Just curious, didn't you say you also got out of shape since then?

The truth is I will probably get tired of it and lose the weight -- I preferred being leaner in general and I also don't want to have to buy new clothes. I was well on my way last year to doing so, going to dance 3x/week, but then my hip started acting up.

To clarify this is for health, not for the hoes, as some might think. Weight doesn't matter as much to them as you'd think, if you're still interested. I still dated hot girls when I was 50 lbs above what I am now. It does make a difference but it's not decisive. Also, a lot of women now assume if you're in good shape that you're gay.

I think the 2000s would have been the last time SV was a good place to live. Since then it has gotten too crowded and Asian. I could tolerate the latter but 2 hour or more commutes to the office would be out of the question (and they don't want people working remote). I do not think it's the up-and-coming place it used to be either, although they still have a considerable edge in the AI age. But anyone can build AI with enough money and the costs will decrease with time...

Basically, Florida sounds like a much better option even with all of its drawbacks. Maybe in a few more years I'll be able to head down to Orlando as well.

Yes, since moving in 2021, I moved away from the austere diet that I had kept for several years (oddly enough, inspired by the "Black Pill Fitness" blog you used to run), and started eating carbs and fats together. The result is that I'm about 10 lbs heavier than I was at that time. On the other hand, being slightly heavier but enjoying life more might be worth it. But bland food will definitely keep you leaner if that's your goal.

The "peak geographically" point got me to thinking, also -- there is a good chance that had we, you or I for example, been in Silicon Valley about 20 years ago we would have been rich entrepreneurs already.

It's not just about temperament. I was reading more about the scene there in the 2000s, there was an insane culture of entrepreneurship and lots of venture capital going around. So, if you were from a STEM background, there's a good chance you would have been sucked into it just from being in proximity (both as a CSCI grad or an EE grad in your case, there were opportunities for both).

But I was in the Midwest at that time and not even thinking along those lines. Back then, everyone here just thought about being an employee of some large firm (of which there are not a few around my area). But this may have been a mistake - being close to the masters of the universe in what you are attempting is a superpower of its own. Now, I was not even in the worst place, nor were you, but even a slight edge might have been enough to make a difference and you would certainly have had that at Silicon Valley in those days.

I doubt I could have stayed there long term, even less so with how it is nowadays versus back in my college years, but it may have meant a decisive life change. This is just a thought experiment, as I would consider it folly to do anything other than work remote for an SV firm nowadays - which I might still consider - but to really "level up" it probably would have required being exposed to a higher-energy atmosphere from a younger age.

And I say this as someone who agrees with your whole thing of school being prison, sports and extracurricular activities being for bug people and so on. I'm trying to imagine a scenario where one could be successful from a young age while at the same time not falling into many of the pitfalls of successful people. Obviously it's not easy!

The people in his age range are filled with bizarre hangups. These people also think that having long hair is the sign you are homosexual and that no one jerked off before the 1960s. I have had more than one of them tell me with a straight face that jerking off is gay "because you are giving a dude a handjob". I only wish I were making this up... And this is one of the many reasons I don't idealize the past. The ridiculous brainwashing that Americans were subjected to in the past -- and their inability for the most part to overcome it even when the absurdity is made clear -- is too much.

Alex, like many atheists in that age range, rejected Christianity but retained its moralizing, which is something you could write off as a rookie mistake IF you were able to correct it. He wasn't.

I also have had this at times. I think when we are somewhere in between sleep and waking it's like a filter gets removed and we can see things we'd rather not acknowledge when we're awake. Because for me it goes away after I fully wake up. But in the between state there's always the sense of absolute clarity about the world and yourself, and often it's not pretty or enjoyable. But it might also be necessary because these are the times when I'm most aware of things that need to change. I've just never been able to change things 100% to the point I'd be totally happy, whether because of personal weakness or simply that happiness is not fully attainable, I don't know.

Unfortunately I think a lot of us had similar experiences of being nearly made into trannies by terrible diets in our school years. I can only imagine what would have happened had this not been so. One thing I will give the zoomers is that some of them - younger relatives of mine and their networks - have been athletes and eaten high protein diets throughout their youths, and they look far better than I did at that age. There really is a biological determinism here: If you had an unfortunate upbringing of the kind we did, you cannot fully recover from it no matter what you do, because those formative years are so important.

And I say this as someone who is quite fit and healthy for my age, but I had to fight against everything - all societal conditioning, all the habits of family and friends, my own intemperate personality - in my 30s to reverse it. Obviously I would've preferred getting it right from the beginning.

I also have low regard for humanity in particular since Covid because they were revealed as being dangerous tribal animals as soon as they were subjected to more than ordinary pressure.

Yes, the unfortunate thing is that most of the cute girls I know right now are in that 20-25 bracket. It's not that they lose their looks by this point, it's the attitude they all have toward men at this age that makes the whole thing unpalatable. Oh and the cuter they are, the likelier they will have STDs.

The 29 thing, I wish that was a meme, but my ex-gf (first gf) had that exact thing happen at that exact age. She ended up pairing off with some Christian beta provider and after he couldn't knock her up, after 2-3 years it fell apart. And who knows what happened to her after that -- she had drug issues so I wouldn't be surprised if she ended up on the street.

I don't know how people can look at the state of relationships in this country and not think "this is a disaster" but then as we've noticed, few people think at all.

Well yes, and to cream queen's point, those younger girls haven't gotten to the point of hating all men yet, unlike all the hoes on the dating apps.

And yet these people in the corporate world think that it's only programmers who are going to be replaced by AI...

In my experience, the women who do this are invariably addicted to abuse in the same way that you or I might get addicted to alcohol, drugs or any other vice.

Huge numbers of women these days make poor choices whom they date but that's not your problem or mine.

If you find a woman like this you just have to cut bait. That's rhetorical of course, I know you don't date anymore.

AI did exist, LLMs have been around for some time - it was already on GPT-3 when it came out IIRC. I knew people who got to use it at their jobs in the early days before it was publicly used -- it was also uncensored in those days unlike the lobotomized versions of today. But unfortunately what we didn't know was how fast it would take over. There are still programming jobs though, but they are harder to come by. The job market for programmers has been in a slump for over 2 years. However, even without looking I still had 2 companies looking to hire me last year. But that's compared with headhunters contacting me every week prior to spring 2023.

Years ago there was a picture of a black negra knitting on the NYC subway. He was also wearing a cap of the same kind of knitting he was working on. He was probably Jamaican. Come to think of it though, that was the only man I've seen knitting.

Who cares if trannies are forced into women's sports. One of the many instances of "karma for feminism". Conservatives love blacks more than liberals do, by the way -- it's the latter who move away to white areas where the brothers can't afford to live.

NOSTR is now as edgy as Twitter was in 2010s (which means it's more edgy because knowledge and understanding has progressed) but without the horde of Political Commissars to censor it...

Collecting STDs in your 20s and paying alimony and fighting custody battles in your 40s -

Ah, the American Dream !

Actually you know what's amazing to me is how many people are still getting married, and especially some people who know all about how little benefit men get from it these days. This includes men who were on "red pill" and PUA blogs over a decade ago. I guess for the majority, the desire to conform never goes away.

That's also what I meant. I did not join in any social activity with the sole intention of getting a GF. In fact that was the least of my intentions in doing so. While it may seem surprising, the dance world has a fair number of high IQ people and it's not the worst place to socialize or meet people. It's just that you will inevitably meet hot girls too and then it complicates things...

Whenever I get involved with women in fact, since the past decade, it's usually by accident when I meet them in some situation but I'm never actually trying to.

I am only a few years younger and I still could pass for a 20-something as recently as 2021 (according to the guy who bought the house when I moved I looked 25).

Genetics may have something to do with that as well.

But I do think relationships might have their role. That's part of the reason I got back into the dance world. But it's a double edged sword because then you meet hot girls and suffer regretful feelings and so on. But it's not bad to practice socializing either because then you don't stand out quite as much as a dissident in a totalitarian society, you blend in more.

A lot of the social scenes were also crumbling even before covid, and they were made worse by the lockdowns. We live in a low trust society now and you can really see it in every circle. The dance world in particular was hit hard by the lockdowns and is only just now starting to recover from the damage with new people showing up again.

I was responding to the musings about age 40 from Tirza in a philosophical sense but I see where you are coming from.

When I visited Indochina I saw few old people even today, although the exceptions were rich people or Buddhist monks living in monasteries.