Shaving

Seven years ago I bought this double edged safety razor - a Parker 96R that opened like butterfly wings. That razor ($28), a $25 brush, $150 in shaving creams (I've tried a number of different ones) and $70 in blades and I still have 60 - odd Derby-brand double-edge blades ready to use.

$250 in shaving supplies has lasted me for over 7 years. Compare that to the cost of the typical Gillette Mach3 package of 8 blades.

Granted, I shave mostly every other day - the sharp blades shave close and I've had more stubble left behind by electric shavers than what I see the second morning - but I also only use the blades three times (I can feel them starting to pull on my facial hair) to minimize ingrown hairs, etc.

In case you're wondering - wait, $70 in blades? Seven years? That's still 420 blades!

Yeah, they're that cheap. I also tried merkur, Shark, and several other brands before settling on the Derby blades as the best fit for my Parker.

I've been happy with a number of soaps - you'll want to do your own digging there, but can say for starting out that the Proraso menthol and sandalwood creams work great.

It takes a bit longer to get a smooth and nick-free shave. I do keep a "nick" stick around from the Pacific shaving company, and am reasonably happy with their aftershave cream, though several other brands have worked out well too - including the old standby's Old Spice , Pinaud Clubman, and Aqua Velva. The little bit of extra time is worth the extra bit of ritual, and the quality of the shave.

Materialism - it's About the Experiences Too

Return of Kings has an interesting article on what they call the "hedonic treadmill." titled "Are You On A Treadmill Of Materialism That Goes Nowhere?"

Prepare yourself because it is only going to get worse. The giant marketing machine that is the modern media will become even more pervasive and insidious as technology continues to evolve. There will be nowhere to go and nowhere to hide. If you live at all in the digital world the drumbeat for material consumption and accumulation will never stop. Through electronic tracking and sophisticated algorithms you will be increasingly targeted. The goal, of course, is to forever separate you from your hard earned money by keeping you on the Hedonic Treadmill.

In terms of materialism, the Hedonic Treadmill means that “enough will never be enough.” In other words, corporations are well aware that it is human nature to become accustomed to higher and higher levels of material existence and wealth. The tendency then, is to then seek out further improvements and upgrades to maintain a certain level of satisfaction and enjoyment. As if on a treadmill, anyone who assesses their identity through material means will never really get further ahead in this regard; one’s self-worth will always spring back to par, thus the need for constant consumption to maintain worthiness, status and pride.

It's worth noting one thing. Materialism isn't just about "stuff," and in many ways the name they give this kind of existence - the hedonic treadmill - is far more accurate than the title.

It's not just about the nicest car, the latest TV, the latest computer, the latest game console, the nicest house, the new shiny set of golf clubs (blech.... ), or the latest AR-platform from Springfield Arms or JP rifles...

It's about living for the "experience." Travel to exotic locations, nice meals, vacations when you can't afford one, etc. ad nauseum. Why?

It's not the pleasure - we all need some contentment in our lives. And yes, even moderation must sometimes be practiced in moderation.

It's the mentality of the "bucket list" in the first place. The only difference is that instead of a tangible good, you get an ephermal experience - possibly with pictures. Maybe, just maybe, waking up to see the sunrise on the east coast, and flying to see it set on the California coast is fun, but compared to what you could have built, or simply meditated on staying at that morning shoreline? All you did was spend a bunch of money so that you could say you did. If you're planning a getaway, sure, go see the Grand Canyon (have some nice pics myself), but trips to go see places should be about the trip, not about getting to cross the destination off the bucket list.

It's not necessarily a firm line. Everyone needs some time in nature, to themselves. My favorite was to get a cabin rental around Gatlinburg near the smokies for a few nights (roughly the same cost as overpriced hotel rooms, much cheaper for groceries vs. restaurants, and far more solitude), drive into the park and hike a trail, usually to a waterfall. Hang out. Come back. Shower, grill, and watch the sun set over the hills. Spend some time reading. Walk the tourist strip one night and get a dinner and some taffy.

So where is the line drawn? I'm not sure. One flag, as the article notes for materialism in general, is when you're spending more than you can afford. Another is that you care more about the event for how it makes you look - though I've seen people camouflage that by then talking about how enlightening/etc. the experience was.

While we're at it - consider how colleges these days are determined to sell the "experience" of how much fun they'll have.

On Seagulls and Greatness

Over at Seagull Rising Jon Mollison discusses Cora Buhlert and her lack of awareness of what she refers to. Cora B in bold....

*Does anybody else find the idea of a rabid puppy taking inspiration from Jonathan Livingston Seagull of all things as funny as I do?

Of course she thinks it's funny.  She doesn't know what you're talking about.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the story of a seagull whose unwillingness to conform to the demands of the crowd results in his expulsion from the flock.  It was adopted by the hippy-dippy movement in the 1970s as they struggled to escape the conformity provided by hard work, the Christian faith, and showers.  Cora still operates under that out-dated mindset, clinging to the notion that true rebels write works that conform to the demands of the university system, major publishing houses, Hollywood, every major media outlet, and most major businesses like Target, Google, and Starbucks.  Jonathan Livingston Seagull is the story of a seagull whose unwillingness to conform to the demands of the crowd results in his expulsion from the flock.  Her mirth makes it clear that she either has not read the work in question - which is largely agnostic on matters of politics, hewing closer to  a 'you be you even if it means going against the majority' message than to her assumed 'stick it to the man, and once you are the man, stick it to those who want to stick it to the man' message.  Proving once again...

These people don't read

I agree utterly - these people don't read. Most of what I've seen on the hugos, and I've looked, is about what kind of authors and characters were in the story, and what they reference. "And there's this girl, and she's black, and she has lucid dreams and it's, like, Freudean, and.." - yeah, fuck off, I'll go re-watch Dreamscape or re-read the Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath. Oh, wait, that's the article describing a new comic series Afar. It's cool because it has a new twist on Freudian dream theory, you see, and this girl is utterly helpless through most of it, then she makes a horrible mistake she can't undo, but it's all about us and our dreams, and...

Nevermind.

Where were we? Oh, Jonathan Livingston Seagull.

I hate to Break it to Jon, but I think he missed an important point of the book, which I first read back in 4th grade a long time ago.

Sure, it's not about specific politcs - it's about the willingness to follow a path even if it's not in lockstep march with what everyone tells you in general, and as he points out, that is by no means the monopoly of the left or liberals, especially when they have become the man.

Here's where it goes deeper. It's not just that our intrepid seagull is determined to do his own thing - all the seagulls "fly" after a fasion. They all dive for fish, after a fashion. They all eat, after a fashion. It is that he is utterly dedicated to excellence. What sets him apart is is his quest to be the best, to fly the best. To find the limits of what is possible and maybe even push a bit further. He could of course choose something else, and of course he is not content to just live life like the herd - but he wants to achieve mastery.

Often in life, we have to accept good enough, but to master ourselves, to achieve excellence, there have to be areas we care about where "good enough" is not good enough.

UPDATE: In all fairness to Jon - on rereading this I realized I made it sound like Jon didn't realize there were more meanings to the story. A guy who's site is called "Seagull rising".

Yeah, right.

So - first of all, sorry Jon, it was a failure in my writing to not make it clear that Cora B's failure to grok JLS went far deeper than just "outsider evicted for bucking the flock" but to excellence and working for it, for, as Jon pointed out elsewhere, the art of the whole and not just badly assembled very pretty bits of craft. The fault was not, as I made it appear, in your understanding of JLS.

I for one am a person who hates to draw distinctions between, say, illustrators, and artist, and craft is ultimately required for most great art, but Jon is utterly correct - one can master craft, and not know how to put the whole thing together into a thing of beauty. A cargo cult of mistaking the craft for the art, without understanding the spirit, the soul of the thing.

I am tempted to try this out

Home brewing. From Art of Manliness:

If you’re wondering why you need an article on how to make beer from a kit, if it already comes with directions, know that while the kit simplifies and streamlines the brewing process, there are still sticky points the first time you try it. While the first batch of homebrew I made a few years ago was okay, I was pretty clueless about the whole operation. I didn’t really understand what the various supplies were for, I didn’t understand the process enough to know how to troubleshoot any issues, and I wasn’t even sure what my beer was supposed to look like in a few of the steps. I’ve gained a bit more experience over the years, and I’ve also had a chance to talk to some professional brewers about the most important homebrew principles, as well as a couple ways the amateur should deviate from a kit’s directions to really get a great beer. In understanding all the supplies and processes behind kit brewing, you’ll be better able to handle any problem and have a better chance of creating a beer that’s worthy of sharing.

Looks like a rather nice and thorough overview. 

How To Act as if You're Actually Intelligent

...and not a caricature of what normally think a smart person is (sortof like Colbert used to play a caricature of what liberals thought conservative commentators believed, when parodying what they actually did would have been both more honest and funnier).

Eric Raymond was encouraged to view a clip of the Big Bang Theory, and wasn't impressed:

Bleagh. This is supposed to be a show about geniuses? It’s not. It’s a show about a dimwit’s idea of what bright people are like. The slowest person in my peer group could out-think and out-create any of these sad-sack imitations of “smart” on any day of the week. 

These actors are not bright, and don’t know how to fake it on screen.

Eric, being Eric, wouldn't let something like that slide without at least providing some guidance.

Here goes a list of bright-person behavior signals which, while not universal, are very common…

Bright people have very precise diction and tend to self-assimilate to educated speech norms even if their formal education is minimal. Enunciate as crisply as you can. If the character is designed to have a regional or lower-class accent, dial it down a little. [UPDATE: I may have overgeneralized a bit here. Strongly true of STEM geeks, but maybe not as reliably of other kinds of brights.]

Bright people concentrate. Their casual attention to a task or person is as intense as most peoples’ full attention. So fixate on those targets – not to the point of being glassy-eyed about it, but to the point where stillness and attention dominate your body language.

Bright people spend a larger fraction of their time in an ‘on’ state of mental alertness or conscious thought than non-brights do. This has consequences in visual saccades that are easy to see – with a little practice, you can grade people by intelligence in bank or movie-theater lines by watching eye movements. Look for relatively little time spent in a defocused, half-asleep state – or, conversely, lots of time when the eyes are tracking or making motions indicative of either imaginative activity or memory retrieval. Thus, when you play a bright person, always be looking at something.

 That sounds about right. I'm self-aware of the focus thing, though at first it had to be brought to my attention. I also know that when recalling I usually look at something fairly static or close my eyes so I can "scan" the information. When it came to things like power plant systems interactions it made visualizing the systems and their relationships in my head easier, almost like an overlay. After one qualification interview one of the board members joked that I must have had the answers tattooed under my eyelids because I'd close my eyes for a couple seconds and then, after reopening them, spout off the answer in almost perfect from-the-book verbiage.

Incidentally, this wasn't photographic memory. I had a knack for applying the correct language patterns to describe an abstract concept I understood. Computerese for computer issues, Navy Nuke-speak for technical plant issues, etc. - my memory for lists of things things like safety setpoints or common values for network ports is actually pretty crappy if not continuously reinforced or refreshed.

Lifting Technique

I'm far from the world's greatest lifter, but over the last few years have come across a few things that seem to make sense. While "Art of Manliness" is a hit or miss site for me, they certainly have provided a few useful insights in the past. Here's a series of vids they did with lifter and coach Mark Rippetoe.

Anonymity, and "Bad" Views

In a recent posting Vox Day notes that the ability to dox effective opponents of the leftist narrative has reached a point that anonymity, even moderately strong steps, can no longer be considered effective to protect oneself from blowback if your lifestyle is not antifragile. In the comments he notes:

There is nothing veiled about it. The situation changes. 10 years ago, it was possible to remain anonymous. These days, it is almost impossible to do so, not only due to social media, but the way in which governments and corporations are gathering data.

These days, it's very, very easy to slip up and drop a clue, but even if you perfectly manage your own behavior, a personal friend might put a picture on Facebook, a trusted colleague might get angry and betray you, or hackers might obtain access to your Apple or Yahoo account.

What was reasonable a few years ago is no longer viable.

and

I guess you couldn't have spelled it out any more clearly, but does this mean I should give up trolling anonymously?

If you aren't willing to pay the price of being outed, yes. The only thing presently protecting you is your irrelevance. If you become effective, they will focus on finding out who you are.

If you genuinely have no reason to care about being outed, then you're fine.

In all things, given the lock that Google, Facebook (which I basically don't use), etc. have on online life and access, if one is effective enough, or gets noticed by / irritates the wrong person, someone will have the resources to track you down.

My own situation is only moderately antifragile. I mention "liberal" people I know a lot, and that is because while my overall state is red, the area I'm in and its environs are solidly blue, if not overwhelmingly. Unfortunately, most of the red crowd are very blue pill - and nearly just as loudly point and shriek at accusations of racism, sexism, whatever as any SJW pointing the way for them. That said - while I'd almost be guaranteed to lose  a significant number of clients if someone contacted them, I'd still be employed, and have means to get by until I could rebuild.

I'm strongly enough covered that no-one from my immediate life stumbling into this is likely to recognize who I am from personal details. The backtrail for phone and email leads to dead ends - protonmail is awesome. There's actually a stronger chance that someone I know who's pointed to this page may recognize arguments that I made, or my mode of speech - but that has more plausible deniability, and does require that someone here that I know and have talked philosophy or politics with has seen these pages and makes the connection. In accessing sites such as disqus, blogger, wordpress, I'm logged in under one of two VPN services from any of five different geographical areas. Passwords are very long, and stored in a local, further encrypted archive.

In short, until I piss off and come to the attention of someone who can correlate connections from twitter, google, etc. back through VPN's and TOR or obtain what should be personal info out of those accounts - which are unlikely to be hacked by normal means, and don't lead to accounts with my name on it - I'm safe.

At that point, all bets are off.

So I'm faced with a choice. I'm not committing yet. On one hand I won't say "I will never let this blog and persona to be great or effective" and duck my head. I may not reach greatness, but I certainly don't want to aim for mediocrity. And I'm probably in little danger of coming to the level of scrutiny in the next year that would make me shut down these accounts before I meet my goal of a full year of daily (m-f) activity.

That said, brand. If I wish to not only survive exposure, but to do well regardless, I need to develop scalable, antifragile sources of income. That means finding a way to put myself out there in a recognizable way that people can get back to and work with me, to connect with people, that there's a discoverable footprint associated with me, online or in the real world, linked to my name, to my bank accounts, and so forth. I may not have to draw the curtain back and publicly associate my name with my thoughts here, but some aspects will have to be in my name, and time spent on that will be time I can't spend here.

It's not time to choose yet, but it is certainly time to begin operating in the knowledge that a choice will need to be made.

Platforms, and Building Them

I joked in my 2016/2017 post that the "dark secret" of this blog was that it's as much for me to develop a set of habits, to do something every day, making it a priority, as it is about anything else. Providing at least some useful insights or interesting info is how I hope to get and keep an audience, but without putting up posts, I can't put up good posts either.

So buried in Nick Cole's recent post on platforms, was this:

Here’s what you need to know to do the same thing.  It’s easy.  In fact, it’s never been easier.

1.  Blog regularly.  Six days a week.  Say something.  Anything.  Even repost someone’s article (like this one) and add a comment to get readers interested and sharing the post even if it’s not yours. People who click on it will land on your website and they might get interested in your books.
2.  Stop going on Facebook and giving them free content by just posting stuff.   Take the time to write a blog post from your own website and then post it to Facebook.

Do this faithfully and start connecting with your readers regularly.  In time you’ll build an audience that will be yours and not some SJW media mogul’s who might decide to blacklist you because you think DNA determines gender.  Or global warming is a big lie.  Or civil rights is just a con game some crooks are using to stay in power.  Or Gweyneth Paltrow’s latest film sucks.  Whatever. Build your own platform.  Even if you’re not interested in causing trouble you’ll have an audience you can direct market your book to any time you want.

Now, I don't have a book to sell, or anything else yet. You may say that whatever I do in the future I'm developing a skillset, or what Scott Adams would call a skill stack, that should help me out.

Nick also wrote the excellent book, CTRL-ALT-REVOLT, available at Amazon. It has interesting characters, a fun story, and is just, in general, a great read.

Coffee

RooshV just posted a video on how he makes coffee with an aeropress coffee maker at home.

I heartily second that.

First, some background. You may be familiar with the Aerobie, a flying ring that was for all intents and purposes a frisbee on steroids. Much slimmer, and you couldn't do ski[-tricks with it (duh) but it could go ridiculously far. A cousin lost one in the ocean because he threw it into the offshore breeze, and with the combination of lift from the breeze and the relative lack of aerodynamic drag it just kept going, and going, and going.....

You really could, with practice, and a little tuning of the curve, accurately play catch along the full length of a football field.

Well... the same designer decided to turn his mind to making the best possible cup of coffee. And what he ended up with combined some aspects of a french press (but far easier to clean, and filtered, with no grounds slurry) and air pressure to make ridiculously smooth espresso-strength coffee that can be watered down to regular coffee strength (add more hot water after the fact), or taken straight. It's not as smooth as cold-brew can be, but you also don't have to have some made ahead of time.

After playing around I personally just use two scoops Trader Joe's coffee I grind at the store as I don't like fiddling with grinders, at a drip or slightly rougher grind, and typically fill up closer to the "three" mark. Other than that, the video is an excellent "how to" if you have any questions on what the very short manual says. Unlike a french press, cleanup is exceedingly easy as it almost cleans itself. Uncap the filter retainer, pop the grind pick into the trash or compost as you wish,  pull back the piston, rinse.

It's also excellent for a hit of ice coffee that's not watered down regular hot coffee over ice. I use a tall, solid, drinking glass and fill it with ice, and make the coffee directly into it. Some of the ice melts, but that only dilutes it to a regular coffee strength.

Art and Communication

Over at Return of Kings there's an outstanding article on why modern art is so uninspiring. It digs into several sources, notably Tom Wolfe:

What I saw before me was the critic-in-chief of The New York Times saying: In looking at a painting today, “to lack a persuasive theory is to lack something crucial.” I read it again. It didn’t say “something helpful” or “enriching” or even “extremely valuable.” No, the word was crucial.

In short: frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can’t see a painting.

Go read it.

I believe I've brought it up before but it bears repeating: I am reminded of a scene from a Baen book I read a while back - Guns of Two Space - where attending a party on earth, one of the crew goes off on the "artists" present.

Skill and craft were addressed, notably the lack thereof in many works - and I agree that more detail/work isn't always emblematic of craft (note the story of Giotto drawing a perfect circle to demonstrate his skill as an artist).

The point of "you just don't get it" - also brought up in the post - was also addressed.

Basically, if part of what art is supposed to do is communicate, that accusation is an admission that the art is FAILING to communicate, except to the very few who study all the theorems needed to unlock it.

Kids may not get all the subtexts of a bugs bunny cartoon, but they're still going to enjoy Bugs and Elmer having it out to the strains of Barber of Seville....

Cocoons

Over on Gab, a recent post by Judge Dread @judgedread encapsulated a point I know I've made in the past:

Cities breed liberalism because cities are the only place where you can survive with absolutely no contact with the realities of the natural world, and liberalism is above all else a denial of nature.
#Science

 What I find funny is that it's liberals who insist on passing on trite stories about how helping a butterfly out of its cocoon basically kills it, because it needs that struggle to properly expand its wings, to grow, to blossom as it were.

CAs an aside, perhaps that's why they wear every petty slight and setback on their shoulders like a badge of honor? No, because then they'd realize it's part of life and get on with it.

I've pointed to it again and again, and I think it bears repeating, as it has lessons even for those who don't believe in carrying firearms. Eric Raymond's "Ethics from the Barrel of a Gun". There's a fair amount of explanation, go read the whole damn thing but the core of it is this:

The first and most important of these lessons is this: it all comes down to you.

No one's finger is on the trigger but your own. All the talk-talk in your head, all the emotions in your heart, all the experiences of your past — these things may inform your choice, but they can't move your finger. All the socialization and rationalization and justification in the world, all the approval or disapproval of your neighbors — none of these things can pull the trigger either. They can change how you feel about the choice, but only you can actually make the choice. Only you. Only here. Only now. Fire, or not?

A second is this: never count on being able to undo your choices.

If you shoot someone through the heart, dead is dead. You can't take it back. There are no do-overs. Real choice is like that; you make it, you live with it — or die with it.

A third lesson is this: the universe doesn't care about motives.

If your gun has an accidental discharge while pointed an unsafe direction, the bullet will kill just as dead as if you had been aiming the shot. I didn't mean to may persuade others that you are less likely to repeat a behavior, but it won't bring a corpse back to life.

These lessons can be extrapolated to any environment where day to day and moment to moment decisions can have fatal consequences, as a matter of daily, ongoing reality. The ocean doesn't care if you really wanted to put that o-ring in correctly or not - it just cares that in a sub at 400 feet, there's an opening it can squeeze through.

Time preference also matters. A thug with a gun is still a thug, still violent, and isn't thinking out consequences. In a world with people who have a longer term outlook though, and are just as willing to be violent to protect themselves, the thugs tend to get weeded out.

We in the west live in cocoons - and those in the cocoons are too ignorant to easily distinguish between the wolves and the sheepdogs. We're isolated from the impersonal nature of the universe, from the realities of death to even feed ourselves, and anything that makes people uncomfortable is suppressed, the sheepdogs vilified instead of more raised.

Molyneux had a recent discussion with Vox that covers how r/K selection can be manipulated by those rabbits in their warm little burrows and cocoons.

The problem is one day the fences break down, the cocoons are ripped away, and reality comes to bite those who have not learned to govern themselves hard.

Another Name for "Habits": Systems... a Continuation

So Stefan Molyneux interviewed Scott Adams a while back, and covered a lot of interesting ground.

I don't want to get into the whole free will vs. meat-robot thing here - and will go ahead and agree with the following - we are hugely influenced, and strongly driven by our bodies, our instincts, our habits, our hormones, what we ate and how that affects our mood. So much so that we fall into ruts, and cannot break out of them. Worse, as the saying goes, we're not the rational animal, but the rationalizing one.

That said - we can change that. Maybe less the rationalizing part than the how we react. We can, to a limited degree, reprogram ourselves. The example Scott uses is his system of going to the gym every day, whether he works out or not. In a similar way this blog was started to quit the wankery of absorbing everything I see and sometimes commenting.

If you listen carefully, what you hear being described is what we would have, in the past, called "building a good habit."

I don't think Scott is trying to be pretentious - he calls it a system, because it is a system, a system for building other systems, or habits, to change his life, his lifestyle, and the choices he makes. It's also a useful way to abstract away the moral dimension of discussing "good" and "bad" habits. Much like one Marine officer I knew detailed how in planning sessions they'd talk in terms of whether or not something would work rather than if it was good or bad. The latter are value judgments. They are why you may want to build a different system or habit, or take a different approach based on the overall holistic results and consequences, but they don't bear on whether or not eating a tub of ice cream every night puts on calories.

Systems also have to address failure. Scott makes his success criteria not "finish a workout" but "show up at the gym". Since that in and of itself requires a trip, once there, he's motivated to do something, and on days he's dog sick, he can be proud that he at least showed up.

The future, of course, belongs to those who show up.

Once the habit of showing up at the gym is established, or writing every day, you build your life around it, it becomes your priority, and you will actually feel off balance or anxious if you don't do that.

Get in the habit of doing the hard things.

Add them, one little bit at a time, like gradually putting on weights as you progress in weightlifting.

Heck - start out light. You'll be surprised at what gets in the way to drag you back to your old way of doing things.

if you can pick an easy "success" that almost always falls into a bigger success, make that your benchmark. In this blogs case - it's "write every damn day" - even if it's just putting up a shot of Kate Upton.

Have an escape valve - part of what you put in place has to be a way to decide "will this work?" - and if not, fail faster.

You'll get there, eventually.