Life updates + how to be pretty

Hi, I recently got an email from a new reader of this blog and so I decided to post an update.

I started a PhD

Originally I started out in math, then found I have a weird affinity for calculus/analysis.

And since physics is calculus (though calculus is not physics), it automatically lead to a weird obsession with classical mechanics. So it follows that I do not have a lick of interest in theoretical physics, which ironically makes me special since all smart people love quantum.

I still cannot figure out why I don’t care about quantum mechanics. I have all the traits of somebody that gets into it. It may be because quantum doesn’t have a direct link to money (the best you can do is be a researcher at IBM or something which is already unreasonably competitive for a job that doesn’t necessarily earn more than being a normal consultant at eg Accenture). Calculus is money and money is life.

My new special interest is looksmaxxing

To be precise, it’s skincare, healthy eating, and clothes.

My obsession started by watching a random video on a Victoria’s Secret model’s beauty routine. It occurred to me that it is all a routine. It is something she does everyday over the course of years and possibly decades — it is a system with inputs and outputs, to enhance the gifts of her superior genetics.

And the ROI for having better looks is almost off the charts.

Better looks means better treatment, less scrutiny, more money, and more fun.

And optimizing a system is basically my special interest, so it follows that optimizing my looks would become a special interest too. It was true.

I don’t know if I’ll stick around long enough to detail my beauty regimen, so I will lay out the principles:

• Optimize your skincare routine by watching dermatologist content on YT
• Learn about plastic surgery and what it’s trying to do, then get the look with makeup
• Study classical art to learn facial anatomy for makeup (light and shadows)

• Become a freak of eating well. Health isn’t necessarily beauty and beauty isn’t necessarily health, but health is the closest thing to a elixir of life
• Eating well magically reduces appetite
• Anti aging everything
• Sunscreen and stay out of the sun
• Make drugstore skincare available in your country into your special interest. Keep the baseline cheap and sustainable so you can invest into a select few specialty items when necessary
• retinol and vitamin C (but don’t mix the two)
• Exercise. Do whatever feels good and effortless to you. It’s also the only known method to increase IQ

Clothes

And here are the principles for clothes

• Dress for your Kibbe body type (Google it)
• Dress for the occasion and conventional attractiveness

This is pretty much it.

Fuck personal taste and fuck uniqueness. I dress to objectively look good to whoever pays my bills. Most people like feminine and conservative, and this style has the least number of downsides, plus it happened to be the cheapest to maintain where I live. So this is what I wear.

Uniqueness is overrated. To be unique, you wear what is either not currently trending, or is conventionally ugly, and that is all it is, logically speaking.

Conventional clothes are conventional because they are beautiful or at least non ugly to a large percentage of the population. Therefore if something is ugly, it’s likely to be non conventional. The quick way to dressing uniquely is to dress ugly.

Also, simply dressing against the grain makes you technically unique.

Where I used to live, long skirts and muted pastels were trending. So if I wore short skirts and bright colors, I was by definition unique. Or if I wore a Barnie Halloween costume everyday, that is unique, due to its conventional ugliness. Ironically, being unique is not special.

Personal taste does not work for me, because if I wore what pleases me, I would wear pajamas everywhere.

So that’s why I go by conventional attractiveness, and as a reward, receive the extra benefits it bestows.

I am against casual clothing

Casual clothes are dumb. It’s because it makes you look sloppy and stupid. Why wear a tshirt when you can spend almost the same amount of time to put on a shirt or blouse? Why put on jeans when you can spend the same amount of effort to put on a pencil skirt or nicer pair of pants?

Proper casual clothes are expensive too — a “nice” designer tshirt can be more expensive than a normal work shirt, yet still look objectively sloppy and stupid like a Walmart one. Trying very hard to make casual clothes look good is idiotic — for the extra cost and effort, you only look worse than someone wearing a suit.

You can only wear one outfit at a time, and you can only do so much to improve your lot in life. Your clothes is a precious slot you have almost full control over.

Then why waste it on something stupid?