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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1250 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 16, 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 was in the gym three times this week. I started the Jim Stoppani Beginner to Advanced program and, after roughly two years away from the gym, my lifts are somewhere between humbling and humiliating. On the other hand, at least I’m doing it.

On the gripping hand, I also did two sparring sessions, for about an hour each, and those went much, much better in the ego realm. I just have years of skill and experience on anyone else at the new club, and so even being very rusty (noticeably so to myself), I was able to spar in a pretty relaxed and casual manner and still do very well. Which is good because I needed the ego boost after the lifting.

On the other gripping hand, while I can do plenty to build up the skill level of the other people at the club, being a big fish in a small pond is the way to stagnate. I’ll have to think about ways to regularly get to other clubs and work with better fighters. In the interim, I aim to at least clean up my own technique so that I, personally, feel less sloppy.

Do you know anyone who has 'self radicized' online, and then returned to normal?

I used to think self radicalization was a meme until I saw it happening to someone close to me.

It's not even that there's no truth to the root of her complaints it's that viewing the world and your interactions though a lens of 'white erasure' and 'white well-being' doesn't really provide a useful or helpful narrative to act on. To me it's just the inverse of other popular victimization narratives.

We can't seem to have a pleasant evening out without;

You've your boot on the neck of Germany, holding us down.

We don't live in Germany and haven't for ~20 years.

Any similar experiences?

Who is this booted "you", who's "us" in that quote? Needs more context.

But to answer the question: No. Fortunately. The radicals I know have been radicalized as much by the IRL water they swim in as by online propaganda. This means that the radicalization is both somewhat attenuated by the need to be IRL-compatible and sadly precludes a return to normal because radical is the normal, as said, water they swim it. It's socially acceptable to spew wild theories about Russian or American or Chinese intelligence agencies doing god-knows-what, about the Rich planning to eat us all, about foreigners wanting to skin us alive, about elites not being happy until we live in the pod and eat the bug, about how the planet is doomed and we're all going to die by tomorrow, about how the vaccines / the environmental toxins / the microplastics / the heavily processed food is giving us cancer / making us infertile / turning the frogs gay. Just pick the right flavor for a given audience and you're off to the races.

And some of those theories may well be right, but epistemic humility is thoroughly out of fashion. I do see people go off and and get worked up until they call for race war now gas the kikes / revolution now eat the rich shoot the nazi politicans / deindustrialize now voluntary human extinction save the planet before it's too late. I don't see people talk each other down with anything that even directionally resembles "Wait, that's hyperbole. Have we considered the counterargument?".

I don't think she meant me specifically, but America / 'Jews' / whoever is white erasing 'western kind'. In this instance the 'us' I think is Germans or Germanic people, but the specifics on these are often fuzzy when pressed.

There's not much opportunity for IRL radicalization in our community or social groups.

Strangely I think I'd mind actual National Socialism less, at least there's a political ideology and the aesthetics are better.

This guy has a horrible aesthetic https://x.com/NoWhiteGuiltNWG

I was too busy to manage to go grab groceries this week and opted to order them delivered. I checked in a few minutes later to find that several items were flagged as unavailable, and the store were suggesting replacements:

In what universe is a pack of salami a substitute for Swedish meatballs?? Imagine a local family of Scottish-Scandinavians, pining for the fjords, unable to make their annual pilgrimage to the nearest IKEA. They've scrimped and worked hard, tolerated the sunburn and boiling heat, and decided to treat themselves with a taste of home. Alas, it was not to be..

Would the hypothetical clan of kilt-knitted, lingonberry-lonely expats be happy? They would stare at the salami the way one stares at a postcard of the Highlands when one had booked a week in Glen Coe: it is technically an image of the right country, but it neither howls with wind nor smells of heather. The children would ask, “Mamma, why are the meatballs in slices?” and Mamma would have to explain that sometimes the world is run by people who think “Scandi” is just a checkout aisle at H&M.

I can only imagine that they haven't experienced such disappointment since their distant ancestor, Björn, held his vegvisir or sun stone the wrong way, and thus took the wrong turn on his voyage to Normandy.

(I accepted the offer because it made me a net profit of about 50p. The replacement of cocktail sausages with chicken skewers, while somewhat saner, would have lost me twice as much, and was summarily refunded.)

Would they be happy to be scammed in this manner, with inferior goods? Is there a single recipe on the planet which accommodates such mutilation?

My wife makes those kinds of substitutions work all the time. Just shrug, close your eyes and chew harder.

It's not the same. Your wife might not miss those meaty balls, but I certainly do.

Just consume calorie. Come on man, you're the transhumanist, look past the shape and taste and texture of the meat, consider only what it means for your more abstract aspirations. You are a dyson swarm in the making, what matter whether this brief bipedal interlude speeds towards its rendezvous with destiny fuelled by salami or by Kötbullar? Elevate yourself! Transcend the need for rotund victuals!

When you put it that way, I really can't disagree. I'll simulate 10^15 meatballs in the distant future to make up for present discomfort.

This week you're all getting a break from all the uninteresting things I'm doing with kettlebells or jiu jitsu to talk about fertility treatments.

I know I'm not supposed to worry about it at all, that anything can happen at this stage, but I have to tell someone and I'll tell y'all because you I can't tell anyone who matters in my real life: after a little over a year of trying, my wife got a positive pregnancy test.

We'll have to confirm it, and hopefully it all works out, but I'm very excited.

We had what our doctor called "unexplained" fertility issues. Which is to say we were making love often enough, and individually our tests were coming back good, but no baby resulted. I guess its good the tests came back clean, but it was a little disappointing, in that when you go in for tests you hope for the doc to say something like "Oh, you actually have a very obvious, simple, and treatable common problem. You aren't doing anything wrong, you just need to do X and then it'll all work out." Sperm testing stressed me out, in that I feel like all versions of that are equivalent to "You're not really much of a man." Where female infertility, while surely bad, is so multifarious and complex, that it seems a little less bad. Like, where male infertility is "your engine doesn't have enough horsepower to move the car;" female infertility is "the wire harness came loose and the starboard vacuum sensor borked itself." Given, I'm sure Mrs. FiveHour felt the opposite way, that have slow sperm is better than being a woman who can't have a baby. At any rate, neither occurred, we were just stuck there with no baby for no particular reason. And hitting the age where while we could probably have a decent chance of getting it done, we might be under pressure pretty quickly.

Our insurance covered IUI, which is basically just optimizing the fertilization process. Mrs. FiveHour took some drugs to precisely trigger and optimize her cycle, then I was to jerk off into a cup, the facility would "clean" the sperm to optimize the sample, and then the nurses insert it directly into her uterus. We elected to give it a try.

This required me, of course, to jerk off into the cup, then immediately drive it across town to meet a very precise appointment time. I have never had a more stressful masturbation in my life. So much pressure! I really put a lot of effort into optimizing the production. I needed a good sample, I needed it to all go into the cup. And it's so weird carrying around a cup of my own splooge. I felt like such a bizarre pervert, in the car, then sitting in the waiting room. Not that I had much odds of getting into such a situation, but I would sooner be searched by a cop and have him find a gun or a half ounce of weed than I would have him find a cup of my own sperm. And the whole time I'm looking at the brown paper bag thinking, well that didn't seem like very much, I bet this was a miss.

I will note that according to my wife, as a personal achievement, that the doctor commented to a visiting med student who joined her for the procedure that the sample was "ridiculous" and that this was "definitely going to work;" they look for 5mm and I managed to hit 29mm. God I hope we don't have to do this again, because I'll have to try to top that. The natural male high-scoring instinct applies to everything with a metric.

I don't know if this will happen or not. We might not get a confirmed positive, it might not make it to term, or who knows.

But I'm praying this is our child. If for no other reason than I don't know how much more I can optimize my jerking off.

I am glad that you painstakingly offered the experience of this procedure you did. I always wondered what it was like to donate sperm, and I bet that's somewhat similar. I would have thought you'd have to do it on site or something. Did you wait a week or a few days from your last "emission" so that it would be a larger quantity? Well, good job, anyway. I thought you both were over 35 and already parents or happily not-parents or something.

I think female infertility would be a serious blow to a relationship. The way I see it in my mind's eye is that sperm is cheap, so if yours didn't work, you could just go get Chad DNA from a sperm bank or something. Chad DNA has its own benefits, because I would want my kids to be successful and having good genetics like tallness or lack of mental or physical illnesses are very helpful, but some people really want their kids to be "theirs". Personally, I would just want something to dedicate myself to that doesn't have any baggage like a preexisting child would. I guess I'm not evolutionarily correct, though the thought of my hypothetical wife cheating on me is still horrifying. On the other hand, female infertility leaves you in the same position that The Gays are in: either hundreds of thousands of dollars paying for another uterus, or tens of thousands of dollars for decent adoption, or a few thousand dollars for an adoption of a subpar kid or foster-to-adopt.

Did you wait a week or a few days from your last "emission" so that it would be a larger quantity?

They recommend three days, that's apparently optimal. I got that the first time (15mm) we tried it, but the second time (29mm) they scheduled it last minute so I only got one day of abstinence, so I don't think it makes too much difference. I edged extensively both times to increase the quantity of the sample, though I haven't tested it not doing that so idk.

I will say: the day before the second sample I had an absolutely killer run at BJJ, so maybe there's something to the idea that winning dominance/athletic competitions increases testosterone production.

They recommend three days, that's apparently optimal.

Weird, that’s not what I’ve heard. Longer time between ejaculations trades off fresher, more motile sperm for bigger loads, and what I’ve read suggests that 36-48 hours between is ideal for maximum fertility. It’s moot at this point though, so congrats!

36 was what I got the second time. I think it's all old wives tales.

Haha, I wonder what the statistics are on edging vs no edging for samples. There's clearly a whole branch of gross biology studies that haven't been done. I'm something of a goonscientist myself!

I know that weightlifting increases testosterone, but not sure about success in general.

He took saliva samples to test hormone levels before and after the races. A number of psychological questionnaires were also administered, designed to gauge self-esteem, ‘sociosexuality’ (willingness to engage in casual sex), ‘self-perceived mate value’ and mating behaviour (e.g. the likelihood of approaching attractive women). Crucially, Longman and colleagues then manipulated the results of the races.

The men who believed they had won received an average testosterone increase of 4.92%, while those convinced they had lost dropped by an average of 7.24%. Overall, men who thought they were winners had testosterone levels 14.46% higher their deflated opponents.

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/believing-youre-a-winner-gives-men-a-testosterone-boost-and-promiscuous-disposition

It seems intuitive that such an effect could also increase sperm production in the short term.

As for edging, study compliance is probably an issue.

There's a couple at my church who were having trouble conceiving. For them, the doctor did say "you just need to do X and then it'll all work out" where X was a hormonal injection into the woman. Apparently she wasn't ovulating and so this obviously resulted in no babies.

Well the hormones worked too well. She started releasing multiple eggs/month, and now they have a set of twins and quadruplets... 6 kids under 5 years old...

That's awesome. I've wondered if purposeful inducement of twins or identical twins would be possible, considering the usefulness of twin studies, and this seems like it's sorta-close to that. Good for her, imagine the family reunions 20 or 40 years down the line.

Making twins is super easy. Basically every couple I know who had kids >40 has twins due to how IVF works. I don't know of a way to make identical twins though...

My wife is really hoping for twins for the economies of scale. Quadruplets would be a bit much though, I don't think I can come up with 4 precisely equal names.

Obviously FiveHour Jr, FiveHour III, FiveHour IV, and FiveHour V, in birth order. Then you just call them all FiveHour without the suffix, for maximum efficiency when calling your kids.

Romans did something similar. They didn't have many names to begin with, and starting with fifth child just named them by numbers (Quintus etc.) For girls, it was starting with Tertia. No idea why these numbers specifically.

Another way would be to use names Second, Third, Fourth etc. and when they ask "what about the First" tell them "well, he didn't behave..."

Not even OneHour, TwoHour, ThreeHour and FourHour?

This would work great if his name is Jerome and he winds up having all daughters.

I believe in FiveHour's ability to get creative. My wife's grandfather wanted to name his kids after him, and the fact that he had all daughters did not deter him in the slightest. That's how my wife wound up with aunts named Paula and Pauletta.

Jeroma, Jerometta, Jeromina, and Jeromabelle

@FiveHourMarathon We’ve solved your problem for you.

I've seen that naming system in person. It works out poorly when FiveHour IV has multiple run-ins with the law and the other FiveHours get arrested for his warrants because a roadside cop can't be bothered to sort it out.

Congratulation!

Enjoy, man. Every part of the process is great. Maybe not so much the cup, I guess.

Best of luck man, kids are the best.

Hey, you were the guy who had the picture book of the Hobbit for your daughter, right? My niece just caught the bug when my sister read her a bit from a traditional novel version, and I'd like to gift them something like what you described. Any info to point me in the right direction?

Yeah, so this art book is what I let my daughter browse through while I read the novel to her. But another friend of mine read this illustrated version to her son. Probably advantages to both. Giving my daughter a separate book I think worked for us because she had some control over what she was looking at while I read.

I've read a few times that hiring has become a mess because loads of applicants are using LLM agents that can apply to jobs and adjust your CV per job, and thus rapidly apply for hundreds of suitable positions with custom applications.

Is this true, do such systems exist? My wife is returning to the job market soon but is a bit lazy when it comes to applications, so this would be a lifesaver for her

Anyone on the Motte practice Tarot? I've dabbled in it for the past year, but looking to a go a bit deeper in terms of interpretations and understanding of the cards.

What's a deck you find compelling from an artwork perspective?

I'm quite partial to the Rider-Waite deck, but I also got one of my friends an Odyessian Tarot based on Greek mythology that I perhaps like better. He ended up buying the Rider-Waite deck as well, so maybe not a ringing endorsement.

I would like to get a set with particularly good art & symbolism, and I've never found Rider-Waite compelling on that first prong. Same for Crowley-Thoth and others that are often recommended.

No but I got the David Bowie tarot set for my partner for Christmas. I assume she’ll use it one day and I’ll post on here about it.

She’s into that sort of stuff in the most lukewarm way, which is the best way.

It’s a really nice, and apparently authentic, tarot set.

Have you compared it against I Ching? Which one has better predictive power?

I used the I Ching a lot in college. I didn't really use either of them for straight up prediction very much but I've found that Tarot seems to help me psychoanalyze a lot more because it has greater symbolic resonance for whatever reason.

Please say more about the psychoanalysis that tarot could enable.

You ever flip a coin to help you make a decision and end up figuring out the choice you wanted to make independent of the outcome? Tarot is basically like that. It helps me figure out what I'm subconsciously thinking about a certain problem.

Hmm yeah. That makes sense. Sounds useful actually.

Can you give a concrete example of how the tarot cards were more stimulating than a coin toss would have been? I'm curious.

I dug out a tarot deck that I had collecting dust, no idea when or why it was acquired. Nearly all the cards have obese women. Gee, I wonder what the creator of them looks like. Lol.

I hate cutting weight. My lifts (never impressive to start with, but acceptable) have gone to crap and I feel tired all the time.

215-220 lbs (at 6'2") overall felt great. My lifts were decent, I still had abdominal definition, and running 2-3 times per week (where my long run was probably 6-8 miles) felt pretty good. Some health numbers were trending in a way I didn't like, though, so I signed up for some trail races and have been working on getting my weight down.

I'm now around 195. My health numbers have shot back down to what they were a few years ago, my running distances are up, and I have way more definition, but as I said, my lifts are now terrible and I'm tired all the time. I'm still 3 months from the first race and having another 5-10 pounds gone would make a marathon much easier, but I'm already wishing I could go back to being heavier.

Im currently dieting around similar numbers as you are. IMHO you should invest more energy of your process into the mindset. Why are you dieting in the first place? It seems you are training towards a marathon whilst also lifting? Things that people usually enjoy in a diet:

  • better sleep quality (unless you are deep into a cut and go to bed hungry)
  • performance in calisthenics - pullups just feel amazing for me in a diet
  • enjoyment of food
  • looks when naked (at least after this first 'flatness' hump)

IMHO you should invest more energy of your process into the mindset.

Probably a good idea and something I should work on.

Why are you dieting in the first place?

To see if it's still relatively easy for me to lose weight. To see where I lose that weight from. To see if it positively effects some health numbers. To make distance running easier.

It seems you are training towards a marathon whilst also lifting?

Yes. For much of my 20s, I was strictly endurance training with no lifting, and I'm not going back to that.

better sleep quality (unless you are deep into a cut and go to bed hungry)

I'm not deep into a cut and going to bed hungry, but sleep quality has gotten worse.

performance in calisthenics - pullups just feel amazing for me in a diet

Bodyweight/calisthenics exercises have certainly gotten easier.

enjoyment of food

Unchanged.

looks when naked (at least after this first 'flatness' hump)

Not to be too vain, but I looked pretty awesome at 215. I'm far more defined now, but feel too skinny (although I recognize I'm not, and I'm still too heavy for comfortably completing a marathon or longer race).

hey thanks for the answer, im not too active here atm. It seems to me you are balancing multiple goals and identities with your fitness regiment:

  • lifting for looks (hypertrophy, bodyfat)
  • lifting numbers --> charitably: "powerbuilding" approach
  • your identity as a capable distance runner aka ye golden times of your 20ies

it is very hard to balance all these goals simultaneously. I had similar issues of balancing different goals (BJJ instead of running). To me, most helpful has been the insight, that due to the memory effect, you are free to regain most of your old gains quickly if you train accordingly. This allows you to prioritize one goal over others with a "good concience" in the mid term. For example: once I let go of some "must-have" lifts and rep ranges (hello bench press 3-6 reps) and embraced hypertrophy training fully, my looks really improved while aches injuries went down

So, a funny story about how motivation is contagious.

I was working on some chairs. I keep trying to make steady progress, because the longer I go without working on them, the less motivation I feel to get back in the saddle and just finish the damned things. My wife waylaid me with a task of making some floating shelves, which I knocked out in about a weekish. The finish is currently curing and then they go up on the wall.

Anyways, I'm explaining how I stay motivated to my daughter, and I ask her "Is there anything you wanted to do, but then got distracted and now it's hard to get back to it again?" She goes "Yeah, riding my bike without my training wheels." This apparently lit a fire under her five year old butt, and she's been going hard at it. After we got the driveway redone on Thursday so it's nice and flat and smooth, and every single day since she's been out there with her training wheels off. Friday I was giving her a push before she fell 5-10 feet later, Saturday she was pedaling down the driveway but couldn't make it uphill. Sunday she was making it uphill. Monday she was making it uphill and downhill and turning at the bottom. Yesterday she frustrated herself to hysterical tears trying to get going all on her own without a push, and by the end of the day she'd pulled it off. Not 100%, but she got her foot in the door. Couldn't be more proud of her.

And it was seemingly kicked off by me having a candid conversation with her about putting effort into staying motivated.

Man, having kids is magical. Getting to see the first time a human decides to take responsibility for their own skill and proficiency is an unmatched feeling.

I took a more passive-aggressive approach. We live in a neighborhood with a ton of kids. While pulling my oldest around in a trailer, I pointed out the 3-year-old girls pedaling on their own without training wheels (admittedly rare and Asian) and that he was older, so he should be able to do it.

A week later he was up without training wheels, and the week after he was pedaling a 12-mile round trip.

Now to get his younger sibling to do the same...

I've been thinking about the role of shaming children into desirable behavior recently. My wife is firmly against shaming in any form---she's a practicing psychologist and so is used to seeing the ways that shame has been used to emotionally torture people. But my experience is that judiciously applied shaming can greatly motivate people of all ages. Your story here is a good example.

I'm a huge supporter of it in moderation and conjunction with sincere appreciation and encouragement. I thank my kids for everything they do to help out, I let them know what teasing is and how to respond to it. If I'm shaming them for lack of ability, it's only because I know they can.

It's far too critical a tool in building a high-trust family to leave behind. Shouldn't a kid be at least a little ashamed of screaming or slamming the door to wake up a sibling? Wasting food they asked for and had someone prepare? Talking over someone telling a story?

I feel like we deal with way less BS than other parents because we are comfortable having calm corrective conversations with young kids. Maybe that's rose-colored glasses, maybe it'll be the wrong play long term, but right now it feels like a cheat code.

Unsolicited advice--just take the training wheels off, and take the pedals off, too. Lower the seat so their feet easily touch the ground. Basically you're improvising what is sometimes called a "balance bike," except that once they have the balance down, you can just put the pedals back on rather than buy a whole new bike.

Man, but then you miss out on the essential dad activity of pushing them, letting them fall, and telling them to rub some dirt in their skinned knee.

I agree, training wheels are shit, and balance bikes are the shit. We had one for our son and he learned to balance so well that one day he took another kid's bike and rode away. We caught up with him only when he reached a massive muddy puddle and got stuck.

This is exactly what I did. Eventually.

  1. Got a balance bike. But a cheap one with no handbrake, so it didn't really work on hills and was too small for a big kid.
  2. Got a training wheel bike. A grandparent got this without my real authorization, so it was ultra-heavy chinesium crap (heavier than my adult bikes) with awful geometry and impossible to pedal up hills. Led to a ton of frustration and balance anti-patterns.
  3. Splurged on a higher-end kids bike with handbrakes (In this case, I think you go with Priority or Woom. Guardian sucks). Used it as a balance bike. Added the pedals after a while. Voilia.

interesting - We've enjoyed our guardian bikes a decent amount - what's the pitch with priority and woom?

EDIT: lighter weight? More expensive so just generally better? Our 5 year old is struggling a bit on hills though is very good at pedaling. 3 year old still working on balance with pedals.

It's the weight for sure. The brake system is nice, but I just disabled the front brake on the priority and will get it on once I trust the kid a bit more.

A friend got the 14" (?) Guardian and it was still just too heavy. The Priority is both ligher and uses a belt drive, both major advantages for a similar price. The woom is unbelievably expensive but is also how light a kid's bike SHOULD be.

Man, somebody's fucking phone was listening in on my conversations, because Facebook has been shoving balance bike ads into my feed up the wazoo. Jokes on them, my daughter doesn't need one anymore!

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