Michael569

I wrote a whole response about Benjamin Graham's - Intelligent Investor being quite a foundational book for holistic understanding of investment but then the site crashed. Check that one out, you may find it practical

thanks! I'm not aware of OP violating any rules in that chat but if you have any evidence we might have missed pls send me a message and I'll investigate.

@numbersinarow there is no need for any of that. State your opinion without offending the original poster . .

as usual, I don't follow This is a great comment and there is something to it. I was reflecting on this topic a bit deeper over weekend (because why not, right). I suppose it also depends on where we are looking. Say, we are talking 50 AD around the time when Britannia was invaded. Some civilisations like Parthia were already significantly advanced yet many would have been still fairly underdeveloped compared to the might of Rome. I don't know about purpose , the way we see it today, as something that is desirable and worth following. Ina way you have to be a bit fortunate in the first place to even think about something as your life purpose today. This forum can be a bit of an echo chamber but its not a common thing today for people to even think about something as life purpose or passion. Back then even more so. People were just doing their best to survive. I'd say, life was definitely less distracted back then but people still had things that worried them: large cities were collecting taxes which people had to pay, you had to pay rent just like today, cooking daily meals, bringing up kids, dealing with sicknesses, attending religious ceremonies, the hassle and bussle of daily life. People still needed to have jobs alebeit jobs were different, mostly manual labour but people still had to earn money. Maybe if you joined the legions as a young man, the life became simpler as your whole life revolved around the army pretty much but then you had the risk of death in battle, disease or disabling injury. Not to mention army life was brutal, constant practice drills, exposure to elements, lack of food, lack of money, you had to fund the purchase of your equipment, had to serve 25 years to be given a land to retire etc. We often associate heroism and stoicism with Rome and strong values of advanced society but true is many people still lived in poverty, hardship, squalor and disease. Even in Rome itself, the amount of murder, rape and filth that was happening in back alleys on a daily basis must have been overwhelming. There was a reason the urban cohorts were patrolling the streets at night with torches and full body armour. There was also a reason armies were generally prevented from bringing weapons inside, even the roman legions because they were untrustful and there were histories of civil wars in Rome when armies turned against eachother. Rich folk used armed guard to move around the city. People were tougher because they had to be. Nowadays we are not because we don't have to be. You don't need to be strong today to survive and life has got safe and comfortable. Its not all bad but I agree that being too weak and complacent can lead to becoming sick and ageing prematurely. So there is still much we can learn from them, lessons to apply but a lot of it is being romanticized today. I'm glad I didn't live in that part of human history although I am very fascinated by it and lucky to live in country that preserved tons of roman sites and history, last month I bought a roman coin in the antique shop but for all I know it might be fake

Evidently there is a popular TickToc , girls asking their boyfriends this question and getting surprisingly positive answers like "3 times a day", "5 times a day". I always though I was weird for being fascinated by this part of human history, visiting roman sites, reading books from 1960s about Punic Wars, invasion of Britania etc... but maybe its not that weird after all? What are your "Roman Empires" that you think all the time that would weird others out?

The website is pretty phone compatible as it is, dunno how much benefit would there be in investing in an app?

Definitely not a waste of time. I've bought bunch of high school text books on chemistry and biology and been relearning some things I studied when I was at school. Back then I was completely uninterested in any of it but now I find use in all that knowledge. I think its also a way to potentially discovery your passion later in life. If you are curious about life, you'll be interested in all of it: history, geography, philosophy, maths, science, botany etc Not sure about Khan's academy approach tho. You'll get content catered by someone else. I think I'd instead pick a book about subject that interests me or even pick specific articles/journals about subtopic of interest like mineral studies, history of Napoleonic wars etc rather than studying the entire field. ideally if it is aligned with your life purpose work since we all have limited amount of time.

Ancient Greece and Macedonia are still on my to-read list @NewKidOnTheBlock haha, good argument! Agreed That's a pretty fascinating topic to think about. Isn't Ichthyosaurs the one that was discovered in Dorset, UK recently that was also on BBC? There is a museum here called Etches Collection and I think they have quite a few fossilised bodyparts and recently discovered a massive one. Or was that something else? https://www.theetchescollection.org/ I took this pic in the museum last year

Sorry for commenting on your private journal, tell me off and I'll delete this I used to be sceptical about the whole nofap thing but maybe the key is in moderation rather than complete abstinence? I think obsessive masturbation is probably pretty damaging both mentally and physiologically, can lead to premature ejaculation problem and poor erections if/once a man has an intimate partner, not to mention frying our dopaminergic and serotonergic circuits too often. But maybe a moderate amount of it sorta keeps you balanced? Male biology is quite hardwired towards regular sexual arousal so I don't know if complete abstinence is even that great long term. Maybe the trick could be to approach it mindfully and ...well, with tact and dignity? I mean like, making time and space for it, having privacy, knowing you won't be jumped on by a parent /. sibling and all of that rather than obsessively masturbating to a phone screen 5 times a day that lot of guys do. So if then one extreme is obsessive masturbation, the other extreme is a nofap and your role (until you have an intimate partner) is to use it almost like a tool for mental regulation? Dunno, I'm just speculating.

finally an outside of box thinker

In respect of her privacy we won't delve into any of that but it may not be entirely be her fault, I agree. But we can't have this level of duplicity around here tho. There is a strict one account per member policy for everyone.

She has been a member of the forum on and off for over 8 years, perhaps more. We've identified no less than 12-15 associated accounts. There might be more. Leo has identified a new, more reliable way to catch duplicate accounts. We suspected duplicity with Candle for a while but the clear evidence was missing.

Awesome, welcome to the team !

@RendHeaven that's mad and damn impressive!

@RendHeaven you freak! How many pull-ups can you do 😲

I hear you brother...my wife and I are looking for a property to buy in 2025 and its mad !!! And I'm living 2.5 hours away from London by train. London is pretty much unaffordable. Its important you don't take a hasty decision but carefully evaluate pros and cons. If your finances are stable maybe you could take that leap of faith. I wouldn't want to tell you what to do Maybe you need to reflect on whether you actually want to settle (buy a property) or would actually have more freedom from renting. There is no harm in renting if you value flexibility. I wanna have a kid within next 16 months so I'm looking for a bit of permanence for the time being but you should evaluate if that's the right thing for you to do. Some people just drop all their stuff into a storage unit, drop their rent and go backpack. It is a bit brave but as long as you have enough money you're fine. When you come back you can crash in airbnb while you figure out your next move. I think you'd benefit from some sort of journalling or reflecting. Understand what you value and what you want from life. Some things are difficult to just "think about", our minds aren't great at that, when we put things down on a paper, deeper regions of the cortex get deployed and we can visualise better. I've gone through a lot of these things myself so some of it is prior experience. I do work with people but but its more health & nutriiton oriented. This type of coaching, I'm not particularly qualified in. There are guys around here who are I believe.

If you have enough money to buy a house at your age , you're doing better than most people. I'm 34 and couldn't afford to buy a house without mortgaging my ass for 25-30 years. Don't discredit things you have going for you just because you're not doing something your friends are doing. I've known people who escaped with travel for years and came back home broke and lost. Hence why I said it needs to be strategic. When you talk about weak ego, it sounds almost like you're saying "I have low self confidence" which is something that can be worked on. With the travel, some companies allow you to take a sabbatical for up to 12 months. That would be an option. Some people completely resign their jobs if they have no other choice. Depends on what feels right. Maybe you need to buy that house first. But from what you are saying, it sounds like some temporary change of scenery would do you good. Of course there are other things that potentially come into play here such as your health, physical activity, socialisation, hobbies, skills you're developing. I think there are a few guys around here who do a form of coaching so maybe you could work with someone on that? There's just too many variables in play here and I feel having someone who would methodically help you look at everything would help you.

I don't mean to be dismissive but such perspective is completely stripped of hundreds of nuance and frankly a bit naive. I see profound influence of Weston Price in your suggestions, a movement which, albeit interesting and provoking, has, for many reasons, been a target of criticism for many years. Your missing the complex intricate relationship between diet and one's ethics, culture, background, traditions, beliefs, resources, availability, geographical allocation, individual health conditions, likes, dislikes...just a top of the iceberg really. Each of those could be categorically aligned or misaligned to the person you have in front of you. Not to mention missing out things like the impact of evidence into all of these categories. Some people should not be eating more red meat. Some can't drink raw milk for risks of infection or lack of availability, some don't have access to high quality fruits, some have ethical consideration with honey, some dislike seafood, some will have rapid anaphylaxis at the contact with any seafood derived antigen, some can't have so much protein in diet, some have cultural aversion to eating red meat, there are people who turn into a diarrhoea machine at the contact with fibre ... i mean what if your client is an ethical vegan who dislikes cucumbers and carrots? will you dump him/her? .. How're you gonna deal with all that if such narratives don't fit the cookie cutter model you've described. I understand your intent and as a health professional myself i agree with your values and intentions but there are fine details you keep ignoring hence the feedback you've been receiving from different members of the forum

The problem is that he has probably done all of this already which is why he is steadfast ignoring all new advice. I don't know which video it was but he was explaining the amount of weird ass shit he tried and made no difference. I honestly doubt nutrition is the fix to Leo at this point and I'm saying that as someone who has vested interest in wanting nutrition to be fix to people's problems. Like @undeather we've seen it over and over. The amount of keto, carnivore, vegan and raw foodies we've had opening these sorts of threads since 2016 when I first joined is quite overwhelming. You name it, its been around suggested to Leo. Everything from coffee enemas to eating dirt to (pick your food) juices, cleanses and detoxes. All been and gone. Maybe we should just drop trying to cure Leo. I love the man, he changed my life but I wouldn't push anymor of my agenda on him.

@RawJudah you make a good point. What you don't want is to just be running away from your problems. Travel can expand your horizons, stimulate creativity, imagination and help you see your reality from new dimensions. Say if you live in California and get bored a lot then seeing what reality is like for men of your age in Sumatra or Burma may help you appreciate what you have and in a way encourage you to use your resources towards a creative endeavour (just a random example) At the same time, you should reflect internally why you are feeling that your existence is mundane? are you lonely? are you lacking a meaning? have you been messing up with your reward circuits too much to a point that nothing is stimulating anymore? (drugs, video games, porn, reels etc) are you just bored because life got too easy (have lot of money you didn't need to work for, lacking general challenges etc) So there is two ways to looking at this and both need to be addressed separately. You don't wanna prevent yourself travelling just because at some point you have to come back. But you don't wanna just waste all your savings on travel that serves as escapism from existential issues you're not facing. Ideally you would use travel strategically Widen your perspective on life of your own and of others (humbling experience) connection with other people some hedonims (sex, party, alcohol, skinny dipping with bunch of drunk girls in Bali, get all the craziness out of your system) culture, history, education - seeing museums, historical sites, learning about each place helps, I find, understand your place in the universe. This is a bit hard to explain. getting to know yourself through the lense of your experience - like imagine spending a month learning Muay Thai in Koh Samui and the awesome journey that would be vs sitting on your phone scrolling reels at home. openign yourself up to new opportunities in life , different ways to generate income you may also realise you have to move out of your country etc. And as you do that you keep working on yourself, read, get more education, speak to people, try new ideas, acquire new skills. You don't stop all life because you are travelling. Travelling just becomes another thing you're doing for the time being. You don't go and piss away 6 months of your life just boozing and screwing girl in Thailand. There's gotta be a deeper meaning to it. Does that make sense?

Fair points, its been 14 years since I removed myself from the dating market so I appreciate the world might have changed somewhat. Still, what you describe sounds like a pretty undesirable type of a woman ...maybe I'm old fashioned

Moving to health section as it seems this has taken turn towards nutrition debate

You've probably seen too many reels with these dumb Slavic girls living in California expecting men to pay for everything . I come from Eastern Europe and this is by no means a rule. Like you said, its case dependant. Some girls want to split while others would never dream of even pulling up their wallet. But yeah, I'd expect that if its the first date and you're both having a good time , offering to pay up the bill, unless the cost is unreasonably high (a red flag if its the first date) then nothing wrong with footing the first bill Gotta read the situation and her non verbal cues as well. The older and more mature she is the more likely that she'll be okay with splitting (but even that's not a rule)

Hi, welcome to the forum! ( if that's , hopefully, your first account :)) I don't think there is a right answer to this question. It leads to whatever you want it to. There isn't A destination. There is a journey and your job as the protagonist of your own story is to make that journey ...(fill in the blanks) ..nice? suffering free? enjoyable? purposeful? it can be any of those things or none of them. Nobody has a manual for happy life although there are socially acceptable ways to life life and socially less acceptable ways. And we know (statistically) that fulfilling certain major steps is less likely to lead to mental disorders. Mostly what you wrote below. Those are things that usually constitute a "happy" life in the sort of traditional perspective and I'd agree with you that having all these things will make you feel more fulfilled, grounded and less likely to engage in antisocial behaviour. I'm somewhere halfway through that, having married recently and looking to purchase my first home and it gives me incredible amount of personal fulfillment to be able to do those things. If I am one day blessed with a child to come into the mix, I don't think there is anything else I'll want from that traditional model anymore. But you could say it goes beyond that. Once you fulfill all those things above, your soul will crave more. You need something to create a sense of passion and purpose. I really do believe that not having that severely weakens your core, especially if you are a man. And this one, I find, is much harder to achieve than finding a girl, buying a house and getting married. And the less of your soul you are willing to sacrifice in some sort of pursuit of shady quick scheme but you stick to something of high integrity, the greater the struggle will be. The more you stand your ground and follow what you are truly passionate about, the fewer people will understand you, fewer will be able to help you and fewer will be there to celebrate success. They'll tell you how to do it quicker, better and how to make more money off it but you'll reject all that because deep down you knows its not your way. Its their way and when you look at their life, you see that their way never worked. And you could say "wow but that sounds like so much suffering". But then imaging somebody came to you and said, "Dude, I heard you want to be a wildlife photographer since you were little? Sounds like you're really passionate about it. Well, here is a business in a box. All you have to do is open the box and you'll have it all done for you. All accounting, marketing, research, taken care for you. All you have to do now is sit and enjoy the fruits" - do you think you'd say "hell yeah where do I sign up?" Having your passion taken away like that would be a hell, a dream taken away from you because you didn't walk the thorny road. You didn't experience the struggle of needing to figure out how it work, the failure over and over and over again. Generating loss year after year...until one day you didn't. You didn't spend all those nights sitting on the side of your bed thinking "am I insane for thinking this could ever work?" while looking at your wife there sleeping and around at the house you bought but which you are barely paying off each month. But deep down, in some masochistic way, you welcome the struggle and the hardship. You love having something to fight for. Each day you get a tiny bit better at whatever it is you are doing. It is what Jordan Peterson might call "wrestling with god". And then one day you'll achieve that success, whatever it means. Finally your business generates a solid revenue for 12 consecutive months. Or you sell or you write that book and publish it. And at some point you come to the end of that road again and realise there is still something missing and you're still feeling hollow. You'll look beyond the horizon and you may start seeing that the next step is actually that there is no next step. You have to transcend it all and realise none of it has meaning and that meaning is completely arbitrary and that there isn't any meaning to anything. But you couldn't have come to this place without first realizing the full path. You had to finish school, get married, raise kids, drive them to school, build the business that aligns with your deepest desire and then one day letting it all go. And all those things you described are the struggles and hardships of life that help you on the path. Each sickness teaches you a lesson. A death of a friend helps you appreciate the finite nature of life, the birth of a child (they say) strips away all the nonsense you were pursuing prior to that, finding the right girl and marrying her finally turns off that girl radar and helps you relax your mind and focusing on what's more important than chasing pussy. And following your passion through the never-ending series of failure and struggles protects you from depression and spiritual death. And at the end of your life when you look back to the faces of those few people who stood with you till the end you won't have a single regret, Because although your life was filled with struggle and hardship, you knew all those battles were what gave your life meaning. And you could say "I had a happy life".

If you have enough savings, then backpacking for 6 months could be the best thing you'll ever do and one of the fondest memories you'll cherish once you are older, have kids or no longer have that opportunity. Yes, you should absolutely travel. The experience can't be described because it isn't jist seeing cities and taking pics for Instagram. It changes you. But you have to see it to believe it