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:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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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.
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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.
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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).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I'm grateful for Substack's ability to show me the sources of traffic. As I've previously mentioned, it keyed me in to the fact that Gwern himself had archived me. I was quite pleased to see a few people independently share my posts on HN too.
But, sometimes it raises more questions than it answers. Why are my posts being shared via the Steam forums? Why Slack? Who is using their company comms or a gaming website to talk about anything I've written?? I wish I knew, but it's a mystery that I'm unlikely to solve. I even saw Localhost:1881 in there, which I strongly suspect shouldn't be sending me any traffic.
After writing the above, I went back to my most popular article, the one about the effects of psilocybin on depression. Substack has 800 views from LinkedIn, 15 from Microsoft Office, 2 from the Brave browser (?).
I hope someone can tell me what the fuck is going on here.
If mma.tv were still around and I weren’t banned - so like 6 years ago really, you’d see me share a link or two from there.
Most forums’ most active places are their misc. sub forums.
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Substack is just processing the Referrer header in the HTTP request that browsers will send when users click a link.
So, someone has links to your Substack on a locally hosted page. Maybe one of our own viewing a locally hosted version of The Motte?
Hmm.. How would that work? If they're self-hosting, then are they executing all the server-side code themselves and also mirroring the content?
In the past I've known people who've made a simple HTML page with some links on it set as the home page for easy access from new tabs. Not sure if
file://would send a referrer, but a lightweight local-only server isn't crazy either. I doubt they know they're sending referrer headers.More options
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Maybe someone is self-hosting something that takes, filters, backups etc content? Or some other kind of custom front-end?
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Slack is used for some like Discord with less stupid name or by people working far more than gaming and exposed to it as a primary real-time chat. Also, some companies have very relaxed policies, that would make USA HR department die on spot.
You can be a software dev in a small 100% male company in Eastern Europe that has a chat channel for sharing porn.
maybe someone self-hosts "to read" list?
Why not? You posted that Avatar tech stuff? Seems quite easily linkable to some gaming discussions.
Appeared in some recommendations shown by browser?
link in .doc document I guess
Thank you. That seems quite sensible
I suppose they need additional perks to make up for the low salary haha.
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Rat-adjacent spaces have a soft spot for jaded psychiatrists with penchant for writing. I am not surprised.
During the great awokening, lots of niche forums moved to private groups on discord and slack. TheMotte is a rare space that has both open conversation and is publicly accessible. Goes to show how badly Reddit fumbled the bag.
Are you accusing me of being a worse version of Scott?
If you are, I can't fault you haha. I live in the shadow of giants, and try to grow in the space between their toes.
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Is there anywhere to see which pages actually link to your substack posts?
Not that I'm aware of. In the specific instances of Gwern, X, HN and a few others, I was able to track down the original link manually, or using Google search parameters.
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Recently, I have been reminded why so many lawyers are fat, drunks, or both. There are just too many days where the stress levels are atrocious, and as if dealing with clients/courts/etc. aren't bad enough, then adding in training and supervising other attorneys means there are constant small fires that need attention.
Now that makes me wonder why more doctors aren't fat and/or drunk. Everything you've said about attorneys fits our bill. Maybe we're more health conscious (and I hope we are), maybe we run around more, or maybe we just sleep better at night from a clean conscience.
The median quality of the people becoming doctors compared to lawyers is generally a fair bit higher, so one would expect them to do better. The comparison shouldn't be between the median lawyer and the median doctor, but between a fairly successful lawyer or judge and a doctor.
I have another observation though, and this of course varies by country and specialization, but my impression is that doctors work life is comparatively (in relation to other similar high status white collar professions) "relaxed" a few years after residency, which coincidentally is the same age people usually start gaining weight. If I'm comparing my friends and acquaintances, the ones in private industry seem to work more, harder and with far less stability than the doctors.
A lot of the stressors that exist in other comparable careers don't exist and things are far more stable, for good and ill. Very high salary, ironclad employment security, lifelong employment, clear delineation between work and rest, etc. To me the biggest issue among my doctor friends seems to increasingly be boredom/under stimulation rather than stress.
I also imagine that a lot of the people unsuited to the medicine specific stressors wash out before they actually become doctors due to how the education is structured. You're much more removed from the actual reality of your future career as a law student for example which can lead to nasty surprises.
While this can be true for some practice environments and specialties, I would hazard it is untrue more often than not.
Most doctors have some combination of research, teaching, administrative, and managerial duties all of which bleed outside of traditional work hours in the usual ways. Additionally many specialties (ex: family medicine) will involve significant time outside of work catching up on documentation and managing your in basket and so on.
It's not impossible - gas usually does little outside of work, same for things like radiology, inpatient psychiatry and so on. Especially in a hospital employed community setting. But as soon as you take on any additional responsibilities, go academic, or hang your own shingle...that goes away most of the time.
My suspicion is that doctors seem to cope well in comparison to lawyers because the sheer depth of abuse, abstruse requirements and zero flexibility in the medical student and residency days makes anything that comes after seem reasonable.*
Although by the numbers substance abuse, divorce rates, suicide are all high for doctors (but maybe not as bad as lawyers).
*"My 24s aren't that bad" is a common attending refrain. It is also insane.
First result for searching for divorce rates for doctors and lawyers. Not too far apart. I did not find any quick results for suicide comparisons or substance abuse rates.
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I'd suggest that divorce (and adultery) rates are high for doctors because one of the perks of the job is that hospitals are full of young female nurses. Of all the divorced men I know, the doctors are the most likely to leave their first wife for some kind of floozy from work. This alone probably encourages staying trim!
I know this is a meme but it is one I've never encountered in real life (although I've heard about it often). Hard to tell if that is due to geography or era (these days most of the male doctors I know are terrified of being on the wrong end of woke crimes and are careful at work for that reason).
Some societal stereotypes seem to be based on things that haven't been true for 10-20 years, and the updates are slow to happen. The "middle aged dude running off with the floozy from work and buying a red convertible" trope is indestructible, but I've personally seen more of the "woman loses her mind and gets divorced (or the opposite order), borderline abandons her kids, and goes on a years-long drunken sex binge" version.
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God, I wish that were me. Or true of most British doctors. At least the WLB is better in psych.
That's a pretty thoughtful comment, and I think it makes eminent sense.
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I have zero doubts being a doctor is more stressful in some ways, especially in some specialties. However, imagine as a doctor, you had a counter-doctor working to fight or undo everything you were doing (even more so than the patient might fight you on things). It adds a whole extra level of stress.
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I was able to hit a pr workwise clocking in 7.5 hours yesterday and 7 today. My biological clock is ticking and I am certain that I can do 8-9 hours daily of focused programming work, well 7 something and the remaining for math. So far, I have only been getting humbled in that I learn something, it quickly becomes apparent that I need to learn more and I try again; my progress has been slower and much more painful than I ever expected. Yet, this is the first time in my life I have worked this much at any level of consistency.
Today, like yesterday, I am too tired to work and just do not care about what is happening in the world, rather, things beyond my own life and my family, plus some friends. My time on twitter is nearly zero, I only open up Hacker News because I am on their telegram channel and since starting Twin Peaks, I have been using tv as my daily hour of leisure, since poor time management leaves me with not a lot of spare time before I sleep by 11 pm.
Many here may remember me from my rambling, incoherent updates from the past. I am a few weeks away from finishing off the entire python sequence on boot.dev, I will start C after that and finally do go after cleaning up data structures there. My mentor suggested this route and I will follow it through no matter what. So I do not have a weeping update like I did once. My sabbatical may take a few more months, but I will not stop or change things in the middle since that is how I fucked my life up two years ago.
On the workout side, I need to eat and sleep more. I kept missing days for the past few weeks; the worst I can do is quit or get injured. Getting humbled regularly has many benefits. I nitpicked people a lot to feel better, I never nitpick anyone. I mean, a lot of this was driven by Luke Smith's short blogpost on this. Life is short, I was told here to derive satisfaction from the stuff I am doing now, it took me 5 years to get the memo. I still sometimes remember my past life, all the opportunities I lost, the occasional fond memories, the dread of ending up the same, stuck in the same limbo I got into a decade ago. But I know things can change. I cannot appreciate any amount of progress, despite having done more than I ever did in my entire life, since I have so much more that I want to do, and whatever little I have done seems smaller than a statistical error. I have gotten to a point in life where I have less than zero confidence in any of my abilities, its not ideal, I was always overconfident, and life is better that way. Maybe never doing anything helped me cope with that, perhaps.
Frankly, I don't care about feeling good about what I do, I just want to do more and git gud for real. Anyhow, I will go back and finish off the first episode of season 2 of Twin Peaks and my dinner that I paused to finish my math for the day. If what I wrote seems incoherent, then do let me know. I am too tired to think properly, and I like it for a change. I will post a review of Twin Peaks season 1 this Friday. Please do not post spoilers, even hidden ones. My work setup is also slicker as I have nvim running the kickstart stuff TJ Devries works on, it feels like a breeze even though I only know 10 commands, including exiting and splitting panels lol. I hope I post another update after a few months, and it's better than this one. I also realised that I pee like 20 times a day, not sure if it's from working too much, drinking too much water or what. See ya!
Fair warning, no spoilers: Lynch left Twin Peaks for an extended period in Season 2, and it gets really really bad for a bit. Not quite unwatchable but close. Soldier on, though, because The Return is arguably the greatest TV ever filmed.
If you decide to take a break and watch other Lynch stuff, Mulholland Drive was originally conceived as a Twin Peaks spinoff, and Blue Velvet is probably his Peaksiest film.
Anti-recommend The Return, I thought it was pretentious arthouse nonsense.
Fire Walk with Me is the sequel that Twin Peaks deserved.
Maybe. But it did produce this behind the scenes gem. And if Lynch blowing his top on a producer nagging him to make his work more mass market doesn't endear the work to you, it probably is best you move on.
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Lynch has always been abstract though. I'll still watch
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I have seen Mulholland Drive and Blue Velvet, I'll get through season 2 lol.
I love the murder mystery melodrama oddly enough. Not the abstract part, for now at least.
Nice, both great films. If you want an interesting experience that will teach you a lot about Lynch's influences, I recommend watching Eraserhead and then Orson Welles' version of The Trial.
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Looking forward to it. TP, Fire Walk With Me, and then The Return is an incredible ride.
I almost don't want to watch it rn and watch the remaining things after doing all of lynch's other movies.
Lynch was the best director in the US according to many, twin peaks was hailed by many as his best work. It's amazing.
For his works as a director, I think Fire Walk With Me and The Return are an improvement over the original TP. The original TP had too many outsiders meddling.
Might be the best anything cinematic, I don't appreciate his work as much as academics I can still sense he's amazing. Talking about lynch here.
It has a lot of cool melodrama.
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Since our stipend got raised to $52k this year, I actually have significant money to invest every month. Any tips other than just dumping into index funds? I've been doing about a third into index funds, a third into specific stocks and keeping a third liquid in money market. In my IRA it's about 70% index funds and 30% individual stocks.
Have you looked into real estate? Rental properties can offer a better return than the stock market and are a good way to diversify.
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Getting good returns comes from timing the market as well as picking the right stocks/assets. You need to have the patience to wait for some panic like we got on August 5th 2024 and April 7th 2025. Then you must have the balls to pull the trigger and go in hard, when it feels frightening and wrong to do so.
If you want guaranteed mediocrity in return for no thinking, just do dollar cost averaging into the index.
People will parrot "time in the market beats timing the market" and "nearly everyone who picks individual stocks underperform the market", and that may be true, but that's because most people included in the stats don't have a clue what they're doing, and/or can't override their instincts for the unnatural behavior of investing.
Interesting analysis of dollar cost averaging vs buy the dip at https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/amp/
That appears to be a hypothetical strat of buying the market as a whole/index when it dips. I don't think index fund investing should be combined with market timing. That's a waste.
Why? No matter how successful a company has been in the past, any dip can be a long-term re-evaluation or even the start of the way to bankruptcy. Especially if you consider the average person asking for investing advice, thinking they can reliably tell apart an irrational panic that will soon be corrected, or a genuine problem that will have long-term impact seems foolish to me.
On the other hand, index funds can't really go bankcrupt. At most, it just stays lower than expected for an extended period of time before going up again. The risk/reward for buying into the dip seems much better here for the average low-knowledge investor.
A decent plan is to buy solid, growing companies during macro noise/sell-off events, such as the dates I mentioned.
It's very unlikely that the market uncovered terrible upcoming fundamental news about the specific company at the exact same date as the market wide fear and liquidity need.
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Index funds are hard to beat in terms of returns intersecting with zero thinking required. If you think you might enjoy a kinda rude but accurate quant's rationalization for index funds you can watch this.
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