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ok finally discovered a kind of lore i want to know about in a non clickbait way: what one-shotted you? eg for me it was 90s movies about how having a career and a house in the burbs is the worst thing that can ever happen to someone i didn't realize i'd been Had until my 30s
for those of you not familiar getting one shotted is getting wrecked on first contact with something. classic deployment attached https://t.co/TEUgeBwrmT
@eigenrobot I thought most of social psychology was on the level until like 2015-2016 tbh. Regarding the family in the burbs thing though: at least in my experience as a person who married and had kids young in the burbs the silent/boomer art about this is basically accurate.
@eigenrobot The Demons were more insidious than I thought. https://t.co/WHb6q7A4x9
@eigenrobot Wait most family-aimed 90s movies were normiecore. Even the family comedies. Tons of classic TV film adaptations: Addams family, leave it to beaver, Dennis the menace, Brady Bunch... Only movies that eschewed tradition were genX gripe flicks like trainspotting and fight club.
@BlueEightySix guess which movies i thought were cool https://t.co/uF397wSbMY
@eigenrobot Japanese RPGs on Nintendo systems. The requirement to lend aid and strive for moral good at all times — “being a good person” dominated a lot of my early life until I met more self motivated / entrepreneurial people in ny thirties.
@eigenrobot I had a friendly but spirited debate with my liberal uncle where I realized that the civil rights act destroyed our ability to freely associate and he crowed how it was a good thing. Easy to unravel a worldview once you tug at that thread.
"Manosphere" bullshit in the 2010s really fucked up my priorities. This plus a completely unexamined "decision" in college that I probably didn't want to have kids wasted a huge amount of my time, not to mention that of the women I was attached to during that time. Painful to say out loud.
@eigenrobot This but it's information theory https://t.co/L6nnGMdUdy
It’s funny, because it actually worked out in the end. But when I was like 21, I tested for the City of St. Paul fire department. Something like 2,000 people applied. I got 100% on the written and 100% on the physical, plus 10 extra points for being a resident of the city at the time. They created a ranked list and I was something like 13th (veterans got an additional 10 points). Later I was informed that women and minorities were allowed to take the physical test up to 3 times, but didn’t care because i ranked so highly. I thought I was a shoe in. The list lasted for like 3 years. The hired 4-5 academies from it. When I saw that the first one was 100% black women, I knew the game. Before that I was a hardcore millennial lib. I became right wing almost overnight, total one shot. I ended up going back to finish my degree and have built a very lucrative career, so I guess it was for the best, but it hasn’t stopped me from evolving to the point where i think democracy is a mistake
@eigenrobot At 20 I was an avid Vox reader, and they had a glowing profile of Drake, so I watched some of his music videos. They were the most immoral things I'd seen in my life. I started actually reading about US race relations and my worldview unraveled, took about a decade to recover.
i think the only thing that i discovered that quickly catalyzed a viewquake was stoicism. specifically this bit Continue to act thus, my dear Lucilius—set yourself free for your own sake; gather and save your time, which till lately has been forced from you, or filched away, or has merely slipped from your hands. Make yourself believe the truth of my words,—that certain moments are torn from us, that some are gently removed, and that others glide beyond our reach. The most disgraceful kind of loss, however, is that due to carelessness. Furthermore, if you will pay close heed to the problem, you will find that the largest portion of our life passes while we are doing ill, a goodly share while we are doing nothing, and the whole while we are doing that which is not to the purpose. What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily? For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years lie behind us are in death’s hands. Therefore, Lucilius, do as you write me that you are doing: hold every hour in your grasp. Lay hold of to-day’s task, and you will not need to depend so much upon to-morrow’s. While we are postponing, life speeds by. Nothing, Lucilius, is ours, except time. We were entrusted by nature with the ownership of this single thing, so fleeting and slippery that anyone who will can oust us from possession. What fools these mortals be! They allow the cheapest and most useless things, which can easily be replaced, to be charged in the reckoning, after they have acquired them; but they never regard themselves as in debt when they have received some of that precious commodity,—time! And yet time is the one loan which even a grateful recipient cannot repay. You may desire to know how I, who preach to you so freely, am practising. I confess frankly: my expense account balances, as you would expect from one who is free-handed but careful. I cannot boast that I waste nothing, but I can at least tell you what I am wasting, and the cause and manner of the loss; I can give you the reasons why I am a poor man. My situation, however, is the same as that of many who are reduced to slender means through no fault of their own: every one forgives them, but no one comes to their rescue. What is the state of things, then? It is this: I do not regard a man as poor, if the little which remains is enough for him. I advise you, however, to keep what is really yours; and you cannot begin too early. For, as our ancestors believed, it is too late to spare when you reach the dregs of the cask. Of that which remains at the bottom, the amount is slight, and the quality is vile. Farewell.
@eigenrobot I still need to find a copy of it but as of approximately the time I went to university, in 2000, there was (in my recollection) a single article in the WSJ which argued engineering as a field was done in the U.S. and all future engineers would be in Asia.