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FiveHourMarathon

You can get anything here except red ink

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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


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				
You can get anything here except red ink

				
				
				

				

					13 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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				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the AR is a really good tribal identifier, I wouldn't say status symbol any more than any other gun is, because it's a moderately  priced buy in and it can serve a number of other purposes (checks boxes for theoretical "home defense," many hunting purposes, target shooting, TEOTWAKI, etc). It's a platform you can get into for $500, and it's a platform you can spec out for $10,000, and we've decided to call them all ARs as a concept and talk about them as one category. The AR branding/memeplex is the key here, it could just as easily come out very differently if more gun enthusiasts identified themselves by gun make rather than by gun category.


International travel is definitely both a similar tribal signifier and a minor culture war flashpoint, though typically more in the positive than the negative sense. I recall hearing at different times some version of "X% of Americans don't even have passports, how can you be so sure about the world if you haven't even seen the world?!" from different Blue Tribe cultural outlets. Having traveled abroad is an important Blue Tribe cultural signifier, the same girls I can picture saying they'd never marry a man who owned an AR would probably also say they'd never marry a man who didn't have a passport, who didn't want to go abroad to learn and experience. Of course, the magic of confirmation bias is that most people go overseas just to tell you what they already thought was true at home because they heard it on Twitter is now true by lived experience.


Nothing else is quite like an AR, in terms of commitment level and universality. Bad haircuts, tattoos, piercings used to play a similar role, but are largely irrelevant now, style is largely uniform across tribal lines. Food items and stuff like name brand waterbottles are good tribal signifiers, but a little more transitory/cheaper/lower cost signaling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I would put both pickups and rifles as tribal signifiers, but in turn the items become status symbols from the bare bones to the customized to the collectible, delivering both superior function and conspicuous status signaling.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Old Culture War Thread: Your good books list
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


"Borges: Selected Non-Fictions"




I have a copy of Ficciones which permanently lives in my backseat, against being stuck anywhere with nothing to do. I can always read Borges again and find more.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Old Culture War Thread: Your good books list
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I endorse that message, something that I identified with to a skin-crawling extent, and would add: it's fascinating listening to NFTU read from my magic box I carry everywhere through my wireless earbuds, and hearing the narrator decry how the people of his age were so artificial because they were just copying what they read in books in the same way that his modern equivalents love to accuse people of being sheeple just listening to twitter/tiktok/youtube whatever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Championships are always overrated as emblems of accomplishment relative to 2nd place finishes, and to consistently making the playoffs after strong regular season performances. Think of it like the NFL, teams that win the Super Bowl are held as heroes, teams that lose Super Bowls are more or less erased from history, often derided more than teams that were much worse all season long. But if we're honest, once a team makes it to the big game, they're only ever one or two ACL tears from winning. The 2004 Eagles weren't nearly as good as the Patriots and lost in the Super Bowl, but two or three unlucky injuries to the Pats and the Eagles would have taken it in a walk and be remembered as this great historic team, rather than written off as "The Reid-McNabb Eagles were good but not great, never got over the line and really won anything."


What was interesting about Trump AND about Hillary at the moment in 2016 was the way they had dominated the primary process (Trump by knocking out a slate of talented contenders one after another, Hillary by being so dominant that only jokes and cranks ever tried to run against her) and forced their parties to acknowledge them as leaders. That indicated that both were forces that would need to be reckoned with for years, if not decades, to come. Their wins in the regular season should be taken as evidence they represent important power blocks, and whether they win or lose in the championship they were still both talented politicians who represented the will of many people.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Plastic surgery exists, but it does not have widespread social acceptance, and it is socially acceptable to make fun of women whose plastic surgeries are bad enough to be noticeable.




Plastic surgery has wide social acceptance, it just isn't something people talk about openly yet in America. Procedures are common for younger and younger customers. Brazil has recognized a Right to Beauty for decades, and hasn't collapsed on that score yet. It's incredibly common in Iran to gift a nose-job to a girl graduating high school. Bald celebrities barely exist (outside comedians and old men) anymore. My dad was shook when I pointed out to him that Terry Bradshaw and Howie Long hadn't aged a day since I was in middle school. People who don't pay attention just genuinely don't notice plastic surgery.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Our society isn't really built around social monogamy in any sense outside raising children




Sure it is, unless you're willing/able to substitute friends/other relations for things normally expected of a partner in a way that is societally abnormal. Who takes care of you when you are sick, when you get old, when you lose your job, when you need help?


The expectation that you will do this for a spouse is so strong that we wouldn't even say "His wife's income supported him while he was unemployed." It would just be natural that when a household loses one income, the other earner covers basic needs where possible.


Where, "Steve lost his job, so he moved in with his friend for six months" seems like a high, nigh unrealistic level of friendship for most people to have as adults.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That data will always be weak, because of the documented (and obvious) trend of men and women defining "had sex" differently. What acts count as sex? Does initiation count or only completion? What if one partner finishes but the other does not? Men, statistically, round up; women, statistically, round down. If you don't account for that, you only get trash numbers.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Work and sex, presumably. When the metaverse has useful business cases (meetings, trainings, whatever) that are universally adopted, it will be impossible to interact with the economy without it.


Plenty of people in 1998 said they never planned to get a computer, no way no how, and if they still stuck to that today they'd be severely impacted day to day. Especially as services that were once analog (movie times in the local newspaper, applying for a mortgage) have moved purely online unless you are willing to undergo great inconvenience. I'm also pretty confident that smartphone adoption was driven by tinder as much as any other single app.


I'm not sure I know what that use-case is for the metaverse yet, but it's certainly possible it's either out there, or that a critical mass of corporate types think it's out there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Using ad-blockers is antisocial behavior and should be discouraged or banned wherever possible. If you don't want to consume content that contains ads, don't consume the content if it contains ads. Simple as.


Advertiser supported content makes it possible for a much broader array of content creators to make a living producing commercially viable products. A world without advertising is a world with more paywalls and fewer creators making a living. See the decline of the newspaper for what content creation looks like without advertising dollars: fewer writers making a decent living, higher prices for less content, increasingly desperate catering to a tiny demographic target.


If you don't want advertising on your TV, don't watch OTA TV, limit your viewing to paid streaming services that don't show ads. If you don't like youtube ads, subscribe to premium. If you don't like reading essays with pop up ads, pay for a newspaper subscription, or if you're too cheap for that go to the library and read it for free. If you expect to google "How to fix my sink when it gurgles" and find the answer for free, you have to expect that the ads on the side of the page are paying the guy to make it.


If you think that putting advertising in your face is wrong, vote with your feet/wallet/eyeballs: reward content producers that offer alternative models. If content producers find that they're losing customers when they put up obnoxious ads, they'll stop doing it.


Can anyone offer me an argument in favor of ad-blockers that doesn't amount to some kind of misanthropic "The system, man, it's broken; so whatever I do against the system is a-ok"? I really can't even create a steelman for the ad-block position. I can understand the logic of not liking to be tracked, sure, and I find that a somewhat reasonable ask; but not viewing any ads that pay for the content you consume is just expecting the world to provide you with something free of charge.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't find the action particularly unethical because it's within the standard controls of the medium, but if a podcast host announced that from here on out he would only release content on a specially made app that would make skipping impossible, I don't see where one would have an argument against him that it was one's right to skip the ads and that he was doing something wrong by changing the rules. The content creator/owner has the right to set the terms as to how that content can be consumed.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I appreciate your reply.




if you find a service to be severely corrupt, opting out of that service can be excused morally.




Using AdBlock isn't opting out of the service, it's opting out of paying for it. I see no way to justify adblock that wouldn't also easily justify, say, turnstile jumping ("I should be able to move about the city without paying so much,  the corrupt mta system shouldn't make me pay") or looting/shoplifting ("capitalism demands too much of 'people's attention, time, ability to focus, and overall mental state [, which] is a valuable commodity' be devoted to work, so I'm opting out of capitalism and just taking this TV"].


Moreover, AdBlock doesn't help create a conversation about advertising limits, it delays the necessary conversation. If everyone has to deal with ads or pay for paywalled content, the sooner it will become apparent you're better off with a freemium substack (Blocked and Reported) than trying to go free and ad supported (The Huberman Lab). Or whatever as the case may be.


I still see no grappling in your post with the question of property rights. Not to get all "you wouldn't download a car" but there's no justification for taking something, just an effort to claim that "the advertisers have more power than me." If you want great writing with no ads, go to your local library and read War and Peace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universalizability


Because if all consumers/end-users use ad-block or skip ads, we don't get ad-supported content anymore. You can probably make an argument regarding rent-seeking with respect to, say, sports leagues. But to block ads from an ad-supported website and expect the content to stay up would be, well, silly.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By your reasoning, it's not watching the ad that you're obligated to do--it's buying the product advertised in the ad.




See I think we have a strong historical tradition around this by analogy, the proverb: "You gotta dance with them what brung you"


Let's say a nice older lady acquaintance of mine I see at Republican party fundraisers asks me to the opera. "Well you see, I have this extra ticket to the gala, and no one to go with, and I know how you love Wagner..." Now I know she wants to sleep with me, and I don't want to sleep with her, do I have to turn down the tickets? No, that isn't the socially accepted opinion, I can accept the tickets. But neither am I obligated to sleep with her, that's a repugnant conclusion (sorry Blanche, nothing personal). At the same time, if I were to go to the Gala and ignore her, avoid her, and refuse to talk to her, most would see that as very rude. Rather, I'm obligated to give her a chance. You gotta dance with them what brung you, you don't gotta go home with them. By accepting the tickets, I agree to give Blanche a shot to pitch her product, I don't agree to purchase it. That's the social contract we agree to.


In the same way, an advertiser buys a fair shot to pitch.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


When infinite copies of a work can be made for no cost, taking a copy and not paying causes no harm to the system. If your worldview is strongly rooted in the old world where copies cost money to make,




Do you assume that historically, books and newspapers were priced at the printing/distribution cost? Because you're not budgeting anything for the actual creators of the content.


As opposed to the constitutions view of the issue:




Article I Section 8 | Clause 8 – Patent and Copyright Clause of the Constitution. [The Congress shall have power] “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”




				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
So, you're literally just going to ignore the idea of paying a fairly minor fee for Youtube premium?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So I don't see why you're implying (and please correct me if I misinterpret you) that our choices are either accept an ad-supported web environment or accept that nobody will be willing to produce or host content.




I don't think I even implied that. Rather I stated directly, if you don't like ads (or certain forms of ads) don't go on sites that use those ads. It's perfectly possible to avoid them.


I haven't used Facebook in years now (though I'll confess, my wife uses FB marketplace a lot and I pick up the furniture), because I didn't like the website. So I stopped using it. Yeah, Yeah I'm only one man Zuck didn't notice I was gone yadda yadda; but by that same logic it doesn't matter who you vote for or if anyone deserts from the army, there are so many other people your decision won't matter. Be the change you want to see. If you don't like the content, stop using the service.




And we have proof by existence that not everybody does use adblock. In fact, last I checked it was still a fair majority who don't.




Once again, this trivially justifies something like looting or turnstile jumping. "Not everyone will do it. Old people aren't athletic enough, others are squares or need to worry about getting arrested."


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think about this at least once a week. I think of myself as having average or better pain tolerance in the context of activities. I regularly climb or lift through serious pumps, I'll drag my ass through a marathon I haven't trained for, my hands and arms are covered in scabs and scars from bashing them on something climbing or futilely struggling on a stuck bolt on an old truck. When those things happen I'll barley notice them, I'll bash my elbow into a hold, scream fuck once, and finish the climb even after the blood starts dripping to the ground.


But take me out of an activity, and I'm SUCH a pussy. I'm going to give blood tomorrow, and I know I'm going to wince when they stick the needle in. I've done it every time I could for years, but I still wince when they stick me.


Hell last year I stabbed myself in the leg with a box cutter trying to work on something, barely noticed the pain of actually stabbing myself, calmly bandaged it and drove to urgent care, then had to grit my teeth to get through five stitches. You'd think I was getting civil war surgery if you looked at my face.


Mentality and context is everything for me.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Why even claim that we currently have a monogamous system? 95% of Americans have sex before marriage and leaving aside whatever small percentage of those people have sex with their fiance pre-marriage but no one else, that means that by the definition we'd apply to most animals we are not monogamous. We just accept temporal rather than simultaneous nonmonogamy, it's fine to fuck lots of people as long as at any given time you're only fucking one of them. A species of wolf that only mated with one mate at a time wouldn't be labeled monogamous.


I don't see any real solution to the problem, just get your shit together gentlemen and don't end up on the wrong end of the cut-off.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Shaved is a different category than balding.


Billy Chrystal in When Harry Met Sally, Kelsey Grammer in Frasier. Brady and Lebron being obvious non actor examples.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'll probably hang onto a Reddit account, maybe not the one I used on themotte, for a while. Until the archives become unusable or unsearchable with google. Reddit remains a useful repository of eg hobby information. There are probably comparable or better forums out there for each individual purpose, but I don't know what they are off-hand, and it's easier to search "Reddit typical repairs e46 3 series"  and find a nice thread already put together, than it is to find which bmw forum is any good, figure out how to navigate it, etc. It seems unlikely that /r/weightroom or /r/trucks are gonna get banned for political reasons any time soon, though I guess anything is possible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That would be pretty funny if a skinhead based their whole life ideology on the haircut. Start with, well I need to shave it all off, and then take up all the other affectations to justify it.


Probably pretty true, but not really the point. Joe Buck still has a job, Lebron is the GOAT, Tom Brady is doing constant ads, Joe Biden is president, Elon Musk is idolized. Honestly, it's probably a rare American man who gets through a whole week without thinking about at least one of those men. Society accepts rich men getting plastic surgery.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
A Death at BUDS, or How Anti-Science Ideologies Trickle Down to Harm Heroes


TLDR: Media bias against drugs leads to people ignoring obvious, medically supported interventions. This creates room for other people to cheat the system, which creates dangers. Kyle Mullen would probably be alive today were he on a medically supervised steroid cycle instead of buying a used car to store his illegal drugs in and learning how to use them from some mix of bros at the base and bros on the internet. I say bring on the Space Marines, or at least provide pure drugs at military expense, it’s only polite.


By any reasonable standard, Kyle Mullen was a Hero in the making, in the classical sense. A muscular 6’4 SEAL candidate, choosing to forego a career out of an Ivy League school to serve his country.




The 24-year-old arrived on the California coast in January for the SEALs’ punishing selection course in the best shape of his life — even better than when he was a state champion defensive end in high school or the captain of the football team at Yale.




He finished the toughest parts of SEAL training, and died on the beach afterward. NYT article here, all quotes are from that article. The NYT story was a real gut punch, expose and heartbreaker all rolled into one, I recommend reading the whole thing and now it’s circulating through the “Summarize a real journalist’s work, make two generic comments, and pass it off as your own” internet chain. Slate chimed in to probably say the whole thing is to be blamed on Toxic Masculinity, The National Review of course needs to Defend Tradition while blaming the drugs, even some Arab website hopped on to call it an example of  American brutality, cheating, and drug culture.


What none of the think pieces suggested was the obvious solution: if steroids make you better at the things we want SEALs to be good at, give them steroids. Why are SEALs buying them independently and taking them secretly, when it would all go much better if the SEALs program offered an option to be put on a mild steroid cycle under doctor’s supervision? At the very least, that’s as upsetting as schoolteachers buying their own school supplies!




Sailors who enter the program bolstered by steroids and hormones can push harder, recover faster and probably beat out the sailors who are trying to become SEALs while clean, said one senior SEAL leader with multiple combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. The inevitable effect, he said, is that a course designed to select the very best will end up selecting only the very best cheaters, and steadily fill the SEAL teams with war fighters who view rules as optional.






“No one can do everything the instructors ask, so you have to learn how to cheat to get through,” he said. “Everyone knows it happens. The point is to learn how to not get caught.”




Teaching trainee soldiers to cheat goes back to at least the Spartan Agoge, and I doubt Lycurgus was totally innovative on this one. But you can prevent trainees from going off the rails by providing reasonable rails. What killed Limewire et al (or at least made them less prominent), wasn’t suing some random college kids for downloading an album, it was creating a legal framework for listening to music online and paying for it. While testing is suggested as a solution, it hasn't worked in sports so I fail to see how we can be optimistic it will work here.


If cheating is easy and it works, then the only solution is to obviate the need for it by making it legal in a managed form.


The Dead Pool is a real phenomenon, steroids are nothing to play with. But those kinds of results come from out of control drug use without medical supervision by guys who are used to pushing their limits, and are OK with dying in the process. There is no question that overuse of steroids can have negative health impacts, but a light, managed cycle isn’t going to make it any more likely that anyone dies, it would probably reduce the odds of other injuries during BUDS if it were used to manage existing problems and lead to more medical supervision. Steroids are like anything else, they follow the 80/20 rule: the first extra push gets you most of the results, then you can keep adding more and more to get attenuated marginal gains. WADA isn’t going to test SEALs before they kick in doors and disqualify guys that don’t have clean piss. Putting all SEAL candidates who want it on a basic cycle would obviate the desire to go on more, level the playing field, and improve performance.


Instead, the Navy chooses to make the competition ever more fierce, and just hope that guys won't cheat or get themselves into trouble.




In the 1980s, about 40 percent of candidates graduated. Over the past 25 years, the average has dropped to 26 percent. In 2021, it was just 14 percent, and in Seaman Mullen’s class this year, less than 10 percent.




Like everything else in American life, the competition at the top is increasingly fierce. The bifurcation of American life into a Barbell Chart of winners and losers doesn’t stop anywhere. SEAL training is particularly brutal, consider this story of a man who was probably tougher and in better shape than anyone on theMotte:




Three weeks in, Seaman Caserta collapsed while carrying a boat. Instructors yelled at him to get up, and when he said he couldn’t, his father said, they made him quit the course. An X-ray later revealed a broken leg.






Candidates who don’t complete BUD/S often must serve out the remaining years of their enlistments in undesirable low-level Navy jobs. Seaman Caserta ended up manning a snack counter at a distant base.




Seriously, I don’t know the whole story, but in what universe is a guy 50/50 between commando and snack counter? There wasn’t a slightly more useful landing spot?


You’re asking these guys to take a gamble between doing their dream job being a certified superhero, with highly paid job opportunities galore in a variety of fields after they serve their country with honor, and obscurity behind the snack counter. Is it any wonder that they’ll do anything to win, especially when you already select for guys willing to risk death?




“What am I going to do with guys like that in a place like Afghanistan?” said the leader. “A guy who can do 100 pull-ups but can’t make an ethical decision?”




I’m really just putting this quote here as a laugh line. We ask SEALs to be elite, to be the best, to sacrifice their bodies, their lives, and often parts of their souls; but God forbid they break the rules by taking medicine that makes their lives easier.


Early aughts Rick Reilly really did a number on America, we’re still recovering from it and realizing just what Better Living Through Chemistry can do for us. But our sportswriters and their cousins in the hard news are the main way the public hears about steroids: I would bet that more NYT writers/editors know someone using Test to transition than using Test to hit a PR. They’re pulling their info from SI, not from T Nation. Much of the NYT commentariat and audience views male weightlifting and fitness with vague suspicion of wrong think. That combination gives us a public discourse about steroids soaked in myths about roid rage, tiny testicles, and ignoring all the scientific studies of the health benefits of testosterone supplementation. Much like a recent discussion of plastic surgery, if everyone keeps it a secret you only ever notice the bad work, not all the work that passes.


The result is that someone like Kyle, who should have been serving his country with distinction, or at least living the probably pleasant life of a former Yale football captain, instead chose to buy a used car to hide his drugs in, inject himself with God-only-knows-what, and died before he ever saw an enemy combatant. What a waste. Let’s at least consider the possibility that the problem wasn’t drug use as such, but using illegal drugs dosed by an amateur, with the obvious preventative being legal drugs dosed by medical professionals under regular observation for results. Recognize that bad results come from homebrew experimentation, not from the substance itself. Let's give Justice to Kyle, not by weakening SEAL training or introducing an ever expanding and expensive team of nannies to keep an eye on everyone, but by doing something that might actually have saved his life.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 04, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I've never tried to find my own work, so IDK that you can find a specific comment that easily. For me it's more like I hear about a new training program and search "Reddit /r/weightroom super squats" which tends to get me threads from /r/weightroom about Super Squats. If I couldn't do that, I'd probably lose interest.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
    

  1. In my fantasy world where sanity reigns, there is no reason to increase standards, because it isn't really a competition. If we have 100 guys who can do SEAL stuff instead of 10 guys that can do SEAL stuff, that's awesome! Our SEAL stuff capacity has increased ten-fold! Given how the US has increasingly leaned on media-antiseptic Drones-and-Commandos warfare since the Obama years, we can use all the guys we can get, and we'll always find the funding.
    2. 



Probably, in the real world, you're right, I concede. And you're definitely right that we need to address the cost of failure. Making SEAL training a life-changing all-or-nothing gamble is a waste of human resources in the literal sense.


    

  1. In general PEDs follow a Pareto rule. The first little boost is going to give a big change, dosing yourself with tons and tons is going to be marginally helpful at best. If you allowed a small boost, there would be much less incentive to cheat: the likelihood of getting caught when you're being monitored as part of your "official" cycle is high, and the payoff is lower. Not a steroid doctor, but if you're monitoring and dosing for Test level (among other things) and one guy shows up with a much-higher-than-intended level of Test in his system (because he's dosing on his own), then the natural next step would be lowering his "official" dose, making it a wash.
    2.