Monthly Archives: August 2013

The BookShelf: Economics in One Lesson

I finished reading Economics in One Lesson weeks ago, but haven’t got around to reviewing it yet. So, here goes.

First, the title is misleading, this book will not teach you basic economics, it is more concerned about correcting basic statist and keynesian errors in economic thinking. Also, it’s 25 small lessons, not one, although, at only about 200 pages you could finish it in an evening if you put your mind to it.

That being said the book is a good one. It is written well and is moderately simple read. It’s a little dry, but not overly so given the subject matter. The arguments are solid and concise and the book is neatly organized.

If you desire to learn about the many economic errors of statism and good, simple counter-arguments to statist arguments, this book will provide. If you have a statist friend, this book would be a good recommendation. On the other hand, you will not learn basic economics, only basic economic errors.

One problem with the book is that it is 50+ years old now, so many of the arguments are now standard within the conservative/libertarian narrative. If you’ve read much about economics or been involved in political debates online, you might find many parts of the book to be somewhat obvious, as you’ve already heard them repeated endlessly. Even so, having the arguments systematized and summarized is useful.

Also, if you’ve read What is Seen and What is Unseen, most of that book’s argument are also addressed here. If you read EON, it would be unnecessary to read WSWU, expect for enjoyment purposes.

Recommendation:

You should read Economics in One Lesson if you’re interested in economics, interested in politics, or want some counters to common statist economic arguments. If you already very knowledgeable about free market economics, this book will likely be unnecessary, although you may still like an organized version of common free market arguments.

What’s next:

A few weeks ago, I started reading John C. Wright’s Universal Apology. It, along with a dissatisfaction with evangelicalism that has been growing within for the last couple of years, has got me to seriously question my protestantism. So, the reading lists are going to go more slowly while I read a bit about the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church, canon formation, and the like. I will likely post interesting topics I come across here; I may or may not do book reviews. If anyone is interested I’m currently going through The Biblical Canon; I also plan to read the Spirit of Catholicism, the Orthodox Church, and Christianity: the First 3000 Years.

Expect the occasional thread on Catholicism or my readings on here. I may occasionally ask my Catholic/Orthodox readers some questions.

While the reading lists are going to be slow, they are not stopping altogether. I’m still sporadically reading Boston’s Gun Bible and have started sporadically reading Sowell’s Basic Economics. When these are done (whenever that may be) I will review them here. I also am going to start reading the Brothers Karamazov for a book group I’m in, I may or may not review it here and I’ll share any profound thoughts I may have about it.

Lightning Round – 2013/08/28

How to fix your inner game. Why to fix your inner game. Read them.
Related: Internal value and external value.

Richard Nixon on the meaning of life.

Vox gives some advice for the omega. Related. Great stuff.
From the comments: “The three key phrases. Yes. And then what happened? How do you feel about it. Repeat/”

Legionnaire defines the aspects of masculinity.

Why women probably won’t make it in the manosphere.
Related: Masculine and feminine discourse.

Face your fear.
Related: Live or die.

Stay on the road.

Don’t uptalk.

Don’t fight, win: Part 2. (Part 1). I don’t know; I like to view debates as a quest for truth rather than trying to win.

The best of Rollo.

You are living in a perfect skinner box.
Related: An afternoon with Stig.

Forney makes me want to read another book.

Science proving game.

Luck exists and is not a magical ability.

The Captain with an amusing anecdote.

Leap on the contrast of a year.

Could game have prevented the holocaust?

Trust the hamster.

Whether you pay or not depends on the kind of woman you’re looking for.

Keoni is enjoying the decline.

Faith in the truth.

The biological vote and conservatism.

The sanctifying role of motherhood.

Rebelling against Christian submission is literally Satanic behaviour.

Fighting nihilism among traditionalists.
Related: A defence of defeatism.

How conservatives can win.
Related: Reactionary strategy from Orthodox Jews.
Related: The beauty and violence of systems: let nature work.

Christians did not build the Cathedral: the humanist heresy.
A response.

The modern mind cannot be evangelized.

The destruction of the oldest civilization due to Muslim immigration.
Related: Muslim brotherhood destroys 47 Coptic churches.
Related: List of churches torched by the Muslim Brotherhood.

If race doesn’t exist, neither can racism.
Related: Racist = White person.
Related: Words and meanings.

The wrong guy game.
Related: All this random randomness is confusing.

Chuck exposes the Oberlin hoax.

The decline continues.
Related: % of never-married single mothers is 11x higher than in 1960.

Law Dogger pines for the old country.

“Apparently a handful of stingy men are dating a disproportionately large share of American women…” Alphas in action?

Now that is alpha.

Sis deletes PCM.

Stop and stare: feminist nonsense.
Related: Feminism as prostitution.

Solipsism as a moral compass.

Quakerism and progressivism.

Wright with reading recommendations and a defense of philosophy.

I find it hilarious that the system made to bully people is complaining about the people bullying back.

Even good laws harm you.

On bullying.

Vox is pointedly not mentioned by the Guardian. Hehe. If you haven’t been following the McRapey saga, you’ve been missing out.
Related: The crocodile humour of the SFWA.
Related: The ideological war in SF.

“My picture was stolen and turned into a fat-shaming anti-feminist meme.”
Related: Scalzi reacts to being made a feminist meme.
Note that simply a picture and the word feminist is enough to elicit such strong responses from both these people. It’s almost like they naturally know that they should be ashamed and preemptively try to reassure themselves.

Humour: Getting over yourself. (Also, is the new meaning of solipsism gaining traction?)

It is all about equality; it has nothing to do with power.

Intelligence and working class pride.

Even some liberals are recognizing that school is a prison.

A lament for the education system.
Related: An embarrassment to higher education.
Related: The devolution of universities’ common reading.

When welfare pays better than work.
Related: Liberals are liars. “Very few people actually qualify for all eight of the programs… fewer than two million households get TANF and only about four million get housing assistance.“ Only 4 million households… Is there anyone stupid enough to believe this BS?

I, Pedophile. Related.

Loneliness is deadly.

Why you should never trust advice columnists.

CDC study: guns help in self-defence, no proof gun control works.

“Our laws should protect victims.” Therefore, our laws should remove their ability to protect themselves. Liberals and anti-freedom advocates are dumbasses.

Harrison Bergeron is one of the best short stories.

EU on the way to becoming the USSR.

The post-WW2 ethnic cleansing of the Germans.

23% of German men say 0 is the preferred family size.

Woman and military discipline.

No one is safe from entryism.

Doctor thinks most men who commit domestic violence are provoked.

Another alimony horror story.

IRS targets the American Legion.

US DoD calls founding fathers extremists. (I agree, but I’m a monarchist).

NRO on Duck Dynasty: a contrast to the rest of our degraded culture.
Realted: The lament of a permissive parent.

The value of copper.

Are atheists mentally ill?

Are liberals stupid? This article isn’t bad, but at the same time she complains both that daycare costs too much and that daycare workers aren’t paid enough.

Seriously, are liberals brain-damaged? How can you possibly be this stupid.

France running out of other people’s money.

Green German learns about unintended consequences.

(H/T: Phineas, SDA, RWCG, zhai2nan2, Maggie’s Farm, Instapundit, Clarissa, M3, Foseti, Anarcho-Papist, Rex Patriarch, Mangan, NRU)

Marketing Marriage

f you follow Dalrock you’ve seen is recent posts on this little advertisement on Mark Driscoll’s new man-up and marry series:

Dalrock has already pointed out the moral problems with the ad, I’m going to focus the advertisement aspects. Dalrock argues that the ad is aimed at churchian feminist woman, and I agree because otherwise, the proponents of marriage suck at advertising.

Instead of making marriage look like something men would want to pursue and would be willing to sacrifice for, they make it look horrible.

In the little skit in the middle, the man is the thoroughly henpecked, seemingly unhappy husband of a fat, dumpy, controlling wife. He’s so thoroughly beaten down that he’s afraid to have a little masculine bonding time with his son, with the video implying that there’s something wrong with him wanting to do so.

Watching this, my main thought was”is this really how they want to advertise marriage to men?”

I’m lean more towards the more pro-marriage part of the manosphere, but this would drive me away from marriage more than any other possible effect it could have. What kind of man would desire to become that husband?

What young man could possibly watch that and say, “yeah, I want to man-up and marry so I too can be a the ball-less husband of an ugly, dominating shrew who’s afraid to play pool with his son.”

C’mon guys. If you want men to man-up and marry how about making marriage look good? How about making marriage seem like a rewarding experience?

In fact, I’ll give you guys an awesome marketing campaign. A marketing idea this good would generally cost thousands of dollars from a slick New York agency, but I’ll give it to you for free because I love western civilization and we need working marriages to keep the remnant chugging.

Here’s my ad campaign for a man-up series:

It starts with an average-looking man in a suit, someone most guys could identify with, coming home from a day at the office. He looks kind of worn-out and stressed. He parks his car, sighs a bit, then walks up to his house. He opens the door.

The first thing seen when the door opens is his non-offensively pretty wife dressed femininely. She looks up from working in the kitchen and sees he’s stressed, so she comes up to him with a smile on her face and gives him a hug and quick kiss on the lips. She takes his bag and says, “Dinner is almost ready, why don’t you sit down?” He gets into his recliner and leans back, his stress visibly fading away. She joyfully brings him a small plate of freshly made cookies and some milk. He thanks her with an expression of mingled gratitude and relief and takes the cookie. While he snacks she says, “How about later…” and bends over and whispers something in his ear while brushing her hand up his leg. The man responds with a large, expectant smile.

Cut to her calling out that dinner is ready. The man goes to the table to find a delicious home-cooked meal of steak and potatoes, his cute, happy children run up to the table. His wife wipes the dirt smudges off of one of the rascals as they sit down. The man looks on proudly as he sits at the head of the table. His wife sits to his right. She looks at him with an expectant smile, her hand on his arm, and he proudly says grace for the family.

During the prayer fade to black and end with the tagline: Worth being a man for.

Boom. I’d want buy that product. I don’t know a man who wouldn’t.

I’d happily man-up to come home to that; I’d happily work 70 hour weeks to come home to that; I would happily sacrifice quite a bit to come home to that. So, would most men. Most men would willingly sacrifice their left nut for that.

So, some marketing advice to Mr. Driscoll. If you want men to man-up and marry, make marriage seem like something rewarding for men.

McDonald’s doesn’t sell cheeseburgers by having a fat, ugly man eat them in his dingy basement while playing WoW and sobbing to himself. They sell cheeseburgers by showing groups of realistically attractive people having fun together while eating cheeseburgers.

Likewise, you don’t make men desire to man-up and marry by showing marriage as a demasculating process of having your pride, virility, and freedom slowly drained from you by an ugly, domineering shrew. You make men want to get married by showing marriage as a refuge from the cares of the world occupied by a pretty, loving, nurturing woman.

Then again, my campaign might be false advertising for most men. Driscoll might get sued.

Omega’s Guide – Social Activities

You have been learning social skills these last few weeks. You’ve read and applied a section a week of How to Win Friends and Influence People and should have spoke a couple times in your Toastmaster meetings. So, now it is time to start putting your social skills to the test. It is time to join a social club to meet new people and hopefully make some friends.

I know, talking to new people is hard and going to a group of strangers is frightening, but don’t worry, you’ve already done it. You’ve talked with strangers at Toastmasters. Presumably you’ve chatted with some folks at your martial arts classes and hopefully you’ve started playing your sport, so presumably you’ve talked to some teammates. You’ve already met many new people and have been spending time with groups of strangers; there’s no need to worry about one more group.

This time you’re going to start going to attend a social group specifically to meet people and socialize. The type of group your looking for should be based around a common interest of some sort. As usual, at the end of this post I’ll post some suggestions for finding a group. I will not suggest what type of group to look for, as there are far to many and it will depend on what you are interested in and what’s locally available.

Try to find a group that meets fairly regularly, at least once very couple weeks. E-mail them to confirm the date of their next meeting and then show up. That’s all there is to this.

I know it may be frightening, but just attend a group’s meetings. You don’t even really have to talk that much. Say hi when you arrive and introduce yourself; use what you remember from Toastmasters and How to Win Friends and Influence People. Answer anything asked of you politely and don’t panic. You don’t have to be outgoing, at least not for the first few meetings. Simply be there and try to engage when others engage with you.

If you keep attending regularly, you’ll eventually come more comfortable. As you become more comfortable, you’ll naturally start to talk more. After a few months attendance, you’ll fit in just fine. The important thing at first is to simply muster up the nerve to go once then keep showing up however awkward you might feel.

You might think the others don’t want you there, but that’s just you’re own insecurity talking. The other people are as interested in the purpose of the group as you are; if they didn’t want you there, they wouldn’t have made the club public and they would have asked you to stop coming. So, show up and keep showing up. That’s all there is to it.

Here’s a few things to consider when choosing a social club:

Purpose – Find a club whose purpose you enjoy. If you’re religious find a religiously-affiliated group. If you have a hobby, find a club for that hobby. If there’s a specific topic you like to talk about or some social cause you feel passionately about, find a social group that . If the only thing you like are anime and video games, find a club dedicated to anime or video games. It doesn’t really matter, just find a place where you can socialize with other people.

Activity Orientation – Some groups will be oriented around a specific activity, others around around socializing. Activity-oriented groups are nice because there is always a natural subject for conversation, the activity, but sometimes, especially if the activity requires concentration or physical effort, socializing will fall by the wayside. Groups more oriented towards socializing are bit harder to fit into, but give you more opportunities to socialize. Either is good; it depends on your preference.

Organization – Some groups are more organized than others. Some groups will be official organizations with regularly sceduled activities; these are nice because they are easier to join and you can build a routine of attendence. Some groups are more casual; they may be irregular drop-ins or have meetings scheduled erraticly; the advantage of this is the there generally easier to socialize in, but they are harder to build into a routine of atetndance.

Cost – Some groups, particularly those oriented around an activity, may have membership costs or ownerships of the activity objects (for example, a wargaming group may require hundreds of dollars of miniatures). Be sure to pick a group you can afford to actively participate in.

Accessibility – Make sure you can actually get to the club regularly. Joining a club that meets on the other side of town where there’s no bus route when you don’t own a car, is not going be of much use.

Time – Make sure the group meets at a time when you can regularly attend.

****

Suggestions for Finding a Group

University Club – If you go to university or college, finding a club is easy. Most universities will have their student groups set up booths in the first work of classes, so check those out. At other times of the year, check your university or student union’s website, there should be a listing of student groups somewhere. Find one that interests you and attend.

College and Career – If you’re a Christian, or even if you’re not and aren’t averse to religion, find a local church near you with a college and career group. It will generally be filled with 20-somethings and are usually inviting atmospheres. Not all churches will have them and bigger churches will be more likely to have them. In addition, generally C&C groups in larger churches will focus more on “fun” activities, allowing for more socializing, while groups from smaller churches will be more likely to focus on Bible studies and religious discussion.

Hobbies – Do you have a hobby or activity you enjoy? Board-gaming, shooting, jogging, it doesn’t matter. Any hobby or activity you enjoy that can be done with multiple people (and sometimes even solitary activities) probably has a local social group. Google it, or if there’s a local store catering to your hobby, check their bulletin board or with the owner. You should be able to find a group related to your activity. I will be writing more on hobbies next week.

Meetup.com – There might be a group that will interest you there.

Friends – Do you have some friends that share similar interests and/or are part of a social group/club? If so, join theirs if they don’t mind. If you do this, be careful to avoid sticking to your friend. Make sure you socialize with others.

Leisure Guide – As I mentioned in the sports section, most cities have a leisure guide. Check out your local guide to see if there

Google – The wonderful thing about the internet, is if you have no idea where else to find something, just google it. if you have a rough idea of the kind of club you want

****

Your Goal

This week, your goal is to find a social club or group that interests you and attend the next meeting of the club.

If you are a university student or the group you’re interested in is off for the summer, you can put this goal off a couple weeks and join a club when it starts out in fall.

Next week’s post in the guide will be on hobbies; this will relate closely to this. So, you can also wait until next Sunday to read that, in which case you will have two interrelated goals for the following week.

1-10 Scale: An Analysis

Last week I wrote about the Archetypical Modern Women. It was my most popular post ever by views and was also one of my most commented posts as well. Most manospherians liked the post, but there was one common criticism that seemed virtually unanimous: I overrated the woman, she was not a 7. The consensus seemed to be she was a 5, although a couple commented she was a 3 or even lower.

I explained my reasoning in the comments: “she’s thin, young-ish with a moderately cute face. She’s not beautiful, but a youngish, plain sort of pretty with a slim build would fit my definition of a 7.”

I generally don’t use the scale in real life; in fact, I can not remember ever having using it in RL, but there’s a small possibility I have. In normal conversation, the scale is kind of silly; the descriptors of beautiful, cute, unattractive, etc. are usually more than good enough and are more humanizing. (That and a numerical scale sounds sort of spergy, and I have enough problems with that as it is).

On the other hand, I occasionally use it on the blog as it is a simple comparative method; more human descriptor cans be open to interpretation and can have different meanings. While a numerical scale at least gives the illusion of objectivity.

But after the criticism of my assigning the label 7 I wanted to figure this out, my inner data nerd was aroused, so I’m going to analyze this more. I’ll warn you now, this is going to get spergy and is going to be dehumanizingly analytical.

Oh, and before I begin, Truthmosis at RotK has a post up on the scale that I came across while writing this. Check it out.

I’d also like to point out that, to some degree, beauty is subjective, so a numerical scale is not the be-all-end-all of female beauty. There are certain objective metrics of beauty: a 0.7 hip-to-waist ratio, symmetry, and other such indicators of fertility and health, that (almost) all men are naturally drawn towards. These can be a basis for an “objective” 1-10 scale.

But outside of that, there are numerous subjective factors on which men disagree. For example, I really like fair-skinned, light-haired, innocent-looking women (ie. cute women) and detest tattoos and piercings. A tongue piercing disgusts me and is an automatic 3-point drop. So, if I were to rate a woman with a tongue piercing a 5, others who don’t find it disgusting, might rate that woman an 8. Another example: I’ve never figured out why the Captain likes Jennifer Aniston or many men like Angelina Jolie; never seen the appeal.

Anyway, with that caveat out of the way, here we go.

****

The first thing to do when creating a scale is decide the system the scale will use. The two major ones are the bell curve and the decile system. Men as a whole tend to use a bell curve system (on a 5-point scale), but I’ve tended to think in a decile system.

In a normal bell curve system (and looks would be normally distributed) a scale would be related to standard deviation. In standard deviation, 68% of all women would fall within one standard deviation from the mean, while 95% of all women would fall within two, and 99% would fall within three.

In a 1-10 scale 5 would be the mean. Most like we’d use 2 sigma (SD:2.5) above the mean to signify a 10 and 2 sigma below to signify a 0. 1 sigma would make far too many 10s, and 3 sigmas would mean only 2% of woman are above a 7+.

A 2 sigma scale would mean means that about 2% of woman would be 10s and 2% would be 0s. About 14% would be 7.5-9.5s and another 14% of woman would be 0.5-2.5s. The vast majority of woman (68%) would be 2.5s-7.5s.

We could also use a 2 sigma to signify 1s and 9s (SD:2). On this scale 2% of woman would be 9+ and another 2% would be below <1. 14% of woman would be 7-9 and another 14% of woman would be 1-3. The large majority of woman (68%) would be 3-7s.

If I were to use a bell curve, the latter is likely the one I would use because no one uses 0 on the 1-10 looks scale and many think (and I agree) that there are no 10s. Limits could easily be put at .1 and 9.9 without negatively effecting the rest of the scale. Not to mention the use of whole numbers rather than decminals greatly simplifies the scale.

So, if we’re scaling women’s looks on a 1-10 (Mean:5, SD:2) we can use a stanine scale to find the proportion of woman at each number.

On the other hand, if we use a decile system 10% of women would be 1s, 10% would be 10s, etc.

The former is more useful for statistical calculation, the latter is easier to use for everyday talk. It is a lot easier to calculate: she’s a 10 because she’s in the top 10% of people, she’s a nine because she’s in the 80-90% range, etc. than it is to calculate: she’s a 9 because she’s 2 SD above the mean and is in the top 4% of woman.

In more practical immediate effect, the former will result in a lot of 4-6s and few 1s and 9s, while the latter will result in an even distribution of all types of woman.

****

Knowing this, how can we systematize the calculation of where an individual woman falls on this scale. That”s likely impossible because beauty is to some degree subjective, but we can give it a shot. This analysis will focus on adult women of child-bearing age because menopausal women are no longer sexually attractive.

In the US 32% of women aged 20-39 are obese. If we used the decile system, that would mean the obese take up all of 1s through 3s. If we used the bell curve, the obese take up 1-3 and most of the 4s as well.

But obesity is not the only indicator of unattractiveness, some women just have the bad luck to be born with a deformity of an extremely unattractive face. If, for simplicities sake, we estimated that 8% of women are simply born deformedly ugly (not unattractive or plain, just ugly), that means that on both scales 1-4s are made up of the deformed and fat.

So, simply not being obese or deformed would immediately make a woman a 5 in either scale.

Back to weight, in addition to the the obese are the overweight. 64% of adult women are either obese (BMI >= 30) (36%) or overweight (BMI of 25-29.9) (28%), so we’ll assume the 28% overweight rate hold for women 20-39. So, we now have 60% of women aged 20-39 who are overweight or fat, but let’s remove 5 percentage points because the BMI does sometimes classify fit people with muscle as being overweight. So about 55% of child-bearing age woman are unattractive due to be overweight or obese.

I can not find any numbers on the percentage of woman that are unattractive due to face alone, so I’ll have to make up some assumptions. Let’s assume, for the sake of ease, that 10% of women who are not fat, have faces that are unattractive enough, that a moderately fat woman with a decent face would rate higher on a scale.

With that assumption we now come to 65% of women are either fat or as unattractive as a fat woman.

(Check out this BMI visualizer to understand what is meant by overweight and obese).

In a decile scale that means that a woman who is not fat or equally unattractive is automatically a 7; in a normal distribution scale a woman who is not fat or equally unattractive is automatically a 6.

This gives us a starting base.

I do not have the time or ability to start messing around with the ins and outs of symmetry, eye size, distance between the eyes and mouth, and all the other micro-variations that distinguish beauty. Suffice to say though that most men can tell objective beauty of these micro-variations fairly easily.

So, we can assume they’d mostly agree.

****

Based on this here’s a 1-10 scale we can use based on the decile system.

1-4: Obese and/or deformedly ugly
5: Fat or ugly
6: Chubby with a cute face or unattractive
7: Plain, not fat
8: Somewhat attractive
9: Slim and pretty
10: Curvy and beautiful

Here’s on based upon normal distribution:

1-4: Obese and/or deformedly ugly
5: Fat, chubby with an unattractive face, or ugly
6: Plain, not fat or chubby with a cute face
7: Slim and pretty
8: Curvy and beautiful
9: The best of the best (very rare)
10: Does not exist

The normal distribution lumps the middling and moderately attractive categories together but allows for the distinguishment of the really beautiful from the beautiful, while the decile scale allows for more distinguishment from the middling, but lumps all the beautiful together under 10. The decile system leaves more distinguishment in those of middling beauty, but lumps the good looking into 2 categories.

From the impression I get from people write on the manosphere, they seem to use the normal distribution system. If we go back to Truthmosis’ discussion of the topic we can see that his scale more or less matches the normal distribution, as does his picture scale.

So, I guess I should start using the normal distribution scale to match up with others around here.

****

Anyway, back to the women who started this discussion:

As we can see, she’d probably be plain, not fat. So, my initial impression of her as a 7 on the decile system was correct. If we used a normal distribution she’d be a 6.

Someone ranking her a 5 is implying she’s ugly, which I do not think this picture supports. Whoever ranked her as a 3 is just dead wrong; she’s neither obese nor deformedly ugly.

****

A few last notes:

I knew the obesity crisis was bad, but I was surprised that 64% of adult women and 74% of adult men are overweight. That’s just plain nuts.

Also, only about 40% of women would be attractive enough to be worth even considering marrying (not even including other factors). So, if you’re looking to marry, make sure you’re in the top 40% of men or you’re going to end up with someone fat or unattractive.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my spergy little analysis.

Lightning Round -2013/08/21

This week my blog post, the Archetypical Modern Woman, shattered my blog’s records. It was over 3 times the number of views of my previous most viewed day. Most views came from The Red Pill Reddit which seems to have grown rapidly. Last time they linked I got less than half as many views. Also, shout to Viva La Manosphere who does a good job at aggregating content.

New blog: I am Legionnaire.
“If the morals standards you hold for yourself are ones that you can always live up, you aren’t holding yourself to high enough standards.”
Also check out Theden and Amos and Gromar.
New aggregater from Forney: The Electric Camel.
Also, added laidnyc. He’s been for a while, but I just found him.
Fearsome Pirate’s blog goes private.

Can the Red Pill subreddit survive?
Related: The manosphere in the Guardian.

The 3 Laws of the Red Pill.

Martel with a great one: House upon the Sand.

There is no manosphere schism.
Related: Anarcho-papist writes on the “manosphere schism.”
Related: Moralist and hedonist game.
Related: Neoreaction and the manosphere.
Related: Transcending the Manosphere.
Related: The manosphere knitting club.
Related: The Captain takes a stand against the manospambots.

From the comments: GBFM’s One Cock Rule.

“They fear the kindness will evaporate once convenient.”

Empower men by not congratulating them for having sex.

Advice for a break-up.
Related: Closure is BS.

Kids and other advice.

The hour makes the man.

Roosh on the paradox of choice.

Spot the alpha male. Also, it’s kind of sad when a girl that could be very attractive ruins herself.

Don’t get defensive.
Related: Navigating the status minefield.
Related: Don’t force conversation topics.
Related: Don’t ask questions, make statements.

Submission is a voluntary offer.
Related: The bargain of obedience for security.

More man-up churchianity, with an addition.
Related: Even manospherians are encouraging the rebellion.
Related: GBFM on the topic.

Laidnyc says not to marry a woman over 25. Similar to my advice.
Related: You date younger women because you’re insecure.

Forney reviews a book I should read.

CR has an interview with Hugo Schwyzer.
Related: CH’s disgust with Hugo really shows through.
Related; Rollo on Hugo.

The self-delusion of the spinster. Related.

Possible hidden consequences of the current divorce laws.

Is the pill a threat to femininity.

The extroversion backlash (is silly).

Starting a blue collar business.

The USSR vs. the US: the collapse gap.

Donal on the decline. Echoing Ace.
Related: The future of the West.
Related: I notice this too, talking with my friends.

Feminism is dysgenic.
Related: The dysgenic legacy of feminism.
Related; Co-parenting. The decline continues.
Related: Bronies: sign of the decline.

Pissing on the broken in America.

Detroit commentary: Missing the point.

Churchianity: gender-bending style.

Is the constitution broken?

WRE: Even the “strong female character.”

JB on the #slanegirl.
JB on the wage gap.

The 3 big factors of happy relationships: communication, partner knowledge, and life skills.

An alpha in action. This woman is insane.

A concise summary of reaction.
Related: True conservatism.

Reactionary youth. Guess I don’t count because I sit on the edge of the manosphere, the reactosphere, and the orthosphere.

All the workings of the Cathedral are just the personal interactions of the elite.

The real enemy.

The futility of left-wing cancer.

The media as commissar.
Related: A list of crimes less important than the using the word “nigger”.
Related: Funny how this brutal double-murder received no national attention.

Vindictiveness: Zimmerman’s wife up for trumped for perjury charges.

IQ, the Cathedral, and cognitive misers.

Why whites are privileged.

Lynching facts.

Guns make you safer: 18 facts.
Remember, disarmament is for the little people.

The naked authoritarianism of our liberal democratic governments.
Related: Lavabit founder may be charged for closing down Lavabit.

The banning of the clowns.

I wonder how the military will fare when the right-wing Christians no longer feel welcome.
Related: A bit more.
Related: Calls to lower military standards begin. Also, female colonel defames war hero.

Some abortionist quotes.

The media in action. Hehe.

Vox with a bit of science.

Stupid patriarchal nature.

Why the news looks worse than it really is.

This guy’s enjoying the decline.
Related: What’s a non-surfer dude to do?
Related: Budgeting for food stamps.

Vox can really turn a phrase.

Eating healthy: Omega-3 and Omega-6.

Liberals are racist. Why do they always assume minorities are irresponsible?

The “smart racism” study linked last Round had problems.

Another reason to homeschool.
Related: Homeschooling infographic.
Related: The products of the public school system.

Icons and the spiritual.

The culling of non-sociopaths from the banking industry.

Communism is hard and economics is cruel.

A test: which famous economist are you most similar to. I got Pete Klenow.

Libertarian populism doesn’t exist.

New peer-reviewed paper shows only 36% of geo-scientists believe in AGW.

The divorce of SF and competence porn.

Sexual scandal in the atheist blogosphere (atheiosphere?).

The joking computer.

Duck Dynasty shatters cable records. I applaud that; it is by far the best reality TV show I’ve seen. It’s entertaining, manly, and implicitly conservative with a solid moral core. Maybe it might bring TV from the liberal, female ghetto. (MF)

(H/T: SDA, MF, Whited Sepulchre, GCBH, GBFM, M3, The Captain, CM, Borepatch, Instapundit)

Response to the 70’s Show Dude

I’ve come across this video a number of places now, most recently at Sis’. It annoyed me the first time I watched it out of curiousity, but I ignored it. But it keeps coming up, so now I want to say a couple words on the great philosophical musings of the guy who played a stoner on that show about the 70’s:

He makes three points (starting at about 2 mins in). The first and third points are unoriginal but good, opportunity comes from hard work and build your own life, but everybody is ignoring those two. The one point everybody is focusing on is # 2:

The sexiest thing in the world is being really smart, thoughtful, and generous. Everything else is crap, I promise you. It’s just crap that people try to sell to you to make you feel like less, so don’t buy it!”

The first objection is that it is simply not true.

Intelligence is not sexy. If being smart was sexy, awkward nerds would would get the hot girls, engineers would be rolling in poon, Stephen Hawking would dominate People’s Sexiest Men, and porn videos would be indistinguishable from Khan’s Academy. We all know how true that is. (Protip: It’s not). Likewise, being thoughtful and generous are not sexy. Saying otherwise is just deluding the gullible.

Just because something is good, does not mean it is sexy.

But the bigger problem is not the untrue conflation of intelligence and sexiness, that’s the type of relatively minor white lie which our society so does love.

The bigger problem is that to the punked stoner sexiness is the goal of intelligence. The axiom of point #2 is a basic assumption shared by stoner dude, his screaming, teenage fans, and everybody throwing this video around is that sexiness is the the primary goal one should aspire to.

Intelligence is not lauded because it advances civilization. It is not lauded for the glory of God, or even the glory of man. It is not lauded for the good it may bring others. It is not lauded as tool for finding and acquiring virtue.

No we should not be virtuous for virtue’s sake or the greater good. We should not expand our capabilities for the betterment of man. No, you should be intelligent because it will engorge Jimmy’s dick and will make Janey tingle.

Welcome to the new hedonism, where aspiring to be a sex object is inspirational.

Omega’s Guide – Sports

You should now have started to learn social skills and have attended martial arts instruction. The next step is to further meet people and get into better shape through a sport.

A lot of the reasons why you need a sport are similar to why you need a martial art: you’ll get in shape, the competition and learning new skills will give confidence, you’ll be able to meet new people, and, hey, being active in sports (especially winning) is attractive to many women.

To being with you probably want to join a recreational league; no offense, but you’re probably not cut out for competitive leagues. If you are, all the best to you, compete away. Also, rec leagues are usually less financially demanding.

Now, summer is over, and fall is coming up, so you’ll probably have to join a fall, winter, or all-year league at this time or find a casual, but regular, drop-in sport night. That’s fine, choose a sport that interests you and will be available in fall. Even if it’s not your first choice, play a season, then in spring register for a sport that’s more to your liking.

I’ll run down a few sports you can look at at the end of this.

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Where to Find a Sport

Your city should probably have a leisure guide. If you have no idea what kind of sport you’d like, find the leisure guide online and see what’s available that peaks your interest.

Some churches, especially the larger ones, have intramural sports, drop-ins, or a team in a church league. These are usually comparatively inexpensive as the churches often fund parts of it as a ministry or own their own facilities. If you go to a church check to see if they have something you can join; if you don’t go to church but live near a mega-church check out they have anything, they’d probably be thrilled to have you join.

Many community centres will offer some kind of sports. Check your local centre to see if they offer anything of interest.

If any of your friends, co-workers, relatives, etc. play a sport, ask if you can join them and their team.

If you are going to school (college or high school), your school will probably have intramurals of some sort. These are usually cheap and easy to join.

Larger companies will sometimes have a team in a local league of some sport or another. Check with your company/union’s social committee or the work bulletin board to see if you can find something.

If all else fails or you have a particular sport that interests you, simply google for a rec league or open-door sports night near you. You’ll find one and most allow individual registrations. There’s also more general rec leagues that will offer a variety of sports.

There are lots of ways you can find a place to play sports.

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Choosing a Sport/League

Unlike martial arts, there’s not a big list of things to watch out for. It’s pretty hard to make a scam out of rec sports; you simply show up and have fun. Make sure the cost is in your budget. Make sure the league takes safety into account and has rules of good sportsmanship. Make sure the team you’re on is good folk. Other than that, there’s not much to it, but here a few considerations for your sport:

Keep in mind cost. Some sports, such as ultimate or soccer, require little much more than park space and a ball/disc, others, such as hockey, require more equipment and/or a special facility rental.

Is it co-ed? Some leagues are, some aren’t. Which you want to join will be up to you. Co-ed leagues are generally less ruthlessly competitive and will often have more rules concerning safety/sportsmanship. On the other hand, you’ll get a chance to meet some women in a co-ed league and it will likely be more casual/less intense. Which is better depends entirely on your preferences.

Is it an individual sport or a team sport? Simple enough, a team sport will give you more chance to interact and develop bonds with a small group within an us vs. them context, while an individual sport will be lead to more loose interactions dependent more on your actions. I’d suggest a team sport, especially if you intend to try to make friends, but its up to you.

Do you have the time? Some sports demand more time than others. Since you’ll be playing rec league, it probably won’t require more than one game a week and possibly an occasional practice, but make sure you can commit to that game on that night. You don’t won’t to be the asshole whose always letting the team down.

You can choose a league or a drop-in/pick-up sport. A league will require more commitment from you; drop-in nights are more casual. Drop-in nights or pick-up games are usually not as easy to find as they are often associated with particular organizations or a group of friends rather than a rec league which is generally open to all.

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Recommended Sports

Below are some popular rec league games you can try to join:

Ultimate – Ultimate Disc has become an increasingly popular sport in recent years. It’s cheap and it’s a good workout. There’s no contact and big on sportsmanship. It’s usually co-ed and mandates gender numbers per team, so it has a comparitively high number of females playing. It can be played most of the year, outdoors in summer and fall leagues and indoors in winter. Indoor leaguse are more physically demanding and faster due to the smaller field space. It’s a good choice for a sport.

Soccer – Along with ultimate one of the two I’d recommend. It’s generally cheap, a good workout, and fun. It’s also low contact with both outdoor leagues in the summer and indoor all-year round.

Hockey – I’m Canadian, so I have to mention this. It’s played in winter, but street hockey leagues can be played in the summer. It can be one of the more intense and high contact sport and due to the need for ice and safety equipment it can be more expensive, but is it ever fun. Broomball and sponge hockey are usually a less intense and less expensive alternative.

Basketball – The classic sport; not overly expensive. Generally male and often more competitive. Teams can often be smaller than in most other team sports. A good one to try.

Football – Contact football will be expensive and there’s not many rec leagues for it due to the chances of injury. You’ll probably be able to find a touch or flag football league if you like football. It’s usually outdoors and doesn’t run in winter. It’s usually male only and can be more competitive and intense than the other sports here.

Baseball – The American classic. A summer sport of moderate expense due to the specialized field and personal equipment. The large team size and slow game pace makes it well-oriented to getting to know other people, but doesn’t provide as much physical activity. It will often be slo-pitch in rec leagues. Baseball rec leagues are rarer and will usually be mostly male; softball/slo-pitch are more common and will be higher proportion of women.

Bowling – The classic working-man’s game. It doesn’t require much of a work-out but its relaxed pace and atmosphere gives you plenty of time and opportunity to shoot the shit. It goes all year-round and is easier to join as it less tied to seasons than other sports, but it can be a bit more expensive due to lane costs. Ten-pin has heavier balls and more pins; I prefer it, but a lot prefer the smaller balls of 5-pin. If you want to join, contact a bowling centre.

Dodgeball – SWPL-types have adopted this children’s game for adults. If you enjoyed it as a kid and don’t mind SWPL-types it can be fun. It can go all year round.

Racquet Sports – Rec leagues will usually use badminton, but tennis and the rest are similar. It’s an individual sport (or teams of two), so most of the people you meet will be competitors, meaning you’ll have to try a bit harder to get to know people.

Volleyball – Not much to say on this. Do you like volleyball? Also, it generally has a higher proportion of women than other sports.

There’s a bunch of other sports, but those are some of my suggestions to look for. You’ve probably played most of them in gym class as a kid so you already know which ones you enjoy.

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Your Goal:

This week, your goal is to find a local rec league and join the fall season. Alternatively, you can find a weekly drop-in/pick-up night and join that.

The Archetypal Modern Woman

I think we now have the physical incarnation of the manosphere archetype of The Modern Woman. From this point on, when someone wonders what the manosphere means by the modern woman, we have a specific person we can point to.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you: Tracy Clark-Flory.

You may have heard of her before, but the dude did not take my advice to RUN NOW, so the story just got better. But before I get to that, I’m going to outline exactly how she makes the perfect archetype of the modern woman.

We can start with the double-name, which came pre-marriage, suggesting she comes from a feminist line. She has your typical worthless degree (BA in English from a Californian liberal arts college) and a job at the liberal rag Salon writing about sex and relationships. We can see from her profile picture above that she was fairly good-looking, a solid 7 (Edit: This rating was controversial, read here for more).

That’s a good start, but it gets ever so much more entertaining.

During her pretty years, she spent her youth on hooking-up and casual relationships. In her owns words, at 24 she “had roughly three times as many hookups as relationships,” but she’s not a slut as she “never had a one-night stand, only several-nights stands.” She passionately defended the hook-up culture arguing it never hurt her going through guys like she was “making an enthusiastic check mark next to every box” on “the Career Center’s job placement questionnaire.

She did indeed have fun times in her youth, but they did not last. A couple of years later, she still defends the hook-up culture and encourages one night stands, but she softens saying, “maybe we’re beginning to also allow ourselves more nuanced feelings about our hookups. Like Klausner and Anderson, we can now acknowledge regret over a one-night stand, without being considered, or seeing ourselves as, forever ruined women…”

Just a year later, she begins to express second thoughts about casual sex, stating that most people find friends with benefits relationships to be “overwhelmingly negative.” “At some point [she] realized that, despite [her] insistence otherwise, [she] actually wanted those sorts of intimacies, only with an actual commitment.”

Her descent into absolute sluttery isn’t quite done yet though. Two years later, in 2012, she sees her favourite male porn star in a bar, and decide she has to fuck him. So she does. The sex is the narssicistic, hollow, rote sex one would expect from such an encounter:

It’s exactly what I had breathlessly watched him do many times before, but this time it seemed mechanical and theatrical. Instead of being entertained, I was doing the entertaining, and I suspect he was too — but for whom, exactly? We were the only audience.”

“Despite the emptiness of it, [she] felt a sense of accomplishment over my conquest.” Yet, a little while later she begins to question herself and “began to feel shameful”, “What kind of man will want to be with a woman who’s slept with a male porn star?”

But don’t worry, her hollow, meaningless sex had meaning and made her a better person. She now has “a whole new appreciation for the difference between fantasy and reality, and how much sexier the latter can be when you aren’t striving for pornographic perfection.”

By pure coincidence, “not too long thereafter I got into a relationship with just such a guy.” This had absolutely nothing with the the profound sadness and hollowness she felt from her “conquest”.

At this point she’s careening towards the wall face-first:

The combination of aging and her empty experience with the porn star send her into a frenzy of self-introspection. She realized she “spent her twenties having lots of good sex, but faked her way through nearly every climax.” She “now climax[es] reliably, sometimes even effortlessly, with Steve [which] seems nothing short of a miracle.” She finds out she likes having relationships, even ones which grow out of hook-ups.

Realizing that she likes relationships, she then does exactly what every modern women does when faced with age and emptiness, starts demanding “real courtship.” Just half a year after she shags a male pornstar on the first night and writes about her awesome relationship with Steve, she finds a new beau. But this one is different, this beta boy doesn’t start with hook-ups, like Steve, no, he brings her aging self flowers. She is “shocked to find that traditional courtship is pretty great.” Yay for her.

But unlike the porn star or Steve, beta boy does not get sex that same night. Nope, beta boy is special and “there’s a specialness in waiting until you’re comfortable enough with someone to get naked together while totally sober.” Beta boy has to work for what she gave the rest of the world so freely. He had to go on five dates, pay for big meals, pick her up in a cab, etc. before he got what McPornstar and Steve got for being available in a bar.

With her newfound love of traditional courtship (ie. making beta boy earn her sex and love), she then starts trying to convince everyone that men love relationships, but dislike casual sex, because that would be convenient would it not?

Recently, we found at she has a happy ending to her tale. She’s getting married to beta boy and is talking about becoming a mommy. In a shocking twist, it turns out beta boy was actually someone she first met “around the same time that I wrote that first hookup essay.”

Looks like beta boy’s been pining away for five years and finally made good (after she spent the last of her youth on dozens of other men).

She could have had his love the whole time, but “even if [she] could, [she] wouldn’t in a million years go back and shake [her] 23-year-old self and tell her that she’d already met her future fiancé.” She just loves her memories of empty fucks with pornstars and her relationship with Steve far too much to give them up for boring old love with beta boy.

But this is good for beta boy because she “would have loved him the same.” Why her “hookup years made [her] more accepting of [her] fiancé’s imperfections.” Can’t you just feel the love she has for him.

Having had her alpha fux and having secured her beta bux, she is still encouraging other women to follow in her path. Her story is a “reminder that the hookup hand-wringers are wrong, and not to be trusted.” It’s a story of true love winning out; young women can fuck whoever they want and still end up with a pliable beta to pay for their children.

****

So, in a nutshell, Tracy Clark-Flory is the the stereotypical, nay, archetypical, modern woman. She fucks uncountable alphas, ignoring the beta who likes her, throughout her years of youth and prettiness. She realizes how empty it all is, but only once the wall approaches and the good times are coming to an end, so she uses the last of her fading feminine charms to husband-up the barely tolerable beta.

All that’s needed now is her complaints about how beta boy won’t divide the chores properly, followed by a story of how she’s falling out of love with him, followed by her divorce within the decade. Then there will be stories about how being a single mother is hard, how dating as a single mother is hard, and how there are no good men left.

If we’re lucky (and beta boy isn’t) there might even be a hilarious story of how she pined for Steve throughout the years of her marriage to beta boy.

So, whenever someone demands an example of alpha fux/beta bux, or wonders what we mean by the modern woman, we only need to point them to this post.

Here’s to you Tracy Clark-Flory, you are the Archetype of the Modern Woman!

You won the mating game. You got the alpha fux and have almost attained the beta bux. To you we raise up a rousing course of “da professional womenz ode.”

****

I’ll say it one last time, just in case he comes across this:

To the guy marrying Tracy: RUN AWAY. Run as hard and as fast as you can before you are legally bound to her. Do it; this will not end well for you. I hope, for your sake, you find this and take heed my warning. If you don’t lulz will be had at your expense in the future.

****

A lot of the information was cribbed from Susan and Vox.

Lightning Round – 2013/08/14

Roosh disassociates himself from the manosphere.
Related: Martel responds.
Related: Reaction and the manosphere.
Related: A response from Dr. Faust.
Related: Krauser and Tom talk on the issue.
Related: It doesn’t matter.
Related: A saw this was going to happen.

Truth unites the manosphere, but there is more to life than biomechanics.

Chad embraces the traditional lifestyle. Welcome brother.

You know enough right now.

Belated strengthening: raise your boys for conflict.
Related: How to screw your boys up for life.

How to stop living your life in transit.
Related: Don’t fake who you are.

Advice to my 15-year-old self.
Related: How to avoid financial regrets from college.
Related: Cyrus the Great on wealth management.

The crapshoot career: do what you suck at.

Newcomer Anarcho-Papist has created a taxonomy of the reactosphere.

A woman’s love can’t be reasoned.

The many levels of game.
Related: On shit tests from 1910.
Related: A new niche: blind game.

How women tool men.

Explaining trade-offs to women.

Manosphere analogies need improvement.

Remember, leftists greatest hate is reserved for leftists who aren’t pure enough. Also, look at the double-standards she holds towards the middle of her piece. Hilarious.
Related: Feminist excited by misogyny.
Related: This is amusing: sex positive feminists decrying the fruits of the sexual revolution.

This is what a male feminist’s mind looks like.
Wow… Watch the breakdown on Twitter (archived here) or in .pdf format.

Roissy with a good set of links.

Requiem for the patriarchy.

Rethinking Christian marriage: a plan.

Just another example of churchuanity.

Marriage advice: #2 misses the point and I’d be wary of #4.
Related: 8 signs a girl’s a keeper.

Managing money in a marriage.

Love and control.

The status of being married.
Related: Desperate for attention.
Related: Advice for young women looking for marriage.
Related: Some graphs and stats on never-married women.

Having children is important for women.

Child-free narcissism.
Related: The dark side of child-free.
Related: Higher female intelligence and longer lifespan lead to less babies.

Woman cannot achieve the same social status as men.

M3 with a smattering of sources on rape.
Related: Girls commit more dating violence than boys

Winner of the beta of the year award.

The collapse has already come. Collapse and disaster are different.

The history of leftism against freedom.

The Captain advocates heightening the contradictions.
Related: Enjoying the decline on food stamps.

Why am I a believer?

Kicking away the crutch of religion from the broken is “the cruel and thoughtless act of a self-centered asshole.”
Related: Don’t do heroin.

Anti-racism is a white thing. Related.
Related: Anti-racism is anti-white racism.
Related: Burn the witch.
Related: Jason Richwine needs to read some Moldbug.

Time preference and civilization.

The biological vote.

We should focus less on avoiding invading other’s property and more on protecting our own.

Wizard privilege.

High intelligence whites more likely to be hypocritical about race.
Related: The latest in stupid liberal offence-taking.

Evidence white women are the most beautiful.
Related: The white slave trade. More. More.

Traditional religion and eugenics.
Related: Soft eugenics. A bit more.

Hope for Norway?

The police state grows.

The US government can yank your passport very easily.

Lavabit goes down, as does American freedom.
Related: Silent Mail goes down as well.

The US to import thousands of refugees from jihad-filled country.