Mewis
1mo ago
The more obvious point is that if we really end up facing such a disaster, we'll just geoengineer a solution. The only reason we don't pursue it now is piety, but it's hard to imagine billions of people just letting themselves die because the IPCC says it would be wrong to stop climate change.
Mewis
1mo ago
Restaurants are if anything, a great example of competition keeping prices low. Most restaurants have terrible profit margins and many of them fail.
Other good examples of industries with high competition and crummy profit margins - airlines, supermarkets.
Mewis
1mo ago
Again, the SHWs are a minority. But it's not clear what your point is. Weightlifting as a sport rewards and encourages people to get big and strong - and getting bigger, for a lot of people, will shorten their lifespan. That's the entire point. Having lots of muscle - as even the SHWs have - doesn't change that. The general trend isn't just that weightlifting is uniquely deleterious, but that all power sports are - cycling is nearly as bad, even though there are no SHW cyclists.
I simply don't really see any direct evidence that carrying lots of lean body mass, beyond a marker of general health and propensity to exercise, does anything for lifespan. Healthy men carry substantially more muscle mass than healthy women but live shorter lives. And if we take it as true that most people will maximise their lifespan by maintaining a BMI of about 18-23, well, it's pretty easy even for an amateur lifter to escape that range, and indeed it is encouraged by most people in the lifting community.
Your substantive criticism is that Olympic weightlifters are all massively overweight and fat. This is plainly not true and just a stereotype. Most weightlifters are in weight classes and actually stay pretty lean. They don't quite look like bodybuilders but they're pretty close. If you look up say, Li Dayan, he looks fantastic.
So whence the poor outcomes? Obviously, they're still too big. Li Dayan isn't going to Olympia any time soon but he's still considered overweight, bordering on obese.
Mewis
1mo ago
Again, if you choose not to be interested in this, you could find any number of rationalisations. That he wrote Olympic bodybuilder instead of Olympia bodybuilder does not really seem important to me. It's not even the only typo in his post.
Mewis
1mo ago
I'm sure you could find any number of reasons to ignore anyone you feel like - why not a typo or minor terminological error?
Mewis
1mo ago
170kg. I don't really PR that often on squats - in theory I could probably do 180 based on my reps.
I'm no soothsayer either but what others have told me is that if I wanted to squat more I'd probably have to put on more weight, at least temporarily. And since I don't really consider my squat numbers to be respectable...
Anyway, you clearly are not paying attention to what I'm saying. I don't consider there to be such a thing as too big. There are however, clearly tradeoffs to getting big and strong that people don't want to hear about.
Mewis
1mo ago
Person goes to hospital with cancer. Is stuck in a bed having their bum wiped for them. Loses muscle mass. Dies. Clearly they just needed some whey and squats. Or hospitals cause cancer.
Actual weightlifters have bad life expectancy outcomes, on par with athletes that get punched in the face regularly.
Mewis
1mo ago
Exercise in general is good for your life expectancy. Any yet, weightlifters have some of the worst life expectancy outcomes among all athletes, alongside boxers and ice hockey players who are literally getting brain damage from their sports. I think virtually all of this is caused quite simply - people who lift weights are too large. The sport valorises size and strength, and even hobbyist natural lifters are expected to have BMIs at 25 or over.
Lifting weights is probably not the culprit. The skinny old guy doing squats with 60kg in between running marathons is probably not endangering himself. But he will likely outlive the meatheads benching 140kg. If you can call such an existence living.
I agree that it's better to live fifty years as a meathead than seventy as a cardiohead. And you're right that people are dying due to being fat and sedentary. But lifting doesn't fix that. It's one of the few athletic activities that actively encourages weight gain and does not inherently involve any cardiovascular exercise.
Mewis
1mo ago
Unless he's been hanging out with Justin Trudeau, HRH King Charles is still whiter than any of them, and is actually a head of state.
Mewis
1mo ago
Lifting weights to build muscle is probably detrimental to long term longevity, particularly coupled with a high BW. If you care about that sort of thing.
Mewis
1mo ago
Opinions may vary, but I don't consider any amount of muscle or strength to be excessive or undesirable.
Mewis
1mo ago
Yes, I would like to have gotten more of that 60s weirdness. As for the race, I don't really mind. I think you can justify just about any casting in the context of a post racial interstellar society. Except maybe Zendaya and her weird baby-face. Not that I don't get the appeal of dudes that look like they're 25 going on 15, but it does make it hard to take them seriously.
Mewis
1mo ago
Why not simply bring down the force of law on these petty criminals for the crimes they are actually committing, rather than this chicanery about nudging social media?
Mewis
1mo ago
One thing that stuck out to me in Dune was the chasteness. The Harkonnens are sex weirdo pederasts in the books, an element that is totally excised in the movies, even though they're delightfully weird in other ways.
Mewis
1mo ago
This is what they call 'four quadrant" films, films that penetrate all major demographics. Marvel has it pretty spot on with no sex and minimal romance, and you can't argue with money.
Mewis
1mo ago
A million things. London, as it is, is being strangled by a hideous combination of sky high rents, high taxes, and a glutted labour market. That it manages any prosperity at all is a marvel - that what prosperity it enjoys is sapped to support housing prices (and atop it, a rentier class of whitehairs) and an underclass of semi employed immigrants. The rest is pure consumption.
This is how despite inviting vast numbers of immigrants, Britain remains poor and is not likely to change it.
Mewis
1mo ago
Rivendell is temporary only from a terribly alien worldview - it has lasted thousands of years. That is, of course, insufficient from the perspective of an Elf, but should satisfy any mortal human.
The Shire, of course, is clearly idealised by Tolkien, but anyone who thinks it to be paradise is wrong. Tolkien himself clearly grasped the drawbacks of such a society - petty, parochial, ignorant, and dependent on the goodwill of greater civilizations.
Mewis
1mo ago
Why is there no in between?
I've noticed a pretty big pattern these days among fitness YouTubers. More clickbaity videos, more collabs with other creators that are popular, more shilling of exercise apps and products. It's not necessarily bad content, and a lot of it comes from people who are genuine and respected. I just think that's the ecosystem they live in now. And I couldn't say on the back end exactly how they're financially incentivised and rewarded, but clearly they are being pushed in this direction.
Mewis
1mo ago
I think that the male urge to protect one's balls is fairly natural and would not require any thinking. I would also say that it seems more likely than your adversary dropping their knife, curling up and waiting for death as soon as you point your bat at his.
Mewis
1mo ago
Gay marriage didn't help any disabled kids, either, but people voted for that.
Mewis
1mo ago
I don't really credit that it's psychologically much harder to stab someone than book them with a bat.
Mewis
1mo ago
Or he could just raise his leg and turn slightly, causing your underpowered hit to glance off the meatiest part of his body.
I would agree that the current US approach to Venezuela isn't working, and sanctions rarely do work (see Cuba, Spain, Iran, Russia, so on). But the US is entitled to refuse to trade with anyone it feels like. Maybe if Venezuelans were actually starving and dying in large numbers, there might be an obligation to send food, but AFAIK things aren't that bad in VZ.
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