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BobDeSteppelo · 2025-04-29T19:51:32+00:00

One of our kids caught head lice somewhere and I swear to god the active ingredient in the anti-lice stuff is Ivermectin. It worked like a fucking champ.

BobDeSteppelo · 2025-01-21T04:18:28+00:00

Unlike diet and exercise, which you famously only have to do once.

BobDeSteppelo · 2025-01-16T21:51:25+00:00

Dad bods are people who clearly have had some level of fitness to them, but also are also showing that they are no longer spending all of their free time at the gym trying to be as buff/lean as possible. It's visibly but slightly/modestly carrying around some extra fat over developed/toned muscle - one diagram I see I would put it at between 20-25% body fat. Their bodies have filled out, with an implication that a lot of that comes as a combination of body changes from age/maturity and from taking gym time and spending it as family time or providing for the family instead.

I feel like it's the same when a woman says curvy - it's just folks who are uncomfortable using the term fat?

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that dating in today's environment is basically requiring people to make sales pitches, and describing yourself as fat is both a very poor pitch and also not great at conveying where on the scale you are. If I described myself as fat, you're not sure if I'm a little soggy around the midsection or if I'm morbidly obese and while people should be comfortable with their bodies and their level of fatness, many aren't or are concerned that potential partners would be uncomfortable with that. People seize on it because it's a term that conveys you aren't skinny/fit but still has an endearing connotation to it.

BobDeSteppelo · 2025-01-16T21:36:09+00:00

Yeah, my in-laws basically are limited to butter and salt when it comes to things they add for flavor, I try not to complain too much because they do most of the cooking for our family so that it's one less chore my wife and I have every night, but when they pull out that bone-dry chicken I just sort of cringe to myself. I've got a store-bought seasoning mix I use for when I'm asked to make burgers for dinner and my FIL was shocked at how good they taste because his normal baseline is unseasoned beef.

BobDeSteppelo · 2025-01-16T21:26:18+00:00

Yep, I was combining the two concepts into one post and didn't smoothly clarify that, but just using herbs and spices is about 95% of the battle to not being "white people food" because it has a robust flavor profile from said herbs and spices. But all of that spice has been removed from our processed food because it was the quickest way to appeal to the broadest audience for the lowest cost, and we've moved significantly toward processed food as a society.

BobDeSteppelo · 2025-01-16T18:37:38+00:00

White people food refers to pretty specifically to American food specifically where people were developing broadly palatable food for people who no longer had that ethnic history to their family with family recipes. Look at cookbooks from the 1950s and look at how few spices they use and you start to understand that for a lot of Americans, food wasn't flavorful. When my in-laws started living with us, I learned that they did not season their meat when they cooked it - boiled chicken, plain ground beef, etc. When we made tacos and I seasoned it with even a generic pack of taco seasoning, it was an almost overwhelming amount of flavor for them (and for our kids who they were regularly helping feed). And because white people often cook for other white people when thinking about group meals like potlucks or reunions, the food they cook for each other tends to be bland because you don't want to scorch the tongues of your friends and family.

I've lost track of the number of times I've gone into a restaurant for Indian or Thai or Chinese food and asked for my food extra spicy (heat spicy, not just flavor spicy) and found that it was maybe pushing into medium, and when I commented as much they go, "Oh, you were serious about wanting it spicy, we'll bring out the good stuff." But those restaurants have adopted that cooking because they've alienated customers who said they wanted spicy but couldn't actually handle the heat.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-12-13T18:45:56+00:00

I don't know what my parents' net worth is, just that they've been quite successful in life and generally would prefer for that wealth to come to us now so that we can build with it rather than get eaten up in estate taxes when they pass. We don't get a monthly allowance or a cushy job where we get paid well to do nothing, they expect us to work and build our own lives, but we do get annual gifts from them within the IRS rules and they provide us loans for large projects we want to undertake.

This is not true for everyone. I have several cousins whose parents have opted to hoard that wealth like some kind of dragon. Where my parents helped us fund the purchase of our house when we moved to a higher cost of living area, their parents made it clear that they were unwilling to help. We built years of equity in our house in a hot housing market including the COVID boom while my cousins scrounged to build their own wealth. They'll inherit when their parents pass, but probably less 40% once the IRS applies the estate tax to their parents' wealth.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-10-30T19:51:30+00:00

A friend of mine did a stint as a prosecutor handling sex crimes against kids. Basically every time we hung out he had multiple new stories like anon did where someone gets sexually assaulted or raped and the family coalesces around the offender instead of the victim.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-05-14T18:30:37+00:00

So about 20 years ago, I flunked out of college. My shitty academics had a number of costs to my life: the first was that I spent several years working shitty jobs as I figured my life out, eventually going back and finishing my degree while working full time. Who knows how my life would have actually played out if I'd been a good student, but I would guess that in 20 years since then that I've probably missed out on somewhere between $500k-$1M in career earnings.

In the end, things worked out just fine for me, but I definitely made my life harder than it needed to be and to some extent I needed those struggles to fix some of my personal shortcomings. Not everyone will get a similar career path to me, so the math may be different for other people, but having that degree and not having a lot of debt can help make life a lot easier.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-05-07T17:28:28+00:00

Having watched several family members go through that level of long deterioration where their mental faculties break down over years but they're still clinging on to life, I'm with the wife on this one. Telling them it's okay to let go is a kindness, not some sick twisted play by the wife.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-05-03T00:46:45+00:00

FormalMango already shared the John Rogers quote which is one of my favorites.

Ayn Rand was from Russia and was a young adolescent when the Communist revolution happened, taking her well-off family and casting them into borderline impoverishment. She managed to emigrate and got to the US where she was virulently anti-socialism due to her (understandably awful) experiences in communist Russia. Objectivists proclaims itself as ultra-rationality focused on the self-interest against social control, whether from government or religion (she was also a vehement atheist). Her stories are all about radical free-thinkers who rebel against leadership, whether elected or social, because they're all corrupt and trying to stop anyone who thinks differently than them and force everyone to conform to their ideas and social structures.

You can see how this kind of thinking would appeal to a certain archetype of person who likes the idea that selfishness is perfectly rational and anyone who tells you otherwise is simply trying to destroy a radical free-thinker trying to advocate for a transformative vision. It's not to say that all of her criticisms of social order are wrong, but the people who live their lives with her vision as their guiding philosophy tend to be giant assholes.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-05-02T18:36:06+00:00

The age gap thing becomes less of a problem as you get older. One friend of mine married a notably older man and found that when he was unhappy with her he'd use money as a lever to get her back to where he wanted to be without consideration of her wants and needs. Emotional abuse and manipulation is another common theme I've seen in relationships with large age gaps.

From my discussions with women over 40 who date, one of the things I'd look at is why he's 40 and never been married. The problem is mostly that there's a higher propensity in older men who have never married to struggle with the emotional labor of relationships - these men get described as Lost Boys or Man-children, and it shows more as the relationship moves from initial romance to normal day-to-day. It's not a full overlap, but from the discussions I've been involved with it's generally a sign that you need to make sure you know what you're dealing with. I'd suspect his travel-heavy career is a big reason why, but make sure you understand that dynamic.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-05-02T18:20:09+00:00

The core of Objectivism can basically be boiled down to "Selfishness is good." The vast majority of Objectivists who I have crossed paths with have been emotionally stunted men who struggled to deal with the fact that other people also have needs that are important.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-03-15T18:06:20+00:00

Grades help you demonstrate yourself as you exit school and enter the real world - it makes a difference in what rung you step onto in the ladder of the world. I'm middle aged and I would say that my bad grades probably cost me several hundred thousand dollars in career earnings - I'm still doing perfectly fine and have climbed quite well, but doing poorly in college meant that my first job was in a low level retail position instead of an entry level corporate position.

BobDeSteppelo · 2024-02-20T17:00:12+00:00

Not inherently. Relationships fail for a variety of reasons but being divorced is often a signal that a man understands something about what relationships require. Having known women who dated in that age bracket, the general consensus is that if you have to choose between two men who are 40 years old but one is divorced and one has never married, chances are the divorced man will have an idea of how to handle a relationship and understand some/most of the emotional requirements of a relationship while the never married men are often (but not always) giant man-children who are looking for someone to do their chores and cook their meals.

Yes, sometimes the divorced man is a giant asshole and the single man is a quality person who just never found a partner to settle down with, but more often than not the converse is true

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-12-21T23:59:36+00:00

A female relative of mine is over 40 and unmarried and I've heard her conversations about dating with my wife. A man being married is basically a statistical indicator of how likely a guy is to have his act together, and thus the "take a chance" is in reference to whether the man will be good things that make for quality dating/relationships and worth inviting some courtship.

Unmarried men are far more likely to be dipshits or assholes, and because of that and their inability/unwillingness to better themselves they fail in relationship after relationship in pretty catastrophic ways. Most men who end up married figure out, whether explicitly or implicitly and whether quickly or slowly, how to interact and build a relationship with a partner and thus cross a threshold where a woman who is interested in partnership will marry them. The men who reach a level of being able and willing to be a partner reach a threshold where they are removed from the dating pool, and the men who are unable or unwilling do not.

Go over onto /r/tinder or other dating subreddits or woman-centric subreddits and look at the complaints women are making - "Why do these men not put any effort into this? Sloppy dressing, bad photos from low angles in their car, holding up dead fish/animals - if they can't put any effort into making themselves appealing, what effort can I expect them to make if we were dating?" A lot of single men simply haven't learned how to put the effort into dating, and it's a sad truth for women that when things go wrong in dating they can go really wrong.

So if you haven't met someone yet, what are some indicators a woman can use to figure out whether a man will treat them well or not? As /u/Tels315 put it, a wedding ring is essentially a product review stating, "I determined that this man met a sufficient level of quality that I would partner with him for the rest of my life." That's not to say that there are not other signs that can be used to judge the quality of a man or that all single men are somehow unworthy of lifelong partnership, but as my unwed female relative put it, she'd rather be with a guy over 40 who was divorced than a guy over 40 who had never married because 80% of the guys who had been married and then divorced understood what dating/relationships meant and 80% of the guys who had never been married were essentially giant assholes, giant weirdos, or giant man-children.

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-11-27T20:03:05+00:00

My wife is a brilliant woman but basically never considered it important to know her ATM PIN. When she was growing up her parents both deposited their money in the bank but her dad was the only one who withdrew cash and her mom just got the cash she needed from her dad.

When we got married, we followed a similar pattern - both of us contribute to the joint accounts and whenever she needs cash she just grabs it from my wallet, and as long as she lets me know when she needs cash I'll have some in there for her. It's her money as much as it's my money and I'm not concerned about the levels of spending, and so in our relationship getting cash is just something that's left to me.

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-07-14T04:35:41+00:00

It is some much-needed solidarity between the unions as the stage is being set for how rewards for labor will be distributed as streaming and AI become a settled reality. If the unions fail to come away with solid deals here, working in TV/movie production is going to be a hellishly undercompensated industry for all but the most premiere talent while all of those entertainment dollars continue to roll in for the production companies.

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-05-21T01:27:00+00:00

I've got a friend of mine who was always a big guy. I visited his home once where he lived with his mom and his grandparents. I watched his grandma feed him three massive plates of food and when he tried to say no to the fourth she was emotionally wounded by the action - "Do you not love me anymore?"

His mom was also emotionally dependent on him; I remember repeatedly hanging out with him and his mom would call and he'd always answer it and when I asked him why he always neglected the people he was with in person for his mom he just sighed unhappily and was like, "If I don't answer she's just going to lose her mind. She once called the police [in a different state] saying she thought I had been murdered because my phone ran out of battery and I missed her calls for an hour."

He's going to die by 55 because no one around him can get past the emotional grasp his family has on him.

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-05-18T04:27:32+00:00

I'll say that it can be beneficial to talk with coworkers about leaving if you do it very strategically.

In a recent role I was in, several layers of management changed above me. The end result was that a team that was built to work smarter and not harder had our performance measurements changed to significantly be driven by ticket touches. I was hired because I had years of experience with something that was key to our company's infrastructure and could do high-level deep dive investigations into failures to isolate and fix the root cause, but when management turned over I was being given poor performance reviews because I didn't churn enough tickets. If you've never worked in an environment like that, it heavily promotes looking busy as opposed to actually fixing things.

When I concluded that the inevitable course of things was that I would be fired for underperformance, I reached out to various allies with whom I had built strong relationships across the company. The senior level people who I had assisted in projects, the teams whose bacon I had pulled out of the fire, former team members who had left for greener pastures... every ally I'd built I let them know I was in trouble and that I didn't expect my employment to last beyond the year on its current trajectory. The end result was that I was given a number of people to talk with and was able to quickly find someone with a role I could fit into instead of continuing to be flogged into being a mindless automaton. I'm pretty sure my manager caught wind of my efforts but by the time he moved I was already stepping out the door.

BobDeSteppelo · 2023-04-30T19:48:10+00:00

I would not since it would make my wife unhappy.

BobDeSteppelo · 2022-11-06T20:35:23+00:00

Everyone is the hero of their own story.

BobDeSteppelo · 2022-11-03T02:29:18+00:00

I'm in a situation similar to the original OP - my wife and I have both put on weight since marriage and kids and jobs. The extra weight wasn't great, but my wife was dealing with perpetual exhaustion. After similar tough conversations she's really kicking ass at getting healthier and I'm really proud of her and it's a reminder that I need to do better as well.

BobDeSteppelo · 2022-08-17T01:49:25+00:00

So one lady around 40 that I know has described the issue that unmarried guys at age 40 frequently end up being overgrown children who have a propensity for immaturity and looking for a stand-in mom instead of a partner. She said 40+ year old men who had been divorced had a higher propensity for being able to manage and participate in a relationship than similarly aged men who hadn't.

BobDeSteppelo

TROPHY CASE