Lex Grossman

@IterIntellectus @QuetzalPhoenix Online shopping, watching trash tv

what’s the female equivalent of a man playing video games?

@johnkonrad He’s having a rough week and it’s well deserved

Ryan is correct. I'm just a retired ship captain. Nobody important outside a maritime niche. Yet this post smells like stolen valor. Let me explain… Stoicism without the battlefield, the sea & real pain is hollow. The Stoics talked constantly about battles, ships, storms & warriors, because they understood reality is not a TED stage. "Be like the promontory against which the waves continually break, but it stands firm and tames the fury of the water around it." Marcus Aurelius, Meditations Aurelius wrote that on campaign. He was an emperor commanding legions on the Danube frontier. Seneca opened his veins on Nero's order. Epictetus was sold in chains. Cato killed himself rather than submit to Caesar. The greatest Stoics earned their philosophy in command, in chains, in war. Ryan flies private and hangs with Tim Ferriss, Matthew McConaughey & NYTimes “influencers”. He knows his words are hallow without military experience. But he was unwilling to pay the price himself, so he stole the prestige. He has posted hundreds of times across his channels about the lectures he gives at the United States Naval Academy. Ask the obvious question: who benefited more from that relationship? The future destroyer captains, Marines, & fighter pilots he lectured? Or Ryan? "I don't think about you at all" is the tell. He didn't go to Annapolis to teach the midshipmen. He went to use them. The military gravitas his philosophy needs in order to mean anything: he doesn't have it. He's never served. He's never gone to sea. He's never carried the weight of command. So he went to Annapolis to be photographed near people who will. Today’s battlefields are the oceans and there are fewer than ten people in the world covering American seapower, sealift, and naval logistics for a large audience. The stuff that actually decides wars. Ryan was personally friends with one of them. Me. Sailed on my boat. Helped sketch his pivot to the Stoics. Never once called with a question about ships, the Navy, or the sea. The wider circle of maritime and military scholars I talk to weekly? Same story. None of them think about him at all. That's not absent-mindedness. That's design. Twenty years ago that might have been forgivable, because the seas were calm. Today the chokepoints are battlefields. The Red Sea. The Taiwan Strait. The Persian Gulf. The midshipmen Ryan lectured are now on the front lines of a world spinning out of control. Their lives depend on the United States understanding seapower again. Ryan contributed nothing to their understanding. He took the photo and left. He didn't want our knowledge. He wanted the credential. The Naval Academy was the prop. He used them to convince NYTimes book reviewers that he has military and nautical cred. Some will say maybe he was trying to help, just didn’t know how. If so he would have asked to see the actual front lines. A USO show on a carrier. A lecture in Djibouti. A passage on a US Merchant Marine ship running the Strait of Hormuz. I could have arranged any of it. But he "doesn't think about me at all." He would rather trade quotes with podcast bros, Hollywood stars, and the New York Times writer who traded Jesus for Ted Lasso. He doesn't care to see a real battlefield or a real storm at sea. His brand of Stoicism isn't built for that. His brand is this: intellectual weed. A way for readers to rationalize tuning out. He and his progressive self-help peers are the opioid of the managerial class. That's not Stoicism. The Stoics ran the Roman Empire and died for their principles. Ryan sells "Memento Mori" to give millennials an excuse to stop stressing about life and travel to safe places. Thinking about real navalists would have meant doing the actual work. The work was never the point. The point was selling Stoicism off a uniform he never wore. He used the United States military to move merch. "I don't think about you at all" is the receipt. It’s either cosplay or stolen valor.

@ChristianHeiens They want us barefoot in the kitchen, caring for the children while our wives go girlboss.

Checking in on the status of Wokeism, and it turns out Leftist academics are unironically saying that society needs to intentionally “marginalize men” even more to supposedly solve the birth rate. History shows us that what’s normalized in academia becomes publicly mainstream within a generation, and there is no sign the ship is turning or even slowing down.

@justjuri27 Thank you for articulating what I’ve been feeling for my entire adult life. My boomer parents are unwilling or incapable of understanding this because they made their break before the hammer dropped.

@UN_Women If that were true, all the overselling would be completely unnecessary.

Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. Any job is a woman's job. 📢 We’ll keep repeating it — this International Workers’ Day and every day. #MayDay

@RichardHanania @nayibbukele You think!?

No matter the poll, Bukele's approval rating is nearly always over 90%. In the last three polls, it's 93%, 93%, and 94%. I've never seen anything like this. We need to study this regime. The international community has massively underestimated the importance of public order.

@A_Revelator @jasonwhitlock They’re not offended, they’re mad that you’ve taken the only power they have (“I can say this word but you can’t”). When that’s gone, what else can they possibly hold over you?

@jasonwhitlock Have anyone ever seen a white person get offended being called a cracker? NOPE!

Black men driving/flying across the country to ask questions/confront a white guy using the N word. You got gangbangers terrorizing black neighborhoods and no one wants to ask them a single question. No one leaving the house for that. Lol.

@AuronMacintyre She’s white passing and will be treated as such by her allies.

The unhealthy relationship between America and Israel is a real problem but those suggesting we ally with radical progressives who have been celebrating our replacement for decades is foolish These people hate you at an ontological level, they laugh at the idea of your demise

@andrewilliamsus That’s precisely why they’re doing it. This is as good as it’s gonna get for many of them.

Nіggеrs are doing all this just to work at Wendy’s after high school.

@shellenberger @RyanHoliday @IvankaTrump Look at his fucking face. He does not have a magnanimous, trustworthy physiognomy

Stoicism values humility, emotional control, and loyalty to family. And yet America's leading popularizer of it, @RyanHoliday, displays none of those qualities in his angry, TDS-fueled condemnation of @IvankaTrump. He displays an arrogance every wisdom tradition warns against.

@MegaBasedChad Beautiful and hope filled

Question for Uncs who were there when it happened How did the turn of the millennium feel? What was it like?

@RamboVanHalen @WeaponOutfitter As someone who spent the first 27 years of my life in CA, I feel the same way.

Make Shit Work Again People almost never come to our door after dark. Because we live in a (what used to be) a quiet place, and random visitors after dark are almost unheard of. So when the doorbell rang at 3:30am this morning I grabbed my shotgun. I racked the pump and shouted for the person at the door to identify themselves. Turns out it was a lady cop. Luckily the cops are used to armed homeowners around here. She shined a to flashlight identify herself, and I secured the gun and the dogs to see what she wanted. Turns out two people were shot across the street in the park. She wanted to know if your security cameras captured any footage of the incident. So I checked the app, and no—there was no footage (because our cameras point the other direction). And that was that. But I couldn’t get back to sleep—mostly because of the adrenaline. But also because I couldn’t help but notice that things are getting worse around here. This used to be a place where nothing happened. And now things definitely do happen. We used to live in LA. My wife and I did industry stuff. We had a good life as an urban childless couple, but then she got pregnant. We thought about the daunting challenge of raising kids in LA, and opted to get out. So we found a place in the Mountain West where nothing ever happens. It was a good place to raise kids. A place with good schools. A place where our children could wander the town by themselves. But it’s not that place anymore. Since Covid the schools have gone to shit. And a few weeks ago my son was at the neighborhood park (by himself) when a gang member pulled a gun on a parent at the playground. So early this morning I’m lying in bed, and I’m thinking about this. And I thought to myself, “We need to leave.” But then I had another thought—a disturbing thought. I thought, “But there’s no place else to go.” Because it’s almost everywhere now. Red State, Blue State, it doesn’t matter. And if it’s not there yet it will be soon. And if you think you’re safe, you’re not. Because this thing is coming for all of us. *** My politics in five words: I Want Shit To Work That’s it. I just want shit to work. And I don’t really care how that happens. I’m old enough to remember when shit did work. It never worked perfectly. But I don’t think shit has worked perfectly in the entire history of human endeavors. I mean, read the Bible—it’s all about shit not working perfectly. But I grew up in a time when things ran fairly well—far better than they do now. I’m not that old, but back in the day schools actually taught stuff. And there wasn’t choking bureaucracy in government and business and every other institution. And we could TRUST those institutions—because they weren’t rife with corruption. And if minor corruption happened to be discovered it was A BIG FUCKING DEAL—because the media wasn’t bent, and they’d actually report on the corruption. And things weren’t so expensive. A young person (me) could work a menial job afford a car and an apartment and still have money left over to take girls on dates. Because there was OPPORTUNITY for young people. Now I could go on and on, but I’m starting to sound like an old man shouting at a cloud, so let me just say, trust me kids: SHIT USED TO WORK. Spencer Pratt is about my age. He remembers when shit used to work. He remembers when you could count on the fire department to not let a giant part of your city burn down with residents inside. He remembers when you didn’t have to step over fentanyl zombies to take your kids to preschool. He remembers when there wasn’t human shit on the streets. He remembers when corrupt government officials were held accountable. He remembers when we could go about our lives and not worry—because shit worked. I can sum up Spencer Pratt’s campaign platform in four words: Make shit work again. So can he win the LA mayoral race? It depends on one question: Is it bad enough yet? I think it is bad enough. It’s so bad that it can no longer be ignored. And I think most Angelenos feel the same way. There’s a critical mass of people who remember when shit worked. They had no way to fix it. They couldn’t imagine a solution. And then one guy stood up and said he could fix it. Because none of these “intractable problems” are actually intractable. We know how to do this. We know how to fix things. We know how to Make. Shit. Work. Again. What was lacking was The Will to do it. And Spencer Pratt has The Will. No, I don’t live in LA anymore. But I’m pulling for Spencer. Because this election is so much larger than Los Angeles. Because there’s no where else to run to. Because we’ve got to make a stand. Somewhere. Anywhere. So vote for Spencer. And if you can’t vote then make a small donation. Because we have to make shit work again. Because we don’t have a choice.

@RyanHoliday This is the exact type of scenario stoicism was meant for. You failed the test. Also, you are not Marcus Aurelius and do not own his work or ideas. People you hate can like and practice his ideas too. You’re a fraud, loser, and clown. Shitlib stoic. Oxymoronic and ironic.

Lol. Rolling your eyes at the performative philosophy of a member of the most corrupt family in American history is apparently 'fuming'? Although if there was anything to be mad about these days, I think objecting to people lighting the world on fire so they can make a killing in prediction markets and kickbacks is probably it. yahoo.com/entertainment/…

@UKDecline @sivori Horrifying. New money + no taste = ruined neighborhoods

Decline.

@Europarl_EN Everyone must hire an in-house notary😂

When it comes to sex, only a clear yes is a yes. Everything else is rape. In many EU countries, rape is still defined by violence or resistance. Parliament is pushing for an EU-wide definition of rape based on the absence of consent. Learn more: link.europa.eu/dN3kpd

@romanhelmetguy I try explaining this to close family members and they continue to choose decline instead of worrying about things they “have no control over”. It’s pathetic and contemptible.

Stoicism is popular because apathy is the sickness of our age and stoicism glorifies it. Stoicism is cope for living in a dying society. Stoicism is managed decline. You need to become anti-stoic. You need to become so passionate it’s self-destructive.

@georgegalloway And do what about it, exactly? Cry/vote harder? Become a foreign fighter?

Any Christians out there give a fuck?

@Will_Tanner_1 “Blacks were persecuted for no reason”

Eisenhower enforced an effective military occupation of the South to ensure this happened Men with bayonets affixed to rifles pointed them at the citizenry to ensure you have no legal way of escaping this, and that if you resist it, you'll be sued into oblivion and likely imprisoned Such is why America is the way it is

@TheLatamGuy Why do they have better roads in Columbia than we do in the US???

it's getting harder to show up for work each day knowing there are unemployed men in Colombia with 3 girlfriends doing motorcycle wheelies at 2 am

@RoderichSpode @Cernovich @Oilfield_Rando You’re right. Definitely more than a few pockets of wealth spread around Maine.

@LexGross_man @Cernovich @Oilfield_Rando York and Cumberland counties are very wealthy

Maine is a land of unparalleled beauty. In summer, it exceeds California. Last trip, I saw Haitians smoking weed, Kratom shops, and growing despair. Rather than run on a successful record of helping the state, the focus will be on a stupid tattoo. Not a good sign.