some ppl I know are real fluid in business, agentic financial success, etc., but it took me *so long* to learn this. It was a foreign language.
here's my timeline of constant failures and dumb mistakes: im a teen in suburban farmland idaho in a lower-middle-class family, house for my family of 5 cost $130k, 1/5 people in the city have any sort of college degree. I'm homeschooled, as well as all my friends. Adults tell me that I can make my own business and im like ok lets do it

i know this isn't quite fair, but part of my brain just doesn't believe that non-fundamentalist christians are christian. My brain goes 'oh isn't that cute, you're larping religion, only deviating from secular culture in a few convenient instances of generic social conservatism' 'yeah, you read the bible and concluded that the way to think, act, and believe was almost exactly like the rest of your modern western secular culture (evolution being real, women's rights, wearing tank tops, etc) with a lil honey drizzle of 'praise jesus' ontop'

this is totally unreasonable but i sorta feel like it would be a soothing balm on my sexuality to tell someone my weirdest fetish and have them respond "oh yeah i've talked to 8 other ppl with that fetish, it's super cool, [bunch of diagnostic questions about the fetish]" i want someone to be completely unphased, i want them to have already been well exposed to the fetish and the subcategories, i want them to know it well enough to be able to ask interesting questions to get at the shape of it, and use other ppl like me they know for reference

I'm not sure if i have full autism; I seem to have some symptoms but not others. I have a hyperfixation on data collection. you have no idea how much data i have. most of it i hoard and never manage to get it out into the world.
I only occasionally get sensory overload tho i really hate the sensation of getting out of a shower, which is a big part of the reason i replace many of my showers with spot-washing.
but i seem to be able to do normal smiling and nodding stuff pretty convincingly?

i think most people are operating quite similar to me in life, but are in intense denial about it. I think a lot of the people accusing me of being weirdly robotic and evaluatory are also doing it too, but are so afraid of rejection that they hide it from themselves. I think I've got good self awareness, enough to know that my insides - and probably yours too - are a mismash of unflattering motivations. I suspect people acting horrified are just failing to be sufficiently self aware. I was also horrified by similar things pre-introspection

i'm not sure ppl properly appreciate the intense subjective experience of a woman making the decision to go into sex work.
It's not like she doesn't know society hates it. She's not stepping in blind or ignorant. Every woman knows exactly what it means, and chooses it anyway. 1/ As a kid in an abusive, extremely repressive household, I learned the skill of making cognitive decisions from a "rational" standpoint, and then coldly following through with that decision no matter what emotions kicked up as I powered through it.

One of the worst things about school is that it's extremely hard to see its terrible ripple effects. There's no contrast - there's Only Culture As Created By School, this is the default, the air you breathe, the movies you watch, the friends you make, the shorthand you use One basic example is that it's really weird that we socialize kids primarily, almost entirely, with other kids *of their own age*. Did you ever think that's weird? Abnormal for human history? Maybe it's got terrible downstream outcomes? Maybe it's really unhealthy?

the more i learn about statistics the more horrified i get at how much personal interpretive choice is at play at every step of the process. i came in expecting a hard science and feel like i'm getting slapped with way more art than i expected 'how do i know how many factors to run factor analysis for'
'idk people usually just do various amounts and squint at it and then do as many as just makes sense to you. if the factors start getting random-feeling then just don't use those'
excuse me what

Oh there is SO much involved in this you have no idea
Cause *every other girl* thinks the same thing. It's not just you posting, it's a flood of hot ladies posting on the same platform.
Take reddit, for instance. 1/

https://twitter.com/Flo133742069/status/1704178466508152860

If you are a hot girl and know nothing and go to reddit and just post a photo, the odds of this actually translating to subscribers (and not getting you banned from the sub, which is shockingly easy) is so low. You have to understand a few key things to do well 2/

one of my partners once was like 'you're not that pretty' during a tender moment
i rolled over in the fetal position and groaned for like an hour, and then he went and made me an im sorry card out of construction paper and markers and stickers

https://twitter.com/postboob/status/1698710827216359646

To be fair he said it in response to me mourning that ppl are not incentivized to be honest about each other's physical appearances, he was trying to be helpful by giving me his honest opinion since I wanted ppl to be more honest

@bashu_thanks @br___ian the only way you can 'not be that person' with grace is if you are acting 'from that person'; if some part of your soul has come to terms with it, you aren't recoiling from it; some part of you is and will always be that thing. @bashu_thanks @br___ian i don't trust people who are nice, kind, and selfless, if they don't have a part of their soul touching the pool of evil. If someone is acting nice, kind and selfless because they're terrified of that pool then I don't know them and they don't know themselves

Guys my "don't ask a woman out if you're gonna socially punish her for rejection" is the necessary flip side of me saying "men asking women out isn't bad, more men should hit on more women, you're not creepy, go for it"
...its not bad *if u don't punish her if she says no!* If I'm like "just ask ppl to borrow a lighter, it's really not a big deal, it's good to be clear about what you want, no shame in that" and then ur like ok, you go ask your friend for a lighter, they say no, and then you give them the cold shoulder and stop asking to hang out...i

I domt get why ppl value "natural" over "synthetic" chemicals - for example, I've heard multiple ppl say they like shrooms over lsd cause they can sense that lsd is synthetic
but isn't this division happenstance? like how many *could* have been created by plants naturally? 1/ like we happen to be in a biome right now where a set of chemicals can be found by going outside, but how many other biomes could there have been with other psychoactive chemicals that today we can only create through labs?!

often, people will hate socially high status/visible people *because* of their position. Something about the power is threatening, so people are more inclined to view them with more hostility, even if they'd give grace to an equal-level acquaintance for the same accused flaws. 1/ I noticed this in myself with a well-known-in-my-circles person years ago, where I had sort of... taken on this "well they're ok but they have these problems" attitude. It took me a while to realize I was motivated out of being personally threatened by their status in hierarchy.

people often talk about the importance of giving a 'fuck yes' in sex and consent - like if there's not a 'fuck yes' then you shouldn't do it
but i think this undervalues exploration of what it's like to be like 'ehh i guess?'! 1/ like, i think there's a lot of value in going through the process of figuring out, for yourself, why you actually *want* to only say fuck-yes. I've had SO much 'ehh i guess?' sex, and i *had to* in order to eventually decide that I didn't want 'ehh i guess' sex. 2/

Poll thread:
1. You predict probably exposure to depictions of violence (e.g., violent movies, video games) _____ violent behavior 2. You predict probably exposure to depictions of normal sex (e.g., porn) _____ attempts to pursue sex in real life (e.g., asking women out)

where's all the poly ppl in crypto?
i descended upon this crypto coliving/conference experiment thing, rubbing my hands together and thinking 'yesss here is where i will ensnare myself a husband'
except like 98% of them are monog af, ineligible for my clutches crypto's a community of analytical ppl who do a lot of norm-questioning, you'd think it'd be perfect to find high rates of polyamory? but no. maybe they're doing *narrow* norm questioning that doesn't extend past specific projects or the economy?

I think women have a *really* good idea of the cultural costs of promiscuity; we learn how people treat sluttiness in media, in jokes, in how boys around you talk about other girls. Too loose and it'll damage market value; we know this!
This is why I dont get the OF criticism 1/ like, usually ppl are like "OF seduces girls who aren't aware that being too promiscuous has cultural costs, don't know the damage they'll be doing to themselves"

like, wat?! show me a single damn girl who isn't aware that too much promiscuity has cultural costs.

ok what the FUCK is goin on with the neo-trads? I was just over here enjoying this free life, individualism, subversive, unwoke cultural movement and I thought everybody was on board but suddenly BAM we've got a a bunch of them spawning into sex-negative tradcaths or whatever is this just the section of the subversive movement that was getting insufficiently laid and decided we needed to reign in sexual freedom to make sure monogamy assigns 1:1 sexual partner guarantees again?

How do poly and monogamous relationships differ? I did a survey of 23,000 people, and here's some of the key results.
1) People who reported being poly, also reported having shorter relationships, but this *mostly* hitting between 40-55 years old People who reported being poly, also reported having *way* more sexual partners, with this really kicking in later in life:

ok i really like the novelty of casual sex, but it's hard to actually *enjoy* casual sex. But for me, via various structures, I've managed to build systems in which casual sex is significantly more enjoyable than it is outside. 1/ I mostly don't enjoy casual sex cause, as is ingrained in my genes, it just "feels kinda bad" to let a rando into my cooch, like this is not an optimal sexy arrangement, my primalbrain believes this will not result in good offspring - need high quality mate for that! 2/