Sheng Wang had short hair when he first got into the standup game:

https://youtu.be/Qvo9stCkbyA

Both Jimmy O. Yang and Sheng Wang are hilarious, but you should recognize that they are two different people.

That’s why it’s funny that the bicycling community talks of “dentists” with all their gear. The people best equipped to really pursue that hobby wholeheartedly are the people who make a shitload of money doing something completely different.

It’s saying that it’s just a fucking hobby. It’s purpose is to be enjoyed not mastered.

Yeah, too many people preemptively gatekeep themselves: you’re not a real (hobbyist) unless you master (narrow part of the hobby), so you’re not allowed to take up that hobby until you’re ready to commit to that boring/tedious/difficult part.

I play chess and I don’t know the names of openings (and still have a lot of trouble with following notation). Who gives a shit, I’m not going to win tournaments. But I still have fun with it, occasionally play strangers in the park, and have been having fun teaching my kids how to play.

I half-ass my fitness and workout routine. Sometimes I go months in between gym sessions, and sometimes I go 6x a week for months, break some PRs, and then go on living my life. Sometimes I run 500 miles in a year, sometimes I run 10. Whatever. Life gets busy, and my own preferences shift between whether I want to do cardio, weights, sports, yoga, metcon/CrossFit style classes, or just sit on my ass and get weak and fat for a year. I’m in my 40’s, so I’ve been all over the place on all of these things.

I can watch a TV show without needing to start from the pilot and watching every episode that came out. I can watch a movie without trying to understand every reference to everything else in the same cinematic universe. I enjoy watching basketball and football even when I can’t name all the players, much less their whole career histories.

And after all that, a funny thing starts to happen. You find that you actually are pretty good at certain things compared to the public, even though you didn’t wholeheartedly devote all your effort to that thing.

I like being a dilettante. It’s awesome and I’d recommend this lifestyle to anyone. The best way to enjoy a hobby is to be unburdened by expectations.

What made it fun was knowing in the back of your mind that it was roughly based on real life, and the gratuitous violence against Nazis.

I’m convinced that Damon Baehrel is a semi-fake restaurant. Like, it’s real, but doesn’t actually take reservations or serve real guests, and the owner/chef lies about everything in order to seem more mysterious.

This article from 2016 lays out the case.

So I don’t think it’s a particularly good example of fine dining, as it’s doing a lot of things different from a normal restaurant that is open to members of the public.

Mountain Dew was originally invented as a moonshine mixer, so that’s just returning to its roots.

a bike which is fueled by snacks and doesn’t even shit!

Well the actual motor that powers the bicycle does shit, though.

italics

Is this a slur for Italian people?

Where’s the source data for that, that shows that Trump won under-29 men by 15 points, compared to Biden winning them in 2020 by 14 points?

NBC News shows 2 points, 49% to 47%. It doesn’t seem to have 2020 data on that specific combination of gender and age, though. But it does show an overall swing of about 11 points towards Trump for the under-29s of all genders.

CNN didn’t break things out by gender but their data shows that Trump gained 13 points among under-29s generally, including women.

band together and hate a specific cause.

The thing with Gen X teenage nihilism was that the only cardinal sin was actually having a strong opinion. There wasn’t much room to hate on anything, because actually hating something showed that you cared too much, and that wasn’t what we were about.

Gen Z seems to be much more willing to embrace negative emotions and acknowledge that they care enough to hate. Whether that’s a better or a worse thing, I’m not sure.

This reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. Eventually the boy cries wolf too many times, townspeople stop listening to the boy, and stop responding to the cries.

The way we tell it, though, is that the boy is falsely crying wolf each time. And the townspeople eventually learn their lesson and stop responding.

One hypothetical that I always think about is what if the boy is correct each time, and there really is a wolf every time? Well, I think the townspeople would eventually grow numb to the cries and stop responding anyway, and kinda leave the boy to fend for himself because they’re sick of helping him. We’d see the same result even if the boy did nothing wrong.

The worst part is no-one cared, fucking “they’ll grow out of it” and now everyone is suddenly in shock. When I talk about it to my friend today he’s even in fucking denial about it, “Oh they didn’t actually mean that, it was all jokes”.

Most edgy teens do grow out of it. I roll my eyes at embarrassment at some of the stuff I wrote in college, and high school me was even stupider.

But one difference in my high school years (in the 90’s), edginess wasn’t inherently politically coded. Some of it was racist, sexist, or homophobic, but plenty of the targets were also Republican constituencies: rural/small town people, Christians, fat people, old people, prudes, etc. In a conservative suburban area, jokes about abortion, sex, drugs, etc. were often designed to elicit shock and disgust.

I think we’ve seen a cultural shift in which edginess is seen as right wing in itself, in part because the right, which used to get offended at things like Harry Potter and Howard Stern and Disney movies, has fallen in line with edgy Gen X comedians who somehow didn’t grow out of it, and made room for people who smoke weed and mock the Bible.

Any male born after 1999 can’t fuck, all they know is Joe Rogan, vape, charge they phone, Twitch, be cucks, eat hot tendies and lie

I think it depends on a lot of real-life interactions, too. I had coaches and teachers and older work colleagues (including in heavily male dominated workforces, like the military) who were strong masculine role models. So when it came to media consumption I tended to gravitate towards celebrities or famous characters who already fit the worldview.

Nick Offerman played a libertarian Ron Swanson on TV, but in that fictional work the core cultural markers of manhood were explicitly presented as non-political, and seem largely shared with the left-leaning actor himself.

Terry Crews is similar, as you’ve pointed out. On Brooklyn 99 his character was presented as a loving father of young girls, who was in connection with his feelings, but also loved working out and sports and, you know, was a cop with a gun. In real life, in interviews, he seemed very much in tune with healthy masculinity and his place in the world.

Steve Kerr and Greg Popovich give off positive male leader vibes and often speak up about political and cultural issues, while largely being protective and supportive of the younger men who essentially work for them.

George Clooney is funny because he came off as a bit of a womanizer for years, but dove right into his long term relationship with a woman whose own career would arguably overshadow his. He is unabashedly and vocally a supporter of Democrats and other causes associated with the left in the United States.

Nobody is perfect, or deserves to be put on a pedestal. But there are little nuggets of positive examples all around us, including traditionally masculine men who support ideals that are more culturally and politically associated with the cultural left.

Year to year comparisons can be viewed here.

Strangely enough, he lost educated white voters compared to before. He won white people with college degrees the previous two times, but lost them this time.

I guess that means that the shift in minority support cut across education levels.

They’re talking about specifically white women, not all women, which the link (and exit polling from other major sources) also reports had a 53% vote for Trump.

James Cameron has a history of making great things happen with a low budget, and spending millions responsibly to actually make a positive difference in big budget films.

is a “B-movie” now?

Did you not read the article? It was regarded as a B-movie when it came out: a low-budget sci-fi slasher/horror film. Arnold referred to it as a B-movie when asked about it on the set of Conan the Barbarian (which had 3 times the budget as Terminator). The New York Times referred to it as a B-movie in its review, as discussed by this article, which is also why the headline uses quotes around “B-movie.”

I’ve been pondering orbs, don’t know what y’all are doing.