I will willingly out myself here to give some perspective. No, I have not had carnal knowledge of a woman. Yes, throughout high school, I thought the difference between me and the average woman was probably not much. I knew women who could do more pull-ups than me (I could do one-and-a-half unassisted, and I didn't know they needed assistance, but even once I did know, it still hadn't really sunk in for me), I knew women who had better mile times than me, and I thought the difference in push-up requirements weren't much different. I think it wasn't until I did co-ed softball in college that I realized "wow, all the women are really slow and horrible at the game, and all the dudes are superstars who we bank the entire game's performance on".
Kickball in high school probably could have given me this realization as well, if I had cared to notice, but it's not as stark because you've also got unathletic girls and boys who weren't choosing to be there and don't want to put in much effort. I guess I thought even the athletic girls playing just weren't as serious about it as the boys.
Admittedly, there may be a bit of an inferiority complex that played into my not realizing that I am actually stronger than most women. I always thought I was sort of weak. Also, you generally don't get into armwrestling matches with women who are not lesbians, and there were almost no lesbians at my school. Sad, isn't it?
oats_son
1mo ago
I never actually tried Stronglifts. What I tried for a few months last year was the basic beginner routine. It actually resembles Stronglifts a bit, I guess. I just liked how straightforward Stronglifts looked while still having the exercises I liked from the beginner routine.
There were fun parts about it, actually - I like overhead press and chin-ups, I am okay with bench press and barbell rows. Deadlifts and squats are things that scare me, because the weight is high enough that you could be seriously hurt for a long time if you mess up. That kind of goes for bench press, too. As I started putting on more weight, I started getting less confident in my form. With bench press, it was warranted. I took a look at some more videos and found that my elbows were too far out to the sides, and that you need to basically curve your lift a bit to do a proper rep (which was disheartening, because I had to go down in weight to do the proper reps). But I was never confident enough to put much weight on a squat or a deadlift, especially after I did increase my weight according to the guide for deadlifts and came away with a horrible tailbone pain to drive home with. I don't think I ever did more than 170 for squats, and maybe even less than that for deadlifts.
Seeing you write about kettlebells does sound fun. There are actually kettlebells at my gym. I've never seen anyone with one in the section they're in. Do you recommend a workout? Can you actually get stronger with a kettlebell? What about lower body stuff, can kettlebells do that? As I've said, I seem to prefer jogging over most resistance training, so maybe kettlebells would be more fun than barbells. There's also the benefit that I don't need to spend hundreds of dollars and allocate a ton of space for kettlebells.
I am open to class formats. I took Tae Kwon Do when I was a kid, and it wasn't boring. I didn't really get along with the other kids very much, but you don't really need to to have fun sparring or hitting a bag. Increasingly, the class got worse as I grew older. It started seeming to be for mostly young kids, and as I got taller and stronger, the only sparring partner was my brother, and the brutality of those seemed to increase over time, along with the weird feeling of bitter rage holding back inexplicable tears in my throat after a spar, usually after I perceived that I had lost or after having taken some blows with some high amount of force (not exclusive to him, I felt the same thing losing in a tournament). I never got injured since we were padded up and kept the hits to the pads. We stopped going due to loss of interest once I was 16 and my brother was 18.
That being said, I think most classes are usually the aerobic kind of thing, right? Hopefully there are some classes that actually build muscle and aren't 99% women.
oats_son
1mo ago
You're right, the continuous decision to dedicate yourself is the bigger barrier. When I find a new job, I will consider it after I've settled in and everything.
You use headphones, not earbuds? Wireless, I take it? Does the sweat ruin them? Do you ever do aerobic activities wearing them? How much did they cost, and how often do you charge them?
oats_son
1mo ago
I also have to cast some extreme suspicion on most transgenders who wish that they had taken puberty blockers, and making efforts to allow minors to take them, legally or non legally, because they are projecting adult feelings onto children. Most of them discovered their trans-ness as an adult, and that particular activism feels like trying to rectify your own shortfalls by enabling other kids to have better outcomes, except it's very much not a better outcome to most normal people and to pretty much any kid, for reasons given in this thread (infertility, stunted growth, tiny genitals, probably even more significant deleterious health effects that I don't know about). The interest in trans kids is actually kind of sickening to me for these reasons. It's a lot more "adult" than it tries to present itself as.
One dude I know online who likes to crossdress once said that conservatives and transphobes only oppose puberty blockers because it would make it impossible to determine if someone was a real female or not, thus giving the risk of being attracted to the wrong sex (which only a transphobe would find to be a bad thing). I had nothing to say to that, because it was so extremely bad faith and also completely inaccurate, both in its reading of conservative motivations and also the actual outcomes of puberty blockers.
oats_son
1mo ago
I understand it's a big ask for anyone to learn a Category V "super hard" language, but he did marry into it, after all... I'd like to learn Chinese someday, but realistically, that probably won't happen. Spanish is probably a better choice anyway.
oats_son
1mo ago
A training buddy or a spouse would fix the problem entirely, because I like talking a lot and you can talk all you like during a lifting session. I think, also, if I had a home gym, there would be no problem either because there would be no or very little wait and you could put on a podcast or some music or an audiobook (or fall back on conversing with your training buddy) and you would be in your house after the workout instead of having to drive home. Another way to solve it would be to have an actually fun hobby for resistance training like rock climbing. With rock climbing, every session can be something to remember. But lifting weights at a gym alone is the worst, most boring time sink to me in a way that cooking, doing flash cards, reading, flossing and brushing my teeth, or showering is not. Even mowing the lawn is more compelling. Jogging on a treadmill is more compelling, though not by much.
oats_son
1mo ago
What an amazing post. Imagine all the history those old guys lived through. China seems to have replaced India as the land of mysticism in the American public's eye. You married pretty well, if your relatives own hotels and are Party members. I also like how you've managed to visit astoundingly rich areas and also seemingly more poor rural areas, but they all have a commonality in keeping some baijiu in store for such an occasion. For a visitor in your situation, it would be an easy mistake to make to think that they drink it at every lunch and dinner. I hope that when I own a house, I can keep expensive liquors for visitors, too. That's good motivation to try to play around with expensive steaks so you know what you're doing when the time comes.
oats_son
1mo ago
I appreciate the advice you were already given. Stronglifts 5x5 looks like a great program. My question is how you guys keep this kind of routine up for any extended period of time. You're giving up 45 minutes or more to drive to the gym, get changed, wait for your spot to be empty, lift weight for 5 sets, then repeat a couple more times for other spots, then drive home, 3 times every week. Do you lift alone? How do you make it bearable? I'm not having fun when I do it and it really hurts that it's cutting into my already limited free time. I just feel like it's a bit overvalued in comparison to something like deciding to spend more time cooking at home, which I find to be a lot more fun and tends to save you money.
oats_son
1mo ago
Ever since I saw how Japanese songs are written, I have kind of thought that rhyming is a bit of a stupid thing to require for every English song. When I say that, I'm usually thinking of Yorushika songs, though there's a lot out there that I think is very pretty, speaks to life's fundamental tribulations, and is artfully put together. Do you have any opinions on English poetry/songs versus Japanese poetry/songs?
Of course, I doubt removing the rhyming requirement would improve the content of American pop songs at all.
oats_son
2mo ago
If you haven't already, you have to approve this to make it visible. You really gotta start looking more closely, man.
oats_son
2mo ago
I know at least one of them is serious about it because I explicitly asked. The others are generally even more right wing than her. I've had to self censor quite a bit lately.
oats_son
2mo ago
I think this fits well into this thread.
Speaking as someone who frequently talks to multiple right wingers, I get the impression the "Big Mike" meme is actually serious. Every single one of them that mentioned it eagerly brings up new evidence in favor of the theory. It's one of the most annoying memes to me for this reason. Comes across as pointlessly cruel and also pointlessly racist, based on basically nothing. I would probably be similarly annoyed by the Obama birth certificate stuff if I was into politics as much back then.
oats_son
2mo ago
Thanks. I'll have to take some photos of a menu and send them to you sometime.
oats_son
2mo ago
For sure, and a good pattern for how that can happen, but excuse me, I asked for your favorite inauthentic dish that has been mangled by cultural transfer. Like, worst of the worst, you're-doing-this-so-wrong type thing.
I told a friend from western USA that I put romaine lettuce on my tacos, and he reflexively said an incredulous utterance and immediately went to get his Mexican wife's opinion on it.
oats_son
2mo ago
I think you make a very good point about subversion and derivation. As I said in a different comment, you just can't make a game like Half-Life 1, because it's been done before. Even if you do it just as well again, it just gets looked at differently. It wasn't there first. The subversion and commentary thing also clearly defines why I think Earthbound is probably far better than Undertale (or maybe even Mother 3).
That being said, I think there's still a lot of room to do new things. You can make genuine stuff while doing some things that you wanted to see done that has never been done before. Undertale did some of that, though it's overridden by all the meta commentary that it did. There's a lot more room for play in video games than there is in movies, since a game can portray a lot more things and be a lot longer. Playing Earthbound is similar to playing LISA: The Painful RPG in mechanics, but there's a hell of a lot of difference in the nuances that I think let it stand on its own, even if it has a lot of flaws.
oats_son
2mo ago
Oh, yeah, you really need the co-op mod for SPT. I think it's called Project FIKA. That's actually how I learned the maps initially, some other Tarkov junkie leading us. Yes, the PVP is really the selling point, tense stuff. I just think that Tarkov takes the gear progression way too seriously. You should be able to have a decent chance of killing anyone in the game, rather than the game saying "too bad, you brought in level 3 bullets but you needed level 6, also you've got level 5 gear and he's level 60". SPT fixes that a bit.
The maps of Tarkov are one of the biggest selling points for me. So huge, so very detailed, so war-torn. It made me realize one of the reasons I love Left 4 Dead and Duke Nukem 3D were for the maps portraying real places.
oats_son
2mo ago
Thanks for the suggestions. I like the looks of Echo Point Nova, but it looks very slide-y with non human enemies and cartoony graphics. Part of the appeal of Max Payne 3 was going to a shithole Latin American country drenched in sun and humidity as a fatass sweaty drunk who quips extremely pessimistic lines every 30 seconds whose heft you can feel when doing the classic Max Payne diving technique. Shooting people never felt better than it does in a Rockstar game, too.
Related: I liked the stories of the originals, but I think Max Payne 3's story isn't bad enough to be worth bashing. It's written a lot less flowery, but there are a lot more lines in it that I feel tempted to quote.
oats_son
2mo ago
To tell the truth, I didn't get that carried away with it. This wipe, I played to level 15 and then lost all motivation to launch the game, mysteriously. That's usually how it goes. I get a desperate urge to play, then I do, then it's over. Next time, I think I will do the single player mod version so that I at least get to keep my progress (and also so that Delivery from the Past isn't impossible), but it does lose something to be fighting bots instead of players. You die a lot more often in live as well, which keeps you on your toes and can make something like a pistol run pretty thrilling. I didn't actually take any EMS kits anywhere this wipe. Got my legs shot out by scavs and crawled veeerrrryyyy slowly to extract a couple times. I think they let EoD players have the same privileges as Unheard, but it's a very time consuming game and you're a busy guy now.
Of course, I liked Max Payne 1 and 2 as well, but 3 really scratched an itch I didn't know I had. There was some free multiplayer game with slomo shooting, but it didn't feel nearly as good.
oats_son
2mo ago
I don't think there's any real way to tell out here. Every restaurant I go to serves fajitas, which are Tex-Mex, I'm told.
oats_son
2mo ago
oats_son
2mo ago
Like you, I liked Unreal Tournament 1999. Arena shooters aren't very common nowadays. I also liked Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, and Marathon a lot, and on that front, there are a lot of boomer shooter options. New Blood Interactive released a lot of games like that, and I also liked Ion Fury somewhat. But these days, if I want something adrenaline pumping, I actually don't play those games, I play something more concentrated like Hotline Miami 2 or Katana Zero. Those really got an addicting formula of "try something, kill people really fast, die, instantly restart and keep killing people". Alternatively, for something different and not very commonly recommended, Streets of Rogue was pretty arcadey and intense at times due to the roguelite nature of it. Lots of options to play that game, like Deus Ex.
I really liked Gothic 1, but I failed to get very far in Gothic 2. The story wasn't as compelling to me, and the setting was more boring from the outset. "You're stuck in this insane penal colony trapped with other homicidal prisoners and also pockets of orcs and goblins and random deadly wilderness creatures and the sorcerers want you to take this letter to the fire mages" was a much better hook than "Omg, dragons! Off to starter town with you!"
I think there aren't really any games like Half-Life. It was pretty unique, even for the 90s. It had a lot of things going for it: environmental storytelling, sparing amounts of NPC dialogue, no dialogue from you, a general survival horror vibe from everyone, and a fun chaotic romp through a sprawling facility. Despite all that, the scope was not that large. I'd say the indie scene is the most likely to produce something like that, but no one wants to do it, because that's not something new or innovative. Maybe something like Selaco is close?
If I had a single recommendation from the last year, it would probably be Dark Souls. I really didn't picture it as being a game I would like, but it was seriously compelling. The setting, the interconnectedness, the weird NPCs, stats that actually mean things, and finally, combat that is really fluid and feels great. If the difficulty is turning you off, don't let it. There are ways around the difficulty.
oats_son
2mo ago
I have to question the usefulness of such a broad question. Even talking about 90s games is very broad. In my youth, I played on an iMac G3 and played tons of shareware titles that probably most 90s gamers have never heard of.
These days, my addictive personality becomes apparent even with modern games. Escape From Tarkov, Dark Souls Remastered, Caves of Qud, and Katana Zero all made me noticeably tank my own health in my lust to play them as much as possible. Just yesterday, I was reminiscing that I really liked Max Payne 3. These are all games that aren't exactly new, but they do fall outside of the late 90s to late 2000s parameters. I think there's tons of good stuff out there, it just needs to be found and played to death.
oats_son
2mo ago
Thank you, I was wondering for a while whether I was actually wrong and that that's just how Mexican paella is. I wish I could drag someone who would know to my favorite spots and ask them about everything on the menu. Are nacho fajitas authentic? What about all these quesadillas? Notable Mexican dish omissions from American-Mexican cuisine includes pozole, which is insanely common in Mexico apparently but nowhere around here makes it. I asked a waiter if they had it once, and he laughed and said "my mom makes it just about every night" but admitted the restaurant does not make it.
I had no idea spaghetti and meatballs was a falsehood. I have to wonder what they do with their spaghetti.
oats_son
2mo ago
Huh, I'm not sure. Pizza took off so hard that now it's like there's competing visions of the food rather than one clearly right one and one clearly wrong one. When I was in college, I liked the margherita pizza they served, but it was mangled too. Big, round slices of tomato on each slice of pizza, along with basil in roasted whole leaf form. I'm not sure if I've actually ever tried the proper kind yet. Might be something you have to go to an urban area to get.
This reminds me of American sushi versus Japanese sushi. I think I prefer American by a lot -- maki rolls are way better than nigiri. Raw fish all tastes very similar to me, and I am apparently too unrefined to get much out of raw fish. Interesting texture, I guess.
Hiring prostitutes is a fun thought, but thinking about the price at all dispels the notion. The cheapest escorts on the forward thinking hippie sex work site are like, $500. Imagine... you could buy a Glock 19 for that and it wouldn't be gone in an hour of passion. You could buy a bike. You could upgrade a bunch of your old computer parts. You could fix your air conditioner during a heat wave in June. You could put it in an investment fund. I'll be the first to say it: for $500, investment funds are better than sex.
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