nerdspeak

USA is no better than anywhere else in the West. And tends to valorize an exaggerated alpha approach that seems try-hard in most other cultures.

It’s cool to get used to poverty in sense of limiting your material wants and being willing to tolerate financial uncertainty. if you do both these things, you’re a lot harder to control.

The Thai Forest tradition goes as far to say that you shouldn’t do insight practice (vipassana) until you have at least a bit of pleasant concentration (shamatha). The shamatha protects you from the terror and makes it a good deal easier to deal with. Doing insight practice without basic concentration skills can really screw up your life.

Yeah when I was 19 I wanted to end the world over all kinds of dumb stuff. The thought of using guns never occurred to me because they weren’t around me growing up.

The shooter was not a leftist. Leftism means organized left-wing political groups, this guy appears to have been a lone weirdo with over-exposure to firearms from a young age.

I agree propaganda of the deed doesn’t work. But this murder was not directed by any kind of “left” organization. So, yelling at the “left” is sort of pointless. if there was some kind of underground party directing this murder, then we could talk about this as political violence and discuss how it’s an ineffective strategy, even if you’re a revolutionary. but there wasn’t…it was just a random dude.

Lenin opposed assassinations and terrorism because it does not get you any closer to power and provokes repression by the state.

NYC sucks in many ways but it has 20 million people in the metro area, you can find all kinds of people. The “hypergamy” you describe (I hesitate to agree that’s what it is) is specific to club culture, there are lots of women who want all kinds of relationships.

You didn’t ask me, but “mastering” pickup is not worth the opportunity cost. There are transferable skills but a lot of them are extremely specific and it’s very time-intensive to get to mastery level. You would have to make it almost a full-time job for several years to reach “mastery” unless you have very high natural talent. It’s like trying to “master” skiing or billiards. Not worth it for most people, doesn’t mean you can’t go skiing sometimes or play pool. Another way of putting it that’s more analogous, is whether, in sales, it’s worth it to master cold-calling. Probably not—there are many other way more efficient marketing funnels. Doesn’t mean you can’t cold-call sometimes but you don’t need to master it like the Wolf of Wall Street guy. Night game, in particular, is one of the most exhausting and self-destructive things you can do to yourself. Even if you don’t drink.

If you’re good looking you can just use dating apps and be normal on the dates and do fine. No need to do cold approach really. But you need to move to at least a medium-sized city. it’s like any other kind of funnel, you need volume at the top or it’s not going to work.

Hitler was not meticulous, clever, or skilled at hiding bias. Which is why the German elite thought he was a clown they could control Social forces have their own momentum and produce demagogues that reflect them. I don’t think these demagogues are puppet master manipulators at all.

Great way of putting it.

Figuring out how to live somewhat off-the-grid and avoid intensive exploitation is a form of "success within capitalism." It depends on how you define "success."

The best way to get over hustle culture is to make friends with people who aren’t caught up with it and are doing what they find exciting, regardless of the material payoff. They know how to deal with material insecurity without it driving them insane.

In the age of mass politics, in the 20s and 30s, and again in the 50s and 60s, people fought in the street over wages and political gerrymandering. People are capable of getting fired up over economics and corruption, there is something else about the current context which is suppressing this process.

I live in Belgium, which is similar to Sweden culturally and even somewhat weather-wise. If I could do it again I’d have moved to south of France or Vienna. Better balance of decent welfare state and good weather.

Reno also seems super cool. If I moved back to the USA, I would seriously consider it.

@Magnanimous London is not good for pickup, there’s a reason all the “Euro jaunt” borderline incel people come from there. Pick a cheap walkable city where you can live close to the clubs and aren’t competing with billionaires for girls.

"stage green" in the US was weaponized by Democratic Party operatives trying to preserve hegemony of neoliberal financialization, it's not real green, it's orange capitalizing on green and turning it into a propaganda narrative

London has some cool people, but mostly people are so stressed trying to survive, dealing with long commutes and housing prices, that even people with good intentions get caught up in the grind after a while and degenerate into a mix of orange and the more bitter variants of green. My advice: Avoid banking cities (London, New York, Hong Kong, Toronto) and tech/real estate boom cities (SF, LA). Places where it's easy to live a middle-class lifestyle with a normal 8 hour per day job and a reasonable commute are usually better. Even if you don't want that kind of lifestyle, it means that people will have the time and space to explore their interests outside of their career, and the general stress levels will be lower. Places like that where I've enjoyed living: Berlin, Ghent, Montreal, Ultrecht, Bourdeaux, LIlle Cheap expat places can be okay. The locals will be stressed, but the expats will usually be chill. The problem is it's a bit alienating after a while, and the locals are usually in a mix of red and blue. But it's still better than moving to London/New York and getting stomped on by the super-rich. Places like that where I've enjoyed living: Kyiv, Tallinn, Krakow, Budapest, Bucharest Despite the locals mostly being in red/blue/beginnings of orange, pre-war Kyiv was probably my favorite place. Bucharest is also pretty great even though the architecture is mostly ugly.

Of course genetics really matters, although which genes switch on depends a lot on environment. Which you or your parents or the society can influence to a big extent.

I enjoy that my rent is 900 euros in the city center, that going to the doctor costs 3 euros a visit, and that I can do my chosen career here, which would be impossible in the US without inherited money. If you want to try making tens of millions of dollars with low taxes, by all means move to the US or Dubai. But I was moderately successful in the US — paper millionaire with a startup in my early 20s — and it’s a much tougher and less fun game than the business gurus make it out to be.

Business for the most part is about buying labor for x and selling it at a markup of 1.5x or 2x. Even tech is basically arbitraging software development hours. So yes, the US, where labor is kept cheap, is better for this, since base costs are lower. I’m from the US and moved to Belgium years ago, and my drive to make money at all costs is basically gone. Of course I still work, but only on things I want to do.

Really? I live in Belgium now and it’s the same capitalism except everyone’s basic needs are guaranteed by the state, and magically everyone is way more chill and less violent. I think it’s pretty simple, make healthcare and education close to free plus a guaranteed minimum income that is enough to scrape by so people can turn down bad jobs. The only difference is that restaurants and cleaners are more expensive so more people cook at home and clean their own toilets instead of hiring it out to impoverished people…

I agree. We need to treat the US at arm's length, be much more careful about our involvement with them. Europe innovating more is just a function of investing more in science. For 17 years--and especially since the Ukraine war--there's been continual downward pressure on funding for research. That needs to be reversed, which means we need to get over the fixation with balanced budgets. That doesn't mean to go crazy and cause runaway inflation, but a bit of strategic investment using fiat currency (you can call it debt if you want) is what we need. The good news is, we have a lot of space for more of that, unlike the US.