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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   1159 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 2, 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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Dude, grilling! I have been enlisted to grill this weekend for extended family. What a momentous occasion!

The original line of thought was that grandma wants ribeyes, and I have a portable charcoal grill (two of them, actually). Now I'm wondering which foods and how much I should make (and, potentially, if I want to start both grills (probably not)).

  • The ribeyes will be seasoned at least an hour in advance. Last time I cooked steaks (also my first steak cooking attempt since my grill awakening), I missed the mark on salt on at least one of them, so I will leave the seasoning to someone else, especially since grandma is sensitive to salt. Shooting for 130F internal temp. I don't have the best thermometer (a serviceable Weber one, not a Thermapen like everyone raves about), but it seems to work okay. If anyone wants something more than medium rare, they can just microwave it.
  • Pork chops get seasoned salt an hour in advance, along with garlic powder and ideally a bunch of black peppercorns crushed with a rolling pin. I used to not trust the USDA and always tried to cook to 160F for pork, but this time, I'm going to do 150F, since I know some people who really love pork at 145F and it, apparently, is safe enough. I love pork loin. It is so cheap and the seasoned salt make it create the tastiest juice afterwards.
  • Brats are pretty straightforward. 160F is needed.
  • I haven't done teriyaki chicken thighs on the grill before, but I am very tempted now, somehow. Apparently you cook it most of the way on the grill, and then add the reduced teriyaki sauce to them and leave them on the indirect side for a bit. 160F. I think a dry salt and pepper brine would be fitting, as that's what Just One Cookbook recommends for before the first round of cooking teriyaki chicken thighs on the stovetop.

Now, the question is: is that too much food? I think we've got 6 people in total. The chicken will likely be three pounds, since that's the package size from Aldi. Pork chops, I thawed out 8 that are about as thick as my palm, so I'm estimating 4 or 5 pounds. Brats and ribeyes have not been purchased yet. Leftovers are okay.

Anyway, what are you grilling? What else should I be grilling? What are you drinking when you're grilling? I like Shock Top's Twisted Pretzel lately.

Ribeyes I go higher so the fat renders. Salt pepper worshirshire.

I love making veggie baskets. Lots of mushrooms, red onion, pablano, sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, your choice of meat stick (kielbasa or some Latin American variant), oil and sazon seasoning. 5 minutes a side. You want some burnt and charred.

Portobello mushroom tops: oil, salt, pepper, top with feta, scallions, oil, salt, pepper - grill charcoal side for a few minutes then other side for ten or so.

Huge hits.

Pro grill tip is to just rest your goddamn meat. Yes, it's a pain, yes, it's hard to resist meat fresh off the grill, but yes it makes a difference and yes you won't have it bleeding all over the plates if you did it properly.

The rest is just down to preference. Rule of thumb/eyeballing it is like 300-450g of meat per person depending on appetite/size of the person. But if you don't feel like doing a plethora of sides and someone is really invested in getting a Steak(tm) you can make some big-ass tomahawks to split between a couple people at around 600-700g a person. Meat's pretty simple. Sides on the other hand have a wide gulf between mid and great, try for both a healthy and unhealthy salad, cold cuts, etc. Stuff can be laid out without much stress. Grilled veggies also work fine as long as you watch the sear and oil/season appropriately; you can skewer the things if you like the visual but it's also fine to grill or oven them in a big batch well in advance and then toss em in a little oil and vinaigrette and season before serving. I actually like doing foil-wrapped fish in packets on the grill too, if it's a fatty fish you don't need to stress too much over being exact.

My typical rule-of-thumb is 1/4 lb per adult per meal if you have a lot of sides, 3/4 lb per adult if meat's most of the food. Lot of it's going to depend on how long the guests are staying (one meal or two) and how picky you'd expect them to be if you run out of one protein. Probably going to end up with a decent amount of leftovers unless they're staying for both lunch and dinner. That said, almost all of these will store well in a fridge for 4-6 days, and they'll mix in well with pasta (everything but the chicken) or rice (everything) dishes pretty easily, so as long as you've got fridge space I dunno that I'd be that worried about leftovers.

I don't grill often, but there's a lot of great kabob recipes that just can't be done in an oven or air frier. Might take one variation on that.

Can't say anything on the alcohol side; I can barely drink beer or wine, and while I can drink hard liquor I've never developed enough of a taste to distinguish more than rough categories.

Any advice for recovery from serious fatigue?

My new favorite thing is to go to the gym, do arms for 60-90 minutes, and then go hiking with a 40lb backpack for another 1-2 hours.

Unfortunately, afterwards I am kind of obliterated for a few more hours. Obviously some turndown is going to be necessary after expending that much energy, but I'd like to get a higher resting state than "staring blankly at Youtube", and/or a duration shorter than "as long as I was just working out".

And I guess I might specify that I'm hoping for suggestions more like "cold shower" or "hydrate with X" rather than "steroids or meth".

Citruline 8grams

Also your dick will get harder - best supplement in the business

Mix some with water and drink before you do your rucking

I get the 2lb bag on Amazon from Bulk Supplements

When you say new do you mean you've done it twice or do you mean you've been doing it for two months?

New things always lead to exhaustion, it's the nature of the body, and as they become old things they'll lead to less exhaustion.

So my advice would be to enjoy it while it lasts, the ecstacy of being truly drained by an activity is increasingly difficult to reach as you get better at your favorite activities.

Just in six months, it takes a half hour of straight rolling in BJJ to reach the level of exhaustion I used to hit in one round, and twenty minutes later I'm fine again, where when I started a morning class could ruin my whole day.

If you've been doing it for a while and you're still that exhausted, assess and address: sleep, hydration, increasing protein/carbs/calories, general stress, injuries/mobility, consider maybe the activity isn't for you. In more or less that order.

Intermediate gym-goer for a decade. I started rucking a year or so ago, just recently decided I was doing it enough and enjoying it enough to splurge on nicer equipment than "old backpack full of dumbbell weights".

It's combining them into a back-to-back mega workout that I've only thought of doing in the last few weeks... because yeah, the individual ones weren't getting me to exhausted ecstasy anymore.

Hm.

Maybe I will just double check the macro/nutrient basics and otherwise enjoy the post-workout fugue while it lasts, and while my schedule permits me to devote a third of a day to exercise/recovery multiple times per week.

More food, especially more carbs, especially during activity.

Electrolytes, magnesium, and adjusting your macros may help but if your intensity is too high for your current stamina levels you have to pay the piper while your body adjusts. The obvious thing to try is adjusting the intensity until you're happy with your energy levels afterwards, for example have a day where you go harder on your arms and go easier on the hike then the next day switch it around.

Nothing beats sleeping after a hard workout and magnesium. So relaxing its hard to get up.

So next on my list of "things I should have picked up twenty years ago, and now are vaguely embarrassing to learn" is bicycling. I found myself in possession of a 21 speed Pacific mountain bike, and I've been riding it a few miles as a warmup before climbing workouts on the moon board. The things is...I suck at bicycling. Like, badly. I can ride a bike, but even just keeping my balance while signaling a turn is a conscious effort, and I regularly get concerned I'm going to just fall over, which is deeply stupid. I feel like I should be more fluent in my motion, but I'm just not.

I learned to ride a bike at an appropriate age, but never really did it much after a few 15-20 mile bike trips in scouts in my early teens. My parents never really let me ride my bike anywhere interesting because I would have to cross "busy roads" and I was the kind of quiet submissive kid that listened to them and didn't push boundaries.

So here I am, 33 years old, and I'm bad at riding a bike. But it seems like something I "should" be able to do, and the novelty is making it a pretty fun workout.

How does one get better at riding a bike as an adult? What should I be doing to bike as a workout program? What should my goals be? I literally have no idea, so far I just ride a mile up the road and turn around and ride back, then climb.

A minor thing that may help (no guarantees) is learning how to bike without your hands on the handlebars (at least temporarily). Essentially this is going at a sufficient medium speed, and “shifting” your body weight or center of balance a little more towards your hips. It also forces you to make your pedal cycle more consistent and regular. You bike straight and one handed, then slowly practice shifting your weight back slightly, so that at first you are lightly resting the hand on top of the handlebars, or floating one or the other on top, and then practice removing it for longer periods of time (of course you can grab it back with one or ideally both hands carefully if you wobble). Eventually you can get to a point where you can, on flat and straight roads without traffic, bike straight with your hands on your hips or so. Note that this works best on a more mountain bike style bike, some road bikes have seats and/or handlebars that deliberately force you to assume more of an aerodynamically superior forward lean position. You also can’t really do this on any kind of notable incline.

I’m not completely positive if that would help or anything, but maybe? The process of learning it for me at least was helpful for getting a better and more intuitive sense of where my balance is and could be, though I already had spent a decent time biking so idk.

Also yes, perhaps adjust your seat too.

Thanks for the tip!

I don't know how you could do it but I think the best way to find your limits is to exceed them, so if you're concerned you're going to fall over you should make a point of falling over. One point in your favour is that bikes become more stable as the speed goes up, so balance-to-failure can be practiced by going as slowly as possible. Also you're a BJJ guy so you're probably used to getting thrown on the floor.

You could try finding somewhere semi-soft like some grass [1] and then riding very tight circles and figure-of-8s as slowly as possible, then slower than possible. Stall. Fall off. Then try it a bit faster. Keep speeding up, turning tight and falling off until self preservation kicks in when the falls get uncomfortable enough that you chicken out of falling off and correct the turn. Then repeat the exercise one handed. You'll look like a clown doing it but you'll quickly map out the lower end of the performance envelope, and you can practice your judo/BJJ falling technique at the same time (the only time my childhood judo classes have paid dividends is when I fall off my bike).

[1] Narrow bike tyres are bad for grass so try and choose somewhere more like a cow pasture or a rugby pitch, not someone's lawn(!).

Find a bike shop or rental and borrow a ladies sit-up bike for a couple of hours, see what you think. Yes, they’re theoretically meant for girls, but they’re a lot more comfortable and more stable, and you can go from riding to standing safely in a fraction of a second just by lowering your feet. Plus you get a basket to put your stuff in :)

The idea that bicycling should involve spending hours in a weird tantric sex position mystifies me.

I'm not really that interested in buying anything. I suppose I'll need to get a helmet eventually, but outside of that this is more of a work with what I have situation.

Though I had an unrelated conversation with my sister recently about "boys" vs "girls" bikes, where I said I never saw the classic female bike design as peculiarly feminine, and outside of a bike that was pink or ribboned, I wouldn't really see a guy on a girls bike and think "fag."

If anything I could easily imagine one of those Traditional™️ masculinity™️ bloggers informing me that it was effeminate for a man to spread his legs to "mount" and "straddle" a men's bicycle.

this is more of a work with what I have situation

Fair enough, though I think renting one for a day would benefit you by giving you a better idea of what difficulties are coming from you vs your bike.

effeminate for a man to spread his legs to "mount" and "straddle" a men's bicycle

I’ll admit that putting a long, hard object between my thighs to get pounded repeatedly isn’t my idea of a fun time ;)

How does one get better at riding a bike as an adult?

I rode my bike a lot. It became my primary mode of transportation over COVID. I rode it to the store, for exercise, anywhere that was less than 3-5 miles away by roads that didn't completely freak me out. And I had a couple mile route that I did pretty much every day I didn't have an errand to run. I still wouldn't say I am comfortable in terms of riding in traffic or on unfamiliar roads (identifying and dodging road debris or potholes at speed makes me nervous) but I am comfortable with signaling and stopping and starting. I don't feel like I am constantly at risk of randomly falling off my bike. OTOH there is no way I would ride on a mountain bike trail or even do a more than 10 mile ride on a nicely paved surface, so you may be looking for different advice.

I have no idea what advice I'm looking for, so I appreciate you.

The thing I see done "wrong" the most is starting/stopping in combination with saddle height being too low. Everyone who hits they gym knows hitting a squat ATG makes it way harder to produce force compared to 1/4 squatting. But for some reason people do not translate this to raising their saddle to where they can produce the most torque. I'm pretty sure it's because they want it low enough to put a foot down when they stop. The canonical site about this topic is here.

Honestly some of it may not be your fault but the bikes. It's Not About the Bike, but I'm 80% sure what you have is a bike shaped object from Walmart. I actually think there's a place for that kind of thing, especially for kids bikes, but unfortunately "good" bikes are unreasonably expensive in the US. At least the Euros can get decent city bikes or entry level sports bikes from decathlon for non-absurd prices. Like seriously bikes easily start getting into motorcycle territory pricing in the US.

Riding on the road on the US is frustrating for everyone, as a recent thread here talked about. I do quite like mountain biking still though. Trail systems are color coded like ski slopes. Hit full send on trail where you just about but don't lose it. Upgrade colors as you improve. For fitness basics of any cardio apply, watch out for over use injuries and assume you will have to put in more hours than if you were to train aerobic capacity via other modality.

Thank you for the contribution. I probably do need to set the saddle higher.

I'm pretty sure it was a cheap bike, and I came into it second hand, but how bad can it really be? I figure it will, you know, roll and stuff, and I don't plan to enter any races any time soon.

What do you mean by putting in more hours compared to other modalities?

Sorry for the late reply, offline for the long weekend.

Cheap bike is fine for rolling around the neighborhood. Like I said l, I do think there is a pace for them. The short version is good metallurgy is expensive. The sub $500 "mountain" bikes from Walmart come with a warning not to ride them on unpaved surfaces. Making a mountain bike where it's light enough to be rideable but tough enough where you don't taco a wheel is surprisingly difficult. On the road you'll feel every Watt a cheap bikes cheap bearings rob from you, but for "city" rather than "road" riding it matters less.

Because cycling is only semi-weight bearing and has no or little exentric you generate less strain per unit power/cardio zone. Stimulus to fatigue is still good, but raw stimulus is lower. So for arobic fitness you might need to put in 50% more time than running for the same cardio benefit. For example, for the same VO2 max increase from x hours of preceved zone 2 work. If you have a good bike fit it will still be easier on the knees though.

Cheap bike is fine for rolling around the neighborhood. Like I said l, I do think there is a pace for them. The short version is good metallurgy is expensive. The sub $500 "mountain" bikes from Walmart come with a warning not to ride them on unpaved surfaces. Making a mountain bike where it's light enough to be rideable but tough enough where you don't taco a wheel is surprisingly difficult. On the road you'll feel every Watt a cheap bikes cheap bearings rob from you, but for "city" rather than "road" riding it matters less.

Yeah, we'll see. I don't think it's exactly to my taste anyway, someone just gave it to me, so I guess if I find I enjoy the activity I'll start looking around for something better. Like a lot of people, I really try to avoid spending any money on hobbies until I'm pretty sure I'm committed. I wore secondhand climbing shoes through 5.10a, and I'm steadfastly holding out on buying rashguards for BJJ. I don't want to buy a bike and have it sit in my garage taking up space.

Because cycling is only semi-weight bearing and has no or little exentric you generate less strain per unit power/cardio zone. Stimulus to fatigue is still good, but raw stimulus is lower. So for arobic fitness you might need to put in 50% more time than running for the same cardio benefit. For example, for the same VO2 max increase from x hours of preceved zone 2 work. If you have a good bike fit it will still be easier on the knees though.

That makes sense. I guess I never thought about because the novelty of the stimulus balanced it out for me whenever I cycle, and I when I see cyclists they are extremely fit, so I never thought about it being "easier" relatively speaking on a per minute basis.

I participate in fighting sports, some very mainstream, a couple a bit niche. I enjoy doing it and used to be very competitive in one of the mainstream ones. But I broke a leg a couple years back and have been slow to get back into things.

That is changing this week, and I aim to be sparring once a week again consistently and training three times a week, plus general fitness stuff. I have, I think, the benefit of decades of experience that will keep me from overdoing things.

I will autistically let the Motte know how it goes, whether you’re interested or not.

I want to hear about your comeback!

Perhaps add "and legs" to your username. Do let us know how you fare.

New adventures in aging! I hit 140 snatch reps two weeks in a row. The old broken bone in my right hand stopped aching, might have been more weather related than anything. But now I appear to have developed some bursitis in my right heel?! When will it ever end! So I'm stretching that out basically every hour for some temporary relief and taking Tylenol twice a day.

My goal is 200 reps by October, which really only gives me 4-ish months to add on 60 more reps. I suspect I'm not gonna make it.

I still believe in you, progress often comes in chunks.

How often does everyone here wash their cars? What conditions are they put through? (Garage/outside, daily driver/weekend fun, extreme conditions, salty winters...) Do you hand wash or car wash? Do you find a sense of ritual/peace in doing it, or is it a chore?

I originally bought a pressure washer to blast crud off the side of my house but now I primarily use it to wash my vehicles. It's oddly satisfying and the kids like it too. I added a foam cannon attachment so I can cover them in a sheet of soap suds, let that sit for 5-10 minutes, and then do a rinse.

Works reasonably well but some spots still need a scrubbing. I probably do this every other month, though it's required more in spring because of the sheer mass of pollen that collects.

I talked about detailing last week so won't rehash that part.

Thanks all! Lotta dirty vehicles on TheMotte! ...I'll go back to considering whether I should hand wash mine slightly less often now...

(I'm currently scheduled to wash it every 6 weeks. Wax once a year. I do the jambs maybe every second or third wash; dirty jambs really annoy me. Nice weather here, garage at home, but getting driven even more now; pretty much daily.)

I have a personal relationship with my local drive thru car wash, and so I can run my cars through for free, and do so basically any time I drive by and there's no line. Once a week to once a month, depending on luck.

How often does everyone here wash their cars?

That depends a lot on where you live and how you use it. In the summer in place where it never rains you can get away with pretty much never washing it. In winter, especially if you drive in the snow, it gets filthy really quick. I usually go to a wash when I notice visible dirt on it, and usually just a run in automatic wash is enough. Occasionally when I take a longer trip (those darn bugs) I have to manually clean it with a rag pre and post the automatic part. Never found any special ritual meaning in it, it's just a chore for me.

My car is 18 years old. I think it's gotten one wash in the last 6 years. I tend to wash it whenever I needed to vacuum it anyway. It's perfectly serviceable.

2006 Camry that I love, my daily driver that I hope to run until it dies. Was garage kept when I got it at low mileage (80k! Still has under 100 because I don’t drive that often) but mine lives outside now. Wash it with the near ubiquitous car washes where I live, about every 2 months. Kind of have to, because it’s deserty and the rain leaves basically dirt deposits, which is annoying and looks terrible after a while, plus the classic bird poop. Hate doing so because feels a bit like wasted money. A sizable minority of people around here actually pay for car wash subscriptions! That lets you go through basically where ever you want, at chain locations all over. When I first got it I was very gung ho about washing and waxing it myself… never happened.

I use my truck for daily driving and light to moderate hauling, keep it outside, and frequently have my dogs in the back. I wash the whole thing by hand when there's so much stuck on crap it starts to bother me. I clean the windows about once a month whenever bird poop, pollen, sap, etc. starts to hinder my view. Road salt is the only thing that motivates me to wash my truck more frequently because I consider that preventative maintenance, for that I run it through a car wash that gets the underbody. I do appreciate a beautifully kept car but I find giving it a deep cleaning 1-2 times a year while spot cleaning as needed is plenty.

Wash it? Pretty much never. It's a light color that doesn't show dirt much, the paint job is roasted, and there's a bit of body damage so washing it doesn't really make it look much better. I keep the interior reasonably clean, though, and my tools are organized in the trunk.

I find anything to do with cleaning cars to be a chore, but worth it when I have a car where the effort actually pays off.

No garage, daily driver, extensive "pin-striping" from off-road driving, and it gets washed when it rains.

How often does everyone here wash his cars? Do you hand wash or car wash?

I let the sky wash my car whenever it rains.

What conditions are they put through?

No garage; a daily commute of 40 miles each way in the New York–Philadelphia corridor

What is your favorite tea, herbal remedy, and or like non-pharmeceutical thing you do for a pick me up?

Personally I like green tea and throat coat. I also love the Dr. Teals bubble path - lavender and fresh spring rain are my favorites. Have a lot of candles and church incense which are amazing.

Chai tea with a tsp of sugar, lots of milk, and a generous sprinkle of cinnamon on top. Black decaf tea with milk and a piece of 100% dark chocolate while doing the free paper’s crossword. Coffee when I’m desperate. A cold shower (or better yet—a swim in a cold lake!)

I like to cold brew some black tea with a hint of citrus (usually bergamot e.g. Earl Gray) and vanilla. For caffeine free, I mostly like strong aromatics like lavender, rosemary, nettles or mint. Best in my opinion to take them individually so it isn't all muddied together.

Goals for last month went okay. Did my chore spreadsheet successfully, read about 3k pages, saved over 50% (due to an unexpected bonus) and swam and ran what I was supposed to. Did not stay fap free or meditate at all. This month I want to focus more on processes/habits and less on deliverables.

  1. Figure out triggers of masturbation/porn use and try and cut the problem off at its root. Masturbation may not be all that bad, but I think my perception of women/the ability to relate to the opposite sex has been messed up, and despite ~5 years of trying, I've never kicked this bad habit.

  2. Be more social. Have social activities planned on at least 3/4 weeknights and one weekend night

  3. Do one thing at a time. Multitasking is an illusion that hurts both productivity and causes anxiety.

  4. Replace the default bored or stressed activity of scrolling with either doing nothing (preferred), or reading an easy fiction/pop sci book.

Replace the default bored or stressed activity of scrolling with ... reading an easy fiction/pop sci book.

At times I have great success with this approach, but then I run out of easy fiction books I want to read. When I recently read Ellroy's LA Quartet and then the American Tabloid trilogy, I basically did zero scrolling because I was reading them at every opportunity (including between sets while lifting). But then I finished them and went back to bad habits.

I have quite a few Joe Abercrombie books to read still.

Hackers and Closers

I finally finished Math Foundations 3 on Math Academy, a course north of 6 thousand xp (one problem is one xp, they assume it takes around a minute to solve it). The entire thing took me close to 4 months. On my trip to Prayagraj, I did three hours of math whilst in a moving train, without a seat or proper lighting. The pinhole reading light and a few inches of sitting space without back support. I was reading Masters of Doom then and found Carmack inspirational. The next day, I did three hours whilst at the airport and some whilst we drove back home.

The math I'm doing isn't going to help me be a great hacker soon, it won't get me employed either. Fast.ai explicitly tells you not to care about math, a course I'll do once my backend journey is over. Yet, I do think I did something important.

My first posts here were in the winter of 2019. I somehow lucked into a really good spot, and the subsequent issues I faced with my academics after joining uni are documented here. I did not know any math beyond grade 9th while in a CS program. I kind of knew some math, but my fluency was zero, and that cascaded into me graduating with close to a 3 GPA equivalent.

At nearly 25, I finally filled that gap and then some. My understanding of math is better now, and I had to chip away at this behemoth for months, literally. I realised that I was at 98 percent completion. My mentor was on the co-working call. I kept going until 3-4 a.m. and finally hit 100 percent. It felt great. I have reduced my math output, but I will study math for life. I feel satisfied, there is a lot more good ahead.

I finally finished Math Foundations 3 on Math Academy, a course north of 6 thousand xp

Interesting. It came to about 5k for me, possibly because it most of it was review for me, and I blew through it in under a month, consequently not getting many scheduled reviews.

I also finished Methods of Proof, which was interesting although it focused a lot more on integer factorization than I expected, and am now about 80% of the way though math for machine learning. The more complicated linear algebra material was a bit of a speed bump for me, as I had to go back and do some reviewing to get a better understanding of what was going on. I should be ready for their ML course when it comes out, and maybe even have time to finish up the parts of the LA => MVC => Stats sequence not covered in M4ML.

I'll do math for ml once I finish discrete math, I want to do both linear algebra and stats as they have the most relevance for computers, especially if I do fast.ai soon and wish to dog deeper.

My mentor is making me do some books on the side that will help me get a second, deeper look at the topics I've already learnt via math academy. I'm unsure of what to do post math for ml tho. Calc 3, linear algebra, stats?

How rigorous/helpful do you think the ml and discrete math adjacent courses like MoP are? Are they enough to help you jump right into applied side of programming? I do trust Jeremy Howard when he says that you don't need a vast amount of math if you're starting machine learning.

They will also publish a ML1 course before their CS1 course so I may jump into that once I knock out MoP, discrete math and m4ml.

Methods of Proof did not strike me (a programmer with many years of experience) as particularly relevant to software engineering. On the other hand, it's a very short course, I think about 1800 XP. Discrete math I think should be more relevant. You will definitely get questions about complexity analysis (Big-O) in interviews.

M4ML is a selection of the most ML-relevant lessons from the LA => MVC => Stats sequence. I think it covers about half of LA and stats, and a third of MVC. I chose to take M4ML first in order to benefit from the interleaving of topics, instead of doing the full sequence one subject at a time.

You can definitely do software engineering without all this math. I studied most of this in college and haven't really ever used it, except some concepts from discrete math. There are specific domains where it can be useful or even essential, but you can have a solid career and make a lot of money basically never using math. One of the best engineers I've ever met told me he almost failed out of college because he wasn't good at math.

I don't know much about how much math you need for ML, as I'm not an ML developer. I would start with discrete math and M4ML, just in case.

Does the urge to engage in poor coping strategies ever go away?

I'm in my 40s. When hitting a certain level of stress/burnout, I used to engage in a very particular unhealthy behavior. Thanks to some combination of aging, better choices, and limiting my ability to engage in those behaviors, it's been years since I did them. But every time I hit that level of stress, my first instinct is still, "fuck this, I'm going to go do X." Obviously, not doing X is good, but it would be nice for that impulse to go away.

Yes it can effectively go away or diminish to the point that you never engage in them unless you somehow deliberately decide to.

You can train the mind in meditation to see that ephemeral and unhealthy solutions are... dumb. Dumb in the sense that when using them you expect a real or long term fix from an ineffective behavior. You start to see that reaching for the cigarette every time is the act of a weak little ape. And you have the potential as a human to be a lot more than a poorly coded input-output machine. You can soften the pain by changing your relationship to it, thus changing how it presents. Typically, most of the problem is created by viewing the problem as a problem, or pushing against it. Everything you push against gets energy added to it and keeps going instead of just dissipating quickly. An emotion and emotionally loaded cognition lasts less than a minute; unless you just keep firing it up again and again.

I think it never goes away, yeah. But as you say it gets easier and easier to get through. Eventually I have found and heard from others that you get to a point where you get triggered and then just sort of move through it in a few seconds/minutes.

Also I'm very curious what X is?

It diminishes for me if I follow basic yogic guidelines such as

  • Meditate regularly
  • Avoid stimulation
  • Inculcate deliberate rest and restoration in your daily life

I'd text girls on Instagram as a way to cope with my life being in the gutter. Now, I am fixing it and find the idea of flirting when not around someone absurd.

You're on the right path by identifying the issues. Wish you the best.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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