A friend moved from Toronto to NYC. He said that he’d see people in NYC who did impressive things, but when he met them, they seemed boring. His theory was, in T.O, you’d have to be a remarkable person to do these things. In NYC, a lot of the people doing Big Things are just low-agency high-ambition people - people who worked hard in school, took the highest-status job they could get, worked hard on that job to get the next one, and so on… There’s a no-imagination-required success ladder there. Not sure if this is acurate but the idea really resonated with me.
you can give help for no other reason than “just because you can and its fun” and this will more likely than not lead to good outcomes trying to strategize this might work, but its not as enjoyable, and probably not as effective
To be very clear since this left containment I don’t think 24 year olds should date 17 year olds. It’s obviously safest when very young people only date and experiment within their similarly inexperienced cohort. This was a point about how good art often explores messy/complicated/grey morality. Also the authors and filmmakers intentions don’t matter my reading is valid regardless. I think it’s possible to read multiple complicated interpretations onto a piece of art regardless of what the intention was. I don’t even like this movie that much lol. (on call me by your name)
“U make me happy” emotionally irresponsible language, implies the other person can directly cause our feelings “你讓我高興” (U let me happy) acknowledges the co-creation of a feeling without abdicating emotional agency. Mandarin has a better default attitude to emotional agency and I’d love to figure out wording for this in English, thoughts? Maybe “U bring me joy” (still my responsibility to receive what U’ve brought), “U allow me happiness”.
this is the key: as the seasons pass again through the door of dreams, as the birds soar astream the great river of trees; behold! the moonlit ocean is the bridge of shadows, and the sunlit mountain is the mask of fire. everywhere we turn the wounded flowers are calling us home
society teaches us from a young age that horniness, sexuality and body confidence are all things to be ashamed of. shame festers and leaves a lot of adult women incapable of communicating their sexual desires in relationships. lack of communication leads to sexless marriages
I’m in Tokyo speaking to a new friend who lived in Montreal for the past 20 years but is just returning to Japan now for a dream job. I asked her what the demographic collapse feels like from Japan: “In Tokyo, you hardly feel it at all. Everything is more or less the same. But in the countryside like in Kyushu where my parents live, it’s like everything good you’ve ever valued is being destroyed. Every famous store or ramen shop, gone forever. The countryside now feels alienating.”
attraction in a sustained relationship is a creative act if you see the other person as like a tv show that you’re watching, you’ll eventually get bored to be in a happy relationship is to realize you are the authors, that you are cocreating the someones that you are becoming
there’s something dead-eyed and uncanny in every person who is ozempic skinny. removal of desire to eat doesn’t make you skinny for the same absence of evil doesn’t create good; truly skinny people are beautiful not because they desire nothing but because they desire more
women will lie to you and you can be aware of it but calling them out on their lies will only hurt you and the relationship. You have to be more clever than that
Inspired by John Carmack’s .plan files, the past 3 years I’ve made todo files for every project And today it finally paid off 6 months ago I was in the middle of a refactor but set it aside Today I wanted to finish it, but forgot all context, but I had all my steps and notes
4 signs you’re making a fear-based decision: your thinking becomes binary (Do vs. Don’t Do, Leave vs. Stay) - you’re obsessed with making the right decision - you keep seeking more information - choices feel permanent rather than iterative
Brazilian women are healing. I’ve heard an iteration of this from different people. Brazilians have big hearts and not only love affection, but are capable of giving it so freely, fully. A Brazilian woman can remedy years of touch deficit and body insecurity in one night
Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.
One reason we’re not getting out of refinement culture of millennial grey minimalism is because it appeals to both men and woman’s individual interests men want no frills utilitarian living spaces women want to “feel clean” all the time this aesthetic satisfies both needs
trans is a shaman class that has been mischaracterized by modernity in the west towards fitting into one of two life paths when in many cases it’s actually a third born from walking the liminal spaces between worlds which give you novel insights like a man born poor growing rich.
Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust (2000) It is one of the last anime films of its era to heavily rely on hand-drawn animation rather than digital techniques. This gives it a distinct, textured feel compared to more modern anime. The iconic animation was handled by Madhouse, known for its work on projects like Perfect Blue and Ninja Scroll
I love the idea of tweet pairing like wine pairing; this wine goes well with this steak, this conceptual tweet goes well with this slice-of-life personal reflection, etc. (Also this is an excellent pairing)
Attention is the beginning of love. So many people, adults and children, have never experienced having someone give them their undivided, focused, and attuned attention; they have not experienced love, fully. And that’s a big reason people are broken.
a lot of unhappy marriages are situationships. In my frame, they aren’t true relationships. the spouses have stopped relating to each other. there is no more meaningful exchange. they are simply coexisting in the same situation
one of the most interesting new words of our time is “situationship”, roughly meaning “we are in the same situation”, imo because the word “relationship” feels dishonest when we’re not actually relating, not actually participating in meaningful exchange, which is change
there’s a whole cluster of words, terms, ideas and in this space that are very revealing about people’s assumptions. Eg the word “settling” assumes that your partner will not change, will not grow. people ask questions like “won’t you get bored of being with the same person”
Finally - I think some long-suffering couples solve the “stepping on each other’s toes” problem by basically avoiding each other, and keeping to a highly-choreographed routine. To me this sounds like hell, but for some people maybe it’s heaven? Do what works for you, I guess
1/ Good thread on visiting China from someone who just returned after 8 years away Thought this point was worth expanding on - the biggest difference you notice when using your smartphone in China vs the West is the dominance of WeChat But different =/= better, IMO
A lot of people are bored and lonely in their relationships because they don’t actually participate in them. They treat the relationship like a weather event, like something that “just happens” rather than as a dynamic they’re contributing to. This is a huge blind spot.
Being a degenerate does not make a person interesting; it just injects chaos into a person’s life. Conversely, interesting people can make even the mundane intriguing bc they understand how to bring a perspective to life.
Hunter Biden going 120 down the freeway blasting ‘Jesus Etc.’ in his lincoln navigator right now while a 19 year old he picked up on tumblr sits in the passenger seat spoonfeeding him mythic-grade neo-Shanghai Dragon Percocet 1,000,000 dissolved inside oreo mcflurry
Universalism must be fractal. We must be careful as the wheel of History ~equals rising universalism. Rereading Saint Paul, whose writings are a mere 80 pages; the most significant human trend has been the inexorable trend towards Universalism (καθολικός “catholicism”, note that we Orthodox call ourselves the “Orthodox Catholic Church”. “Catholic” means “Roman Rite Catholic”)*. It was misunderstood of course during the eras of Communism and Nation-Statism: universalism is about rights, it does not mean eradication of all differentiation: I have more obligation towards my sibling than to a stranger; but I still have obligations towards a stranger, just as Arab tribes are obliged to feed a stranded traveler. “Neither Judean nor Greek (…)neither male nor female….” Οὐκ ἔνι Ἰουδαῖος οὐδὲ Ἕλλην, οὐκ ἔνι δοῦλος οὐδὲ ἐλεύθερος, οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ· πάντες γὰρ ὑμεῖς εἷς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ: Ἰουδαῖος may mean “Judean” not “Jewish”, and “Greek” means pagan. *Note that yahoos who preach a Catholic nationalism have mental difficulties.
“Loneliness crisis” is often blamed on lack of family, on social isolation, internet, etc. But loneliness, as Jung noted, comes not from having no one around, but inability to say what’s important to us. Political correctness is the real culprit behind our perennial aloneness.
Self-guaranteeing promises Companies break promises all the time. A self-guaranteeing promise does not require you to trust anyone. You can verify a self-guaranteeing promise yourself. File over app is a self-guaranteeing promise. If files are in your control, in an open format, you can use those files in another app at any time. Not an export. The exact same files. It’s good practice to test this with any self-proclaimed file-over-app app you use. Terms and policies are not self-guaranteeing. A company may promise the privacy of your data, but those policies can change at any time. Changes can retroactively affect data you have spent years putting into the tool. A self-guaranteeing promise about privacy gives you proof that the tool cannot access your data in the first place. Examples: Google, Zoom, Dropbox, Tumblr, Slack, Adobe, Figma (see links). Encoding values into a governance structure is not self-guaranteeing. Given enough motivation, the corporate structure can be reversed. The structure is not in your hands. Example: OpenAI. Open source alone is not self-guaranteeing. Even open source apps can rely on data that is stuck in databases or in proprietary formats that are difficult to switch away from. Open source is not a reliable safeguard against the biases of venture capital. Examples: Omnivore, Skiff. When you choose to use a tool, the future of that tool is always ambiguous. On a long enough timeline the substrate changes. Your needs change, the underlying operating system changes, the company goes out of business or gets acquired, better options come along. It is possible to accept the ambiguousness of a tool’s future if you choose tools that make self-guaranteeing promises.
Something to keep in mind is that people generally don’t learn about how the world works from studying historical examples objectively, or simulating and rehearsing situations, but from popular culture tropes Consider for example: the mass popular protest trope
“I don’t have a dog in this fight” : normal, if grim “I don’t have a horse in this race” : less common, but meaning obvious “I don’t have a dog in this race” : subverts expectations; strong imagery “I don’t have a horse in this fight” : spellbinding, transcendent synthesis
“…one of the illest scenes of the year as Detective Nice Guy whips out a chain mail glove to fight a knife wielding thug while the seductress watches from afar getting her car seat wet” - Vyce Victus Letterboxd Review
People from secular countries process religions as ideologies. They believe that religion exists as a separate and untouchable entity. But in religious countries, religion is actually the lived reality. There’s no distinction between culture and religion, it’s all interconnected
Tbf I will say as a Singaporean the tricky thing is we are very good at creating visually compelling spectacles but actually wandering around the city core isn’t all thaaat fun. Tho maybe I’m biased to be bored because I was raised here. I actually liked walking around SF more
Experiencing down bad, psychotic, feral horny, psychedelic lust for a truly ordinary man is part of the female experience. You don’t need to understand it.
Most travel is utterly pointless, and where it has the appearance of being enriching, it is usually a deception. At this point, we’re in the “post-travel” era. One adds more to their life by remaining in place. If they must travel, they should go for 2+ months and go as slowly as they can – or they would be better not to go at all. I say this as someone who has not stayed anywhere more than a few months for the last 13 years. While I do not regret my life as a traveler, it has not been enriching in really any of the ways that most people might expect. It has only taught me that real culture worthy of the name is produced by people who seldom if ever leave home. Flitting around as an observer is to be a pure consumer. It is a form of decadence that ultimately breeds cynicism in the heart. (One exception – regional travel. For the New Englander to visit a new county in Maine, or the Appalachian man to venture up a new gorge in Kentucky – these deepen his understanding of himself in a way that floating down the Danube cannot)
At the risk of seeming a little uncouth, I’ll say it might be wise to view travel in quite the same way one thinks of sex. Just as promiscuity confuses the heart and leaves you feeling empty, ‘geographical promiscuity’ is the same.
I’ll also add to this by saying that travel and sex are closely aligned for many people. “Backpacking” is often somewhat euphemistic; though someone might literally mean to go travel, there is often an unspoken subtext that they’ll be “mingling” at hostels and so forth.
to get the job you want, do that job instead of the job you have. people will come to rely on you doing the work you like, while developing contempt for the results of the work you dislike. thus, management is both pushed and pulled toward favorably reallocating your headcount
as far as i can tell 95% of the impacts of parenting is about setting a child’s psychological base points, their priors for stuff like how safe the world is, how much control they have, how happy they are about themselves, how much they trust others. from that perspective
If you’re a cerebral, precocious young man with an IQ over 120 it’s very important to learn that verbalizing every criticism you have is usually a poor idea People won’t change, you will only succeed in alienating yourself from them Only verbalize compliments
Only people who have had their self-identity utterly smashed at least once seem like grownups to me There is this tension/caution around people who haven’t, like they are carefully carrying themselves, as if they’re a precious vase that they couldn’t bear to break
notesprawl: the rapid expansion of the volume of notes, characterized by low-density single-use notes, relying on cheap storage and search. caused in part by the problem of info overload, but also correlated with increased cognitive load and decrease in mental cohesion
The DRAMA of this! Archbishop of Paris SINGING to the organ of Notre Dame to ‘waken up, you sacred instrument’, after 5 years of sleep. The organ answers him with a fanfare!
ofc it isn’t always possible but i kinda think u just shouldn’t seriously date someone unless they’re better than anyone uve ever dated before . like an optimal path is basically monotonically improving relationships until u get married
One of the strongest attraction markers for me in people is their voice. A single sentence tells entire tales of posture(ing), confidence, wounding, neuroticism, humor, and much more. Some people’s voices tell me to stay away very quickly. Others draw me in and make me laugh.