My friends, it is a day of tears. And peaceful arson. And 100% off designer footwear. But I digress.
A man was MURDERED for the ‘crime’ of counterfeiting money while black. Even with all the peaceful protesters peacefully sunsetting black cops and energetically renovating low income black housing…
Even with protesters festively illuminating police stations and shopping centers…
And even though, if someone calls the police for a nonviolent robbery, the police could KILL that unarmed black man just for sprinting at the cop with a knife.
Even with all this, it is still LEGAL to call the police on a black man.
I can’t breathe. So I must write.
As we all know, before racism was defined as being born with genetic hatred for minorities due to having ‘white’ skin, it was defined as ‘privilege plus institutional power’. The African American community is a marginalized group that is constantly fighting the power of institutionalized ‘white’ supremacy.
So in light of all the craziness that’s going on, I want to stand with:
the CFO of Citibank
The Pope
Wendy’s
Chick Fil A
Joel Osteen of the Lakewood Megachurch
The Lego Group
Gorilla Glue
Former President George W. Bush
Pokemon
Salesforce
Bank Of America
AT&T
Boost Mobile
Porsche
American Apparel
Alaska Airlines
Popeyes “We are nothing without black lives” Chicken
McDonald’s
Boost Mobile
Call Of Duty
Doritos
Family Guy
Formula 1 Racing
23 And Me
Reebok
Scholastic Publishing Corp
Kaiser Permanente
American Express
United Health Group
Ubisoft
Airbnb
Amazon
And of course, Canada Goose
and say, like the poet Flavorius Flavius before me: Fight The Power!
(P.S. I know multiple governors, mayors, congresshens and senators have explicitly instructed the police to stand down and stop arresting peaceful protesters… but if by some mistake you get arrested for FIGHTING THE POWER? I hear Hollywood has a multi-million dollar pool you can use to make bail. And probably some pro bono lawyers. And hey, the judge is a friend of BLM in a lot of these cities! FIGHT THE POWER!)
But assuming it is real, what should a young man planning for the future do with it?
First of all, cost for cars, furniture, clothes looks flatish. Computers and entertainment, CHEAP. Hospital, college, childcare, GABILLIONS. Wages in general, growing slightly higher than food and housing.
(Hold on, why is this chart fake? Because, qua Moldbug, the entire CPI structure is built on layers of leaky abstractions and shitty assumptions. For example, if Ribeye steak goes up 300%, the bean counters assume a household will substitute a cheaper cut. So the price for ‘steak’ stays flat… even as all the average family can afford is half rotted cube steak on Manager’s Special. There are many more examples.)
BUT, pretending this is kinda sorta real, you would want to avoid/mitigate the high cost increase sectors and leverage the lower cost sectors.
In other words:
DON’T go to the hospital
DON’T go to college
DON’T buy textbooks
DON’T buy childcare
DO buy a house (there are a ton of first time homebuyer programs out there, just don’t buy a house in any once or future Congo)
DO grow/cook more food
BUY SOME clothes, furniture, maybe used car
BALANCE cheap toys with free time. You can buy 3 tvs and a levitating computer orb but when will you play with them? Easy to hit 100% of leisure time fun time with a console, phone, and mid-range PC. Or just go on a road trip every few months, gas is cheap right now.
Hitting these main points will avoid the most cost inflated sections. You can also save on the costs that are closest to the trendline for wage increases, and spoil yourself with cheap to free entertainment when you need to relax.
Basically, you can massively raise your standard of living relative to income if you’re smart about it. Then you can use that extra money to start building wealth… or just drown in your favorite flavor of porn, I don’t care.
DON’T GO TO THE HOSPITAL
This one is easy and hard at the same time. I have been doing some variation of Stronglifts 5×5 for something like 5 years now:
The secret sauce of this routine is that no one does it. It’s so powerful, people hallucinate a different, more useless and less boring workout in its place:
“You want to bulk up? Do Stronglifts twice a week and eat dirty.” “So you’re saying, do isolation exercises five times a week and don’t eat, right?”
“Look, strength training works for girls too. It even works with machines. Since you’re worried about your joints, do these machines light enough for 8 reps, then add more weight when you can do 10 reps. It’ll tone all your butts, 100%.” “Okay, so I did those exercises for 15 reps and then jogged, and like, I didn’t see any change, even after two weeks! I guess the gym isn’t for me…”
Long story short. Do squats and deadlifts. Cook ground beef and veggies in a skillet. Unless you are a birth defect…If you have a gym, a stove, a multivitamin, and an hour a week to workout, you can avoid 90% of the hospital visits. 20 different pills, a knee replacement, triple heart bypass surgery? All really fucking pricey.
Long story short. Do squats and deadlifts. Cook ground beef and veggies in a skillet. Sleep. Unless you are a birth defect…If you have a gym, a stove, a multivitamin, and an hour a week to workout, you can avoid 90% of the hospital visits. 20 different pills, a knee replacement, triple heart bypass surgery? All really fucking pricey.
A surgery or accident will still knock you out, but that’s what The American Taxpayer is for. If you get shot, go to the ER and file for bankruptcy.
Basically, the secret to not consuming healthcare services is to be FIT and COOK MEALS. Don’t boof Mountain Dew and snort sucrose, kids!
DON’T GO TO COLLEGE
This one’s pretty simple. Don’t do it.
If you want education, get a subscription to the Great Courses. If you want skills, go watch how-to videos on YouTube. (This is not a joke. How do you think these 14 year olds are doing their faces better than the pros that fly in to do makeup for the Oscars? You can learn how to build a fucking deck in a week with Youtube, and that goes for most tasks.)
If you want a job, do student projects on YouTube until you accidentally build a small company. Suddenly you have “management experience”. If you absolutely have to have some degree for the position you’re looking for, go to a community college for 2 years and transfer for the other half to cut costs.
Getting a sales job and finding some way to get “manager” on your title has a good shot of outperforming most 4-year degrees right now unless you’re in a top school on full scholarship.
DON’T BUY CHILDCARE
Childcare is a fundamentally broken market that will always cost the better part of whatever money you make instead of raising your kid… unless you are rich. Single moms are fucked… but as a young man planning for the future, consider building a life structure that eliminates paid childcare. If you have good parents, move closer to them and let Grandma babysit a couple days a week if possible. Try to get one parent part-time. Live in a smaller place for a while to keep the budget balanced.
Public school is shitty but free. At 10 years or so they can start staying home alone if absolutely necessary, but it’s not a good idea.
This is a place where planning long term, building trust with friends, that kinda stuff would be great. The earlier you can get it lined up, the better.
HOUSING
This is one place where you can obliterate costs in a few ways. They all take some kind of work or stress, but the payoff is YUGE and it’s still a relatively high cost area, I suspect more than the chart shows.
Live with parents and SAVE that money. Split rent with roommates. Buy a house and rent out the rooms. One of the Twitter guys I read spent 10 years living in the basement of his own house and renting out the bedrooms to make New York City mortgage payments.
If you live and/or move to anywhere sane, you can buy a 2-3 bedroom with some kind of First Time Homebuyers Program and then rent/airbnb the extra bedrooms. Again, if you have reliable friends/roommates, you’re already ahead.
Saving all this money and raising quality of life is great and all, but you know what happens if you aren’t careful?
You blow all that money like a Women’s Studies major on Seeking Arrangement.
I’ve seen plenty of people with tons of stuff and no money. And then they keep buying stuff! Life hack: don’t put a new sectional sofa on a credit card when it doesn’t even fit in your living room.
If you don’t have a plan for where that money is going to go, it’s going to get spent. Ideally it’s in a separate bank account, or invested.
BUT, looking at that CPI chart again, looks like furniture, clothes, and especially electronics are much cheaper relative to the average wage.
This matches my experience. It’s not too hard to kit out a decent wardrobe, get a couple decent pieces of furniture, and keep a budget going for nights out. And of course, video games for dayZ. Half of them are free, and the other half are going to be 20$ or less in a month.
If you start doing one of these things, you’re going to magically have another few hunned dollahs to throw around here and there. If you do all of them, you will eventually find yourself not giving a shit how much beef jerky costs.
A barista living in an apartment with student loans is broke for a LONG ASS TIME. A barista in a house with 2 renters, a backyard garden, and ‘like a grand’ in the stock market is certainly going to be living like a broke ass for several years. But they’re also going to be learning sales, property management, and building wealth in the meantime.
Unless they live in the Congo district of Minneapolis. I hear that’s literally on fire right now.
I’m getting really pissed off that all the ‘health ministers’ in New York City, San Francisco, etc. were going, “LICK A TOILET AND LET A CHINESE MAN SPIT IN YOUR MOUTH TO FIGHT RACISM! CORONA CHAN? NEVER HEARD OF HER!” up till at least February.
And now? Now that everyone and their grandma probably has it? now that the toilet lickers are now the epicenters of the disease? Now that even the first “MILLIONS DEAD” doomsayers are walking back the death toll to 20k in the UK or some pussy ass number… NOW we’re going to lock down the country for months at a time?
MOTHERFUCKER most people don’t have two weeks of bills in the checking account, and you want this shit to go for months?
We got hospital systems firing nurses if they wear masks, we got states banning the only known treatment because someone drank fish tank cleaner, we got New York City talking about shutting down for 9 months(?!)
And what’s going to happen when all these broke people run out of food? I know you can just steal it in San Fran but some people still have to work for a living. How many deaths from poverty, stress, supply chain collapse, hunger have to happen before it’s not worth the risk? Has anyone checked? Did anyone ask?
Here’s just one knock-on effect that I have close experience with:
The medical system in the US is so bad that even healthcare professionals I know basically go, “Yeah if you don’t have someone with you 24/7 to make sure you get real food, watch for drug interactions, veto unnecessary procedures? It’s kind of a coin toss if you make it out normally or are just fucked.”
GUESS WHAT THEY JUST BANNED?
All patient advocates and visitors!
I’m telling you, people really want ratpocalypse. Did all the news people just get really fucking tired of complaining about white hikers? Still got blue balls from the WW3 With Iran Weekend?
Normally I say “It’s a problem, but not my problem” because while I haven’t personally been fucked by X, it’s still something that society needs to solve. This thing hit me a little bit, though.
I have family out of state that went in for a broken hip. Old man with a broke hip in the hospital is dangerous in the best of times. He had the surgery, had complications, went to rehab to get back on his feet. In rehab he got infections in his mouth, a urinary tract infection, ‘mild pneumonia'(?!)… was out of his mind from pain and isolation, got so many sedatives they had to give him Narcan, AND the people refused to move him out of the rehab center to another area.
His wife, a nurse for decades, is of course barred from seeing him at all, and has to call 10 times to get anyone on the line in the first place. “We’ll give him antibiotics on a picc line, he’ll be fine” changes to “Oops, the picc line guy is involuntarily quarantined with the coronavirus so we’re just going to sit on our asses while he gets septic.”
“No, we aren’t going to move him somewhere where he could actually get antibiotics. No, you can’t see him.”
Turns out if he dies from the most retarded shit, but you stuff him full of drugs, it’s not your fault. That’s called “standard of care”. But if you have to move him to someone with their pants on, people might start thinking that you did something wrong to have to transfer him.
Think that’s been ticking up or down after almost two decades of diversity graduates?
10% more deaths from losing advocates is 10k deaths from the panic shutdown, and that’s 2002 numbers. I would bet on it being higher.
Doing absolutely nothing at all and writing themselves a check for 2TRILLION would be better than doing the worst things at the worst times. But hey, people might start wondering why they’re paying people trillions of dollars to sit around with their thumbs up their asses!
Nobody gets fired for buying IBM. Nobody gets fired for DOING SOMETHING in a TIME OF CRISIS. In fact, if you don’t DO SOMETHING, people get mad at you! Systemic pressures and all.
Retard policy may end up killing more people than Corona Chan, but at least we DID SOMETHING.
In case the context drops off over time, Aeoli did a blog about Jews having lower trait Neuroticism from the Big Five personality index thing. They supposedly have lower suicide rates and everything. Not everyone agreed! Hitler was pretty put out.
I think if you’re talking about big averages, I’d expect that a group of people that believe they are chosen by God and/or Science to rule the world are going to feel pretty optimistic vs. a population being told constantly that they are Basically Hitler and should let their New Countryman replace them. “The Unbearable Whiteness of X” vs. “We must be doing something right to keep winning all those Nobel Prizes, just saying.”
Aeoli Pera over at that one blog has asked a question to all the NEETs out there: Why Do Anything?
But why, though?
Most people absorb their values from the collective unconscious, through the biased filter of their genetic temperament.
I’m no exception to this–more of my worldview probably comes from Veggie Tales than I would be comfortable to know.
Thus, most people can’t deconstruct their ethics, which brings us to the question in the title.
Why do anything?
It’s the most basic question in ethics and I bet if I asked you right now you’d give me a list of noble adjectives with no logical, syllogistic content describing someone you’d like to be someday as long as it’s not too uncomfortable.
I can count on my hand the number of people I know who can answer this question five whys deep. No offense, but if you can’t even do this you’re basically subhuman filth.
The trick is coming up with your own ‘why’s, because you don’t always want to deconstruct yourself with the hard questions.
Anyway, here’s what I got:
–Why do anything? Well, I tried not doing anything, and it really didn’t work.
–Why didn’t it work? Something about ‘to find rest, you must seek exertion’. The NEET life makes you feel terrible and useless. Living for pleasure is a full-time job, because if you ever stop, you remember you have nothing to live for. It’s better to do the anime thing, find ‘something you want to protect’ and live for other people, even just a little bit.
–Why do the extra work of ‘live for other people’ instead of just end it all? Survival instinct too stronk. Fear of pain too stronk. If I’m going to live for a very long time, whether I want to or not, might as well set myself up as best I can for the future.
–Why set yourself up as best you can? Why not find an equilibrium, tread water and ‘stay comfy’? Because I am not just setting myself up for the future anymore. I have people I need to protect, and to set them up for the future, I have to do more than I have been. I have to think about the needs and desires of others now, too.
It’s a great day to do squats and deadlifts and do things for the people I love, and who care about me. And taxes. Man, taxes suck.
–But why is doing the anime thing ‘better’? Personally, it boosts all my life outcome metrics by a crazy amount. Results are noice. It’s good for the people around me that I care about. Stable people investing in their community is a basic building block of ‘we live in a society’.
Better in a more global sense?
Universal ideologies fail because no finite set of rules can fit all permutations of an infinite world. Maybe it could be a bad thing to do in some situations. If a person is interested in ‘saving humanity/civilization/’The West’… friendship and community service is more powerful than voting.
Doing uncomfortable but useful things for an hour or so a day is more effective than all the purity spiraling and ‘poolside sitting’ in the world. You might be surprised how much you can get done before dinner.
Computer breaks are fine too, though. Rest After Creation!
We did it folks. We made it happen. Clipping audio issues will be fixed next podcast. I have eliminated my previous microphone and will obtain another SOON™
Aeoli Pera over at that blog we like had a rant about the medical system:
A business associate yesterday turned out to have been on the wrong blood pressure medicine for 15 years. His heart rate was 40 and systolic was 199, so he went to a new doctor. His new doctor said “this isn’t for blood pressure, this is for lowering your heart rate”. Meanwhile, it’s destroyed his health and nearly killed him.
This medication has been destroying his body for 15 years and would have killed him 20 years early. Every other medical problem he has, including several other medications for side effects, stemmed from that prescription. He had no other problems to start with, it’s just that his blood pressure was high.
300% Agree. I have a lot of stories about this stuff. I hear the medical system has gotten pretty good at keeping people with stab wounds alive, it’s worth a shot if you get shot.
But the number of medications with staggering side effects that are prescribed to treat symptoms is TOO DAMN HIGH.
One day, while visiting my great aunt… She tells a story about her first husband starting to get dementia. He had gone from bright and alert to not knowing who his kids are. To not knowing who she was sometimes, even. Really sad, and that stuff usually goes from bad to worse.
She had read a recent study suggesting that statins might contribute to dementia and memory loss, so she took him off the stuff. (everyone over 60 gets statins prescribed)
A few days later, he comes down the stairs, asking, “Do I… Do I have children?” She says yes, and tells him how many. He bursts into tears from lost memories coming back. That one change got her a little more time with the man she married… and their kids got a little more time with their father.
My great aunt knew about it because she was a nurse and actually did the continuing education stuff… But she tells the story because of that dramatic reversal in health from just taking him off one shitty med.
Apparently something like 75% of your cholesterol is used in the myelin sheaths protecting the neurons in your brain. Wonder what happens when you get rid of it for ‘heart health’?
Moral of the story is you should be on statins starting at 40 years old. Maybe even without high blood pressure to start with, as a ‘just in case’ thing. And also they have no side effects, ever. Those studies showing otherwise have been dealt with.
“Studies show that dissent against Official Science has a significant negative impact on total lifespan.”
Remember folks: Official Science says so! And they have ways of dealing with dissenters… [NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM, DO NOT IN FACT TAKE STATINS]
P.S. Fun fact, I originally wrote “be on statins starting at 45” because I thought it was a decent exaggeration of how aggressively this stuff gets pushed. Turns out the official recommendations start at 40! Go figure!
Hey, want to take a moment between pullups to talk about a couple basic persuasion techniques that work WAY better than anyone wants them to.
I’m talking the kind of secret weapons-grade stuff that influences world leaders. The kind of stuff that everyone from Banks to Tech Companies use to make billions of dollars.
And the best part? This stuff is so easy to use, it’s practically free. Don’t you deserve a raise? A promotion? Don’t you deserve to be listened to with the respect you are due? I think you do.
1. Chart going up
This is the classic. I used to joke that I could be a consultant by just saying motivational cliches and having a chart with the numbers going up… Then I saw people using this stuff to influence world leaders.
It goes all the way to the top. Marketers use it to get millions more for their budgets. Managers use it for promotions. Software guys should use it to get hired. Anywhere you are in life, there is a place to show all the good numbers going up… because of you!
Just show a chart with the numbers going up. Hire me, this happens. Boom.
Pictured: How much you will win after using this chart.
2. It’s on sale + You deserve it
Another classic. Works especially well in girl sales. At Hobby Lobby, everything is on sale for 40% off (estimated retail value), EVERY DAY. If that sounds like just marking it up to mark it back down? YES.
You deserve to have the good things in life. Who would argue with that? And today it’s on sale, so you don’t even have to pay full price!
I can PROVE to you that the universe values you and wants you to be happy. Who else would we give these great deals to?
Pictured: Why you should buy that thing you like.
3. Things in Threes
I don’t know why, but doing things in threes is magical. Seven is a good number sometimes, but three is a great number all the time. How many final forms do all the good bosses have? Three. How many main points do all your college essays need? Three.
Kirk, Bones and Spock. Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Three versions of Pokemon. ITZ everywhere.
Three is the perfect number for a beginning, middle and end. It’s just enough storytelling to make a thing compelling. There’s just something truthy about three….
Three in a row. Checkmate.
P.S. Use a P.S.
The secret weapon to catch people who want all the info but don’t want to actually read. People read the title and then skim down to the secret bonus P.S.! ITZ magic. Pair the P.S. with a Chart Going Up… an It’s On Sale And You Deserve It… and the Power Of Threes? You are on your way to winning all the things.
THE TREMBLES was apparently a big deal around the 1800s. It killed Abe Lincoln’s mom!
The article quotes a doctor’s description of the symptoms:
The following year, Dr. Daniel Drake of Ohio published a description of the symptoms in Notices Concerning Cincinnati:
“It almost invariably commences with a general weakness and lassitude, which increase in the most gradual manner. About the same time, or soon after, a dull pain, or rather soreness, begins to affect the calves of the legs, occasionally extending up to the thighs. The appetite becomes rather impaired, and in some cases, nearly suspended; sensations of a disagreeable kind affect the stomach upon taking food.”
Drake, however, did not name the disease and apparently at the time of this first published piece did not even connect its occurrence with tainted milk.
For a while, it was just a mysterious thing that people would randomly drop dead from. Eventually they figured out it happened when someone drank milk from a cow that was trembling.
Pictured: A Cow.
So there was some disease killing cows, spreading to the milk, killing humans, and people were trying to figure out what to do about it. Enter the Scientist.
“From his study of the etiology Drake suggested five plants that might cause milk sickness… He narrowed the plants down to white snakeroot and poison ivy, then rejected the former because it was so common and had no poisonous properties.”
By this time people were more or less aware that there was some kind of plant that the cows were eating, but no one was sure which one it was.
I mean, some farmer guy had done actual experiments and found his own cows died from eating snakeroot two years back, but that doesn’t count:
“Meanwhile, in 1838, Fayette County, OH farmer John Rowe, suspecting that white snakeroot might be the cause of milk sickness, fed leaves from the plant to some of his animals. Sure enough, they developed the disease and died. The farmer published his exciting find in the local newspaper. But farmers don’t make medical discoveries, do they? No, at that time, only certified professionals were allowed to make discoveries.”…
Silly rabbit! Farmers don’t do science!
Drake commented on John Rowe’s experiments in The Western Journal of Medicine and Surgery: “It must be admitted that the plant on which Mr. Rowe experimented possesses some active properties, as four animals under its use died with what were pronounced to be symptoms of Trembles.
Still, the mode of conducting the experiments differed too widely from that in which the animal is likely to eat the poisonous plant—in the woods—and the decision that the animals killed by it had the Trembles is far from conclusive or binding.
“A professional scrutiny only can be relied on in such cases. The testimony adduced by Mr. Rowe is therefore defective and inconclusive, even if nothing could be found to oppose it; but there are several facts which directly invalidate it.”
Because Drake was such a prominent physician and scientist, his theories were accepted by most in the mainstream medical establishment.
And with that, Snakeroot was Officially Ruled Out by Official Science. Stop talking about it. Why are you still talking about it?
Meanwhile…
Another doctor, also trying to figure out what was going on, goes investigating in her area. Locals say it was a witch’s potion, but she doesn’t like that explanation, and keeps investigating.
She determined that the illness was seasonal, beginning in summer and continuing until the first frost. It was more prominent in cattle than in other animals, suggesting the cause might be a plant eaten by the cattle.
Legend says that while following the cattle in search of the cause, Dr. Bixby happened upon a Shawnee Indian woman who told her that white snakeroot plant caused milk sickness.
Man, it’s bad enough that farmers think they can do science. Indians don’t even HAVE scientists! It turns out that ‘direct observation’, having ‘hypotheses’, and doing ’empirical testing’ don’t win you any favors from Official Science despite getting county-wide results:
She tested the hypothesis by feeding the plant to a calf, demonstrating its poisonous properties. Dr. Bixby and others in the community then began a campaign to eradicate the plant from the area.
Although Dr. Bixby was correct in her analysis, when she died in 1869, she had received no official recognition for her discovery of the cause of milk sickness.
Decades after local professionals figure it out, the Official Scientist position is THOSE FUCKING LAYMEN:
Despite its position as an official representative of government health policy, the NIH report makes no mention whatsoever of Bixby’s or Rowe’s experiments, and still considers milk sickness uncured:
“Satisfactory accounts of the disease are rare.
Drake, who is much quoted in all accounts of the disease, appears not to have been personally familiar with the malady; indeed in his memoir he states that he has seen no case in man, nor in the lower animals.
Yandell, who is also frequently quoted and has written much on the subject, makes no mention of having himself seen cases, and in his later publications expresses grave doubt as to the existence of a specific disease corresponding to that described as milk sickness.
“In his own words: ‘Upon a review of the whole matter the conclusion to which all the testimony on the subject has brought me is that we who have written upon milk sickness have been egregiously imposed upon by careless and incompetent observers.’…
“STOP TRYING TO MAKE SNAKEROOT HAPPEN. IT’S NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!”
Finally, nearly one hundred and thirty years after the first person was diagnosed with the trembles… and over eighty years after various local professionals had noticed, investigated, identified, and dealt with the cause of the trembles…
Official Science catches up.
Finally, in 1928, researchers at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, led by Dr. James Couch, isolated from white snakeroot a highly complex alcohol they named tremetol, and the American Medical Association recognized that Eupatorium rugosum was the cause of the milk sickness. The culprit plant had, finally, been officially discovered. As this information spread throughout the medical and agricultural communities, fencing laws and supervised milk production largely solved the milk sickness problem.
Boneflour 