thejdizzler
1d ago
- Work. Work has been going well. I have been both much more productive and much less stressed. Turns out doing one thing at a time and taking frequent breaks means I get more done and am not exhausted during the day.
- Fitness. Unfortunately most of the weight loss was completely ephemeral (likely a combination of water loss from reduced glycogen stores and less fibrous shit sitting in my gut). However, I am feeling great running wise and have crushed my workouts last weekend/this week. 10 weeks until chicago. Weekly hours: 7.66 running.
- Intellectual stuff: Finished Foundation. Way more entertaining than Blood Meridian and I think it'll make for some great discussion in philosophy book club. I do have some very strong disagreements with the author's worldview, but that is not unexpected given when he was writing the book. Now am focusing very hard on Spanish (frustrated that my grammar and output seems to be so stuck) and economics.
- Finances: new roommate finally moves in this month which will help out finances ALOT. Ended up donating about $250 last month. 110 went to a yearly subscription to a substack I like (with no paid articles). The rest went to the guaranteed income program I'm part of. Monthly spending so far: $1703.
- Dating. Nothing.
- Tarot. Good session this weekend with my ex-roommate. Asked the deck about career moves and about my friend's romantic life.
- Socializing: Ran with my friend Monday morning and had a board game night with my lab yesterday.
- Screen time: 2.5 hours, need to get out of the bad habits engendered by the trip.
- Meditation: 5 minutes 4x last week. Little by little.
thejdizzler
1d ago
I've had one of these for about 5 years now. They are amazing. Don't always use it (because my discipline is weak) but it makes it much easier to resist temptation because you only have to make one decision (rather than many). Cold Turkey for laptops helps a lot (you can make it so your computer auto-shuts off after a certain time).
thejdizzler
3d ago
This is a good idea. I used to give to my Catholic Church quite a bit, but I am put off by the tithe to the Vatican and the stupid spending habits of my pastor.
thejdizzler
5d ago
Ahhh okay thanks for the terminology clarification!
thejdizzler
5d ago
Yes, corrected.
You can get 3 month treasury bonds....
That’s why I would suggest a bond fund: it’s liquid in a way that individual bonds are not and has a pretty comparable yield. Yes you need to sell it but credit should be able to tide you over if it’s truly urgent
thejdizzler
5d ago
Sorry can you explain this a bit more?
thejdizzler
5d ago
What does theMotte think might be some good charity EA options? I'm skeptical of a lot of the EA suggestions for a number of reasons. Things that have a very direct impact, like Malaria nets, I like in theory but I worry about the downstream consequences (do we really want a lot more Africans who can't feed themselves when the global fertilizer crisis really hits). Other charities that I like in theory, like the Good Food Institute, which is working on making people's diets more plant based, seem to just be paying some CEO's salary with the donations.
Right now I'm trying to donate about 10% of my net savings each month to something that I feel is good/worthwhile. Some of this will go to the guaranteed income program I participate in in Baltimore, but I'd also like to give some money to charity whose cause I agree with and has a direct impact on the world (i.e. not just paying a think-tank salary). Some causes I care about are veganism (reducing animal suffering), environmental clean-up in the US, encouraging urban agriculture/local manufacturing in general, and second language education. Would appreciate any advice.
thejdizzler
5d ago
Treasury bonds could be a good option that's better than savings bank rates and is basically risk-free (if the US government goes belly up, none of your money is worth anything anyway). You can also suggest things like bond funds, which are more liquid and have slightly higher returns than just normal treasury bonds.
thejdizzler
8d ago
I think it's a combination of smaller portion sizes, and walking about 25k steps/day. Walking is much more pleasant and feasible in Europe, so I tended to do it more than here.
thejdizzler
8d ago
I think I will once your comp ends! Your posts are very high quality and I appreciate them a lot.
thejdizzler
8d ago
- Work. Back from Europe. Excited and motivated to wrap up the end of my PhD. Job interview in Germany went well, and have another one here in Baltimore in two weeks. Will probably make a bigger post on wellness Wednesday in a few weeks about my decision to get your guys' advice.
- Fitness: Mileage was fairly low over the course of the trip (43,43,51). Hoping for 55 this week. Came back to a nice surprise: I've lost 5-7 pounds, which is about ~50% of all the weight I wanted to lose. Unfortunately I currently feel terrible because of the jet lag, but I'm sure I will recover soon. 11 weeks until Chicago.
- Intellectual stuff: reading Foundation for philosophy book club and enjoying it. Actually got a lot of Spanish practice on the trip, and thinking I should preemptively switch my L3 focus from Italian to German. Otherwise am starting a few economics books (Great Crash 1929, Pocket Picketty) which I am excited about, as this is an area of weakness for me.
- Finances: work covered most of my trip-related expenses. I also got an unexpected $2k from a student loan law suit, my salary got bumped by about $150/month, and I earned about $500 in interest/dividends from my investments. So actually ended up being an incredibly positive (35+% savings rate) month. Thinking about giving 10% of my net savings each month away (either in the form of paying for substack subscriptions or increasing the amount I donate to my income sharing club), so would also appreciate any thoughts on this.
- Dating. Nothing. In too much of a liminal space in terms of careers to dedicate much time to this now.
- Tarot. Will have a session this weekend!
- Socializing: Was very social my first few days in Germany. Haven't done anything since I got back, but hard to do so when I crash at about 7:30 pm.
- Screen time: 3 hours, but makes sense given travel!
- Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Hoping for every day this week.
thejdizzler
9d ago
Yes this exactly captures my discomfort with America (as a lifelong American, although with dual citizenship in the UK, I have always felt a little out of place). I just spent two weeks in the UK followed by a week in Germany, and both places felt just incredibly more real than America, even though they undoubtedly both have been infected by the consumerism and striving (especially. the UK). I think a lot of it has to do with the structure of cities, which are thousands of years old and build for people rather than cars, and also with a sense of belonging and place that definitionally cannot exist in the United States because we haven't been around for long enough and our national mythos is built on conquest, immigration, and progress, which makes it inherently unstable.
Interestingly enough, I feel like Europeans use social media way more than Americans. I post something on instagram maybe once a month, but my Italian lab partner for this course in Bath was posting constantly. This paradoxically actually seemed to make her social media use more authentic: she was just posting everything that came into her mind to share with her family/friends (I also noticed that these Europeans tended to have very few followers, maybe 100-200, within Dunbar number range) rather than curating to cultivate a certain image of oneself.
Pretty much everyone in my course (I was the only American) admitted that they had negative stereotypes of Americans and that I managed to break out of the mold by the end of the course. I've heard similar things from my sister, who moved to London in 2021 and had a rough first 6 months at her job where no one respected her. I find the reflexive dismissal of this stereotype by posters downthread to be a bit unhelpful. Pretty much all stereotypes have at least a kernel of truth to them, and rather than dismiss this one as Eurotrash bigotry, I think it is more helpful to examine why Europeans might feel this way. I think you capture that why incredibly well.
thejdizzler
10d ago
Are you a Baltimorean? Didn't know we had more than one on theMotte
Is it just me or has this latest wave of communications technology really homogenized the youth? Both German and Italian and Spanish (from my course in Bath) preteens seem to be dressing like American tik-tok sluts and acting like phone zombies?
thejdizzler
13d ago
Immigration isn't going to be a viable solution for much longer. Every country outside of Africa pretty much has a below 2.0 fertility rate. Even if it does work out it's just can kicking.
If we do somehow figure out how to raise fertility rates (unlikely) the generation that manages to do so is going to have a very rough time because of sky high dependency ratios (both more kids and more elderly people).
thejdizzler
15d ago
Traveling in Germany this week, no progress on any goals. Check back with me next week.
thejdizzler
17d ago
I was hoping for the Mamdani sighting, but alas this was all completely off.
thejdizzler
18d ago
Argentina’s tactics are extremely sketchy and dark arts which is the main reason I’m rooting against them. Also the spain team is quite white…
thejdizzler
18d ago
Can anyone steel-man the Argentinian position re: the Falklands (Malvinas)? I got into a few heated arguments with an Argentinian women during my course about them, and the Argentinian position doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Argentine never actually had sovereignty over the islands, nor does the local population want them there.
thejdizzler
19d ago
Upvoted for a really nice McCarthy parody. Laughed a lot.
thejdizzler
21d ago
I don't believe that this is the case. The kind of violence present in Blood Meridian is very much not inherent to nature. Animals do not engage in the kind of orgy of killing that Glanton's gang gets up to.
thejdizzler
21d ago
I did not view Blood Meridian as suggesting that violence is inherent to human nature. The judge wants you to think that's the theme, but the judge is a liar. I think Blood Meridian also wants you to see how a system of social pressure allows people to commit violent acts without blinking an eye because everyone else is doing it. The judge claims that this is a property inherent to humans, but from the first moment we meet the judge he is lying to get people to do what he wants, so why would he be telling the full truth when he monologues to the reader (credit to my friend Emory for this realization).
I'm not sure why you're being so obtuse about this point. The phone is specifically designed to make it very difficult for you to avoid hyper stimuli. Yes you can change the settings to turn off notifications, make the phone greyscale, restriction app usage, etc. When I have done those things they make me use my phone less, because, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's much more pleasant to read on a physical book or e-reader than on your phone, it's much more pleasant to write essays on a laptop or physical notebook, and its much more pleasant to talk to people in real life (or call them without the screen on). When you remove the super stimuli, the phone is not that useful, so I don't see a very big difference between what you recommend and locking it up.
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