MaximumCuddles
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User ID: 58
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Probably! But history is made at the margins.
For example, I bet if you ask four random cabbies in Manhattan in the 1940s to take you to Harlem, it’s not crazy to think that most of all of them would reject you. Some percentage of the refusal is rational, concern about crime etc, but certainly not all of it. Maybe not even most of it.
And more importantly, there were non crazy reasons to want to go to Harlem in the 1940s, lots of them. There are plenty of good reasons to go to Cuidad Juarez today, but a lot of people on the US side of the border would refuse.
I think it’s an excellent, but not perfect, analogy.
History is strewn with lots of groups who did and believed things that the majority thought were crazy. Most really were crazy. A smaller percentage weren’t crazy at all with the benefit of hindsight. And sometimes the majority of society were clearly the crazy ones all along.
That’s the risk of living in history, backing the “wrong side” in hindsight, but we don’t have hindsight in the present.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Eight years later, the “crackhead taxi driver” analogy still holds.
Imagine you have a destination in mind. You hail an Uber, 4.9 stars, great vehicle, clean. You tell them where you want to go and they look at you like you have three heads. And after realizing you’re serious, they flat out refuse to take you there. No matter how much you beg or attempt to reason with them or bribe them.
So you call up a Lyft. 4.6 stars, nice vehicle. Same outcome, first they think you’re joking, then you’re crazy, and finally an idiot.
On and on it goes. Seven vehicles later, you hail an unlicensed taxi cab. The driver opens the door, it smells like piss inside. There are empty beer cans and takeout containers strewn around the vehicle. You tell him where you want to go, the driver looks at you for a minute with his cigarette still in his mouth and says “Fuck it, let’s go. Hop in.”
If you’re a Trump supporter, hearing that you just jump in. So far it’s you’re only shot to get where you’re going, it’s getting late and you’re getting desperate.
Honestly? Don’t blame anyone who chose that way. With the benefit of hindsight, I think they were absolutely right.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Well, if you define the success state of simply being a better doctor than this won’t help directly.
But it sounds from the OP that they are suffering from more general spiritual/psychological malaise, and I know from personal experience that strong & consistent physical training in pursuit of a series of difficult yet achievable goals does wonders to keep the mind sharp and the darkness at bay.
Really the point is that I’ve found the greatest counterbalance to depression is feeling goal oriented and physically empowered, and learning and practicing an aggressive combat sport is just one of the most extreme yet mundane examples of that.
Plus with ADHD brain, the sedentary modern world is a double enemy as we’re akin to hunters in a world made for farmers.
A physical discipline that requires full mind-body activation for extended periods of time acts as a powerful tonic to lift the spirits. Doesn’t have to be fighting, it’s just the thing that is the most direct path from A to B.
Downhill skiing, mountain biking, trail running, Olympic wrestling, judo, mountain climbing, are all activities that could possibly scratch the same itch.
There’s a reason it’s a known archetype for high powered businessmen or other such high achievers under a ton of stress to lean into stuff like this (or the yin to the yang, meditation.) It works and really takes the edge off.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
My suggestion? Choose violence.
There’s almost nothing more empowering than learning how to turn your body into a weapon, pick a martial art and start learning it, join a training gym and get good enough to spar on a regular basis. Nothing fancy, I recommend good old western boxing to start.
“b-but MaximumCuddles, I’m a lover not a fighter / I’m gentle at heart / I don’t like fighting / blah blah blah”
Good news! If you’re an adult man*, you’re almost certainly wrong about yourself. You come from a long line of sex-havers of which some portion had to resort, sometimes multiple times, to extreme violence to live long enough to bust a nut. It’s quite literally in your blood.
So, you want to feel empowered? You can quite directly empower yourself physically, with time and luck the mind will likely follow.
You want to feel driven? Avoidance of pain and the pleasures of adrenaline, physical power and mastery are incredible motivators. It’s very easy to motivate yourself not to get punched in the face.
It’s important to remember that you are, in fact, still a wild animal and that all the guardrails you perceive aren’t actually real. And, more importantly that your body means something, it’s just through the modern way of life that most people have forgotten why they have a body at all. Nothing brings it back into clear focus like violent physical struggle.
I saw somewhere else a suggestion of travel while slumming to drum up that feeling of total freedom, and while it’s not a bad idea, the discipline and pleasure of building a physical skill that strengthens your body far outstrips the quintessential “backpacking through Europe to like, find yourself man”.
That guy who hung around here who is probably dead in the Alaskan wilderness wasn’t wrong, he was dead right about needing physical struggle to have a full life and get laid on the regular. He just went way to far, it’s pretty easy to toughen yourself up, you just need regular access to mock battle with real, but mild consequences.
So what are you waiting for? Chop chop! Blood for the blood god!
*(If you’re adult woman, also good news, you’re probably wrong about yourself as well. It’s just not likely as cut and dried.)
Ps- I say this as someone who has fully diagnosed ADHD out the ass and dropped the stimmies a long time ago, and my life is pretty good! So I feel like we have an overlap of experience.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Whiskey is completely bottle stable, and doesn’t develop in the bottle over time so any time is a good time to drink it.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I’m, quite literally, a wine expert. A paid wine professional.
I fucking love port, in the wine world it’s very much that bell curve / midwit meme where wine noobs love it because it’s sweet, midwits over correct against sweet wine because so much of it is trash, and certified wine geeks and fanatics circle back to it and have no choice but to admit how awesome it is.
Because of the blending involved and the fortification process it’s not as subject to as much vintage variation as a typical dry wine, so honestly just go crazy on the vintages. Most of them are certified bangers.
I highly recommend Churchill’s, that’s my go-to port producer. All things being equal they have longer fermentation than the big houses which means less residual sugar and less Brandy needed to get to the required alcohol by volume. So it’s less syrupy, less hot, and much fresher.
It’s still sweet but you can dome an entire 6oz glass without getting a tummy ache.
If you have a child and are of means, the old tradition was to get a lion’s head cask of the vintage of your children’s birth year and sit on it until they’re 18 or 21, and give it as a birthday present. I’m too poor to do that but if you have the money, space, patience and storage ability (needs to be in a cool place) to buy several cases of vintage port to keep for your kid, it’s an awesome tradition.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I just started General Wrangel’s ”Always with Honor” after hearing it described as one of the greatest war memoirs of all time, up there with ”Anabasis” by Xenophon, which I’m reading simultaneously.
If you’re not familiar, General Wrangel fought in the side of the whites in the Russian civil war and held out in the Caucasus mountains for years. He died in exile.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
No, shortly after I hit my max deadlift of my life I got married, spent a lot more time working and started a family. I had a lot less time to train, so I just hit the gym as much as needed to stay reasonably strong and have a good QOL.
I feel like we have opposite proportions, as even at my strongest o could barely do more than my body weight on the bench. I always preferred shoulder presses but it’s quite a bit harder to press heavy. I had a decent squat but nothing to write home about. Clearly, I was born to deadlift.
Nowadays I mostly just do novice level Mountain biking and keep my Muay Thai skills alive, go on the occasional long hike or bike ride. I’m still decently strong for someone approaching middle age with a desk job, and I go on a lifting tear once or twice a year for a month or two just to keep the fire alive.
I have the feeling I’ll get back to it when my kids are grown.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I wasn’t on PEDs although I understand why that would be an assumption, anyone I’ve ever talked to with a background in this straight up told me I’m a weird outlier in terms of bone density, including my childhood doctors.
Took me a better part of two years to achieve that training 3-4 times a week.
I was also pretty laser focused on getting my deadlift as high as possible, and started off my powerlifting journey with high lower body strength as I had formerly trained as a cross country runner, and was an avid cyclist and amateur martial artist (kickboxing).
It’s really amazing what you can achieve when you’re consistent and keep your goals very narrow.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
A plurality of the vegans I’ve known were skinny-fat, one who is straight up fat, and the rest were pretty emaciated. In general they seemed malnourished.
I’ve known one vegan in decent shape who was into yoga, she was decently strong and vigorous but she also semi frequently had moderate to severe health issues. I assumed they were related or exasperated by her lifestyle choice as she was generally pretty healthy. She was eating constantly.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
Then you’d be effectively saying that it would be better for domesticated pigs to have never existed at all, which is a whole other can of worms. Comparing not existing in the first place to existing is largely a fool’s game.
But it also belies almost a closed system of philosophical belief. Barring extreme and probably impossible human action, animals will exist. Their existence will consist of some amount of suffering. So the question isn’t “will animals suffer?” it’s “how much, and for what purpose?”
I understand if you, personally, don’t wish to participate in any action that causes animals to suffer. That has been a relatively common personal and religious choice throughout history. But the idea of systematically lessening animal suffering through collective human action is more than a little farcical.
As compared to human suffering, which while it waxes and wanes throughout the ages and will likely never be eliminated, we are able and have been able to really dull the edge of the lovecraftian horror that is the state of nature.
Veganism always reminds me of anarchism for this reason, an utopian vision of erasing a somewhat tragic aspect of the universe by radically decontextualizing it, then arguing it can be eliminated by ignoring all context.
235 at 20% body fat is not obese, I had a ton of musculature and a tiny belly. I looked like a gorilla. I was doing 10 mile runs in the mountains on the regular and could deadlift almost three times my body weight.
If I had bird bones I’d be obese but I’ve never had a problem with getting enough calcium or putting enough eustress on my body.
150lbs at 6 feet tall you’d look like you just been interrupted halfway through your stay at Auschwitz.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I honestly think we can blame Disney for a huge portion of this problem.
Antromorphism is a hell of a drug.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I feel exactly the same, by disposition I’m not inclined to be a car person. Hell, I’ve put my money where my mouth is and I commuted by bicycle for years while it was feasible.
I don’t have a neurotic aversion to driving but I don’t move it either and I’d much rather do almost anything else.
But your average urbanist is also the average person who cried, pissed and shit himself when fentanyl Floyd punched his ticket and is quick on the trigger to defend or excuse every lowlife degenerate who makes urban life functionally impossible for families with young children and no trust fund to thrive.
So, rolling coal it is.
Until the public transit people and the law and order people get together I’m basically obligated to be like “fuck you I’ve got mine.”
So it goes.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I know it’s totally anecdata but it’s significant to me that I’ve never, ever met a vegan who is healthier than me.
Because of my social and professional circles I’d bet a mint that I’ve met and interacted regularly with a lot more vegans than the modal person. So it’s not a sample size issue.
I’m not the perfect picture of health but I’m certainly “robust” in more than one way. I have a lifetime of on again off again strength training, extreme sports, endurance sports, outdoorsmanship, martial arts and manual labor . But I’m too poor and too busy to be a consistent athlete, and probably too undisciplined to boot.
But still, every vegan I’ve ever met I could almost literally break them into pieces.
To wit, I believe the poster in question said he was six feet tall and 150lbs, which to me even if you are endurance athlete is not “healthy”. I’m the same height and in my best shape I had almost a hundred pounds on him, even with literally zero body fat I’d weigh more.
I know it’s a joke on the whole ‘sigma grindset’ to say “If you can’t physically overpower me I don’t have to listen to you” but when it comes to diet & excercise, I’ll say “This but unironically.”.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
To me this gives away the whole game. When someone says “This is cruel and inhumane!” The natural follow up question for someone interested in actually understanding the truth of the matter is “Compared to what?”
For actions between humans it’s incredibly easy to find alternative contexts and thus possible to make judgements about what’s moral and what is not.
But the life of animals, with or without human intervention, is just one rolling atrocity after another, forever and ever, without end.
I think it’s no accident this ideology only came into being after it became possible for people to live lives so alienated from wild nature that their only real experience of it is through a Disney-fied, highly sanitized lens.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I guess they called for a culture war, and no one showed up.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
A… pink slate?
”Man is born gay, and yet everywhere they are marrying their beards.”
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
I saw this and wondered how common it was.
It’s… good to know that’s normal? I guess?
I don’t know much about Canadian politics but as an outsider, I think I came to that realization with that viral video clip of the two MPs going at it a while back.
One, a conservative, asked a very simple question; “How much does the average house in the Ottowa area cost?”.
The other, a liberal I assume, simply replied with a random accomplishment of the liberal government, completely ignoring the line of questioning.
The conservative asked the same question, and the liberal breathlessly did it again, just blurting out some non-sequitor factoid about the supposed accomplishments of the liberal government.
This went on and on for maybe like ten minutes straight, like literally 25 times.
It was so incredibly baldly dishonest I almost admired it.
Edit: Found it.
MaximumCuddles
5mo ago
This thread is super funny to me because I got a 1460 and went to community college and then a decent state school from which I went right into the workforce and never graduated.
I was a decent student, 3.5 GPA, took no sat prep.
I got a perfect score on the Verbal portion which does give me a twinge of pride.
Depending on the IQ scale I’m in or around the 99th percentile, but I had a bunch of other issues which hobbled my academic performance.
Learning not to mix up my sense of self worth with my academic performance or intellectual ability was an important aspect of reaching maturity in my young adulthood, and I’m now very happily living a working class-ish lifestyle far away from the influence of the PMC peer group I had in university.
Although my high intelligence is usually the most obvious attribute people notice upon meeting me, I don’t even think it’s near the top of my best qualities.
I’m not even sure it’s all that important in isolation anymore, only as a support to other good qualities a person can have.
MaximumCuddles
6mo ago
In general, it seems apparent that leftists typically believe whole swathes of all possible political ideologies are either overt fascists, crypto-fascists, fascists in training or fascists in denial.
Understanding this explains a tremendous amount of their behavior & speech.
It’s also additionally amusing because these same people make fun of their republican uncle for saying something like “single payer is communist.” They do the same thing except even worse because it’s even less accurate.
The idea that a beltway libertarian or classical liberal is a fascist but just doesn’t know it yet is so absurd on its face that’s it’s laughable. But it’s a common belief on the hard left.
I love this analogy, the Truman show is a perfect encapsulation of our incredibly stupid media ecosystem that has penned in an increasingly small amount of people into epistemic closure.
In the taxi analogy, trump haters act like they are requesting we go to the city of dis on the 7th circle of hell, when we really want to go to like… upstate New York. Can you imagine if every cabby you asked to go to upstate New York cried or pissed and shit themselves or immediately tried to change the subject or flat out refused to talk to you afterwards? I imagine That’s a common feeling being a Trump supporter, like “What the fuck is wrong with these people? I just want to go to Connecticut from Manhattan.”
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