LastThursday

@CARDOZZO read Advanced Magick for Beginners on the Internet Archive. It's an easy read and might give you some ideas: https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/0/items/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman/advanced-magick-for-beginners-alan-chapman.pdf The gist of the book is to be creative and experiment a lot, but also to be methodical and write down what works and what doesn't. This will give you a good idea of what you're able to do. For example in my life, I will often realise that I'm idly thinking about someone, and they then contact me soon after. It's happened so many times that it's not coincidence. The trick is, can I force it to happen? Maybe, maybe not.

The belief that my conscious experience is generated by my brain. But it is super obvious to me that it is in fact the other way round, and it's not a belief, because it's there right in front of me all the time, it's an absolute truth.

@Something Funny but be careful with being "fully actualized". You could be a fully actualized hermit, and that still will not make women chase you. You still have to play the game of attraction and provide the value that women want in a man. In fact providing value in general is the number one way to make you more visible to people. Work out what women value and then things will become a lot easier.

The bit in bold is the important bit. You are already yourself now, not tomorrow. When you actually become the best version of yourself you can, then women will chase you. Believe me most people are nowhere near their full potential. It would be amazing if we could all be loved for who we are now, but in reality we are invisible to 99.9% of the people around us, they are indifferent to us. To get noticed, and to get love, you have to shout quite loudly, wave you arms around and jump up and down, all the time. Even then only a few more extra people will notice you. Only your parents will love you for who you are. The whole point of pickup is to improve your chances of getting noticed, that's why it's called "game", because it is a game you play. I will say though, that if you are fully aligned within yourself, and in charge of your life in a sovereign way, then people will subconsciously pick up on that, and that in itself will get you attention. i.e. when you're fully "actualized" as a human.

@Something Funny you are hitting on the correct mindset, but having mindset is not enough. Women chase men for different reasons that men chase women. You have to externalise your "I am high value" mindset. But also you have to understand what "high value" means to most women, not what you think high value means to you.

I'm a hermit most of the time, and I mostly don't mind it. Up until my mid-thirties I was always around people and I didn't mind that either, but that changed as my friends had kids and so on. It was a shock at first to be alone for so much of the time and it affected my mental health a lot. But I came out of it and I've got to say this period of being a hermit has been the most productive in terms of self-development and maturity. I don't know for how long I'll carry on being a hermit.

Dear diary. The last week has been a crazy one. My Dad got taken ill with flu, which even for a healthy person would be an unpleasant experience. Instead his flatmate phones me and says he's unable to move at all, and that she's very concerned for him. My Dad had a second major heart attack last month, and this really zapped his physical strength and mobility. Having flu on top of that has nearly killed him. I understand now why flu is taken so seriously for older folks. Dad ended up going to hospital and has been there a week now. The biggest issue is that his flatmate would be out of the country for weeks, and he had no one else to care for him. My uncle lives fairly near to him, but he is old himself and had mobility issues also, so that wasn't going to work. My sister is in America and my half brother hasn't got two pennies to rub together. So that only left one person, AKA me. If I had been working this would have been a nightmare, as it is I haven't worked for a few months. My full intention was not to work at all for an extended period, perhaps even up to a year. Primarily I stopped so that I could decompress, destress and just "do nothing" - but also to think about my options and what I could do with my life "the big stuff". Of course, reality doesn't play by our rules and as Americans say sometimes you're dealt a curve ball. I could simply have said "nope I'm not dealing with that fuck off", but I couldn't bring myself to do that. So, here I am in a foreign country, in the middle of Dublin sorting shit out. My aunt and uncle put me up for a short while. I felt incredibly awkward as we are effectively strangers, I only having gone to their place once before. I've probably seen my uncle twice in about forty years. But luckily we got on well enough. And, as soon as I had the chance I relocated my Dad's flat. His flatmate is back briefly for one day (today) before she goes to Poland for Christmas. Seeing my Dad daily in hospital has really emphasised how fragile we can all be at times, and how we can go from being functional to nearly non-functional very quickly. I've kept my visits brief and some days he hardly acknowledged me at all. I'm a fairly stoic and not prone to "over emotion", but my body has been telling me it is stressful, even if my mind is not overwhelmed - I feel tired. I really really don't want to be doing this shit at all, not out of lack of compassion, but because I'm just not in the right space to be doing so. Effectively my dad will need a carer if he ends up being imobile, and a lot of things will have to happen to re-adjust his living circumstances. I'll do what I can do, but I absolutely refuse to be his carer in any way, I had enough of that shit with my mum for too long. He'll go into a home kicking and screaming if it comes to it, and he'll pay for it out of his money. So for the foreseeable next few weeks I'm stuck in cold wet Dublin. I should be thankful, back home there are problems with the water supply and thousands of homes are without water, probably including mine, some problem with the water treatment works. The universe works in mysterious ways, and it's fucking annoying. Diary out.

You could ask if physics is invented or discovered. In physics we invent systems for measuring the real world, and then discover the patterns that those measurements create and then invent and refine more ways of measuring the world from that, and so on. The models that are created from the patterns that are observed are pure inventions. It's a similar thing in maths, we invent a system of axioms and then discover the patterns that system makes. So for example we invent a way of counting numbers and then discover prime numbers out of that. And it is self-perpetuating, new discoveries are used to create new inventions.

"Wage Slavery" is the wrong viewpoint. Think instead of "Level of Freedom". Whether you work for a corporation, work for yourself or don't work at all, you're exchanging one set of freedoms for another set of freedoms in each situation. A wage slave is exchanging time and autonomy (one set of freedoms) for money. Since money is so versatile, it gives you a lot of freedoms as a balance for "slavery". A few of those freedoms of money are the availability of shelter, food, and keeping in good health. For most people this is a no-brainer. If you work for yourself you're exchaning time, mental/physical effort and certainty for money, but also other intangible things such as autonomy.

Obviously I can't spell Swedish, I will flagellate myself now.

This may be incoherent. I've been subbed to this forum now for seven years. I'm naturally a joker personality type (I don't think that's in MBTI or is it?). I'm prone to both being an artistically inclined luvvie, but also have a seriously humourless pseudo-intellectual bent (always with correct punctuation or I will self-flagellate). There's a certain degree of autisticality in my general persona, which I cannot help but help. But I also love language, and people. Kiss kiss ya'll. I thought I would write my ode to this forum (and hence expressing my love for). And, for fear of you taking it too seriously I quote: "Sometimes a forum is just a forum." @Leo Gura I advise you take the following the same way. Without much further ado or celebration and in no particular order my ode to memorable members both past and present: @Leo Gura Neo, One, Oen, Noe, Eno... @Princess Arabia I am not here @Keyhole I am Loba Kali @Joseph Maynor philosophate rarrr! @Carl-Richard intellectuate, and work out @Preety_India I am chaos, love me @VeganAwake I'm really really not here @Emerald take on me, take me on@soos_mite_ah cry-sis ya'll @Judy2 I love me, like a beautiful sweet @eos_nyxia hide, seek, I am myth! @Nahm rub my crystal @flowboy fix you fix me @flume gentlenesstivity @integral not sexist right, right? @MuadDib evolution, it's all God isnt it? @mandyjw Jesus, I'm also not here @Shin joker I am @Someone here smoke, my ass @Yimpa isn't it all fun? @DocWatts essay and book my philosophical ass @BipolarGrowth grow my beardy femine baby grow @Sugarcoat be my Sweedish Valentine? @Schizophonia Je suis le nouveau Freud non? @JosephKnecht write me a book @Keryo Koffa immaculate Yang creativity @jimwell break-me-in @MsNobody Sou mais do que meu corpo @cetus wise wizard of stuff @Sabth but how? @r0ckyreed deepen me @Myioko paint me a desert @Natasha Tori Maru ausie football is art right? @Zigzag Idiot unapologetic musical awesome idiot @Water by the River One, Neo, Oen... Ohmmmmmmm @Reciprocality inside the generality of the vissitude of genomical... @nuwu outside the generality of the vissitude of ... @Ramanujan but, but which book? @Gesundheit2 (1 and 2) I mean well I really do @Origins the insanity of Ontology is real @Aquarius sing laaa! @Zeroguy girls, cars, girls on cars, oh, and God @Hojo enlightened, from left field @RMQualtrough Is the nothing which we are many nothingnesses? @Inliytened1 you're right, but I'm righter @CARDOZZO Full-Spectrum Thinking rules @aurum geoengineer the **** out of it @Xonas Pitfall immaculate Yin, not Keryo ok? @Forestluv wise beyond Serotonin @LastThursday what the...?

Your post made me think of something. A tiger is just a tiger, it doesn’t second-guess itself or worry about whether showing its teeth and claws makes it a bad tiger. Its ability to be dangerous is part of what makes it impressive, and we respect the whole animal, not just the soft bits. But people aren’t like that. We’re more like a Swiss-Army-knife animal. We’ve got all these different “traits,” all these ways of behaving, and we're constantly worry about which ones we’re supposed to use. That makes it really hard to feel like we know who we actually are, so we end up searching for "ourselves" all the time. A lot of us on the forum are here for that. But underneath all that, there is actually a core to being a person that everyone shares. And we get to choose how much of that we express. Sometimes it’s useful to expose the more animal side of ourselves: the part that doesn’t apologise for existing and for having sharp claws and scary teeth, the part that doesn't apologise to being impressive. And to be honest, part of being a whole human is showing your teeth now and then. Not to hurt or manipulate people, but to allow yourself to have power and to be true to your nature.

My theory is that most people associate thinking with the voice "in their heads". Why's the voice in their heads? Because when we speak out loud our vocal chords make our head and neck resonate - and to a degree our chest. To show that just hold your hands to your head and hum. So the "location" of our voice is mostly in our heads. Also, when we speak to ourselves we partially engage the vocal chords and even lips sometimes, so there's that association too - subvocalising. It'd be interesting to know if pure sign language speakers see themselves located more in their hands?

@Thought Art woah, that's some next level break out shizzle. Or is that break through? Or break in? Hmm... @jimwell excuse the trolling it's all meant lightheartedly.

@Thought Art dafuq? 🤣

These are my half-chewed thoughts about non-conformism. I'm part way through Leo's Conformity video, so he may cover what I'm going to say, let's see. My thinking around it is that non-conformist is a negative. A non-conformist does not conform to the usual rules. There is a subtle distinction here that seems obvious to me, either you "non-conform" consiously or you do it unconsciously. To elaborate a bit, consciously non-conforming is a continual process of rejection. This can be for any number of reasons, such as wanting to separate and stand out from the crowd (to get attention), or, maybe it's because you know better that everyone else (to puff up your own self-importance or out of ignorance), or, wanting to break away from circumstances (to improve your life), or, that's just your prefered style of dealing with reality (genetics). In all those cases there is an active sense of rejecting the status quo. To be unconsciously non-conforming is just to do your own thing despite what everyone else is doing. It's less a rejection and more of a focused state of individualism. For example you wouldn't consciously think "I don't want to marry", it just never occurs to you that that is something you should do: the "stuff" of conformity doesn't stick so easily to you. Or more accurately, you wouldn't reject marriage, you just don't care for it, a subtle difference. Naturally, you cannot be totally non-conformist, either consciously or unconsciously. If you rejected absolutely everything other people produced, you would soon die. Those who label themselves "non-conformists" are no such thing in general, they are non-conformist in very restricted and narrow ways. True non-conformity is not rejection of the norm, it is the creation of new norms, which themselves become new conformity. True non-conformity then has to be endlessly creative in order not to get caught up in itself - most people neither have the energy or imagination for that way of being.

Language is a mixture of both. You have dialects which break off and languages change over time, so things are fluid. Language is a completely relative construct. But I agree, the main point of language is to be understood, so you need a large amount of conformity for that. @jimwell I don't see a problem with conciously redefining English for yourself, I can see that its inconsistencies seem illogical and overly complicated - we all have our own particular voice and way of speaking. You're still speaking a form English however, so in that sense you're still conforming.

Emotional pain is a message. Therefore emotional pain is triggered BY something. To work with the pain you must either look into the cause (i.e. answer the message), or change the trigger itself (i.e. reframing, therapy, NLP, Stoicism, distraction, drugs etc.). Those that are good at managing emotional pain, are either efficient at fixing the problems that cause them pain, or are good at reframing their pain. You're spot on that most suffering is mental. This is the trigger part I talked about above. Emotional pain can be triggered by thought alone long after the original cause has ceased to exist. You can stop repetitive negative thought patterns, but it's a counterintuitive process.

Yo diary! I thought I'd go through my thought processes on two different subjects in this entry of October 24th 2025. First things first. I gave up work. As I have probably gone on at length on here my boss and the whole work thing was giving me gyp. The idea of giving up and not working at all for a while was very attractive on the one hand, but super stressful on the other. My biggest concerns were that I may find it hard to get another job and if I were to take any extended time off I would have to explain myself in interviews. It would go something like this: "Wow you had six months off after you last job. What did you do with your time?", "Absolutely nothing". Doesn't look great does it? In retrospect most of the stress was in actually just making a decision and going for it. The stars aligned one morning and I just thought fuck it, it's going to be today. Despite them agreeing to keep things open for me should I change my mind - which was kind of them - they didn't offer me another other carrot to stay. I did my three months of notice, in which there was no slacking in my work pace at all. And then... peace. I don't miss working whatsover, I don't miss the people either. In some work places I've made life-long friends, in others meh, whatever. There's no clear plan on my part, other than when I start panicking about money, I'll start thinking about how to get an income again. I have plenty of options as I don't have any dependants, or ties as to where I live. I should move out of this flat, because it's expensive and the landlady is crap. But everywhere in this country is expensive, especially the South of England here. I should go live somewhere with a warm climate, but every country has its pros and cons, one of the biggest being language. I'm also acutely aware that I'm going freefall into my savings and it's a finite resource. Other than those stresses, I feel a lot calmer and a lot less stressed than I did. I while away the days in a Zen-like trance, just doing whatever arises (Actualized has a lot to answer for). No alarm in the morning. No boss breathing down my neck. No super-abstract thinking for eight hours every day. - Second is more philosophical speculation on the nature of reality; as is my wont. Is reality emotional or not? One of the quirks of suffering in general is that a large part of that suffering is dependent on viewpoint. Or to put it a different way it's a matter of interpretation. If there is a separate being called "me" that experiences reality then it's me that experiences the emotions of suffering (amongst other emotions). You could argue that it's all interpretation in which case there is the implication that we're not reacting to reality itself but we're just emotional about our interpretation of reality: change the viewpoint and our emotions change with it. The further implication is that reality itself has no inherent emotion within it. All those appearances or atoms (however you want to interpret it) are neutral, there is no good, no bad and no suffering inherently within them. The pro of this way of seeing reality is that we're completely free to change our interpretations and hence react to reality in any way we see fit. Note that this contradicts most people's lived in experience that it is a place full of emotions. But just because we are free, it doesn't necesserarily follow that we know how to be free or that indeed we'll take up that freedom even if we did know. What if there is no "me"? If it's reality and me as a unit, then emotions are very much in the fabric of reality. But cause and effect in the scenario are a bit more subtle. It's not "me" that suffers or experiences happiness or anger or horniness (e.g.), but the whole complex of reality itself. It's more like appearances happen in synchrony with each other. The fact that the synchrony can be repetive is beside the point - I hit my finger with a hammer and every time it hurts - reality is insensitive to repetition. The repetitive nature of synchrony could actually be considered as "one event" albeit one spread staccato fashion over time. There is only one hammer-hitting-my-finger event, but it happens randomly spread over time. Peering deeper into it, it's that there is a category of thing called "hitting my finger with a hammer" and reality snaps-to-fit into that category when it happens. But, that snapping-to-fit process is still happening as a part of reality. That's ok, because experience really does have the quality of being able to be split into parts even if those parts are members of a cohesive whole. With that in mind, when we feel sad because we miss our friend (e.g.), it's not a unique event or cause-and-effect situation, the absence of the friend does not cause the sadness. Instead it's the entire complex of absence + sadness that is the event as one synchronous whole. Maybe we feel sad whenever it arises in our thoughts that we miss the friend, but it is just one synchronous notion spread staccato fashion over time: one category. Reality is emotional. For an analogy: are the leaves of a tree individual things, or are they actually one thing making up the tree?

Maybe the quality of a thought is related to how it is physically manifested or expressed? For example if the thought brings into the world some suffering, then it is low quality. If a thought stays as a thought and is never enacted, then its quality is only relative to other thoughts (which themselves might be enacted in the end). If I'm trying to solve a problem, then a high quality thought is one that helps solve the problem, even if it is indirect. Or a high quality thought is one that gives insight when expressed to other people. I can see that some thoughts could both be high and low quality at the same time, depending on which angle you take.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to study. With study there is always a breadth versus depth tradeoff with regards to time. In college the emphasis is on breadth, because it's designed to give you a good overall (but shallow) grounding in a subject. If you continue to a Masters or PhD then you will narrow down and get more depth, or you'll get a deeper understanding if you continue your learning in the work place. Breadth and depth learning require different strategies. The low-hanging fruit for breadth learning are: Consistency. Have a daily set routine for study, which is for a certain number of hours with short breaks and distraction free (no phones, no friends). Even two or three hours a day can make a huge difference for retention. Alertness. Get enough sleep ideally with consistent hours. Reduce consumption of alcohol and other substances that affect your body. Eat well. You will also find that certain times of the day are better for concentration, find your personal preference. Drilling. Use a system like Anki flashcards or working through exercises or past exam papers to consolidate your learning. Revise the material at set intervals of days and weeks and months (spaced repetition). Go meta. Concentrate on learning the concepts rather than getting bogged down in detail: why does a three-phase-induction motor exist, what problem does it solve? rather than: it's constructed in this way and obeys these physical laws. Often the detail follows as a consequence of the guiding concept, not the other way round. Look for relationships between all the concepts in your area of study, what is the chronological history of those concepts? Have fun. Have time off from study. But keep a good balance between study and relaxation.

This guy's self-development videos are well researched and this video in particular explains the mechanics of my previous post:

In amongst the detritus of death there is new life.

Hey. You. Yes. You. Ever broken the fourth wall on your own character? Ever tried to expand out of the confines of your own imposed novel and escape the narrative you're entrenched in? Yeah. Me neither. What are you afraid of exactly? Is it too chaotic and unpredictable to break out? Is constant questioning just too much to bear? Is insanity too scary to touch? Is it "too much" in every sense? Are you being scripted by influencers outside of your control? Are you in their thrall? Is the character you play controlling your destiny, and what you feel and think moment to moment? Do you have any choice whatsoever? Maybe it's happier to just be, let all that define you, and let it wash over you. Nah. Of course you know it's bullshit. But you're confined to a world of "maybes". Tomorrow. And, if this, and, if that. I have to be in the mood - for the stars to align. To talk through that issue, to learn to bear that pain - then maybe I can be "me". Whatever that "me" is. You look for guidance elsewhere. You look to the past for inspiration, and investigate your previous characters. You're so evolved now of course and you've come so far. But you're not yet the character you want to be. You dig and dig and realise that once everything is accounted for, there's nothing else there. You're all those things. To break free you have to be none of those things.

Environmentalists are not wrong though even if you think their vision is weak sauce. We can change our lifestyles as humans and it not be a bad thing: most of us recycle now and we probably don't think much about it. If public transport we're cheap, reliable and affordable we'd all use it more. It doesn't make us hippies, it makes us more self aware collectively. Maybe engineering a grand vision for the human species instead of geoengineering one is more important? We as apes do like a good story.