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WhiningCoil


				

				

				
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joined 2022 September 04 23:24:47 UTC
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User ID: 269

WhiningCoil


				
				
				

				
6 followers   follows 0 users   joined 2022 September 04 23:24:47 UTC

					

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User ID: 269

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https://aella.substack.com/p/the-difficulty-in-dating-good-men

Another stream of consciousness essay from a town bike describing (probably without meaning to) how all men just blur together and cease being distinct human beings you could bond with anymore after being run through enough? You don't say?!

It's fascinating reading something like that, where the front half is just a pastiche of the ways men are objects to her, scarcely individualized. Then the back half comes up with about a dozen potential reasons she can't seem to bond with anyone... except the correct one. Alas.

Edit: You know what, let me elaborate. I knew a guy who knew a guy who used to be hooked on heroin. The guy I knew was too, but he was telling me about another junkie he met in NA. One addict to another he told him, being slightly older and along his path of recovery, that nothing he did in life ever felt as good as being on heroin. Not meeting the love of his life, not getting married, not even the birth of his first child. They all felt good, sure. But man... nothing topped heroin. Luckily for him, support groups like NA exist to keep him from succumbing to that eternal lure. I know their failure rates are high, but I like to think, like the guy I know and still see regularly, he's chugging along on the relatively straight and narrow.

Aella has spent the better part of her life smashing her moral compass with a blunt rock in a petty act of rebellion. The single piece of human machinery that gives us feedback when we are moving along a proper path of human fulfillment. And now she's complaining that nothing feels right when she attempts to return to the path, so she gives up. Maybe there is money to be made in a "Narcissistic Internet Whores Anonymous".

That's wild. I knew the youth (and increasingly young adults) had been brain poisoned, but I never connected it to some unfounded faith in "randomness". My parents, teachers, scout masters, basically every adult in my life in the 90's and early 00's rode my ass that "If I don't X, Y won't happen" or inversely "If you don't X, terrible Z will happen". At time it felt overly deterministic, and the example my mother always used must have been a warning passed down through the generations. "If you don't get good grades you'll grow up to be a ditch digger!" It was an anachronism in the 90's, I can scarcely imagine how it sounds now.

While I rebelled at the time as a kid, never the less I grew up and stuck to the golden path as an adult. Funny how those things happen. Life is pretty good on the path, prudently considering action and consequence, delaying gratification. A story comes up with my wife constantly where I was in this gifted program as a kid, and they had these work-study units you could do. It was a bit free form, with different levels you could advance through. But I had lost interest in about a dozen of them halfway through, and the teachers told me I couldn't start any new units until I finished the ones I had already began. I didn't want to, so I told my mom I wanted to drop out of the gifted program. She read me the riot act about finishing things I've started. So off I went, knocking out all the units I'd begun, and turns out by the end of the year I'd finished more than anyone else and got some meaningless attaboy for it.

My wife on the other hand, her parents always told her if something was hard just give up.

To this day, a difference between my wife and I is that I finish things and she doesn't. She has a stack of a dozen books she's started next to her bed, I refuse to start one book until I've finished the one I'm on. She has a half dozen hobby projects in various states of completion, I've been laboring away on a set of chairs, refusing to begin some floating bookshelves she wants until they are finished. She started refinishing the kitchen... I had to finish it so we had usable kitchen.

Sometimes I do feel like a person out of sync with my generation. You do read about a transitional or micro generation between Gen X and Millennials.

At some point I got hit with belief fatigue. I can scarcely tell what's true from last week. Was the Minnesota shooter a D or an R? Will I ever really know? We still don't know shit about the Butler PA Trump Assassin. Or the motives of the Vegas shooter. I've utterly given up concern over whether the truth of the Christian tradition is 100% literally exactly what happened. Probably 75% of what I hold to be true about history, or the active state of my own country, is a lie. Lies I will never have the ability or opportunity to correct. Shit, people get wrong the truth of things they saw with their own damned eyes. Eye witness testimony is famously among the worst forms of evidence. I get all the nitpicking about the game of telephone/oral tradition that eventually got put down in the bible, and then translation after translation etc. I just no longer see how that same argument isn't a fully generalized destructor for any concept of truth.

Dan Carlin constantly quotes some historian talking about ancient texts, and it goes something like "We cannot believe ancient history, but we have no choice but to believe ancient history." It goes back to the constant arguments about how much of what we know about, say, Alexander the Great was real, how much was propaganda, and how much was apocryphal nonsense? But at the same time, you can't go full retard and claim Alexander the Great never existed. Sometimes I like to think about the Trojan War, and how for the longest time, I think basically since the Enlightenment, "educated" people believed it was just a myth and never happened at all. Then some random German thought "I donno man, this poem is pretty specific about where Troy was. I think I can just, like, go there?" And then he did, and it was. The truth was sitting there just barely below the surface for anyone with the motivation (and lack of sneering cynicism) to just check and see.

How important is it really if I choose to believe that 2000 years ago God manifested as a human on Earth? More over, as I go down the rabbit hole, and try to intellectualize that belief, I can still make it work, literally. If I really want to.

I guess if I had to try to put a point on this, it's that everything may be lies and nonsense. The fog of war isn't some vague concept in distant operations. It exists inside our brains far closer to the source than we'd like to believe. Not unlike LLMs have done more to degrade my estimation of people than raise my estimation of AI, arguments against the Christian Tradition have ultimately eroded my ability to believe anything more than they "disproved" Christianity in specific. So fuck it, why not return to the belief system my ancestors had for over 1000 years? They had a pretty good run during that time.

There are plenty of total simps in tech with a solid paycheck who'd be thrilled to go for her, and she knows that.

But simps are gross. Very few women who think anything of themselves (and Aella thinks a lot of herself) is willing to stoop and settle for a simp.

This is all a marketing gimmick. Come save the poor whore with a heart of gold and a mind of platinum!

I can't discount it. This could all be part of her hustle. Like I said, I try to ignore her.

Progress continues on my 200 snatch goal. I carved out some headroom above 130 reps. But man, it sucks getting old. First something in my mid right back tweaked the fuck out. Sprained or knotted something so fierce I could barely get out of bed the next day. Eventually stretched/massaged that out. Then something in my right shoulder hurt so fucking bad I couldn't reach behind myself to wipe my own ass with my right hand. And more or less only that movement in specific caused problems. I could actually still do tons and tons of snatches no problem. Lots of stretching and massage for that too. Both those problems have gone away and don't seem to be coming back. But now my fucking fifth metacarpal on my right hand, which I broke in my 20's, has decided to ache for days every time I do my 100+ snatch reps.

Fucking why?!

On a sadder note. We lost my cousin last month. The funeral was last week, and I found out he committed suicide. We weren't especially close growing up, but we had reconnected a few years ago, and unfortunately lost touch when I moved away. He was a good guy, struggling with what remained of a life of poor choices and core traits he couldn't reform, despite solid success breaking some of their more destructive manifestations. There was always such a tone of regret when we'd catch up, and he'd ask how the wife and kid were doing. He clearly wanted those things, he'd had chances, but he couldn't stop himself from fumbling them, badly.

I miss you cous'. I'm sorry you couldn't make it. I hope you're at peace now.

I do wonder how the average iron age scholar would react to "Pointing out that actions have consequences is evil".

I fucking love programming, and noodle around in random unprofessional bullshit all the time.

But i spent my childhood obsessed with computers. I also did Computer Engineering with a software focus versus straight comp sci. I felt it gave me a better perspective of how computers actually work.

What's been good for my confidence has been contributing to a smattering of open source projects I used, but which had bugs that annoyed me. Emulators, open source bios, etc. Jumping into foreign code bases is great for experience.

From where I sit, the industry is scary. My little corner in my small government contractor company is fine. But I do wonder if the ladder got pulled up behind me. Some of it is hardcore culture war material, so I have to leave it at that.

I think America is already dead. There are almost certainly other theories, but look at the utter collapse of our state capacity.

Sometimes I see people point to Vietnam as the point where America "lost the ability to win wars", the first Iraq War not withstanding. We can fight wars. We can fight wars for decades. But we haven't achieved our geopolitical goals after a war in decades.

But there is more to running a nation than adventurism over seas! Sadly since Obama basically the state has failed at every initiative it ever undertook, and fails harder, faster and more obviously as time goes on. And yet people connected to government keep getting fantastically wealthy!

The corruption and graft is so out of control, we've become like Africa where nothing gets built, but the people accepting the contracts all live in mansions. And it's hard to ignore that the multi-ethnic low trust society we've all been forced into seems to have paved the way for this.

I'm no longer confident the US will be around in my old age. I just wonder which ethnic group or coalition will be lead by some modern day Atilla or Clovis will seize control of large portions of the US under a forced "reorganization" of state and federal power because the feds no longer have the state capacity to stop them. After all, we've seen such a decline in state capacity everywhere else, why should we expect them to hold the country together, push comes to shove? You think the 20 million illegals that flooded the country, or the 60-100 million descendants they'll have in 50 years in their ethnic ghettos care about the continuity of the American project? They came here for a better life, and that doesn't necessarily include us.

I think they have a problem with narcissism.

Most women go through their lives being the center of attention. Women Are Wonderful, and most relationships revolve around them and whatever it takes to keep them happy. After all, it's easy for them to replace the men in their lives who fail to live up to their standards.

To a point.

Having a kid takes all the attention they were getting, all the effort people were putting into keeping them happy, and steals it away from them. Now the kid is getting it. There is no comparison to being a man and becoming a father, because nobody gives a fuck about men in the first place. Supposedly becoming a dad is (used to be?) good for your career because people are (or were?) more generous with raises for a family man.

What we can do is work with them, educate them on how to live a better life, and love them.

This has been the political project of the last 50 years, and it's only resulted in the inmates running the asylum.

So I finally took profit on COIN and decided to get my driveway redone with some of the windfall. It's a fucking disaster, washed out, weeds coming through, you name it. Thinking of going with tar & chip to the house, and then recycled asphalt back to my workshop. It's about 400+ ft of driveway total and my first quote is about $11,000. I guess we'll see how this goes.

I don't know if Adam Friedland will seize the day to become the ironic Bill Maher for under-40s

Is becoming Bill Maher supposed to be some sort of accomplishment? His schtick mostly seems to be begging the Democrats not to be crazy (and failing) for 1.5 years, and then spending the other 0.5 years during peak election season (midterm and presidential) sheep herding all the audience he grown being "contrarian" into voting Blue No Matter Who anyways because "The Republicans are still worse."

It's working less and less well as time goes on. And every time he goes "I was wrong, here are some of the good points Republicans make" for a few months. But then another election comes up and the mask of reason falls and the pure partisan comes back out.

That being said, and I mean this genuinely, but your posting style seems very uhhh cynical for someone who believes in Christ? If you genuinely believe in the Christian tradition, shouldn't you be more joyous? Christ won!

Yes. I am a lifeline cynic/edgy internet atheist trying to change my ways. It's not moving in a straight line.

I don't think that's what originalism is. Every time I've seen people argue, claiming originalist bona fides, they bring up the surrounding context. The debates, the letters, the journals, and any other written record they can find from the founding fathers. They aren't considering the words on the page in a vacuum. If anything, that's what the "living document" people do. They ignore all the context around around the founding documents, squint, abuse semantics, and decide the words on the page mean whatever they want them to mean.

Maybe.

Then again, the stereotype of that happening is a man rapidly approaching middle age who's had little luck up to this point finds himself in a situationship with a woman who's had her fun already and has run out of options. One thing leads to another, she decides "He'll do I guess" and they live happily ever after in constant seething resentment. Her because he wasn't who she wanted to end up "stuck" with, and him because this lady treats him like something that got stuck to her shoe and constantly humiliates him in public with stories of the sexcapades she used to have in her 20's. But not with him. Eww. She doesn't do those things anymore.

Shit, I ran into five of those couples at a school function last week. Putting aside the insane inappropriateness of bringing up your 20's sexcapades not just in mixed company, in front of your husband, but with your fucking kids not 10 feet away on the jungle gym.

Needless to say, yeah, people can eat shit. People can draw straws lost at sea. But most would prefer not to find themselves in situations where those are there only options.

You know, I was saving this for Friday Fun but it almost fits better here...

If you came of age and discovered internet porn in the early 00's, ideepthroat dot com was legendary. It was this couple, one part a bottle blonde woman with a handsome face and giant fake tits, and the other a dopey sounding guy packing some above average heat. The hook was that this lady had no gag reflex what so ever, and he could literally fuck her face without her gagging or crying or anything. To this day, if blowjobs are your thing, best in class.

Eventually the site shut down, but the clips lived on. They were early 00's quality, but if Citizen Kane can be a masterpiece despite the technology of the time, so are those blowjobs. I heard rumors from time to time, she became a realtor after she quit cam girling. Or that her and her husband had kids and hung it up. Or that they split. No clue if any of it was true.

Well, a couple years ago she decided to return on pornhub. It's gross. Really gross. She's in her late 40's or early 50's now? The giant rock hard fake tits are pretty much the only part not succumbing to the ravages of time. She was shoving comically oversized dildos up her prolapsed asshole. I used to think there was nothing sadder than a washed up rock star who's arthritic spasms on stage make you wish they'd joined the 27 club. But it turns out an old camgirl, first of her breed, trying to recapture some of that young and sexy magic is even sadder. Makes me wonder if in another 20 years or 40 years we'll see these old camgirls auctioning off the chance to be their partner in a snuff film, to die as they lived.

I should note my own prior here; you're much better off with a priest than a shrink.

I would not be shocked to see a study with a dataset supporting that exorcism is a better mental health intervention than therapy.

Let me put it like this.

I would not be against much maligned literacy test to register to vote. I wouldn't be against banning people on SSRIs from voting. I don't understand why felons ever started getting their rights to vote back, when the last thing we need is a felon voting block, somehow convincing politicians to make their crimes legal or at least unpunishable. I think it might be a worthy experiment to whittle away at universal suffrage "disparate outcomes" be damned.

Sometimes I think of the origin story of sorts for the Slavs. Mostly because Dan Carlin did a podcast on vikings in the east, and then immediately after I heard that Putin summarized largely the same history in his interview with Tucker Carlson. And that origin story, as written by the victors, is that the Slavs were so incapable of ruling themselves, they invited some viking nobles who were much better at ruling down to rule over them. The relentless and short sighted tribal strife largely calmed down, some measure of relative peace and prosperity returned to the region.

Now on the face of it, that sounds like a preposterous story obviously written by the victors. Are we honestly supposed to believe that a people requested from foreign stock a new ruling class? That it's even possible for them to have the self awareness required to realize, as a people, they are temperamentally incapable of governing themselves? It's probably just a story, a myth even. But sometimes I think about it wondering, what if?

You know, that is true, but also, when you watch Sam & IDubbz competing documentaries, one of the things that jumps out in IDubbz trying to encourage Sam to be more genuine and less of a character. Sam, understandably, believes if he ever did that he'd get deleted off the internet and unpersoned entirely.

One 'uge election victory later, and Sam does appear to be letting his true self come out at least a little bit more. His open letter to Elon was probably as close to an unironic manifesto for what he actually believes as we've ever seen, and is arguably responsible for his resurgence in fame/notoriety/attention.

So, not only did Sam try to pull IDubbz off the path, and IDubbz has proceeded to ignore all his advice and ruin his life, but Sam may have taken IDubbz advice and prospered enormously?

So I got a Switch 2. Because I'll always be a Nintendo kid at heart.

My old Switch was dying. The fan in it was making a god awful racket. So I hadn't turned it on the last few months because I planned on just transferring everything to a Switch 2 anyways. I may replace the fan for fun and practice and sell it now that I'm not concerned about losing data.

First order of business was finally finishing the playthrough of Final Fantasy XII that had about 3 hours left to it. I fucking love this game. Favorite Final Fantasy by a country mile, and the only one I still fire up from time to time. Personally I preferred the original's license board over Zodiac Age's job system, but it is what it is. I generally always prefer things the way I first experienced them.

The game was still as obviously flawed as it was when I first played it in 2006. The first half of the game is way stronger than the back half. The entire plot seems to revolve around chasing McGuffin after McGuffin to no consequence what so ever. Every time you finally get a McGuffin, some cutscenes halfway across the world with characters you never meet happen which move the plot along independent of anything you did. That said, I still love the real time combat and gambit system, the localization is top notch and the accents they gave all the groups really heighten the expert world building that went into Ivalice. Ultimately it's a game that is a work of art despite itself.

I mean, yes. But also, that requires a lower time preference than most narcissist are capable of. They don't want to give up attention now for more attention later. They want all the attention, right now, all the time. And especially their exact favorite type of attention, not a different type that's better in some ways and worse in others.

Why not both? Look, I haven't taken a chemistry class in 20+ years. But by way of a possibly flawed analogy, you can have incredibly stable molecules that get pried apart in the correct solution. Maybe all it takes is water.

No relationship is perfect or without strife. Culture can encourage people to kill their ego and sacrifice to work things out, or it can encourage them to be purely ego driven and destroy their relationships in pursuit of limitless self actualization.

Man... I had so many dreams of giving my child the same childhood I had. Biking 15 miles to the nearest strip mall with my sister, playing in the woods all day, ranging through countless back yards. Once I found this weird heavily vandalized abandoned cabin in the middle of nowhere. My parents never cared, and it all seemed totally normal in the 90's.

Unfortunately, times have changed. Putting aside the sociological factors, apparently ticks in my area are up 4000% since a decade ago, and my daughter has already caught Lyme Disease and Alpha Gal Syndrome. Any tick bite she gets could make her AGS symptoms worse, and causes my wife to have a week long panic attack. I didn't appreciate how much the world had changed in that regard, and how much worse just playing in the fucking woods was.

Also, I swear to god if the rumors that Lyme Disease and AGS escaped from a bioweapons lab are true you may very well see me on the news.

That said we try our best. Lots of tick spray, twice daily tick checks, tick treatments for the yard. Breaks my heart that she can't play in the woods and the creek I bought. Virtually every time anybody goes into them they come out with 2-5 ticks, so that's not even a hypothetical problem.

That said she fucking loved the 2 acres of yard we do have. Climbs the shit out of trees, plays with the chickens, has her own garden with her mother. She loves to pick herbs and leafy greens to add to her fresh eggs in the morning. Skips around the yard in her night gown saying good morning to the chickens. Makes my heart swell.

Her peers... well... I donno man. A friend of mine has a kid about her age, a boy, tall as fuck. He spends an hour on a tablet at his preschool to get him ready for the tablet as a learning device in elementary. Cause I guess that's what public schools do now? He can't ride a bike, climb a tree, he still has an awkward toddler gait despite being 5, and still has very soft speech. I'm reading Lord of the Rings to my daughter, he's seen all the movies along with Star Wars, The Hobbit, and countless other shows.

My wife and I constantly discuss, is our daughter just "advanced" or have we just not hobbled her with screentime and being locked in a townhouse? We may never know, but the differences we notice are stark.

This is preposterous. Libby posted an athlete's record. Their literal public performance. Not their phone number, address, social media accounts, criminal record, or any other information that might be publicly available but threatening in the wrong context. Conflating that with doxing is just rank bad faith.

What's next, is a Ellen Page's IMDB page doxing? Is Bruce Jenner's Olympic record doxing?

Long distance relationships aren't real, without a concrete plan to become a short distance relationship. Preferably you've at least traveled to meet this person already?

I made the terrible mistake of getting into a LDR as an early 20's super nerd who'd barely interacted with women, at least not successfully. The novelty of "Somebody likes me!" was nice, but actually meeting torpedo'd it so fucking hard. Granted, this was the mid 00's and things were a little bit different socio-culturally. But it turns out, the sort of woman who is desperate enough to latch onto a long distance relationship is even worse than the sort of man who does. Consider all your flaws, and reasons you can't find a real relationship near you, and understand that along axis you don't even realize exist, she's probably worse.

That said, the strategy I pursued after that might not even be available anymore, so who knows.