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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1524 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 11, 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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I'm looking for advice on how to fake being a football fan.

I call myself a fan of Arsenal because, when I played Fifa 2001, I'd end up picking them because I thought the cannon on their flag looked sick. I'm reliably told that they peaked right about then, and I've had decent mileage telling people I stan Arsenal because then they give me pitying looks and don't ask followup questions.

Courtesy of drinking at Scottish pubs, I feel at risk of more detailed grilling, and I want to get better adaptive camouflage. So far, I've come up with:

"What was the coach even thinking?" and "They keep trying to walk it in this year", but I'd appreciate more personalized advice to shake the trail.

If you're trying to put more detail into defusing and avoiding the conversation while seeming normal, for nearly every sport you can nearly always say something along the lines of "I used to LOVE it when I was a kid, but nowadays I just can't stand the [foreign or billionaire money/social media/diva players/lack of loyalty/lost spirit of the gameall of the above] so I don't really watch it like I used to." The purity play will actually position you as more of a football fan than your interlocutor: you love the real game not the spectacle of today, like refusing to go to a novus ordo mass positions you as more Catholic than the pope.

If you're trying to fake actually watching sports for networking or social purposes, I recommend the SbNation network of blogs, they do all the American sports and most of the big European teams. Each blog is independent, run by fans, but in general they're pretty decent in quality. Arsenal is here, I can't certify quality as they're all fan-run and the blog varies by team. I follow the SbNation blogs of the teams I follow pretty religiously, and they will both give daily/weekly news summaries and game recaps, that will take you five or ten minutes to follow daily and fifteen or twenty to summarize weekly. With that knowledge, you can hang in a conversation with any fan for as long as they want to talk.

Hey, I might not be a Real Fan™, but even I know about the whole Qatari stadium thing that Gooners moan about! Unfortunately that's an issue more than 2 decades old now, so I'm not sure how seriously people will take me if I complain about how things have been since I was less than 10.

"What was the coach even thinking?" and "They keep trying to walk it in this year", but I'd appreciate more personalized advice to shake the trail.

There's also "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?"

Excellent choice fellow gooner. You picked a good time to be an arsenal fan - the bad years are over, we have an exciting young team full of likeable characters, but we haven't won anything big yet despite finishing second three years in a row and whipping Real Madrid in the Champions League, so you're not a glory hound. If you want to learn more about the team, the subreddit is fine, there's also arseblog.com (best arsenal news/commentary site, they do reports and player ratings after each match which will give you a good sense of how to talk about it).

I'd be honest with people, say you haven't been watching for a long time, and you have a perfectly good excuse with the time difference and med school in India. And when the season starts at the end of the summer, would suggest, if you happen to be off work for a match day, going to a pub and watching the game. It's a great way to make friends. Just do expect a little banter from the Scots for supporting a posh London team...

PS - if you do get sucked into it, and you find yourself taking a trip down to London, DM me, I can most likely sort you a ticket.

A serious answer? Far too much effort for a throw-away joke, but I appreciate it haha. Maybe I will watch a football match, then I can stop getting shit for wearing football shoes out and about.

Yeah, as serious advice - I didn't become a devout football fan until after I left England and started traveling. It's the world's sport, so one of the best ways to make quick friends wherever you go. I've had great nights out from Bulgaria to Bogota start by chatting with other fans at an Arsenal bar.

Watch real football.

2025 NFL Schedule Press Release

I found out recently that Google Translate, when translating from English to Japanese, will translate "gooner" to "Arsenal fan", no matter the context. I know what you're really doing by being an Arsenal fan.

If Gooning is wrong, I don't want to be right. A man needs to put his balls in a net from time to time.

Be less of a wanker, not more. Throw away the football shoes. Don't try to fake being something you're not. You'll be sniffed out easily.

If you couldn't tell, this was a joke.

For the unaware: https://youtube.com/watch?v=6yN2H3--1aw

Seemed only half jokey to me because I've seen those fakers IRL, even for something as lame as being a football fan.

Apologies. I'm sleep deprived.

Just casually stalk the subreddit. That'll expose you to some discussion points to start up, and people love nothing more than a chance to tell you why you're wrong - especially if you spin yourself as a foreigner who is willing to take the wisdom of the locals.

Bruh!!! Learn the foot. Or look around conspiratorially and go "secretly I like cricket more." Likely they will go "gasp, cricket, how awful" and ask no further questions.

Are you 100% sure that approach would work in the UK? They're almost as nerdy about cricket as Indians are!

I refuse to believe anyone would like cricket. REFUSE.

It boggles my mind too. It's one of the few sports where the spectators get more of a workout than the players.

Do you plan to stay in the apartment during working hours? Because I doubt they will be doing road works at night.

In Japan the wee hours is when most local road work gets done, so as not to disrupt day traffic.

Call airbnb support, get told to fuck yourself, call credit card company, do a charge back, and go back to booking hotels ever after.

Please drop everything and check out Meta's AI feed. It's making me cry, imagine getting to have a quick look at what people are talking about on ChatGPT, except that it's the bottom barrel of literacy, and that they're not aware that the "share" button isn't a save button. It makes everything public for the world to see.

Best I've seen is 2 minutes is a woman grappling with vaginal stankiness, and someone trying to write a character letter for their buddy about to be sent to jail. Good times.

Here's the tweet that introduced me to the hobby.

Here's the actual site, if you don't want to accidentally download the Meta AI app and then find out it's meant for smart glasses:

https://www.meta.ai/#feed

I think it's over/filtered? I can't find any boomer-posting, just infinite pages of terrible AI slop images.

"Meta AI isn't available in your country."

If only there was a way to get that effect on every ”provider” that insists on shoving AI slop to my face in their ”tools”…

It's only fair the stupidest AI out there has the same caliber of user. Or perhaps those with the best taste, idk.

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So does NoFap/Semen Retention actually do anything? Or is it all a bunch of bullshit?

People’s go-to strategy to increase motivation is to make their life suck. Nofap is effective at that, pure loss with no upside.

Not my thing. Wouldn’t wish it on my worse enemy. Nofap makes you horny, obviously, but what isn’t said enough is that it makes you lonely, tense, angry, too.

Positive vs negative discipline.

Positive discipline is doing things that are good but that require the completion of a behavior; working out, reading more, writing more, learning a new skill, whatever.

Negative discipline is abstaining from things - mostly that are bad from you - but, more generally, that you want to abstain from for whatever reason in order to shift habits. Drinking and drugs, obviously, are the big ones. But this is also dieting, masturbation, social media consumption, etc.

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!" Negative discipline is more complex - while it creates, for me, a sense of "momentum" and the feeling that I'm "on a streak", if I focus too much on it it warps into an "oh no, don't break the streak!" feeling of anxiety or anticipation. So, the mental model I use is to treat it like a savings or investment account - set it up to be automatic, then don't think about it. Check in on the "balance" every once in a while and smile as it will often be larger than you remember.

I like this framing!

Positive discipline activities give you a generous feeling of accomplishment and instant reward. "I worked out today!"

Do people really feel this way about exercise? To me it always feels like pointless effort for a reward that never comes. It's a hopeless fight to slow the pace of inevitable regression.

Yes, the happy chemicals after picking up the heavy things or covering a long distance makes me happy. The heavy things also have numbers on them, and if you keep doing it, you can watch the numbers go up.

The heavy things also have numbers on them, and if you keep doing it, you can watch the numbers go up.

The analogy I make to guys who don't lift but are into vidya is, it's like an RPG but IRL. (With a few exceptions) When you first start 2pl8 (100 kg) bench is like the first world boss. You'll get smacked down if you approach it without enough XP or skill. But once you level up a bit it just becomes random fodder you blow by in your warmups. You get to pick where to devote training/XP to, strength, size, endurance, etc. And have manna (recovery) you have to manage.

The inevitable regression does suck, but the meta is always changing. You'll see influencers go from "functional" training to pure strength. Then to bodybuilding/aesthetics. Then they'll pick up running. I suspect it's because one training modality does become stale when you saturate that attribute or regress. But having good general physical preparedness lets you transition to all sorts of things as your life evolves.

Are you 'Throwaway05' as well? The phraseology and semi-trolling strategy seem similar.

I am not this man!

Not sure I would say this person's writing resembles mine but that's the kinda thing I'd have limited ability to assess.

Also not sure how I feel about being accused of semi-trolling. I do earnestly believe we increasingly have the evidence base and research on outcomes to conclude that free will is pretty damn limited.

Not sure if I've been up to other stuff that could be considered trolling other than my excessive arguing with that one guy a few months ago.

On a related note some people get pleasure from exercise (ex: runner's high). Others don't. This has a significant impact on enjoyment of and therefore participation in exercise.

I am not. And this question was quite serious. I've long struggled with keeping up exercise routines because I find it hard to keep motivated due to the lack of noticeable rewards, even ones so minor as "a feeling of accomplishment" after finishing.

Try testosterone

You’ll blow past expectations early

Apologies for being presumptuous.

You have two options. Option 1 is the Jock Wilink "bleak discipline" route. You do your workouts, without exception, every time you plan them. It will not get easier. You just develop discipline. If you miss a workout, it kind of doesn't matter, you immediately get back to the discipline. It's much a more of a mental shift than anything else, and pain and discomfort are kind of the point. Will this work? Sure, in tautological sense.

Option 2 is to find a way to enjoying the workouts in and of themselves. You aren't seeking the reward function of completing them, you are enjoying the process of doing them. This makes you outcome independent. Gym time is equal to fun time. This is what works for me. I did this by combining the "bleak discipline" approach with awareness of the exercises I intrinsically enjoyed at the gym. For whatever reason, I like doing deadlifts the same way that I like the color blue -- I just do, it's "built in." So, I dead deadlifts a lot. And, at first, I didn't do a lot of bench press. But, slowly, I was able to replace my total "bleak discipline" motivation with a mix of "hey! deadlifts are fun!" on the one hand with "okay, fine, I'll bench" on the other. Repeat this cycle a few times and, now, bench is a core part of my routine and I don't find it hard to motivate myself to do it (still like deadlifts more).

I don't know if there's a formal definition for this mental pattern. You're creating new, adjacent in pathways; you put "fun" as close as possible to "have to do it" until the circuit jumps the two wires. Yes, I know that's not how the brain works on a neurological level, but this is actually the same principle as cognitive behavior therapy. You're creating new thinking-acting repetitions until they become habits.

Doing hard things is hard and they don't get easier, but you can become better at doing the hard thing.

There are also indirect positive feedback loops to employ. I enjoy lists and handwritten stuff - so I mark off "workout complete" on a physical sheet of paper sometimes when I feel I'm dragging. Does that "help" in any objective way? Fuck no, but we don't care about the objective here, we're literally trying to alter the subjective experience. So, a wastepaper basket full of "go me!" stickynotes may be the best way to a new squat PR.

Try engaging in exercise that results in a reward at the end. I like walking for 2.5 miles (4 km; 5 miles (8 km) for the round trip) to the nearest Dunkin' Donuts or Chinese restaurant. There's also the pleasure of seeing all the different buildings.

It'll make you horny af. That's about it dawg.

Regarding sperm:

A 1999 study.

Short-term abstinence may be associated with limited improvements in semen quality in healthy men but could be more beneficial for infertile men, especially within the first 4 days of abstinence.

Regarding testosterone:

A 2001 study

These data demonstrate that acute abstinence does not change the neuroendocrine response to orgasm but does produce elevated levels of testosterone in males.

Also several bullshit studies. No credible peer-reviewed studies on cognitive or emotional benefits, beyond anecdotal.

YMMV, but oddly jacking off in the 21st century hasn't had much research.

Yes it does something. Namely, makes you a lot more interested in women from a dopamine/seeking perspective. Whether that's a benefit is up to you. It can be intoxicating though.

I wonder if, as abigguy4u implies, it has more to do with removing a poor coping mechanism in order to establish more constructive sources of joy and relief. Some people smoke cigarettes constantly to take the edge off. Does it work? Only if you keep at it, only temporarily, while doing nothing to the underlying pain and anxiety of their life.

One downside to a man simply not ejaculating is worse prostate health. A daily jizz may lower the risk of cancer there, last I heard.

It’s like quitting drinking. If you’re a terminal alcoholic, quitting will have some major positive effects on your life. If you drink a few beers twice a month, you’re probably not even going to notice. For “The poor bastards of what will forever be known as Generation Z” who are cranking it out to hentai 7 times a day, nofap is a revelation, and they will see substantial improvements to their mood and energy levels. For anyone with normal habits it probably isn’t going to be a game changer.

Increased horniness and its attendant behaviours. Past a certain point it will just end in a nocturnal emission.

In the words of Andrew Dice Clay: "What are you saving it for?! It'll grow back".

Others will have better things to say than me, but I think women like it when you're actually interested in them and eager to bed them. NoFap helps on that front. Any other benefits they claim, I would be pretty suspicious of.

@sun_the_second you've been tricked, mwahaha

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Context, for those of us not in on it?

"Xianxai" is a genre of fiction centering on "Cultivators", martial-arts practitioners who develop various reality-bending superpowers by "cultivating" their chi, or mystical life-force. These stories tend to be produced in serial format, and are often very, very long, many hundreds of chapters for text versions being relatively common. Think Dragonball Z.

Cultivators generally congregate in "sects", communes dedicated to further developing and perfecting their particular method of cultivation and raising the power of the sect's members generally; these communes are usually depicted as rigidly hierarchical, and often mercilessly competitive and even grossly exploitative for those on the bottom of the hierarchy. Within a sect, someone lower on the hierarchy is one's "Junior", someone higher is one's "Senior". Seniors are often depicted intentionally stunting or interfering with their junior's training for various bad or even occasionally good reasons.

Cultivation takes a very long time, generally is depicted as passing through a long sequence of distinct levels and sub-levels demarcating significant increases in power. There's usually a pretty distinct tradeoff between slow, steady, diligent growth and rapid "get rich quick" growth that shoots up quick but plateaus early. The slow-and-steady growth is often referred to as "building one's foundation"; if you do this poorly you may grow quicker but plateau earlier, and the reverse might mean slower initial growth but much more capacity for growth.

The meme is portraying Xianxai fandom as recapitulating the medium; the "senior" (fan who has read tons of Xianxai) is misleading his "junior" (fan who has read less), claiming that he's read an extremely long work and that they should definitely read it as well. The story is "building it's foundation" and the quality pays off spectacularly 1400+ chapters in. In fact, the senior hasn't read a single page, but by the time the "junior" is in a position to assess the truth of this claim, it could be argued that they will certainly learn something from the experience, and perhaps will be Enlightened.

The specific context is that @self_made_human is claiming to have pulled this gambit in his previous recommendation of "Reverand Insanity", an extremely long and apparently quite polarizing Xianxai serial that's been discussed here in several previous reading recommendation discussions.

Right. Xianxia novels vary widely in terms of quality. It's not uncommon for them to be thousands of chapters long.

There are, in fact, instances where a novel can start off slow for dozens or even hundreds of chapters, and get better. That's often the case when the protagonist has to start from scratch and scrabble to establish the powers and connections required to do much of anything.

How do you know if a novel is good? The rating systems on the popular sites are fucked, and it's certainly a pain to read a ton of one before realizing it doesn't get better.

Hence communities like /r/MartialMemes, where readers ask each other for recs or reviews. They also love to RP as actual Cultivators, which is why they're addressing someone as a "junior".

The joke here is that some naive newbie has asked a more experienced reader about a novel. The latter promises that it gets better, and even if the first few hundred (!) chapters are dross, stick at it and the payoff will be worth it in the end. Unfortunately, he hasn't even read the story in question and has been making shit up.

Fortunately for @sun_the_second, I have in fact read Reverend Insanity (and am currently re-reading it again), a popular novel that has occasionally faced (unfair, IMO) accusations of having a slow start. He began reading it on my recommendation, and hopefully he's enjoying it so far. If he isn't, I promise it gets super peak at chapter 42069, can't give up on it before then.

Since I have an opportunity to ask: what is with RI's author's numeracy? Do the Chinese have no precise numbers?

I can understand why the narration says "thirty to forty of jade dragons flew forward" because an average person wouldn't count them precisely at a glance. But when there are such unnecessary hedges as "four to five", hell, they might even go as low as "two to three" although I obviously can't quote the specific page numbers... well, my eyebrows rise.

well, my eyebrows rise.

How many of them?

One to two.

Hmm? Can't say I noticed that myself. I would assume any such instances are written from the perspective of an observer who can't precisely count the values.

If you can tell me a chapter number, I can look it up.

Chapter 642: "...four to five light barriers covered his body"

Chapter 310: "In the blink of an eye, three to four days passed."

Chapter 242: "They had already bought [this and that] from three to four <...> clansmen."

I tried to only count instances where something discrete is being counted in a specific occasion. It's fine to say that a Gu refinement or something usually takes "three to four days", but there's no way "three to four" days passed between one specific event and another specific event. It might not be terribly important how many, but pick one number, damn it! You can't buy supplies from 3.5 traders, and there can't be 2.76 spectators at a specific arena fight!

Well you brought receipts. It still never jumped out to me haha. It might be translation issues, otherwise no clue.

Is this a translation issue? Like how "forty days and forty nights" just means "till it's done."

I think I'm getting decent at spotting translated Chinese idioms, and I'm pretty sure most of what I'm talking about are not that.

It is, in fact, that. It's an artifact of Chinese. To some degree this can be done in Japanese (三日か四日 for 3/4 days) or (三四天 in Chinese) but it's more common in Chinese. Don't rely on me as an expert but that's my take.

There's a handful of well-known examples in western languages, too, and probably a bunch more that are too informal to really be written down.

In that case maybe the reason the author got purged was because of innumeracy?

This is why I haven’t read a word of text since 2007. I use text to speech for everything.

Impressive if true, you'd have to have been running this con a few months before I actually asked you about RI.

He's actually not a doctor either, this whole persona is part of a matchstick men style long con.

Next thing you know, you're going to start claiming my theoretical degree in physics isn't valid :(

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