The Based Department seems to have a couple new faces. Right on!

I usually complain about going to the gym in the cold, but I honestly didn't even feel it so much thanks to the small investment I made into getting some baselayer clothing.

I think people neglect the importance of proper equipment in building disciplines. Just having really solid basics (a good pair of shoes, a nice jacket, a good set of paint brushes or whatever) can really help you making the building of a habit easier. Not to say that special gear or equipment is needed exactly, but having good basics probably is a big help

Things have been equally good and bad for me this week.

The good

• It's finals week and I'm likely going to get straight A's. Returning to a Community College to fix my GPA to get my master's has been a difficult but worthwhile journey.
• Been pirating a lot of computer programming to help get my interview/programming skills up. Need to find a new job.
• Been working out out five to six times a week. I really want to be shredded for once in my life, My plan is to be objectively hot by this time next year
• Been reading. Both real-ass books like bell hook's "Will to Change" and nerd-ass books like Stephen King's "IT".
• Been gaming. Having a great time with Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and some smaller 2D indie games off itch.io

The bad

• My social circle seems to be retracting, not hearing back from people
• The cold of winter is coming and my loneliness is really flaring up.
• Still can't seem to met a solid group of people I can really plug into. Don't get me wrong having online weirdos in my computer box is cool, but I really want to develop a meaningful social life.
• Still unemployed
• Still haven't found a solid framework for consistency regarding my game development efforts. I'll do an hour here an hour there. Even a big burst out of the blue, but I don't have the sort of every day discipline to show up for this hobby.

Sphinx cats are so cool. I think they are really beautiful animals.

The thing I find most upsetting as a cisgendered heterosexual male, is that “manhood™©®” as a social and cultural concept is so disturbingly rigid and narrow that most males can't even do the performance of what is accepted as what “manhood™©®”. It's very frustrating that we are all meant to live up to an impossible artificial archetype. An archetype that never really existed and the values of which don't benefit the man nor the society in which the man lives in. It feels like I have been set up for failure my entire life. I cannot ever be the guy I think I'm supposed to be, nor am I ever capable of being the guy that some rhetorical “other” thinks I ought to be. It's a lose-lose situation for everyone.

Check out c/menby for more

Fraternal love is truly the strong bond. Luigi is his brother's keeper.

I hate that "Oligarch" has as special anti-Russian meaning when they are just describing America.

Fuckin' exactly.

It's shit like this that makes me understand that money is fake, stupid, and destructive. Medicine should have ZERO private influence. Health, physical therapy, healing in general, all that stuff should be a public good we all invest in and receive the benefits from. Doctors should work with patients and that should be it. Why the fuck is there a third party even in the room?

I didn't finish chapter 3 but I did read chapter 2. Chapter 2 is such a good chapter. In the same way I think Marx lays it all pretty flat in the "Communist Manifesto", I think bell hooks lays out the whole game of Patriarchy in clear and plain language. One thing I love about this book is that language both really beautiful but also just straightforward.

I also really appreciate this chapter's view on how violence is both a systemic thing but also a group thing. I mean that I like that hooks talks about how the violence happens in the home through physical violence of course but also through socialization. It really is a form of indoctrination we all are coerced into.

"Patriarchy promotes insanity" is so fuckin' real. Men's mental health is abysmal and Patriarchy does nothing to actually aid us. It creates the conditions of our anguish and woe. I think the social narrative that men need to dominate women is an acid that burns through the foundations of most men's mental health. It creates all of these weird unrealistic expectations that no one can live up to.

I also really love how bell hooks doesn't really let anyone off the hook saying that it's something we all play into, but she never says "women bad" or "men bad" but does rightly say "systems bad".

Learning at a very young age that Library style-Communism works through by sharing our toys, comics, CDs, and video games on regular basis.

This is exactly what Mutal aid is for, we are all hoping you can safely navigate these terrible times. I pray one day you and your people can live in peace.

Correct. I deleted the word "American" when I was trying to get the hyperlink working on accident.

Today's a new day I guess

That's the best part of this whole self-improvement thing, so long as you have a new day you can make progress. Keep at it LocalOaf, your they/them powers will help you on your journey. Stay encouraged friend

Good catch, I deleted that word when I was editing the post on my phone. My bad.

54% of American adults have a literacy below a 6th-grade level (20% are below 5th-grade level).

My big ones are sci-fi games on is Prey (2017), Deus Ex, Dead Space, and Alien: Dark Descent.

• My gut is vanishing, ab like shapes are becoming visible. I will become as it's my moral duty as a leftie dude
• Reading still strong. Starting Wheel of Time for the first time.
• Game Development going well. Have some basic 2D platformer functionality.
• Grinding leetcode because I need a job and sadly the stupid leetcode thing is a part of the hustle of finding a computer nerd job in 2024
• My circle of friends seems to be shrinking, not getting texts back from people. I don't know if that's good or bad, or it's on me or on them
• Getting back into playing games I love rather than playing games to pass the time.
• Did some worldbuilding for my "dream project". I created the some Sea gods that the pirates worship for favor or pray to avoid their wrath.
• Watched several game development behind-the-scenes and interviews on GDC from real indies to see what it's really like to make a project from zero
• Listened to an audiobook version of W.E.B. Du Bois "The Souls of Black Folk"

Hell yeah walking is the one of fundamental self improvement things that I think gets gravely overlooked. Moving those legs and getting some fresh air is critical to creating a better self great job!

I don't know what my malfunction is but reading this had reminded me of the deep lack of love I have in my life. I have geinune paternal love and fraternal love from my direct and extended family. I am deeply grateful and honored to have that. However, outside of the family bonds I don't think I have any real meaningful exchanges of love in my life.

I have friends but they are more like "katz I know" rather than "people I love and people I know love me as well". I haven't known the love of a woman ever I think in a romantic sense so I find reading a lot of this to be "abstract" in that I can't even conceptualize that. I gloss over mentions of being a partner/lover, not out of any sort disinterest but more so "it doesn't really apply to me" which fine, not even word is for every person at every time.

To be totally frank, it's really reminding me how isolated and alone I really am. Which is cool in the sense that it's worth highlighting these feelings that exist in me, and also that I too fall into the trap of "stoic masculinity™©®" in that I just thug it out. My life sucks, I'm not happy, I don't have love or really even access to it, but I gotta keep it pushin' or I will perish. Which sucks and this book is giving me a reexamination of those feelings that she directly mentions that men package up and push deep down within ourselves. So much of the stuff I felt/feel is not anything I can meaningfully share or express (or feel safe to do so) in the real world. It's really making see that I'm a really alienated from myself in like a bad way.

The part i find so interesting that as dudes we are taught both overtly, explicitly, and implicitly this sort of "stoic masculinity™©®". I think my Dad is a good guy, old-school but overall decent and upright. Never did he say "REAL MEN™©® don't cry" or anything like that. My uncles and older cousins were never on some "YOU GOTTA BE A REAL MAN™©®" shit either. However as I read this book I'm thinking that these messages exist in all sorts of seen and unseen ways in our childhoods and cultures. It's really fucked.

It's really just reminding me "Bro, you are deeply hurt and yearn for a thing you don't even know. Lmaooo this sucks dude, you are so fucked". I don't say that in jest at all. Just turning the pages (i got a copy from local library) I feel that sense of "oh shit, you're not not good my man, you not in a good place at all. You're not broken or whatever but you certainly wounded and you just have had the fortune and fortitude to keep it going. As you are is probably isn't how you ought to be"

It's an uncomfortable read for me for sure. Though it's uncomfortable I know it's a worthwhile read.