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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   1611 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 23, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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April BJJ Notes

-- I traveled to New England see my in-laws for Easter, and I looked up a local gym with a Saturday open mat and called to ask if I could drop in. The owner said if I was just stopping by for the weekend, in lieu of payment I should just bring him a six pack of Yuengling, I brought a case. I'll be honest in this space: I was really nervous about it. I've been going to BJJ at my gym pretty consistently three to five times a week, mostly progressing from losing quickly to losing slowly, and I'm pretty comfortable with rolling with anybody at my gym, comfortable with my level of sucking. But I hadn't yet rolled outside of that community, and I was pretty nervous: that I actually sucked way worse than I thought I sucked and everyone at my gym was just being nice to me, that my gym itself actually sucked and I just didn't realize it because it was all I knew, that I was going to be missing some key element of the game or of etiquette and would look like a fool, that everyone would dislike me for whatever reason. None of that happened, it was fantastic, 99th percentile realistic outcome. I had fun flow rolling with the upper belts who were very helpful, I felt pretty strong rolling with the lower belts, and I was able to hit a lot of things I've been working on at my gym like flower sweeps, and hitting underhooks and wrestling up from bottom half guard. Actually a great experience.

-- The severe bruising that I asked about when I started has more or less totally faded and is no longer a concern. I still have a few small bruises after every class, but it's not longer very painful or large. Among other suggestions I received was a possible deficiency in Vitamin D, and I started taking supplements. That might have worked. It might have also been changes in technique, or adjusting to it (though @self_made_human indicated that was impossible and he knows more than I do).

-- I've now reached the level of relative experience where the coaches ask me to drill with and roll with new sign ups and female students, and now newly signed up female students. I generally hate working with the women and try to avoid it unless directly asked or it comes up when we're all rotating, drilling even moreso than rolling. Nothing personal, I'm happy they are there and having a good time, it just doesn't have any benefits for me personally. I'm close to 200lbs, I need to be extremely gentle to avoid just overpowering a 130lb female, especially with the concern of avoiding being inappropriate. This is even worse when drilling; the other week I had the mortifying experience of one of the girls in class asking me to drill with her, and every single drill started with "Ok, get on top of your partner and put your hands on their chest and put all your weight on them..." Rolling isn't as bad because at least I can just decide not to use techniques that would lead to positions I'm uncomfortable with. I roll with girls if I have to, but I don't seek it out. BJJ is mostly a masculine experience, and a masculine activity, but I reflected recently that it actually makes a lot more sense for women than it does for men from a self defense perspective. A lot of times, the guys (other than the cops) kind of giggle when the coach is going through "self defense" applications for techniques: we are vanishingly unlikely to face a peer fight that matters at all. To beat an untrained person, I could have quit two months ago and been pretty confident, and the odds that I run into another big strong trained guy are low; to say nothing of my being in middle age and having avoided getting into any fights in years and years. For a young woman though, the odds of finding yourself with a larger stronger man on top of you and between your legs, who you want to control and stop, probably without using overly much violence; well I'm not going to turn this into a quibble over statistics but they have a decent chance of being in that situation in their lifetime. So in some ways, I should spare a thought for their needs in class: they might actually be doing something useful here.

-- So what am I getting out of it? I ran into this quote about tennis in Infinite Jest the other day and wrote it down in my notebook:

And then also, again, still, what are those boundaries, if they’re not baselines, that contain and direct its infinite expansion inward, that make tennis like chess on the run, beautiful and infinitely dense? The true opponent, the enfolding boundary, is the player himself. Always and only the self out there, on court, to be met, fought, brought to the table to hammer out terms. The competing boy on the net’s other side: he is not the foe: he is more the partner in the dance. He is the what is the word excuse or occasion for meeting the self. As you are his occasion. Tennis’s beauty’s infinite roots are self-competitive. You compete with your own limits to transcend the self in imagination and execution. Disappear inside the game: break through limits: transcend: improve: win. Which is why tennis is an essentially tragic enterprise. You seek to vanquish and transcend the limited self whose limits make the game possible in the first place. It is tragic and sad and chaotic and lovely. All life is the same, as citizens of the human State: the animating limits are within, to be killed and mourned, over and over again. Mario thinks hard again. He’s trying to think of how to articulate something like: But then is battling and vanquishing the self the same as destroying yourself? Is that like saying life is pro-death? And then but so what’s the difference between tennis and suicide, life and death, the game and its own end?

That's ultimately the goal of all athletics, and the other guy on the mat gives me a better excuse or occasion to explore my limits every week. I've dabbled in a lot of fitness hobbies over the years, and this has me stoked in a way I haven't been in a while. Every day is a challenge, and I can feel that I'm making progress, even if progress just looks like losing slower against the same opponent week over week, or hitting one good move in a round. I still suck, I'll probably always suck I'm not a naturally gifted athlete, but that feeling of progress is addictive.

-- I think my goal going forward is to work on narrowing down the moves I'm using in matches. Work on targeting a limited number of moves, and hitting them consistently, rather than the scattershot approach I've been taking so far. I love my gym for a lot of reasons, but I don't always get the most value out of the daily lessons because sometimes we're talking about seven-step leg locks from De La Riva and I'm just not gonna get it anytime soon. If I can get to the point where I've got a toolbox of a few good sweeps and a few good subs, I'll be way better off. I don't want to say my defense is good, but I'm reasonably decent at bogging things down when I'm in a bad position, and I can often sneak back into half-guard and fight from there. Counterintuitively, I think right now one of my goals needs to be to give up my back more this month. I almost never give up my back, the better players I see often do, so I think the fact that I'm not giving up my back indicates I'm over-valuing protecting my back, and need to take more risks.

onwards and forwards. This is a good bit of progress compared to the winters. I never got to the De La Riva since my coach just wanted us to swing leather, but I am glad that you are doing more complex things. I had brusied lips and a mark from dirlling body kicks. Mostly wrist and ankle injuries though from improper landings and bad takedowns.

Half guards are a weird bjj thing wherein if you train mma, half guard can be death due to strikes, so you miss a lot of these fun tools unless you are specifically training submission wrestling. Leg locks too.

You can now start looking at instructionals too, so Craig Jones has great ones where he, as a submission guy, shows how absic wrestling can counter a lot of submissions but also vice versa in a very effective way. You should try giving your back up with time, there are plenty of times when you cannot get up without doing so. Sakuraba had a non-existent guard and always showed his back as he would be able to shrug off the Brazilians and beat them up again. Great person to see how far limited grappling can go if you are smart enough. Most of the lore around BJJ is completely fake, and the sport has a lot of marketing to make it mystical or at least did back in the day. Sakuraba kinda put a stop to this.

For women, the grappling aspect makes a lot of sense from a layered perspective. Women have piss poor grip strength, if you grab a girl and she is noteicabley strong, you will think twice before engaging with her. Most communication is nonverbal, strength is a cue that you cannot miss even when drunk. If a girl is out and she has rolled with guys who are big, trained and scary before, she will not freak out if some creep acts funny with her. The added benefit of concrete means that usually, one hip toss is enough to fend wierdos off. Submission wrestling is awesome. Do keep us posted.

p.s. beware of finger injuries from using gis. Every gi competitor and many hobbyists get hand issues from gripping the gi. Many might use the gi but would never use grips to save themselves trouble. Also, if you get stacked, just open up the guard even during hard rolls, the vertebrae damage is not spoken about enough.

Again, good work, man. More people can and should pick up basic physical culture and how that allows one to prolong youth and vigor.

On the topic of grip strength, as an aging judoka, I picked up one of those rock climbing finger boards and a peg board. Those are really handy for working the same tendons and joints in a slightly different way, and I think they’ve helped protect me from sport-specific overuse injuries.

I never had a gi since rash guards have replaced them nearly completely in many places. People use a lot of handed finger extension to counter the effects of gripping, my reasons for using it is so reduce damage from using my keyboard.

How long did you practice for?

Bands probably would have been even better for me, actually.

I was a very competitive (within a few state area, not like actually competitive with genuinely good judo players) judoka for about 10 years. Most people, myself included, seem to age out of intensely competitive judo pretty young, even at the amateur level, just from wear and tear. At 30, they put you in the Master’s division for old folks. 😂

This isn't surprising, wrestling is probably even more intense. Submission grappling is the only combat sport you can do forever since even scaled down versions are pretty fun and productive.

I would have done judo had we had any combat sports here. Submission wrestling, the current strain comes out of judos lost groundwork and a lot of inputs from Anglo wrestling forms. Both those things are extinct now sadly.

I gave up real sugar and high-fructose corn syrup years ago in favor of artificial sweeteners like Splenda, aspartame, and stevia. Last week, I decided to also give up zero calorie artificially sweetened drinks on Jim's advice. It's done wonders for controlling my hunger. On the minus side, non-sweet tea and juice taste awful; I would rather just drink cold water at that point. So that's another source of enjoyment gone from my life.

What about raw honey ?

isn't that just sugar?

  • antioxidants

I use a tablespoon with my decaf green tea, mint, 1/2 lemon every night just about

If by non-sweet tea you mean the pre-made Southern kind, yeah I enjoy it as a Southern thing but it's low-quality, industrially processed tea and it's not going to be good on its own. If you'd like a neat little hobby, try getting into brewing your own iced tea with high-quality ingredients - tons of variety as well as better taste.

Try some unsweetened fruit flavored seltzers. It’s gotten to the point where those taste as good as Sprite to me.

I was thinking about a post extolling the wonders of artificial sweeteners, courtesy of popping into the local Taco Bell and making good use of their unlimited drink refills.

All the Pepsi Max and Diet Coke a man could dream of, without the normal consequences on the waistline? Whoever made the nectar of the gods zero calorie deserves a Nobel, maybe two. And they're safe, last time I reviewed the claims about potential downsides I was thoroughly unconvinced.

The only thing I've heard of regarding artificial sweeteners that I thought had enough evidence to be potentially concerned about was potential changes in gut microbiota, but since I don't drink any artificially sweetened drinks I kind of stopped following the news for this.

Maybe I should make a habit of replacing the little amount of sweetened drinks I do have with stevia-replaced ones....

Yeah my experience whether on or off keto was that sucralose & sugar alcohols didn't disrupt my hunger/satiation. And I thought as of maybe 10+ years ago, the story was that while each of the artificial sweeteners have slightly different results with different people, they all had extremely low metabolic response compared to dietary carbs in general. The idea of your body being 'tricked' into producing a flood of insulin by the apparent encountered sweetness seems like some kind of psychological intuition that some people may find useful, but that wasn't backed by evidence.

And it's crazy to hear dentists saying 'luckily you're not a soda drinker' when looking at perfect teeth, whenever I'm drinking an impressively expensive amount of energy drinks instead of coffee.

The idea of your body being 'tricked' into producing a flood of insulin by the apparent encountered sweetness seems like some kind of psychological intuition that some people may find useful, but that wasn't backed by evidence.

This is 99% of health/diet/nutrition research...just hunches without any evidence or only cherry-picked evidence. All macros produce an insulin spike. It's how digestion works. Otherwise, it would be type 1 diabetes. The same pleasure you get from candy or ice cream is no different from a fatty steak even though the macros are different.

Splenda has calories, about the same as a sugar per gram. 3.5 calories per gram . but they are allowed to round it down to zero.

i was wondering what happened to jim. He owned jim . com which is worth a fortune. and then he stopped updating

My understanding is that all the artificial sweeteners have calories, it's just that they taste so intensely sweet to us that you have to use a tiny amount compared to sugar. And that makes the calories negligible.

Calories are the literal energy content. The subjective taste is irrelevant.

The point is that drinks sweetened with artificial sweeteners have 100 times less calories than drinks sweetened with sugar, because they have 100 times less of the sweetener. And 100 times less calories is so little that it can be rounded down to zero.

It does not matter. A tiny packet has 1 gram, or about 3.5 calories. The sweetness is irrelevant. The rounding down is because it's less than the allowed threshold

Cooking spray doesn't have zero calories, but the reason people think that's true is essentially due to a loophole in nutrition labeling requirements. Essentially, the label says it's 0 calories because of the declared serving size. For any foods, if the declared serving size contains less than 5 kcal (calories), the manufacturer is permitted to round down to 0. This is exactly the reason why Tic-Tacs - probably the most well-known example of this - indicate that they have 0 calories per serving, even though technically each Tic-Tac mint averages about 2 calories. Since the serving size is <5 calories, it can be rounded down to 0.

https://old.reddit.com/r/nutrition/comments/xpsky0/how_does_cooking_spray_have_zero_calories/#:~:text=Since%20the%20serving%20size%20is,much%20any%20liquid%20cooking%20oil.

A normal can of Pepsi has 40g of sugar. A can of diet pepsi has 0.124g of sweetener. Even if the sweetener has the same calories per weight, you would have to drink 300 times more of the diet version to get the same calories as the sugar version. What makes this possible is that per weight, the sweetener tastes much sweeter than sugar. The sweetness is the most relevant thing.

For what it's worth, i can easily eat a lot of the stuff raw without it affecting me much . Sweetness is subjective, i guess. During my diet I was unwittingly adding 200 calories a day by using too much of it, so the calories do matter. I originally thought it was zero calories, but I was wrong.

When I look at something called Splenda Original Sweetener packets, I can see from the ingredients list that it contains dextrose, maltodextrin and sucralose. Dextrose is just sugar, (even the wikipedia page redirects to glucose), maltodextrin is another kind of sugar that may or may not get digested, and the ingredient mentioned last, sucralose, is the actual zero calorie sweetener. So it seems that the product called Splenda actually is mostly just sugar, with a tiny bit of super sweet sweetener added.

The lesson here is probably not that sweetness is subjective, but that you should read the ingredients list if you want to be careful about what you eat.

I would get a bag of something like pure stevia extract if you need something to sweeten your tea and really need zero calories.

It does not matter. A tiny packet has 1 gram, or about 3.5 calories.

It does matter, and @tsiivola already said why. You use far less of the artificial sweetener to get the same subjective taste than you do sugar. So while 3.5 grams is the same amount of calories either way, one uses way more than 3.5 grams of sugar.

I wish this site had a decent user block feature as twitter does.

  • -12

Click the three dots on someone's comment and select "Block User". You won''t be notified of replies and their comments (but not the children of their comments) will be hidden from you.

As far as I can tell, that's practically identical to Twitter.

I do read Jim from time to time, but I never got his health advice, given that extreme amounts of butter will eventually cause issues. Actual doctors who do work out like the barbell medicine fellas recommend the use of zero-calorie sweeteners and seed oils.

The comments below are even worse commentary on this by Aidan, a guy whom I cite regularly. For the record, I am not the fittest guy, I just don't think that eating mostly meat and dairy can be good long-term.

Also, has he shared any of his stats (weight, height), before after, etc.? Anyone can give advice, but results are another matter

He did but he is not jacked, he went from fat at 250s to 150 now. Many people do that and on a whole host of different diets. There is an alpha male larp with food habits that he seems to like.

wow that is impressive

Yes but he is trying to paint a picture of things that are not true, I say this as a guy who has a much more positivie view of him than most here

Whats wrong with tea and what is non sweet juice? Do you mean juice that has had its fructose somehow removed or just juice without added sugar? If it's the latter then I don't see the problem, unsweetened juice is still incredibly sweet.

Maybe juice is not the right word... I'm talking about stuff like chicha morada and agua de jamaica, not fruit in a blender.

Aguas frescas without sweeteners? Now I've heard of everything.

Pro-tip- put unsweet tea in the fridge, do yardwork and then drink it as soon as you come inside. That's how you develop a taste for it.

Does anyone have recommendations on a cheap smart watch for fitness and sleep tracking?

The Garmin Vivosmart 5 is a cheapish band that’s pretty good.

Pros: price, tracking basically works, no subscription, battery life VERY good - about a week. Cons: no integrated GPS, lacks the kind of coaching features other watches have, HR sensor can be sticky and takes a while to adjust to sudden changes in rate.

FWIW I’ve had mine for years and got a lot out of it but I’m considering buying something more expensive like an Apple Watch that maybe has better sensors and does more with them. Interested to hear recommendations.

https://www.dcrainmaker.com/2022/04/garmin-vivosmart-review.html

Just ran the Boston marathon without really a proper training cycle before hand. Got injured in February and hadn't done more than 30 miles a week since then. I was going to just jog the race, but my college friends (who are all low 2:30 marathoners) successfully bullied me into trying somewhat. I held just under 6:30s for the whole thing, which felt great and re-qualified with a 2:48 (about ~15 min off my PR), but now my legs are absolutely destroyed and am having trouble walking around work. Any tips for dealing with DOMs in the legs?

Any tips for dealing with DOMs in the legs?

I find nothing works better for me than just walking it off. Yes it hurts but it gets the blood flowing. Eat extra protein and you'll be fine.

It might be too late but cold showers can dampen the immune response which causes DOMS.

But doesn’t that also interfere with the mechanisms that cause healing and adaptation?

Congratulations.

Have you tried compression for DOMS?

Fumes With Jealousy

Grilling. Do you grill? What do you grill? How do you grill? What are you grilling with? How often?

Recently I had an incident where I wanted to cook a meal at my grandmother's house, but for four people, I didn't see any way to make multiple pounds of nicely and uncontroversially roasted meat without using an oven. So now I want to learn charcoal grilling, but the Weber charcoal chimney is in the mail, so I must burn with passion regarding grilling quietly to myself. Charcoal grilling seems a lot better to me because it's a lot more unique than stovetop, offers unique flavors, offers variety like smoking meats, and has way less moving parts and the grills cost a lot less and they seem generally more portable. Also I hate running out of propane in the middle of a cook. I actually haven't used the propane grill much because it feels like a hassle compared to stovetop. So if it's a hassle either way, I might as well pick charcoal, is the way I see it.

I grill 2-3x a week and smoke with my electric smoker 1-2x a week.

I used one of those chimneys for charcoal for a few years but now I’m back to lighter fluid.

I use a Weber and (I’ll look at the brand if you want but any of the 199$ ones are mostly fine) electric smoker.

Buy a fish basket or veggie basket or two.

My best recipe:

Cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, red onion, pablona peppers, sweet baby peppers, kielbasa tossed in olive oil and Sazon Completa seasoning.

Grill it in a basket for 4 minutes a side on the charcoal side.

Eat.

No one has not lived it - ever.

Leftover for breakfast with scrambled eggs.

Most impressive:

Whole snapper. Have the market clean a small to medium snapper, run her down with olive oil and your imagination of spices and herbs (garlic salt , black pepper , cilantro to start) and grill for 3-5 minutes a side on the charcoal side.

Ribeye:

Worshershire, garlic salt, black pepper

Grill on the charcoal side until as ‘ burnt ‘ as you like and grill it to a tad over medium so the fat renders.

Get a meat thermometer.

but the Weber charcoal chimney is in the mail, so I must burn with passion regarding grilling quietly to myself.

https://old.reddit.com/r/redneckengineering/comments/vhhsvf/homemade_charcoal_starter_actually_worked_quite/

this is all you need.

Grilling. Do you grill? What do you grill? How do you grill? What are you grilling with? How often?

  1. Yes
  2. Mostly skirt steak, ribeye and pork tenderloin 3/4. Sous vide - first 3 hours warm aging at 47C, then for tenderloin and ribye to 54, for skirt - 56-7 for 24 hours, then I use top gas 800C IR grill - for some reason they are really cheap in europe https://images.app.goo.gl/HmAKhd1wsQh1874o7
  3. Whenever I need to impress a girl

Such thing is btw quite cheap to design yourself - just take 2-3-4 donner burners and the rest is just protection, housing and copper pipe.

good thing - you could prepare absurd quantities of meat before and it is the tenderest possible. But it takes away all the romance.

I do grill. I grill various things like steak, burgers, brats, salmon, etc. I also smoke things on occasion, which I would say is pretty different from grilling and really counts as its own thing.

First, you don't have to wait for your Weber chimney. Lighter fluid is vastly over-hated by the extremely online grilling crowd; I use it from time to time and I can't taste any difference in the food at all. Plus it's fun to watch a big flame shoot up as the fluid ignites. I would say try it for yourself and see if it works for you or not, don't take the claims that you must use a chimney starter on faith.

I definitely prefer charcoal to gas for grilling, though I do have a gas grill (from back when I lived at a place that strictly prohibited charcoal). I don't find it to be that much of a hassle, basically you get the coals going and walk away for 15 minutes. No biggie. I have a Weber Summit Kamado grill, and I love it. The design means that it holds temperature very well for long cooks, and it also is airtight enough that you can shut the dampers and the fire will go out (so you can save that unused fuel for next time). I've had various grills over the years ranging from El cheapo to not so cheap, and this one has been by far the best.

Biggest tip I would say is learn to control temp. Your charcoal grill is going to take in air on the bottom and vent exhaust out the top; both those things can be used to control air flow (and thus fire temp), but the intake matters more than the exhaust. If your grill lets you adjust coal height that also will make a big difference in how the food cooks. You don't want the fire to be rip-roaring hot because your food will burn on the outside before it cooks on the inside (though maybe you like it rare on the inside, but not all things are good that way). That temperature control is something you'll learn with time, and IMO is the real skill element in cooking with fire.

If you are going to cook bigger things (thick steaks, chicken and the like), you should use a two-zone cooking technique. When you put the coals in the grill, put them only on one half. Then you let your items cook through (or almost through) on the cool side, before moving them to the hot side to brown the outside nicely. This is a great technique and really effective, though the effectiveness does depend on there being enough thickness of meat so that you can get the outside nice and hot without heating the inside up too much. Doesn't really work super well on burgers or small steaks etc.

If you're interested in smoking, look up Meathead's articles at amazingribs.com. Dude knows his stuff and writes very informative articles, it helped me a lot when I first started smoking.

Overall, have fun! Grilling is a great way to cook, the fire hits you right in the caveman brain and it's very chill (especially if you smoke things). And keep us updated on how it goes, I look forward to hearing it!

Yes! Yes! This is the grilling content I wanted! Thanks for the amazingribs link.

I do not possess lighter fluid. I figured even if it was true that lighter fluid burned off before it got on the food, a charcoal chimney would probably be cheaper over a long period of time because you do not have to buy fluid continuously.

I have a very tiny 14 inch used Char-Broil tabletop kettle grill. We'll see if I can do two-zone with that.

I think the first thing I cook will be brats and chicken thighs and then maybe chicken leg quarters, too. I might try grilling up the cabbage in the fridge. Do you do marinades or anything like that? My lazy air frying usually involves just seasoned salt and a meat and it usually turns out pretty great, but then my uncle (who grills a lot) avails me of his complicated adventures involving brining and marinades and rubs and I feel bad.

I'm too cheap to experiment with steaks. Steaks are very expensive, especially lately.

I do not possess lighter fluid. I figured even if it was true that lighter fluid burned off before it got on the food, a charcoal chimney would probably be cheaper over a long period of time because you do not have to buy fluid continuously.

I would think that this is a wash, because you still need something to ignite the coals when you use a chimney starter (just throwing a match in there doesn't cut it in my experience). I use paraffin wax cubes for that purpose, which means I'm still buying consumable stuff to get the coals going. Newspaper does work, so if you have it sitting around you can always use that at no marginal cost to yourself. I just don't have anything like that.

I suspect that a 14" tabletop grill is going to be too small to do two zone cooking, but I certainly could be wrong. I don't have direct experience with those.

As far as food prep goes, it depends on the specific thing I'm cooking. I do use a marinade for making jerk chicken, and something like a marinade for salmon (I cover the fillets with a mixture of brown sugar and Dijon mustard, them cook them indirectly). For burgers and steaks, I just do salt and pepper as a rule. For brats I do nothing at all - they are seasoned enough already that you don't need to add more, and I'm not a beer brat kind of man (though many people do like that).

When I was learning how to grill, I found that brats are surprisingly tricky to cook. This was where I learned the importance of temp control, because I was turning out brats that were blackened on the outside but were raw inside. Even now I probably don't do an amazing job (I think that I have a tendency to overcook them so they come out dry), but at least they aren't raw. You might find them easier, but just something to look out for.

Steaks, by comparison, are trivial! Which is good because they are expensive as you said. Salt and pepper, maybe a seasoning mix, and then you cook them like 3-4 minutes per side. And if you really want to be thorough, you can use a thermometer to temp them, though I generally don't bother.

Another thing which is really good is grilled corn. I've done a couple of different methods, but the one I have found I prefer is to peel back the husk (don't remove it), take the silk out, and then put the husk back. Then you soak the ears of corn in water for a long while (I do overnight), and cook them directly over the coals, turning the ears every now and then, until the husk is dried out and brown/black on all sides. The corn inside should be perfectly cooked and it's delicious (with the usual salt and butter of course).

I would think that this is a wash, because you still need something to ignite the coals when you use a chimney starter (just throwing a match in there doesn't cut it in my experience)

Soak kitchen paper or cotton in cooking oil. can get a chimney starter to emit blue flame in 6 minutes.

I didn't know that one, I'll try it out. But my overall point was just that you need to use something to get the chimney starter going, and that something (probably) coats you money. Using oil and paper towels is cheap, but so is lighter fluid. So my guess is that no matter what method you use to light coals, it'll be similar in costs.

For me, our house gets a bunch of Chewy boxes in the mail, so spare cardboard is handy at about any moment.

I hope I abuse this smaller grill enough to break it so I can get a proper Weber kettle soon.

The objections against lighter fluid are usually taste not cost wise. Never used the stuff so I can't comment.

But I think that for me this is more of a - a knife never runs out of bullets situation. If you are grilling you will have paper towels and cooking oil nearby, buy you can run out of lighter fluid.

You don't get any junk mail or grocery store circulars? I agree that the "lighter fluid bad" crowd tends to be a bit overzealous, but the problem I have with it is more one of consistency—unless you're very careful about how you apply it, there are always a few briquettes that don't seem to light, and you usually have to stir the pot a bit to get everything going. Match-light charcoal avoids this, but it's also the most expensive solution. This is the same reason why I think lump charcoal is an affectation as well. It looks cooler but is more expensive to produce and doesn't give the consistency that good 'ol Kingsford blue bag does.

I do, although to be honest I have never thought to keep them for that purpose. I just throw them out immediately. It's a good idea, though, and one I will probably start implementing. The paraffin wax cubes I currently use to light my chimney starter are not super expensive, but free is even better.

I think that a lot of people still live with the first seasons of good eats, not realizing that the 80s suburbia is long gone. More and more briquettes are pressed dust with some starch as binder. And they deprive themselves of the brilliant asian briquettes with hole - those things can make your local blacksmith passing by to ask if they can use your forge for some minor work.

Chicken is difficult because it is non-uniform in thickness, and non-uniform in density (bone-in). Brats are easy because they are uniform, as are steaks (cut to thickness). Chicken thighs can handle some abuse, but bone-in leg quarters seem challenging to me. Hard to get the inside cooked without burning the outside. It's easier to cook those in the oven where you can control temperature better, but then you're roasting, not grilling.

I would absolutely use a marinade on the chicken. Acid, salt, and fat are what you need, along with aromatics. Acid is usually lemon or lime juice, but can be vinegar or even wine (red wine makes dark chicken). Salt is salt, or soy sauce (again, dark chicken). Fat is some liquid oil. Aromatics would be garlic and fresh herbs. How's your herb garden looking this spring? If you don't want to make one, use a bottled salad dressing, or a bottled sauce.

Seasoned salt will work fine, as will salt and pepper. Powdered spices to include on top of just S&P would be garlic powder, onion powder, paprika, chili powder, cumin, coriander, turmeric, and so on, depending on what flavors you want. Garlic powder as the only addition to S&P is the simplest and will get you great results on steaks.

Brining is nice to do. Dry brine just means salt well ahead of time and leave uncovered in the fridge. Pat dry when you remove. This pulls out moisture and usually leaves better crust and browning on the outside, while transmitting some of the salt into the meat. Wet brine is basically a marinade with only salt and aromatics, no fat or acid. If you're marinating, you're usually brining by default. Wet brines can help keep moisture in the meat, so for chicken especially it's useful, since dry chicken is the common failure. There's a reason your Thanksgiving turkey comes packed in brine.

I've experimented a little with marinades before when trying to perfect my fajitas, but there are some things I am unsure about with them still. For instance, do you always throw your marinade out once you're done with the meat? It seems a bit of a waste to me. Glazing it on is an option I've seen floated, but that seems like it adds extra considerations. And let's say that my marinade is 100% acid. How long is it safe to leave the meat marinating in it? How about 50%? I know that meat gets mealy if you marinate too long, but I don't know how long it needs to get an effect at all.

Since fajitas are just about my favorite meal, maybe I can give grilled pork or chicken fajitas a shot. Also, I can see clearly that I'll need to order a couple thermometers to do grilling correctly. Thankfully, chicken thighs are forgiving. I will take your leg quarter advice under consideration. They do really well in the oven anyway. I tried a soy honey marinade once with leg quarters, and then baked it in with the marinade, but it just turned out really watery and the soy honey flavor didn't come through very well.

If you have a really fantastic marinade that you want to use as a sauce, put it in a small saucepan and cook it down to a thicker consistency.

For instance, do you always throw your marinade out once you're done with the meat?

Yes, and honestly I don't feel bad about it because it was just there to flavor the meat. It did its job, no need to keep it around.

And let's say that my marinade is 100% acid. How long is it safe to leave the meat marinating in it? How about 50%? I know that meat gets mealy if you marinate too long, but I don't know how long it needs to get an effect at all.

Marinating is something where you will generally want to spend hours to get any effect. When I do jerk chicken, I marinate overnight. It's perfectly safe as far as I'm aware and I've never had negative results.

Also, I can see clearly that I'll need to order a couple thermometers to do grilling correctly.

You don't need to (lots of cooks have made great meals without thermometers), but they can be helpful for sure. I highly recommend Thermapens. They read temperature near instantly, and they hold up to use very well. They are on the pricy side but I find that worth it for a tool you'll have for a long time to come.

Also if you get into smoking, consider getting a remote probe setup. Ideally it would have at least two probes (one for the meat and one to clip to the grill surface), and the remote will let you monitor the temperature from anywhere in your house. That way you can kick back and relax with (insert beverage of choice here), which is really the best part of smoking meat.

Yes, you typically toss the marinade, or use it as a glaze while cooking. Just glazing doesn't give you the time that you need. Cooking with the marinade means too much water, which means lower heat (212F), which means no browning.

Long exposure to acid will chemically 'cook' the meat. This is ceviche, for example. 100% acid I would do for no more than an hour, but I don't have a hard and fast rule. A typical marinade with equal parts oil and lemon juice is fine overnight, but I might hesitate doing multiple days.

Thermometers are not 100% necessary, but I would recommend them for chicken leg quarters. I like them in general, so an instant-read is a good tool to have in your kitchen.

For evenly cut steaks, you can use the muscle of your thumb as a guide. Thumb touching pinky, and the thumb muscle feels like well done. Ring finger, medium; middle finger, medium-rare; index finger, rare. I use this for beef and lamb, I'm sure it works for pork, and I don't grill fish at all.

I have a traditional Russian box grill, but I don't grill this much, because we both hate cleaning the grate and my wife doesn't like skewers for some reason.

I love grilled gilthead and European seabass.

because we both hate cleaning the grate

usually grills are self cleaning if you raise the temperature enough to glow in the dark.

What isn't, then?

I prefer charcoal. Mostly because of cost: I buy a $50ish charcoal grill every five years or so, and when it rusts out I scrap it and buy a new one. Where good gas grills are hundreds or thousands, and I'm not sure they last all that long anyway.

Consider using different kinds of charcoal. Most stores carry regular briquettes, but also lump charcoal and various hardwood flavor charcoals. You can get really interesting flavors, and sometimes just blending a little bit of expensive stuff in with your briquettes can get you the flavor. Lump charcoal is often a little harder to manage than briquettes, and it's important to make sure you get an even burn, but it can add a lot to the process.

On that note: get a small metal fan to blow on the charcoal, along with good fireplace. This will help you manage heat, get everything hot quickly, keep it even across the grill. You have to be careful to make sure you don't have a hot spot at one end where the burgers burn and a cold spot at the other where they're raw. A certain degree of unevenness is probably inevitable, and you want to rotate things to make sure all of them get heated evenly.

Grill everything. Vegetable, fish, sausages, burnt ends, fruit. Have fun with it!

If you're grilling at least a couple times a month, the price of the grill ends up being negligible compared to the price of the stuff you're cooking on it. My bottom-of-the-barrel gas grill from home-depot has lasted 5 years so far and still works great and looks like new, and I find that the fine-grained temperature control I get with a gas grill is helpful when I want to cook a bunch of stuff and have it all finish on the grill at the same time.

$50 grill, are you buying used? About the only new thing I see in that price is a Weber Smokey Joe, which is probably not most people's ideal grill for most things. What model you got?

You have to be careful to make sure you don't have a hot spot at one end where the burgers burn and a cold spot at the other where they're raw.

Two-zone grilling follows a philosophy of having a hot spot and a cold spot so that you have indirect cooking and direct cooking. Sear and then move over. You don't do that?

$50 grill, are you buying used? About the only new thing I see in that price is a Weber Smokey Joe, which is probably not most people's ideal grill for most things. What model you got?

I have no idea. It's red, it's from home depot's clearance sale in the fall three years ago, and it's got a picture of a Kangaroo somewhere in the logo. Tbf, the price quoted is based on having purchased them A) years ago and B) on Clearance in the fall. The thing about Charcoal grills is that the cheap ones work just fine. Unless you're getting something like a big green egg or a pizza oven, all you need is a piece of tin that holds the charcoal and the rest is details.

You don't do that?

There's a difference between intentionally having evenly burning areas at different temperatures, and unintentionally having cold spots where you don't want them. If you're trying to have different areas of the grill at different temps, you need to be even more careful to make sure you have each "zone" burning evenly.

get a small metal fan to blow on the charcoal

An old hairdryer will also do

Do you grill?

Yes.

What do you grill?

Let me get my translation guide... Usually a combination of Tenderloin, Ribeye, Short Rib, Flank, Skirt, Pork Rose Meat, black pudding and Chorizo, though I have dabbled in weirder cuts/meats.

How do you grill?

You put the meat on the grill, turn it around and then serve it. The "hard" part of grilling is the logistics: knowing where to buy, knowing what the people you're grilling for like, and staggering so as to keep the cuts flowing in the "correct" order (sausages and thin cuts first, and then proceed to the meatier stuff).

What are you grilling with?

Charcoal built grill, no shade to propane, it's just what I was raised with (also, running out of gas in the middle of grilling is truly a nightmare, though in reality making sure you have enough is probably easier than going out to buy charcoal bags every time), sometimes add wood for extra smokey flavour, sometimes do it only with wood for the spectacle.

How often?

About once a week.

Math and CS

I finally hit 12k on mathacademy, my mentor sent me a book, "the courage to be disliked" as a gift for hitting 12k. It seems trivial to me at least, 200 hours of math, could I not have done all this faster? is this even worth celebrating? But I know that it took me a lot of effort. I nearly flunked out of my uni in my first year as I did not remember any math at all and it fucked my grades and confidence permanently, I now know more than any of my classmates did since you barely get taught much beyond high school. My progress CS wise has been kinda alright, I realised that boot.dev does not have enough programming volume, so I will do a bunch of books and projects alongside it to be better. I partake in atcoder weekly contests. I never go beyond the first question but the sight of a contest would scare me. As far as I can remember, even when I picked up soccer, i was always very afriad of stuff, what if someone passes the ball to me, as a result I never got better and had to play with kids a year down after my first year, which is why I quit.

I went on exercim and I could solve the problems there with some ease. This is not a lot, but I could not see myself doing anything in my own head, ever. I list this out because I truly do appreciate that I have gotten better. The programming concepts I plateaued on and could never get past seem easy now.

My workouts are doing ok, too. I add a rep to every single exercise every week. I work out three days a week, all three days have different exercises, and I have been able to progress so far. I do not miss days and try to do some rehab work on my off days. Yesterday, after I got back home, I felt some pain in my right shoulder. Is my slap tear back? I was super concerned and went to the physio. He called me a pussy, laughed and told me to consider smoking weed as a joke and come back when I am stronger. I felt relieved.

Spiritual practise

This is the major update. @TowardsPanna once suggested that I meditate for longer durations. I had my first experience, shaktipata, on the 14th of Feb. Well, yesterday, after I hit 12k, I sat for my session. Every time I felt that I was going to get distracted, I relaxed my attention and somehow became more attentive. By the end, I felt extremely sensitive, my alarm went off, and my mind was blank. I was undergoing my second spiritual experience. My senses were in overdrive, I felt a sense of equanimity for the world. All my worries felt pointless, it's difficult to describe any of this with words. All the accounts people write about this are very real. The world seemed divine. I then had my injury scare, which did wreck my evening, but until then, I was super happy. I discovered Kashmir Shaivism via my mentor, too. The recent attacks in Kashmir also happened yesterday, though I stopped feeling bad since I know the government will never fix issues there.

Overall, I am doing better, slightly. The math stuff is not for direct jobs. When I started, I was too distracted to even read textbooks properly. mathacademy, more than math, instilled basic discipline and a belief that with proper drilling, I could, in fact, learn more. My parents do not know any of this, and the most I can do is post my small incremental steps here. I also started 10 mg of melatonin at night, it does not do much but hey, this place did start from a psychiatrist's blog, so I had to mention it.

I just started on MA two weeks ago, and it's pretty cool. I tested 58% into MF II and am now up to 23% of the way through MF III.

I took linear algebra, discrete math, and multivariable calculus in college many years ago, so it's like 80% review, which is why I'm powering through so fast, but I'm learning a surprising amount of new stuff because my classes didn't go as deep. I'm looking forward to proofs, diffeq, and abstract algebra, and hopefully real analysis will be ready by the time I get to it. I expect to slow down as I get a bit further in. I don't think I can sustain this pace on new material.

I decided to self-study math as well. Took a long time for me get to the point where i could answer difficult questions on mathoverflow/exchange. There are no shortage of practice problems on there, like integrals.

What resources did you use?

no specific source; mostly trial trial and error and PDFs for more advanced concepts. Wikipedia is surprisingly good for the basics

Cool. Keep in mind what you really want is changed traits, not states. :)

Had to re read this. Spiritual journey for me isn't something that I base my identity on or should discuss publicly. Whether I get burnt or achieve peace is irrelevant, the pursuit of truth is all that matters.

Hari Om!

I also started 10 mg of melatonin at night, it does not do much but hey, this place did start from a psychiatrist's blog, so I had to mention it.

Try 0.3 mg instead: https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-than-you-wanted-to-know/

I know, I got 60 tablets so can really return them now.

I cut my 5 mg ones into (approximately) 1/8ths so it's at least close to the right dose.

Also, I tried 5 mg once, and it's a very different beast from 0.6ish mg. If I didn't already know it was the same drug, I wouldn't have been able to guess from the effects.

For the future, you can get 300mcg pills from Nootropics Depot.

Please tell me more, what difference did you notice? Compared to 5.

0.6 mg made me quite sleepy after a short while. In the morning, I woke up from a deep sleep and (after a minute) felt well-rested.

5 mg made me almost collapse in exhaustion. I had vivid (though unremembered) dreams, and I was still tired as I got ready for the day. I was fine by the time I left for work, but it didn't feel like a normal good night.

Weird, I did not feel extremely sleepy after the second 10 mg dose. I have tried other sleep meds before, sove 10 or diazepam, which gave me hallucinatory experiences, I actually did not dislike them lol, but melatonin is very tame by comparison. I think they are considered benzos?

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