srf0638
11d ago
Lol, I read it more as addressed to an audience that's never done anything than as by an author that's never done anything, but you may well be right. Separately, the accounts I've read of Delta selection (e.g. Haney's Inside Delta Force) make it pretty clear that the challenge comes more from navigation, elevation gain, bushwhacking (using the road is an auto fail), and beating the time cutoffs than from merely covering ground as such.
srf0638
12d ago
the Fort Bragg Cartel
My buddy (who has periodically contemplated trying out for the 19th SFG and could probably hack it) put me on to this. It's entertaining, but if I had to take a drink every time the author delivers what is supposed to be harsh criticism of Delta or ST6 that actually makes them sound absolutely fucking rad, I would have passed out in a state of advanced intoxication a quarter of the way through.
srf0638
18d ago
If someone is experiencing physical sexual dysfunction, then they should of course address that.
But if you're feeling moral guilt over not being fully present, then my good ol' fashioned practical advice would be: stop.
YMMV and so forth, but I should think a suitably galaxy-brained anti-porn interlocutor would respond by saying that these aren't really two different things--perhaps "full presence" is an unnecessarily obscurantist way to describe whatever it is we're going for here, and by the same token "physical sexual dysfunction" obscures the existence of psychogenic sexual dysfunctions with physical manifestations, and "causes" in the following should be taken to read "reliably predisposes with reasonable probability in a reasonably large fraction of the relevant population", but porn causes lack of full presence which in turn causes sexual dysfunction, and sexual eufunction is more important than the enjoyment of porn. Do I, myself, actually believe this? Eh, not enough to bet my life on it, but enough to avoid watching porn.
srf0638
19d ago
It's been like 2 years for me, I'll let you know if I ever figure it out. Admittedly I haven't gotten around to Hornblower. Mr Midshipman Easy was ok but not the same sort of thing at all.
Based on your other comment, Wodehouse might not be a million miles away from what you're looking for. Obviously lighter, but a good deal of the same spirit.
srf0638
22d ago
alternatives to Strava
For social, no idea. For tracking/logging, I like intervals.icu.
I'm finding it to be kind of an abusive relationship
I don't think any wearable measurement that includes the word "score" (stress, sleep, recovery, readiness, ...) is worth a thing after the cost of potential nocebo is accounted for (see e.g. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/bad-bedfellows), for what that's worth.
srf0638
26d ago
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.
srf0638
27d 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
1mo ago
30ish Gordo more fun than 50ish Gordo: https://gordobyrn.substack.com/p/you-wont-remember
srf0638
2mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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.
Hand size is a lot of it.
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