0xvenge

[Mud Wizard | 泥巫师 | (91/100 days 3hr+ practice) @IkkyusDen]

Pick a yoga teacher who is fit and has good posture themselves, which oddly seems to be the minority. Iyengar yoga might be optimal, they're super OCD about the fineries of posture.

[QC @QiaochuYuan]

impro again:

> Suppose an eight-year-old writes a story about being chased down a mouse-hole by a monstrous spider. It'll be perceived as 'childish' and no one will worry. If he writes the same story when he's fourteen it may be taken as a sign of mental abnormality. Creating a story, or painting a picture, or making up a poem lay an adolescent wide open to criticism. He therefore has to fake everything so that he appears 'sensitive' or 'witty' or 'tough' or 'intelligent' according to the image he's trying to establish in the eyes of other people. If he believed he was a transmitter, rather than a creator, then we'd be able to see what his talents were.

> We have an idea that art is self-expression—which historically is weird. An artist used to be seen as the medium through which something else operated. He was a servant of the God.
...
> Schiller wrote of a 'watcher at the gates of the mind', who examines ideas too closely. He said that in the case of the creative mind 'the intellect has withdrawn from the gates, and the ideas rush in pell-mell, and only then does it review and inspect the multitude.' He said that uncreative people 'are ashamed of the momentary passing madness which is found in all real creators...'
...
> At school any spontaneous act was likely to get me into trouble. I learned never to act on impulse, and that whatever came into my mind first should be rejected in favour of better ideas. I learned that my imagination wasn't 'good' enough. I learned that the first idea was unsatisfactory because it was (1) psychotic; (2) obscene; (3) unoriginal.

> The truth is that the best ideas are often psychotic, obscene, and unoriginal.

[scott 🌞 @scottdomes]

as far as masculine “initiation” rituals go, the tough thing is that you cannot initiate yourself

e.g. a 30 day cold shower challenge is gesturing at such a ritual, but it falls short because it’s maintained by conscious intention

whereas a true initiation is when you are thrown well beyond your intentions - where you are forced to submit to something larger than you, persist via sheer will, and thus encounter the impenetrable confidence within (which you could call the Self)

a meditation retreat can’t do this. a carefully curated trip to Europe can’t do this

you can consciously choose to sail into a storm, but the storm must take you - it must be inescapable - in order to actually cross the threshold

[Ellie @basilYam]

Here are some party tricks that help me:
1. Always arrive on time!! This way I can connect w the host (normally I have to fight everyone else to do that) and they’ll invite me properly into the space, get me a drink, make me feel comfortable, maybe introduce me to the few other people who are already there… voila I am already at home

[Briana Theroux @brianatheroux]

I think men underestimate how much of female sexuality is mental because they assume women experience attraction the same way they do. A woman can look at a man and know he is attractive while having absolutely no desire for him.

Then another man notices something about her no one else does, challenges her in a way that feels novel, or creates tension through conversation, and the entire interaction becomes erotic. Attraction is not a reward men receive for being good looking. It is a nervous system response to the quality of the exchange. This is why dating apps are terrible for women. They reduce attraction to appearance when appearance alone often tells us almost nothing about whether desire will actually exist.

It is also why bad conversation can kill attraction almost instantly. Once she realizes there is nothing behind the presentation, the body frequently loses interest too. Men call women complicated because they keep interpreting female desire through their own psychology, then acting confused when women do not respond the same way. It is basically a theory of mind failure.

[𝐃𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐫𝐲 - biofoundationalism.com @BackTheBunny]

This is the most false thing in the history of wrongness on the internet about women. Rare Danny Baltz L! Zoomers: don’t listen to him, gather round.

Anyone with Amazon experience (over 6’2”) knows the first thing they say/allude/hint is something about how they’re submissive/don’t want to be dominant/please God why won’t anyone manhandle me. Within about 5 minutes you can tell they're clearly exhausted by droopy reddit feminists viewing them as fetish outlets. And rightfully so, they are elegant, towering angels. Magnificent She-Units.

It doesn’t matter how tall they are, they're still women, and morph into smol beans if you’re more of a man than them and aren’t afraid they’re going to step on you. And they’re very feminine, sometimes even moreso (perhaps an overcompensation thing), with the most glorious, lengthy pair of gams you’ll ever have the pleasure of holding.

It’s just like climbing Mt. Everest, except even more rewarding.

[𝖒𝖔𝖌𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖌 @wanted4mogging]

hinge is a terrible app because it’s against TOS to communicate sexually, yet that is also what women particularly the ones on there really want, they just want it from the right guy. so you walk on eggshells playing this cucked game of corpo HR speak or you risk your whole account to actually give them the energy they’re looking for crossing your fingers you weren’t the wrong guy at the wrong time and get your account perma nuked (which would actually be the best thing that could happen to you btw)

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

Women warn you that marriage robs you of your independence. That you'll lose your freedom. That it's important that *if* you do get married, that at any point in time, you need to be able to comfortably walk away from the person you committed your life to, without emotional scars, with a bank account full of money, or else you are less of a woman, stunted by the whims of others, denied your full potential.

But freedom is overrated. What did you do with all your freedom? You used it to fret, to worry about the time when you might accidentally give your heart away and couldn't easily take it back, to warn other women that their happiness is dangerous. You used it to build a nest that remained empty lest you accidentally invite someone in that could hurt you. You stared into the mirror, into a thousand reflecting camera lenses, and tried to achieve the kind of immortality that can only be achieved by separating yourself into pieces for those you care about.

You didn't understand that to allow yourself to be weak was to become strong. But to try to be unbreakable, was to fragment at the first gentle touch.

[BowTiedBrazil @bowtiedbrazil]

Most slavery across time was chattel and every major civilization had chattel slavery.

Read about Dahomey slavery in Africa. What Indians in the Americas did to slaves. What Arab and ottomans did to slaves. What ancient Roman slavery was like.

While nobody should be defending slavery itself (which nearly nobody does), the idea that slavery in Americas was uniquely bad is a leftist idea with zero basis in history as all leftist ideas are

[Dvorstone @dvorstone]

Guys, I'm not trying to denigrate you but... you're wrong.

If your woman shuts down your sexual adventurousness (assuming it is within her theoretical range) then it's because she's not aroused enough, and that is something you can control to an extent.

Women don't think "these activities are for fuckboys." What they do instead is rationalize their previous behavior in order to explain their lack of desire. Simply put, they're marrying someone they're not as attracted to and so they're retroactively reframing their past in order to justify that.

I genuinely feel a little bad because I think a lot of you guys really just can't or won't contend with the fact that you're just not that good at arousing your woman. The truth is though that it is a skill you can learn... but I don't think most complainers want to. What they want is the result of high-sexual skill without the effort. They want to be lazy about creating arousal but they want her to be sexual as if they'd put in the work.

[Giff Lasta @GiffLasta]

4. Policing naughty boys rather than building good men

Almost every Christian porn-recovery program starts the same way: lock down his devices with porn blockers or accountability software. With the latter, the idea is that he’ll think twice if he has to explain the sites he visited to someone assigned to check up on him. Seemingly unrelated, some Christian books promise a “return to childhood innocence” once the dirty images from porn fade from his mind.

Some of this may feel harmless—even prudent. But once you understand quitting porn as the development of masculine agency, relying on safeguards as central is insidious. In the long run, the only reliable porn blocker is the man’s own mind. The goal of any program should be building his internal toolkit. Accountability and external tools must support his ownership, never outsource it.

Otherwise his takeaway from a relapse becomes: “I came into contact with an unprotected device—I shouldn’t be alone when packages arrive.” Or: “my pastor or group leader didn’t remember to check up on me.” He’ll think he botched a play when he’s not even on the field.

Let’s stop monitoring behavior for the nice-kid club and start forging good men for the army of God.

By “good,” I don’t mean merely “not evil.” I mean “good” like in Good Friday: faithful, dependable, reliable—all the knots held good. Manhood is not a return to sweet innocence but a rite of passage into becoming trustworthy with power. Every man will face moments when the only thing between him and moral catastrophe will not be safeguards or supervision. It will just be him. Any approach that aims at less than equipping him for that moment is worthless.

[critter @BecomingCritter]

Seeing a woman as a sexual object is totalizing. you reduce her to an instrument with no purpose other than to end your need for pleasure

Yet, to see her as sexless is similarly reductive. A woman is, but is not only, a sexual being. She plays, she improvises. Sex is a conversation without end. To see her as a sexual being is to accept her creative drives, and to see her as a being practicing sexual play is to accept her entirely

Men often fail in this regard, but women may also refuse to accept their fullness, instead becoming mannequins. Both are unnecessary tragedies.

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

Once a man gave me a big, long speech about how ~he~ defined love, but ultimately it was a preamble to the fact that he wanted to be able to tell me "I love you," in a breathy, solemn burst while basking in the reward of the feeling without any responsibility or commitment to me. I couldn't articulate any of this at the time, but I knew if I responded it would be a tacit admission that I accepted his definition and I did not.

So after he said, "I love you," I just said, "Okay," and left.

[Vivid Void @vividvoid]

There is a point in a man's life when he needs to reject immature behavior from the women he loves, and to become totally intolerant of it. Some of these women will respond as though they have been betrayed. They'll become enraged, vengeful and falsely accuse him of all manner of horrible things: Sexism, misogyny, often much worse. Many guys don't have the stomach for this, and therefore never mature past this point. They fail to see that this hysteria is also immaturity that they need to reject.

Men that successfully navigate these shoals find that, in the space left by the immature women who abandon him, mature women soon appear. Women who admire his backbone, with the courage to be accountable and hold him to account. Women who understand that they can bring out the best in the men they love, and that men can bring out the best in them. Women who prefer growth to comfort, and being real to being ideal.

At no point in history has the development of masculinity required misogyny, or a rejection of femininity, or hatred toward women. Masculinity is the rejection of immaturity and movement toward what is actual, what is real. In a man, this produces certain archetypal symbols and dynamics that we call "masculinity" and confuse for the thing itself. But the thing itself is nothing more than a dogged preference for reality.

[asparagoid @asparagoid]

Just remembered the world sauna championship. Was one of the most interesting things I've read about

It used to be hosted in Finland every year until the incident in 2010. Rules were that it started at 110°C (230F). Then 1 litre of water was poured onto the stove every 2 minutes

The last person to walk out under their own power won

In 2010, both finalists had to be dragged out

The russian finalist died, burned all over, and the reigning Finnish champ went into a coma and woke up 6 weeks later with 70% of his skin burned, kidney failure and his airways completely roasted

One peculiar thing about it was there were no prizes. Only in one particular year did the winner get 1 small prize, some special heat resistant speakers that could be used in a sauna

But despite this, participants went to the edge of death every year and would do insane stuff like grow their hair out long specifically to cover their ears so it didn't get burned by the boiling water vapor

It was interesting to me because it's another piece of evidence that as soon as you create a ruleset... no matter how ridiculous it is, no matter how small the group of participants, no matter the extremely chance of death, and no matter a total lack of prizes. There will always be men willing to compete to the point of actually killing themselves

The male brain enters a kind of hypnotic trance where it will completely convince itself of the worthwhileness of the task, so long as it begins to venture seriously down the path of a competitive interest

It's kind of like a hijacking of the programming evolutionary mind, where no incentive makes sense but it happens anyway. You can find a million examples of this for every male interest on the planet. Just the simple act starting down a path confers it meaning to the person, and the more they are surrounded by other men who care about the same thing, the more they learn and compete, the more entranced by it they are, until their identity is fully subsumed by it and stuff like these sauna deaths happen

Seeing lots of things like this taught me to be very careful when I start down the path of any competitive interest or business, because getting hypnotized by what you are doing is essentially guaranteed. So it's good to assume it'll happen and be totally sure the outcome is worth your potential self-destruction

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

@RickHedin I feel similarly. Adam's sin is letting Eve be nurturing to a snake.

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

Looking back over our 12 year relarionship, if my husband had done everything I wanted him to do, I would have started to resent and dislike him. Because you don't actually want everything that you want, and often what you believe will make you happy is a trap of lies and misconceptions you've created for yourself. You want a man who can tell you "no" sometimes. Being denied our desires is often what protects us from true unhappiness.

[Alex Petkas @costofglory]

Helen calls herself "κύνωψ" in the Odyssey, usually translated "bitch" or "shameless bitch". Wilson says "hounded" (🤣). Here's why that's wrong.

The word literally means "dog faced" or more properly "dog eyed".

Why do women get compared with dogs in Greece?

There's actually a whole book on this ("Shameless" by Cristiana Franco, which is useful despite the author's clear feminist leanings). Yes, women get called dogs/bitches disproportionately, in Greek too.

Men let dogs into their company, and even love them, b/c they are useful and charming. But they are clearly interlopers in some contexts. There are certain rules they just won't obey. Even if you get them not to crap on your rug, they'll still lick their balls on top of it, right in front of you. This can spoil certain kinds of occasions.

Similarly women are interlopers in male-only contexts (incl. war, politics). When they transgress that boundary, they can be expected to break the (other) rules—sometimes with good results, sometimes chaotic, crazy, bad results.

Shame is the opposite of honor, and honor is what binds male hierarchies together. Without shame, you don't get honor. Women can't integrate properly into a male honor hierarchy (at least (?!?!) in Greece...). But honor is the lens through which men see the world (or used to).

Thus, when women break rules of good behavior, one of the go-to comparisons is with the dog, who is also innately a misfit to the code of men. ("of course they'd do that").

(Not that you can't call a man a dog in similar fashion; Achilles does it to Agamemnon in Iliad 1).

Anyway,

Helen calls herself "dogface" in Odyssey 4 when she's telling a story to Telemachus (in front of Menelaus, now her husband once again). She's telling a story about "how crazy things got!" when she was bewitched by Aphrodite, caused the Trojan War etc.

But she insults herself, "yes my fault!" in order to win sympathy. She "knows she did wrong, so shameful!!" It disarms you. It's a kind of seduction.

She does the same thing in Iliad 3 (calling herself κύνωψ and all).

She's not trying to excuse herself (with e.g. "hounded!") —that would provoke indignation from any reasonably intelligent and morally serious man, like Telemachus and Menelaus. She calls herself the worst thing you could call her, that you maybe already had in mind. And this is key to the seduction. She says what you're already thinking.

This kind of thing is key to her charm, and key to Homer's brilliant characterization of her otherworldly powers (still present as she approaches middle age in the Odyssey).

[Just Another Pod Guy @TMTLongShort]

When I was like 19 I fell down the rabbit hole of PUA and would obsessively read books and forums by Mystery, Nason and Paul Janka who was apparently a fellow hedge fund guy.

I would hit on every girl walking past in soho or the Abercrombie on 5th.

Thought it was a complete waste of time for a while but conditioned me to the point where a year later when I got into Provocateur/Avenue for the first time with my ID Chief fake I had no shame and would hit on every model within a fifty foot radius.

And that’s how I fell into being a promoter at night while working sellside during the day.

Fascinating to see these forums wax and wane.

[Autumn Christian @teachrobotslove]

Men don't choose women, women choose men. The trick is they make the man believe it was his choice.

On a more fundamental level, God chooses. And if the man ignores this, he will suffer. All ideas of what traits you desire or don't desire are thrown out the fucking window when you find the person you're meant to be with.