FiveHourMarathon
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Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
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FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
https://news.gallup.com/poll/121571/marriage-remains-key-predictor-party-identification.aspx
33% to 31% R v D among married Americans.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Do it. Write about it. Post it.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Idk, I've never done anything close, but when we have these threads about romantically hopeless men one of the peanut gallery suggestions is often to do something radical with one's life.
You've professed repeatedly to being romantically hopeless, so why not do something radical?
Lately I've been seeing a lot of things happen in life that are the result of probabilities, in the "The harder you work the luckier you get" kind of way. Do something crazy and see what happens.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
E.W. Kirkegaard is nobody's main anything. He's a guy on the internet with a BA in linguistics, who changed his name and moved countries to try to dodge a piddling amount in a libel judgment.
If you're surveying a scientific argument and both parties are addressing internet randos as major players, you're probably in the wrong part of the argument.
((I'll acknowledge here that @DaseindustriesLtd has persuasively argued that credentialism is a form of censorship used to hold HBD down. It's a good argument, but one I find kind of funny coming from HBDers))
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Murray The Bell Curve and Coming Apart. Then on the other side The mismeasure of a man 1996 edition by Gould.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
TR giving a speech on the topic:
I stand for straight Americanism unconditioned and unqualified, and I stand against every form of hyphenated Americanism. I do not speak of the hyphen when it is employed as a mere convenience, although personally, I like to avoid its use even in such manner. I speak and condemn its use whenever it represents an effort to form political parties along racial lines or to bring pressure to bear on parties and politicians, not for American purposes, but in the interest of some group of voters of a certain national origin, or of the country from which they or their fathers came.
Americanism is not a matter of creed, birthplace or national descent, but of the soul and of the spirit. If the American has the right stuff in him, I care not a snap of my fingers whether he is Jew or Gentile, Catholic or Protestant. I care not a snap of my fingers whether his ancestors came over in the Mayflower, or whether he was born, or his parents were born, in Germany, Ireland, France, England, Scandinavia, Russia or Italy or any other country. All I ask of the immigrant is that he shall be physically and intellectually fit, of sound character, and eager in good faith to become an American citizen. If the immigrant is of the right kind I am for him, and if the native American* is of the wrong kind I am against him….
…Now for our own citizens. We represent many different race strains. Our ancestors came from many different Old World nationalities. It will spell ruin to this nation if these nationalities remain separated from one another instead of being assimilated to the new and larger American life.
The children and our children’s children of all of us have to live here in this land together. Our children’s children will intermarry, one another, your children’s children, friends, and mine. Even if they wished, they could not remain citizens of foreign countries….The effort to keep our citizenship divided against itself by the use of the hyphen and along the lines of national origin is certain to breed a spirit of bitterness and prejudice and dislike between great bodies of our citizens.
Long before Anti-immigration nativist sentiment was based primarily on conversations about the white race, it was based on questions of Christian denomination, on language, on a fear of factionalism within the country. Nativist Americans were hesitant to trust any immigrant who maintained cultural, linguistic, or ethnic distinctiveness.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Shakespeare, Honor, Unitary Leadership, and How To End the Culture War
As part of my continuing effort to give myself the Classical Education I believe in, I’ve been working my way through Shakespeare. I have been listening to the lectures in this class on latter Shakespearean works in a sort of random order, after listening to the play in question here and occasionally reading passages as I go. The beauty of the work is really making me happy. But in this case I want to talk about some events in the play Cymbeline.
Cymbeline is considered a “problem play” by many scholars. It is marked in different contemporary printings as both The Tragedie of Cymbeline and as Cymbeline, King of Britain; the former suggests the work is a tragedy while the latter suggests it is a history. Parts of the play definitely suggest a tragedy is oncoming, from the jealousy, trickery and banishment to the soliloquized contemplation of suicide by main characters. And Cymbeline is a pseudo-historical king of Britain
, probably familiar to the audience of the time from works in the Matter of Britain, who did have significant interactions with the Romans; though it is always unclear what contemporary educated Brits considered “Historical truth." Much of the play’s content suggests a comedy, with comic relief characters playing a major role, and the play concludes with all the “good" characters and warring sides reconciled, all the evil characters dead, peace and love reign and the true heirs are returned to the throne. It does not neatly characterize itself the way that headliners like Hamlet, Richard II, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream fit gracefully within their genres.
The play really does have it all, from a Blue Pill v Red Pill debate over whether AWALT, to hidden heirs returning to heroically defend British independence in battle, gender bending and cross-dressing heroines, wicked stepmothers, the courtship of the Rich English Doofus, questions of family and duty. But what really caught my eye about the play, and lead to my deeper examination and meditation on its meaning, was the political conflict between Rome and Britain, and the way it plays out through names. This play isn’t a comedy or a tragedy, it is primarily a parable, it is no more about Leonatus and Imogen than Animal Farm is about the windmill.
THESIS: Cymbeline is primarily a play about Roman Catholicism in England, a plea by a Catholic Shakespeare for England to return to communion with the church of Rome, which dramatizes to the positive impacts that the Roman Catholic Church had on English society and pointing towards a synthesis of Roman and British virtues and an accommodation that benefits both parties. Shakespeare writes this allegory in terms of ethnicity and honor, and considering Shakespeare’s vision of honorable victory and the resulting honorable submission reflects on how to navigate the dangers of our own times.
As background to the historical moment, most of you I’m sure are aware of the English Reformation and the basic circumstances surrounding it. Around 1530 the process of breaking the Church of England from papal authority towards Monarchical supremacy began, and ratcheted up its Protestantism over time. Many historians speak of a “Long Reformation” that stretched well into the 17th century, with the distance from Catholicism growing and waining over time. Shakespeare’s own lifetime would have begun just 30 years removed from the break with Rome, during the reign of Mary Tudor who reintroduced Catholicism, while his career largely fell within the reign of Elizabeth I who returned to Protestantism. William would have been 24 years old at the time of Spanish Armada, the great roll of the dice at which the Elizabethan reformation, and even English independence, could have failed and been consigned to the ash heap of history next to the Cathars and the Burgundians. Next to the Blitz, the Armada is arguably the greatest and most heroic moment of British History. For the audience at the likely premier of Cymbeline in 1611, the Armada was about as far back as 9/11 is for us; a very relevant and present part of history.
The Political plot of Cymbeline follows a fictionalized version of Britain’s gradual accession to Rome. Within the play, set during the reign of Caesar Augustus, King Cymbeline had fought an inconclusive war against the Romans (during which Leonatus’ father and Belarius served valiantly) signed a treaty with Julius Caesar wherein Britain would remain independent but pay tribute. Under the influence of the unnamed wicked Queen and her son Cloten (his stepson), Cymbeline has declared that the treaty was only in force during Julius Caesar’s life and ceased paying tribute to Rome, treating a Roman ambassador roughly despite the threat of war. Various romantic and comedic shenanigans ensue, and when the Roman’s invade only the timely and heroic arrival of Leonatus, Belisarius, and Cymbeline’s lost sons leads to a British victory over the Roman invasion force. After Cymbeline’s victory is assured and his happiness restored by the successful marriage of his daughter and the restoration of his heirs, he magnanimously declares that Britain will resume paying tribute and end the war with Rome, reconciling with the Roman leadership.
Linguistically, an analysis of the names tells us what the characters are meant to symbolize. Some names are clearly British in origin: Cymbeline, Imogen, Cloten. Then on the other hand we have Roman/Latinate names for characters in England: Leonatus Posthumus, Belarius who guards the two heirs Guiderius and Arvirargus. Then we have Giacomo, who is quite obviously Italian but not Roman, a Florentine or Venetian rather than a Classical Roman.*
Cymbeline, King of Britain, has rejected the heroic line of Roman-Britains (Belarius, Leonatus) under the influence of a native British-Welsh queen. Belarius takes the Roman-British heirs to the throne and hides them, instructs them in Roman-British virtue, rather than the brainlessness of the Celtic Cloten. Leonatus, the Roman-Britain, wishes to marry Imogen who represents the British people in her mix of virginal virtue and plucky courage, they are prevented by the king who wishes to marry her to Cloten. In the battle against the Roman invasion, the Roman-Britains pitch in and win the battle, but afterward the King chooses peace. British honor has been satisfied by the victory, there is no need to continue the war over mere money tribute. The British, especially the Roman British, have proven themselves worthy of equality with Rome, and an accommodation can be found.
The historical parallels with the Reformation are obvious. The message of the play is a Catholic Shakespeare, nudging the audience, hey we beat the Armada, we proved our point, time to come home to Rome. There is a belief within the play that war is brutal, war is death, but war is also purifying, war is healing, war reveals truths. War reveals the true natures of the hidden heirs, the threat of death reveals truths about the hidden Imogen and the lying Giacomo. In the clear light of war, after the lucky victory in the battle, Cymbeline sees that he cannot win the war, that Rome is bigger and more powerful and will not quit, and makes peace. The Armada revealed how powerful Britain was, but it was at the end of the day lucky, the stratagems and weather than combined to deliver Britain would not be repeated. The continental powers would return, it was better to rejoin the Catholic Church.
This ideal of personal leadership, and concomitant personal (for the ruler) and national (for the ruler and the ruled) honor is missing from today’s wars, both the physical and the cultural. We live in an era of total war, of mob war. Zhou Enlai said that the French Revolution has not yet ended**, we still live in the era we have inherited from it, SA says we all live in America, in many ways we all still live in Paris in the 1790s. It strikes as instantly morally repugnant for the warring sides to make peace after battle, if you were going to resume tribute why start the war? But in a global period, rather than a momentary utilitarian analysis, a system in which a people can exercise and demonstrate their power, and then be satisfied with their demonstration and resume peace, is preferable to one where the end of any conflict must be the extermination of one power or the other. At the end of Cymbeline (most of) the Romans and (most of) the Britons are still there, still alive, still in power.
Most CW conflicts are, at core, about power. “Mis"gendering is, at core, meaningless. Who says Nigger and who doesn’t is at core meaningless. Drawing a cartoon of Mohammed is at core meaningless. Whether one kneels after a High School football game, or kneels before a professional one, is at core meaningless. These acts, and their negations, are imbued with meaning because they are exercises of power, and to enforce them or to recognize them is to demonstrate and acknowledge power. All these efforts at exercising power, by groups that want to demonstrate their power, form the core of the CW. Why did White ethnics experience Trump’s victory as their own victory, despite his objectively doing almost nothing for them? Because it was a demonstration of white power, in the literal sense. Why do Black or trans advocates insist on enforcing absurd speech codes? Because they are a demonstration of their power.
1/2
And because our conflicts are structured as Who, Whom class conflicts in which one must overtake the other, these conflicts can only end in the social death of one group. What we need is an American Cymbeline. We need a leader that says “Hey, we demonstrated our power, we proved our point, time to head home.” Rather than continual acceleration towards armageddon, we need the ability to see a point proven, and to respect a point that has been proven, without continuing to push it. But I am as trapped in the matrix as any, I don’t even know what that would look like.
*Giacomo’s character is a fascinating anachronism, he is clearly coded as an Italian in the Renaissance stereotype. Crooked, Machivellian, horny, prone to gambling and to cheating. His subplot revolves around Giacomo’s claims that he is essentially the ultimate PUA, and that AWALT. His debate with Leonatus could probably form a whole CW post in the “la plus ca change” genre, but I’ve written too much as it is.
**This is itself kind of fascinating to me, most accounts at the time seem to say that he was speaking not about the French Revolution, but about the 1968 riots in France which also inspired the Rolling Stones Street Fighting Man. But I like the other way of looking at it better, something can have meaning even if that meaning is a misinterpretation. A sort of very short death of the author.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Totally different but I have this on order at my local bookstore after reading this interview with the author. He seems to be talking primarily about fashion, but of course fashion can mean anything from how a pair of pants is cut to what books we read to what Gods we pray to and what political opinions we hold.
His argument seems to be that status is created in fashion by distinctiveness, and that fashionistas are constantly contrarians trying to create change, but that in order for a change to really take hold it has to have a story behind it that people believe in. Something of a fashion version of Friedman's dictate that
“Only a crisis - actual or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable.”
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I want to make clear that I'm not sure I have a solution, I'm as trapped in the matrix as everyone else. I'm not sure I can imagine anything that looks like a realistic solution, at best we're all in the gutter but some of us are looking up at the stars.
I broadly agree with your second point. The lack of organized groups, with leaders to whom loyalty is owed and goals that are to be met and not exceeded, has been a significant contribution to the CW spiral. BLM isn't a group with demands, it is a gag reflex that engages whenever a Black person is harmed under sufficiently dire (apparent, reported) circumstances. One can't negotiate with it.
And the way that you, as an individual Trans person, would work toward negotiating a truce in whatever small way, isn't by actually negotiating. It is by engaging in loyalty and working on building groups within your own community that are well run and loyal, encouraging your compatriots to show loyalty and deference. It is only once groups exist that command loyalty that negotiation is possible.
I can't find the quote, but I remember a bon mot about, I want to say Syria on gaining independence?, that went something like "Today, 50% of the population thinks they are merely major religious or political leaders, 40% think they are great writers, 5% think they are Prophets, and the last 5% think they are God." I'm probably butchering it from a history book I read a long time ago. But one of the things I do think Moldbug gets right is that what is missing isn't leadership, it is obedience. We can't all be leaders, we can't all think of ourselves as leaders, or nothing will ever get done. I guess we can take it back another three hundred years and say that we're still living through the consequences of the Protestant Reformation?
As to the first point: I disagree. The increasingly confusing restrictions on the use of the word Nigger, or the application of pronouns, or which sports teams people practice with, are all exercises of raw social power. Performed by their advocates for the purpose of demonstrating power, resented by their targets because they are exercises of power. I'd compare the use of speech codes by analogy to this kind of exchange:
Imagine you've just gone through a bad breakup. You're a little sick of everyone talking about it, asking you how you're doing, asking you what happened, you just want to move on and talk about something else for a bit. You go over to your brother's house to watch the game, you say "Hey, listen, I don't want to talk about the breakup, I'm tired of talking about it, let's just watch the game." He proceeds to ask you about it, over and over, even though you remind him that you don't want to talk about it.
Most people in that scenario, even if they weren't that upset about talking about the breakup to begin with, will become furiously angry at being forced to talk about it. Talking about the breakup was merely embarrassing or unpleasant, but being told that you aren't allowed to say you don't want to talk about something is saying that you have no power to determine that. The other party, your brother, will in turn become angry that he "isn't allowed to ask questions." Because that is limiting his power.
The goal of symbolic actions, like banning words, is to exercise power. Power that cannot be exercised arbitrarily does not exist. Make it clear to your enemies that you can do symbolic, or absurd, things, and it will be clear that you could do dangerous things too.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Would you accept a rightist Cymbeline who told you "ok, you proved your point, but now it's time to let MTFs in women's sports and institute permanent DEI quotas and all the rest of it", just imagine him asking for total capitulation on whatever CW issue is nearest and dearest to your heart. Would you be ok with that? [emphasis added]
I am neither an orthodox leftist nor an orthodox rightist, so I don't want to pretend I can speak for anyone. But I think the obvious flaw in your theory is that avoiding total capitulation through partial accommodation is sort of the whole point. In an existential struggle, we can be certain that one side will cease to exist. I would have liked to see Leftists respond to the 2016 Trump victory in a way that didn't lead me to link that one Brecht poem constantly. And I would like to see Republicans respond to the 2020 Trump loss by coming to terms with the facts, rather than denying them.
And to be frank, I disagree with the idea that...
Most CW issues aren't very amenable to compromise either - there's no physical piece of territory that you can split up 50/50. You either accept MTFs as women or you don't, you either pay reparations or you don't, etc.
For the most part, we had compromises on most of these positions that were broadly perceived as "good enough" in the Washington Consensus period of 1992-2008. People who want to transition are allowed to, with their own funds, and will be accepted or rejected on an ad hoc social basis. Most high concept and many lowbrow sit coms had a [now considered insensitive] very special episode on the topic. Affirmative Action is accepted in a limited way, but not at a scale that would present significant problems to advancement for talented white people.
One could say those weren't stable equilibria, that it was a slippery slope to a decision one way or the other. I'm not sure I agree, but I'm not sure by what mechanism to disagree.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Rambo, volume 8, back in the USSR!
John Rambo fathered a half-Chinese kid during one or another adventure, they link up to fight...somebody, maybe the Dalai Lama? It needs a Creed type pass the torch bit.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
It was. It hasn't been about any of that since Rambo 2.
Just like Rocky was a story about a guy not winning the heavyweight belt. Until Rocky 2 when it became a story about the guy winning the belt. Then each one became about winning, again.
If it changes your emotional reaction at all, I think you're finding out that you're really a good looking dude rather than just that you're better off not obese.
I'm bigger than I think you are now and probably been a little leaner, and I did not have schoolgirls giggling as I passed by. And for that matter, I'm a pretty dude myself! dropping the weight has revealed that you've been gorgeous all along.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
But then I'm curious, what things did you notice in your case?
Hard to say, I don't really have the transformation you're undergoing to talk about. When I started lifting in college I went from 5'11" 165 to 185-195 for ten years, but I kept wearing 32 pants and a 40 jacket they just fit differently over time. I generally am in Thibs' old Muscle Migration Theory, my weight and general muscle stayed the same it just varied from half assed Oly lifting to climbing to powerlifting. It's only in the last year I changed up my lifting and my supplements and packed on another ten pounds to 205 and just can't find fucking anything that fits right without stretch. I'm definitely the attached meme here, my level of female attention has barely changed from 18 to 31 despite carrying 20 or 30 more pounds of decent muscle, at varying distributions and levels of leanness. Lovers will often compliment things like my shoulders, or my forearms, or my biceps, but only after we get together and I strongly suspect that they are pretty secondary to the attraction.
In general my model of human, and especially hetero male, attractiveness is that the curve is very discontinuous. The return to a good vs a great personality is more or less zero difference if you're a totally unfuckable 1/10, and even getting to a 2/10 won't change much, but get to a 5/10 and all that starts to come into play. An 8/10 handsome face attached to a 3/10 fatbody doesn't deliver much, but put it on a 5/10 ordinary body and all of a sudden it's go time. Essentially the biggest returns are all at that point between 3-6/10 when you go to average and then slightly above average; then there is almost no return until you get to 9/10 and you're actively everyone-in-the-room-looks-at-you gorgeous. The factors all kind of hang together and need to be in line for any one to really give you returns.
Which is to say: You've been a good looking smart charismatic dude all along, you finally dropped the literal anchor holding you back. Better living through chemistry. Mazel tov!
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I'm 31. I've joked that half my reading of the past two years have been completing homework assignments I half assed in a great books course freshman year of undergrad.
Early 30s is when Jesus and the Buddha and Mohamed got serious. You got time. You have valuable contributions to make.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I got really severe poison ivy a couple years back, tried two or three OTC remedies didn't work, went to a doctor, got a prescription cream, that cleared it up almost instantly. So there are treatment options that going to a doctor gives you. At least if you're at the point I reached where I couldn't sleep or move around much.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
Weekly Pentathlon attempt, five exercises for a target number of max reps in six minutes, five minutes rest in between, a fantastic use of the first hour after I wake up. Used the 28kg and tried to really push it on the early exercises and get closer to full marks, and just gutting through the last two sets was the plan.
Clean: 118/120
Long Cycle Clean and Strict Press: 60/60
Jerk: 81/120
Half Snatch: 64/108
Push Press: 120/120
443 total reps, at 3.5 points per 28kg rep, comes out to 1550.5 points. New PB, and I reached my goal of breaking 1500.
At this point I know it's 100% conditioning and breathing that is the issue. I want to reread Breathe and The Oxygen Advantage and spend the next couple weeks doing breathe work and working hard on cardio. If I could just keep my breath controlled as I hit the wall I could have gotten a lot more reps, but once I lose control of my breathe my technique gets all wonky, and I cut sets short rather than risk injury. That happened on everything after the Long Cycle. I was especially disappointed in myself that I lost reps on the Jerk, which should be the easiest exercise on the list by rights. If I had left Long Cycle reps on the table and rested longer, I would have gained points on the Jerk from being able to get more points overall.
A month into this game, the physique results have been good, on balance. My shoulders, biceps, tris, glutes, quads, adonis belt/cum gutters, and forearms are all looking better than typical for me. Abs are getting that kettlebeller look, like in photos of old-timey strongmen, I never get lower abs anyway. I highly recommend doing a month of trying to get a good score in this if you have enough KB experience to do all the exercises with good form. It is different enough from what I was doing before that I'm seeing great results.
I'm going to try to break 1700 yet, and then I'm seeing that I need some cardio work and conditioning. This has me in a "ridiculous challenge" mentality, so I'm eye-ing up doing an xfit "Half Murph" in my barn every morning, or close to that, for a few weeks.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
It's not one or the other, it is BOTH together.
I have friends that are built like a brick shithouse, but the finishing on the brickwork was bad, ugly, poor face shape unfortunate haircut bad skin bad style. They don't get stared at.
If you literally have hot women stare at you in public, it's everything you are doing. The styling, the mannerisms, the body, the facial features. In the past, the body was letting you down, and hiding all those other qualities, now it's picking you up and displaying them.
That's the point I'm trying to make contra the Black Pill attitude of "they only love me because I'm not fat now and that's depressing." No, everything else about you is awesome too and was before, it just used to be hidden under the fat.
Keep in mind that visually, if I have a good idea of what your body looks like (mine), if you are losing belly fat that increases the contrast and angle from your shoulders/lats/chest to your waist. You might look bigger and more imposing at a glance than you did when you were actually physically bigger but rounder and softer so you read smaller.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I don't think any significant percentage of Americans will enjoy the kinds of tactics necessary to achieve successful mass deportations. It all depends on how it is reported, of course, but the kind of police state necessary to achieve a significant dent in the immigrant population will not happen without the end of functional democracy or will consist of the politicians involved performing self immolation to prove a point.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
My point coincides with yours, my man.
I think of a 1 and a 2 as equally more or less unfuckable grades, so moving up one grade delivers nothing at all. Being Disney Quasimodo rather than Hugo Quasimodo delivers no advantages.
Going from an unfuckable 2 to a merely unpleasant 3 is a HUGE return, going from 3 to a below average 4 and to average 5 and above average 6 are each delivering returns. But getting from above average to slightly more above average delivers less.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I just have a ton of these
In black. They work for everything. I bought a bunch of pairs a while back, haven't worried about it since.
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
FiveHourMarathon
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11mo ago
I would go so far as to say that people get weird and cynical about any strongly attractive traits they have. It's a pattern I've noticed in people regardless of what the trait is. Money, Ethnicity, Fame, perfect breasts, a huge cock, whatever. It becomes a question in their mind whether their partner is attracted to some mystical "real self" outside of that one strong trait.
Which is why eyes are the best thing to compliment about anyone, no one will get weird about it. Except occasionally East Asian girls in America, but you can normally get through that.
I will add to this: Drink water. Constantly, throughout the night. There is virtually no downside to being hydrated as long as you have somewhere to piss.
Before you go out, place a bottle of water by the bed you plan to sleep in. ((I normally use a hydroflask with a pouch of LiquidIV/Gatorade powder mixed in at half strength)) Drink it when you get back.
Start slow, don't assume that you know how alcohol will affect you based on heuristics other people use. A whole pile of factors impact how drunk you get, don't make assumptions.
Slow and steady wins the race. Your goal is to maintain the scientifically, psychiatrically, and historically proven Ideal BAC of .05% for as long as possible. You will have more fun getting and staying tipsy all night than you will getting really drunk and having to bow out early, or not remembering how you wound up in bed with this woman.
I have no idea where you'll be or what you'll be drinking in India, but for Americans at an event with a bar, you can always go to the bar by yourself and order a Ginger Ale in a rocks glass, it'll look like a Whiskey and Soda or a Seven and Seven. Sip it for half an hour and you've skipped a drink while blending in to the crowd. If you're really sheisty, you show up early to the event and tip the bartender well and tell him that when you order a Whiskey and Soda to give you a Ginger Ale in a Rocks Glass. I've done this at a good number of professional networking events/conferences/weddings/etc. where drunks want to bond, I'm not a strong/regular drinker so I need to cheat to "keep up" without ending up with my head in the toilet, and being less drunk is an advantage.
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