Mike Gates

Sort of a profoundly pessimistic paper. Basically, everyone gets sorted into what they’re gonna do early in life, and this is in fact completely correct and accurate, if you were going to be successful you’d’ve shown promise earlier.

Once you actually go outside and talk to normal people, you’ll realize that none of this Twitter shit is real at all

Peak europoor is having to dry our clothes like this in my living room

I notice an interesting parallel in how a not-insignificant fraction of men are channeling their sexual energy primarily into pornography and how some women are channeling their sexual energy into romantasy / "faerie smut" etc. When you think about the types of men who women are sexually fantasizing about, I am struck by the fact that they are the type of men we used to more reliably create and are now somewhat of an endangered species. Things that women think are hot: physical fitness, confidence, directness, intelligence, perceptiveness, power, and a strong energetic frame that gives them something solid (big and distinct from themself) to play with. Women want to be understood, chosen, made to feel powerful in their desirability, chased, and shown (not told!!!) that they are worth the effort. And all of these are things that, almost overwhelmingly, are NOT fixed traits but rather traits you can build and grow into. So I wonder if a lot of men who are unhappy about their romantic life would benefit from hearing a message like, "You are only 6 months of consistent work in the gym away and some attitude changes from becoming the kind of man women desire. If you show up, do the work, eat clean, start dressing stylishly and grooming yourself well, the entire world will open up for you because the feminine collective consciousness WANTS you to be that man." This requires unlearning the mainstream cultural message that a man is supposed to be energetically small and conformist. But once you unlearn the message, it's gone forever and you're operating on a higher plane of truth and reality. There's something tragic and defeatist to me about people who withdraw from their sexual desires and the pursuit of love and connection because of a fixed mindset around insecurity (and I feel extremely well-qualified to speak about this with empathy and deep understanding as I used to be an overweight, unattractive, insecure alcoholic. I have lived that experience). You really can change how you show up in the world, how you feel about yourself and your desires, and how you think about other people and their desires. But it doesn't happen automatically, it requires effort and intention. At the end of the day, sexual energy is extremely powerful and spiritually important. If you suppress it, you are suppressing your own soul, your drive, your creativity... it has serious ripple effects affecting how you show up and move through the universe. And I see it as a matter of both collective *and* individual life-and-death to bring masculine and feminine sexual desire back into alignment and away from these diversionary forms of gratification without meaning.

Francis Fukuyama is a fucking genius and a prophet.

My favorite James Baldwin line: "There is a reason, after all, that some people wish to colonize the moon, and others dance before it as an ancient friend."