women - if they're hot, they make you hotter, if you're busted, they make you look worse. If you wear glasses that's a good reason to get your haircut and any beard grooming dialed in, and wear clothes that work with the glasses.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
I actually find it much more of an issue in small-town restaurants, the kind you'd go to on a roadtrip stop if you wanted to avoid a chain. Recall once stopping off at a BBQ joint in the Central Valley (not necessarily a mistake, there are good ones) and my sandwich was like eating a salt shaker. Same with a fried chicken place in the coastal South that all the locals raved over. Though I did recently eat a bag of store-bought popcorn and it was so salty I had to put chapstick on for the next two days to heal my lips.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
I also feel the same way about salt in a lot of US food, although there are definitely times the body just wants MOAR SALT.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
Karlin
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
Two ex-wignats, one guy mindbroken by Russia's failed blitzkrieg, and a former holocaust revisionist who changed his mind after seeing a gas chamber (apparently he just... hadn't thought about that?) are not exactly the cast of the Level Headed Good Judgement Hall of Fame. A casual browse of David Cole's spittle-flecked twitter feed may help to confirm that impression.
Bartender_Venator
1mo ago
Cole, like many disillusioned members of the right-wing commentariat, is really telling on himself here. If all you can do is churn out Takes on this week's story to an undifferentiated mass of readers, you will eventually come to see them as a giant lump of aggregate stupidity, and caricature accordingly. I assume this explains most of the phenomenon - I wouldn't want to make a guess at how much is internalized self-loathing for one's writing career terminating in what is essentially slop (that is to say, Takes).
This was probably a (well-deserved) gesture of disrespect toward Unz for his descent into increasingly conspiratorial beliefs, ultimately culminating in Holocaust-denial.
Unz has been like that for a decade at least. This is more likely connected to Sailer's newfound career opportunities with Passage et al.
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
Storm of Steel is certainly the classic place to start, but worth remembering that Junger published it at 25 and lived to be 102. Most people only know him for WWI, and so they miss the incredibly rich development of his work afterwards. I'd urge you not to be satisfied without reading either On The Marble Cliffs (fiction) or The Forest Passage (philosophy) to get a taste of the later Junger, both of which are very short books. If you had to pick just one Junger, given your intense reading schedule, I would recommend On The Marble Cliffs (in the newish NYRB translation), which will hopefully give you the taste for more.
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
Happy to give any recs based on what you're looking for, I happen know a thing or two about Junger. Have one book and a half left before I've finished his entire (translated) bibliography (and "Bartender Venator" is chosen after the protagonist of his novel Eumeswil).
Celine is excellent, and he had a big impact on the young Sartre, although of course after the war they hated each other. There's a darkly amusing anecdote in Ernst Junger's war diaries where Celine manages to horrify a party full of Nazi officers with his antisemitic bloodthirst. Still, at least Celine was an honest misanthrope, whereas Sartre buries it under layers of bloated theorizing and projected dishonesty.
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
"Why in Lenin's name is the General Secretary suddenly running the Politburo?!"
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
If by non-sweet tea you mean the pre-made Southern kind, yeah I enjoy it as a Southern thing but it's low-quality, industrially processed tea and it's not going to be good on its own. If you'd like a neat little hobby, try getting into brewing your own iced tea with high-quality ingredients - tons of variety as well as better taste.
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
Pajeet was an Indian name that happened to be used in a 4chan meme about "designated shitting streets" (itself a variation of a comic making fun of Turkish claims to steppe nomad heritage), and the name just stuck.
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
Spoiler for the big twist of the first season:
Bartender_Venator
2mo ago
My understanding is that Russian and Chinese submarines are intended to operate in very different waters and for different purposes. Chinese subs are intended to operate in the South China Sea and within the first island chain, so it makes sense for them to focus on smaller submarines with much less need for nuclear subs. Could they catch up to Russian capabilities? With time, I'm sure, but they don't really have a need to until they take Taiwan and start playing force projection games.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Perhaps we need a new version of Aristotle's Four Causes for systems analysis...
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
I make a lot of shredded chicken, beef, pork, etc. What's a better solution than shredding it with two forks? Gets a little tiring when you're doing multiple Instant Pots' worth.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
Thanks, was hoping you would comment on this for the medical perspective. I take them a couple times a year for heart stuff, so never really had a chance to notice side effects, and my friends who use them off-label also do it very infrequently.
Bartender_Venator
3mo ago
You can get CBD-infused green tea from Harney and Sons' Hemp Division, and I'm sure other providers. CBD doesn't seem to have notable cognitive effects, but does take the edge off.
You may also consider talking to your doctor about beta blockers. They focus on the sympathetic nervous system, with minimal if any cognitive effects, and aren't habit-forming. They're essentially an off switch for the physical symptoms of anxiety, from what I've heard and experienced (some people use them for public speaking, dating, etc.), so if that's a major component of your stress they may help.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Really 1948. It was the Apartheid government that facilitated mass movement of people between black and white areas of SA, because they believed they could keep blacks on the pass system forever.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Apartheid was originally supposed to genuinely divide SA into separate countries, but the white areas wanted the cheap labour to keep flowing. The current momentum for that, such as it exists, is around Cape secession, which would create a plurality Cape Coloured state (mixed-race, Khoisan/White/Indonesian/Xhosa ancestry - also, the official term, none of the connotations of 'coloured' in the US). Generally Cape Coloureds get along with whites, vote for the white liberal party, and local governance is much better, still a fair bit of corruption but more skimming off the top than ruining everything. Huge problems with drugs (mostly methamphetamine and meth cocktails) and gangs in the Coloured community, but more as street crime rather than controlling officials. South African ethnic and political divides can't be fitted into a neat black/white divide, even if it looks that way from the outside.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Booby traps used to be very common in South Africa. Now they're pretty strictly outlawed (by SA standards of law enforcement) after enough cases of guys getting into their car, forgetting to press the right button, and decapitating themselves with their own shotgun trap.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
The best book I've found for brevity/pithiness in non-fiction writing is William Zinsser's On Writing Well, if that's of any help.
Bartender_Venator
4mo ago
Which is understandable, given that back then a doctor was a bloke with leeches and a hacksaw. Back in my academic days we occasionally used to joke about how the students in other disciplines getting their PhDs was proof they were jealous of us in the philosophy department.
iirc during the Africa/America section the narrator is also losing the plot somewhat
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