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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   2821 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 22, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What are some things you learnt from leaked documents?

These documents are like the ground truth, but there are too many too look through. So I want to pool our knowledge.

For me it's the spies often cooperate with industry, and that they will lie and even hack their oversight committees.

What are you even talking about? Which “industry,” and how much cooperation?

Nothing is monolithic. Not even a lone individual.

Well for example they will spy of foreign oil companies like Petrobas, but they will cooperate with ones from allied countries like Shell. You can see the known facts in those links. And I extrapolate this out to a more general rule, that's speculation on my part.

Nothing is monolithic. Not even a lone individual.

And I though I was the schizo...

Don’t listen to that guy. He’s full of shit. The only truth is the pillar called “I”.

I'm kind of an aspiring genealogist, and one bit of family history I've been trying to find has hit a wall and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I found a bunch of notes and letters from the 60s/70s talking about how my Great Great Great Grandfather, Charles Stocker was a ship captain who saved the lives of several sailors in one incident and was awarded a medal from Chester A. Arthur, the current US president at the time. This is extremely cool to me, and as the letters mention a certain Raymond Edward Stocker (d. 1989) as the last possessor of the medal, I am trying to see if anyone is still holding on to it (I would like to see it at least, and possibly buy it).

The letters were sent by my still living grandfather who was learning about the medal from his distant cousins at the time. He doesn't really remember much about this, and unfortunately I've been doing my research, and all of the names on the letters, including their children are now deceased as of the 90s. My question is - I have the names of some people, with virtually nothing else to go on, who died in the 90s. Is there any way I could somehow use this info to find living kids (unlikely at this point) or grandkids (maybe a bit more likely but shrinking every day)? The name I have died in Australia and so I messaged everyone in Australia on Facebook with that last name Stocker (seriously). No dice. Turns out most people don't really know the names of their great or great-great grandparents, which, fair, but kinda sad. I found a newspaper clipping with Raymonds wife's obituary talking about her Will - I tried to contact the law firm which executed her will but can't get a hold of them (and doubt they'd give me anything anyways). How do you find living people off of dead people? Seems like if a kids name isn't mentioned in an obituary, you're kind of out of luck. Maybe a private investigator could help? I'm curious if anyone has any deep research skills here that may have suggestions I have overlooked.

How do you find living people off of dead people?

It may be easier to find living people off of living people. If you take an Ancestry DNA test, you will be able to view the accounts of all other people who took the test and are related to you, even if they are distant cousins. Many of these people will have their own publicly-viewable family trees which you can often use to figure out exactly how they're related to you.

If your grandfather (or parent) is willing to take (or already has taken) a test, he can give you access to his results, which will make it easier to find relevant relatives. Your goal will be to find any DNA matches who either already have Raymond Edward Stocker in their trees or who can be connected to him through other relatives. You can then message these people and find out what they know.

Great idea, thanks

Have you tried using any genealogy database sites like FamilySearch (operated by the LDS, but it's very comprehensive, especially for Anglos)? You might be able to use the info you have to construct a partial family tree and connect it with existing family trees on the site from distant relatives of yours. That might help you find a bunch of people who are still alive.

Haha...i am LDS and familysearch is my katana. I'm trying to see if any cousins have enabled "see me as a live person" on ancestry.com, i guess I've seen that's an option

Even if they haven't, you can search for the dead people on Ancestry and if their descendants were included in family trees then you can message the creator for access to see the living people. Even if they haven't included all the descendants, the creator may have the information themself and you could discuss the medal with them.

This is something I've been mulling over for a while: if you aren't lucky and fairly determined, as a man - maybe as a human being - you need to decide where you want the ambulances and the tragedy if you want a relationship.

This is a stage that many people pass through at one point or another, and it is admirable to have strong enough personal or religious convictions to attempt it. Maybe that means being stoically resigned to being sexually assaulted or raped because you're a somewhat awkward but physically attractive mildly autistic 17-year-old girl who wants to experience life and have a family someday. In that model, you accept that you are going to need to kiss some frogs to find your prince. And you have an immune deficiency, so you genuinely make your peace with the fact that those frog kisses are likely to lead you to a couple of hospital stays that hopefully don't give you permanent damage. Maybe it means accepting that your girlfriend might stab you because you stuck it in crazy to get whatever wisdom comes from sex or relationships; maybe it means being maimed at 48 by your wife and the mother of your three children and winding up nearly dying, losing a limb, and spending three weeks in the local ICU.

I think that this is admirable and respectable, that in ages past men and women endured similar dangers in order to be worthy, and that war for men and childbirth for women have been how these tragedies played out until very recently.

What's your take on this?

  • -35

Go see a therapist and get your mind off of these rails: you have the kind of fixation on an idea that is actually rather common among online autists, only instead of falling into something traditional like trains or gender ideology, you've locked onto this particular idea which will end in its own unique flavor of train wreck.

Registering the prediction now: conditional on you even completing this insane quest, it's not going to make you any more attractive to women. Why? Because you've only doing it to attract women, and that inauthenticity reeks. This is why @screye bangs on about his self-delusion practice to enter female-dominated hobbies, and why men with an honest-to-God mission are attractive: because they are complete in themselves, and aren't forever seeking approval.

LOL - you're talking about the Hock, right? I also think that the Hock is cool as hell; I've written before about using it for college admissions and my reasoning behind why I like the aesthetic of the Hock, even if as a practical matter it is both insane and idiotic. I believe that the Hock provideth, either through victory or death, and that everyone chooses their own Hock - or abstains from Hocking.

If the Hock wouldn't make me any more attractive to women, I'll be honest - I'd be less excited about it, but I'd still think it was cool as hell. It's the culmination of what was basically a years-long thought experiment and a set of personal beliefs about suffering and ordeals building character, especially if voluntarily done.

If some deity came down from the Heavens and told me that no one would ever be interested in me...I'd be sad. I don't know whether I'd go on the Hock or not in that case. Leaning no - but maybe I'd do some kind of lesser Hock in Montana or something, IDK. Hockism as a homebrew philosophy is personally compelling to me.

Ask the ACN discord about the Hock; you'll hear a lot about it.

Besides. "Skookum, the First Hockmaxxer" has a nice ring to it to my ears even if it is also dumb as all hell and unlikely to work. I'd at least be the first fool to try "chucking yourself and some survival gear and food and shit into the Alaskan wilderness in winter and walking out" as a solution to romantic woes, which is at the very least some novel foolishness instead of garden-variety dumb shit. You've said it yourself...that I am likely to wind up in a unique flavor of train wreck.

My post history is partly an experiment log and partly something for posterity, especially if I don't survive the Hock.

Some things can be done as well as others; I know I'm three parts Chris McCandless and one part Don Quixote, but I've heard tales that native Alaskans respected Chris McCandless. I respect the guy: he was starving but functional until he got got by a relatively obscure poison and was fatally weakened by lathyrism. It was the potato seeds that did him in! He had the strength to live and die by the courage of his personal convictions, just like I would if I set out on the Hock.

So when are you going to go Hock yourself?

February 13th, 2024.

Why not exactly on Valentine’s Day

The plan is to arrive in Fairbanks on the 11th and then reach the jumping off point for the Hock on the 12th or 13th.

My take is that tragedy is an inescapable part of life. Wallowing in tragedy isn't. Stop wallowing buddy.

Same take as the last several times -- get drunk, and/or go to a rave or something. Get the fuck out of your skin, and don't whine about how you just can't do these things.

Where is your standard of worthiness coming from? Could two people pair up live decently happy lives with children and be unworthy of doing that in your view?

oh, just forget it, skook. Stay alone forever, and make zero effort. More than one way to skin a cat.

The day I posted this, I ran five miles as training for the Hock.

My take is that though 'tough talk' is in vogue these days, the usual bromides of 'just self improve' or 'don't be a pussy' or whatever are not necessarily a spur to change. They may, in fact, serve as a defense against change. And I suspect that the change you are defending against is actually getting a girlfriend, and you use these horrible events like your friend getting stabbed or your own feels of unworthiness to avoid doing it. And of course, it is not hard to find unpleasant people on the internet who will join in on this. It's human nature to seek to identify others as inferior, and to hate them for it. I guess I understand this kind of behavior because I engage in it myself. It's easier to tell myself that I'm lazy, small, weak, unattractive and disgusting than it is for me to go out and talk to other men. And I sometimes seek out negative reinforcement on the internet, which is never in short supply in places like Reddit.

I don't really have a solution. But I don't really believe that tragedy and ambulances are inevitable features of having a relationship.

They may, in fact, serve as a defense against change.

Been reading The Last Psychiatrist lately, by chance?

No, but his work lives rent free in my head.

Regardless, the logic is simple. Skookum comes here, moans, gets moaned at. Why does he do it? Because he wants it, on some level or another. Or because, on some level, he feels he deserves it. There are many possible angles. But as someone who has also strapped himself into a rollercoaster to deal with my lack of desire or drive or accomplishment or whatever, I sort of get it, and I personally find the 'sort yourself out, mate' routine to be totally pointless. Having others scold me for being small and weak and lazy didn't resolve my feelings of inferiority, it made them worse... and yet even knowing that's true, I still want it, I still seek it out. As Dostoevsky said, men can be as fond of suffering as they are of well-being.

My take is that posting the same thing over and over is annoying and borders on egregiously obnoxious.

Look man, I believe you really feel these things and you're unhappy. But this place isn't a therapy group, and while people are usually pretty willing to offer advice and feedback when someone posts about their personal struggles, when someone whines about the exact same thing over and over again, using exactly the same examples and verbiage, it becomes self-indulgent and a bit selfish. Your exercises in self-pity are beginning to look like some sort of shame kink in which you're making us all unwilling participants.

I'm loathe to invoke the single issue posting rule and ban you, or tell you you're just not allowed to talk about this anymore. But find some other things to talk about, and if you are going to post about the despair of being unlaid, stop reposting essentially the same thing over and over.

I asked a girl out on Saturday, and she said yes. I have a girlfriend now. I met her at a local meeting of baseball fans about three months ago; we started hanging out one-on-one at the end of August. We got to know each other and things developed organically. Last night we went to Ikea, and then came home and played with my cat. It was wonderful.

To be honest, "lucky and fairly determined" may be exactly right. I'd been single for three years prior to this. There were about five girls I tried to make something happen with in the meantime, and it didn't work out - I either got a first date that didn't lead anywhere, or they turned me down outright.

The determination part comes in in two areas: one, you have to be determined enough to keep going. It definitely hurt when one girl that I'd crushed on for probably six or eight months rejected me in the spring. But you have to have a thick hide, and you have to decide to bounce back and try again.

Furthermore: you have to be determined to keep examining yourself and working on your shortcomings. Like: my celebrity lookalike is probably Mike Myers (Austin Powers). I'm a funny-looking dude. But I have to find a way to be appealing to women anyway. I try to do that by being a joy to be around. I laugh an smile a lot. I try to find the good in everything. I can be a reliable and capable problem-solver when I need to. I think there are many archetypes you could utilize in making yourself "someone others want to be with," but you have to follow through on one of them enough that you yourself start to believe in it. I genuinely self-believe that I can make any interaction with someone end with them thinking, "That was a blast, I hope I can see him again." But I wasn't born like that. I had to cause myself to be that person.

The luck part is definitely in A.) Meeting a real option and B.) Getting the genetic lottery outcomes that give you a chance. With A.), as many Mottizens have noted, meeting people is hard. It's work. You have to grind and go to all the stuff you may not want to go to. Somebody recently posted about how you need to self-delude yourself into enjoying some things, and that's right on. With B.), yeah, I got lucky in many ways, to be an eligible partner at all. I don't have Down syndrome. I'm a normal height. I have a nice build that's enabled me to create an acceptable physique. I try not to take those things for granted.

Anyway dude. You always make me want to respond to you because you bring up "being worthy." I don't even know what that means. I've never been to war, or hiked more than 10 miles in temperate landscapes. My moral history is extremely dubious. I am truly, truly just some asshole. I'm not even hot, you're probably better-looking than me. But human beings want to be with each other! If you can try and be someone that other people want to be with, why couldn't it be you? Have you ever considered what you can do to make someone happy? Not everyone is out for what they can get - not everyone chooses defect! I promise you that. There really are girls who want to choose cooperate.

As another man who doesn't have the best go at dating in the recent past.

The hock isn't climbing the Alps. I can tell you that. The hock is talking to a hundred girls and getting rejected by 99. Sometimes 100. Then trying 100 more.

Do that and you will get infinitely more out of it than "the hock". Talk to girls in the grocery, the streets, at work, everywhere. It doesn't matter if it feels off or weird, or whatever, that's the point.

The point isn't to get a number or anything, but to rather just lose the inhibition to simply ask, such that when you really need it, you will have it.

Don't be a pussy and start with easy targets like other guys. Just dive in. Trust me it will feel like absolute shit up until its over. Then you will realize you are better off having done it than not.

Eh...it can't be as bad as dealing with things like chronic pain, or going to war, or making it through selection for the Green Berets - and I know people who've done all of the above.

It's interesting that the guys I knew that went to war were doing well with girls...even when they were literally at death's door from alcoholism-induced liver failure. I think that it's being able to exert immense levels of willpower and learning to be graceful and effective when your life is in danger.

Women appear more psychologically threatening than physical adversity, hence the procrastination and post-Hock rationalisation.

Mountains are static and predictable.

What a pun. Good show.

post-Hock rationalisation

Oh you!

This looks like a verbatim copy and paste of a post before.

My take is that your mind is stuck in some kind of bizarre loop and I'm not sure what might help you get out of it. Touch grass? Get blackout drunk to reset your brain? Start boxing?

The Hock provideth.

  • -12

Your hope is that it'll make you manly. My hope is that it'll remove the railroad spike from your the part of your head that should tell you to stop and consider what you're even talking about.

That said, good luck. I wish you a nice trip, if truly you go.

Skookum doing Skookum things.

But I'm going to salvage this as an antidote to what I believe to be layer nineteen recursion trolling.

"The pain of regret is far greater than the pain of rejection." I may have messed up the exact wording here, but this is a common old-school PUA / red (but not black) pill / modern male self-improvement scene saying. It's aimed at the early stage guys who still get so worked up about a woman turning down a request for a number, an invitation to a date, or even just an engagement in conversation. The slogan implores young single guys to go up to their paramour, give it a shot, and take the rejection with grace if it occurs. You'll spend a lot more time being in pain thinking "what if!" as opposed to the sharp but short pain of "Oh, no thanks."

I think it's not only useful advice within and without a dating context, I'd say it's close to necessary for the progression of stable dating norms. I've written before on here about how things as innocuous / innocent as High School dances (at least as they were up until maybe the 2010s) are really models for acceptable social interaction and dress rehearsals for unsupervised courtship. Asking a girl or guy (sadie hawkins style) to a dance is a very binary yes/no situation without any ambiguity and you, the asker, are socially pressured to accept the response. Maybe you pair it with some pre-messaging and try to get a feel for what the likely outcome is, but you still abide by that final outcome. Now, in your mid 20s, you can pattern match well enough that when you're chatting with someone at a bar, you can read the mood well enough to see a yes or no coming. Maybe you think there's a shot worth taking and escalate to a firm yes/no inquiry. "Take you out for a drink sometime?" A little heartache is the risk, but everyone goes home, sometimes together.

The loss of these progressively more ambiguous, complex, and unsupervised rituals is, I think, part (though far from the whole or even primary) cause of some of the hyperventilation over ambiguous sexual encounters in the popular mind. In the infamous Aziz Ansari piece, the author's primary contention was that Ansari should've sensed her discomfort and terminated the encounter. (Nevermind that this was after she had willingly performed oral sex on him. Hmmm, maybe she likes me?) Leaving that particular case, mixed messaging and hypoagency aside, there is something to the idea that both parties in a romantic situation ought to have some ability and experience with gauging mood / human emotion / etc. Normal caveats apply to issues with autism, drunkenness, sociopathy.

Returning to "The pain of regret is far greater than the pain of rejection," a massive pillar of old-school PUA was learning from even the worst of encounters. It's actually basic hypothesis testing and iterative development. The more times you do something, the more information and patterns you have on which to base your decision making. If you want to get good at talking to girls, go talk to a lot of girls about anything you want. More importantly for society; this will probably mean that all parties involved start to become far more aware of the intentions, feelings, and boundaries of all other parties involved. Part of me gets really nervous thinking about some PMC marriages I've seen where I know the wife is the first person the husband had sex with. Does he have any ability to understand subtle communication? Does she feel like she has to be 10/10 overt at all times to prevent misunderstandings? How many of their sexual encounters end with a raised-voice "No!" from her that is genuinely surprising and unexpected to him?

I'm not calling for all young men to be Don Juans or young women to be ultra-flirt coquettes. In fact, I'm calling for a lot more social pressure (read: shame) and additionally a lot more social interaction practice.

If you fail to provide models of adulthood and pro-social behavior, don't be surprised when you're dealing with anti-social children in 25 year old bodies with 25 year old hormones, 25 year old rights (alcohol, drugs, firearms) and a creeping chaos in society. Yet this is now close to the norm, and I say that because of the far less dramatic but far more insidious ways it has manifested itself. "You can be anything you want when you grow up!" Cool, thanks, but what is something good to shoot for? Is fireman better or worse than lawyer, or boy-robot who can turn into a jet? Please just give me a shove in the right direction. "Never let anyone say you can't do something!" That cop said I can't shit right here in front of the Apple Store. Am I being oppressed? "You're perfect just the way you are!" Good, because I wasn't planning on showering today anyway.

I mean, hell: I think that people should freely choose to endure hardship and misery - up to and including death - rather than be awkward. Basically: the ideal man would sincerely prefer, in the absence of any compulsion, to be dead rather than have done his utmost to have become graceful. Something vaguely akin to the Spartans' conception of military honor, basically shaming a guy who was absent under orders from the Battle of Thermopylae into committing suicide-by-Persian, or the Samurai's conception of bushido, applied to social grace and to a lesser extent physical fitness, conscientiousness, and general life skills. And yes - if someone is not doing their utmost, occasionally they may need to follow the fate of Admiral Byng. But only occasionally, and even then I don't like the State participating in it that much. If some awkward guy gets killed for being awkward around a volatile bully and the bully gets a slap on the wrist, however...I think that is a good thing if it happens very rarely.

It is entirely reasonable to expect our young people to prefer being dead to failing to do their utmost to become fit, graceful, productive members of society, and I also think that in this country it is necessary for a lazy person to be killed from time to time to encourage the others. Better yet is that they freely choose to embark on a course of action that will make them graceful or dead. Although - again - I think that this should be very rare indeed; Byng was the only admiral executed by the Brits.

I think you're wildly misinformed and ignorant.

You need to work on yourself until you're attractive to women. Get into a long-term committed, monogamous relationship with a woman who can stand being in the same room as you. Your mindset will improve.

Separately, I don't say this to many people, but you would benefit from advice from the pickup artist community. There's a lot to be said against that community, but the one thing PUAs get massively, overwhelmingly right is internal-vs-external locus of control. In the same sense that "the customer is always right", women are right about their preferences, and if you don't meet that standard, that's a you-problem, not a them-problem, or a society-problem. Those communities will have better, specific advice for your circumstances. This forum is not equipped to help you.

I come here for intellectual discussion, not [gestures wildly at all your writing] whatever self-indulgent pity party this is.

You need to work on yourself until you're attractive to women. Get into a long-term committed, monogamous relationship with a woman who can stand being in the same room as you. Your mindset will improve.

For that - as I am - I need to decide where I want the ambulances, more or less; I hope that this can happen without doing things that are considered predatory such as trawling homeless shelters for girlfriends. That being said - and it's gross and nasty as hell, as well as at best morally murky - maybe relationships for the unattractive are just straight up hell and fucking suck, and part of the whole point is being able to bear the opprobrium of society AND whatever shit your girlfriend is slinging. For what it's worth, I know guys that have been attacked by knife wielding girlfriends; one of whom nearly died to blood loss. This is reasonable to expect from people, in my opinion: who cares if you die to blood loss at age 29 because your crazy girlfriend stabbed you, you've been in a relationship and she probably goes to jail or some shit, meaning that your betters are better off and you serve as an example and warning to others.

This is part of why I am going on the Hock on February 13, 2024, in the Alaskan wilderness somewhere north of the Arctic Circle: because I sincerely believe that this is a kind of preparation for a kind of struggle that is considered idiotic and stupid by the standards of my society. Also, the Hock will expose me to life and death struggle, which I think makes men more attractive. It is also going to make me more used to enduring pain, misery, privation, fear, cold, and hunger for no good reason. That's valuable when you wake up in the ICU thirteen days after being very nearly killed by your crazy girlfriend, one leg laying useless and crippled for life, rasping out statements about how you loved her and it was worth it.

Dulce et decorum est, boyos.

Also, the Hock will expose me to life and death struggle, which I think makes men more attractive.

No, it does not. It makes you impressive to men, in some respect, but the fact that it’s completely pointless just makes them think you are stupid.

Son, when I was a young lad, my grandfather as he was wont to do sat me down at his feet while watching a documentary on natural disasters and gave snippets to be reflected on as life advice. Only this time instead of using anecdotes from the life of Hitler- this was in the days before the history channel transitioned to full time alien content, you see- he told me of arctic wildlife, that the polar bear hunts for walrus by barging into the herd and going straight for the one it wants, and that this attitude would be relevant to me later on. As he had learned to enjoy accounting, it is worth listening to him speak about attitude.

Imitate polar bears in your dating life in ways other than wandering about in northern Alaska in February, is my point. You are probably less likely to get stabbed this way than you are to be gored by a musk ox in ‘the hock’. You might want to try being normal(which certainly sounds like it would entail being like 50% more aggressive and 50% less neurotic than you currently are) because the grizzly man Schtick won’t fix your problems- ordinary problems require ordinary solutions. Like just asking a girl out, consequences be damned. You’re a grad student, you must know at least a few in person.

Last Christmas I watched the film Wild (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_(2014_film)) with my family, based on the memoir of the same name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wild_(memoir)) by Cheryl Strayed. The film concerns Strayed's successful attempt to hike 1,100 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, solo. I didn't like the film for many reasons: its narrative structure (hiking interspersed with flashbacks) was monotonous; the dialogue was overwritten and stagey; the performances were of greatly varying quality; and what little CGI it used was unconvincing and distracting.

But the biggest reason I didn't like it was because I really disliked the protagonist. The death of Strayed's mother caused her to spiral into a deep depression, which she coped with by using heroin and having unprotected sex with strange men, despite being married. After one of these illicit trysts she gets pregnant, she decides to terminate the pregnancy, her husband (finally!) realises he's had enough and divorces her. At this point she realises she's hit rock bottom, prompting her to embark on her hike as a therapeutic exercise (explaining to an exasperated friend: "I'm going to walk myself back to the person my mother thought I was!").

And I just found her motivation and conception of herself so grandiose and narcissistic - the idea that her personal problems are of such profound import that the only way she can address them is by walking 1,100 miles, alone - that I couldn't stand her. Even when she correctly recognises that she's a piece of shit, she still thinks she's a piece of shit in a rather grand, exceptional way - a Mary Sue who's a villain is still a Mary Sue. Like, if you've (finally!) realised that it's wrong to cheat on your husband with strange men (and grief over your mother's death does absolutely nothing to exculpate you) - sure, you absolutely could try to address this by hiking 1,100 miles alone with little to no expertise, and potentially endangering other people who may have to come looking for you if you injure yourself.

Or you could, I dunno, not cheat on your husband, you stupid bitch.

Most of us go through our lives quietly toiling away at doing the right thing, not expecting or receiving any special praise for doing so. When we realise we've fucked up, we quietly toil away at trying to put things right. Most of us have the self-awareness to recognise that our personal problems are not huge, all-encompassing things which require extraordinary, dramatic efforts to rectify; for most people, their personal problems are ordinary and mundane, and can (must) be resolved or managed with ordinary, mundane graft. Cheryl Strayed can't even claim that the root of her personal problems is a traumatic event outside the realm of normal human experience (like being raped or horribly maimed; even having a miscarriage or a cot death would have been more sympathetic) - the death of one's mother is deeply upsetting, but unfortunately, it's something that the vast majority of people in the world will go through at one time or another. If everyone dealt with the death of their mother by abandoning their duties and embarking on a hike for three months - why, the Pacific Crest Trail would be clogged with people denser than Times Square and society would collapse. Strayed dealt with the grief over her mother's death by i) ruining her husband's life; ii) conceiving a child and then aborting it; iii) going on a long hike; iv) writing a book about her experience which made her millions (and she still had the nerve to complain that the film adaptation wasn't nominated for Best Picture and accusing the Academy of sexism). Most people take a few weeks off work and deal with their bereavement privately, with dignity. "But you don't understand, I had a really close bond with my mother!" - well, so did the Hispanic binman who collects your rubbish, Cheryl, who can't afford to take three months off work, because he has to put food on the table for his (un-aborted) children and (un-cuckqueaned) wife. It's the height of narcissism and self-absorption, perhaps even clinically significant delusions of grandeur.

I imagine you can guess where I'm going with this. You've been talking about this "hock" thing for at least a few weeks. You seem to expect us to be impressed by your plan to do this - well, I'm no more impressed by hearing about people's plans to complete punishing physical ordeals than I am by hearing about the idea someone has for a novel: the execution is the thing. ("Oh my God, you're thinking about running a marathon?! That's amazing! You're so disciplined and dedicated for thinking about doing one! And here I am actually running one like a sucker!") But more than anything I just find your motivation for doing it contemptible in exactly the same way as Strayed. You think you're the first guy in history to ever feel lonely or romantically frustrated? You think the only way you can deal with your personal problems is to embark on some punishing attention-seeking voyage? In your circumstances, most people just practise their people skills, improve their diet, go to the gym and perhaps attend a therapist if applicable - and they (we) do so quietly, with dignity, without any expectation of praise or commendation.

If you're lonely and romantically frustrated, I'm sorry to hear that, I've been there and it sucks. But whining about it on a forum is not going to help you, especially not when you rubbish all of the well-meaning and practical advice offered in reply (all of which that I've seen is more sensible and likely to help the issue than "go to Alaska alone"). If you want to do your "hock" thing, go for it, but don't delude yourself into thinking that it will magically resolve all of your personal problems in one fell swoop - wherever you go, there you are. And for God's sake, stop telling us about how you're going to do it and expecting us to be impressed in advance by your resolve and determination. Prepare for it in your own time, complete it, then you can feel proud of your accomplishment, and perhaps even write a postmortem about what you got out of the experience.

Counterargument: if every lonely individual chucked themselves in the Alaskan wilderness - leaving instructions to not look for the body or attempt rescue - there would be a lot more determined people in the world and a lot less lonely people. Yeah, it's nuts. Yes, it's dumb as hell; the risible idiocy fundamental to the Hock is, in my opinion, part of the whole fucking point of the Hock.

I don't even know how to talk to you. It's like you're not even reading anything anyone is saying to you, just using their responses as opportunities to whine and pontificate.

The pontification is an ad Hock commentary for posterity if I don't make it. Could just be the writings of a dumb jackass, but whatever. Am probably going to write a blog about this whole hock crap. I have been training and preparing in good faith for this journey.

Congratulations on your epic roast making the Quality Contributions list, though.

I would greatly appreciate if you would stop being a dumb jackass for five minutes and respond to my sincere request of a couple of days ago. Feel free to respond in DM if you're embarrassed.

Congratulations on your epic roast making the Quality Contributions list, though.

Thank you, although it was intended as well-meaning criticism borne of concern.

I look forward to reading about your story in next-year's newspapers.

I gather that you are not terribly optimistic about my chances of surviving the Hock.

I'm sorry: that joke was in bad taste. I don't want you to die. But in all seriousness your odds are less than 100%. People have died doing this. Is that the point of your hock?

I think you're just rationalizing reasons to run away. The real Hock is trying to meet women and getting turned down seemingly-endlessly. It's torture, and I can understand why you'd flinch away from that prospect to construct elaborate fantasies that involve becoming a wilderness mountain man.

But please work on yourself. Find some resources for how to attract women. And please don't post about here until you've found yourself a good woman.

But in all seriousness your odds are less than 100%. People have died doing this. Is that the point of your hock?

yeschad.jpg; the Hock is basically my homebrew substitute for war with far less potential for moral injury and far less potential to live as a horribly maimed cripple; the Hock provideth through victory or death. Like Everest or even K2: most people that attempt it either come back more or less in one piece, or not at all.

The real Hock is trying to meet women and getting turned down seemingly-endlessly. It's torture

Probably a good deal less torturous than a 100-mile solo ski journey through the Alaskan wilderness in temperatures that may be colder than 40 below zero, staring your own death in the face.

elaborate fantasies

Elaborate fantasies, my left foot. If all goes according to plan, I'll start the Hock at dawn on February 13, 2024. If you do not hear back from me by April 1, I have most likely died in the Alaskan wilderness; I will have left instructions for my next of kin and anyone that would search for or attempt to rescue me to NOT endanger themselves and expend resources by attempting to recover me, dead or alive. These writings are at least partially something that would explain or describe for posterity the thought processes of Skookum, the First Hockmaxxer, if he dies on his most excellent adventure. I know I'm maybe three parts Chris McCandless to one Don Quixote, but hey, what the hell...

Do I need to post proof that I am in possession of a one-way plane ticket to Fairbanks?

Do I need to post proof that I am in possession of a one-way plane ticket to Fairbanks?

Yes. Tix or GTFO.

These writings are at least partially something that would explain or describe for posterity the thought processes of Skookum, the First Hockmaxxer, if he dies on his most excellent adventure. I know I'm maybe three parts Chris McCandless to one Don Quixote, but hey, what the hell...

Well, for posterity's sake: I'd love to talk this guy out of it, but my best effort was going to be something like "do you realize you're maybe three parts Chris McCandless and one part Don Quixote", and if that's a dud I really don't know where to go from here.

I still miss trhurler's comments.

Try ‘have you considered that actually trying to date women you know would be a big improvement on this incel Ted k knockoff schizo larping’

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Oh dear, the motte is going to be subjected to media scrutiny as part of the fallout.

I mean...several things need to happen.

  1. I need to die on the Hock.

  2. They need to connect my frozen corpse to the Motte.

  3. There needs to be at least a small media circus around the dumbass that thought this was a good idea and that he could survive.

Some dumbass dies trying to climb a mountain or something without proper equipment, and it's basically local news.

Fantasy doesn't mean you won't do it. It's just that you're getting all worked up about about a 7-week(?) trek in the woods and somehow that will define your personality. Spare me.

I don't know. I feel as if the process of training in earnest for the Hock is already paying dividends in the form of better and healthier habits. It's still early days yet, but I am working out more and being more organized, which is something I've often struggled with. I'm more conscientious, I think, and maybe slightly less neurotic, too. Seriously considering the prospect that you may be a frozen corpse in four months' time seems to have that effect.

On whether or not Hocks work: I have heard it said that if Hocks worked, Hocking would be normal; my counterargument is that Hocks work reasonably often, but they're expensive as hell in blood and treasure and so not usually worth it. For me...I feel deep down in my bones that if I survive this, I'll finally be average in terms of grit, determination, and willpower. Also, I might still be disgusting, unattractive, etc. after this, but one thing I won't be is a hypocrite. My father was a peacetime military officer, and he always told me that an officer should never ask his men to do something that he is not willing to do himself. If I'm asking someone to endure a bunch of pain and shit for a basically pointless reason - even if I do my very best, no matter how much lipstick you put on a hog it's still a hog - then I damn well ought to be able and willing to do the same.

Will define?

Do I need to post proof that I am in possession of a one-way plane ticket to Fairbanks?

I am also still waiting for a picture that proves your irrecoverable unattractiveness.

I am also still waiting for a picture that proves your irrecoverable unattractiveness.

While I'm solidly below average physically, I'm no Quasimodo. The unattractiveness isn't the kind that can be readily captured in still photos.

For an extreme example, consider Elliot Rodger. Was it his physical appearance that was the problem?

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Do I need to post proof that I am in possession of a one-way plane ticket to Fairbanks?

I think that would be best.

Hmmm, are you just saying that you need to "choose your pain", and also accept that trying to do things will sometimes turn out badly? Or something more specific to romance?

Both, I guess - and that if you are unattractive, whatever your gender: where do you want the ambulances? What kind of tragedy would you like to endure? Is it worth it to be married with three children if at age 47 your drug-addicted wife runs you over with a truck while on a PCP bender, nearly killing you and costing you your right arm? I think it is.

mulling over for a while

Yes, you've made it repeatedly and tenaciously clear. Are you expecting a different response than the last few times you came to vent?

My take is that you still have no idea what you're talking about.

Is it at least novel, interesting, or cool?

Actually completing the Hock, as described, would be cool, or at least impressive.

Talking about your plans to complete it is not cool. It's actually pretty lame.

No, not when you’ve added nothing from the last time.

No, it somehow manages to be both objectionable and pedestrian.

No, asserting “rape is totally valuable” is not cool. Neither is the rest, really.

Yeah no, rape is still evil as hell. So is damn near killing your husband after an argument or some shit. Freely accepting the risk of that is admirable, though.

no

no

no

So, what are you reading?

I'm picking up Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth. It has been on the backlog for years.

Paper I'm reading: Dombrink's The Touchables: Vice and Police Corruption in the 1980's.

Finished the Expanse series, started on Bosch.

For falling asleep, I've been listening to Andy Serkis read The Lord of the Rings for almost two years.

I just blew through The Big Short in a day and a half. It is, Peter Segal observed, a most unusual book because adapting it into a movie didn't mean making changes to make things more exciting or dramatic—but several things that really happen did have to be toned down!

Funny, I rewatched the film last week. This time round I found that the comedic parts of the film really did not work for me at all (surprising given the director's background) and the quirky editing choices were distracting more than anything. The dramatic parts are so much more effective than the comedic parts that the film probably would have been improved by making it a straightforward drama rather than attempting a quirky comedy-drama.

Which is better, the book or the film?

Both are good, but the book is better. You get a lot more detail on the finance side, if you are into that. It’s probably Michael Lewis’s best book, or at least the one I would recommend to introduce you to his writing style.

This time round I found that the comedic parts of the film really did not work for me at all (surprising given the director's background) and the quirky editing choices were distracting more than anything

This is how I felt about Vice, Adam McKays biopic about Dick Cheney. McKay took the quirky, “wink at the camera” directorial choices from The Big Short and ratcheted them up to ten. Not a fan.

Planning on continuing my Irish history reading with Ernie O'Malley's On Another Man's Wound. Unlike the other guys I've been reading - Dan Breen, Michael Collins, Tom Barry (I wrote my thoughts on the interesting parts of his book here) - this guy is far more well-known for his books than his war exploits which makes me think he'll be a better writer than the rest. I know one of the books, maybe this one, covers the Civil War and that's something only Collins has gone into depth on in my readings so far (though he died before it was over so O'Malley should still give a clearer picture of what it was all about).

Has anyone read In The Distance or Trust by Hernan Diaz? If so, how did you like them?

The Two Towers, by Tolkien.

It's comfy. I tend to look up https://tolkiengateway.net for landscape drawings and paintings relevant to the passages I read, and it makes for a very nice experience.

Neat. I'm halfway through a TT re-read. Fall is a perfect time to read this series.

I was looking for the source of my Silmarillion’s cover art. Through the Gateway, this led me to the absolute madness of Middle Earth calendars. Some of these are absolutely perfect examples of a certain 80s style. I ended up with a sweet Mount Doom for a phone background.

Finishing up King, Magician, Warrior, Lover. It's great.

I found Ted Chiang's most recent collection of short fiction Exhalation in a book sale the other day. I've never read anything by him, but I thoroughly enjoyed the film Arrival which was adapted from one of his short stories, so I thought I'd check it out.

The hype is warranted. The first story I read, on Tuesday afternoon, was "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling", which does exactly what hard sci-fi is supposed to do: tells an engaging story and gets you thinking. I've mentioned this story to three people since reading it. It does something very clever by contrasting a fairly conventional Black Mirror-esque "imagine the impact this near-future technology will have on our society" story, with a parallel narrative about a nineteenth-century missionary in Nigeria introducing literacy to the natives, illustrating all the profound, non-trivial and non-obvious impacts that the written word had on their culture (and human culture in general). For me it did a wonderful job of puncturing the parochialism and small-mindedness of Black Mirror-style sci-fi: writers in this genre have no trouble speculating on the scary effects of near-future technologies (or real technologies invented since, say, 1995), but essentially take for granted every technology invented prior to 1995. Chiang is making the rhetorical point that "yes, near-future technologies will have profound impacts on our society and individual psychology - but also this has been going on forever."

I don't like to read an entire collection of short stories in one go, so after reading three stories in the Chiang collection, I started my second read of Private Citizens by Tony Tulathimutte. It's just as funny and engaging as I remembered, and I can't wait for his second book to be released.

It's worth getting Stories Of Your Life And Others too. There's quite a bit of overlap in the included stories but the variations are worth the duplications.

Did your collection include Hell is the Absence of God? I thought it was particularly good, especially in the context of books like Unsong.

Is this supposed to be a Christian fable or a cosmic horror story?

I have heard it was written because Chiang thought the book of Job was a cop-out. So…yes.

Jesus Christ.

Unfortunately not, but I'm going to read it now.

WWI poetry - especially Wilfred Owen. Gone too soon.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, pretty decent if you ask me.

Do any of the dating apps still let you filter by race?

Some people are only attracted to certain races.

The last time I used Hinge was October 2022, and if memory serves, you could filter by race if you paid for a premium account, but not on a free account.

I have spent quite some time doing nothing but consuming the creations of others wether it be media or ideologies, without ever creating something myself. Looking for what I find to be ideal from amongst the creations of others, I have realized that they will never be ideal in my eyes, and have begun to consider creating something that I can be directly in control of, rather than continuing on hoping that someone else will create something that I find to be ideal. Has anyone else felt this way? When you become a creator rather than a consumer, does this feeling of imperfection ever go away?

In my experience, trying to create something out of dissatisfaction with the imperfection of existing creations usually leads to an understanding of why all that exists is imperfect, but does not lead to perfection.

There are usually two types of people who make things, those that find great satisfaction in them and those that can't really stand their own creations and just want the reaction of others. I think the only way to find out if you'd be in the former category is to make something yourself as others have said. Apparently, Stephen Spielberg doesn't watch his own movies once they're in the can and Quentin Tarantino watches his own for fun.

Personally, I derive a lot of satisfaction from things I create but I've never gotten anything perfect so I always get a little caught up in the fact that the imperfection could be fixed. I end up liking what I make but if you think that your own work will be perfect because it's what you want it just doesn't work that way in my experience, I enjoy it a lot, yes, but I'm often blind to what I would easily see as imperfections had I been from the outside looking in. So, maybe for a little bit you get that feeling that you've made something purely satisfying all your needs but in my experience that fades whether because the luster fades and you notice your own faults or others tear it down for you.

But it still feels worth it. You might not write your ideal novel, make your ideal game, but it's hard not to make something you enjoy when you know what you want. I mean, you'll know pretty quickly if it's something worth it or not once you have something tangible to reflect on. It's definitely a different kind of satisfaction that's going to hit differently than consuming something from others, and people praising you (sometimes) is just icing on the cake. But if you're going for perfection you're gonna end up making something like TempleOS.

does this feeling of imperfection ever go away?

I've recorded dozens of songs and written a decent amount of fiction in my life, and in my experience - no, it does not. Some of the songs I can't bear to listen back to because of how bad they are, some of them I'm still quite proud of even if I notice little mistakes or things I would have done differently - but none of them sound "perfect" to me. And this is definitely one case in which the perfect is the enemy of the good - I would much rather release a good-but-flawed song, then spend a lifetime agonising over every minute detail to the point that I never release anything. I know more than one musician who meets the latter description exactly.

The standard advice is “go for it.” Art exists as permutations on what different people think is ideal on one axis or another. By all means, be fruitful and contribute to this chaotic buzz.

But I wouldn’t expect creating it to let you feel the same way as if you’d found it. Mostly because surprisal is an important part of consumption.

No comment on creating “ideologies.”

The standard advice is “go for it.”

Do it for you, not your audience.

If you really have an idea nobody else has thought of, you should hop to it before somebody else beats you to the punch! Good luck!!!

I think the US government should legalize freedom of association, allow the formation of ethnic neighborhoods, and devolve more power to the neighborhood level. I don't think what I support should count as white nationalism, per se, because it doesn't explicitly favor white people, and it falls short of creating sovereign ethnostates. I think the USA is like the Ottoman Empire, and I support preserving the empire and creating a millet system rather than breaking the empire apart into nation-states as happened historically to the Ottoman Empire.

We have freedom of association on racial grounds. For example, I am free to invite only people of race X to my birthday party, or to invite everyone other than members of race X. What you are asking is why businesses should not be free to engage in racial discrimination, which is a different question.

Say you're a Swede who lives in San Diego and wants to visit family in Seattle. Everyone on the west coast who doesn't live in those two cities decided to freely disassociate from Swedes. Now you can't stop for lodging or victuals along the route.

Is this realistic in the modern age of capitalism? No. But some people think that things like it might be. Stepping away from the specifics of race, I suspect that many small businesses would freely disassociate from wheelchair-bound people if it was legal to do so.

I suspect that many small businesses would freely disassociate from wheelchair-bound people if it was legal to do so.

"Legal to do so, but you have to note it as part of any advertisement" might be a reasonable compromise. Just like you can sell rat poison as medicine, so long as you label your warfarin correctly, you should be able to sell your ramp-free hotel as accommodations so long as you warn any prospective guests ahead of time. I suspect most small businesses would build the ramps anyway, because it won't just be wheelchair users who will leave "must be accessible" enabled as a permanent search filter.

I think the best steelman I can come up against even that level of compromise is: lots of people would leave such a filter enabled today, but perhaps that's mostly because it took government force to push the majority culture to the point where using such filters would be seen as a good deed and a minor inconvenience, not a weird ideology or an impractical hardship. Likewise for bigotry: people are much more open to other races/etc. today, so legally requiring nearly everybody to provide non-discriminatory service and employment seems like a quaint atavism or at most a way to catch a few secretive villains ... but how much of that is because most people (or at least the earlier generations from whom they learned their culture) were often effectively required to e.g. interact more with other races back when that requirement required serious enforcement and opposition to it wasn't seen as villainous? Even if their "post-judice" from such interaction wasn't always a perfect vision of equality, it might have been "close enough" in many cases where their pre-judice wasn't. There's a Simpsons joke in Homer's Phobia about how if only all gay men could save Homer's life, like the episode's guest star did, then things would be fine ... but I suspect for many people the hurdle to cross wasn't "had my life saved in a dramatic adventure", it was just "regularly spent time among people I'd have been prejudiced to avoid, and yet nothing dramatic happened at all".

The best argument against freedom of association may be the hypothetical scenario of a doctor withholding lifesaving medical treatment from a black person while openly claiming racial animus as the motivation for their inaction. I can imagine a society where most people have freedom of association except for certain professions which are forbidden from refusing service on the basis of race on pain of having their professional license revoked.

Yeah - the medical profession in present day America would not like that. Maybe a doctor could get away with that kind of crap in 1950 Alabama, but not in 2023 Alabama, not openly claiming racial animus. Even if it was legal.

How well do communication skills transfer across languages? I have always been impressed with Ilforte’s writing, and a few days ago, saw Anatoly Vorobey (whose Russian blog I follow - I suspect Hebrew is his strongest language, but I cannot read it) post in very precise and clear English here.

(I would not be surprised if there are many other such posters here, but I can’t read their native languages. I’m not a very effective communicator in either language, though writing verse is way easier in Russian).

Trilingual here. Its proportional to how often you use said language. Its pretty linear factoring in your baseline articulation ability.

Same experience here.

I find it much easier to talk in my native language. I've been doing some interviews in English recently, and I've definitely lost a lot of fluency compared to my peak in 2002 or my international experience in 2012. Now I sound like Trump, constantly backtracking, whereas my native lookahead lets me talk in verse if it's not a complicated topic.

With writing, backtracking is not a problem, and I find it much easier to write on a more complicated topic than to talk about it. I still find that a lot of my writing needs additional editing when I reread it later, but that doesn't really change whether I write in my native language or in English.

I'm really looking forward to George E. Hale's answer to this question, he's the only one here who has written something that is worth a damn and can speak a second language well enough. I don't know if Yassine is bilingual.

I'm certainly more eloquent in English, but find myself having to rephrase myself or clarify in Spanish about as often as I do in English. Datapoint of 1, but I find it much easier to switch gears from English to Spanish than from Spanish to English, although I don't know why that is.

I encounter this as well and have thought about it. I think it's b/c when switching from English to Spanish I'm switching to a simpler/easier language. Spanish language structure just makes more sense.

Anatoly Vorobey (whose Russian blog I follow - I suspect Hebrew is his strongest language,

I doubt it. His native language is Russian, even though he lives in Israel, and while his Hebrew must be pretty decent now (I knew him a while ago, but only read his texts for more than a decade since) I have never seen a text from him in Hebrew, so I don't think it's his strongest. Probably his Russian and his English are better.

For myself, I find that while English is not my native language, it feels easier to write in English on many subjects, such as politics or technical matters, because so much of the terms and the books I've read on those subjects are in English anyway. Not that I consider myself some sort of a brilliant writer, in either language, but it just feels more natural for me.

English is not my native language

It is mine, and you could've easily fooled me into thinking you were a native speaker.

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