WhiningCoil
No bio...
User ID: 269
WhiningCoil
13hr ago
Happy Birthday! IMHO 25 is peak cockiness. If you took the short path you've completed your education, begun your career, are getting attention from the opposite sex, and are in the full flower of adulthood such that all the old farts of jealous. Enjoy it.
Just don't ask about your 30's.
WhiningCoil
13hr ago
At the age of 25, you're at your physical and cognitive peak, and it's all downhill from here.
I really have to wonder how much of this is people just not taking care of themselves. Personally I'd probably put my physical peak around 32 when I was fighting fit and winning tournaments. But that might have been an artifact of not really having proper training or nutrition until my late 20's. It's more difficult to assess my mental peak, or separate alacrity of though from wisdom, since wisdom provides so many shortcuts. I will say, when I was pre-diabetic I thought my mental acuity was falling off and I was just aging. Then my doctor caught it, I cut out a ton of sugar and snacking, started intermittent fasting, and now I'm right as rain again in my 40's.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you peaked at 25, maybe see a doctor, nutritionist or trainer?
WhiningCoil
17hr ago
Well, the 401k has been trucking along about 20 years, with 9% of my income (5% contribution, 4% match). The brokerage account I've had about 10 years, and bitcoin has been an 8 year accumulation. Most of my "active" investing has taken place in the last 8 years.
There were a smattering of minor setbacks that came out of the emergency fund. New well pump, birth of my child, etc. Nothing in the six figure range, or even much above $10,000 at a shot. Buying a house with 20% down in 2021 was probably the largest "set back" if all you care about is maximizing contributions to an investment account. But despite the opportunity cost of being out around $100,000 for the down payment, it's been worth it. I don't really include the appreciation on the house in my "Fuck You" goal, but I do include the fixed cost of keeping a roof over my head compared to the rental market, as well as avoiding all the instability of having to deal with a market for shelter at all. You see debates on the rent vs buy math all the time, but I can promise you the buy in 2021 versus rent today math absolutely works out in favor of "buy in 2021"
WhiningCoil
18hr ago
Short version, the ratio went something like 8:4:1 for 401k split 50/50 between growth and value funds, my regular brokerage account with my own stock picks, and then just bitcoin. Despite how heavily the ratio skews towards the 401k, all three accounts as of this post are within spitting distance of each other. My private brokerage account has almost doubled the growth of my 401k, and my bitcoin had almost quadrupled the growth of my brokerage account.
WhiningCoil
18hr ago
You get up 2.5m dollars any asshole in the world knows what to do. You get a house with a 25 year roof, an indestructible Jap economy shitbox, you put the rest into the system 3-5% to pay your taxes, and that's your base, get me? That puts you for the rest of your life at the level of "Fuck you". Someone wants you to do something? "Fuck You." Boss pisses you off? "Fuuuuck You." I have a car, and a house, and a family, and it's all paid for "Fuuuuuuuck You."
I remember seeing this clip go viral years and years ago. It's inspiring and terrifying in equal measure, and supposedly the movie it's from isn't even that good.
I am tantalizing close to reaching this goal. Got the house, got the paid off cars, got the family, and the last several years my investments have appreciated more than my yearly income. One year it lapped it. I still contribute to my investments, though my contributions are dwarfed by appreciation to such a degree it makes me question the utility of it. I originally wrote a post about what lessons I'd thought I'd learned to get here, but it felt like I was jacking myself off to much. Lets leave it at a combination of luck, thrift, relatively high income, and commitment to a plan.
Best of luck to you all, and here's hoping I didn't speak too soon.
WhiningCoil
18hr ago
It's horrible for the parents involved and many of them hand kids back when they can't cope with them, but that was the job they signed up for. To give a kid a shot. You are deliberately choosing to trade your time and effort and yes pain in exchange for possibly healing and raising a wounded child. It's not invasive, you deliberately brought it into your home. Yes absolutely do so with open eyes, about the issues they may well be facing, but it's not an invasive species, or even a cuckoo left in your nest against your will (as the most recent clarification by Coil) it's a burden that was chosen. Recognize that it is a burden yes, but you don't then get to pretend it was an invasive species.
You understand metaphors, yes? That they aren't literal? Yes?
I don't literally think blacks are an invasive species, or that this congenital felon was literally snuck into their home.
But this poor family made a terrible decision because they've been lied to about reality their entire lives. They thought they could take the fruit of generations of convicted felons, and rescue him from his genetic destiny, because they didn't believe it was real. The moral imperative of blank slatism has robbed two promising young children of their parents time, affection, resources and an emotionally nourishing home. Yeah, it's not as direct as the Cuckoo just leaving it's eggs in an unattended nest. But they were tricked all the same. And they continue to be tricked with narratives like yours that make them feel like they just aren't good enough people if they give up.
Yeah, I know this doesn't only happen with black kids. Yes, I know it happens with flesh and blood too. Right now my mother in law refuses to live in her own home because my father in law refuses to stop harboring their criminally insane 40 year old son. She's damned near 80, the son is a violent psychopath, and the father is not doing his proper duty in actually physically protecting his wife, even if it's from his own kin. But that wasn't the topic of conversation when I made that post. Adoption was, and that's the adoption story I have.
You know, I've been debating about this post of mine. Because everyone has reacted like I wrote the blacks should be exterminated. And I'm sitting here going "Adoption came up, I told a story about the sheer pants shitting horror I've seen a family go through, that was the metaphor in play". Because I really do know a family that adopted a young ghetto infant out of Washington DC. That's just the story I have on hand. And obviously everyone had a reaction to it.
At best, the disconnect as near as I can tell is that "the garden" in my metaphor is that guys family. Not the entirety of humanity. And the family in question, were it a garden, is absolutely being terrorized by a virulent invasive species that they've invited into their home. The husband is utterly checked out and retreated into his work, the wife is medicated (both rx and self) just to get through each day and each fresh hell their adoptive son puts them through. Their younger biological children are clearly neglected and struggling. For a year every day I pulled up beside their van, waiting to pick up my daughter who was in the same school as their biological daughter, I'd overhear the mom on the phone on the verge of a panic attack coping with the nightmare of their existence, or talking her husband down from the same.
I don't know strong enough words to translate that experience to this "garden" metaphor that was in play. A cuckoo bird leaving it's eggs in another birds nest, for them to starve that poor bird's actual children and push them out of the nest may have been a more direct metaphor for what I see happening, but a garden had already been brought up.
So I'm sitting here baffled that the post I felt was fairly neutral, and made no sweeping statements about any groups, but was a cautionary tale about who you choose to add to your family when it is a choice, caught so much flak.
But it goes back to... I mean... people know. I have made sweeping statements. At one point I might have fought the accusation that I'm racist, because I honestly didn't think I was. But those days are long over. Too much has happened.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Man, but then you miss out on the essential dad activity of pushing them, letting them fall, and telling them to rub some dirt in their skinned knee.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
This is true, but also still feels atypical. This goes back into childhood ignorance, but I remember precisely zero about George Bush Sr's VP except people clowning on him. Al Gore I remember precisely zero about during his term as VP. Dick Cheney was always more of a shadowy figure, presumed to be pulling the strings from the shadows, but rarely out in front doing anything visible to the public. The only thing I remember about Joe Biden as VP was when he got in trouble for saying "Shylock" and the ADL came out and said he was up to date on his protection money donations and that he was absolutely not an antisemite. Oh, and when Obama put him in charge of curing cancer during a State of the Union address. Pence did fuck and all during Trump's first term.
That Vance is out there, regularly, and seemingly successfully, advocating the President's agenda feels atypical across all my life experience. He gives on strong podcast "Debate me bro" energy that might just be an artifact of the times we live in.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Yeah, so this art book is what I let my daughter browse through while I read the novel to her. But another friend of mine read this illustrated version to her son. Probably advantages to both. Giving my daughter a separate book I think worked for us because she had some control over what she was looking at while I read.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Best of luck man, kids are the best.
WhiningCoil
1d ago
Man, somebody's fucking phone was listening in on my conversations, because Facebook has been shoving balance bike ads into my feed up the wazoo. Jokes on them, my daughter doesn't need one anymore!
WhiningCoil
1d ago
governed like a radical
Well... somebody governed like a radical. Jury is still out on who.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Side note, my highest aspiration these days is to earn enough unrealized capital gains to retire, and live off the 0% tax rate on the first $100,000-ish I realize a year. Even after that it's only 15% up to $500,000. Fuck paying into this system that hates me and my family.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
I think a lot about gambling apps in this context. There has been a lot of talk about them, how frictionless they make it to part with literally all your money. How if you actually do make money off them, they ban you. How, against the law, they personally call their worst addicts and entice them to gamble more. There is an argument I've seen made that if we are going to allow gambling, we need to add as much friction as possible to the experience to try to save people from themselves.
Similar care needs to be taken with those of us who end up in the returned goods bin. We don't need tiktok gassing us up about our worth, or dating apps dangling imaginary chads or stacies in front of our noses. We need examples of how non-broken people act in healthy, fruitful monogamous relationships treat one another, and maybe even the fear of god to scare us straight. Or something, anything. Just not this. Anything but this.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
I don't think you understand. In order to work at a Fairfax, VA McDonalds, you need to speak spanish in order to communicate with the rest of the staff. They literally won't hire you.
Well, that's not 100% true. I saw a single white teenager working at a Burger King around 2009 in Reston, VA. His coworkers were laughing and carrying on during the lunch rush flipping burgers, and he was all alone, head down, working the fry machine. Couldn't understand anything anyone was saying around him. One of the most depressing things I'd ever seen in my life.
Last time I was in Loudoun County, 2015-ish you could still find entry level work as a native English speaker. The Roy Rogers in Leesburg was staffed entirely by very polite local highschoolers. That may have changed in the last 10 years though.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Man, I sincerely hope you don't strike out on an app for chubby chasers. Because if fat chicks have so much brainrot they are shooting you down 99.99% of the time, I'm not sure I want to see the creature you become.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
This is a long story, but I'm getting to a point, I swear.
A buddy of mine in college converted to Mormonism to date a girl. He was a character, but this story is going to be winding enough without getting into that. One day we went over to his girlfriend's house to meet before we all left to go see Lord of the Rings in theaters. I forget which one, maybe Fellowship. It doesn't matter.
It's around Christmas time, and this huge Mormon family is bursting at the seems with wholesome energy. Every little girl wants to show you want they've been baking with their mother. Every little boy wants to show you their somersault or some trick. The house is decorated, the Christmas tree is up, good times. So me and a buddy of mine are awkwardly sitting in the living room, not really sure what to do or say because this is not a vibe we grew up with. In addition to our usual awkwardness I might add. And two of these kids are throwing a little toy football closer and closer to the Christmas tree. My buddy and I, we don't say anything, but we're looking at each other with a panicked expression that needs no words. We are both thinking, if that ball actually hits that tree, a kid is gonna die in front of us.
Anyways, ball hits the tree, ornaments fall, train doing loops around the base falls over aaaaaaaand.... nothing. Dad chuckles, asks them to take it outside, life carries on like nothing ever happened. The boys clean up the mess they made and go throw the ball around outside. After my buddy and I piled into the car to go see the movie once everyone had arrived, we talked about how Christmas was at our homes growing up. How the house was transformed into a veritable museum of Christmas, and our mothers would fly into a violent rage if they so much as heard an ornament jingle due to a single heavy step within 20 feet of the tree. And it slowly dawned on us, that we were the fucked up ones. That family we just visited, they were the happy well adjusted ones.
It sucks realizing in your 20's that you were raised wrong. And not just "could have done better, but basically OK", but fundamentally the opposite of how you should have been raised. With all your intuitions about family dynamics and how to view and treat loved ones horrifically and possibly permanently miswired. It sucks watching the increasingly small demographic of well adjusted, family oriented peers you may have politely filtering you out and pairing off. It sucks getting older and realizing, you've been left behind with the other rejects, and now you've got to find the least damaged item in the returns bin to try to build a life with, knowing full well that's all you are to someone else as well.
I have no fucking clue how I did it. I have no fucking clue how anyone else is expected to do it today, except that it seems even more impossible, and the odds even more remote. But it sucks seeing all the "good ones" taken, and it hurts even worse realizing that goes for you too.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
I do, but you don't. Telling people "git gud" without any notion of how they do is less than worthless. You don't even have proof that they can. Who do you point to to show it's possible, if not yourself?
Can I let you in on a little secret? You know what me and my married friends sometimes talk about? We aren't bragging about how much better than our younger contemporaries we are, or patting each other on the back about how we "got gud". We talks about how fucking lucky we are to be 40 and married, and not 20 or 30 and single. That we met our spouses before swiping, and tiktok. Before Andrew Tate. On both sides! Men and women both are clinging to their spouses like the last lifeboat on the Titanic, because it doesn't take a genius to see how utterly fucked the dating landscape is. The sheer hellscape of modern dating and gender relations has probably done more for the security of my marriage, and many others, than anything else.
I'm on the other side, and even I don't see how anybody is expected to do it if they haven't already these days! Y'all are fucked.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Single, childless, drifting somewhat aimlessly, generally an emotional wreck on a daily basis. But what of it?
You don't actually know how to "git gud". You have zero proof that your diagnosis of the problem, nor the way out is correct. You should not be giving advice to anyone, nor judging anyone else for how they are handling it.
First you ascertain how gud the "git gudder" actually is, and then you have two options. If they're gud, then you say "well yeah, easy for you to say, you're already gud, and you probably got there by luck or natural talent anyway, so you don't know what it's like to suffer as someone who's not gud". If they're not gud, then you say "well what do you know anyway, you don't know anything about being gud, so just stay out of it."
Because you left out the 3rd option. If the people saying "git gud" is good, and has actionable advice, you actually do it. People are not limited to the cacophony of narcissistic rage.
You have neither.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
"I'm a weirdo autist. That's not going to change. That's what we have to work with. So it's time to figure out how to make the best of that, rather than getting all mopey about it."
Do share. How did you make the best of that? Did you manage to land a wife? Have you had kids? What did you have to settle for? It's all well and fine to say "Git gud", but it helps to show your work.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
So, I know a couple that tried to do a good thing. They adopted a young ghetto boy as an infant, removed him from all the bad influences that afflicted his community, and raised him in a middle-upper class environment with the best private schools, institutions and cultural guidance western civilization could provide.
The boy has terrorized that poor family for over a decade now with no signs of relenting. If this were a nature versus nurture debate, nurture is in a fetal position, ribs kicked in, begging for death as nature relentless curb stomps her.
It's all well and good to want to plant seeds, and failing to plant your own, nurture what you can find. Just make sure you aren't nurturing some virulent invasive species that will leave the land barren.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
So, a funny story about how motivation is contagious.
I was working on some chairs. I keep trying to make steady progress, because the longer I go without working on them, the less motivation I feel to get back in the saddle and just finish the damned things. My wife waylaid me with a task of making some floating shelves, which I knocked out in about a weekish. The finish is currently curing and then they go up on the wall.
Anyways, I'm explaining how I stay motivated to my daughter, and I ask her "Is there anything you wanted to do, but then got distracted and now it's hard to get back to it again?" She goes "Yeah, riding my bike without my training wheels." This apparently lit a fire under her five year old butt, and she's been going hard at it. After we got the driveway redone on Thursday so it's nice and flat and smooth, and every single day since she's been out there with her training wheels off. Friday I was giving her a push before she fell 5-10 feet later, Saturday she was pedaling down the driveway but couldn't make it uphill. Sunday she was making it uphill. Monday she was making it uphill and downhill and turning at the bottom. Yesterday she frustrated herself to hysterical tears trying to get going all on her own without a push, and by the end of the day she'd pulled it off. Not 100%, but she got her foot in the door. Couldn't be more proud of her.
And it was seemingly kicked off by me having a candid conversation with her about putting effort into staying motivated.
WhiningCoil
2d ago
Is it a free market? Are you factoring in the market distortions of women taking out massive loans for fake degrees that don't pay, and then lobbying to have the taxpayer just forgive them? Or the weaker market distortions of income based repayment? Are you factoring in the cartel like behavior of HR which is predominantly run by overly educated women? Are you factoring in all the assistance programs women get for almost every facet of their life?
There is a lot going on, but at no point would I claim it's the "hand of the free market at work".
If you are going to take the people who raise congenital felons and bestow upon them all the benefits of generations of prudence and compare them to firefighters, you might want to consider if they are the firefighters from Fahrenheit 451.
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