ser
10d ago
Good luck, update us if it works for you as well as it does for me.
I've found I have to find something not too interesting or work related as to keep me awake and not too boring to loose interest.
Same with me and as long as narrator's voice is not annoying. I did classic literature (short stories) audiobooks for a bit, then hopped to true crime podcast/narration ('Rotten Mango' on youtube)
ser
10d ago
Most of what you've written here isn't wrong, but it's mixed with a lot of rhetoric implying the US is a uniquely evil, conniving nation that wanted to sabotage Good Guy Russia from living in peace and harmony with the rest of Europe.
I don't think Tretiak's rhetoric is implying any of that unless you're looking at the world through the basic lens of good and evil. It's more like US benefits from Europe that's more US dependent, while Russia is weak, poor and kept on a leash. Because the alternative is a possibility of strong Germany-France-Russia alliance that is able to project its power on the rest of the world. A Europe that is able to do things beyond writing strongly worded letters and accepting refugees as blowback from US's actions like a good boy is not in America's benefit and that's why things are the way they are today.
ser
10d ago
After almost a decade of poor sleeping habits, I'm on a 2 months streak of, what I would consider, perfect sleep. I've been trying to fix my sleep for years by following best practices and methods. I've tried every supplement from ashwagandha to even peptides like epitalon. Nothing worked consistently. I would be able to string together 2-3 nights of 'proper' sleep but then it would get derailed by a restless night and I'd be back at square one. But few months ago I stumbled upon research claiming that optimal melatonin dose is under 500mcg (most melatonin supplements are 1000mcg+) and should be taken 3-5 hours before bed. I've already tried 1000mcg+ melatonin supplements before and they had the complete opposite effect on me, but I decided to try low dosage out anyway. And it actually worked! I was able to fall asleep within 1hr of getting into bed every night. I've improved my routine over time, so now I'm asleep in 20-30 minutes. Routine: last food 4 hours before bed, last water 3 hours before bed, 300mcg melatonin 3-3.5hrs before bed, when in bed put on boring podcast with 20-30 minute sleep timer, usually I'm knocked out before the timer runs out. That 20-30 minutes of podcast is like hypnotization for my hyperactive brain, it's completely overpowered by an external sound that prevents it from wandering off and thinking about random things. I now consistently get 7.5+ hours of sleep. Alarm is set for exactly 8 hours, but I naturally started to wake up 30 minutes before my alarm every single day after about 2 weeks of this routine. Next step is tackling 1 hour of staring at my phone when I wake up and I'll be at my peak performance.
ser
12d ago
He was for sure the ugliest... but they were almost all ugly, aside from the idols of course. Side characters and random people in the background weren't good looking, just like people in real life. I guess the reason it stood out to me is because in many other animes, characters that aren't supposed to be pretty are still aesthetically fine by being symmetrical, having perfect teeth/smile and so on. While in Perfect Blue a random guy you see for 3 seconds would have a shitty hairline and droopy eyes for no reason at all.
ser
13d ago
Perfect Blue (1997)
There's an interesting purposeful distinction between the way idols and regular people are drawn in this anime, and it's obviously related to the plotline. I haven't watched too much anime to say that this hasn't been done anywhere else, but so far it's the most realistic portrayal of objectively beautiful appearance and regular/ugly appearance I've seen.
ser
14d ago
Risk of seizure varies depending on what country you're from. For US, as far as I'm aware, chance of seizure is low.
ser
17d ago
A lot of information is public and readily available without having to woo woo with autists that prefer to gatekeep everything. For starters, use peptaura . com to order peptides directly from manufacturers. Every single peptide from your original post is available for sale.
ser
23d ago
Perhaps not. Heaviest I've been was 188lbs and my face was so round even my grandma said I should lay off the food, I can't imagine being above 200lbs on my frame.
Did my first ever dexa scan. To my surprise, 22% body fat. I was expecting 17-19% given my physique and weight (I'm 6'3 165lbs), but I think I must've been duped by my fat distribution. My arms and legs are in the 15-18% range while my trunk (torso) is 20-26%. Was also surprised by how symmetrical left and right side of my body were. My left side was, what felt like significantly, weaker than my right side but turns out the difference is 0.3lbs in lean mass for arms and 0.2lbs for legs, which is very little. Overall, money very well spent ($50). Goal is to get down to 18%-ish by summer through recomp. Will do better job tracking my nutrition, I'm assuming in my default state I don't consume enough protein and too many carbs, and will add an additional hour long walk 3-4 times a week to target fat burn.
ser
24d ago
Research suggests heavier weight and low reps (6-8 is perfect) is usually the sweet spot. But consistency and form is what's most important. The weight must be heavy enough where you can stick to proper form. If you go too heavy, you may be able to lift that weight but if the form is suboptimal you're gonna get injured or you're working out the wrong muscle.
ser
30d ago
How many people in the US would be actually surprised/outraged if we got into a hot war and someone bombed a military base, which also had a school on it?
You don't have to get into a hot war to figure that one out. Just look at Ukraine-Russia war, Ukraine blew up a bridge using an unsuspecting civilian trucker to carry the bomb, killing a random family in the process and public consensus on this (in the west) was 'justified'. Now imagine what type of reaction this would generate if Iran did this to US or any 'bad guys' did it to 'good guys'. You wouldn't stop hearing about it until it's imprinted in your brain.
ser
1mo ago
I doubt there's data on this, but I'd say it's pretty common. It's unlikely your existing friends end up living in the exact same suburb as you and you really gotta go out of your way to make friends with your neighbors, who will most likely be older than you (median age of a homebuyer in the US is 59). A 30 minute drive is literally nothing in the US though. It takes approximately 12-15 minutes to just get out of my suburb without traffic.
ser
1mo ago
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Screen time. Same argument as with dating. I don't think we need to overthink this. As people have more options to spend their free time on, they will most likely pick activities with least friction. Without looking at data, I'm sure invention of TV started contributing to this as well. But nothing compares to having instant access of a dopamine hit that every single one of us has in our pocket. No wonder some can't even resist it while driving. Not to mention how superior of an experience it is to discuss certain things online versus in person. You're typing this out on an obscure forum instead of discussing it with the boys.
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Modern (speaking about American specifically) infrastructure is so badly designed for connecting with people. Most people live in the suburbs. That means it's likely a 30+ minute car ride to meet with a friend. 60 minutes all in just for commute to meet with someone. That completely eliminates spontaneous meetups, that's why every get together is a 1 month in advance thing these days. This connects back to screen time, most people are just choosing the path of least resistance - being glued to a screen at home.
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There's no third spaces. People don't drink anymore, so bars and clubs are out. What else is there? New thing is running clubs I guess.
ser
1mo ago
You'd be shocked at how many deny these basic realities.
Eh, I would agree with you if we had this conversation 8-10 years ago (height of body positivity era). With rise of looksmaxxing, glp-1s into mainstream even the slowest of the bunch are admitting the obvious.
but this post is geared more towards what an individual could do to max out his chances in the context of the current
fair enough. You made a decent list. I do think it's important to not tie self improvement to getting into a relationship. Going out to dance, while hating it as an activity on its own, is an easy way to start hating yourself and life if expectation of getting a girlfriend out of it is not met.
Even though it hasn't been talked about much here, probably because an average TheMotte user skews older, none of this stuff is new to the internet. It's no secret that having status, charisma and being attractive gets you far in dating, and in life in general. I think there's an interesting conversation to be had about how could one solve this issue at scale. To me, and I've talked about this multiple times on here, it all comes down to screen time. Screens are competing for every minute of our free time, and they are winning. What's easier? Going out on a friday night with the boys (expensive, requires planning and effort, payoff uncertain) or playing some games and then scrolling tiktok until you doze off? You just had a tough week at work, you deserve some rest. Screen time it is. Many people, both men and women, are just opting out from living their real life. It's especially hard to make a case for men to 'waste' their time on all this dating bullshit when it feels like you have to pretty much be James Bond (status, charisma, looks) - look at the list you wrote. Just going off anecdotes, none of my older relatives had to be an all around great man^tm to get into a relationship. My dad was a recently divorced junior engineer (never been to the gym, smoking, drinking, -7 vision, greying at 32) with a son when he met my mom. My (much) older half brother met his (very pretty) wife while being a piss broke bartender with a huge gut and round face due to all the alcohol he consumed on the job. I'm sure stuff like this happens nowadays too, but at much smaller scale. Everyone is glued to a screen, opportunities to be around another gender in an environment where it's encouraged to mingle are almost nonexistent, and hypergamy is making it feel like you have to be at the top of life before you even shoot your shot. So, somehow reducing screentime, while also increasing opportunities for men and women to interact in a natural way would solve dating issues for a lot of men. Israel's birthright, a free 10 day trip to Israel for young jewish adults, where they purposefully group up participants with people of similar age and opposite gender doing their mandatory IDF service, comes to mind.
A car would probably be useful, both for my practical and romantic life, but if I move to Europe in the next two years (maybe 30% chance), it's a terrible investment.
You're a second class citizen without a car in America (NYC doesn't count), so even for 2 years it would be worth it. Just buy a used, reliable model, you would be losing around ~15% max in 2 years.
I could also donate most of the money to charity, but that feels both like slapping my parents in the face, and potentially making life much more difficult for myself. Even if the money were to just sit in money market, it would be an extra $10k of income a year, which is substantial.
Why are you even considering donating it if $10k/yr is substantial income for you? That's 25 years (less after taxes) of your 'substantial income' gone from your pocket.
I'm sure your parents worked hard for that money, enjoy the fruits of their work and use that money to improve your life.
ser
2mo ago
What's up with american intellectuals always using russian words to describe ordinary concepts that have existing definitions in english?
ser
2mo ago
Leveraged uranium long sounds stupid to me. If you mean doing something that is an etf and leverages for you.
I should've clarified. In this case, by leverage I meant stock picking uranium miners. Miners outperform spot = leveraged uranium long. Perhaps getting some leaps on miner stocks if liquidity is there, would effectively be a 3-4x leverage on spot uranium.
ser
2mo ago
Unfortunately I believe that all US based robotics companies are overvalued, so it's too late for outsized returns. 1X raised last round at $10b valuation... FigureAI raised at $39b... and Tesla is at 1.35t market cap... I think elon can juice it up 2-3x in the coming years given his impeccable marketing skills, but that's about it. Not to mention that China is so far ahead on this in every way, gonna be a while US companies catch up. Unitree IPO at $7b valuation seems compelling though.
ser
2mo ago
Valid, leveraging your know-how in specialized niche is a proven way for outsized returns
Someone recently claimed that people here would greatly outperform the market given their higher-than-average intelligence. So let's run a hypothetical - you've got $1m and your goal is to 5x it (pre tax) in the next 2 years. Perhaps we can look back at replies to this post few years later and see how everyone does. Anything goes, from investing to leveraging your unique skills or connections if you have any.
My plan would be this: 900k into a leveraged Uranium long. 100k dry powder for any other opportunities - long Korean hardware stocks (Samsung, SK Hynix) right now, then rotate to INTC leaps and/or lithium, then try to time crypto bottom and buy a few good coins on spot (LINK, HYPE). I think Uranium position does a 3-4x so would have to do a magical 14-23x with that $100k.
ser
2mo ago
Him mixing in normal life activities in his narration is not what's making it off putting on it's own, it's the fact that he's trying to present his experience as exactly the examples you just brought up. It's an attempt at the slice of life narration about a person in (what he thinks are) adverse conditions, but in reality he's a middle aged/boomer good boy that is inconvenienced by self involvement into operation of completely lawful agents of the state.
I remember reading some stories during the Syrian civil war which were like, yeah, we had to avoid those blocks because the rebels have control and the government forces are also over here, but we could take X street though and so after school we went to the theater.
This is exactly what he thought this would come off as when he was writing. Except he's not an unlucky Syrian or a Gazan who is thrown in the middle of a war that turns his life (and fate) upside down. Every struggle is entirely self imposed, there's no stray bullets or bombs flying around. He, at any time, can make it all end for himself by walking a block over. I'm not discrediting his opinion (although I'm not entirely sold on if he actually has one, or if he has to consult Jill before he can take a stance) about what's happening as a whole, I'm merely put off by his dramatic narration.
ser
2mo ago
This is such a strange and off-putting read. It's like he's trying to paint a picture of a nation under siege, while constantly undermining his own narrative by sprinkling in bits about ordinary vacation activities. There's a dark authoritarian fog settling in Minneapolis, our country is in deep danger and I'm right in the middle of it...Oh the museums in Minneapolis are fantastic by the way, Jill and I go every time we visit! It's clear he doesn't actually know what's going on and doesn't actually feel any danger, but it feels right to join the protest and yell random slogans. Jill even got the herd to chant SHAME and it got on TV, +1 cool story to share back home! Is this guy just a mop and since his wife feels strongly about it he's obliged to at least pretend it's a big deal to him too? Is it a need to belong to something and an anti government protest in whatever form is good ol' proven reliable option for it?
Make no mistake, 'MAGA' wants EU states to 'contribute more to NATO' aka flow more capital into (mostly) American arms manufacturers. They don't want Europe that unilaterally decides to stop letting American planes use their airspace to, for example, bomb Iran whenever they want. Big difference. Not to say that Europe would prefer either in its current state. They would rather close their eyes and pretend it's 2007 again and it's all sunshine and rainbows.
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