Twine Align

I'm an atom repairman, I'm supergluing two molecules together; Nuclear Fusion

Like a bull in a Duckstack shop

Today’s newsletter is the 100th Duckstack, ever¹. Thank you all for being with me.

Art: Blossom, by Mario Nevado

When we at The Duckstack use We, we use it in the royal sense, meaning I. When I at The Duckstack use We, I’m just talking about me, its just myself. Its certainly not you, unless you’re me, reading this. Statistically, you aren’t me, and never were, so its statistically a moot point. I’m the only We around here, no doubt about it. If in doubt though, just ask yourself: Am I me? If the answer is no, you aren’t. Immediate clarity. That’s The Duckstack Method. Knowing who’s We and who’s me (or you), you can’t function without it, but now we know, you know? Proceed accordingly.

What Makes Us Human?

Alright children time for a science lesson

Have you ever cut yourself²? The red stuff that comes out is called blood. But what is blood? Well, its mostly iron, right? which is a type of rock. So your blood which circulates throughout your body is rocks. In like manner, what are your bones? Well, they are milk. That's why your limbs can bend and have flexibility. Skin covers each and every one of us³, and is a sort of untanned leather, which holds your stuff in. Your mind is made out of brains. It “thinks” using something called gray matter, which is a special phase of matter, similar to how stuff can be objects, liquid, or gas, matter can be antimatter, organic matter, or gray matter, and gray matter is the only sentient matter we've ever been able to mine, even on asteroids. We're pretty sure thats what a soul is: Gray matter. Hang on I've got a couple more here… Let's see, teeth…. that's calcium, so that's milk again… Ah! Your hair is a thin kind of fur, which is made of the same stuff as your fingernails! Isn't that gross? Its called calcite, and its what caves are made out of. Don't interrupt me I'm almost done. So you can think of your hair and fingernails as sort of upside down stalactites. Unscientific? What are you talking about? Hey, you can’t cut me short, they need to know this stuff! I was just going to tell them about muscles! Hey wai-

Okay lets do it, Dating Issue.

I’ve solved the war of the sexes guys⁴

People aren't getting married, and people aren't staying married. I’ll forebear rehearsing the graphs and statistics and charts to you here, which I expect most of my readers are readily familiar with- instead I want to talk about what can be done about this; the collapse of dating relationships is something I'm very anxious about, and I'm going to try to distil years of research on this as sort of a primer, to lay out a basic framework for what each sex looks for from the other. I will break it into two sections, for men and women, who will need to approach the problem differently if they are going to have dating success. By necessity, I’ll have to skip a ton of the possible material I have on the subject- I am also running a wide ranging survey on dating, so there is a lot more to do, but I feel confident enough to give you this much, and I feel confident that this much will be helpful.

Dating Tips For Boys:

Girl “wants” tend to be easy to parse, but hard to satisfy.

By my count, men nowdays have less experience with women than any previous generation in history. You can see this in just about any graph you look at- exponential decline since the 70s. What this means is that you, an incel, have a catastrophic competitive advantage if you just go up and talk to her. Your peers are not doing this- “men don’t ask us out anymore⁵” is the #2 complaint women have about men. If you just ask tons of girls out you are likely to fail ,and embarrass yourself, a lot, of course. But girls like that. Eventually. There is no way to get good without failing, and what you are going to find is that with very few exceptions pretty much everyone who’s gotten married before you have succeeded through repeated, intelligent, failure. You might notice that a lot of your male peers who are more or less below you in intelligence and virtue succeed in getting married before you- How? It is because they didn’t know when to quit, so they ended up learning the rules much faster. It is a very simple mechanism, but smart guys (being less practiced at failure) rarely take advantage of it, and simply, tragically, have fewer opportunities to learn as a result.

Your comfort with risk is, as a man, your primary filter point against women. Women do not need more instability in their lives, they are not interested in an unstable man. I don’t think you need to have a high powered career making $600,000/year to attract women, but you do need to figure out how to be stable, because that’s one of the primary costs men impose in relationships⁶. You cannot fake being comfortable in your own skin, you will just have to practice, grinding your gears together until it clicks.

Unfortunately this is also true of having a job. Can’t really fake it, kind of important to getting married. But also important is job stability- I don’t think anyone can fault the economy but most women will naturally proxy your ability to hold a job for your ability to care about your family, and your dependability in general. Again, it doesn’t need to be particularly glamorous⁷, but you do have to look like a foundation that can be built upon, rather than a vacant swamp where she would have to do everything herself. She is already doing everything herself currently, being single. If you want to attract a girl you need to add something, y’know?

The other two things girls want from marriage are a man who provides drive, and a man they can look up to. Drive here is sort of a synonym for ambition, but more importantly one who can take some of the initiative load off of the woman. On a micro scale this means being able to supply a place to eat when she’s indecisive. On a macro scale this means taking a measure of ownership over her projects. Women don’t want to feel alone. As much as they might enjoy your interests, find them fascinating, or support you, you need to understand that women don’t really get a lot from these things, and if your dating profile is full of what I will charitably call personality you are probably just making yourself harder to parse for your prospects. Autism can come later, up front she needs to know that you can be normal.

Finally, you must be admirable. I don’t think this needs exposition- you know if you are admirable or not. But especially if you are intent on some sort of traditional, patriarchal marriage, you can’t expect girls to take the roles you’re asking for without some equivalent sacrifice. As my friend Bennett wrote in an early substack of his own:

if she’s going to surrender, it should be to someone worthy, who will take her somewhere worth going. It would be humiliating to do this for some pothead, some clown who just wants her to scrub his unrinsed dishes. There’s dignity (for men & women) in swearing fealty to a righteous King, but not a petty bureaucrat.

Girls love heroic men. Those men get idealized in stories, flattened and simplified, but few women would pass on a man they respect.

TLDR: Ask girls out more, never take moral shortcuts, become aggressively normal and at peace

For Girls:

Boy “wants” tend to be hard to parse, but easy to satisfy

When I talk to men, they express two main concerns to me regarding dating, marriage and women. Men tend to have lots of random thoughts and answers all over the place, but these two are fairly consistent.

First: Men are worried about divorce. Women initiate 80-90% of divorces, which you might interpret to mean its the man’s fault, but it also means that the man was wanting to work things out or keep trying. Justified or not, if a man’s calculus in dating is “I might be able to secure a girl for 5 years tops” he is going to view marriage itself as a degrading and expensive form of prostitution, and just use porn instead. To the men that are reading this: You should not view marriage this way, in fact it is really important you don’t pre-emptively poison new relationships with this kind of mindset. Instead, you need to learn to vet carefully so that you can trust your judgement- Even if the raw statistics are bad, you need to know that these things are not actually out of your control. Relationship breakdown isn’t random, its a wide spiral with landmarks you can learn to recognize and steer away from. To the women that are reading this: You will be able to attract men better if you can somehow signal your ability to remain loyal. Some practical ways to do this would be to demonstrate in front of your date your ability to be forgiving or merciful. Especially in a time when boys have less experience with girls than ever, feeling like he has some measure of real grace will be a massive relief.

The second major male concern is finances. More and more men are telling me that money is their primary reason for not getting married. This does not mean that girls should be fine with marrying deadbeats- You should want nice things, and you should motivate your man to work harder so you can have nice things, this is natural in any relationship. But if you demonstrate frugality by either planning cheap-to-free dates or being content with cheaper options, then you lower your effective cost and your upfront cost. Lowering this risk factor will greatly increase the man’s ability to act with confidence in your favor.

There is a tendency in both sexes to seek attributes that are attractive to their sex, but not necessarily to the opposite sex. For women, this often manifests as seeking achievements, credentials, and status, but it is extremely rare for a man to evaluate any woman on these criteria. So its good to have an understanding of what you bring to the table- Men already have other men to do projects with, to hang out with, and to get advice from. And I have seen it decently often that women see task-mastering as their contribution to the husband, but it is usually their own concerns and projects which they nag him towards. Not to say that these projects are unworthy, simply that they aren’t correlated with the husband’s happiness. Wives will likely have more success in gauging their relationship if they ask how good of a girlfriend they are, as most of the things men want do not change in marriage. I think a lot of girls get confused at what kind of flirting and attention he wants from a wife, but its just the same as for a girlfriend. Charm and adoration and sexuality and the like are the things he can’t just get from other guys.

There are a lot of tried-and-true methodologies for flirting that women used to pass down to each other through the ages, but don’t any more, I think because feminist doctrine teaches that trying to impress or submit to a man is fundamentally immoral and/or low status. And certainly there are ways this can be overbearing, or even emasculating if it comes across like you’re trying to “lead” him, but girls seeking marriage would still do well to practice some basic flirting techniques. Most of these come down to extremely controlled shyness, confident allowances, or being a good sport about male libido⁸. Men almost universally enjoy being manipulated, as long as they suspect you actually think they’re heroic/appreciative for it. Its a lot more pleasant to be motivated with sugar than vinegar, basically- and you will find that often men appreciate being given motivation, sexual or otherwise.

In my research, I’ve found male wants out of marriage have a much higher variance than women’s in expressing what they want out of marriage, and a lot of guys have not really thought about it that much, and so are unable to identify well when “something is wrong”. I will paint some broad strokes, however.

Respect: Men want to feel respected, even when they haven’t (totally) earned it. I have seen many marriages struggle gravely when the man felt he wasn’t respected, and it almost always became a self fulfilling prophesy on the woman’s part, because it led to the man stopping trying altogether. Men may express a desire for respect in only narrow dimensions of their life- One man may want his opinions respected, another may be more hierarchically minded and feel respected when seeing compliance to rules he set, another might be materialistic and want some space to be untouched, and another may simply want verbal affirmation. But either way, if you don’t respect him, he will know.

Enthusiasm: One of the most universally attractive female attributes is enthusiasm. Female enthusiasm is often the dividing line between “good sex”. Enthusiasm towards things he cares about will cause him to seek you. Enthusiasm towards herself signals self care, low maintenance, and that he will not have to “carry” your interest (many women are very hard to converse with). Enthusiasm towards life in general is a relief because it means you are pleaseable- A man does not want to be stuck spinning his wheels trying to please a bottomless pit, so knowing there’s a common success state makes women much more attractive.

Peace: While peace does not mean boredom, many men report a distaste for drama, pettiness games, and financial instability. Men enjoy alone time and recreation time and value having space for them, hence the common “man cave” compromise. Many find the man cave emasculating, but carving out a slice somewhere in life for him to have peace will lead to massive gains in relationship stability.

Decoration: While a guide to “how to find a husband” would not be complete without an admonishment to lose weight (within reason), the decoration a woman adds to a man’s life is not restricted to her appearance on his arm. When a man looks at a woman he doesn’t think “she has a great career” he thinks “How will our conversations go?”. Intellectual stimulation (to his specific things he cares about) provides decoration to a man’s day to day life. Similarly, a woman can literally decorate a man’s house. Thus a sense of style and curiosity are of great value to men, and will help you attract and keep one.

While a guy doesn’t necessarily care about your credentials, I think its an error to assume he wants a wife who is uneducated- Even the most chauvinistic men do not want a dependent relationship to that extent (not without some real psychosis/self esteem issues. You can vet these far in advance because self esteem issues manifest pretty dramatically in a man’s character.) Men actually do highly value an intelligent, competent woman- So if you are working on developing expertise in various things, men will like that, that’s something you can do to make yourself more of a catch. But I do not recommend college and a career for these, as both are geared towards creating the appearance of competence, rather than to actually giving knowledge of a subject.

Men want useful women- physically, emotionally, mentally, or otherwise. Women will have more dating success if they put their efforts towards uniqueness and flattery rather than status.

TLDR: be cute and fun, stroke his ego, men are attracted to vibrancy

All About Ants

All about the ants in your pants

When you look at ants, you might feel many things- aspiration, consternation, perspiration. You might think to yourself, “what an engineering marvel, they can carry leaves and stuff, and can sense a picnic using their food magnets from 5 kilometers away including up or down. You might think it incredible that ants can munch on anything they find and precisely analyze their contents and nutrition data and evaluate how it fits into the hive’s needs: “carbohydrates… Salt…. A little bit of sugar… This will make excellent sugar water to feed our young”. This lightning chemical analysis is unfathomable to the average person. One thing you need to understand about ants is that they are not smart, they're autistic.

Ants are also known to build “hills” which is a little pile of dirt. It might not look like much, but to billions of ants, they call it home. They dig tunnels at billions⁹ of miles per hour connecting the little ant rooms in their ant community together, and they defend these tunnels with their lives, filled with a patriotism the founding fathers could barely dream of for their brothers and sisters and their shared bond of dirt. Ants are also known to bite really hard, which is how they say “hello” and “I hate you” at the same time.

Many ants are kept in legal entities called “farms” which is a glass box with dirt for the ants to play in. This name may feel like a misnomer, as you are not harvesting the ants, and the ants aren’t really growing any crops either. Instead, what the ants are farming is the human spirit, the real farm is the friends they made along the way.

History

Captains log stardate 7/5/2023, our family is doing well, our toddler has exceeded all outfit-ruining expectations this week and will hopefully take a long vacation from it soon

Our son Jethro writes many songs when he is happy. One he wrote on the way back from Costco was “You scream I scream we all scream… For chocolate chip muffins. Because they are sooooo yummy!”

Jethro wanted to do something, and my wife told him “maybe”, and he said to her “mama, have you ever heard, of keeping your promises”

Jethro’s younger brother, the toddler, has started dancing when he hears good music (I think it was Metallica or something) and my wife was like “look at you dancing!” and he abruptly stopped, and obediently stared down at his legs for a bit.

We have been painting our basement this week, which means we have lost 3 toddler outfits to paint

At a family reunion: Someone’s kid randomly came up to me and told me he’s addicted to Legos. “I think its not bad to be addicted to Legos, because it doesn’t rot your brain,” he said.

The toddler, from his crib: “Good night, good night, good night!” then very sternly: “take! a! nap!”

Announcement: Duckstack Referral Program

Technically, I have referred you all. You are all referrals, in my heart

The Duckstack is pleased to announce our new referral program in partnership with Substack Inc.’s new feature they just barely rolled out. That’s right, for every new subscriber you refer, you get a percentage of The Duckstack’s annual ($0) income! But wait, there’s more:

The Duckstack’s Website now has a leaderboard section, where you can let the bloodthirst take over. Annihilate the competition by referring more people to subscribe to The Duckstack, asserting dominance over other Duckstack Subscribers, becoming King of the Jungle (duck pond?) and gain all rights, privileges, and authorizations appertaining thereunto, furthermore:

If you refer 5 people I will draw and send you a small personalized thank you dream of really low quality. With stick figures, an autograph, and surrealism.

If you refer 25 people I will draw and send you a small personalized thank you dream of substantial effort. Imagine a surrealist sketch with an autograph, figures that actually look like humans, and shading. Just for you.

If you refer 200 people I will ask you “how?” And draw you a personalized thank you dream of substantial effort and full page size. If you send me your address I will mail it to you. I do not practice art often, but I would put in the effort to make it decent. Below are some of my nicer Latter-Day Saint themed drawings to give an example of the type of art style and skill level I’m offering.

Referrals are, to my knowledge, counted from your referral link (on the leaderboard page), but also counted from hitting the share button on any post, provided the person subscribes with their email.

The Duckstack is 1/3rd politics and religious monologue, 1/3rd mommy blog, and 1/3rd Monty Python skit.

Thank you for 100 Duckstacks. Thanks.
-bob

1. including prehistory

2. if you have never cut yourself please put your knife down, there is no need to do so now

3. Yes, even you Reginald

4. all done

5. This likely applies to married men also. But like, towards their wives I don’t mean married men to single women

6. What, did you think you were free?

7. I will readily admit that glamour helps

8. Its really A Duckstack For Another Day but don’t have sex outside of marriage- how long he’s willing to pursue you without sex is your most direct measurement of both his honor, his interest, how well he respects you, and a massive host of other things that translate extremely linearly into marriage success rates.

9. I assume