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FiveHourMarathon

Listen to Pierre

14 followers   follows 6 users  
joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.


				
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FiveHourMarathon


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
Listen to Pierre

				
				
				

				

					14 followers  

					follows 6 users  

					joined 2022 September 04 22:02:26 UTC
				


				
					

					
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.



				

				

				

				

				

					

					

					
					
					

					
User ID: 195


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 9
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
She was asleep during that game so I managed to restrain myself.


I am comforted by the fact that the last thing she ever watched on TV was an embarrassing cowboys loss. A true birds fan to the end.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I need to know: what is the standard index order for Plato? What order are the dialogues put in?


Why is the Phaedo 4th in my copy? Why would the one that chronologically must come after all the other Socratics be 4th? Why was it that last night, sitting with my grandmother on her last night, I found that when I opened my copy I just happened to be on the dialogue specifically about facing death and the nature of the soul?


At least I didn't decide to reread the first chapter of Evgeny Onegin.


2spooky4me


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 9
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That fumble was way worse. Losing the ball on the one yard line on a trick play is on the coach. Having what appeared to be a QB spy on a hail mary was also weird.


A coach can't come down hard like that unless he has credibility to do it. Mike Tomlin or a Bill Belichek can cut people, Eberflus can't.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 9
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not attacking you specifically, but it's weird to me that everyone is giving so much credit to Jayden Daniels. He played a great game on the whole, but he put up 18 points against a weak Bears team, and the play at the end was 90% luck on his part to get the TD. He wasn't even really targeting the receiver who came away with it, it was an arm-punt into a crowd and hope for good luck. That play, executed exactly that way with no additional Daniels contribution, would be expected to have less than a 1/5 chance of success I would guess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 9
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I spent Sunday sitting bedside for an ill relative, she was mostly unconscious so I wound up watching three straight games on mute in between reading, helping her reposition herself, and reassuring her that no, she was not standing on my foot, she was in fact laying down.


Luckily it was an excellent football Sunday.


The Eagles had their most convincing game since 2022, winning in Cincinnati for the first time in franchise history. They won the turnover battle 2-0, for what feels like the first time in forever. Hurts played his best most complete game, hitting some deep balls, running enough designed run plays to keep the defense worried, scrambling when he isn’t contained, and of course hitting the Brotherly Shove trick for first downs and TDs. This is the best version of Hurts: a pretty good Lamar Jackson imitation with a cool trick to get one yard on command. Barkley crushed it, the local boy has loved playing for Philly. The ball spread around reasonably well to Smith, Brown, and backup TE Calcaterra. Still waiting for Jahan Dotson or any other receiver to do much of anything. But when Hurts is at his best, with Barkley in the backfield, 2.5 possible targets is enough to run a passing game because the defense is on a swivel trying to keep eyes on the run game. The Eagles Defense finally got some takeaways! The Bengals will probably be downgraded as a win by the end of the season, they are probably just bad if they lost to the Eagles like this at home, but they’re at least a real team that was playing to save their season this week. They have a fantastic quarterback and a star receiver. They’re not tomato cans. This loss probably ends competitive hopes for the Bengals season, unfortunately.


With Jameis Winston stepping in for the injured Deshaun Watson, the Browns snuck past the Ravens on some hero ball from Winston. The Browns season is probably already over, they’d have to win out to get to 11 wins, which makes some good performances from Winston so exquisite for me as a hater. Winston can play competently, or at least not worst QB of all time bad, get the Browns nowhere because they’ve already lost six games in a tough division, and then Winston is going to want starting QB money somewhere, or at least a shot to start, and will probably leave Cleveland where he is only under contract for one year. Cleveland still probably has no realistic way out of the Deshaun Watson contract (unless I’m right that the injury is fake and he simply never comes back letting the team take the insurance payout as a salary cap relief), they can’t pay two QBs and field a competitive team around Winston, and the mess will be fantastic in the off-season, with the team and its fans faced with just how stupid and immoral trading for Deshaun Watson was. I was really ready to root for the Browns in the Mayfield era, now I’m a hater, and not just a hater rooting for them to lose, I’m happy to see them win just enough to make them suffer more.


Bears v Redskins was a fantastic game. I regret to inform everyone that Jayden Daniels is a legit QB, and will be for some time. The ultimate outcome of the game was luck: if the Bears don’t flub a goal line handoff into a fumble at the 1 yard line, or the bounce on the Hail Mary doesn’t go that way, then the Bears win. But Daniels looked good. The skins have always been an annoying team to play in the division, but now they have some legit talent. Going to be two exciting games coming up. Caleb Williams looked good as well, but expect the Bears to do whatever they need to do to pick up some offensive line help in the near future. Makes me appreciate the Eagles O-Line situation: Stoutland University is a meme, but when you see Fred Johnson come off the bench to replace a Pro-Bowl LT and the team avoids giving up a sack against Hendrickson, that kind of Next Man Up mentality keeps the team competitive when there are problems. The Redskins looked beatable, they only put up 18 points on the Bears, but those are going to be two games to look forward to for the Eagles.


And oh man, the game I was more excited for than the Eagles game: SNF, Dallas against SF, season on the line for both teams desperate to get back on track after tough losses. A Cowboys loss was great, that both Dallas and the Niners looked beatable is even better. I was happy to have a reason to root for Brock Purdy for a change, and he played pretty well. Dak Prescott was in classic form, getting the team deep into a hole throwing interceptions, then leading half a comeback in garbage time so the game ends up looking close, before inexplicably throwing the ball into double coverage to end the game. Classic Boys loss. They'll probably still play the Eagles hard, but it's tough to worry about them going on a run to take the division.


What a weird week of football. We're starting to see the tiers of the league separate themselves, but power rankings are going to be a mess.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I just have strong priors against "government gets all the money then moves it around" so I wanted to clarify.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How do you picture this money "going back to the middle class?"


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In my quest through Plato I've gotten through the Euthypro, the Apology, the Crito, and I'm now on the Phaedo. Good hospital bedside reading.


On audio I just finished Moby Dick. A truly universal work, it feels like an allegory for the presidential election 175 years early. I've now started lonesome dove, which I recall someone here recommending, and Lord in heaven is it amazing. After reading a lot of non fiction and literary fiction, lonesome dove is like a firehose of content. Just action on action on allegory on allegory on setpiece on setpiece. The book just GOES. I'm totally digging it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But is it worse to cook your fried egg at home in vegetable oil than bacon grease?




I don't really know and I don't worry about it too much. I tend to go the bacon grease route, I rarely use vegetable oil at home. But I'm not going to ask what oil the recipe used when I eat at someone's home, and if I eat some junk occasionally I'm not going to sweat it.


Sensitivities vary, of course. Maybe there's an allergy response some people have.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
When it comes to caffeine, after finals every year in law school I would need to cut back severely, but I got headaches if I went to none. So I went from drinking about six shots of espresso every day to drinking two cups of hicaf tea, to drinking just enough black tea to keep the headaches away, to cold turkey. Would normally take two weeks to get down to nothing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


What's bad about processed foods? Does the act of processing a food introduce sin into the food that causes obesity?






Talk of hyper-processed foods causing obesity seems very hand-wavy to me.




I literally explained the proposed mechanism in the next sentence:




The majority of technical diets that major in the minors just track with "create a restriction that prevents you from eating at a convenience store or fast food restaurant;" this prevents most people from eating mindlessly and serves as an effective calorie stopper.




Most Americans/Westerners aren't getting fat off of home cooking, even though one can quite easily make high calorie foods at home. Most people are getting fat off of fast food, takeout, and grocery store junk food, not high calorie home cooking.


The sin being introduced is mindless availability of calories. I would bet that consumption of seed oils tracks obesity less closely than percentage of meals eaten outside the home.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


There is probably also something to be said for good technique. Are you having trouble at high cadences/efforts specifically or more broadly?




I'll say this: I thought the idea of technique on a stationary bike was silly coming from much more technical exercises, but it takes time to get the rhythm right.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's possible there's some minor impact from eating particular foods, but I am generally an IIFYM guy when it comes to the big obesity/health stuff.


Seed oil consumption tracks obesity because it is used in so many processed foods. The majority of technical diets that major in the minors just track with "create a restriction that prevents you from eating at a convenience store or fast food restaurant;" this prevents most people from eating mindlessly and serves as an effective calorie stopper.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Endorsements from newspapers are probably also increasingly irrelevant to persuadable voters so the choices are weighted differently.


If it was worth a two percentage point bump towards Kamala on the Nate Silver model, but if Trump wins there's a strong chance of retaliation and/or it causes a loss of conservative subscribers, that's one thing and I think the papers would have endorsed under those circumstances.


In reality, virtually no one is persuaded by a newspaper endorsement. The readers are mostly all liberals already, and any conservatives left won't be persuaded by the editorial board, but they might finally be driven away by it. If anything, the strategic move would be to not openly endorse, to try to keep as many conservatives inside the audience as possible, where they'll be exposed to liberal (or to the true believers in the newspaper "truthful") reporting. There's no or negative actual value in the endorsement.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
This is just the reversed version of arguing that we should vote for Trump because of the possibilty of another Jan 6th type event.


One can't be held hostage. Even if it's utilitarian true it has too much moral hazard.


Utilitarianism doesn't work when you're playing an intelligent opponent.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
For Twitter? Not his immensely valuable, industry leading industrial and tech companies? The one that isn't making any money, that's hemorrhaging users, that runs off advertising that's in steep decline?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So school desegregation was a big project of the 50s and 60s. But because kids attend local schools, and neighborhoods were segregated, lots of schools are pretty segregated without segregation.


So there was brief effort to live up to ideals and force schoolbuses to cross neighborhood lines. This was wildly unpopular, a bad idea, and ultimately binned.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Importing foreign doctors is vaguely possible if you are okay with decreasing the value of American healthcare (which is a massive segment of the economy) and reducing quality of care (which you don't believe is important)




You're putting a lot of words in my mouth, which I'll attribute to your repeatedly mentioned intellectual exhaustion.


Quality of care for the average patient will improve with increased access to doctors. Which can most easily be achieved by increasing the number of doctors.


I'm admittedly not in medicine, but growing up basically all my high school best friends wanted to go into medicine. Only one out of seven still wanted to go into medicine by junior year of college. These were all guys with SAT scores within a shout of mine in the mid 2200-2400 range. Why? Because they looked at the available slots and realized that if you have the misfortune to be white or Asian and interested in medicine, you face a series of gatekeeping processes that heavily limit your odds of making it. Return to the article I linked:




On March 17, 2023, nearly 43,000 medical school graduates will anxiously await the chance to continue their journey to become licensed physicians. But with just 40,375 available residency positions available, what will happen to the remaining 2,500 applicants that fail to match into a slot? While a lucky few may be able to ‘scramble’ into an open position, most will have no choice but to wait an entire year to reapply for the privilege of practicing medicine.




And that's after you get into med school.




The overall allopathic medical school acceptance rate for the 2022-2023 year was 43%. There were 55,188 applicants and 23,810 applicants were accepted. 22,713 students who were accepted actually matriculated.




I argue that much of the lack of interest from top students in going to med school is that 57% chance of not getting into med school at all, followed by extra gatekeeping and artificial systems that might still leave you without options and certainly leave you without prestige. Much of it tied up in racist affirmative action policies and destructive undergrad competition. Why not opt out and go into consulting or finance or tech, as many of them did, where you've got a comparatively high chance of making it into the industry and little gatekeeping to prevent your rise after you are employed?


Make it seem easier to become a doctor and more people will become doctors. Make being a doctor seem less horrendously awful, as you repeatedly claim it is, and more people will want to become doctors. Create more doctors and more of them will choose to move to Arkansas. These things are really economics 101 stuff.


Alternatively, I'm sure we're only a few days from Trump proposing that doctors shouldn't pay taxes.


As for foreign doctors, my general belief is that we should not restrict immigration of high human capital candidates. Every (legitimate) Masters degree should come with a green card stapled to it. If we need to do outside testing to insure quality, let's do it. But that's a technical issue not a strategic one. Regardless, that's not a solution I'm proposing.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If history had played out differently, we easily could have wound up with transgenderism normalized a generation ago and homosexuality being normalized now, and then the same conservatives would be treating the latter as the bridge too far, with very elaborate arguments as to how this set of priorities made perfect sense.




See eg


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But I also don’t know if we have evidence to compare “hereditary profession in meritocracy” versus “free choice in meritocracy”.




We absolutely do. No society free from nepotism has ever existed, but societies with proportionately less nepotism have consistently outcompeted societies with proportionately more nepotism.




I can’t really think of a “free choice” nation in history that was dominant, can you?




The United States of America. Not only is this literally true comparable to other cultures throughout history, it's our national creed.




Those kids aren’t getting injured because of some cosmic law that you ought to diversify activity. They are getting injured because they overtrained a particular muscle through an unnatural repetitive physical movement.




I brought up TJS, because it's super direct and easy to follow cause/effect. What about the injuries in Basketball? In youth soccer?


Doing anything to the exclusion of everything else is "unnatural." That includes mathematics. We don't know how those things would go because we haven't tried them. I should be clear: if you want to take your kids and move to the Adirondacks and force them to learn math every day for hours from age five, I support you doing so. But I expect that if we apply such a theory to the mass of people, we'll start to see the same problems crop up.




I think it’s possible that the physical training was so intensive that it left a long distaste for exercise after the fact. I think this is possible. But that has more to do with the training being coercive.




Moreso the aforementioned injuries from intensive training than anything else, combined with going from a highly regimented training regimen built around competition to having to steer oneself. They're an example of what happens to specialists left behind in scalable professions.


And if we're starting from age five, training will always be coercive. Many five year olds require coercion to get dressed and to eat. If you're suggesting that a child who wants to do nothing but mathematics should be encouraged, within reason sure I agree with that. But we'll probably run into the same problems we do with athletics. And we certainly shouldn't be trying to specialize everyone in the world.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


patient handoffs are so dangerous that one of the reasons we work stupidly long shifts is because someone so sleep deprived they are drunk is safer than having someone else come in for a complicated patient.




Man, the goalposts are moving around so much that I can't even remember if this is a home or away game anymore. But let's chalk that up to exhaustion and address what you're saying point by point.


Our learned friend in argument @was started this discussion with the statement:




The practice of Medicine just isn't that deep. It's some pattern recognition (sick / not sick), extracting the right features from the patient (patient says "man my chest feels weird" and figuring out if they mean chest pain, shortness of breath, etc.), heuristics (this cluster of signs and symptoms matches this), and then a short decision tree (D-dimer --> CTA). It turns out that at the end of that relatively shallow decision tree, if you can't figure it out, 99% of the time it's not because there's a Dr. House moment waiting on the other side, it's because nobody knows. Sometimes that's -- well we've discovered that you have stage IV pancreatic cancer. Here's a clinical trial but otherwise that's the end of human knowledge. Sometimes it's "well, I don't know why your chest feels weird, but we've ruled out the bad stuff so let us know if it gets worse!".




So sure, fine, we need a few hero-genius doctors willing to work insane hours for complicated patients. That doesn't really address the majority of patient needs, the majority of interactions that a typical individual has with a doctor and with the medical system, which typically are simple checkups and checkins and outpatient procedures and don't require constant observation. Why are we incapable of discriminating between those tasks and assigning appropriately?




{Nurse Pratitioners aren't good enough.}




That's fine, no one brought them up. The whole argument I'm making is that improving access to doctors will be a positive, even if the doctors that one has access to are not hero-geniuses.




Train more doctors you say. Sure, fine. Except that that takes a long time, requires professors and other resources (we don't have enough cadavers for anatomy lab already) and things like surgery specialties don't have enough procedures to adequately train in a timely fashion. You need to see a variety of cases and patients and advancements in medical care have made this harder (which is mostly good but not for this specific issue).




All the more reason to start today. Not doing something because it takes a long time is setting us up for the same problem ten years from now. Pipeline problems require time to address, but you have to start. And what we're seeing today is downstream of what we did 40 years ago:




While today’s physician shortage is accepted as fact, it may come as a surprise to learn that just forty years ago the exact opposite problem was being predicted: a physician surplus. Back in 1980, reports warned that too many physicians were being trained, and organizations like the Pew Charitable Trust and the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academy of Medicine) urged a moratorium on new medical schools and a reduction of first-year residency positions to restrict the entry of foreign medical graduates. In fact, there was such urgency in the 1990s to slow the production of physicians that the government began paying hospitals not to train doctors. In 1997, a consortium of medical organizations agreed that further steps should be taken to limit the number of physicians, recommending a decrease in funding for postgraduate medical education. That same year, the 1997 Balanced Budget Act capped residency training funds, which would remain frozen for the next twenty-five years.




The physician shortage of today is the result of policies then. Do you think that the percentage of Americans who meet those rigorous hero-doctor requirements declined as a result of those changes in slot-availability, or do you think that fewer Americans who were capable of doing the job were being trained? So now we're downstream of those policies facing a shortage, we should give up? It will take institutional knowledge and years of training-the-trainers to come to fruition, so we should never start?


Also, RE: cadavers. Pay for them. Or make it opt-out rather than opt-in. We've got the dead bodies. Not having enough cadavers is a question of will, not some immutable law of the universe.




Import foreign doctors you say...They are also mostly good enough, especially after retraining...You are also stealing jobs and wealth from Americans, which is sometimes justified but most of the people making this complaint don't like it when it happens to them or people they like.




So, at this point, we get the whole story lined up directly: adding a large number of inferior doctors will be good enough to keep the system moving, but it would reduce the wealth of existing stakeholders. This is called rent-seeking. Look, if you want to work brutal hours in a hellscape because it will make you good money, that's mostly* your right. But then don't complain about it and attack the solutions to the brutal hours and the hellscape. Either this is a good deal you want to preserve, or it isn't.




In the longer term you'd kill Americans going into medicine, and Americans going into medicine and our absurd wealth is responsible for a huge amount of medical advancement.




Why would making more residency slots available for Americans kill Americans going into medicine? You know what increasing med-school spots and residency requirements would kill? Affirmative action. If every qualified applicant gets a spot, who cares who gets priority. And why would improving on a system which you say sucks kill applications? You say:




To put some context in, most jobs involve things like lunch breaks and misc. downtime during the day where you can shoot the shit, unwind, and refocus. It's extremely common for a physician to work 16+ hours with barely enough downtime to piss...




Ok, let's get you a piss break, and maybe even lunch and an afternoon smoke break. People aren't going to want that job?


*There is some point at which I'm uncomfortable with a job being done at all if it requires inhumane working conditions or incredibly low wages. But we're talking about different universes than medicine, like when I saw the illegal immigrant tree planting crews that a landscaper near us hired for an industrial job planting three inch caliper birch trees without any power equipment. Three Americans could have done the whole job in a day with a mini excavator you can rent at home depot, instead these guys were breaking their backs for days to put them in, paid piecework so ultimately a significantly sub-minimum wage. At minimum wage it wouldn't be profitable to have them do it, and you'd have to have somebody with a backhoe doing the work.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 8
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's one of those things where we looked at that Bengals team and said "when they just fix the O-Line they'll be dominant!" But that's easier said than done. Team culture is such an important thing in the NFL, in a way it seems not to be in the NBA or even MLB. Some teams just produce those role players one after another, and some teams don't. The Eagles' Jeff Stoutland can get overhyped by the fans, but they at times they seem to be getting more out of guys like Fred Johnson and Tyler Steen than a lot of teams get out of their starters.


Sometimes they just never figure it out. I'll always love Joe Burrow for that season though, it was such an honorable showing as a QB, going out there and getting blitzed over and over and still doing what needed to be done.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Did societies that placed children in hereditary professions from childhood outperform societies that allowed adults to choose their own path?




That little kid you see at the Chinese restaurant['s]




...parents do not intend for him to work at that Chinese restaurant when he grows up.


But more to the point, we've seen the results of childhood specialization in sports, and while it has lead to improvements in technical quality among youth players, we also have to question the impact on the broader society of all the wasted potential of the failures and burnouts. What do we do with the mathematical equivalent of a Ballerina who gets too fat?


Or consider the crisis of young baseball players getting Tommy John surgery on their elbows.




The need for Tommy John surgery has exploded at the youth level. According to Chicago's Rush University Medical Center, the biggest age group that needs the surgery in the country is from ages 15-19. [...] Another factor according to the experts is overuse. “The more you put a high load on something whether it’s a rope or a ligament in the elbow, it’s going to fatigue over time and if it doesn’t have time to recover and rest, that ligament is ultimately going to fail,” Dr. Shepet said. Doctors recommend avoiding single-sport specialization. “One should take (off) at least 2 months, some people advocate three or four months if you could,” Dr. Zellner said. “That doesn’t mean that a child or youth is sedentary during that time. They're able to do other sports, they’re able to cross-train lift weights and work on their conditioning. There are plenty of things that can be done outside of throwing with that arm.” Berken now owns Impact Sports Academy in De Pere which trains baseball players year round. He tries to help parents understand what can be done to minimize the risk of a pitching injury. “The biggest thing for me I think is, we try to let our coaches know that we gotta take it out of the kids hands,” Berken said. "The kids don’t know any better. Any competitive kid, if you ask them how do you feel, hey do you want to stay in the game, the answer is going to be yes.”




The children may long to identify only with the thing they like and are good at, but that doesn't mean it is good for them, any more than letting a kid eat only a single favorite food is good for them.


Personal anecdote, I dated a girl twelve years ago, her family of three siblings all specialized in different Olympic or non-school sports from middle school, to the point that they did alternative high school classes to avoid attending high school which would have interfered with training and competing. One figure skater, one skier, one cyclist. None made it. All are very fat now. The figure skater at least still looks more or less like herself, the skier and the cyclist are both so fat that one thinks of their health immediately upon seeing them walk across a room. By contrast, I've always been a mediocre dabbler, as a kid I played three sports at a mediocre level, and I kept picking up new ones as the specialists left me behind at each stage; my athletic career topped out competitively in undergrad with our club boat finishing dead-last at the Head of the Charles. At 33, I'm probably in the best shape of my life. Not good enough at anything for anyone to care, but I look good naked and man can I ever help someone move.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll note once again that the way to fix "My job is hard mostly because there are so few of us that we have to work long shifts with many patients and it is exhausting" is to lower standards and introduce more workers into the job, making it easier and reducing the standard of quality needed to perform the job, which would allow those lower standard workers to perform at the necessary level.


What you're describing is the inefficiency of a medieval guild system engaging in rent seeking.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 21, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Sometimes people just don't like things because the things are bad.




I don't like Coldplay. I think their music is what they play in a waiting room for your vasectomy. I don't go around using Coldplay as a [prefix to indicate everything bad in the world]. Nevermind, I was going to link the wikipedia article, but the actual title of the article is too funny:


https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:English_terms_prefixed_with_Mc-_(derogatory)




Or, given the insane adaptability of human aesthetics, because they haven't yet found a reason to cultivate the liking. In a world of impossible luxury, is it really surprising that people's preferences don't overlap?




I don't like Hockey. I try to like hockey, pretty regularly, but I don't like it. I don't go around complaining about the NHL for existing.




Disdain for Americana is a heuristic, a shorthand for a bunch of material and cultural luxuries. Disdain for America, or for one's family, is something else.




Yet the two ideas are tied together. "I love America, but I hate everything American and want America to be completely different" has some obvious illogic to it. Patriotism is Hegelian, it's about synthesis, glorifying both sides of a conflict. The patriotic American version of the Civil War isn't the Lost Cause or Marching Through Georgia, it is both. Within that ad, the Yankees and Red Sox hate each other, but baseball wouldn't be better off without either team, it needs both, both embody part of baseball's romance and joy. As ever, the success of Augustus wasn't at core about the brutal victory of one side in the Roman civil war, but about his success in glorifying the other side as brave Romans embodying Roman values who were nonetheless mistaken. The English aristocrats who descended from William's retinue came to honor the Anglo Saxon heritage of their conquered homeland. Russian patriotism today struggles to swallow a world in which both Lenin and Alexander were admirable, but it seeks it.


American patriotism today which does not contain McDonald's and the NFL and MTV isn't, at core, patriotism, because for most Americans it doesn't contain the traditions of your literal ancestors and the people you grew up with, your teachers and scoutmasters and little league coaches and the boss at your summer job. That doesn't mean you can't dislike McDonald's. To be honest, I don't really like McDonald's. I've been to a McDonald's three times in the past two years, and once was just a drink, while another time I just bought a medium fry to get change for a fifty so I could buy a velvet painting of JFK for $30 in the parking lot. I prefer Wendy's, when I do eat fast food, which is rarely. But I understand the appeal of it. (I'll note that by my own standard I'm far from perfect: I haven't seen a superhero movie since the Toby Maguire Spiderman)