Maybe a week ago, I listened to Tucker Carlson's interview of Andrew Tate. I get why the guy is loved and reviled in equal measure. At one point in the discussion he talked about all of the energy men spend on sitting around feeling sorry for themselves. Paraphrasing, but not by much: "If they spent a tiny fraction of that effort and, let's say, went to the gym instead, can you imagine how much different their lives would be?"

He went on in great detail, not mincing words. The discourse really stung, because it struck close to home. He didn't sugar coat it: he essentially called me a pussy, and smacked me in the face. And that was exactly the message I needed to hear: for the first time in my life, I've started seriously lifting weights, and have been putting in a ton of time on the exercise bike as well.

He went on to say that he doesn't believe in "having depression". "I believe you can have depressed thoughts: but those pass; thoughts are temporary. When I have low thoughts, I just say to myself 'Ok, fine, I'll have different thoughts next. I might be down today, but I won't be tomorrow.'" Hearing this completely changed my outlook, and my motivation has been through the roof.

He relayed a story of a young man who once contacted him: "I want to kill myself." Andrew Tate responded with, "Go get a six pack first. After that, do whatever you want." He then asked rhetorically: "Do you think the guy still wanted to kill himself?" And therein lies the story of Andrew Tate: the people who love him, love him because he tells you the truth; the people who hate him, hate him because he tells them the truth. It's all up the recipient how they are going to receive the message, and what they are going to do with it.

In other news, for the second time in eighteen months the main board in my 2016 Vizio P50-C1 went bad. My suspicion is that some other part of the system is malfunctioning, and that I could keep replacing main boards until the cows come home, only to have them repeatedly get destroyed.

In light of that, I finally ponied up for a new TV, which should arrive tomorrow: a 48" LG C3. I gave some serious consideration to the Samsung S90C, which is definitely superior-- but in these early doors, QD-OLED is having substantial burn-in issues, to the point where Samsung is last-ditch, covertly deploying firmware updates to gimp the maximum brightness. That is not a good look.

Besides all of that, the C3 is going to be such a stratospheric upgrade for me already, that I'm sure to be thrilled with it. The biggest thing I'm looking forward to, beyond improved contrast and colors, is superior motion persistence: I can't "unsee" the muddy mess you get on LED LCDs when you rotate the camera in a game. I'm also going to have fun with 120 Hz and VRR.

Finally, my used copy of "Street Fighter 6" came in the other day, and I can't stop playing it. It reminds me of when I got "Alpha 3" on the PSX in 1999. The demo of this latest release really rubbed me the wrong way-- but the full game has so much going for it, that it's a rare modern video game which has really grabbed me. Interestingly, I've never been remotely interested in playing fighters online-- but that's all I do in this title: the game mode with the arcade cabinets is such a cool idea, that it got me "hooked" on playing human opponents.

There is this character named "JP". He's right up my alley in terms of personality: he's geared towards frustrating the opponent, and keeping them from playing. I love that archetype in any fighter, such as the bird guy in "Way of the Warrior". He has an immense, almost absurd learning curve-- but little-by-little I keep having mini-eurekas with him, and I'm steadily improving. I still have lots of matches where I get stuck in the corner and clobbered, but I had a breakthrough realization last night, where I can now manage "Houdini" sequences to get un-trapped. My next step is to learn more combos, so I can eek out more damage when I punish openings.

As for video games, I also picked up a cheap lot of used "CIB" PS2 games, so expect some PlayStation 2 reviews to start appearing on the 'Wharf. The big game in that stack for me is "Dark Cloud", which superficially at least has the trappings of maybe being an instant classic for me.