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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 2, 2023

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Extremely frivolous stuff, but there's a fun debate going down over on Aella's twitter about personal hygiene. In short, as a true empiricist, she measures lots of stuff about her daily routine (iirc, using an app called Daylio), and recently revealed her stats for 2023. What is causing a kerfuffle is not the number of days she had sex (63), took Adderall (126), or escorted (6), but the number of times she showered, namely 37 [sic].

Aella insists she doesn't smell (and says she's consulted with others to confirm this), but I think that's a very relative statement; some people seem to have a high baseline tolerance for stank of various kinds, to the point that even strong odours don't register to them as stank, while others like myself are very smell sensitive; at the risk of TMI, my wife was amused that I could tell when our kids in their diaper days had done a pee, because I could always smell it almost immediately even when she had no idea. Back in my online dating days, there were several dates I simply couldn't follow up on because the person I was with had bad personal hygiene. I'm not talking about a mild healthy body odour here, but when you're having sex doggy-style and get hit by bad ass-stench it's an instant boner kill. And I'll be honest, I've had a crush on Aella for ages; she's a very attractive nerdy woman, and as a sexually confident and charismatic female Rationalist, she is a very horny unicorn among horses. But I've got to say, learning that specific factoid about her life had a similar effect on my idle long-distance lust as an F150's tires do on a small rodent (not that she should care, of course - just putting it out there).

That said, I am a bit of ablutomaniac - I shower and/or bathe 2-3 times a day. I don't think it's a hygiene thing per se. I shower when I get up because it helps me feel awake and ready for the day; I often have a shower or bath in the late afternoon/early evening after a workout because it feels great to soak sore muscles; and I sometimes shower just before bed, because I find it really nice to get into a bed with clean, fresh-smelling sheets having just come out of the shower smelling clean and fresh myself. I also routinely use (carefully chosen, subtle) cologne on my body as well as both fabric conditioner and scent booster when washing my clothes.

Anyway, Aella's feed is pretty funny right now, to the point that she's holding polls about showering, and I was curious what folks here think about it. Obviously me and Aella are at different ends of the ablutic spectrum, but what's a healthy normal number of times to shower/bathe per day? How much of it is down to personal preference?

What is causing a kerfuffle is not the number of days she had sex (63)

If it is not causing kerfuffle, then it should. She had sex almost twice as many times as she showered. So she did not shower before or after having sex.

Why should anyone care, exactly? It's not like any of us are having sex with her. If her partners are fine with how she is (and they seem to be, if she's still having success getting some), then good for her I guess.

I care because it is one of the many instances of how the social norms are established and before you know it, it will be your own daughter smelling around the dinner table. I am done with the "live and let live" attitude for all the craziness it brought upon us. I am now all for return of good old shaming/blaming back into town. So yeah, I have no problem calling Aella and any of her partners as disgusting people. Sue me.

Okay. And progressives will use their cultural influence to shame you for not being one of them. You want to swing a dangerous weapon around. It will predictably be turned on you and me.

That seems like conflict theory done only halfway.

I'd say all weapons will be used by all sides that are capable of using them, with no respect for unilateral non-escalation. Progressives will shame conservatives regardless of conservatives refraining from attempting the same, because progressives are currently in a position to quote that piece of the Melian Dialogue: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.".

Observing the proprieties while your enemies are biting and gouging is only a winning move if there is some powerful third party who values non-escalation.

Observing the proprieties while your enemies are biting and gouging is only a winning move if there is some powerful third party who values non-escalation.

You seem to be making the mistake that what's important is to win or lose. But as the cliche goes, what matters is how you play the game. I would much rather lose while upholding good moral behavior, than win by sacrificing morals.

Nietzsche asked:

Is it better to out-monster the monster or to be quietly devoured?

If your morals lead you to be devoured by the monster, for no benefit to anyone except monsters, then what good are those morals?

To quote a long-eared muppet. "That is why you fail".

This is why leftism always devolves into purity-spirals and circular firing squads, this is why utopians are incapable of building anything other than mountains of skulls. The first step to building any lasting legacy is to care about something (usually a principle, but possibly an institution or other person) more than you care about yourself.

Then out spake brave Horatius,

The Captain of the gate:

“To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late.

And how can man die better

Than facing fearful odds

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods…”

-Thomas B. Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome

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For my good. It's better to be a good person, even at great material costs, than to engage in vice to get ahead.

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"If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?"

Have a blessed day.

It seems like a noble sentiment on the surface, but it does not seem that great when you are hiding in the bushes while the enemies behead your brothers and rape your sisters and aunts. This high-minded morality to me is just a sign of privilege, it is easy to pretend to be "moral" if one is not present with tough choices

What good moral behaviour is being maintained by avoiding the use of shaming tactics? I would be surprised if there were many people who were against the use of shaming absolutely, in all contexts.

Sure, I too prefer to play that way. But you can only lose for so long until you're not even in the game anymore.

Now I don't mean to imply that anyone, conservative or otherwise, necessarily needs to go around shaming people. But I do mean that progressives seem to have no compunctions about it and they're currently winning the culture war so decisively that they increasingly get to dictate the conditions for social participation, and for conservatives to worry about whether shaming might be used against them if they were to attempt to employ it against progressives is, in my opinion, missing several points.

Everyone already does this. A pacifist in a culture war is a fool.

I don't think that encouraging and normalizing shaming is to our advantage. Encouraging more and worse bad behavior is not a wise action.

Public shaming is a necessary part of a functioning society

I disagree and if true then our near future will be mean progressives publicly shaming wrong thinkers like you and I.

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You, a stranger on the internet, will not achieve anything by "shaming" another stranger on the internet.

Edit (because of much confusion) - Shaming works if the right people shame you in the proper context. For example, a teenage boy might not take a shower ten days in a row if his mom tells him to, but will shower 2x a day for the rest of his life if his crush calls him stinky (even as a joke). Work backward using the demographics of motte users and determine if shaming is a good tactic for the modal motte user.

Your edit is good stuff, but without it your original post is just so wrong as to be jaw dropping. And here, of all places! Honestly, I would be embarrassed if I were you. (Not really, but this post is more about practical application than discussion.)

without it your original post is just so wrong as to be jaw dropping.

Hardly. The original post was obviously correct to me, and it was surprising that others were willing to do confidently (and incorrectly) declare it wrong. The point @f3zinker was making from the beginning is what he clarified in his edit: to Aella (or anyone else reading people here for that matter), you are a nobody who doesn't matter. You can't possibly affect behavior by shaming people from such a position of unimportance to them.

Oh you sweet summer child...

Is another example of a regularly successful attempt to affect behavior by shaming people from a position of unimportance. Is that not shaming in your eyes?

No, not at all. Why would I care if someone thinks that?

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Yes but the shaming is not always for the purpose of affecting the behavior of the target, but rather pour encourager les autres, the other readers.

Your shaming won't work on me Frucko. I am shameless.

And yet, cancel mobs. They sure seem to achieve a lot, at least in terms of forcing normies into social conformity with their desired shibboleths.

Wrong! Third parties who read it can experience shame by proxy.

Does anyone see aella as a role model?

I really do not enjoy the fact that many of my internet watering holes have the propensity for discussing any stray thought this woman has. I have no interest in her or what she has to say yet I am not allowed to be free of her. Would anyone like to STEEL MAN their interest in her? Tell me the most interesting thing she's ever said IYO.

It's just the classic "woman notices untapped reservoir of male attention" trope as far as I can tell. Any straight male dominated space will sooner or later have this phenomenon happen to it. Women have this warping effect on (straight) male spaces where suddenly everything becomes all about them. Suddenly you have to be careful with what you say, lest the woman flee like a spooked gazelle, which would upset the number of men in the group who are now resolutely pouring all their attention and time on her to try and get some play.

Yes but us Men of Rationality are supposed to see things like this for what they are and keep our minds on higher things. I guess all that was a load of crap, wasn't it?

Not everyone lives up to their ideals all the time, this isn't new. It doesn't mean those ideals are a load of crap. For one thing, plenty of people in this community don't give a shit about Aella. For another, even the people who do care about her are probably sincere in their ideals. The conclusion to take away there is "these guys are human and prone to human failings too", not "they are full of crap".

I think it's a pretty low bar. This is on the level simping for a twitch streamer.

What is easy for one is hard for another. One should always strive to be understanding of someone else's weaknesses.

I think it's fair to point out to people obsessed with Aella the ways in which their actions are incongruent with their beliefs. I just don't think it's fair to say that their stated beliefs were therefore a load of crap.

I can accept that. I was too harsh.

I don't know who claimed that, but, big brained men are just as horny and warped by porn as little brained men.

I mean, it's not like we're running on completely different hardware. Rationality is just supposed to help you use your existing hardware better, and so there's going to be things like, "when a moderately attractive rationalist chick comes around, she's going to get a lot of straight male attention disproportionate to her actual contributions."

You can tell someone the reason they're acting extra nice around her is because they find the combination of her looks and personality attractive, and they're subconsciously executing subtle mating protocols in their brain, and that might help them check some of the tendency, but it will never entirely eliminate the behavior. For that we'll need gene editing.

I'm not sure where it follows. The fact that you can more clearly see what's going on doesn't mean you are free from all human emotions and faults. You still have the same brain, the same hormones and the same sexual drives, you may know better about how it works, but knowing which hormones make you horny doesn't make you any less horny.

Same. She's not even the most interesting Rationalist-adjacent moderately attractive (and homeschooled!) woman, who is probably Lulie, but Lulie doesn't troll or generally seek attention, which is why most people don't know about her.

I hadn't heard of her before, and am looking a bit at Lulie's Twitter and website. Neither seem particularly approachable or interesting at first glance. The parts about something I have some expertise in (teaching and learning art) seem to be presenting very well known information (the sort of thing you get out of any intro to drawing class), with no angle or interesting take on it.

What do you like about her?

What do you like about her?

Nothing much, I just think that what she talks about and thinks is more interesting than what Aella talks about.

What’s interesting about her? Just did a quick read of her latest tweets and it seemed like regular white girl stuff

This one?

https://twitter.com/reasonisfun

If Taking Children Seriously is regular for white girls in your area, then you are in an unusual bubble.

Also, I suspect that less than 1% of Rationalists are Popperians.

She is interested in a lot of dubious psychology, but so are a lot of Rationalists.

That said, I wouldn't say she's particularly interesting, but then again I am more interested in ideas than people, and follow debates/topics/events much moreso than particular people.

I think her schtick is kind of a pre-christian druidic sex priestess. Perhaps druidic is wrong, but I think there were things like that around northern Europe.

Basically she's thrown dreamy sex parties for prominent rationalists.

A lot of the interest about her online is from people with a couple of degrees of separation from that and are intrigued by her.

Basically once she's shown the super nodes an amazing time, nodes farther away fall under her influence.

OK this is the best explanation so far. She's not a natural internet celebrity, she a really good IRL socialite.

If I talk about a hot nerdy girl like her tweets are deeply important, maybe she'll see my comment, want to meet, and have lots of wild sex and fall in love.

How has this worked for you in the past?

The nerdy version of honking your horn at a hot woman on the street.

Same, though happily this is really the only place where I'm really exposed to Aella, beyond when something she says really makes her the 15 minute main character on Twitter. Most of it really all comes off as your basic "whoah, have you considered these social norms could all be... DIFFERENT?" style high school philosophizing.

I mean, it's getting discussion and attention, and Aella seems to be particularly good at it, so I don't know if it's so 'basic'. Clearly she is hitting a note that other people won't or can't.

This sensation peaked for me on the B&R podcast interview when asked if she recognizes how weird her twitter poll questions are. She didn’t say she doesn’t know why her questions are weird, she didn’t assert the questions shouldnt be weird, she denied that she was aware they are weird(Even Jesse uncharacteristically commented on this later, finding this this too much). Smells too much like she’s wearing Spergface and not doing a great job at it.

same. annoying to see it here

Would anyone like to STEEL MAN their interest in her?

twirls his hipster moustache I liked Aella before she became a rationalist sex symbol. If you ever trawled subreddits where women post their naked pictures, you'll notice that 90% project a carefully curated purely sexual image, 9% crave validation (either sincerely or not). Aella with her "kidnapped by gnomes" series did neither. You can consider her persona a rehash of the manic pixie dream girl, but with boobs, or a precursor to the whole gamer girl with a cleavage archetype that occupied Twitch.

Aella with her "kidnapped by gnomes" series did neither.

Wait, that's who people are arguing about? Man, that's like, 2012 vintage reddit? Oh god I'm getting so old.

Suddenly this whole conversation makes so much more sense when I think about the sort of woman who would do that on 2012 reddit. Showering less than once a week just fits.

I saw that on Tumblr myself, not Reddit.

And yeah, I don't find Aella all that erotic, but that was a good shitpost.

She talks about sex and the power dynamics involved in it very openly and mostly honestly from the perspective of a very attractive woman. In a social sphere 90%+ male and rather socially clueless. Where is the mystery?

The problem is there is no mystery!

this whole thread would be better suited in the small questions section. it's not really culture war relevant.

I disagree, primarily because (as mentioned in my comment below) there is a definite HBD angle here. There are also some obvious (at least to me) gender issues implicated in the discussion. I'd probably have approved this discussion for outside the containment thread, but I don't see this as a small question, even if it is not presently an active CW issue.

Much of her twitter popularity isn't from le sex, but often-offensive philosophy-style hypothetical tweets/polls.

Her blog also has some decent articles. https://aella.substack.com

It's so weird how ex porn/cam girls go on to try and be intellectual, I don’t care how many philosophical books Sasha Gray read, I’m not taking life advice from a woman who licked cum off a toilet seat.

The more I digest the shower thing the stranger it is to me. Does she never exercise to a sweat? The people quiting shampoo at least makes sense as it's a relatively new invention but humans have been bathing forever.

In the same post she said she only exercised 22 times in the entire year (lol), so I guess that's not a problem.

My gym was closed for 2 weeks during the winter and I thought I was going to lose my mind, how can people live like that?

Believe it or not, not everyone enjoys exercise. 😉 I personally actively dislike it, and find it only mildly preferable to being slapped in the face.

Same. I have never ever felt like exercise was even the least bit enjoyable, and I've tried to enjoy it. I've spent long amounts of time trying to get past that initial painful hump and into the addiction phase everyone tells me will happen. It's never happened. In fact I don't even really believe people anymore when they say it's enjoyable. I assume it's some mix of bragging and them conflating the effects of exercise with the feeling they get after exercising. Or maybe masochism.

I have to say that doing a heavy set of 450 lbs deadlifts for 5 reps with heavy metal blasting through my headphones is really pleasant to me, the burning muscles and the exhaustion are obviously not pleasant in themselves, but lifting heavy shit sort of makes me aggressive in a way that's pleasant. The feeling of having pumped muscles, like my skin is about to explode around my biceps, is also quite pleasant.

Hmm, well, I guess I don't hate lifting as much as I hate cardio. I hate hate cardio, but lifting I can do without feeling like I'd rather die.

Actually, my main problem with lifting right now is that I feel like I've reached a plateau. I wouldn't mind your advice. Firstoff, I refuse to have a gym membership. I won't pay a monthly fee to go someplace to feel bad about myself. And I'd probably never use it.

So I've used small barbells (up to 25lb in each hand) for over a decade doing triceps, biceps, chest, shoulder, lats, hamstring, calves, glutes, and abs. But I didn't know how to get past that amount of weight. So I bought a barbell and some weights to try to get more weight in. And now I kinda feel like I'm at the point where I'm physically incapable of lifting what I'd need to lift in order to feel like I'm making any progress. It's still not what most lifters would consider to be a lot of weight. But if I do lower amounts on the barbell, it doesn't give me the correct muscle fatigue, but I can't physically lift any more. Unsure how to proceed. More reps?

I guess my other problem is that I don't really feel like my results are too visible, since I still have a bunch of fat covering it. So, like, what's the point?

There are a bunch of things to mention here, I'll just write a summary of common sport science knowledge that I think would help you, apologies if I say some stuff you already know.

There's no problem with not going to the gym, I don't like it either and workout at home too, though I've spend a few thousand dollars on a power-rack, bench, barbell, 45lb plates, hex bar (for hex deadlifts) and adjustable dumbells (The powerblock EXP series).

The current scientific knowledge on optimizing muscle growth states that muscle growth mainly depends on 2 key variables under your control: daily protein intake and weekly workout volume. I'll go into each of these before mentioning other stuff.

Protein Intake:

Daily protein intake should be around 1g/lb of body weight, that amount basically guarantees that your protein is taken care of, it's probably slightly excessive and you could get away with 0.8 to 0.9 g/lb, but 1g/lb is the main recommended number for bodybuilding to just be able to check that box for sure. If you haven't been eating this amount of protein, but more like 0.4 or 0.5 g/lb, you've been seriously hampering yourself, and you're gonna get essentially a second phase of noobie gains when you start eating correct amounts of protein. Physiologically, large muscles are a luxury. When the body gets protein, it first uses it for critical systems like the heart, brain, organs, blood, stomach lining, etc. any protein it spares for muscle building has to come after all of that, so doubling your protein from 0.5g/lb to 1.0g/lb can take you from 0 muscle gain (because all protein is gobbled up by other systems), to great muscle gain. Protein is really fucking important. The total grams of protein per day is what matters most, but a secondary factor is protein timing: because your body can't store proteins like it can store fats and carbs, any muscle protein synthesis has to take the protein that's currently swimming in your blood, so it's best to consume your protein separated into roughly 3 or 4 meals throughout the day, with one high protein meal preferably right after workouts.

weekly workout volume:

Here "volume" refers to the number of working sets performed per muscle group, per week. Why don't I mention reps? Because as far as current science knows, anything between 5 and 30 reps is pretty much equivalently good for muscle building, as long as 1. you do the same number of sets and 2. you go to either complete failure or just shy of failure in both cases (leaving 1 or 2 reps in the tank, so to speak). There's a bit of complexity, but in general for bodybuilding people choose the 12-15 rep range, in general 5 reps and lower is for strength, and is more injury prone due to higher strain on connective tissue. And higher reps than 15 aren't too ideal because your cardio capacity could get in the way, preventing you from exhausting the muscle correctly.

So the main thing that will determine your muscle growth (assuming adequate protein) will be the total number of weekly sets per muscle. To give you ball-park numbers, 6 sets/muscle/week will cause ok muscle growth in noobies, but is just enough to maintain current muscle mass in intermediates. 10 sets per week is a good number for MEV (Minimum Effective Volume), you'll probably grow quite well if you do that much. 20 sets per week is quite high, it's most useful for advanced people, and you wouldn't want to do that amount for more than a few weeks at a time before scaling back, since the fatigue will pile on quickly. A secondary but important variable to the total number of sets is the number of workouts per week. So 10 sets of chest all done on monday is inferior to 5 sets on monday and 5 sets on Thursday. Working out every body part twice a week yields an important boost over just once a week, though going to 3x week isn't that much better. I personally workout 6 days per week, with a Push-Pull-Legs-Push-Pull-Legs split, so I workout every body part twice a week.

This is what I suspect is hampering your progress. If your volume has been below 6 sets/muscle/week, and you haven't been working out too consistently... then you've essentially just been working with a volume barely able to maintain your current muscle mass, especially if you haven't been eating adequate protein.

What weight to use:

It's still not what most lifters would consider to be a lot of weight. But if I do lower amounts on the barbell, it doesn't give me the correct muscle fatigue, but I can't physically lift any more. Unsure how to proceed.

The choice of weight to use is subordinate to the choice of rep range, so if you decide that you want to work in the 12-15 rep range, you would then choose the weight that allows you to do the exercise for 12 reps before you physically can't do any more. It doesn't matter if you're benching the bar alone, if this is what you can bench for 12 reps before you can't anymore, then this is the weight you should start at. Muscle growth doesn't come from the weight itself, it comes from the fact of getting close to failure. If you test your max reps with the heaviest weights you have, and you can do more than 20 reps, it's time to buy some heavier weights.

Progressive overload & Phasic structure of training:

The third crucial factor is progressive overload: the gradual increase of training variables over time, generally either increasing weight lifted for equal reps and sets, or increasing numbers of sets. You can either pre-plan the weight increases, or you can sort of "work by ear" by just doing as many reps as you can with a weight, and increase your weight when you notice it's become much easier and you hit the top of your rep range. If you started benching 135 x 12 reps, then eventually got to 135 x 15 reps after a few months, it's time to increase weight again until you can only do 12 reps with the new weight.

Another useful concept is that of the mesocycle, which imposes a phasic structure on your training on the order of around 6 to 10 weeks. The long-term pattern should be something like 8 weeks mesocycle -> 1 week deload -> another meso -> 1 week deload, etc. The deload weeks you either take completely off from training in order to recover from systemic fatigue, or you do 50% of your usual weight. Within a mesocycle, you increase the weight (or the sets) every week. The beginning weight of the mesocycle should be fairly comfortable, you might start at 100 lbs x 12 reps, then work up to 135 lbs x 12 reps over the course of 8 weeks. Take a week off, then start a new mesocycle at 110 lbs x 12 reps, working up to 145 lbs x 12 reps this time. Each meso starts and ends at higher weights than the previous ones, but the start of the next meso is easier than the end of the last one.

Cycling in this way is really more useful for intermediates and above, there's no problem if that seems too complicated, just working close to failure every workout and taking scheduled weeks off every 2 months is plenty good enough for most people.

Phasic structure of Dieting

If your goal is muscle building, then being in a calorie surplus greatly, greatly helps. Losing fat and gaining muscle at the same time can work if you're a beginner, but even there it's significantly more efficient to split your time between bulking and cutting phases, essentially because maintaining muscle during cuts is easier than building the muscle at maintenance. So in Bulking phases you should aim for roughly 300 to 500 calories surplus, this is enough to heavily promote muscle building, and a very significant part of the weight you gain will be muscle. Follow this up with a cutting phase where you aim to lose 0.5% to 1% of your weight per week in fat (while working out to maintain your muscle).

For how to compute macros, here's how you do it: start with your total number of calories per day for your goal, say you weigh 140 lbs, you're bulking and your aim is 3000 cal/day. You know you'll eat 140g of protein per day, so that's taken care of and you only have 3000 - 4 * 140 = 2440 calories remaining since proteins have 4 cal/g, next you take care of your fat, which you should keep at 0.4g/lb to maintain good hormonal function, any more than that doesn't help too much, so now we have 2440 - 9 * 0.4 * 140 = 1,936 calories remaining, which all goes into 484g of carbs. Carbohydrates promote muscle gain to a much larger extend than fat because they replenish the glycogen stores inside the muscle itself, which promotes the whole chemical cascade that signals for muscle growth, that's why they're preferable to fats.

Sources:

Best youtube channel for this stuff: https://youtube.com/@RenaissancePeriodization

Second best: https://youtube.com/@JeffNippard

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My relationship with exercise has been a bit masochistic. I got pretty damned fit in my 20's, although never model ripped. I enjoyed the feeling of self determination in reshaping my body. I also greatly enjoyed my new physical capacities. I was working out all the time, did martial arts for 10 years, was teaching and competing. The soreness and stiffness was fleeting and didn't bother me.

Once my 30's rolled around, I was just sore and stiff all the damned time. I didn't enjoy sparring hardly at all like I used to, since every twist or deep bruise took for god damned ever to heal. I scaled way back, and eventually quit when I had a family.

These days I mostly just do kettlebell workouts. One day is 5 sets of 5 70lb turkish get ups. The other day is 5 sets of 30 70lb kettlebell swings. Usually I throw in a lot of crunches, pushups or military presses too. Once I discovered turkish get ups, no other exercise makes me feel as all over strong as them.

Closing in on 40 and I've aged a fair bit better than most of my peers. Still have a good build, even if my belly button is a bit deeper than it used to be. It's not a problem for me to be outside doing yardwork or repairs all weekend. I can mostly keep up with my 3 year old. I still find myself getting sore from time to time, but mostly when I neglect to drink enough water or have a recovery protein shake after a workout. I've achieved a good enough steady state that keeps me from going to seed, at least for now.

How do you program TGUs? Everyone recommends them, I never get anything out of them, just curious if you have any tips?

I want to love them, but just don't.

I just do 5 sets of 5 with the heaviest weight I can do. Which at the moment is 70#. I try to get them in 2 or 3 times a week. I rest as long as I need to between sets.

My wife also complains that she gets nothing out of them, but she does them with 25#. IMHO, they only become beneficial once you are doing them with a heavy enough weight that it challenges you at every stage of the exercise. It should be a weight heavy enough that you feel worked from the tips of your fingers maintaining the grip to the tips of your toes anchored to the floor. Your shoulders should burn by the 5th rep from the maintained tension. Your core should be solid as it remains rigid while you push yourself into the one armed position. Your glutes should strain up from the kneeling position.

I've committed to TGU's for about 10 years or so, and have worked my way up to doing them with 88# on occasion. They have essentially set the strength floor for every part of my body. All the little stabilizing muscles machines ignore.

Contrasted with my wife, who dabbles in them occasionally with low weights, there is always a weak point keeping her from experiences the full benefits. Maybe her shoulder can only handle 25# of TGUs, while her core and glutes could probably have handled 50#. Or her back is all fucked and can only handle 15# at certain parts of the exercise. This results in reps done sloppily as many parts of her body can get away with poor form, with little actual improvement on the weak muscles.

TGUs for me are very much a case of "Go big or go home". There is a possibly apocryphal story about how if you wanted to be a strongman back in the early 1900's, they'd just teach you the TGU and tell you not to come back until you could do it with 100#. I don't know if that story is true, but it's my guiding light in doing them.

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No, I genuinely enjoy running. That I enjoy the effects are obvious, but I also enjoy the activity independently of that, and I enjoy it in a few different ways:

  • I love racing because I'm competitive, I want to see what I'm capable of, and I enjoy competing against other people directly.

  • I enjoy track workouts because the sensation of running hard is enjoyable in itself and I like dialing in highly specific numbers (being able to run a lap in the exact amount of seconds I'm shooting for is satisfying).

  • Running in new places is great because you see the world differently on foot than if you're getting around on public transportation.

  • Normal, everyday running is enjoyable because it's a good time to listen to podcasts without having something else that I'm focused on.

In fact, there are close to zero times that I don't enjoy running or biking. The only time it ever feels like a chore rather than a joy is during a training cycle when there's a workout that I just don't really feel up to.

Since others have already covered weight lifting (personally my experience on that front matches closer to yours):

I don't think I've ever experienced "runner's high", but I do find cross-country running genuinely enjoyable (as well as walking and jogging). But only that- I do not enjoy running on treadmills or tracks and I do not enjoy rowing or biking, whether in nature or on machines. On the flip side, other family members absolutely hate running but fell in love with rowing or biking.

There is a certain swollenness to the muscles that just feels good and seems to scale linearly with how much muscle you have to get swollen. And while lifting you can feel your muscles exhausting into this state in a very satisfying way that feels like progress. And lifting is nice in that you get to do all this at a relatively relaxed pace so you can do other enjoyable things like listen to music and browse obscure contrarian forums at the same time. It probably does vary person to person though, I've never gotten runners high despite most of my family swearing by it and having done more than a fair amount of running. But a good heavy chest day followed by a joint and a hearty meal can be preferable to sex for me.

I dislike exercise less than I dislike being a fat-ass. While I could substantially restructure my diet, I really enjoy pie and beer.

Yeah, I feel so much better on the days I don't exercise. But I still do it nearly every day because I heard it's good for you.

Extremely easy if you're nigh-immediately frustrated with mindless, repetitive tasks?

Meditation is good for you even if you don't necessarily enjoy each of its component parts. A good workout unloads a stress I think a lot of people don't even know they're carrying.

Gyms in Ontario were closed for most of 2020 and a chunk of 2021 due to Covid. NYC had extensive gym closures too. Michael Malice talked about how much it hurt his mental health and how appreciative he was of a supporter who managed to get him some heavy kettlebells.

I saw some of her YouTube appearances, and she looks pretty good for a person who exercises less than twice a month. Nice to have good genes, I imagine.

I mean, the vast majority of staying thin is done with diet, not exercise. So it makes sense to me.

Does she never exercise to a sweat?

That was my first thought as well. I don't necessarily shower every day, but I do shower pretty much anytime I go to the gym or otherwise work up a sweat because the thought of changing into a clean shirt or crawling into bed without at least "rinsing off" just feels gross.

And I'll be honest, I've had a crush on Aella for ages; she's a very attractive nerdy woman, and as a sexually confident and charismatic female Rationalist, she is a very horny unicorn among horses.

Is this a common opinion? I really don't find her attractive at all. She looks like she could almost be very attractive, but there is something very offputting about her. Has she ever done a poll to see what people think of her? I was genuinely surprised when I learned how much she makes as a prostitute.

She's decently attractive, but I think it's her personality that really puts her on top.

Though perhaps some might disagree, in the least inflammatory manner possible I can only relate that it has mostly been my personal experience that your average woman has the general breadth, depth, and intensity of political, philosophical, intellectual, etc. interests of a bar of soap (whether Aella would be better off this way given recent revelations shall be left to the reader's judgment).

Thus I frequently see even women who are only a little bit more intense or slightly independent about promoting [current thing], who tweet things like "Eat the rich" and "Capitalism is slavery", get fawned over as "smart political chicks" by many men. Women who are in any way politically heterodox experience this pedestalization even more.

And for a girl like Aella, who can quite reasonably be considered to have developed a sufficiently competent corpus of decently original thinking, comparable to many posters on places like this, and who is not fat (and objectively of an above average level of fitness), not a greasy troll-looking creature (and again probably objectively at least a bit aesthetically above average facially even if she's not your personal "type"), and not biologically male? As a stereotypical Italian might say, "Fuhgeddaboudit".

I'm only surprised she hasn't hooked up with Elon Musk yet. (Though this depends on if he'd actually be comfortable with being occasionally depthmogged by a woman or not or if he just wants "smart political chicks" like Grimes to engage in mutual intellectual onanism with.)

your average woman

I wouldn't put it this way, even though I think you're onto something.

I would say that a relatively high proportion of women aren't very interested in ideas or things, but people. (These being a good general categorisation of interests.) So, if a woman is even moderately interested in ideas or things, she really stands out. Similarly, to be regarded as an "fascinating conversationalist" by women on dates, a man just needs to be able to hold an interesting and intriguing conversation about people, rather than his car or sportsball team's stats.

I see this in academia: even if a woman is interested in engineering ethics, technology and psychology, physics and people etc., she will stand out as more interested in ideas/things than most women, and have a lot of dates, mentoring offers, invitations to conferences and so on. She becomes a big bait in a small pond of fish starving for a Woman in X. As always, it helps if she's at least presentably attractive.

You definitely have a point that a lot of the difference is likely a matter of inherent preference or interest as opposed to raw cognitive capability. Given sufficiently strong incentives (which is not to say ideal or desirable incentives), and given that most "intellectual" discourse is at least a quarter (sometimes necessary, sometimes not) filler if not often schlock anyway (and yes this includes my own posts to a degree), most women if they were really pushed into it could probably do a decent imitation of their male peers in IQ in engaging with the discourse of any given subject matter. (This is of course other than the specifics and depths of "harder" fields like math, physics, engineering, etc. that usually have inflexible barriers requiring a considerable degree of specifically computational/calculative cognition to surpass, a variety that is far more likely to be heavily present in biological males (though many biological males also do not possess much of this brand of cognition and are thus also filtered away from these areas, just not as many).)

Yet I still think there's a worthy amount of truth in this quote: "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people." Perhaps smaller minds aren't neurologically incapable of engaging with greater subjects of consideration, but that they lack so much natural interest in it regardless nevertheless says quite a bit about them and reflects a limited, somewhat contemptible (to me anyway) or at least pitiable viewpoint.

Just on that quote - it's true that discussing math or philosophy or AI etc is better than discussing celebrities, boring workplace gossip, and the latest articles on $newssite - but that isn't a fundamental feature of 'discussing events or people', just a vague allusion at particular low-class dumb habits, both of which are just as important as 'ideas' in the right contexts. As an extreme example, a CEO has to, and should, spend a lot of time on 'people', great mind or not!

As an extreme example, a CEO has to, and should, spend a lot of time on 'people', great mind or not!

Do they really? I would expect them to spend a decent amount of time initially thinking about people to find good ones... and then I would expect them to outsource most of the rest of any thinking about people to those people (who will most likely outsource it to their own underlings etc.).

The higher up you are in the food chain of an organization, the more time I would expect you to spend focusing on conceptual matters like strategy and ideas for future advancements in whatever it is your organization offers to the world, not personnel matters (except for the rare incredibly important one).

For her world is her husband, her family, her children, and her home. But what would become of the greater world if there were no one to tend and care for the smaller one?

Except they (meaning particularly the younger ones) mostly don't even do this nowadays. And that's why they are also mostly met with contempt at least by me. They cannot grasp the larger world, and they refuse to help create a smaller one and care for it as nature intended. Thus they inhabit the limited and contemptible/pitiable viewpoint I mentioned, one mostly informed by vapid narcissism and mindless orthodoxies.

As always, it helps if she's at least presentably attractive.

Which, contra the negative stereotype of nerds, my experience was that women in science are noticeably more attractive than the median in the population. I think this is mostly just the usual association between socioeconomic status, wealth, and appearance, but it's still present. Quite a few of the things that are ostensibly appealing about Aella are traits shared by a pretty large percentage of women that I encountered in research, both friends and girlfriends. I get the impression that men that find Aella highly appealing are largely porn addicts that have little or no interaction with intelligent women in real life.

objectively of an above average level of fitness

She exercises like once a month, right? That's not any level of fitness.

Both can be true. The American population as a whole is so unfit that being skinny, but not athletic at all, is likely still above average.

Never underestimate the lack of athleticism of a skinny couch potato.

Apparently twice a month per the linked Twitter thread. Depressingly, the average level of fitness in the United States is near-obese and approximately zero workouts. If someone is lean and goes for a bike ride every now and then, they have exceeded the average level of fitness in the United States. Aella would almost certainly beat the average American woman in simple physical tests (e.g. the old Army PFT).

Aella doing the PFT is actually some content I'd like to see.

I knew a very sedentary skinny girl in college who was physically unable to bench a 45 pound bar. Fat people at least develop some muscle from moving all that fat around, so I think it might be closer than you think.

She's not obese and/or overweight to any degree. In this day and age that puts her at above average, regardless of if it's objectively impressive or not.

Thus I frequently see even women who are only a little bit more intense or slightly independent about promoting [current thing], who tweet things like "Eat the rich" and "Capitalism is slavery", get fawned over as "smart political chicks" by many men. Women who are in any way politically heterodox experience this pedestalization even more.

A less flattering explanation is that there are a lot of male "simps" - for all sorts of women. Jenna Jameson had nothing to say on tracking adderall consumption or geopolitics and she became rich off simps. Far more than most "smarter" (or better read anyway) women.

It's just that more intellectually minded "simps" use their interests to justify their "simping" by appealing to something more flattering; as both a "she's not like other girls" and "I'm not like other guys" thing.

Jenna Jameson had nothing to say on tracking adderall consumption or geopolitics and she became rich off simps

Trivia of a trivia, but is this true? I thought she was a pornstar back in the days when the big money was in producing pictures and video that people bought, rather than having an army of simps on Onlyfans.

Women like her also made money going on dancing tours for men who'd pay to see their favorite porn star - simps imo. So they made money that way.

But before Onlyfans camming was already a thing and lots of women post-Jameson-but-pre-Onlyfans made money off that model. Which tbh is just OF. All Onlyfans did was widen the road and suck in more "normie" women.

Ah, I see.

I think it's a mixture of both. And the problem is that even if the men are just trying to flatter them, the women take it seriously or at least seriously enough to use it to increase the reach of their "insight" and thus the influence of the effeminate hivemind that's gripped politics.

not a greasy

Isn't "greasy" a euphemism for "doesn't shower"? At least I always assumed it is.

Well fair. To me she doesn't look greasy at least though (like for example Caroline Ellison).

Though perhaps some might disagree, in the least inflammatory manner possible I can only relate that it has mostly been my personal experience that your average woman has the general breadth, depth, and intensity of political, philosophical, intellectual, etc. interests of a bar of soap

The rule isn't actually that your posts must be minimally-inflammatory. Rather, the rule is that you must:

Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.

(Also known as the "hot take" rule.)

You have provided only the evidence of your "personal experience," which is some evidence, but does not sufficiently cover the degree to which your post is inflammatory (and fails to write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion, and fails to be charitable, and is in general just very boo-outgroup).

Don't post like this, please.

You have provided only the evidence of your "personal experience,"

But my claim is entirely about my personal experience. The next sentence includes "I [frequently] see" to further emphasize the subjectivity of it. So how can I provide further evidence of it? Get it notarized?

being an above average IQ , attractive white women is basically a license to print money . ASMR vids, math vidoes, twitch, only fans...does not matter.

She definitely has a bit of spectrum face going on. That will throw a lot of people off.

She has a playful and inquisitive vibe which a lot of people find appealing.

I admit I find it concerning that days she had sex is greater than days she showered. But there is that famous line from Napoleon to Josephine, “Home in three days. Don't bathe.”

There's probably some deep primal appeal to her BO.

What I don't understand is why so many people feel the need to register an opinion about her hygiene habits. If the people around her aren't bothered by it, why would anyone waste a single thought on it, much less participate in discussions about it? This human need to produce conformity at all costs is asinine.

The first answer that popped to my mind is, "because it's fucking gross". Of course, that lines up neatly with your claim that it's about enforcing conformity, but I strongly disagree that this is asinine. Maybe Aella can get railed by 6 guys at a free-use orgy, skip showering, and it's actually totally fine, but I think it actually would be a less pleasant society on the whole if this wasn't treated as fucking gross.

This comment leads me to what I think the real reason for people registering an opinion: Men (and some women) are upset that someone who takes a shower once every six days not only gets laid all the time but gets paid for it.

Maybe Aella can get railed by 6 guys at a free-use orgy

Really, while I have dealt with my fair share of bay-area women who are so arrogant they believe they don't stink when they do, this is more aggressive than you need to be.

The number of pathetic simps on this planet is beyond your comprehension. Belle Delphine is pulling down millions of dollars per month. There's no need to manufacture a scenario where Aella's bathing habits had any consequences (I.E. she had to do a gangbang to make cash). Nothing bad happened. The men who paid her to fuck put up with her smelling a little off, as did the other people in her life, because she's a hot unicorn. That's the beginning and end of the story.

There's no need to manufacture a scenario where Aella's bathing habits had any consequences (I.E. she had to do a gangbang to make cash).

I was referring to this. I'm not manufacturing a scenario, I genuinely think she's gross. I understand that she's physically attractive, appealing to many people, and is a highly compensated hooker. This does not change my view that she's gross and that it's best that most people don't act like she does.

Tweet not found, can you quote it?

From Aella:

got railed by six different ppl at an orgy last night and i have a glow today, my soul is joyous, i am nourished

Separate from any of the parent comments, this seems off to me just looking at the diction alone. This reminds me of those funny fake history quotes people like to shitpost for a quick laugh; "Just like, don't be a dick, lol" - Jesus or "Bitches ain't shit" - Eleanor Roosevelt. The dissonance between the assumed diction and the diction in the quote is the funny part. Here, why would some who seems to be genuinely using language like "my soul is joyous, I am nourished" combine it in the same sentence with "got railed" -- which is a fairly vulgar, slightly violent connotative phrase? I realize I'm way over analyzing a tweet here, but this seems to me to try and play both ends of the spectrum - one the on side is the sort of new-age "sex is a divine experience" aspect and the other side is "whoo ya be a proud slut!" I'm not trying to judge either of those, but I don't think they mix so fluidly? What's the rub? Who's the rube?

It's likely modeled off of the Tumblr meme of "my crops are growing, my skin is clear."

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My apologies, I did not understand the reference as I'm not on twitter regularly.

The stats were posted on her twitter ostensibly to spark discussion and then posted to this forum for the same purpose. As far as I am aware no one has unpromptedly commented on her hygiene habits. As to why everyone seems willing to weigh in it is a personal aspect of literally every person's life so every person has some stake or perspective in the conversation and it's discussed infrequently enough that people are suddenly finding themselves and their opinions in discord with other people that they assumed were on the same page which will always produce much discussion.

There was plenty to discuss about her stats that would have been substantive. But most of the comments weren't that. When you literally see a thousand variations on the same comment, its clearly something other than "discussion" going on. And as far as unprompted comments go, there have been plenty of "take a shower" comments on unrelated tweets of hers, or on related content from other people. It's as clear case of the hivemind enforcing conformity.

Because people that don't want to hear others' opinions and register their own on random shit don't go to online forums which exist pretty much for doing exactly that?

I mean, I don't understand why people pay attention to e-girls at all. But so long as they are put themselves out there, and mining their lives for every commodified retweet, upvote and simp dollar they can, people caring about their hygiene habits makes as much sense as people caring about them at all.

As a side note can you really call yourself a professional escort if you only work 6 times a year? seems more a schtick than a profession.

I know there's a joke here. Best I've got is "side tussle".

I think the old one about how if you bake just one cake, that doesn't make you a baker. If you paint just one house, that doesn't make you a housepainter. But you "escort" just one nerd...

I would go with an oblique reference to the relevant haggling joke, but I'm not completely sure of the correct phrasing:

“They are telling this of Lord Beaverbrook and a visiting Yankee actress. In a game of hypothetical questions, Beaverbrook asked the lady: ‘Would you live with a stranger if he paid you one million pounds?’ She said she would. ‘And if be paid you five pounds?’ The irate lady fumed: ‘Five pounds. What do you think I am?’ Beaverbrook replied: ‘We’ve already established that. Now we are trying to determine the degree.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=A85ipUgy5B4 (somewhat nsfw, but given what happens in this topic...)

She escorted a lot more in the past, iirc.

Did you mean "a lot more"? Because "a lot less" than 6 is pretty much nothing at all.

yeah, sorry. Can't find the exact number of clients, which pre sure has been posted, but from her blogpost:

My credentials: I escorted from 2018-2020 (I of course no longer escort, however if you happen to see a woman in the ads who looks very similar to me you should hit her up). I charged $1200/hr (with discounts for multi-hour sessions), and earned 50k on my highest-earning month

in Wikipedia, being having a single song qualifies as being a musician, so I guess

Musician or professional musician?

"You eat one knee, and they call you a cannibal!"

I think she’s trying to find a buyer and not a renter right now.

Whore a little bit to be a freak in the sheets but not too much that people would have questions about wifing her up (ie. Actual cuckoldry concerns). Even the over sex count isn’t that high.

Back in my wilder student days, I seem to remember a rule that you double the number of men that a woman says she's slept with and you halve the number of women that a man says he's slept with.

In the case of a prostitute with an OnlyFans account and the dynamics you suggest, maybe we need to go factorial: 6!. At an average of $100, that's only $72,000.

I don't care about your parasocial simping drama.

  • -17

I don't care about your parasocial simping drama.

Then skip the thread and move on. This is unnecessarily antagonistic and just plain obnoxious. Banned for a day.

This thread should not be here in the first place. It is gossip about a twitter persons nasty personal hygiene habits. It is 100% parasocial simping drama which is why a similar thread already exists in small questions.

Guy should not be banned for calling a spade a spade.

This thread should not be here in the first place.

That's not your call. If you think a post violates the rules, report it. If you just "don't think it belongs here," move on. Or if you really feel a need to register your objection, do so civilly.

Or if you really feel a need to register your objection, do so civilly.

I just did. Don't insinuate that I didn't.

I'm referring to the person I banned. But no, calling someone a simp is not civil.

And I'll be honest, I've had a crush on Aella for ages; she's a very attractive nerdy woman, and as a sexually confident and charismatic female Rationalist, she is a very horny unicorn among horses. But I've got to say, learning that specific factoid about her life had a similar effect on my idle long-distance lust as an F150's tires do on a small rodent

OP describes himself as one in his post.

He does not describe himself as a "simp." That is your (and the OP's) uncharitable label.

I will repeat - if you don't like a discussion someone starts and you think it unworthy of your attention or this place, you have two (2) options:

  1. Ignore it.

  2. Report the post.

Note that "Insult the person who started the thread" is not one of the two options listed above.

Then read something else.

Then read something else.

Is there anything that could be considered off-topic here? Is it okay to post things which are off-topic?

If it has a culture war angle it's on topic usually. And if it's interesting enough it doesn't really need a culture war angle. Personally I'm just happy it's not another twitter thread, but I have never really understood the off topic/on topic distinction - some of the best threads I've read started with some guy sperging out over some obscure thing nobody else cares about. And because of the nature of this place and its residents' stubborn refusal to use forums properly, you kind of have to post in this thread regardless of what you want to talk about, because outside this thread engagement drops to single digits.

Anything that's sufficiently interesting (usually via in-depth explanation of some sort) can go in the CWR thread. Example - If you want to make a detailed post about the payments industry or another random niche topic, go ahead.

actual prostitute who literally sells her body as a commodity apparently has no respect for it or and is whoring this out on the internet.

Wow this is really compelling stuff. A girl in the internet talking about her bobs and vagene? Sounds like she isn’t like the other grills!

This is objectionably low-effort. Don't post like this please.

I disagree that this is any more low effort than the rest of the replies here, it’s just said more succinctly.

Here’s a longer version which takes more “effort”.

Why is Aella popular among rationalist spaces? Well one reason could be that rationalist spaces trend towards under sexualized men, and likely often polyamorous men, who tend to be be both undersexualized and bitter towards women. Aella offers them the fantasy of an attractive woman who could potentially have sex with them, or at least provides the fantasy that there are other women like her who could potentially have sex with them.

Not only this, but she also provides sapiosexual fantasy if an “above average intelligence” woman who will talk with them deeply about deep, interesting, complex topics. Sex is traditionally not something talked about in the open, and she is willing to proverbially kill this sacred cow, something that is incredibly alluring to a sapiosexual, because it gives odd the impression of deeper understanding or thoughtfulness.

Of course this, like her other prostitution, it fake.

A prostitute doesn’t love you, and the feelings you get from one are are a shallow simulacrum of love.

Similarly the things Aella is saying or talking about are shallow (because being thoughtful isn’t the point), because the point is to titillate nerds, not to actually increase any level of understanding.

It’s porn for sapiosexuals, it’s porn for everybody else, and for a few unlucky men, it’s the willingness to be an actual prostitute.

It’s sad, and also incredibly annoying because like another poster said, this stuff gets posted in the ratsphere all the time. It’s snuck in as “discussion”, but it’s just a prostitute advertising her body and mind as available for sale.

I hope this considered “higher effort”. I suppose asking me to take something with meaning and expand it into something with has the appearance of meaning is pretty appropriate for a thread about Aella

I think I've soured on Aella just by noticing that she pretty much never elevates any other parties to let their thoughts on a matter dominate the discussion, and (intentionally or no) uses her larger audience to immediately capture the discussion and bring it into her frame. She doesn't shout people down, oh no, but I simply see no evidence that she cares to let anyone else run the discussion.

And she definitely doesn't elevate any other females, including other sex workers despite ostensibly being an advocate for normalizing sex work. Literally never seen her do a 'collaboration' with anyone, especially not in a way that would require her to share the spotlight!

Is she obligated to elevate others, on her twitter feed? Nah.

But after a few years of it one really gets the sense that everything she does is part of her sales funnel and that she thus relies on all the available attention in a given space bending around inexorably to her, and she's perfected the basic techniques of bending said attention and doesn't seem to give much heed to the impact this has on the space in question.

It comes across as just a slightly more sophisticated version of standard female solipsism. "Only my feelings matter, pay attention to only me" even if she's supposedly generating a discussion 'around' her, she knows that the act of generating the discussion allows her to siphon off attention and, of course, convert some of that into money.

Suffice it to say that while I have nothing personal against her I would NOT choose to invite her to any given social space that I cared about since the inevitable effect would be the space would bent towards her ends anyway.

I'm sure you're referring to a more general pattern, but I remember watching this discussion last year. IIRC, it's quite good - civil and balanced - with both Aella and Louise talking to each other rather than at each other.

That is a great example of how to hold a constructive discussion, but it's almost an exception that proves the rule about Aella. She entertained a discussion with a female who holds almost diametrically opposed ideals and thus isn't a direct competitor with Aella for attention.

I think information that would cause me to revert to an overall positive position on Aella (and don't get me wrong, I'm kind of glad she exists) is if I found out she anonymously gave away large sums of money to pro-sex worker causes or was actively helping lonely men find compatible mates rather than just taking their money and asking them to respond to her surveys.

It's not clear to me that she has any goals in mind other than just stirring the pot and making money. I guess she did try to help promote a dating app a few years back.

I've said it elsewhere, in the current environment of intrasexual competition, Aella is basically an Apex Predator. And she will probably remain so into her 40's or beyond, and she's well aware of her genetic gifts and happy to exploit them.

So I just find it telling that she knows full well the impact her own presence has on the discourse, and while she ostensibly believes she's a net positive overall, she won't make seemingly small changes to her behavior in response to any criticism.

I find it hard to believe that constantly thirst-trapping lonely men (most of whom, I think, are absolutely NOT in the rationalist sphere) is a pro-social activity, and it would not be hard for her to just... not do that.

Being clear, literally none of this invalidates anything she has to say, or her research, nor does it mean all her critics are right.

I think my opinion started turning after observing the interaction where she claimed that she'd rather die alone than marry a guy who required she shut down her Onlyfans. And it's hard for me to take that as anything other than "I don't think it is reasonable to ask me to stop receiving money from lonely, horny guys who find me sexually attractive in exchange for a serious, committed relationship from a male that I find attractive."

Which, okay. But a strange hill to literally die on which indicates to me either this whole claim to want help looking for a husband isn't actually in good faith or she's talked herself into quite an intractable position, and will end up unhappy if she can't find a way out. And if she doesn't have a good-faith desire to locate a husband and settle down, then she's basically declaring her intent to keep teasing horny single men (possibly inhibiting their ability to find a partner of their own) indefinitely.

and she is willing to proverbially kill this sacred cow, something that is incredibly alluring to a sapiosexual

I’ve never been able to take the term sapiosexual entirely seriously, because in the Malay language, sapi means cow. Nominative Etymological determinism strikes again?

Her blogging about escorting and camming was detailed and interesting, setting le sex aside, I read it for the same reason I read a deep dive into retail pharmacy (referring to this ).

Man, that pharmacy blog was a great read. Thanks for sharing!

She's such a macaron.

Think it's dependent on your lifestyle as well.

If you're a desk jockey in reasonable weight and live in a cool climate you can probably get away with infrequent showering. If you're slaving away on a plantation you're going to have issues.

Honestly the whole phenomenon of people being superadverse to body odor and such confuses me, since like... 99.999995% of human history would ostensibly have been totally intolerable to people in 2022. In my father (who's in his mid 70s now)'s upbringing, baths were a weekly thing and more than that was considered extravagant. Obviously trends like the reduction in smoking would increase olfactory awareness, but it still seems absurd how precious most people are about scents.

I'll obey hygiene conventions, but personally tend to just be unbothered by sweat (within reason) due to having done a lot of contact sports and thus have never understood the sheer vehemence some people have towards very minor amounts of sweat.

baths were a weekly thing and more than that was considered extravagant.

I do think people of younger generations are simply not aware of how much effort taking baths were, before all houses had bathrooms with an indoor bath (and later showers, the extravagance!)

Heating up enough water for a bath takes a lot of fuel and a lot of time, then you have to fill the bath (if it's the old style stand-alone tub) and then you have to tip out the dirty water afterwards. Even if you have an indoor bathroom, can you afford the cost of heating the water (old-style back boilers running on coal-burning fireplaces, immersion heaters on electricity) - if you don't have (relatively) cheap and convenient methods, then a weekly bath is a big deal. Daily washing by boiling a kettle of water to fill a basin is easier to manage.

There's also associated necessities, like having a house that is heated enough that the bathroom, bedroom, etc. are warm so that you're not wet in a freezing cold room; able to do laundry so that you have clean, dry towels and not have sopping wet items piling up; a lot of things people don't really think about. We've gone in a generation or two from "maybe the living space doesn't even have a bath" to "houses with two bathrooms" or even more, depending how you count them.

Yeah. My dad was from a very poor corner of the North of England in a very large family and a bath was a weekly phenomenon in which the water'd be shared between the extended family.

People are generally unaware of how staggeringly modern a lot of expected current conveniences are.

Also, I imagine if you couldn't afford the luxury of a bath, but you lived in a city, you might have been able to go to a communal bath. Nowadays, that sort of thing only still exists in, what, Japan?

if you couldn't afford the luxury of a bath, but you lived in a city, you might have been able to go to a communal bath

Hence the San Francisco bathhouses 😀 But yes, public baths and wash houses for the working class were indeed a fixture of large cities.

And the gay bathhouses have a provenance in the Middle Ages in Europe, where public baths became places of assignation (at best) or de facto brothels. You would be spending pretty much the entire day there and if you already had your clothes off...well.

Things like that helped in the condemnation and closing down of bath houses, as well as something this article points out: there weren't the kind of chemicals we use today to keep pools sterile, and if the owners/operators of baths weren't too scrupulous about changing the water, it was no wonder people began to associate frequent bathing with risk of disease.

The pop culture idea of the past simply being dirty because they were dirty, and also Christianity thought bathing was sinful, isn't correct but it's something that seems to be embedded in the popular imagination (the dung-coloured Middle Ages notion persisting even in Amazon's Rings of Power, where we can tell Bronwyn is an Important Character and Strong Empowered Woman because she's the only one dressed in bright colours).

The slow body odour musk that builds up is different from the sweat smell.

Years ago I read about some studies that suggested that the body odours of men who were genetically distant triggered aggression in brain scans. Haven't heard anything about that in a long time, might have not panned out. But it makes sense from an evolutionary-tribal point of view.

It also suggests that bathing is critical to keeping the peace in groups of men from different ethnic backgrounds.

Still it's not like intercultural metropoli are a totally new thing to the era of on-demand frequent/dailyish bathing and deodorants.

Lack of access to full-immersion bathing in no way implies that people were historically just super gross, smelly and unwashed, though. I believe it was pretty standard in Europe to take a sponge bath/ wipe yourself down with a wet washcloth from a basin of water at least once or twice a day, which would cut down on any smell pretty substantially. People also wore linen that absorbed sweat, oil and dead skin and was changed daily, kept their hair closely braided and covered or combed through it with powder to remove the oil, etc. Plus, some portion of the greasiness and odor we currently experience between showers seems to actually result from overcleansing that strips the skin of oil and unbalances its microbiome.

I've heard reports from a number of historical reenactment folks that it's not especially hard to stay clean using period methods.

I do agree that people weren't literally sitting in their own filth all the time, but I also think the average person from 2022 would find the scent of everyday people from eras prior to our own to be confronting/unusual.

So she showered something less than once a week. Did she wash in other ways, I'm presuming she washed her hands and face as normal?

If she's not doing heavy work and is indoors mostly, and using deodorant, and changing her clothes regularly, then she needn't smell bad. Especially if she's having a wash in the sink, not a full shower/bath, in-between days she takes a shower.

Funny you mention fabric conditioner and scent booster for the laundry - I can't use any of that, the smells are too overwhelming for my senses and I find them irritating 😁

I think it's only relatively recently that everyone has the capacity to bathe/shower every day, so I probably have more of a tolerance for the sort of "full bath once a week" routine than someone who grew up in a family where you were expected to shower every day.

I think she said somewhere on the thread that she'll "spot wash" various parts of her body more often than she takes a full shower.

Yeah, that makes sense. What is called the "cat's lick" (or, ahem, "whore's bath") in common parlance, or at least back when I was a kid.

Is whore's bath a British thing? You're from there, and the only other time I've heard that term was in Austin Powers.

UK and Ireland, yes, seems to be the original places!

One a day, plus one per workout, two for BJJ (one before, one after). Averages out to ~two a day.

Hunting camp doesn't have showers, so I do a couple weeks a year without. You can go a long time on baby wipes and a strong stomach.

This also points to the extent context and expectation have profound impact on even basic human habits. Nobody expects the hunting camp to smell good. No one on deployment cared about how anyone smelled. We all knew beforehand that it was going to be smelly and gross.

Well yes, but two months in the back of a Bradley in 120 degree heat with six other dudes packed so close you were never not touching two other people? That was a whole new level of stank!

I shower every day, unless I'm not going to be around other people in any kind of close-quarters setting for any extended period of time, in which I shower every other day. I can't go more than two days without showering before I feel disgusting and have to shower for my own comfort. I am extremely skeptical of anyone who claims they can go a whole week or more without showering and not stink pretty bad.

Well yeah, if you go a whole week without showering and the only time you wash is when you shower, you will smell bad.

But if you wash regularly, aren't engaging in the kind of activities that will drench you in sweat, change your underwear every day, use deodorant, then a week between showers shouldn't be too much.

Have the days of doing a quick wash down in the bathroom sink (hands, face, armpits, other bits) gone with the dodo?

That quick washdown can't possibly be saving more than a minute off of doing a quick shower right? If your shirt is already off to get tot he pits it's just a matter of finishing undressing and spending one or two minutes rubbing soap on in the shower, rinsing and drying off.

I have to think that hormones, diet, and health matter a lot for this.

Healthy humans eating similar food to you and not in puberty will not smell very much.

My toddler kids don't stink after multiple days of no bath.

I drink and often eat a little badly. Since puberty I have stank badly after a day of no showering.

The worst smell I have ever encountered was a high school weight lifting gym.

Healthy humans eating similar food to you and not in puberty will not smell very much.

Including workouts? That just seems straight up impossible to me.

I think the workout stink depends a lot on what you are sweating out. I think most teens are going to have raging hormones when they work out and not have great eating habits, so they all acquire hygiene habits that they keep into adulthood.

Personally, I have to shower once a day at least, or I reek. Confirmed both by me and others.

On the other hand, most of my girlfriends have done it much less. Current fiance probably showers only once per week and works out probably about every other day, and she's never had a significant odor. I figure it has to do with the genetics of the particular group of women I tend to like. One basically never showered but would wipe herself down daily with a wipe.

I figure it has to do with the genetics of the particular group of women I tend to like.

East Asian? This is my experience with Korean and Chinese girlfriends as well.

The ABCC11 gene, for anyone curious. The "odorless sweat / dry earwax" allele is in 95-99.99% of various East Asian populations, vs 2% of Caucasians.

I have not smelled Aella and thus have no opinion on her body odor, nor intend to weigh in on how she should go about her hygiene. Personally, I used to be able to go for a week or so without showering in a cool climate and not stink offensively (according to others); but that seems to break down when you live in a warm place and/or have a healthier lifestyle, moving around enough to work up even a bit of sweat, and that means daily showers.

Maybe she's a shut-in with good AC? Not much of one: she went out 222 times.

Anyway, people's sweat, sebum and earwax properties can be hugely different, for genetic as well as bacterial and dietary reasons.

Another controversial figure there is the number of poops (194) which works out to 0.531 poops a day average or 1.88 days to have a bowel movement. Or, actually, not:

many of the days i pooped, i pooped multiple days, but it's recorded as '1 day on which pooping occurred'

People who are not Aella rarely open up about this stuff unless they have some relevant health issues (or even then), but I remember a scholar tell me that the Platonic ideal of pooping is like once a day, early in the morning. This paper, however, says that the normal healthy range is «between three per week and three per day» which is unexpectedly wide and seems to invalidate concerns about IBS-M in replies, though I can't be assed to look for intra-individual variance. If it were confirmed, it'd have been interesting in conjunction with Scott's old political orientation vs. mental health finding, because of curious genetic correlations: «the same genetic make-up that puts people at increased risk of IBS also increases the risk for common mood and anxiety disorders such as anxiety, depression and neuroticism».

Probably a nothingburger.

A source of lowbrow fun though it may be, Aella is impressively persistent in normalizing and even making prestigious the discussion of stuff currently believed to be gross.

Maybe she's a shut-in with good AC? Not much of one: she went out 222 times.

That codes as a shut-in to me. Not total, obviously, but to an extent that I personally think is pretty weird. I don't do daily logging like that, but I'd be surprised if I had more than ~5 days last year where I didn't set foot out my house, and I think they were all days where I was completely physically shot from running a race or traveling the day before. I'd be curious to see what the median is, but not leaving home at all would make me feel like I need to go outside and do something.

She is a professional cam girl though. If my work completely happened at home I think I would also have many days of not leaving the house

I don't understand how people can go without showering daily. If I skip a day I feel clammy and any more than that I become visibly greasy. I have no idea how a human can shower less than weekly and still stay clean (I'm assuming no sponge baths etc.).

I shower on alternate days, even in the hottest, muggiest weather, and still feel clean.

Many comments are pointing out the variance between people, but considering frequent bathing is a pretty recent trend, I would think we'd get used to lower frequency bathing if we really tried (or were forced to).

Is anyone aware of evidence for some kind of feedback loop between bathing and oil/sweat/odor production? I know of many anecdotes of people who went from washing their hair everyday to much lower frequencies, they all say they got used to it and their hair doesn't get gross anymore (or as quickly). Personally I used to shower everyday and used to feel pretty disgusting starting around the 16th hour, but now I wash every 2 days and I feel fine until around the 40th hour. It could be psychological rather than physiological, but my hair really does look less oily for longer since I cut my bathing frequency. My guess is that it's a combination of psychology and physiological feedback loops (e.g. decreased sebum production).

I shower every day but only use soap/shampoo every 2-3 days since (in my anecdotal experience) excess soap use causes excess oil production and damages skin and hair. So I'm sympathetic to what you're saying. But if someone isn't at least rinsing themself off with water every day or two, they are going to stink.

I think it depends a lot both on the person (how active is their sweat glands, what bacteria they host, etc. - this is all very individual) and on the lifestyle they lead. If I work out, I always take a shower after, because otherwise I stink. If I am practicing martial arts (read: close bodily contact with other people), it's a shower before and after, first because you don't want to be that guy, and second the same reason as the workout. Otherwise, I usually shower before going to sleep, but if I am super tired I could skip it once in a while. If I wake up especially sweaty or tired, I may take shower in the morning but often I don't. Overall, it could be anytime from once per 2-3 days (if I am doing something particularly mentally exhausting but not requiring me any physical effort, and for some reason I do not work out all that time), to 2-3 times a day. If I go for a couple of days without and don't do much physical effort, I don't smell any particularly bad (I asked) but unless there are very unusual circumstances (like extended camping) I prefer to not take too long breaks. That said, in my student days, where I lived in the same quarters with other people, I knew people that could go much longer and didn't see any effects that offended my sense of smell (of course, I didn't have close bodily contact with them so who knows).

One thing that is weird for me is "had sex" >> "showered". I can't remember or imagine a case where I had sex and didn't take a shower/bath soon after. I'd feel very bad. But I guess it's individual too.

Yeah. I'm similar. I'm very physically active which tends to just regulate my showering tempo according to the 'got immensely sweaty, shower' principle which generally works. But I tend to see showering more as a reactive activity to dirtiness as opposed to a 'must be done at X interval else unclean automatically'

Is there any discussion of the body odor gene taking place there? I shower 5-7 times per week but I've known many people, especially Asian women, who could get away with less. I would kind of assume Aella has run her DNA but maybe I'm projecting my own rationalist stereotypes on her there.

I'm more stunned to hear how rarely Aella has sex. I have seen studies that show married people are more sexually active than unmarried people but I would not have guessed that this extended to someone like Aella, who writes about sex and who is something of a rationalist Aspasia. Sex once-to-occasionally-twice per week only marginally exceeds the national standard for healthy adults (which last I checked was about once per week).

This is anecdotal but I find the people who obsess over sex the most seem to be the people who have the least of it (there’s likely a reason for this correlation I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader)

I can’t imagine showering less than 40 times a year. Aella is weird and often offputting, but is obviously someone who understands physical presentation. I suppose I believe her when she says she doesn’t smell, but I’m interested how she manages that.

Hygiene is a fun subject. Physical activity and clothing are obviously important, but dirt and genetics seem to matter a lot to your personal experience with it. I have a friend who smelled of mold and BO for years and didn’t seem to understand despite me hinting/outright telling him for the longest time. He almost certainly showered more than Aella but still smelled awful. He eventually had an embarrassing encounter where his coworkers told him frankly how bad he smelled.

I like showers in general; they’re pleasant and being freshly washed helps me feel presentable and confident when I go out. I shower once a day, and feel shlubby if I leave the house without washing up beforehand. That’s mostly psychological, but I get terrible bedhead and it’s obvious if I don’t get it wet. I wash my hair with water every day but only shampoo once a week or so.

3 a day seems high, but I would probably do that many days if drying out my skin and hair wasn’t a concern. Season and exercise will make the average number very. How often do you shampoo and moisturize?

I usually moisturise my face after every shower these days, but I have naturally quite oily skin and never get dry skin on my body regardless of how much I shower. Re: shampooing, I usually shampoo and condition once a day. I have done the "no-poo" thing and it worked insofar as my hair found a natural balance without shampoo and conditioner, but I don't think it actually improved the appearance; it just saved me a few minutes a day, and I missed the pleasant experience of scrubbing my scalp and having my hair smell like strawberries or tea tree or whatever.

In my experience, diet matters a lot. Dairy and onions in particular. And a good antiperspirant goes a long way. By "good antiperspirant," I mean the creamy kind, not the solid bars, applied in detail to all the relevant areas. The difference is stark.

Milk, butter, cheese, bacon, and onions, with nothing beyond cheap bar deodorant? Stank regenerates quicker than I can get thoroughly dried after bathing. Minimal dairy and good antiperspirant, and I can forget entirely until my hair gets intolerable. I pretty much never even have to re-apply antiperspirant without bathing first.

Disclaimer: Still bathe in the tripple digits annually. Mostly because I prefer shaving and bathing in one sitting, and the former must be done at least weekly. *Grumbles about useless lasers and the lack of electrolysis within several hundred miles*

By "good antiperspirant," I mean the creamy kind, not the solid bars, applied in detail to all the relevant areas.

Creamy antiperspirant? That you're allowed to put on areas other than the pits? I want to know more.

That seems very low. My guess is the median number is around 230.

Healthy number of times probably depends on your skin, and how much filth you're exposed to, and how much you sweat, and many other factors besides. I'm highly confident that personal preference plays a larger role than health concerns. Not to be rude, but did you actually expect a sensible answer here, or was the question not even the point of your post?

some people seem to have a high baseline tolerance for stank of various kinds

Similarly, some people (depending both on environment and genes presumably) have different baselines of smell - anecdotally, some people have to shower a lot more often than others to avoid odor.

The palatability or pleasantness of various odors, including body odor, is probably very contingent on the odors in one's youth, and the context in which one smelled something as well. And it's dependent on local context too - smelling cow shit at a farm is significantly less unpleasant than unexpectedly smelling animal poop while eating.

Im of partial East Asian descent and I think I lucked into the no body odor genes (I have dry earwax too). Ive always found the talk about turning into a smelly pig after not using deoderant quite unrelatable. I shower every other day or two when I dont lift. But not showering for 10 days is a bit extreme if you do any form of physical exercise at all.

Im fully onto the no soap and shampoo bandwagon. I have almost perfect skin. No pimples, dry spots, acne, grease, nothing. In my experience diet is a much much larger modulator of skin health than whatsoever chemical you can possibly use. But that too might be insignificant compared to hormonal profile and genetics. Im a straight guy thats the extent of my knowledge and opinion on the matter.

Im pretty serious about oral hygiene though. Brush twice a day and floss every 2-3 days. Bad breath imo is 10x worse than body odor.

but what's a healthy normal number of times to shower/bathe per day?

Depends on context, namely weather, activity levels, and socializing.

  • Summer? Once a day, absolute bare minimum. Depths of winter, like late January? Every other day, otherwise my skin gets way too dry.

  • If I went to the gym? Shower. Rest day? Meh, maybe not.

  • Going to a club or party that night? Shower. Hermit-mode, working on a project? Probably not prioritizing a shower.

So it all depends. 85° and circuit party season, I’m in the shower up to 3 times a day, but if it’s the crushing 0° depths of winter, well, my dog isn’t judging me all that much.

Though, of course, I’m washing my face twice a day, moisturizing in the morning, and using an astringent followed by a heavier moisturizer at night. I’m not a monster.

my wife was amused that I could tell when our kids in their diaper days had done a pee, because I could always smell it almost immediately even when she had no idea

In addition to the regular stuff I can smell when my wife is about to get a migraine. It's not a unpleasant smell and her parents were quite surprised since they've been dealing with her migraines since her teens and they couldn't tell.

but what's a healthy normal number of times to shower/bathe per day?

I'd say once when you wake up and once after you work out?