Mewis
5mo ago
Other way around, surely?
The fact is, nobody is actually sitting down and crunching the numbers on utils. When it comes to actually making decisions in the real world and not in thought experiments, everyone resorts to the same expedients and heuristics - usually, some combination of virtue ethics and deontology. Don't commit murders, don't be dishonest.
Mewis
6mo ago
The latest craze on Youtube? A guy called Sam Sulek. Sam Sulek is a 21 year old bodybuilder and mech eng. student from Ohio who has, over the past six months, gone from about 50,000 to over 1.7 million subscribers. I've heard dudes at work that don't lift mention him, either. He is, for his age, ridiculously large, and has already attracted accusations of not being 'natty' (i.e. he's using PEDs). Regardless of how he gets his gains, his appeal, however, seems pretty genuine. Unlike the deluge of overedited, attention-grabbing garbage on Youtube, Sulek's videos are lightly edited and mostly show him driving to, working out in, and then driving back to the gym with occasional meals, while he provides a kind of stream-of-consciousness of his thoughts on training and diet. There's very little groundbreaking stuff here, his videos are nearly entirely unscripted (like his workouts themselves) and Sulek saves all his intensity for his lifting. In fact he comes off as a fairly charismatic, positive, intelligent student. More than that, though, his videos scratch a desire for society and friendship. Commenters describe them as relaxing, and Sulek as authentic, but really what they are is parasocial. Sulek isn't acting as a coach or source of information or salesman (though he does have a deal with Hosstile), but more as the lifting buddy that millions of people wish they had. And though it can hardly be any good for my very poor self-esteem and body image issues, it's difficult to stop watching.
Mewis
8mo ago
It does work for some people, you can definitely find cases of people losing the weight, and they often frame their motivation in terms of self-image and shame.
Mewis
10mo ago
I mean, that depends on the meaning of 'coming for the children'. Trans activists see themselves as benevolent saviors, swooping in to protect innocent trans children from being tortured into suicide by evil Christians. In that sense, of course they would not be embarrassed about it. But you probably don't mean it in the same way.
Mewis
5mo ago
Would you deny your 14 year old daughter a life free from financial concern?
But of course, it's not your daughter - the premise is that the parents also consent. Would you let someone else's daughter have sex with an old man?
Mewis
7mo ago
After spending summer at a lower weight, I've decided to try and bulk and gain again. I have mixed feelings about it because I found bulking in the past to be very stressful and miserable, but then I also hate how small and weak I am.
Mewis
16d ago
The idea that Putin and Russia are not under threat from the US axis is I think, not on solid ground. That's been demonstrated several times over the past twenty five years. Iraq, Syria, and Libya were not under threat from the US, until suddenly they were. Fundamentally, the US believes it has the right to direct the affairs of all the world, simply waiting for crisis and opportunity to strike.
This is not to say that Russia's aggression is justified. But the notion that the West is just minding it's own business is ridiculous.
Mewis
1mo ago
Lifting weights to build muscle is probably detrimental to long term longevity, particularly coupled with a high BW. If you care about that sort of thing.
Mewis
8mo ago
America First is a sufficiently ambiguous doctrine that could cover a lot of things. It did not mean, and never meant, isolationism. Rather, it indicates a turn away from 'world policing', and the acknowledgement that there are bounds to American interests.
Secondly, there are downsides as well as upsides to fostering domestic enthusiasm for war. The bottom line here is that Americans will not simply line up for more military adventures on hearing the word 'terrorism', a fine trick while it worked but no longer. Americans must be persuaded that Taiwan is actually relevant to their interests, and a track record of pursuing those interests makes that persuasion easier. Just as a track record of anti-communism made it easier for Nixon to sell rapprochement with China, a track record of hard-nosed pragmatism will make it easier to sell intervention when the time comes.
The other thing is that for all this talk, Trump actually was President for four years, and neither Ukraine or Taiwan were invaded under his watch. Is that because he was construed to be a committed idealist?
Mewis
5mo ago
My flight to New Zealand is tomorrow. It's a monster, two 12 hour flights with a 7hour layover in China between. Any advice for getting through it?
Also, have a video of me deadlifting somewhat poorly. https://youtube.com/watch?v=e1sHeKR8KjU?si=vsioEZDvf4OLvR2V
Mewis
5mo ago
I'm moving to New Zealand in 8 days to start a (potentially) 2 year working holiday.
I guess I should be happy and excited. Instead I feel listless and anxious. I have lots of stuff I need to organize and get sorted that I just haven't. Other than my visa, flight, and a short hostel booking I don't have anything. Worse, I can't evade the thought that I'm going there to escape the things I don't like about myself and my life, and that I'm going to take my same issues there and replicate the same problems.
Other than that, bulk has kind of stalled out at about 83kg, which is always where I start to struggle to gain weight. That said I have made some small strength gains.
Mewis
8mo ago
I don't see that they're clearly required. When determining eligibility, the government doesn't have to consider due process - it doesn't have to prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt. And due process is to do with rights. There's no right to run for president.
Mewis
30d ago
I've never played the Souls games, so I'll take your word for it that they're not good. But if so, why are they occupy such a large cultural space? Obviously, because they are difficult - that extra challenge is clearly adding something that other actions RPGs just lack. I think it's that - there's a pleasure in overcoming an unfair challenge. And I think a lot of it is the unfairness. Other video games are difficult, but they play by Marquess of Queensbury rules - no sucker punches or surprises.
Mewis
1mo ago
Depression, again
The question was posed in the last SSQ Sunday - what gets you out of bed in the morning? What gives you motivation or purpose? If unhappiness is not getting what you want, depression is not wanting. It is hard and embarrassing to write down the things I want. Embarrassing because they are shallow and venal, and because I am so far away from realising them. And yet by pretending otherwise, by telling myself I don't deserve these things and can't have these things, I am torturing myself and squandering my time.
I want to have a relationship. A loving relationship in which I can both receive and give love. Ideally a romantic relationship with a man, but at this point I would settle for a non romantic one with a biological child or a cute animal like a dog. For the most part, society tells people who are lonely or have depression that they should give up on love, that they don't deserve it. I don't really want to accept that. This is something pretty hard for me. I don't really enjoy sex and am generally pretty shy. I also find gay culture unappealing, on top of my neuroses and horrible self esteem.
The other thing I want is a great body. Despite going to the gym for some years I still feel very dissatisfied with my body and the way that I look, and it makes me feel like I'm lazy or undisciplined that I don't look as good as others. I guess it's pretty shallow and vain of me to express a value like this. But it's the proximate source of a lot of my negative thoughts.
Right now, I feel unbearably neurotic and negative. I'm not beyond pleasure or joy. But it feels ephemeral. I am currently standing in one of the most beautiful places in the world on a lovely warm sunny autumn day. I have no responsibility, no problems. But it leaves me cold. Sometimes I feel like I'm walking around like an idiot zombie, or about to burst into tears. I see the pleasure of others and feel vile and worthless. And I drift aimlessly around without really seeking out the things that might change my state of affairs.
Anyway, thoughts/opinions/perspectives welcome
Mewis
5mo ago
Humans are neither hyper rational utility calculators nor are they blind rule followers. Everyone uses both rules and a consideration of consequences to help them make decisions. But it's my impression that consequentialists are much more resistant to this idea.
It's a typical consequentialist trick to conjure up some idiotic thought experiment, as if it means anything. It doesn't.
Mewis
1mo ago
Person goes to hospital with cancer. Is stuck in a bed having their bum wiped for them. Loses muscle mass. Dies. Clearly they just needed some whey and squats. Or hospitals cause cancer.
Actual weightlifters have bad life expectancy outcomes, on par with athletes that get punched in the face regularly.
Mewis
3mo ago
It was always dumb of DeSantis to try and beat Trump. Trump is like 90 years old, just wait for him to die.
Mewis
4mo ago
Some things are nearly identical (I couldn't identify the difference between store brand and Uncle Ben's rice, for example) but other things, particularly processed foods, do have a noticeable gap. Offbrand cola is disgusting, for example.
Mewis
6mo ago
I remember reading some accounts that Bill Clinton had an uncanny level of personal charisma that people who hadn't met him just didn't get. I think it's probably a more general quality of today's rigorously competitive political world. Maybe that's why politicians so often come off as incompetent or fake, that they're selected so strongly for personal charisma it leaves no room for other qualities.
Mewis
6mo ago
Tbh, I find the 'is he natty' debate to be pretty uninteresting. Does it actually change the ground reality of what he's doing or what he's saying?
Also though steroid use is more widespread than ever, it's still, like, illegal. I don't know how strict things are in the US, but I think people are reasonable to choose not to talk openly about it, if you could get arrested, lose your job or your place at college over it. Sulek has never claimed to be natty, and at the end of the day isn't selling training programs or boutique supplements or diet plans under the promise that others can get the same results. He's not selling anything except himself... But it's worth asking if that makes it better. The pressure to look good, to be big and strong, to earn the respect of other men, to be accomplished and confident and popular are still there.
Mewis
6mo ago
Well, that doesn't solve the problem - the emergence of a semi permanent rentier/leisure aristocracy. Personally I'm inclined to say that this sort of thing is possibly unavoidable in any kind of complex economy with a free market and for various reasons our economy wouldn't allow too many people to do this.
Mewis
8mo ago
If you're low functioning enough to struggle to maintain housing/job, that makes it easier to move, not harder. We're not talking about people who have an established career path or a mortgage or are pillars of their community. If you just lost your burger flipping job and are getting evicted and don't have any friends... Nothing is keeping you anywhere, other than inertia! Pack a suitcase and get on a bus.
(This is, of course, how a lot of people end up in California in the first place.)
Mewis
10mo ago
I mean, there is a pretty obvious principled line between adult homosexuality and pederasty. I'll give you a hint - it's the same one straight people use.
One thing that stuck out to me in Dune was the chasteness. The Harkonnens are sex weirdo pederasts in the books, an element that is totally excised in the movies, even though they're delightfully weird in other ways.
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