One more thought...
One of the more toxic elements of the whole "manosphere" thing relative to dating is the application of game theory to relationships. They've got people trying to "maximize their dating potential" or whatever, trying to find the "most attractive march" (which is it's own fucked up thing I'm not even going to dig in to). But that whole mindset is basically going to always leave you miserable.
Oh, you're single? You need a partner. Oh you have a partner? Could you get a "better" one?
It turns relationships into the endless pointless grind of capitalism. Fuck that. None of that shit makes sense. No matter how "well" you do in that game, you always feel like a loser. Everyone does. Fuck that game. Quit.
The constant desire makes you miserable and your misery makes you unlikable. When you let go of it, you leave room to experience what is instead of constantly imagining what could be.
You will always be able to imagine a better "could be" than what is now. By comparing your situation now to that "could be" you will always see your situation as bad because it's worse than your yardstick.
Is your situation good for you? Is it serving you? It can be good and it can also be possible to make it better. When was the last time you just experience your life instead of trying to strategize your way into "something better."
Throw away the yardstick. Something something Buddha.
Edit: all this is of course aside from the whole objectification thing, which is it's own whole set of fucked up. But yeah... All that shit is real bad news.
Shots fired:
❝The most important thing in the Mythos release is not the model. It is the precedent. Anthropic has established…that a private company can unilaterally classify a capability as too dangerous for the public, grant selective access to the largest incumbents in the affected industry, and construct a parallel disclosure regime outside any democratic accountability structure. That precedent is exclusivity for abuse.
…
The model is not the story. A cartel is the story.❞ https://wandering.shop/@xgranade/116445436798619026
The Incoming Energy Crisis
What the Closure of the Strait of Hormuz Means for Europe and the World
A very good summary of the situation in the ground plus the geopolitical factors at play, by "European Geopolitical Journal"
https://europeangeopoliticaljournal.su
After the whole Adam Something "dating advice for leftist men" thing, I realized I should probably write something about that. I didn't, but I realized I should. Here I am sort of getting around to it.
I had a friend call me an "elder" at one point. I was like 35 at that time, but like... a lot of old leftists are just dead or in prison, so we take what we can get I guess. Being also an elder in the sense that I'm an elder millennial, who is also a parent and married for almost 10 years and all that, I guess I'm technically qualified.
So here it is, dating advice for (straight cis) leftist men:
1. Don't.
That's it, actually. That's the whole thing. Let me explain a bit.
First of all, this is dating advice for neuroatypical folks. We're way overrepresented in both extremes because this system wasn't built for us. And that's who is *the most* confused by all the relationship stuff, and most likely to try to apply all this masculinity/manosphere bullshit. I'm also talking a bit from experience here, as a neruo-spicy trying to "figure out" how to date within a paradigm entirely built around neurotypicals and their relationships. It's garbage. Throw it out. There's nothing worth saving.
His video had some line comparing not having sex to your house being on fire. I'm not gonna bother to quote it because I'm busy with actual life. But like, that's exactly what I'm talking about. I recognize that and it's horribly destructive. Men who buy in to patriarchy actually believe this, because those men value themselves based on (hetro) sex. Yeah, if you think you're worthless because you aren't "getting laid" then yeah, you're gonna feel like that's an emergency.
"Dating" as a paradigm turns humans into roles. It dehumanizes us all, and thus makes human connection much harder. It is a game that, like thermonuclear war, can only be won by not playing.
When you abandon "dating" and just act like a human, everything starts to be easier. There's no such thing as being "friend zoned" because you're just friends. Sometimes friendships become other things, sometimes they don't. It doesn't actually matter, because if you're actually there for friendship then you don't *need* anything else.
My grandma, at 98 I think, gave me some advice. My grandparents always got along well, and were married for enough decades that I listened really closely. She told me I should just do things I loved to do and everything else would work itself out.
And it kind of did.
I understand the fear, the idea that you'll die alone. I get that. I get the loneliness. It all hits a lot harder when you have ADHD emotions and past trauma. I get that. But that fear is self-manifesting. When you build your confidence, when you don't *need* to be "in a relationship," you have more room to actually build relationships. For me, dating was dehumanizing. When I abandoned that, I was able to actually be a good partner, and I was able to find my partner.
I would advise against marriage as well, but we did get married for legal reasons. It can still be hard to maintain that, to see each other as people rather than roles. That becomes extra hard as parents. But the times that we cut through that are the times we're closest. Those are the times when it becomes easier to remember that we're both humans and all human relationships need tending.
Roles don't need to be tended because they are classifications. Classifications are static. But relationships between humans are not. Humans are messy and chaotic. Humans have all kinds of complex needs and desires.
So yeah, don't date. Just be a human and see what happens. Maybe google "relationship anarchy" and see where it takes you.
If you have ADHD, it can be especially useful to understand that relationships with neurotypical folks can be especially difficult. Assume you're incompatible with 90% of the population as your baseline, and you'll start to understand why the standard "dating" thing has made you feel so alienated and miserable.
Neurotypical folks generally have no idea that atypicality exists, much less how it impacts relationships. Having to conform to a neurotypical relationship just adds additional mental strain unless you find someone (really special) who can do at least some of the work.
The ADHD thing was especially important for me. There were so many things I was told to do in specific ways by neurotypicals that never worked for me. Their advice always made me feel like a failure. When I was finally diagnosed, I realized they were just giving advice for the wrong type of brain. It was advice I could never use. Basically all dating advice I ever got fell into this same category.
That's my braindump. Maybe I'll develop it more in the future, but I'm busy so maybe not. I hope it helps someone who is struggling like I was.
WD-40, "Je reviens de l'est" (2001)
Je reviens de l'est
Où poussent les Molsons tablettes
Les tavernes de ce coin-lŠ
Aiment les dames autant que moi.
A group that's close to my heart with a song imagining the geography of turn-of-the-21st-century Montréal like a flipped western. The video features much of my old stomping ground (if the camera had been positioned just a little differently in a couple of frames, you'd see our apartment).
A US judge grants an injunction to makers of the banned "ICE Sightings - Chicagoland" Facebook group and Eyes Up mobile app, who say DHS and DOJ violated the 1A (Cheyenne MacDonald/Engadget)
https://www.eng…
Perceived inequality is a breeding ground for populism, say researchers
#politics
Facial Recognition Error Jails Innocent Grandmother For Months - Slashdot
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/03/13/0513251/facial-recognition-error-jails-innocent-grandmother-for-months
Precision measurement of the ground-state hyperfine constant for $^9Be^ $ in a linear Paul trap via magnetically insensitive hyperfine transitions
Zhi-yuan Ao, Wen-li Bai, Qian-yu Zhang, Wen-cui Peng, Xin Tong
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14811
PAColorHolo: A Perceptually-Aware Color Management Framework for Holographic Displays
Chun Chen, Minseok Chae, Seung-Woo Nam, Myeong-Ho Choi, Minseong Kim, Eunbi Lee, Yoonchan Jeong, Jae-Hyeung Park
https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.14766 https://arxiv.org/pdf/2601.14766 https://arxiv.org/html/2601.14766
arXiv:2601.14766v1 Announce Type: new
Abstract: Holographic displays offer significant potential for augmented and virtual reality applications by reconstructing wavefronts that enable continuous depth cues and natural parallax without vergence-accommodation conflict. However, despite advances in pixel-level image quality, current systems struggle to achieve perceptually accurate color reproduction--an essential component of visual realism. These challenges arise from complex system-level distortions caused by coherent laser illumination, spatial light modulator imperfections, chromatic aberrations, and camera-induced color biases. In this work, we propose a perceptually-aware color management framework for holographic displays that jointly addresses input-output color inconsistencies through color space transformation, adaptive illumination control, and neural network-based perceptual modeling of the camera's color response. We validate the effectiveness of our approach through numerical simulations, optical experiments, and a controlled user study. The results demonstrate substantial improvements in perceptual color fidelity, laying the groundwork for perceptually driven holographic rendering in future systems.
toXiv_bot_toot