J. D. Stembal

What is the emotional need that you are fulfilling when you cling to irrationality?

You are right on the money. When he is being particularly annoying, I have to distance myself from him, and remind him of my feelings. When he discussed his mom spanking him, he was laughing delightfully, and I had to say, "Hey, I don't find that to be funny," and then I said it again when he persisted. At that point, he dropped it. You may already be aware, but the cute and funny angle is specious. Cute and funny is code for the woman liking a man because he is not intimidating to her. If women are honest with themselves and recognize evolutionary biology, they will likely go for the tall, physically intimidating, and strong spoken man before the smaller, yet delightfully witty gentleman. Being of average stature and build, I am acutely aware of the female preference for dominant male characteristics. Having a sharp wit is not a detriment, but a women is going to scratch you off her sex list long before you have the chance to tell her a joke. Andrew, did you watch the video I linked? The important bit is toward the beginning where Tucker talks about a woman deciding if she is willing to sleep with a man in a matter of ten seconds or less, usually before you have said one word to her. I have a funny feeling that you are going into these interactions asking many women out on dates while unprepared. Don't get me wrong, it is fantastic that you are facing routine rejection, so that it doesn't dissuade you in the future. Let's be honest; most guys don't deal well with female rejection, or can make improvements. Rejection from women still stings me, perhaps more than most because my mother approved my genital mutilation as a baby. Circumcision is a savage and cruel rejection of manhood during a time when the man is the most vulnerable to it. You don't actually have to flirt, come on to a woman or ask her out on a date to see if she's rejecting you sexually. First, you have to look at her for an extended period of time. If she refuses to make eye contact other than a quick glance or sideways glance, that is a bad sign. If you say hello to her, and she purposefully ignores you (most people leave earbuds in at all times so they can pretend to ignore people talking to them), looks down or laughs nervously, that is a bad sign. If you approach her, and she goes to the other side of the room or crosses the street, this is an extremely bad sign! I routinely see all of these reactions, not only from women, but from other men. The lesson is that you would have been better off avoiding these women anyway because you already know that they aren't buying what you are selling. Get fit, get lean, and walk with shoulders wide everywhere you go. Eye fuck the nerves out of everyone's faces. People will start to take notice. Most people will likely avoid you like the plague, but those that aren't fearful will quickly demonstrate to you that they are not. Maybe one time in fifty or hundred interactions, you will find a person that actually seems happy and enthusiastic to see you, and want to talk to you. That's the person with which you can have a satisfying conversation.

I believe this was covered a bit in Stefan's video, but drought is exacerbated, if not caused, by industrial agriculture practices through irrigation, rainwater runoff from clearing out competing vegetation, and the process of ground water evaporation. Healthy soils from complex ecosystems foster more groundwater retention. Consider the implications of this article about the amount of produce we receive from California growers. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/explainer/2013/07/california_grows_all_of_our_fruits_and_vegetables_what_would_we_eat_without.html There is also a treasure trove of evidence that desertification is linked to less and less land being cultivated by animal ranchers, and more being turned over to crop monoculture or nationally protected parks, so, in an indirect way, if you value the continued production of a successful ecosystem with humans at the top, eat more pasture-raised and wild meats. I'm doing my part! Here's a presentation by Allan Savory, who is esteemed as the foremost researcher on desertification in Africa, Asia and the American continents.

Philip Zimbardo's week long prison experiment, funded by the U.S. military, gets adapted for the screen.

He is a friend, so yes.

As in grating on my nerves, or offensive to me. There is no joy in it. How it relates to amused mastery, I'm not sure. Specifically, I am thinking of people who lack empathy or compassion for their inner-child and, consequently, other people, like one of my friends who laughs at extremely inappropriate topics like death, bodily harm or natural disasters. He also tells the same quirky anecdotes over and over despite the fact that everyone has heard the stories at least eight times before. Similarly, he will not remember something you told him one or two days before. He will keep asking me the same question over the course of several weeks, even though I've answered him many times. My theory is that he has a selective memory problems due to abuse or being raised by a bossy single mother. He also married a Japanese woman, who are well-known for being some of the most nagging women in the history of the world. It was very hard for him to open up about when he was committed to a psychiatric ward and doped up with Thorazine as a teen. He spoke of it once or twice, and then shut down completely. This discussion came about because I warned him about putting his son on ADHD meds, and told him to check out Robert Whittaker's book, The Anatomy of an Epidemic. One of his son's public school teachers suspected child abuse and a state psychiatrist mandated that his son be put on meds, under the coercion of threatening to take custody of the child. Eventually, after about a year, he discontinued refilling his son's prescription or started flushing it down the toilet, so at least his family can be thankful for that. I also lack the sort of empathy required to avoid these types of behaviors, but I attempt my best to work around it through self-reflection. If I am annoying or offensive, I want someone to tell me about it. No one told me that I was a stinking drunk, and that it was killing me. I had to figure it out, and quit drinking on my own. Seeing people intoxicated now bothers me in the same manner as above. This fact has ended several of my personal relationships. More on the topic of finding a girlfriend, I would like to share this: Apparently, in order to be charismatic enough to attract women, you need to be able to cook, or fight hand-to-hand combat. At least, I have one of those covered pretty well down pat!

Please explain how obesity is a marker of health. Forgive me if I am mistaken, but I'm not sure what you are trying to argue. Can you also point out where I use a false dilemma? All I need is sight to observe that someone, including me, is obese. It's not magic, or medicine. It's objective reality. I wouldn't trust what LoeyLane says in assessing her own health because she, and many others like her, have this cognitive dissonance which leads them to believe that being obese is something to take pride in, rather than a detriment to their health. All you have to do is see how she dismisses logical criticisms of her weight. She admits to deleting comments critical of her, especially those from men. She admits to using click bait thumbnail pictures of her wearing two-piece swimsuits, which tend to attract those criticisms. She's running a scam. I don't hate fat people, but if you consider voluntarism, self-autonomy, human psychology and physiology, you can only come to the conclusion that people choose to be how they are. No one gets as obese as LoeyLane accidentally. She chose this lifestyle, or perhaps she is perpetuating a choice made for her in childhood. It is up to her to acquire the requisite self-knowledge to understand why she is slowly killing herself. If she loved herself, as she claims, she would reduce her exposure to future health risks by losing weight. The fact that her husband thinks she's hot gives her a built-in excuse to continue remaining obese, but she isn't asking herself why he prefers her that way. When I see someone try to lose weight and then abruptly quit trying, I know that there are people, usually family members, around him (or inside his head) who don't want him to lose weight. I experienced this phenomenon when one of my ex-girlfriends felt threatened that I was losing weight. She would tell me often how she wanted me to have a beer gut, but she was not clear on the reasons behind her preference for my flab. It's probably revealing that she was incredibly jealous of other women who would talk to me. She did not want me to lose weight and then leave her for another woman. I can remember all the other passing comments and shaming I received from people around me when I started tweaking my nutrition and habits in order to lose 40 pounds. Then, a couple years into it, someone sees me shirtless and exclaims, "Holy shit, you've got abs! When did that happen?" For all these reasons, obese people break my heart. I cannot look at them closely in person unless I want to tear up. I hold no ill-will, but when the obese can have hundreds of thousands of subscribers on a health and beauty channel while they are peddling nonsensical and deterministic body positivity messages, I can't abide that kind of irresponsibility. Social ostracism should be allowed to kick in and help the suffering people. The body positivity movement (and, economically, socialized health care) is preventing people from feeling the negative effects of their behaviors until it is too late. Edit: Also, compare the message of LoeyLane with Alisa Vitti. Which sounds more empowering to women? To me, this is the difference between night and day.

Wheat, even whole wheat, is one of the most glycemic of foods, meaning it raises your blood sugar higher than eating sucrose, which taxes your hormones and metabolic systems over years and decades. This is the motive force for metabolic diseases like heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer. Dr. Perlmutter may point this out in the video below, but I'll give you the link. A study published in 2013 demonstrated a correlation between average blood sugar level and odds of having symptoms of dementia in elderly people regardless of diabetes status. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1215740#t=abstract Wheat has been genetically modified since the 1960s to produce the strain we now all eat called dwarf wheat. Gluten is just one small facet that the industry seized upon in order to sell a niche product. Now if you walk into any grocery store, they are touting gluten-free products as if they were all about health. William Davis is a good place to start exploring the reality about the health problems due to wheat consumption. David Perlmutter and Abel James discuss wheat, fat and brain health:

I do not have enough plus reps for you, MMX. There is a bit of fearful/strong negotiation going in inside my head. It will be interesting for you to note that my mother cannot form emotional connections as far as I can tell. She cannot even connect with her own feelings of betrayal. She refuses to acknowledge serious abuse that went on in my family, and probably still goes on with my half-siblings. I purposely sought the most emotionally disconnected women to date, because I did not know how to relate to emotional intelligence. It is very clear to me now. I had the ability to read other people, but only the emotionally disconnected ones. I am becoming progressively more emotionally sensitive towards my inner-child, so emotionally disconnected people grate on my nerves. The "Strong One" is coming into his own right now. Is the thread well and truly derailed or is it more on-topic than ever?

For a member with -50 reputation, you ask brilliant questions. Andrew does not have to avoid activities he hates, provided he knows why he dislikes those activities, and his goal is to overcome his dislike. Otherwise, why would someone pursue an activity that they dislike unless they receive adequate compensation for pursuing it? Pursuing a costly hobby at the expense of long-term happiness does not sound like a recipe for success. I did not speculate that my dislike of social dance comes from my childhood. I know that it does. I don't know why I would need to empathize with other members of the dance class. It was clear that I was the worst male lead in nearly every class, and some women actually refused to dance with me a second time. I got better over time, but I eventually lost interest because I started dating a women I met at one of the classes, further proof that I was there primarily to pick up women and not improve my dancing abilities. If Andrew does not much care about the activity, social dance would be perfect for meeting women who want to date. Also, I'm not a fan of self-deprecating humor. Every time you cut yourself down verbally, your self-esteem takes a hit. Other people notice this tendency and resent it, or they may try to use it against you. In PUA, you are supposed to neg other people to test how they react to it. Negging yourself before the other person has a chance does not defuse shit tests to my knowledge. It would likely invite more rigorous shit tests, and make them more frequent, especially from a female. I'm not a PUA, so correct me if I'm way off base. I appreciate your empathy with my inner-child. It has been a long struggle opening myself up to my infant self. I was held a little bit, but obviously not enough. I sucked my thumb until I was 10, so any breast feeding that occurred was limited, or none at all. My mother went back to work eight weeks after my birth. I don't know if she pumped or not. She allowed me to be circumcised without giving it a second thought, so I doubt she cared much about infant nutrition. No, I absolutely love human touch. However, this desperate desire to touch and be touched has lead me into some unhealthy sexual relationships due to a lack of self-knowledge about it. There have been a handful of occasions where I was sexually molested as an adult, a couple times, in public. I have also touched strange women in ways that most people would not find appropriate at first meeting. It's like people can sense that I like to be touched, as if it were written on my face. I can also sense other people with this desire. People send out non-verbals all the time, and it is just a matter of interpreting them correctly. In the sphere of social dance, my problem is that I have trouble concentrating on anything else when I am touching another. I also have "socially unacceptable" habits centered around touching myself, but I will spare you the details. Did I just derail another thread? Please accept my apologies, Andrew!

This is yet another compelling reason to filter municipal drinking water. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9Uzxj6mruU If you aren't getting enough iodine from your food sources, add seaweed. I use salt with potassium iodide. I typically try to avoid costly supplements where I can get the micronutrient elsewhere, but I do occasionally use cod liver oil, but not specifically for iodine. As a side note, the most important supplement, the one that adds the most benefit in health for the most people, is Vitamin D, which is instrumental for preventing cancer. It's not exceedingly expensive to buy a tincture of it, but I try to get most of my D naturally from the sun. Here's a blog about the cancer prevention benefits of vitamin D, although unfortunately, they are also perpetuating the myth that saturated fat is a source of disease (in this case breast cancer), in an effort to get women to go vegan. I do not have a facepalm big enough. http://www.naturalnews.com/035063_vitamin_D_cancer_facts.html Here are 22 other sources of dietary iodine, although I will not recommend white bread to anyone. As mostly everyone has heard by now, wheat (along with corn and soy) is a scourge on our collective well-being. http://bembu.com/iodine-rich-foods

How does LoeyLane encourage healthy eating and exercise when she doesn't follow her own advice? Like Stefan is apt to point out, you don't see many diet books with a fat person on the cover. Objectively, neither of these women are healthy even though they might look somewhat attractive once they put on make-up. I get that eating patterns are influenced by hormones, mainly, as well as human psychology, but a painful childhood of being teased about your weight, or sexually molested, does not give you a license to tell other people that it's OK to be objectively unhealthy. I have empathy for addictions because I was addicted to alcohol and drugs for twenty years. Empathy only goes so far. Healthy people, such as myself, have to pay for the damage people like LoeyLane and Sarah Rae Vargus are doing to the socialized health care economy, which will only get worse when they age. In one of Sarah's videos - not the one I linked - she briefly mentions that she has four different doctors that she sees. She is twenty-five years old, and I don't think she's ever been pregnant. I watched the LoeyLane video again just to be sure. She is actively enabling women to ignore male comments while she deletes the negative comments from her videos. She thinks that she is pretty damn healthy and she doesn't care what anyone else thinks because her husband thinks she is bangin'. How is this a good attitude?

You are right. If I had taken the dance classes with the goal of bettering my dancing ability, rather than meeting women, it would have been a better experience for me. I'm coloring my experience with hindsight, of course. The problem is that I attempted to take classes in an activity that I have never enjoyed because I know it is one of the best ways to find single and attractive women. In general, I love to dance and move my body. It feels great, but when you throw in the added element of having to embrace the follow while simultaneously leading, I have two left feet. This probably stems from the fact that I was not regularly touched or held as an infant. Embracing someone else is an all-consuming effort for me. When Andrew talked about being prepared to join any club that could get him dates, my mistake with social dance classes came foremost to mind. It will be much more productive for Andrew to discover what he is passionate about, and then figure out which women want to follow his passion.

I never really thought about Captchas in this light before. I simply thought that they were annoying as all get out. Thank you for the insights. I prefer the audio ones that recite a string of letters and numbers, but this would be an obvious problem for the deaf.

I want to clarify that I wasn't rejecting the premise, just asking for clarification on definitions. I am having trouble seeing how words directly translate to violence, as in a breach of the non-aggression principle. I mentioned two examples where the words are one step removed from the real violence (intimidation, threats, and fraud), and one example where sound that comes out of your mouth could cause physical damage (rupturing an ear drum), but is screaming considered communication or just noise? Of course, there are aesthetically preferred behaviors such as listening while people are speaking, and being polite and respectful, but rudeness isn't a moral issue.

These trade agreements represent the major players jockeying for position while the world decides what its next reserve currency will be. Perhaps I've been watching too many Peter Schiff podcasts, but I'm convinced the U. S. Dollar will die shortly, sending the world into temporary chaos before a recalibration to a new world reserve currency, or a combination of competing currencies. (BRICS vs. EU, for example.) Fear porn libertarians hoot and holler about the New World Order, and the possibility of a future one world fascistic government. It's pretty clear that, at least financially, we've had a one world government since the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944, and the dictator of that world government is the United States. At this time, all currencies were pegged to the dollar because we had two-thirds of the world's gold reserves. Which nation has most of the world's gold reserves now? It's not the United States.

Without watching any of the 2.5 hour video, I agree. I'm not down with the finer points of biology and ecology, but most animals and plants require natural predators in order to thrive. When humans drive off the natural predators in an ecosystem, they must supplant them or else the populations down to the level of the spore and the microbe fall out of whack, which, in turn, undermines the overall biodiversity. Everything living and dead is inter-connected in some way, and humans should not be so naive to think that we can completely divorce ourselves from the ecology of the planet because we mostly live in cities. We have to eat, breathe, defecate and reproduce just like everyone else who has come before us. We evolved here, we were born here, we will die here, and we will ultimately go extinct like every other species on a long enough time line.

Thank you so much for that link, but I did not appreciate how he frames his quest for fitness as providing a positive role model for his two young daughters while also leaving them in daycare. His daughters are probably not particularly concerned if he has a beer gut or not. However, I imagine that they would like more time with their father and mother. My dad had a bit of an athletic build when I was very young (I noticed by looking photographs), but I also only spent eight to ten hours a week with him at the most during my formative years (0-5). Currently, he's still struggling along with the complications resulting from a heart attack he had in 1998 at age 47, incurring tens of thousands of dollars in medical costs, and I no longer speak to him. Perhaps it would have paid off better for him in the long run if he didn't go to night school for an MBA, spending so much time away from his son, and running many miles a week to stay fit. I'm not going to continue to shield him from the consequences of his terrible choices. The same policy goes for my mother who doesn't understand why I'm angry about being circumcised against my will before I could even comprehend what was happening to me. Take what you want and pay for it. There are many female "body positivity" videos rolling out as of late. This is the female flip side of the Dad Bod. Notice how she addresses her male detractors, and not her female critics. For every person, male or female, sending LoeyLane messages of support for her bravery and confidence in her flab, I'll show you a person who probably also wants to criticize BroScienceLife for his "obsession" with fitness. To be that ripped, you have to be obsessed, right? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA3ij7Qx26A Here's another popular body positivity blogger, Sarah Rae Vargus: Edit: Finally, some female common sense was displayed over the internet on the matter of Dad Bod. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4lBldKWN6k

It is probably one of the most short-sighted laws known to man. If you live in an arid state that is prone to drought, the last thing you want to do is make it illegal to catch and store rain water and snow melt. http://www.naturalnews.com/029286_rainwater_collection_water.html If anyone can find a working link for the Colorado study, let me know. So far I've found one broken link and one document that mysteriously will not load.

I'm having trouble understanding how communication can ever be strictly described as violent, other than a verbal threat of violence, and in that case, it is not the actual words that are violent, but the promised retaliation for disagreement with the words. For example: Son, clean your room this minute or you'll be in for a trashing! I suppose that words can also abet violence in the commission of fraud (i.e. pretending to be a tax agent to steal someone's personal information), but the communication involved is not inherently violent. Sound could be physically described as violent if you scream into a person's ear loud enough to cause hearing damage, but other than that no communication is inherently violent. Yes, I'm also thinking of the weirding weapons from David Lynch's film, Dune.

There should be a class on drugs; there should be a class on sex education. What about parents teaching children these lessons themselves? Oh, wait, that would be a conflict of interest, wouldn't it?

At the very least, religion requires transmission of the belief in a fictional omnipotent being upon the child, which erodes rationality. The parent is lying to the child about the world, which never helps in the long run. There may be some short term benefits to religion like chastity or avoidance of illicit drugs, but the love of God is a drug, in itself, anesthetizing the user from feeling the joy of self-determination. The motivation to do good works comes not from within, as it would in a virtuous person, but without, due to the influence of a vengeful deity who does not exist, and the congregation or community that blindly follows Him. This is the slow poison of religion.

This stance is not the male analog of a feminist, or the inverse of feminism, because men cannot lobby the state for sanctions against women, while women easily can. See alimony, family law, child support, Obamacare, etc. A man's only ammunition is his rational judgement, choice, and resources. The ad hominem above is counter-productive. Relationships will become less toxic for men when women stop sharpening the knives of the butchers. Yes, just as men need to take responsibility for their choice in a mate, women also need to accept the same level of self-determination. This is a very good observation. Unicorn sometimes suggests that a good woman does not exist, as others have already pointed out. I don't see this scenario happening because any man who convinces himself that a good woman is a mere fiction cannot rationally enter into a relationship with a woman unless he is a masochist. Then, we can only wish him luck because he will need it. Discouraging women from entering into relationships, or working hard to negotiate a satisfying outcome, is an example of using an external pressure to dictate how a woman behaves. If a woman enters into a relationship with this attitude, she is releasing responsibility for her judgement. It is a built-in excuse like proclaiming that there are no virtuous women. When I see the word, unicorn, I immediately translate it in my head to unicum, which is the unique or best example of a subset of things, in this case women. The good woman, whatever that may mean to you, is out there. She exists. She is uncommon at the moment. When the state implodes, and the social programs that cater to women start to deteriorate, we will likely see many of them crawling out of the ruins, seeking virtuous men.

I'm fascinated by all camps in the manosphere, because I am a man. The podcaster I enjoy listening to the most is Spetsnaz because he references his personal experiences, and adds self-knowledge to his insights. Sandman also talks a bit about his family life and how it has affected his adult relationships. The most important aspect of the movement is that more and more men are no longer reticent and want to talk openly about their struggles and emotions. It's a shame that not many feel that they can safely use their real names when they discuss men's issues. How many men, for instance, are opening up a serious dialogue about their experiences with male genital mutilation? I've been laughed at, ignored or shamed for my openness, usually behind my back, and it stings a bit. One of my male friends sent me a text a few weeks back asking me about my "man channel" on Youtube. He didn't actually deride me, but I could sense the social disapproval behind his words, and this is one of the most conservative libertarian people that I know. Many others, with which I try not to associate, are so far left that I cannot have a serious discussion or debate about the non-aggression principle. "What about the roads???" Loosing the Against Me argument onto a leftist is nearly a guaranteed show stopper. Libertarians can usually take a step back and briefly entertain the notion of a stateless, non-coercive society, even if they don't openly endorse it. Edit: I just realized that this post is extremely off-topic from the original post. Please accept my apology.

Abel James and David Perlmutter discuss our crap and our health... I've been healing my gut for the past year since I quit drinking, so I find this video fascinating.