srf0638
4d ago
Periodic reminder that state and regional conservation corps exist all over the American West and possibly elsewhere (see e.g. http://ccc.ca.gov/, https://sccorps.org/, https://thegreatbasininstitute.org/nevada-conservation-corps/, https://www.rockymountainyouthcorps.org/cc-field-life) and are sometimes cool but generally a bad deal relative to entry-level land management jobs.
srf0638
11d ago
The apple of bikes?
Surely this would be Cannondale.
The DTC guys are sometimes interesting.
There's also Aliexpress if OP feels like a real adventure.
srf0638
12d ago
found myself with a menagerie of old bikes that had been sitting in garages for years or decades now sitting in my garage and being fixed up and ridden around my neighborhood.
Based.
srf0638
17d ago
Huehuetenango
These tend to be crowd-pleasers in my experience, I recommend for someone who isn't sure about all this fruit stuff.
tangible blueberry note.
Yeah, and I've also had a Yirgacheffe with very distinct key lime notes. These are a little more exotic, but also a good way to start branching out if you currently think that coffee pretty much tastes like...coffee.
srf0638
19d ago
Strongly endorse all this, but re:
Inevitably, this rabbit hole includes taking the plunge and roasting green coffee beans for your own consumption
I'll add that this step entails the initial promise of freshly roasted beans on demand for the (low) cost of green coffee and amortized equipment costs, but also the dawning realization that you will have to spend a lot more time and money than you think to match the quality of product you can get from specialty roasters. Not to say it isn't 100% worth it, at least at the level of hobby roasting and freshly but not especially artfully roasted beans, but it's something to consider.
srf0638
19d ago
Try making a few cups with bottled water and see if you like it better, or at least that's what I did.
In response to one of your other comments, Sweet Maria's used to say that the blade grinders were good enough for pourover, and I'd say that one will at least pay for itself while you decide if you want to spend any more money on the hobby.
srf0638
21d ago
What equipment do you recommend for home brewing?
Hario V60, gooseneck kettle, Baratza Encore/Capresso Infinity/OE Lido grinder. Krups blade grinder is acceptable for cheaper if you're on a budget. Brita filter or similar may be a good idea depending on the quality of your water. Freshly roasted beans--Happy Mug is a good start if there's nowhere near you.
What are good reasons for taking coffee seriously?
I had my first really good cup of coffee and have spent fifteen years or so trying to recreate it at will, which is not an uncommon experience in the specialty coffee world. If you haven't had a cup that made you want to put effort into your home brewing, I don't suppose I'll be able to argue you into it, and if you have, nobody needs to argue you into it.
How much subjectively experienced variety is there in terms of bean types?
IMO, quite a lot. If you want to see for yourself, find a specialty coffee place near you and try a bunch of different brews. Also relevant to your second question, obviously.
srf0638
23d ago
30ish Gordo more fun than 50ish Gordo: https://gordobyrn.substack.com/p/you-wont-remember
srf0638
1mo ago
What do you mean by bad epistemics exactly?
His truth-seeking processes are bad. In particular:
-Refuses on principle to engage with disagreement, except maybe of the "fifty Stalins" variety
-Lots of talk about intermediate outcomes but precious bloody little about actual performance
-Confident inference from naive linear regressions on heavily pre-selected populations (as in linked article)
It's not really that bad by the standards of the fitness industry, I guess, but it annoys me coming from someone whose self-presentation makes it seem like he should know better.
srf0638
1mo ago
I've seen that article (and e.g. https://www.slowtwitch.com/running/we-often-run-faster-off-tri-training/). Best I can tell, Couzens has appallingly bad epistemics, but I think he's pretty close to right on this point.
What you perceive as "goofy" is in my mind more like "optimized for achieving balance across multiple domains of fitness."
Eh, I was thinking, like, shadowboxing with dumbbells, or anything involving Bosu balls or squishy foam mats or tsunami bars, for instance, none of which I would consider simple but balanced. Though, granted, it's not like I have a video montage of top MMA guys doing that stuff.
When you say you are suspicious of general fitness, are you saying such a property doesn't exist, that it's impossible to describe, or that it never matters to anyone?
I would accept either "doesn't exist" or "is impossible to meaningfully describe" as a characterization of my views, here's my reasoning:
optimizing fitness for a given activity A produces different levels of fitness for B and C;
This is of course correct, but I think that people's actual selection of A, B, C, ..., ultimately boils down to some.combination of the following:
-"idk it just sounds cool", great, awesome, that's pretty much what it comes down to for me as well, but I don't think you can get from this to meaningful claims about generality.
-muh fizeek, to be answered by a dismissive Bronx cheer
-fighting/soldiering/moving house/farming/etc from someone who's not actually doing any of those things and has no plans to start, ditto
--fighting/soldiering/moving house/farming/etc from someone who is actually doing one of those things, but then you're just doing task-specific s&c, and it's not going to matter much in comparison to specific practice anyway.
Basically, I don't think there's a principled way to select a truly general A, B, C.
On a purely autobiographical level, I experienced noticeably better carryover to manual labor in the woods from training like a dentist with a half Ironman coming up than I did from various well-regarded "tactical" training systems. I suppose this isn't a terribly widespread experience, but then again I don't know how many people have tried both, and it certainly made me more skeptical of the idea that I had to think about some kind of balance or generality in my training for it to carry over to real-world tasks.
srf0638
1mo ago
FWIW, the most interesting answer to "the fittest" in my mind is probably MMA competition,
There's a certain primal appeal to fighting, absolutely, but I also feel like combat sports s&c is pretty unsophisticated or downright goofy compared to more specialized events because, well, perfectly optimized s&c isn't all that important relative to skills training.
I am an athletic mediocrity
Oh, sure, me too, and ultimately pretty similar logic re:specialization, I just think the many variations on "but what's his Fran time?" (perhaps more prevalent: "I would never want to look like that") are generally contemptible.
More generally, it occurs to me that the word "fit" by its etymology and other meanings pretty strongly implies specificity--fit for something or other. I don't know how many people this will convince, but it certainly makes me look on the concept of "general fitness" with a good deal of suspicion.
srf0638
1mo ago
The inability (in work capacity or mental fortitude) to lift all day is the same as not being "all that strong at all" - no matter what the little numbers on the plates say when they get moved around for a grand total of 10 minutes every other day.
It seems more or less pointlessly obfuscatory to use the word "strong" like this when you yourself invoked the more accurate "work capacity or mental fortitude" (and we might also or instead say endurance, heat tolerance, hand skin toughness, ....). People surely do love to define "true strength" as what they, themselves, are good at, even when it has very little to do with maximal force production.
srf0638
1mo ago
hopper
I would push back against this a bit. If a "hopper" scenario is what motivates you to go put in the work, fine, cool, whatever. But it sure seems to me that this scenario is just as contrived and fake as actual real competitive sports with standards established through a history of wide participation, particularly when you look at the multisport competitions that actually exist. To my ear, it vaguely rhymes with a Rawlsian veil of ignorance--"how would I train if I didn't know what I had to do?" Of course, there may be an answer to this question, but in a world where I do pretty much know what I have to do that answer shouldn't have much action-guiding force. Meanwhile, the cost of invoking a "hopper" scenario is that it invites mediocrities to be smug, cf my point above about established standards--"Mark Allen? what's his Fran time?"
when one is talking about muscles we're mostly talking about aesthetics.
Indeed. I class talk of "gym muscle" much the same as "I don't want to look like one of those gross bodybuilders", "lean, toned muscle", " Tyler Durden in Fight Club", "swimmer physique", etc. etc.
srf0638
1mo ago
running through Wilson's Ramble with her male boss to get ready.
Woof.
I think I could manage faster than 40 days, but yeah, that's the rub. I've enjoyed interacting with fellow travelers on previous tours, so timing things to line up with the Grand Depart has a certain appeal.
srf0638
1mo ago
srf0638
1mo ago
Would you race?
I might try to throw down some big days, but I don't like recreational sleep deprivation, so not in a real serious sense. Maybe start with the Grand Depart, maybe not. You?
I've done a fair bit of solo travel both on and off the bike, never really struggled, but it's gonna be harder to schedule now that I have a serious gf. Or slow-play my hand and do it when I retire, there's at least one guy in his 70s on the Rigs of the Tour Divide series every year.
srf0638
1mo ago
Nothing much of substance to add, but I enjoyed this quite a bit. Have done a few touring-with-a-purpose trips on pavement, would like to hit the GDMBR and Baja Divide someday.
srf0638
3mo ago
I don't really trust calculated/composite scores from wearables myself. But caffeine/stimulant use might be worth thinking about.
srf0638
3mo ago
quitting to pick pineapples isn't going to make you any happier until you find something larger than your own ego and physical pleasure to live for.
I dunno, one can be noticeably happier on the pineapple plantations while still suffering from a lack of larger meaning, and indeed that's a pretty fair description of how it worked out for me.
There's also some ambiguity here (and in the original pineapples post)--is "picking pineapples" meant to denote physical work in the outdoors, maybe somewhere exotic, maybe seasonal, maybe paired with travel during the offseason? (Planting trees in Canada, fishing in Alaska, wildland fire, etc. etc.). Or is it merely supposed to be any kind of low-wage minimum viable employment? In the former case in particular, I can see it being quite a bit better than Office Spaceing and swiping harder, while still being ultimately meaningless. In the latter case, maybe less so (though even then, "work a mcjob and spend half the year training muay thai in rural Thailand and living like a local" might fall into the same bucket as the first class of jobs.).
A different post reminded me that I just finished Anton Myrer's Once an Eagle, a sprawling midcentury epic supposedly beloved among America's military officer corps. Doesn't really get into gear for a while but no regrets. Now chipping away at John Holt's How Children Fail, as reviewed in the ratsphere--so far, some of the phenomenology of confusion seems exceptionally penetrating and insightful, but there's a good deal that seems wrong or confused. And there's not much of a positive program yet, but after all it's not called How to Unschool.
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