FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
10hr ago
Like church, most people don't attend regularly. They just go to the holiday services (pride).
But as with certain varieties of Buddhism, most people will spend a period in a monastery (university) where they will engage in serious study and pious indoctrination.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
I don't think we really have two different approaches. Your snatch goal is your goal, and you have to work through or around injuries to get to that. Right now, fitness wise, BJJ is my goal; everything else is an assistance exercise. I gut through soreness/injury for BJJ, but not for everything else where it might impact rolling every day I can.
The accountability mechanism right now for BJJ is very effective, I have several close friends who are about as good as I am at my gym and I can't let them get better than me and leave me behind, because right now our technique progress is huge month to month. Compared to that everything else is less important.
But at the same time, I'm conscious of the fact that I'm six or seven months into jiu jitsu as my main focus now, and it's important to keep up lifting and cardio, if only to avoid getting weaker. So I'm trying to figure it out.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
Been a while since I've dealt with an LDR, but some simple mechanical advice:
As a man, you probably only contact people when you have something to say to them, and typically only when you need something from them. You aren't contacting her just to chat and show general affection, you're contacting her to solve a problem (often one that rhymes with "she wants me to call her") or when you're horny or to organize something.
Your goal in an LDR is to tie her into your life, show her you are thinking about her, so that she doesn't feel so far away.
Send her pics of your day. Not necessarily selfies of you, but just of funny advertisements, pretty wildflowers, or traffic jams, or your workout equipment, or the sky, or a screenshot of your phone when a song is playing that "reminds you of her." She's the person you want to share these things with, and when you see them she's the person you think of, and you wish she was there.
Send her articles you read that you think she might be interested in, then discuss them. Ideally, she's interested in the same articles you would be reading anyway, but we can't all be so lucky, so be prepared to invest a little time finding articles she will like. "Hey, I saw this, what's your take?" Then throw in some lovey dovey before/after along the lines of "I'm so happy I have you, there's no one else I trust/believe/is smart enough/gets it/shares my values who I can talk about this with." Makes her feel valued, and brings you closer.
Utilize the work of others. You have trouble doing expressions of affection, but luckily there's a huge industrial complex online of people producing sappy content. There's an effectively infinite quantity of content on twitter (and probably other places) that's a picture of two cute animals, or an historical painting, or hell of two literal spoons, with the caption "us if we were..." She will like that.
Good luck my friend.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
But man, it sucks getting old.
Dude, I sympathize, it feels like a constant flow of minor injuries all of a sudden. I've had trouble sticking to a workout program outside BJJ this whole year, because of near constant minor injuries leading me to abandon each exercise plan/challenge in turn. Start working squats; lower back injury. Start working kettlebells; trap injury. Start running; knees are bothering me. Get on the rower; elbows. I know I'll get a lot out of adding supplemental work to BJJ, but I can't seem to stick with anything at all.
So sorry to hear about your cousin. It's so sad when you see someone whose life is essentially tragic.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
15hr ago
Something I think hasn't been addressed thus far: the degradation of international law over the GWOT period, leading to the current Iran-Israel conflict. War used to be declared publicly, fought to a conclusion, ended with finality. Now there isn't really a declaration of war, states of conflict exist in nebulous ways between strong-state, non-state, and weak-state actors. Obviously this goes back a long way, but the US pioneered this process during the GWOT, asserting its right to bomb within certain countries at any time, with no declaration of war, and no peace made afterward. The USA was never at war with Pakistan, and Pakistan never formally publicly approved the use of force by the USA within Pakistan's borders in either a narrow operation or broader war. Yet the USA continuously bombed targets in Pakistan, and even launched a commando raid within Pakistan's borders killing residents of Pakistan with no formal notice to or approval by Pakistani authorities. The USA continuously asserted its right to bomb targets in Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Libya, without a formal declaration of hostilities commencing or ceasing.
What was initially the prerogative of the hegemon leaked. Israel and Iran started to assert their right to do the same after terrorist attacks, first within weak states and targeting non-state actors. Israel periodically bombs targets in Lebanon, Syria. Iran responded to attacks by bombing non-state targets in Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan. Now they're trying to assert that right to bomb each other. Now we're in a situation where the belligerents escalated from proxies, to hurling drones and missiles at each other, with no particular realistic end point in sight.
What we're seeing is a kind of low-grade warfare, that will drag on, because it forms political positive feedback loops. The leaders who send the bombs are strengthened by the bombs that come in reply. Peace is an unclear process from here.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
If you're trying to put more detail into defusing and avoiding the conversation while seeming normal, for nearly every sport you can nearly always say something along the lines of "I used to LOVE it when I was a kid, but nowadays I just can't stand the [foreign or billionaire money/social media/diva players/lack of loyalty/lost spirit of the gameall of the above] so I don't really watch it like I used to." The purity play will actually position you as more of a football fan than your interlocutor: you love the real game not the spectacle of today, like refusing to go to a novus ordo mass positions you as more Catholic than the pope.
If you're trying to fake actually watching sports for networking or social purposes, I recommend the SbNation network of blogs, they do all the American sports and most of the big European teams. Each blog is independent, run by fans, but in general they're pretty decent in quality. Arsenal is here, I can't certify quality as they're all fan-run and the blog varies by team. I follow the SbNation blogs of the teams I follow pretty religiously, and they will both give daily/weekly news summaries and game recaps, that will take you five or ten minutes to follow daily and fifteen or twenty to summarize weekly. With that knowledge, you can hang in a conversation with any fan for as long as they want to talk.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Short answer: No. Neither Iran nor its allies can do fatal damage to Israel, Israel can sustain air operations against Iran for a period of time, then things will cool off for a while. Iran's regime is not going to fall, at least not in a way salutary to Israel, but neither is Israel's going to fall, at least not in a way that achieves Iran's goals.
Long answer: it depends on the timescale and how you define "Israel."
The dreams of "modern" "western" "tech hub" Israel have suffered, and may in the short term become impossible, as a result of this conflict. I don't know that a modern tech economy can survive in a place that suffers missile attacks with regularity. And it's not clear where the off-ramp from here that leads to normalization of Israel's situation sits anymore. It's highly likely that Israel will face significant difficulties de-escalating on a permanent basis.
The goals of Netanyahu and his allies have been advanced, in that Bibi has another simmering conflict to stoke to remain in power.
The long term future of Israel probably ticks downward, but hey maybe AGI or whatever.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Much simpler to just use weight categories and set them in 10mph tiers.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
Because the Cybertruck speed limit would be 1/10 the speed limit for a Honda goldwing assuming equal momentum limits.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I don't really care because they've got skin in the game in the most literal way possible.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I've always wanted to watch a drunk driving track race. Every pit stop involves pounding a couple shots.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Yes, and when Obama was elected he kept Dubya's SecDef along with most of his top generals, and after Obama we had two straight Dem nominees who voted for the Iraq war in the Senate. We did not see politicians who supported the war suffer consequences en masse.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
To be fair at this point every US president for 25 years has openly had calls for regime change in Iran. It's not like they're holding some grudge from their grandfather, every living Iranian knows part of the American government wouldn't mind if they were dead.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Tbf to Israel they do seem to be arming and feeding and propping up some kind of Quisling tribal coalition that might evolve into a new Gaza government. But if that's the plan it's a ways away.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
We have managed to lose three wars in living memory and none of the politicians involved suffered electoral consequences.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
What makes you think the alternative people reach for is going to be surrender?
What country has responded to urban aerial bombings with surrender? Maybe Japan but that was, you know, and also their armies had been thoroughly trounced at that point. In nearly every case I'm aware of it has stiffened the resolve of the populace and strengthened hardliners.
As long as Israel and their western support bloc shows absolutely no love or friendship for the Persian people, they're not going to throw the Ayatollah out and replace him with western moderates, they'll replace him with a hopefully more competent Ayatollah.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
If you had a lot of dense traffic, and some of it can't legally go faster than 30, while others can go 90, is a nightmare.
Everyone needs to be going about the same speed for traffic flow.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I'm jealous of your M5. I've always felt like at some point I'd like to own a full-fat M car, but the added expense just doesn't seem overly worth it and I probably never will.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
What cars have you driven on a regular basis? If they were expensive, have you found them to be worth the extra money?
Well, here's the list of everything I've ever put more than a few thousand miles on. Most of them were family vehicles in one capacity or another that I either borrowed for long enough to get a feel for them, or they were , only one did I buy new-ish from a dealer,
1952 Dodge Pickup Truck: A friend of my father had this parked in his driveway for about two decades straight. When I was in high school, he called my father and said all his wife wanted for her 50th anniversary was the damn truck out of the damn driveway. So my father and I went over and towed it out of where it had sunk into the pavement, and spent the better part of a year fixing it up. It's candy apple red with a small block chevy v8 in it, running through mostly Ford Explorer running gear. It's not actually fast, but it's fun to drive in that you feel every single thing. Sometimes I think that if you get caught speeding way over the limit, you should be sentenced to your license being limited only to cars like this, in that at a sustained 60mph everything rattles so damn much that it feels unsafe, while in better more modern cars 80 or 90 or 100 feels like nothing.
1991 Ford Bronco: I never actually drove this much on the road. My dad picked it up for $100 cash on the side of the road, and gave it to me for my 14th birthday to learn to drive on the farm. I drove it all over the local farms and trails. Not a bad car in and of itself, but I once read a statistic in an article that something like 1/10 of this model wound up involved in a fatal rollover crash, so probably good that I sold it before I actually got my license.
1996 Ford Explorer XLT V8: My sister's first car before it was my first car, stayed in the family for about twenty years. Bought for $1800 with 100k miles, ran without any problems through two fender benders to 200k miles, while being driven mainly by teenagers, before finally being sold off for $1200 two years ago. This was really a near perfect teen car, strong AWD system, the V8 had enough power to pull out on the highway but not so much that I got pulled over as a teen. You could pile ten kids into it when we went hiking, or about 500lbs of fireworks when me and a buddy bought them illegally. Had a six cd changer, which was the height of luxury.
Various American Work Spec Pickup Trucks from between 1990 and 2005: All pretty much the same. Ford, Chevy, Dodge, it's all the same thing to me. Different mechanics swear by different trucks, but with some minor variations (Chevys are cheaper to replace an engine on, Fords have the little keypad) it's all the same story. It'll run forever but everything will break. Every little thing will need to be replaced, but it's easy to find and never fatal.
2000 Subaru Outback Wagon XT Manual: First car I bought, off my elderly cousin who bought the turbo for some reason. Oh man did I love this car. Fun to drive, AWD, manual, space in the back for stuff. I'd still have it, if i hadn't been t boned at a rural intersection and gone into a coma for a week. RIP to a real one, amazing I survived after the damage it took.
2000 BMW 323ci Manual: Got it off a family friend. Gorgeous, perfect car, one of the best driver's cars ever made for my money. Perfectly balanced, rides comfortably but can take corners as hard as you want, perfectly stable predictable handling, the small engine option so you can drive the hell out of it, but despite only having 170hp the inline six pulls in every gear. I still have it, and periodically I think I should get rid of it because I don't need it, but I see the pittance I'd get for it and think eh I really like driving it when I do. Then my wife got a 3 series and now likes the his and hers/collection bit.
2003 Mercedes-Benz C230 Wagon: Here's where the chronology vs model year gets thrown off, I bought this car for $5k after I graduated law school. I love station wagons, especially small ones like this, and if they were more available it's what I'd drive now. It was a great car, only flaw was the automatic transmission. My dog loved it, riding in the back. It was great on the highway, had pretty good sporty handling, and it could hold all my rock climbing stuff. Got totaled in a hailstorm, I put the offer ($2k more than I'd paid) in my back pocket and drove the car for another two years and 30,000 miles, then sold it to the insurance company. I regret getting rid of it sometimes.
2003 Chevrolet Corvette: My dad's car, he bought it new when Chevy was running crazy incentive deals, as he tells it "post 9/11" though I don't remember the time well enough. Red, convertible, manual, FE RWD. What a vette should be. The 2000s GM finishing is as mediocre as you'd think, and it's not the performer that later vettes would be, but it's fun to hoon around in on occasion.
2004 Audi A6 Quattro 2.7t: My mom's car when I was in high school, I inherited it when I went to law school and they felt I needed an AWD. It was a great car, tons of power from the twin turbo, I'm told that a chip tune would double the power on it pretty easily but I never messed with it. Ran great for 100k until suddenly it didn't: died on the highway when an alternator gave out, then flooded in a rainstorm because the drain holes under the batter pan clogged with dirt, then the cooling system leaked and leaked and leaked. Sold for peanuts to some kid who I hope had better luck with it.
2005 Audi A4 3.0t Quattro Cabrio: Bought it used from a local dealer. Extremely fun car to drive, but ultimately I don't get the point of a fun car without a manual. Bad time technologically: screen but a crappy screen and no native bluetooth. Sold it for a little more than I paid for it after fixing it up a little.
2005 Toyota Camry: Another family car, my grandfather bought this new, in classic Indian-Dad gold/beige, and smoked in it every day until he died. Smell of cigarettes on the cloth is just fading now, but the burn holes aren't going anywhere. Honestly, one of the best cars ever made for my dime: starts whenever I turn the key, v4 is plenty on the highway and sips fuel, never done a single thing to it. Some of the interior parts are cracked from sun damage, and the exterior is showing wear, but it runs and runs. And when I park it in the city, I never worry about it, which is a use case all its own. I drive it the most, but really it's more of the family beater: it's the utility infielder if anyone needs a car, or the car we lend to a friend if someone needs to borrow a car. For which it is great, because it will always work, but no one is too thrilled about borrowing it. I reach for the key any time I need to go anywhere and not be seen.
2008 Chevrolet Avalanche LTZ: My first "nice" pickup truck in my life, got it at a bankruptcy auction from some jackass who didn't pay his taxes but did spend a ton of money on a chromed out bitch of a pickup. Still only 80k miles, so it's got a decade to go at least. Leather, good sound system, big v8, got a chip tune on it so it wouldn't do the v4 thing. Terrible mpg, but I have other options to avoid using it when I don't have to on long trips.
2015 Mercedes Benz E550: My mom's car for a while until it had some kind of weird electronic heart attack and was impossible to revive for less than it was worth. My god was it an amazing car while it lasted, though. I can see why at one time its close cousin held the Cannonball record: on a highway it would pull through 130-140 like nothing was happening, and would hold 120 better than the Camry held 65. It was still beautiful and the interior perfect when it gave out, but too expensive to revive.
2015 Mercedes-Benx SL550: My mom bought this car for reasons I have never really figured out. What possesses a 65 year old woman to buy a v8 coupe/convertible that gets to 60 in 4 seconds? I think she couldn't resist the bargain: she got it off the estate of an old guy who had only put 8k miles on it, and she got it for a song at seven years old. She almost never drives it...but I borrow it frequently. Honestly, it's too much power. It would be more fun with less engine. Within seconds of touching the gas pedal, you're committing a felony. Good for a couple of passes, but not really a great driving car at the end of the day. Handling is clumsy, transmission is herky-jerky with the too big v8.
2015 Lexus Rx350: My wife's first car. Workhorse, did everything you wanted it to do, ran perfectly except for eating batteries, but ultimately I just hated it for being a mid size feminine SUV. Around the time it hit 100k, I looked up its trade-in one day out of curiosity and realized that Lexus' hold so much value that we should really consider getting my wife a new car. Then my wife decided she didn't want a new car because nothing was any better than the Lexus, but my in laws had already decided that if my wife got a new car they wanted the Lexus and we had decided to give it to them, so we wound up buying my wife a...
2022 BMW 330i: My wife's new car, the ultimate answer to the last time I posted asking what car I should buy. This is honestly, in my opinion, the peak of the ICE car, the swan song of the genre. Four door awd completely practical to commute or take to costco, gets 40 on the highway with the mild hybrid, but also tons of fun to take on a twisty and hoon. Tossable, responds well to the gas pedal in sport mode, my wife loves driving it so much that she frequently takes breaks while WFH to just take it for a spin on country roads near us. Can drive it five hours and feel great, can rip around a country road and love it, can drive it every day. Fingers crossed on reliability, but Consumer Reports gave it good marks so maybe we'll be ok. Genuinely love this car, and my wife loves this car so much that she suddenly understands why I've loved cars before. Truly a great machine. Bought it two years old with 12k miles for a little over $34k, which was reasonable for me for getting my wife something she liked.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
Manual transmission Subaru Forrester:
Middle income professional, probably "could" have afforded something more expensive but chose the Subaru. Practical, not overly showy, but not overly false-modest either. LL Bean in human form. Probably outdoorsy, but in a modest hiking/biking/canoeing kind of way; rather than an EXTREME making it your whole personality way.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I feel like if it was kept constant momentum it would just lead to a dystopia of motorcycles zooming through lumbering cybertrucks.
But if it were just a 20mph difference I'd agree completely. Big trucks and SUVs should stay at a steady 65, but let small cars and motorcycles play at 90.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
1: Yes. Using your turn signal should be an automatic part of any anticipated lateral movement of your vehicle. You should not assume that no one is around just because you aren't aware of them.
2: Yes. You should not assume that you are aware of everyone around you. Though, I guess I really mean no to the question as written, because I don't care about a slow rolling (<5mph) stop at all under any circumstances. Any speed above 5mph, though, is just running a red light with extra steps. This is why roundabouts are superior, because when no one is there you never have to stop.
3: No. Speed limits are nearly uniformly wrong, and should be followed only inasmuch as they may be enforced. I routinely drive below the speed limit in residential neighborhoods, for fear of hitting pedestrians; I typically drive a little above the speed limit on the highway. But get me an empty rural twisty, I'm not doing 35; get me on an open highway I'm hitting a daily triple.
4: Tailgating is never ok. It is the one driving crime I think should be punished more often. When you get too close to react properly, you risk an accident, people vastly overestimate their reaction times. Nor is it fun or efficient or otherwise rewarding.
5: Yes, mostly, though I think in most cases the reason you need to come over and there isn't space is because you waited until the last minute, in which case I will not let you in and will dare you to hit me. If you know your exit is coming up, you should be in the correct lane at least 1/2 mile and preferably a mile in advance. As soon as you see a "lane ends ahead" sign you should be trying to get over. Don't ride to the very end and then expect to squeeze in.
6: I don't break any of my own rules, but I do break some of other people's rules, so I think we all come out the same.
7:
-- You can tell a lot about someone from assessing their choice of car. Even if you think your car says nothing about you, it does.
-- Cars should abide by the "Gentleman's Agreement" to stick around 300hp, and anything larger than that should be heavily taxed. 300hp is plenty to have a quick mid size sedan, a very fast small car, or a reasonably drivable large SUV/pickup truck. Capping horsepower on most cars would encourage people who want to drive fast sporty cars to buy small cars, and discourage people from driving giant SUVs and pickup trucks they can't handle too fast.
-- I don't really know that I'll ever want or trust a self driving car, but I see 75% of people on the road and I wish they had one. At the same time, if regulators don't make self-driving systems EXTREMELY conservative and predictable in their behavior, we deserve to get paperclipped.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
I think Trump is getting dog-walked by Netanyahu, reacting to events and trying to seem in control, while actually being in a reactive mode and failing to achieve any kind of leadership over his putative allies or the people he has a "great" relationship with.
Whether Trump knew about it in advance or not, I don't think he wanted Israel to do this.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
5d ago
This is a bad mod flag: SS in this case was pointing out the assumed consensus in the post he was replying to, which stated as conventional wisdom that Israel is trying to drag the USA into a war.
I think it goes way deeper than that. The concept of declaring war and making peace within European (and hence today, global) diplomatic systems goes back to Rome at least. The Romans had huge amounts of superstitions and traditions related to declaring war, and making peace. Numa Pompilius, who first held the title Pontifex Maximus which has gone in unbroken succession to our current Pope Leo, introduced the tradition of the Temple of Janus to the Roman populace in order to tame their warlike urges. The temple's gates were open in times of war, and closed in times of peace. The formal declaration of war and peace was a superstitious, religious matter for the Romans.
When we abandon that kind of simple logic, we chip away at an organized international legal system, and we wind up with a permanent murky state of conflict. If you never have declared war, you can never have peace.
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