Delicious Tacos talks to Personality Girl and Default Friend about getting laid and other things

Personality Girl and Default Friend have a hilarious podcast with Delicious Tacos, a podcast covering many topics, including how women don’t (maybe can’t) understand what life and horniness as a man is like, alcoholism, writing, groupies, face, sociopathy, work, and Houellbecq (the key philosopher of the last 50 years, no one else who hasn’t done pr0n counts). My replies are disjoint and won’t make sense without listening to the podcast.

Hot, emotionally mature girls aren’t on the market much and aren’t drunk or snorting coke. Guys with alcohol or substance abuse problems are attracting girls who will accept those, and it’s dangerous to draw conclusions from that biased sample… I try not to generalize too much about women based on the women I’ve been with in the last ten years, because most of them are at the very least curious about or accepting of non-monogamy, while women who want a conventional family and children aren’t going to put up with that shit. Delicious Tacos lives in L.A. (all the normal girls stay out of California). The conversation is a very big city conversation, cause normal girls who want a husband and family live in the midwest, or Texas, or Florida, or any place that it’s possible to live a middle-class existence and have a family… they’re not in the big famous cities. That’s where the sluts are, and the people who can’t afford to have kids, so they might as well do all sorts of weird sex things. I’m one of them, I’m talking about my own here, but I’ve also spent lots of time in smaller cities where women in their 20s walk around with their children in strollers and their husbands next to them. Most of them are 10 – 40 lbs overweight, which is gross, but that’s where they are.

Despite all that I have a piece coming up in the next month or two about how I was dumb to not have figured out mdma earlier in my life, cause, used judiciously, that’s where many of the easy lays are. Lots of hot chicks lack personality, or drive, or the ability to admit the sex they want and get it, and need some external aid to get there. Trying to talk to a lot of hot girls age 18 – 24 isn’t easy, cause their knowledge base consists of inane gossip and an interest in drinking and drugs. That’s it. It’s hard to build commonality from that. Solution? A lot of conversation that uses The Game + insinuations of drinking/drugs now, or in times to come. I should’ve learned this earlier… in many ways I’m a slow learner.

Very true: pussy begets more pussy. Absolutely. Sex clubs are apotheosis of this. DT gets this. He says something like, the difference between 0 pussy and 1 pussy is a million times greater than 1 and 2, and pretty much everything in game is about moving from 0 to 1. Red Quest might be less interesting cause it’s mostly about moving from 2 to a million, via sex clubs + non-monogamy.

Agree that guys who get a lot fuck a lot of chicks, almost all of varying quality levels.

Delicious Tacos should get a counseling degree and do counseling for men. He’d be great at it, and he’d get out of the corporate grind office job, become more of a prophet than he already is. I’d refer guys to him. “You want to get laid, get your life in order? Talk to this guy, Delicious Tacos.” Would he be popular, though? Most therapists seem to need to take 20 sessions to get to the obvious, because they have to wait for the person they’re talking to to get to the idea on their own… I think Delicious Tacos would be like, “Your family’s fucked up, go learn the deadlift, and get in touch with your feelings that way.” If more guys mastered the deadlift and pullup we’d have less need for therapy.

His voice is peculiarly similar to mine, as are many of his life experiences, although I’ve never had alcohol or substance abuse problems… although I have been accused of being a sex addict (DT discusses “sex addicts” on the podcast). I don’t think I am, though, because I usually have some standards, and after I get my fill I go read a book or whatever.

He says that he used to get groupies when he showed his face… but then he sadly got doxxed… I’ve speculated to other guys that, to build a bigger following it’s necessary to show some proof-of-lay and become a public figure. Krauer and Tom Torero did that. Andy from Kill Your Inner Loser has done the same. I don’t think I care enough to want to take red quest to the next level that way, but it’s useful to hear ideas echoed. Like Balaji says, “we’re going to need to build a pseudonymous economy, where over the medium to long term, you separate out your real name, your earning name, and your speaking name. And in fact, you have multiple earning names and multiple speaking games, just like you have multiple usernames at different sites.” Balaji goes on,

Let’s say, for example, you have a large Twitter following, and you boot up a new pseudonym, that pseudonym starts with nothing. And so it takes you time to boot up a new following, that’s a whole effort, that deters a lot of people from doing it, they’re starting all the way from scratch. And I thought about this problem, because the thing is that with cryptocurrency, we’ve actually solved this where you can set up a username and another username and you can use ZCash to transfer money from one name to another pseudonymously.

So money can be transferred, reputation though didn’t seem to be, until I realized that actually you might not be able to do it for followers, which are non fungible, that to say, one person is not, like, the same as the other, but you could do it on a site like Reddit, where you had Karma that was accumulated. And so someone who had 10,000 Karma under one pseudonym just like you use ZCash to transfer digital currency, ZCash was basically like the truly anonymous version of Bitcoin, the truly private version of Bitcoin. Just like you use ZCash to transfer cash from one name to another, you could use ZKarma to transfer Karma from one username to another and thereby a reboot under a new username.

Seriously, that Balaji podcast is some of the best and most mind-blowing stuff I’ve listened to, so go listen to it after you’re done with the Delicious Tacos interview… if you have a choice between long-form Balaji and long-form Red Quest, Balaji is the right way to go, on all topics apart from getting laid. Some people are badass enough to go by one name, sorry to the rest of the Balajis of the world.

Delicious Tacos also mentions that online dating stopped working effectively around 2015, which I’ve speculated about too, “I’ve had some success with regular online dating many years ago, and no success from regular online dating recently, and by recently I mean in the last six or so years. Sometime around 2015 I had enough things going on in real life that I had by then mostly quit.” Search red quest for “2015” or “2014” and you’ll see other examples.

His story sounds like Tucker Max’s (remember him…?), lots of debauchery, followed by some “what am I doing with my life?” desire to start a family.

Delicious Tacos hates his working an office job for money. What’s missing from the podcast, maybe his life? Craftsmanship. Of a physical sort. It’s a topic in Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance but more than that it goes back to Plato, one of history’s first big cucks. Craftsmanship can be done in spare time, and it can turn into full-time work. It doesn’t need to be furniture making or whatever. It can be making amateur internet porn. Seriously, some of the top verified amateurs or onlyfans ppl are craftsmen, forever trying to better their last creation. Lack a sense of craftsmanship and life will seem more meaningless than it would with craftsmanship. These people should learn woodworking or whatever. Bookbinding.

The top programmers and engineers are craftsmen, the money follows the craft. Unfortunately, the pussy doesn’t follow the money in their case, unless it’s paid for.

Although many people complain about work, very few live like Mr. Money Mustache and radically decrease their spending. Decrease spending far enough and the need to work goes way down as well. This works best outside of expensive Los Angeles. The problem is often not work, it is spending. DT doesn’t appear to have learned bike repair and physical dwelling repair, as Mr. Money Mustache has… if you hate work, there are ways to structure your life to minimize it. But it seems possible to minimize spending or maximize sex, but it’s difficult to do both at once, or at least I don’t think I know anyone who is really doing it. How big is DT’s circle of control?

Contributing to a larger community, like xbtusd says. W/o community, alienation, etc., and you can only having f**king be your main source of meaning for so many yrs. If you try to spend your whole life chasing pussy, instead of doing some family as well, you’ll likely end up some combination of miserable and, worse, pathetic (“likely”… if you’re the exception, fantastic, you’re the exception). How long it takes will vary by guy… some guys can be players successfully into their 40s or even 50s… despite saying that, if the reader really doesn’t want to have kids, don’t, there are sadly too many kids resented by their parents for merely existing. Someone who doesn’t affirmatively not want them should give it a shot.

How many marry out of tiredness or desperation?

I know a couple people who moved from alcoholism/substance abuse to becoming workout freaks, so maybe there’s something to the idea of the addictive or extreme personality. Or maybe it’s random variations and salience bias.

A make a meta comment, this post is almost like the old days of blogging… Default Friend and Delicious Tacos have websites separate from the major “social” media platforms (only Personality Girl is slacking in this regard, cause she does Twitter not blog). I’m replying on a site that’s also separate from the major data hoarders. There should be more independence and less Facebook leviathan. We can do better. Get off the big sites, be informationally independent, that’s what Balaji thinks crypto can help us do, we can do it ourselves in the ways we can right now.

Link again to the DT, Personality Girl, Default Friend pod ep. I read DT’s book THE PUSSY, it’s a fine book but one I think I read when I’d become too old and too earnest to love it. Earnestness is in today, existential irony is out. Onlyfans is the expression of earnestness in the smut market, fake San Fernando Valley surgically altered bimbos are the expression of existential irony.

Chicks want you to make the first move, so do it

The Graphic Designer Who Hates Making the First Move is a universal story of a woman who can’t or won’t make the first move: she finds a guy she likes, “I think he’s cute and wish he’d just make the move and ask me out. I don’t get it.” Why doesn’t she make the first move? She doesn’t say. About another guy, she says, “I could ask him out myself, but I really want someone to take the lead and I want to be pursued.” Despite what you’ve heard from feminist teachers in schools, despite the bullshit you may have imbibed from the media, women are passive and won’t make the first move. As a man, it’s your job to make it, and it will almost certainly remain your job as long as men and women exist. Eggs are expensive and sperm is cheap, so, if you’re a man reading this, you’re going to need to be the actor, not the acted upon.

Sure, you may have heard women say “Ew, I can’t believe that guy hit on me.” Guess what? She’s making a female social power play, by saying that she’s so desirable and popular that she routinely rejects guys. That’s her game when she says something like that. Or, she considered the guy to be below her level (this always happens). The other day, I was walking along a strip of bars near me, and there was this woman, cute, wearing an outfit that was like 55% business / 45% T&A, skirt that was almost too short, tits almost hanging out too much, and I opened her with, I don’t know, something about business, something about the time of day, and she said something like, “Ew, no.” Or maybe just “No,” I don’t remember exactly, but it was an uncommonly cold rejection, particularly for a woman dolled up like she was.

And it doesn’t matter, the rejection, I mean.

Breaking it off with the secret affair girl

Broke it off with the girl from Women having affairs never make you use a condom, after seeing her, I don’t know, five or six times… it was very nice, and yet after each time I found myself thinking the kind of things I’ve talked about on here before, like, “You can only have one or two main priorities in your life, and a couple secondary priorities, and after that you’re out of time and energy.” A lot of people fail to have a single main priority, besides something like video games or stuffing their face with sugar, and it shows. My main priority right now should not be chasing random skirt, as doing so is not consistent with my overall life goals. Problem being, when I think I can get a cute girl to pliantly spread her legs, my hindbrain says, “SCORE” and my forebrain is missing in action. When the girl and her perky tits and flat stomach are somewhere else, the forebrain can better assert control and whisper, “WTF are you doing with your life?”, and I have to admit the forebrain has control.

We met in a neutral venue, as usual, f**ked very thoroughly, also as usual, and after that we got underwear back on and I broached the topic. I don’t remember exactly what I said but it was something like, “I like you a lot, and what we’re doing a lot, but I’m not sure we should keep doing what we’re doing.” She seemed a bit surprised, but not surprised at the same time, sort of like a pandemic is a surprise we’ve been expecting for decades, or like we’re going to be “surprised” when China invades Taiwan and we’ve spent the last five years with our heads in our asses, or like having a baby is both extremely normal and simultaneously shocking. She probed a bit about why and I was actually pretty straightforward with her, my theory being that these kinds of things rarely remain secret. It’s too easy to make a mistake, and right now I need to be focused on other matters. I didn’t specify what those other matters were. I did emphasize that I like her a lot and that this isn’t about her. I’m not sure she believed it, she seemed like she wanted to cry at one point, but the “breaking it off” conversation wasn’t long. If this were a few years from now, and I’d achieved some other things, I’d keep going. But it’s not, and I’ve not, so here we are.

She turned out to be a lot like Peaches. Similar temperament and employment situation. Hot girl who doesn’t behave like a hot girl, or seem to really get/understand that she’s a hot girl. Not really sure why she’s married (I’m not sure why she’s married, that is… maybe she knows?). She’s both very driven in some ways and drifting in some other ways. You know the people who are furiously pursuing a goal without asking themselves if the goal is worth achieving, or what happens the day after the goal? A bit like that. A girl who is very IQ smart but is kinda missing the point at the same time. Needs a lot of reassurance. Seems a bit impressed that I’m not too impressed with what she’s doing, although I think it’s a bit cool at the same time. I think she needs more sex than she’s getting at home, and while I didn’t say that to her in those exact words, I did tell her that she’s a girl who needs to be f**ked a lot… and let a lot of the rest do the implying for me.

Despite having spent not a huge amount of time with her, but some time with her… I feel like I don’t know her. Know her, know her. She’s almost always a bit reserved. She needs/likes pretty heavy BDSM. Having the actual talk with her, the clean break, seems better and truer than letter her drift away. I think a lot of women today are justifiably annoyed with the number of grown males who still exhibit a lot of “boy psychology” instead of “man psychology” (a point made in KING WARRIOR MAGICIAN LOVER: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine)… “man psychology” often means politely but firmly telling her when it’s over, so she can have psychological rest. It might hurt a bit more in the moment, but it hurts much less in the long term. Yes yes I know chicks usually ghost, but chicks do a lot of bad behavior that it’s not good to emulate. A lot of guys are so stuck at the early levels of the game that they never get to the “How to break it off?” moment. Look for guys who talk about letting girls go, if they’re discussing that they’ve often gotten to more advanced levels.

I’d be surprised, though, if this chick doesn’t propose consensual non-monogamy to her husband. Maybe she’s already been dropping hints towards that. I’ve told her things like, “You got married too young” “you need to experience life,” other slut bromides designed to convey to her that what she’s doing is normal and fun. It’s part of my effort to give her permission… you’d be surprised at what chicks will do with male permission + encouragement. Chicks are generally poor at leadership and usually need a guy to support and encourage them. I don’t know why her and her husband married so early. Well I think I know why her husband married her early, she’s hot, she’s unusual in a way compatible with his bad social skills… and he probably didn’t think, at the time, he could do any better. Still not sure he can… tough to say, until you’re on the market. Markets are where statements are proven or falsified. If they’d had kids already, them being together would make sense. I suspect she’s fundamentally a weak person, psychologically or personality-wise, because there are some things about her job and life goals that are not well supported by her husband. I’m being vague here but the specifics are too revealing. There’s gotta be something to him I’m missing, or she’s going to be one of those chicks who, after her divorce, can’t quite remember why she married in the first place. I wouldn’t be shocked if she ends up a spinster, but I think she’ll pull out of the dive and have a family at some point. If she does divorce, I’d not be surprised if she goes on a slut rampage for a bit.

In the last year I’ve been pretty monogamous, having only slept with, I dunno, four chicks, or five, something like that, not many at all, most of them recurring revenue, and most of them well spaced out from each other (COVID risk… but I’ve been vaccinated… I bet STIs are going to skyrocket this summer, as people start f**king again). I also want to say… I made some substantial changes in the last year, and they’ve been good… even with them, I’ve probably talked to 100, maybe 150, chicks, to find this one who was in the right place, right time for the potential lays (of which there have been very few). Most of them were very brief and in social circumstances, often a bunch in one day, just a “hi, how are you, what’s your name,” that sort of thing… very low-level pings. I’ve done a bit of large-group social hosting, in part cause it’s fun but also to try and keep some backup chicks in my orbit. I retweeted a Rob K. Henderson tweet, “Not only do people in committed relationships have backup mates; even people who seem quite happy with their relationships actively cultivate them…people without backup mates were twice as likely to get depressed compared to those with a solid backup.” This is what almost all successful players I’ve known in real life (not on the Internet) have done… whenever they’re in a relationship, sometimes a “relationship,” they’re also cultivating a backup roster with postions #2 – #10. Ten is a little extreme, you get the idea.

Often, they have something regular going on… it can be almost anything… a Friday night happy hour, a group hike, a dinner, a whatever, so that when they meet a new chick, it’s easy to say, “Some friends and I are doing a thing, you should come.” Way back in the mists of the time, when Mystery was doing his LA thing, he got hold of the “seven-hour rule,” that it takes the average chick about seven hours of exposure to a guy to be ready to f**k him. It can be shorter than that, obviously, but it can also be longer, for some chicks… 4 – 10 hours is a good round number. Having a guy invite a chick into his loose social orbit will often let her spend those hours around him… so that when his primary chick departs, she’s there ready to be f**ked. This is how many office affairs, teacher-student affairs, etc., start. The girl spends enough time around the guys to be comfortable enough with him to want to f**k him. She knows he’s probably not a murderer, etc., because she works with him, she’s been taught by him, whatever.

I’m not saying that’s the only way to do it, and I’m not denigrating daygame… it has its place… but there are different ways to do it, and it seems like a lot of guys writing online lack basic social skills. That basic notion is behind “parties.” Daygame and other elements of social life work together, too. I prefer real one on one dates… but sometimes you’re with a woman, and you want to have a few more on deck, and other methods come to the foreground. I don’t like getting caught in the open field without any cover around me. That’s happened to me before… not often, though. Any guy in a relationship should be able to think, “What will I do if she walks out tomorrow?” and have a good game plan ready to go. Guys who think, “She is my entire world” “I’d fall apart without her” “happy wife, happy life…” I feel bad for them. What your sports coaches told you is true, proper preparation leads to victory.

A man who won’t prepare is preparing to fail.

This is a pic Unsplash showed me when I searched for “affair”

*Muscle: Confessions of an Unlikely Bodybuilder*

If you’re reading this, you should read Muscle, by Samuel Wilson Fussell, because it’s about a topic that can’t be taught, only recognized and cultivated: obsession. Obsession propels people past skill and into mastery, it’s the thing that moves from “good” into “top”. Don’t think I quite have it, myself, right now, though maybe I did, at one point. It’s the thing you do for no reason, however many “reasons” you come up with, the thing that keeps you moving. Why’d Sam get obsessed? He thinks ’80s New York streets scared him, and that could be a small part, but it sounds like an excuse. The muscle thing could be a rebellion against his parents, he implies. Could be some third thing, I’d say, and the truth is probably tautological, it got him cause it got him.

You can ask a similar question, why do some guys go from normal healthy high interest in quim to extreme obsession?

The Internet fantasy bubble: the gap between the responsible and the spectators

The Internet lets people indulge in wild fantasy, and Twitter is more like World of Warcraft than is commonly assumed: this effect might also be more pronounced in “smart” people than dumb ones. Being smart, or high IQ, isn’t a shield from this effect either, and if anything it may make you more susceptible to these effects. Being rich also insulates a person from the effects of excessive fantasy: the richer we are, the more we seem able to indulge fantasy, because our base human needs are met.

To be good with women, you should be able to suspend disbelief and create an alternate reality, for women to step into, but that skill can be dangerous in regular life. Or useful. Along with suspending disbelief, rock-solid frame helps a lot with women, and thus the emphasis on bringing the woman into your world and worldview. Some guys seem to forget that that frame is a creation, and they carry it through on everything, even when it’s not correct.

“A Unicorn’s Tale: Three-Way Sex With Couples Has Made Me a Better Person”

“A Unicorn’s Tale: Three-Way Sex With Couples Has Made Me a Better Person” won’t contain anything surprising to Red Quest readers, but it’s notable because it’s published in a mainstream venue and it’s written by the daughter of a famous person. On Twitter, I’ve been keeping up a steady stream of articles like this one, with the tagline, “It’s happening. Are you ready?” When I started in consensual non-monogamy, it was still mostly underground. Few girls were really familiar with its ideas. I don’t think Vanity Fair was publishing this kind of dirty “Unicorn’s Tale” back then… and today it is. The change is happening, if it hasn’t happened already.

Chicks are getting a steady diet of the idea that non-monogamy is fun and socially okay, and this is important because most chicks want to stay with the herd and avoid doing anything that will make them outcasts or “weird.” Chicks mostly rely on guys to make things to happen for them. By now, most young hot chicks know friends who have dabbled in non-monogamy. Chicks are swapping non-monogamy stories and ideas on places like Twitter and Reddit and, as more open up to the idea, the guys who can make it happen are going to have an edge on the guys who can’t. The chick who wrote that piece is pretty good looking in most of the pics Google Images shows, too (an important thing to check, because unattractive women will amp up their sexual signaling as a means of trying to attract men who might take the easy layup but don’t want to put in the work).

So: Are you ready?

 

 

 

How to build communities and find tribe

XBTUSD shines a light in the darkness of the cave, revealing what guys are missing as the scramble around in the dark, cutting their hands and mistaking pain for enlightenment.

Most sex happens in a highly social context, and most “highly social contexts” involve some kind of community—yet no one writing online talks about communities, how they form, what sustains them, how they splinter, or what value they have.

Let’s take a simple example: when I was an undergrad, I joined a fraternity. My path to joining wasn’t certain, and I didn’t plan to join until the week the decision had to be made. Initially, I saw fraternities as a way for people without social skills to “buy” a group of friends: frats had dues, and if you paid, you had a guaranteed set of dudes to get drunk and try and fuck girls with. I was lucky enough to live in mixed-age housing my freshman year and became friends with one of the BMOC (“big man on campus”) seniors who lived in my dorm. He was in one of the “cool” frats (one of the ones hot girls spent time at), and over a number of conversations he convinced me that I had it all wrong, and that I should just join, as there was little downside. He correctly pointed out the downside of joining was that if I didn’t like it, I didn’t have to spend any time there, or could de-pledge if I felt strongly enough. I’d lose the frat dues, which weren’t zero, but that wasn’t a great loss for me at the time. I decided to join and a lot of what I know about community comes from that experience. Most Americans live alienated, isolated lives, and frats are the exact opposite, which explains why so many guys have a great time in school and an unhappy time after.

No one “empowered” talks about “empowerment:” see the lie

“Empowering” and “empowerment are hugely overused words, and the people using them are neither. The people talking about “empowerment” are trying to escape from some aspect of themselves they don’t like, or something they’ve done that doesn’t fit their present narrative. “Empowered” people aren’t talking about empowerment, they’re busy doing things in the real world. Things that are really empowering include learning rare/unusual skills, building a real business that adds value to the world, having peak experiences, deepening real relationships, and probably a few other activities that don’t come immediately to mind. Also, the most “empowered” people I know never talk about empowerment or say they’re “empowered,” so talking about “empowerment” is a sign of weakness/neediness/something undesirable. I searched for the word “empowerment” on red quest and found it in a single post, used skeptically, despite the fact that red quest is in some sense about “empowering” guys to lead the lives they want. If you do the things advocated, and develop the skills described, you’ll be “empowered,” and if/when you are, you own’t need to talk about it. “Empowering” is used once in this blog, but in a quote.

Pickup is hard, and top girls don’t stay that way for long, and musings on networks

Red Pill Dad realizes that “almost everyone is doing online dating (OLD) and banging low quality chicks and then bragging about it… no one really wants to learn day game or cold approach.” [1] Well yes, and think of it this way, literally how many girls are true 7s in the entire world? The true 7s are almost always somewhere between their mid teens and mid 30s, call it 18 – 30, for legal purposes. A few 7s can persist into their early 40s, although that’s rare. A lot of girls drop from their true 7 potential into 5 or 6 territory due to poor nutrition and fitness. The number of true 8s, in the entire world, is not that high, probably a few percent of the female population, and every guy from puberty to senescence wants to bang them. They have a level of “privilege” that the male classes, who are busy working building and struggling, carrying the burden of civilization, can barely imagine, because we’re too busy toiling to try and keep a roof over the head and maybe impress the few hot chicks we’re ever exposed to (“f**king hot chicks” is a fine reason to stay in school, one not adequately emphasized).

My perspective on investing and financial security is super vanilla

A reader asks my thoughts on financial matters,

Hi RQ. With the GME short squeeze/bubble (whichever term you prefer) making headlines, it made me curious what your perspective is on investing and financial security. Obviously one of the best ways to improve your finances is to not get married, something you have espoused all the time, but I would love to read a whole post about the subject.

Don’t have a unique view or expertise here… a lot of finance advice is pretty wasteful because there are only really two or three ways to really achieve financial freedom:

1. Spend less.
2. Earn more.
3. Invest in assets that earn more than inflation.

That’s it. Numbers 1 and 2 are both hard (if they were easy, we wouldn’t have a $10 billion finance industry trying to sell us on ways to do them).

Re: #1, I rely on Mr Money Mustache for ideas, so start there… he has a nice philosophy too, where he says, “What are you really on this planet to do?” Money is usually a way to achieve other goals, e.g. make friends, create things, etc. The advertising industry is there to convince you the way to have a better human existence is to buy shit (hint: it’s not).

Re: #2, that’s good as well, and you should develop valuable skills, but many high performers spend whatever they make, cause the hedonic treadmill is real, and it’s also not easy to make a lot of money, in most cases (if it were, more guys would do it). A lot of guys who focus on making a lot of money forget why they want to (to live a better life). I’ve not maximized earnings in my life, and have spent more of it than I should have living on the edge, partially due to some choices that, from a finance perspective, haven’t always been the best. Okay and worth it, but I’ve taken a lot of risks with sex.

Re: #3, see John Bogle’s books on index funds. See A Random Walk Down Wall Street, and other finance classics that extol index funds. Efficient markets hypothesis is mostly correct and most people don’t beat the market, sorry. The math behind lower fees and dollar cost averaging is sound, unless you are RenTech or someone like that (extremely rare).