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PaperclipPerfector  17d ago (text post)   1823 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 28, 2026

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 did my first roll of shame last Saturday. I got rid of my personal trainer last autumn for failing to produce any sufficient gains in me and reintroduced the incline bench press this year. When I got to 65kg, I failed the second rep. Which was kinda surprising, as I did three with 1 in reserve the week before.

A dude spotting his friend across the aisle bolted to help me, but I told him I was all right (which was true) and that it was deliberate (which wasn't). Anyhow, on an incline bench all you have to do is brace your core to protect the lowermost ribs, and the bar will roll into your hip crease.

I lift alone at home and I've started leaving the collars off and never pushing close to failure. I'm scared about this.

Just get a rack with safeties. Trying to shimmy the plates off sounds like a terrible idea that will result in the bar whipping uncontrollably.

I already lift in a half rack with safety bars. This is for when I'm benching as a fail safe.

You're worried about your safety bars failing? It's probably more likely that you'll accidentally dump the plates than that.

For incline it should be easy to set up where the safeties don't get in the way. For flat bench you should also be able to set up with a modest arch and find a decent spot to put the safeties, if you have Westside hole spacing. If you don't have tight hole spacing or dislike hard stops, I like safety straps or soft safeties. They feel better if you make a soft accidental touch while moving.

It's also easy to customize a DIY solution if you are too cheap or they do not sell safeties for your rack. Make sure to set them where you will never get a finger or hand caught. I misracked 405# once. Those $20 Harbor Freight recovery straps saved my life, or at least prevented getting seriously maimed.

It's also easy to customize a DIY solution if you are too cheap

That actually looks pretty good. As a certified cheap fucker I might have to rig up something like that. Doesn't help that my rack's manufacturer once had a bit of a fucky wucky with the straps and I place more faith in Hazard Fraught's stitching.

That's why you should practice the roll with low weights first, do it at the end of your workout session. Put 10kg plates on the bar and just let it rest on your chest, then roll it off. Then add some weight and repeat.

I'll look into it.

Try not to wear a sweatshirt with a zipper when you do that. I had a zipper tab-shaped bruise for over a week last time I pulled a roll of shame while I was doing incline bench.

Good advice, thanks. I usually wear a t-shirt, so I should be safe.

I've been starting $PRESTIGIOUS_ACCELERATOR recently. It's really surreal. I did an accelerator before, and while the form is the same, the sheer amount of wealth and power and potential I'm around is next level. I keep whipsawing between "hell yeah I made it" to "I am only here through stupid dumb luck". Deserved or not, this skinny kid from Massachusetts is in the heart of silicone valley.

All my dating/self improvement/social maxing bullshit seems like it started to bear fruit right before I left town. I've had two separate girls propose hookups. Wasn't super into them so I declined. On a few other occasions I got numbers from girls I consider extremely attractive, then fumbled the texting part. I'm extremely heartened by this, I'm fucking up further down the "sales" pipeline. That means the previous steps are working. Not really sure if I'll try to date out of town, but I'm going to keep grinding the gym and trying to otherwise improve my appearance.

What’s an accelerator?

A company that pairs startups with venture capital.

in the heart of silicone valley

I look forward to hearing more about the darkness of the cosmetic surgery industry.

New political compass test just dropped. Some people like taking these and I'd be curious where you guys end up.

I got Classical Liberalism w,hich is a bit surprising given how much Moldbug-posting I tend to do.

Kautskyism. Democratic socialism without revolution.

I hate these things (why are they always made by people who phrase the prompts so poorly?) but here we go.

People shouldn't be treated harshly solely because of some immutable characteristics.

Well which ones are we talking about? Eye color, or compulsion to murder?

The government should be used to incentivize people towards or away from certain actions.

Are we talking about drinking soda or about bank robbery?

Religion and culture ought to influence laws of communities and governments.

What else would do it? Is there an alternative? What is 'culture'?

Sexual deviancy is perfectly fine.

...? What defines 'sexual deviancy'?

Gender-and-sexuality-nonconforming individuals should be accepted for who they are.

Who are they?

Property is odious in its principle and murderous in its effects.

Yes, and still the best arrangement. How's this being counted?

Economic class systems are divisive.

What the hell does that mean? I think my take is "Yes and that's a good thing" but idk what they meant or how it will be counted.

The concept of society and social norms should be abolished entirely.

How would that even be possible without ending all human life? What is being asked here?

Wealth disparity of class groups is due to some individuals working harder.

Oftentimes? Other times not? What?

Okay I got "Jeffersonianism" but had to nullify like half the questions, so there you go.

I hate these things (why are they always made by people who phrase the prompts so poorly?)

Making a survey meant for the general population is the opposite of easy. We're wordcels on an argumentative wordcel forum, we have an unusually high tolerance for walls of text and complicated questions that consider counterfactuals and nuance.

For example, someone here crawled up my ass when I said that I agreed with (a statement asking if) genocide was evil, asking for a definition of evil. Some poor test writer or psychometrician really can't cover every edge case. Your best bet is to put yourself in a normie state of mind when evaluating a question, if not the answer.

Short of write-ins that are evaluated by humans, the only way to do significantly better is to use some kind of ML classifier or LLM to dig into things. Fuck it, I might see about making such a survey and grader myself. God knows that still won't stop some people from complaining about the validity of the questions, fair critiques or not.

"Modern liberalism"

Don't really understand how that one rolled out, that's certainly not how I see myself. One thing which always causes problems for me in this type of political tests is that I want both centralised government and the marketplace to have less influence than they do now in western society. What I want instead is more civil society and local communities and institutions that aren't run (directly) by a big centralised government. To be fair, the third best match which this test gave me was Distributism which is more in the ballpark of the kind of politics I want.

"Third Way Liberalism"

whatever that means!

EDIT: apparently that means I match most closely with: Ezra Klein, Matt Yglesias, and Noah Smith

Fair!

Liberal conservativism.

Social Libertarianism, which feels like a weird way to say the left-most of the rightwing libertarians. My runner ups were Libertarian Distributism, Liberal Conservatism, Georgism, of which Georgism is the only one I've actually ever heard of.

I mostly consider myself a classical liberal.

I am boringly centrist and it is simply because they did not include the fun questions like 'are some races less worthy of existing' or 'would you kill' or 'is capital punishment justified'. Maybe the really heinous stuff is beyond what can be published online, but I'd really like a polcomptest to really just fucking commit.

Capitalism (reactionary liberal/neocameralist as runners up). You're welcome for food and technology, folks.

Slightly below dead center, so I'm apparently a "Modern liberalist".

As with most such tests, it is inherently flawed by failing to distinguish between absolute and relative scale in the questions as well as the questions being much too vague. A Finn like me giving this set of answers means something very different from an American giving the exact same answers, yet the test tries to match both under the same absolute banners.

I'm auth right. Checks out.

Pretty much in the center.

Closest Match: Progressivism

And that kids is the reason you should view those kinds of tests as long jokes with lame punchlines.

I got the same, which makes no sense to me. If I claimed to be anything, it'd be something like Old-school New England conservative Democrat. Which in modern political speak makes me a mutt. A "swing voter" who holds both conservative and progressive views and sees no contradiction in doing so.

Lower right, but still pretty close to the center. Prog/Con almost exactly center. The quiz calls this "Social Libertarianism".

Overall not surprising. I want a smaller government that focuses more on infrastructure and the essentials and less on social engineering and redistribution. I think most conservative traditions are positive and existed for good reason, but some lost their importance and we need to adapt them appropriately to modernity. Etc.

A "Hayekian Minarchist". Somewhere in the middle of the lower right quadrant.

Seems sensible enough. I'm not opposed to the idea of a state for the management of the commons and as a coordination mechanism, but it should be like a child, seen but not heard. The less interference with the affairs of consenting adults, the better. As you can imagine, living in the UK is torturous.

Jeffersonian and a filthy filthy centrist.

Modern Liberal, the lower left corner of the grill square. Almost perfectly balanced on the pro/con axis.

I really dislike questions framed as "X is immoral and should be made illegal", that's two very different questions in one! Maybe that's exactly what makes me a liberal.

Jeffersonian.

Some questions as usual I overthought. "Should the government be a means to an end and ultimately be abolished" can get Strong Agree from Ancaps or from Communists.

Dead center. Guess I'm an 'it depends man'.

I almost always get the exact dead center on these sorts of quizzes, and I did again here. I feel unless you go into the test saying to yourself "I want to get as [BASED/COMMUNIST] as possible!!" it is hard to get anything but centrist. Most of the statements put up for agreement are so absolutist that there is only really one reasonable response.

I think a lot depends on which arrow intensity you click on. I interpret the outermost arrows as "would I go full Unabomber/join mass protests/emigrate over this issue?", the middle ones as "would these affect my vote?" and the innermost ones as "would I defend this position on The Motte?", so I practically never click the outermost ones. Someone who has a different interpretation might click the outermost ones without a second thought.

If one builds a test broad enough to incorperate the full spectrum of political thought, then we would expect to see people tending to cluster around the middle simply due to the central limit theorem. I have seen people on Twitter around the edges for what it's worth.

Ended up with Jeffersonianism

My main beef with tests like this is that it doesn't distinguish well between things that are preferences and those that the test taker feels should be policy. For instance, on the question of traditional gender roles. I think they tend to work better and I think it's broadly good if people follow them, but I also don't think anyone has the moral ground to enforce them and that people who don't want to follow them should be allowed to (legally and socially). What would I answer? I could answer in the middle, but that would not capture my actual feeling (positive) towards the roles, and my opinion (negative) towards enforcement of them. My answer should push me more towards libertarian conservatism, not be neutral.

I am a Centrist. Which is kind of surprising to me because everywhere but here makes me feel like the I'm some weird far right fascist.

Yup, me too. My shorthand explanation is I like the policies of Bill Clinton, for the most part. Today that's most closely matched by Trump, therefore Im a fascist nazi bigot. Oh well.

As promised my review of Peter Attia's Outlive.

For those of you that don’t know me in real life, I’m a biologist by trade. For at least the past five years of my PhD, I’ve been absolutely obsessed with understanding fat metabolism and metabolic dysfunction. Heart, or cardiovascular disease (CVD) is still the #1 global killer, despite decades of research and the existence of a very effective class of drugs that largely treat the condition. CVD is thought to be largely caused by dysfunctions in metabolism, which is also true to some extent for the other three largest killers in the west: diabetes, cancer, and dementia. While traditional medicine has had a ton of success eradicating traditional infectious diseases, it seems largely unable to effectively treat these “four horseman”, despite the billions of dollars that have been poured into research and the development of thousands of pharmaceuticals. A reactive, treatment-focused approach isn’t working: we need something new.

This is where Peter Attia’s Outlive comes in. Unlike other longevity books like David Sinclair’s Lifespan, Outlive is relatively light on pharmaceuticals and lifespan extension. Lifespan extension doesn’t seem very tractable in humans currently: even the massive advances in public health, germ theory of disease, and antibiotics did little to increase the maximum age of death: the increase in life expectancy of what Attia calls medicine 2.0 rather came from massively reducing child mortality and the impact of infectious disease across all age brackets. While there is some promising research in animal models on lifespan extension, and Bryan Johnson is attempting to biohack himself into immortality, neither Attia nor myself think that focusing on this kind of stuff as an individual is very useful. Rather, Attia is focused on lifestyle interventions to prevent and delay the onset of the four horseman (CVD, diabetes, cancer, dementia), effectively increasing the healthy years of one’s life, or healthspan.

Outlive is divided into two sections. In the first, Attia gives an overview of the mechanism of action of the four horseman in order of lethality. This is the only part of the book in which pharmaceuticals are mentioned, mainly in relation to CVD and diabetes, that can be well-managed by statins (CVD)[1] and drugs like metformin (diabetes). I generally liked these sections, although there was frustratingly little information about dementia, likely due to our poor understanding of the disease. The common thread that seems to tie all four of these horseman together, including cancer and dementia, is dysregulated metabolism, which is also the central theme of Attia’s practical recommendations in the second half of the book. This section is divided into roughly into four, with the book highlighting lifestyle changes with regards to exercise, nutrition, sleep, and emotional well-being. Like with the first section, I broadly agree with Outlive’s prescription, although I have some quibbles with some of the details. More on each of these below.

Exercise

I originally discovered Peter through an interview with Iñigo San Millan, who is most famous for being cycling super-star Tadej Pogacar’s coach. Iñigo is a professor at University of Colorado (of course he is), who works on understanding what the metabolism of athletes can tell us about metabolic disease. Millan has shown, perhaps unsurprisingly, that athletes are far more insulin sensitive, and have far more of an ability to burn fat than both untrained and metabolically unhealthy people. They obtain these adaptions through a ton of exercise in what psychologists term Zone 2, which is done at a relatively pedestrian pace. This exercise in Zone 2 forms the basis of Peter’s prescriptions.

In addition to preventing the four horseman, the focus on Outlive in this section is on what Peter dubs the “centenarian decathlon”. These are a group of activities that you would like to be able to still do when you are 100 (or 80 or 90). In addition to the aerobic capacity developed by zone 2 exercise, which is necessary for actives like hiking or even walking, you also need to develop maintain muscular strength and coordination, as well as max aerobic capacity, also known as Vo2 max. Peter recommends roughly 6 hours of exercise a week, composed of a few weight lifting sessions, something like yoga for mobility, 2-3 Zone 2 sessions, and a hard Vo2 max workout. This is much more than the amount of exercise that most of us are doing, and much more than the current medical establishment recommends.

I don’t that this is a bad plan: certainly it’s better than doing nothing. But I worry that what Peter recommends is too intense, especially for someone who hasn’t really done much exercise before. What Outlive defines as Z2, right around the first lactate threshold of 1.5-2 mmol is pretty intense exercise, and will rely heavily on sugar, especially as an untrained athlete. Vo2 max work and the gym are also intense and heavily glycolytic. Instead of training your body to better burn fat, you may be creating massive amounts of sugar cravings. Since this program is also quite intense, I would imagine compliance might be an issue as well, potentially leaving you in a worse place that you started.

I would instead recommend a program like one Gordo Byrn outlines in this post: 4 hours of Z1 before the first lactate threshold, 30 minutes of higher intensity, an hour of gym work, and thirty minutes of mobility/agility a week. For an unfit person, even something like walking may be in that first zone. This plan will generally be much gentler on your nervous system, and will properly train your metabolism so you avoid CVD and diabetes like Peter intends.

I would also like to put in a small plug for barefoot shoes. I’ve been interested in them for years, but I was prompted to take the plunge by the recommendation of my friend. I’ve been wearing barefoot shoes to work and out and about for the past three months, and there has been a huge improvement in my balance and agility. Even my arch has returned. I haven’t done much running in them yet, but that will come!

Nutrition

One of the reasons I have such high respect for Peter is his ability to change his mind. Mid-2010s Peter would have put this section first and used it to advocate for the ketogenic diet. However, there just isn’t evidence for the effectiveness of this diet, nor really of any other diet for longevity: Peter is skeptical of epidemiological studies because of their inability to control for confounding variables. While I think he comes down too harsh on epidemiology, I largely agree. Diet is so individualized that it’s difficult to make prescriptions about what to and not to eat. As a result of this uncertainty, this section ends up being a little sparse on detailed advice. Avoid large caloric surpluses or deficits, avoid behaviors that spike your blood glucose and blood lipids, and make sure to eat enough protein to build muscle mass. All very non-objectionable, although I think Peter’s protein targets are a little aggressive. Protein is readily interconverted into sugar, and if you aren’t using it to build muscle you’re just going to be stressing your kidneys and raising your blood sugar. Plus high protein intake (beyond the needs of muscle synthesis) is associated with shorter lifespan in humans and pretty much every single model organism. I wouldn’t go much over 1g/lb of body weight, which is upper limit for more effective muscle synthesis.

Sleep

This chapter was also very non-objectionable. Get your 7-9 hours. Make sure you create a relaxed environment on both sides of sleep. Don’t track sleep if it stresses you out. I’m coming off a period of being too stressed out by my sleep tracking, so I’m trying to only focus on giving myself 9 hours in bed, and not worrying.

Emotional

I’m glad Attia included this chapter in Outlive, as I think it’s very important to consider why we want to live longer. Without joy, community, and love, increasing health and lifespan starts to increasingly look like Voldemort creating Horcrux’s while destroying every relationship that could have made his life better However, I didn’t find this chapter to be incredibly informative, most likely because Peter is a total newbie in this area. There’s a fuzzy recommendation for some kind of therapy, or at the very least self-directed CBT. The aim of this seems to be to understand environmental triggers for negative (and I suppose positive) emotional reactions and outbursts that ruin relationships and fix them. I don’t think this a bad idea, but I would appreciated more direction, and also more of a focus on the importance of social connection. As one of my friends in Baltimore keeps pointing out, loneliness can be as damaging as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. This is an aspect of longevity that was not addressed at all in this book.

Conclusion

Despite my quibbles, I think Outlive is the most solid and accessible longevity book on the market. Attia grounds his prescriptions in the tangible goals of chronic disease prevention and the centenarian olympics, and the advice he gives is practicable and actionable. While I wish that he would have touched more on the emotional and social aspects of healthy aging, he at least acknowledges the former and likely will feature more guests on his podcast The Drive that deal with this aspect of health.

  1. Statins are difficult to get over the counter, but you can take nattokinase, which is almost as good

I’m personally very close to the position most of my fairly long lived grandparents and my great grandma thought about things, which is that most of this is just weird overthinking of systems that work just fine without needing to fuss over the very fine details of nutrition and exercise. Maybe you’ll add a percent or two to your longevity, but that’s it.

The best advice they gave me was simply to eat homemade and less processed foods, three reasonably sized meals a day, and make half of your plate veggies. As far as exercise, while they did move around a lot, it was mostly going out and doing active things with friends or to simply enjoy life. It wasn’t a thing that was quantified, it was a childhood spent skating and dancing and playing sports like baseball and football or swimming. I don’t think people need to reach perfect Vo2 to benefit from exercise. Just going out and doing active things for fun should be plenty and because they are more fun they’re much easier to stick with. It’s much easier to get off the couch and play in a community soccer or baseball league or go dancing.

I’m going to reply to you from the perspective of someone who managed various General Nutrition Centers for 19 years, saw 30 customers a day, spoke with 20 of them, and had real conversations about health and lifestyle with 10-12 of them.

So roughly 49k conversations about all kinds of various health and lifestyle stuff. From gym bros to elite athletes to grammas to kids.

It doesn’t matter.

Keto diet? People will swear they’re on the keto diet but then break down their diet and … I dunno they’re just eating slightly less carbs?

Mediterranean diet? Maybe they eat fish twice a week.

Oh I eat healthy? Yea then why did you describe for me the last three days of what you ate and it included one veggie and no fruit?

Oh you exercise daily? Oh you eat enough protein? Oh you’re on a low salt low fat low cholesterol low whatever chuckle fuck thing you think? K

People’s interest in nutrition are very peculiar and the way they go about adapting the various good, healthy things they are supposed to be doing is vaguely wrong on every level.

That’s ok - none of us are perfect, usually not really that good, and frankly trying to claw our way off the side of the road covered in shit.

(all metaphors and judgements are solely based on nutrition, health, and exercise … but probably apply to everything)

I hope one day we have perfection when it comes to health understanding, so that everyone can individually strive for whatever they want, and we can all live healthier and happier lives.

I read Outlive and generally enjoyed a large number of media health things throughout the years.

My Big Beautiful Recommendations for Live Long and Prosperly are as follows:

Sleep 7-9 hours. Don’t eat breakfast. Eat 5 veggies & 5 fruits every day. 75% of your bodyweight in protein. Stretch for 2 hours a week. Lift weight for 2 hours a week. (More than walking) Cardio 2 hours a week. Eat fatty fish 5x a week. Maintain a healthy BMI (you are not an outlier).

That’s it.

If I were the President I would put this in every single school. I would tell people who read Outlive to shut the fuck up (just so we’re clear, this includes myself!) Nutrition is for the nerds - the ITFYM dorks - the specialty athlete - gym bros - whatever.

I want those people to take us into immortality, or as close to being old and healthy as can be possible until we lose the weakness of our flesh and turn to the beauty of metal.

I’m a bit burnt out on health, nutrition, and wellness. There’s no such thing. There’s just doing the best you can.

I would say 2% of us fall into my recommendations - honestly I think it’s closer to zero … out of the 49k people I spoke to it was definitely close to 0. Does that make my recommendation stupid? I don’t think so - just means we have to do better.

75% of your bodyweight in protein.

Wew, lad! What is your conversion factor, lbs to grams?

If you’re 200lbs you intake 150g of protein

barefoot shoes

which one did you get? and did you start abruptly or gradually?

Gradually. Started wearing them around the house at first, then to work one day a week, then two, three, etc. Going to start running in them once a week once snow melts.

I have these. Very comfortable, they feel like slippers.

Seconded, I liked they're product so much that I bought a bunch of pairs that are sitting in my closet, against the day they fuck with them and they don't fit me properly anymore.

It's darkly amusing that modern humans are so accustomed to and dependent on shoes for running and playing sports that wearing barefoot shoes is something one has to build up gradually to be able to do. This would apply to me too (perhaps especially me) if I try barefoot shoes one day.

Yea it's absolute insanity. I'm glad I started for so many reasons. Hopefully can completely switch over in the next few years: certainly will save me a lot on running shoes!

CVD is thought to be largely caused by dysfunctions in metabolism, which is also true to some extent for the other three largest killers in the west: diabetes, cancer, and dementia. While traditional medicine has had a ton of success eradicating traditional infectious diseases, it seems largely unable to effectively treat these “four horseman”

Eh? I present semaglutide. It obviously works for diabetes, and I did a journal presentation on recent research demonstrating a 50% reduction in risk for Alzheimer's (and probably vascular dementia) for people who started before diagnosis.

https://alz-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/alz.14313

Semaglutide was associated with significantly reduced risk for first-time AD diagnosis, most strongly compared with insulin (hazard ratio [HR], 0.33 [95% CI: 0.21 to 0.51]) and most weakly compared with other GLP-1RAs (HR, 0.59 [95% CI: 0.37 to 0.95]). Similar results were seen across obesity status, gender, and age groups

The obesity epidemic, which is upstream of a whole host of other issues, is being cut down at the knee.

Wait, what? Semaglutide really has that much of an effect on Alzheimer's? Is everyone gonna be on the stuff when they get old, fat or not?

Unfortunately, studies on the effects of semaglutide after developing Alzheimer's showed null results. But yes, as a preventative agent, it's up there with the best we've got. If you're diabetic or at high risk of developing Alzheimer's, I'd say it's a no brainer. Getting weight under control and improving glucose metabolism probably has a quadrillion other benefits. We're still in the early days.

The only thing preventing it from being a blanket agent, at this point, is the cost. But GLP-1As are only going to get cheaper, and they're already not that expensive.

Internet retatrutide is currently very cheap. I'm concerned that when it's approved for human use the price will skyrocket.

Astral Codex Ten article on the topic

Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases?

Fine, the title is an exaggeration. But only a small one. GLP-1 receptor agonist medications like Ozempic are already FDA-approved to treat diabetes and obesity. But an increasing body of research finds they’re also effective against stroke, heart disease, kidney disease, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, alcoholism, and drug addiction.

Right, and this treats the same thing that lifestyle interventions, without the willpower. I do worry about muscle wasting long-term from GLP inhibitors.

Muscle wasting on semaglutide is comparable to that seen with equivalent weight loss from intermittent fasting or bariatric surgery. It can be entirely mitigated with concomitant resistance training.

In other words, if you're in a pronounced caloric deficit, you're going to lose a bit of muscle with the fat. It's not a big deal, the health benefits robustly outweigh the risks. There's an ongoing study, LEAN, that looks into it at scale, but preliminary studies support this claim.

Total agreement. Seems like an amazing drug to get metabolically healthy. I think I would prefer the lifestyle interventions that Attia recommends once I'm there to stay in that condition though.

Thank you for the write-up.

Longevity / health has been an interest since I read Lustig's Metabolical. FWIW, Lustig does a good job of getting into the details of how the macros (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) interact to fuel you - or to cause metabolic syndrome, "leak gut", and all sorts of insulin issues. The transfats section was particularly scary.

  1. On the Zone 2 exercise claims. I've seen these floating around health twitter for sometime. I cannot at all claim to be an expert, but I think some of the confusion may come down to the fact that the difference between Z2 for multi-year trained folks and those just coming off the couch can be massive. The reality is that most people, even those who go to the gym regularly, are actually very undertrained in a whole-of-athlete sense. Gym Bros can move big weight, but they have the cardio of smokers. Treadmill bunnies can stomp out 7 min miles for ever, but have heart palpitations after doing a few box jumps or kettlebell swings. Casual gym goers train themselves into hyperspecialization which leads to overall system brittleness. I think that's hard for people to deal with because it means treating your fitness as a dynamic system that changes meaningfully every six or so months. The only people who are going to be able to keep up with that are already in the top 20% of executive function / discipline / planning capability - which means they likely are already doing it! It's such a hard problem for that 50% - 80%. It's an impossibility for < 50%.

  2. Agree broadly on nutrition. There's no special diet. You eat whole, minimally processed foods, with roughly balanced fat-protein-carbs. I think anything from 40-30-30 (fat protein carbs) to 20-50-30 (fat protein carbs) is probably fine and mostly rests on an individuals particular sensitivities and situation. Any diet where a macro is less than 15% if total calories seems suspicious to me. The protein cult is real. You cite 1g / lb of bodyweight as a max. I've seen references to 0.8 g / lb as where diminishing returns start. If you're really getting after it in the gym or elsewhere (marathon runner etc.) then going above 0.8 can have benefit.

  3. Sleep is king. Got disciplined with it about 18 months ago. Perhaps as much of an impact on mental and physical health as a good gym routine. After a while, I started to really enjoy the end of day pattern I had constructed for myself to signal sleep to my brain and body.

  4. Emotional. Again, person to person. There are recluses out there who do perfectly fine on their own, but they are an exception. Definitely against the "everyone should go to therapy" line. Pretty good way to develop neuroticism. I think the gold standard is a religious community. You get a deeply committed community aligned to a transcendental or metaphysical "goal." That's self-sustaining in a permanent way that a softball beer league or trivia night group is not.

I read Lustig's book about two years or so ago and his personal assumptions mingled with science became too much for me to the point where I no longer view him as authoritative. I don't have the book with me but I remember he would often write how specialists in other fields often asked him breathlessly about his statements, which to him suggested he must be on the right track (in his demonization of sugar.) He references so-called"leaky gut" regularly in a very pop-science way. And of course he hawks his own fiber snacks or whatever.

Yep, this is all true.

Still, the sections of Metabolical where he actually walks through The Science the science of, say, ATP production helped me "get" nutrition - and especially insulin - in a way I hadn't before.

Your point is well taken, nonetheless. I try to diligence any pop science books I read and everything you said about Lustig popped up on my radar. That's why I kept reading and kept an interest in nutrition.

I definitely rethought some things and eat far less sugar than I used to. I had quit soda drinks (other than the occasional Jack and Coke) years ago but yeah, I think for, say, an obese American living in the heart of Sweetville, a bit more caution with sugar is much needed. I ate an ice cream cone (the kind you buy in a box, for home) recently and I was thinking how laughably, absurdly small it was compared to its equal in the US, where it would be triple the size.

  1. Yea I think the confusion on Z2 comes from the fact that in highly trained athletes, Z2 is heavily fat burning still. As you get fitter you can handle more intensity without it cooking you. Same with strength. What Gordo and I advocate for is a volume first approach where you focus on time exercising first and then worry about intensity. Of course not appealing in current milieu because people don't want to spend the time exercising that is required to be fit. Weight lifting and cardio are both important as you say, which means even more time.

  2. I think you might be a little bit heavy on the protein still, but I broadly agree.

  3. Sleep really is key. The biggest problem I have with it is that my cronotype is much earlier than most of the population, so I get a ton of shit for wanting to go to bed earlier.

  4. Also agree with religion as an alternative to therapy, although I unfortunately don't find the versions of Christianity around me to be very appealing. I want a more environmental-focused version of christianity basically, but the only communities that I see doing that are a bunch of wokies. I also agree therapy isn't the answer. Perhaps it would be if therapists actually wanted to cure people, but it seems like the current profit model leads to people spinning their wheels forever and using "childhood trauma" as an excuse to never change.

  • Re: Protein. Genuinely curious about what a good range is. I've always seen .5 g / lb as the benchmark for "minimum" for a semi-active person.
  • Re: Sleep timing. I hear you. I would be in bed at 9pm everynight if this wasn't the equivalent of social suicide. Artifical light literally changed the species and I think the consequence is that early oriented cronotypes are slowly dying out over generations. Sorry, dude.
  • Re: Religion. I'll plug the Catholic Land Movement. I don't have a ton of experience with it but it seems to be split between TradCaths (my strain) and very woke Liberal Catholics (who .... aren't catholics). So, YMMV, but at least something to consider.

I've always seen .5 g / lb as the benchmark for "minimum" for a semi-active person.

I would be very curious, too. I have a fun anecdote that makes me believe the real minimum is extremely low: I went vegetarian in my mid 20s, and because I did it totally uninformed that absolutely cratered my protein intake for at least 2 years. Rice and potatoes must have been my main sources of protein.

But I started out fit, and absolutely nothing happened. I climbed difficult rock climbs and progressed as before - slowly. I hiked 7000' of elevation in a morning and was sore for one day after. I destroyed people in beach volleyball and socker.

I only noticed because I was totally immobilized by an injury for weeks and lost around 15 lbs of muscle. Rehab took a year, and I obviously only started to build muscle once I fixed my protein problem.

So yeah, if you want to see the numbers go up, eat plenty of protein. If you're happy to just be active and fit, eat whatever macros you want. A protein deficit threatening (even high level) maintenance is almost impossible on a western diet.

Re: macros. My rule of thumb is

  • protein: at least 1g/kg, at most 2g/kg
  • fat: around 1g/kg, you probably will regularly overshoot this value
  • carbs: depends on your protein/fat intake, as much as it takes to reach 30kcal/kg

30kcal/kg is the rule of thumb for someone with a desk job who goes to the gym 2-3 times a week. It will be higher if you stand all day, if you walk all day, if you perform strenuous physical labor all day.

I've heard a minimum of 0.8 g/kg for an active person (roughly ~.4 g/lb). The max dose with a shown benefit for performance is 2.2 g/kg, which is 1g/lb. So making sure you get at least 0.5 g a day seems good, and not more than 1g/lb, especially if you aren't training intensely. This likely means protein in the 80-200 g range for most of us.

It's been a problem with every single girl I've dated. I've decided to bite the bullet one day a week and have no limit on bed time, but it's still difficult. Going to sleep at 10pm most nights, and between 11-1am one night a week, which usually fucks me.

I'll look into it, especially when I move away from Baltimore. Just tired of the options here, which are either extremely woke or extremely trad.

New Year's resolution check-ins

  1. Work: Have my committee meeting at the end of February, and realizing I haven't done that much on my primary project in the last six months so am panicking a bit. This has the positive side effect of making me work more, which I need to do.
  2. Fitness: hit 11 hours this week past week (10- dancing), which felt great, although I need to do a bit better job of eating slightly more food. Down week this coming week (~8-9 hours, including dancing). Need to make sure I start getting in strength training again. If all goes well I'll be able to XC ski this weekend for a few hours, which will be awesome!
  3. Intellectual stuff: feeling very overwhelmed on this angle: I've committed to do my clubs/projects. Going to turn my Italian class into an audit which should help, and finishing up Marx in a few weeks. Look out for an Outlive effort post today or next week!
  4. Finances: On track for this month financially! Did most of my taxes, although am waiting for the 1099 from my investments to finish up. I owe much less than I thought (only about 2.5k), which is big because I can put a bit more into my IRA!
  5. Dating: Locked down my devices pretty hard: I can't get to porn sites, only fans, or even stare at instagram or photos for more than five minutes. It has, perhaps unsurprisingly worked, and I've been porn and masturbation free since last week. The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest. If she reaches out to tell me she wants to go on a date I'll give her a shot, but I'm not interested in putting in effort.
  6. Tarot continues to go well. Ex-roommate quit his job (terrible financial decision, but great for his mental health), so we had a pretty great conversation this week.
  7. Screen time. Due to the adult content and other restrictions, my screen time on my phone plunged to 90 minutes. This week I expect it to be around an hour. It is still quite high on my computer, but that is because of the large amount of computer work I am doing at work!

How goes it @FtttG and @oats_son

  • I fell off on lifting last week, but got in my lifts on Monday this week and plan to do so again Thursday. Yesterday, I ran for a while, running at 5 MPH for half a mile and then walking for 2 minutes at 3 MPH. Sadly, this got my heart rate up to about 185 by the end of each half mile. I am still trying to find the best way to get the aerobic base to jog for a long time. In the end, I might have to try 4.5 MPH. Today I'm just going to go for a brisk walk during my lunch break, though. That can get me lightly breathing out my mouth, and I suspect from previous observations on the treadmill that that's probably at zone 2. It's easy and I don't break much of a sweat, and it's warmer today, so not much reason to refrain. I was excited to find one day that I could do 6 chin-ups instead of just 5, however, on the same day, my overhead press suffered a lot, which is confusing, but that's apparently just how overhead press is. Still trying to figure out squats... going all the way to parallel is very close to ass-to-grass for me, and it seems like my abs get worked out a lot on the way up because they have to work somewhat to shift my weight and allow me to rise.
  • Scale this morning read 184.6 pounds. I think it read 182.5 on Saturday, but that was probably because my stomach was almost completely empty. I seem to be trending around 185, good progress in my books. I took @FtttG's advice and try to weigh myself every morning after peeing, with no clothing. It's been very informative, which is what I needed. I need to go shopping because I'm basically totally out of produce. I want to get a LOT of broccoli this time. Eating it without oil or cheese, just salted and microwaved is just fine for me and it's very filling. Romaine lettuce salads seem bad. The vinaigrette costs a lot calorically and I generally like to throw other stuff in like sunflower seeds and cheese and it will end up being a lot of measuring. I was excited last night when I managed to peel a bunch of hard-boiled eggs in a row without losing any white. I baked an absolutely fantastic turkey the weekend before last thanks to an excellent thermometer I bought, and found that turkey breast is slightly better for protein than chicken breast. Finally, I've thrown off my diet a bit by going out to eat with my mother last weekend and eating to the point of satiation on accident, and also practicing making a margarita too much. The recipe I used seemed to add too much lime. It was a recipe for a cucumber margarita because I tried a flight of margaritas in October and the cucumber one was the best. It was pretty good when I tried it, too, but I'll have to play with the lime ratio. Rather, I'll try a different recipe with a different lime ratio. I think I'd want to get a blender for putting blended fruits in.
  • I've cut down my Anki backlog by about half. The mined word deck is difficult because there are no sentences to help me until after I reveal the answer. Kanji sucks! But I'll get there. My main problem is how spotty I've been in working on it; I skipped last night because I was too tired. On the other hand, I'm reading a lot more stuff designed for natives thanks to @Corvos's collaboration. And I'm also trying to learn the grammar as I go this time rather than taking a comprehensible input approach.
  • No progress on jobs or relationships, but it'll be alright. I now intend to read that book FtttG linked about attachment theory.
  • No progress on Karamazov, but I've played like 5 hours of Dark Souls III, been good so far. I fought some holy knight NPC invader but got ganked by some stupid enemy that I accidentally aggro'd, and I was disturbed enough that I restored my ember and kicked his ass.
  • No tennis yet. I swung by the nearest park and their tennis court has been converted into 3 pickleball courts. Now that's a culture war! You can find evidence for it IN REAL LIFE right there! It's literally Tennis Replacement Theory, and tennis players on the internet are not happy about it. But it's too cold, you know. I would want to use public courts, but I doubt I'd find anyone at any of them in this kind of weather.

I want to get a LOT of broccoli this time. Eating it without oil or cheese, just salted and microwaved is just fine for me and it's very filling.

One method of preparing broccoli I'm very fond of: boil it in salted water for five minutes, take it out, then pour a little vinegar and soy sauce (also sesame oil if you like) over it. Delicious and fairly lo-cal.

I now intend to read that book FtttG linked about attachment theory.

I hope you find it useful! I'd offer to send you my copy, but I already lent it to my uncle who's complained about some of the same issues you have.

It's literally Tennis Replacement Theory, and tennis players on the internet are not happy about it.

bahahaha

  • Posted my third blog post of the year on Monday, listing all the books I read last year and which of those I most enjoyed (expanded from a comment I posted here).
  • Went to the gym three times last week, then again on Monday evening. Planning to go at lunchtime today. Can deadlift 1.75x my bodyweight for 5 reps, squat .9x for 13 reps and bench press .72x for 9 reps.
  • Have not consumed any alcohol, fast food, fizzy drinks or pornography since waking up on January 1st. When it comes to snacking between meals, I have failed absolutely.
  • Have completed 7/11 modules in the SQL course.
  • Have practised guitar for roughly one hour every day since January 1st.

The hot Argentinian women just wouldn't even engage with me over text (like was just giving complete non-answers to my questions, and we were talking in Spanish!) so I lost interest.

No point pursuing it if she's not putting in the effort. It's funny though: some people are very good at expressing themselves, but hopeless when it comes to texting. The fact that she's responding in monosyllables doesn't necessarily mean she's not interested. But yeah, don't waste your time.

Also – is it "Argentinian", or "Argentine"?

So I looked this up: Argentine is the formal and British way of saying it, Argentinian is the American way. Are you European? Could explain the difference.

It's not the short answers that I found to be problematic, it's the lack of engagement. For example, we were discussing her vegetable garden at home, and I asked her what her favorite vegetable from it was. Answer: I don't know. What she wanted to study: I don't know. What she liked to do for fun. Many things. Just like absolutely nothing to hang on to.

Ahhh. Yes, I'm Irish.

For example, we were discussing her vegetable garden at home, and I asked her what her favorite vegetable from it was. Answer: I don't know. What she wanted to study: I don't know. What she liked to do for fun. Many things.

Ugh, I'm feeling vicariously frustrated just reading about it. Some people have like negative conversational skills.

Coffee Haters Club

I reduced my intake to 16-24 grams of beans per day (one full strength cup or two slightly weaker cups). I did this mainly to improve my sleep after getting a bit carried away with using coffee as fuel, but also to keep some of the joy in this hobby instead of building too much tolerance towards it all. One should be a bit careful with raising standards. YOLO, but also being mindful of how regular consumption of good things makes them less special.

I've tried out decaffeinated whole beans that were treated with the Swiss Water Method. I'm not very impressed. There's a 'hole' in this coffee. Something is clearly missing, not just caffine but aroma/taste wise too. I bought a whole kg of the thing. It will have to serve as a vehicle for a cup of decaf with plenty of cream and sugar in the late afternoons.

The Gesha (also spelled Geisha) bean from Honduras which I mentioned to @Muninn I had ordered is very good. Apparently the bean type came into use in the town of Gesha in Ethiopia in 1930 or something? It was rumored to smell of jasmine, and it actually does. It's pretty cool. The drinking experience isn't all that different from any other decent bean though. It's too expensive to make a habit of, at 3x the cost vs most beans. I'll gladly try other Gesha beans if offered, but I can't justify regular purchases.

Other purchases lately:

Sierra Mazateca beans from Mexico. This one is great. It actually smelled vaguely of honey, but also berries at times. Recommended!

A mixed bag of Sumatra (Indonesia) and Ethiopian beans: Surprisingly good. It smells of a lovely spicy herb garden upon grinding. I didn't know anything about the practice of mixing different beans together, I only vaguely remember seeing that in the coffee shop in the game Persona 5. :P

It will have to serve as a vehicle for a cup of decaf with plenty of cream and sugar in the late afternoons.

You seem to be more discerning in your palette, I just have a burr grinder, and I buy from the warehouse stores, but I always like half-caf coffee. Just mix equal parts with another bean.

Hm. That way, you get a sufficiently 'thick' coffee and half the caffeine? Smart.

Your review of the Swiss Water Method is sad. I had heard it's the best method for decaf coffee, and even it falls short. I think it's likely worth something despite that, but nothing really compares to a real cup of coffee.

I'm not fancy. I just drink Maxwell House from Sam's Club when I'm at work (.66 cups of coffee per cup of water; a little stronger than I like it, but everyone around me uses cream and sugar whereas I just drink it black) and I drink whatever other people make when I'm not at work. Somehow Grandma makes the best coffee. It's because the water in her town sucks and tastes weird, which somehow makes her coffee taste more distinctive. Other than that, I've tried other people's fancy bean roasts that they use their fancy burr grinders on. It really does taste good, but I already have the opportunity to spend tons of money elsewhere, and I like any coffee either way, so I'm content to live dragging my tail through the mud. Grandma is the same way.

Grandma also drinks coffee all throughout the day. This appears to not harm her in any way whatsoever, though she has a difficult time before or after surgeries when they tell her to drink water. She drinks very close to bedtime, too. Honestly, desensitizing yourself to caffeine might make sense. It means you can drink coffee all day like Grandma. I understand the impulse, though.

Your review of the Swiss Water Method is sad. I had heard it's the best method for decaf coffee, and even it falls short. I think it's likely worth something despite that, but nothing really compares to a real cup of coffee.

Sample size of one. Someone else with more experience with decaf will have to confirm. It's always possible that I was unlucky with this particular bag or this particular bean. I didn't buy one of the most expensive ones. Though the one I got was far from 'cheap'. Definitely expensive enough to, one would hope, ensure a sufficient level of seriousness in the production. I was surprised at how 'hollow' it seemed, aroma and taste wise.

Honestly, desensitizing yourself to caffeine might make sense. It means you can drink coffee all day like Grandma.

Hah. :P

Thanks for the report! I'm planning on roasting my first batch of Gesha soon, and I'm highly interested in smelling it and tasting it for the first time. That said, when comparing old-school coffee scoring, I've tasted coffees, particularly Ethiopians, that have scored higher than the Gesha that I have, so I expect that I'll feel like you do WRT paying the premium for what is essentially equivalent to an exemplary Ethiopian coffee. Speaking of which, Sweet Maria's has a ridiculous wealth of good-looking Ethiopians right now, I told myself that I was going to roast through my existing green coffee stores before buying more but now the itch is upon me and I don't know if I'll resist.

Also, +1 for Indonesian coffees! Generally speaking, I find that they have spicy and earthy notes that I don't get from African or Central/South American coffees, and to me, they are exemplary of their region!

Sure thing! Have fun roasting! o7

Will do! I'll likely be doing another Coffee Hater's post after I've done a few tastings of my first Gesha roast, and although I told myself that I was going to roast down my stash of green beans before buying more, Sweet Maria's has what looks to be a bumper crop of African coffees and several of the Ethiopians in particular are calling to me...

Well, I did the relationship therapist thing.

She was very competent and nothing I had to say surprised her. Very professional even though she was covered in tattoos. She knows her stuff, at least as far as I can see, and I can see pretty far for an amateur.

I'll post again once I get a result. One way or the other.

Most therapists are middling, but a middling therapist can still be great if most of your processing comes from friends, and a great therapist can be life changing.

I believe I indicated this last time but many of them are good at not being good progressive soldiers in the room even if that's what they are outside of it.

Best of luck!

I think its very important to get a mirror held up against yourself, and that's what I was looking for here.

There are certainly close friends in my life that are progressive that I'm holding detente with. I don't think I'm the only one here doing that.

Glad it went well. Yeah therapy can be quite useful for tricky interpersonal situations, especially if you aren't going to them as like a replacement religion.

He seems to regard the protesting as mostly a harmless social activity that he groups together with going to record stores and restaurants. I get the sense his wife is basically dragging him to this ("I am not as brave as my wife, who acts from a strain of moral clarity that can sometimes be daunting") and he is playing the role of an agreeable husband that regards this like his wife dragging him to a museum or board game night, so he is happy to go there and shout obscenities for a few hours in between other tourist activities. I know it sounds cliche, but there is just such beta energy radiating off the entire post.

This comment excerpt gave me a fun idea: The Chad harem/offspring-maxxxing doctors and lawyers explain to the autist incel programmers and engineers their personal understandings of how friendship and romance work!

Even before I realized that familiarity inevitably breeds contempt and stopped making attempts at pseudo-friendship, I absolutely hated the idea of obtaining an actual friend or a romantic partner only to be constantly forced by that person to do random things in which I had no interest. It seemed like a continuation of how my parents would torture me by making me join after-school clubs and dragging me to museums, concerts, and weddings.

I assumed that any friend or romantic partner would require me to do such things. But now @daguerrean says that only an inferior, weak-willed "beta" man allows his romantic partner to lead him around by the nose to random events. So, is it normal friendship/romance behavior to drag the other party to an event in which he is not interested, or not? Has my entire life been a lie?

I absolutely hated the idea of obtaining an actual friend or a romantic partner only to be constantly forced by that person to do random things in which I had no interest

I do things with my partner that aren't my cup of tea all the time. She gets so damned excited that I participate with her that I can't help but enjoy myself. If it's the right person, it won't feel like you're being forced at all.

I absolutely hated the idea of obtaining an actual friend or a romantic partner only to be constantly forced by that person to do random things in which I had no interest. It seemed like a continuation of how my parents would torture me by making me join after-school clubs and dragging me to museums, concerts, and weddings.

Only boring people are bored. There are simply very, very few things I cannot enjoy when with my wife or a close friend. If I don't like it naturally, I find a way to make myself like it. The idea that every experience in one's day will be perfectly to one's own taste is a modern conceit.

With few exceptions* my wife and I enjoy almost everything we do together. We're together, so that's nice. And I can find my own way to enjoy almost anything. My wife wanted to invite all her friends over to watch The Bachelor, which is distinctly not my kind of thing. So I found the autists out there doing sports-podcast Sabermetrics analysis of the episodes, and now I had my hook. How long did Madysyn's Hug-Jump last? How did her HuJu compare to Bryttunee's? Will this affect her odds of making the final four and Seeing Sand? I make her go hiking with me, she makes it fun for herself by picking out fun hiking outfits and aesthetics.

Though, in all honesty, I sometimes feel guilty about my relationship with Mrs. FiveHour, because intellectually I buy into the idea that modern marriages are asked to be entirely too much. But she genuinely is my best friend, and that's just how it is.

*colloquially referred to in our relationship as "Harbor Freighting" after my wife's reaction to being in a Harbor Freight store and being violently and instantly bored while I vaguely browsed buying solar panels or a house jack or something else I didn't need

The Chad harem/offspring-maxxxing doctors and lawyers explain to the autist incel programmers and engineers their personal understandings of how friendship and romance work!

My uncle – a far more accomplished psychiatrist than I –* was telling me about getting his passport renewed and the very first stamp being from Chad. I told him it was a missed opportunity that he went to Niger next, instead of the Virgin Islands.

Look dawg, your autism is weapons-grade. Distilled in a lab. It's absolutely dual-use technology, you use it for both great good and mild evil. I'm not sure that there's any advice anyone could give you that would completely change the way your neurons are wired. It's not like doctors can't be autistic, just look at @SkookumTree.

I absolutely hated the idea of obtaining an actual friend or a romantic partner only to be constantly forced by that person to do random things in which I had no interest. It seemed like a continuation of how my parents would torture me by making me join after-school clubs and dragging me to museums, concerts, and weddings.

This varies a great deal. I've been in relationships where I've been subjected to stimuli as unpleasant as an ex making me watch stupid Victorian period dramas with her, and getting mad should I express disinterest or glance at my phone. I still shudder when I hear Taylor Swift, but other lovers have at least used earphones.

But the majority of my partners, and anyone I choose to call a friend, have been relatively understanding. In an ideal world, the fact that you're not interested in an activity should be both necessary and sufficient when it comes to getting them to desist from asking you to join them.

The Victorian-drama ex and I failed because she operated on the fusion model—she believed that love meant merged experience, that my dislike of her shows was a dislike of her. This wasn't true, for the record. I only started disliking her when she made my life a living hell in other ways.

Constantly forced? That's too much. I'd call that a deal breaker. But it's not that big of a deal to accompany a lovely lady to a summer market, or let her tell me about a new show she's watching.

Some claim that a partner should mirror your tastes. I think that's far from necessary. Commonality in values and beliefs is far more important than shared interests. If I want to talk about video games and AGI, that's what you mfs are for. Of course, you can get away with a little ho-scaring when you actually love each other, in the same way she's okay with you seeing her without makeup.

I assumed that any friend or romantic partner would require me to do such things. But now @daguerrean says that only an inferior, weak-willed "beta" man allows his romantic partner to lead him around by the nose to random events. So, is it normal friendship/romance behavior to drag the other party to an event in which he is not interested, or not? Has my entire life been a lie?

The man in the comment you linked is being mocked not because he is compromising, but because he is compromising on dignity rather than just preference. I have never been desperate enough for female attention to go to a protest for a cause I do not believe in. That involves a violation of my internal moral compass. Going to a museum just involves sore feet.

Relationships, like actual ships, require routine maintenance. You don't really resent a car for an oil change, and occasionally listening to something that doesn't actually interest you isn't that big a deal when you're getting mileage out of it.

*All em-dashes artisanally crafted by hand.

*All em-dashes artisanally crafted by hand.

You placed this footnote on an en dash, not on an em dash. The difference between the two characters was recently discussed here.

And then you used an em dash later in the same comment. Such a blatant inconsistency gives your detractors a lot of ammo…

Such a blatant inconsistency gives your detractors a lot of ammo…

I'm only human. Self-made, in fact :(

They're both on long presses of "-" — — and I can't tell a difference when it's rendered here.

I recommend typing "& mdash;" and "& ndash;" without the spaces.

I didn’t know this was an option.

I do what @stolen_brawnze describes, even with the same fingering. I don’t smash the thumb though; it’s just more of an mp on the thumb as opposed to the p on the trill.

ETA: Ah, apparently it’s indeed not an option in software such as Word. It’s an HTML thing.

We need more musical dynamics for keyboard strokes, whenever they are mentioned.

Stenographers use chorded keyboards.

Reading the specification (1 2) is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be… üñńâţūŗàļ.

I'm an alt + 0151 man myself. If you have a number pad it's a simple smash of the thumb and a trill between forefinger and middle finger.

Yesterday I dragged my fiancee to the gym. She dragged me to half priced books and Venezuelan food after we showered. This is generally considered to be what humans call a 'date'.

If one of us wished to drag the other person to an event they were not interested in, like a boardgame night, or an Emily Autumn concert, we would simply not do that and live would go on. The whole process is a negotiation. We each engage with the other's interests because we are interested in the other person. Like in any negotiation, not being willing to allow the other parties to walk all over you does a great deal to prevent the other parties from walking all over you.

As a male who likes the occasional boardgame, I would agree that regularly getting dragged to board game nights is big beta male energy if you don't. My fiancee likes plenty of nerdy stuff, but she doesn't like those, so she generally hangs out with someone else and watches anime instead whenever I attend one.

Venezuelan food

Did you find this terribly objectionable?

No, that's why we got it. It isn't my favorite, not a huge smother everything with cheese guy, and that place is a little expensive for the serving size, but it's good grub.

Okay, I feel obligated to defend myself. I don't really find anything objectionable in doing things your wife enjoys for the sake of the relationship. It was just that post in particular that gave me a vibe that this man has no agency or convictions while his wife is a shrieking harpy calling the shots in the relationship. The other thing is, he is talking about basically dedicating hours every day of his vacation to standing outside protesting in Minneapolis in January, there is a point where it crosses over from being kind and accommodating to your spouse to being a doormat. You should do things your spouse wants to, but IMO you should also feel comfortable saying "Go by yourself, I don't want to do that." Now granted, my wife doesn't really go out, so the extent of this for me is watching reality shows I don't care for. I usually just go to daguerreotype-related things myself without dragging my wife along. I don't understand why some couple feel the need to do everything together.

I also think protests are a bit different. I think protests are supposed to imply some level of personal conviction that going to a museum doesn't. In that sense a protest is maybe more similar to attending religious services. And going to daily protests in the winter in Minneapolis is like the equivalent of attending years of church services you personally think are BS because your wife likes them.

You know, in one of your linked comments you had a list of 700 questions which I enjoyed, reminds me I've been meaning to make a survey for Motte users which I should post.

I've been meaning to make a survey for Motte users which I should post.

Do it! I love doing surveys.

"I am not as brave as my wife."

This was a red flag to me. I think this entire fundamental question comes down to the fact that your wife has to respect you. If your wife respects you, she will accept your saying no to things without pique; indeed she will take into account whether you'd be interested in going to something before she even asks you to. I'm not saying you need to "dominate" your relationship or anything like that - as the other commenters note, you should always be looking for opportunities to make your wife happy, even if it inconveniences you greatly; that's part of what you're signing up for.

If seeing your wife happy is a priority for you, you'll gladly do all kinds of silly stuff that's not for you; and you won't think about the cost to you. Many are the hours I've spent loitering in quilt shops for this reason, lol. But I also know that if I tell her no, I'm not going to thing X or Y, it'll just be accepted. I feel like if your partner does not respect you, then she'll have an expectation you'll go along with what she says no matter what, and if you don't she'll feel justified in being mad about it.

"I am not as brave as my wife."

I have to believe this was self-deprecating.

What I imagine he meant, and maybe I'm projecting, is that his wife does not believe that harm will come to her the way it does to men. And that's generally correct; men will swarm her if she gets pushed around at a protest. Pretti died after swooping to the aid of a woman. The Good lookers-on were horrified to learn those were real bullets. We simply expect easy mode to be turned on for women.

Relationships are all about compromise, and give and take. You demonstrate your affection for your partner by doing things that she wants to do and you don't: after all, if they were things you enjoyed doing, you'd do them anyway. It's the fact that you're willing to sacrifice your time and resources to do something for her that demonstrates how important she is to you. The important thing is that it cuts both ways: if you're doing things for her that you don't enjoy, there's a reasonable expectation that she return the favour. But try not to think about this too much, or you run the risk of making your relationship seem cheap and transactional, a ledger that requires constant balancing. If you want her to watch a dumb action movie with you, when she asks you to come for dinner with her parents, just smile and say "of course, dear". Or buy her flowers or something. It's not rocket science. If it's weak-willed or "beta" to do things for your partner that you don't really want to do, well, that just sounds kind of exploitative to me. Good luck finding a girlfriend who's completely happy for you to walk all over her and never do anything for her in return.

I don't think this ordinary fact about romantic relationships should discourage you from getting into one. If you were to ask me to list the things about my girlfriend that most get on my nerves, the fact that she occasionally drags me along to go window-shopping with her would not crack the top ten, the top twenty, probably not even the top fifty.

If I do have a line in the sand, it's preference falsification. If my girlfriend wants me to come to some boring museum exhibition with her, I'll go along happily. If she wants me to attend a protest for some political cause I emphatically don't support (say, a "Free Palestine" rally), that's a hard no. Even the idea of a single man going to a protest he doesn't believe in just to meet girls makes me feel gross. And yes, it does strike me as a bit lame to performatively attend a protest you wouldn't attend otherwise just because your wife wants you to.

Relationships are all about compromise, and give and take.

This is one of those generic pieces of casual advice that literally leads people into hell.

I'm not writing this to attack you, @FtttG, but to attack that idea.

Relationships are not about compromise unless there is a greater goal to compromise for. Otherwise, this is a circular argument that is also negatively compounding. Think about this rephrase;

"Relationships are all about compromise. When I want to do something that my wife doesn't want to do, she compromises her own happiness (just a little!) to make me happy. Likewise, when she wants to do something that I don't, I do it, and compromise my own happiness (just a little!), to make her happy. The relationship net happiness is totally the same, right? Not at all slowly degraded."

The intent, genuine as it is, is to maintain system stability in the relationship. But if the "goal" is the current state of affairs, then every possible choice becomes overweight in risk because every possible choice represents a potential change to the system. Soon enough you get into defection problems. Think of this scene; Guy wants to go our for guys night, has already informed his girlfriend / wife of his intention days before, she has agreed, but, then, at the moment he is pocketing his keys to leave, she hits him with the puppy dog eyes and asks if, maybe, just this one time he can stay home and watch Netflix with her. Why? Because there is no direct relationship upside to him hanging out with the guys. Sure, sure, he needs time with his friends and all, but there's the much higher risk that some bar slut will make a move (or is that just a perceived risk?). The point stands.

My counter is that relationships are about two people working towards a defined mission. Usually, thats the having and rearing of children. When it isn't, there has to be something beyond mutual emotional support (which is stasis). Perhaps that something is being the DINK couple that travels a bunch. "Babe, we're going to hit 50 countries this year if we save and budget!" maybe it's the fitness couple - they run marathons together. It doesn't matter what the particular goal is just that The Goal is there and third party to mutual emotional support. Then, you can "compromise" because both parties can see it as a positive sum sacrifice for that external goal. The guy stays home from boys night because the drinking will impair his training. The girl doesn't nest up the couch and binge watch netflix because that means missing a training session.

I think I have to disagree here. I have no idea if I'm qualified to give any advice here, all I have is N=1 data point of 20+ year long marriage. But I don't think it requires KPI goals. I mean it's cool if you run marathons together, but it's not a requirement. People being comfortable together and genuinely interested in each other's happiness is a requirement. That's where the compromise comes from. If I want to do something, and I suspect my wife may be not ok with it, I ask, and she can say no. Or she can say yes. Or if she says no, and I really feel like I need it, we can talk about it. The key here we want to find that point where we're both happy - or at least, the least amount of unhappy - about the outcome. It's not a mathematical formula and it's not a ledger, if you start keeping balance on it, you're going to get in trouble. But it's totally about sometimes just doing something you otherwise wouldn't do because your partner wants you to. If you're going to be good long-term partners, you will be able to find a way to figure out how to negotiate those things, everybody does it in a different way. If you can not find a way to do it, then probably the partnership is not going to work out.

or at least, the least amount of unhappy - about the outcome.

This sentence scares the shit out of me.

If you can not find a way to do it, then probably the partnership is not going to work out.

But then what happens? It's a very nice and good and smart modernist idea to think that when a married couple realizes they aren't good for one another that an amicable and professional divorce takes place.

In reality, however, divorces are some of the most (figuratively) violent experiences people have. Many, many divorced people never truly recover. Most, I'd wager, have, at least, a year or two of personal and financial setback. And, of course, outcomes for children of divorce and uniformly inferior to their stable household peers.

My whole point is that I want discourse around relationships to actually be helpful to them instead of milquetoast generalities that do nothing but sound and or feel good. Dating is one thing and breakups are fine. But when the marriage contract is signed, it's such a massive commitment that you need all the tools and good information you can get.

This sentence scares the shit out of me.

Why? You can't expect be perfectly happy all the time when dealing with other people - or anything, really. If the dog vomited on the carpet, somebody has to clean up. Nobody likes to clean up dog's vomit from the carpet. Somebody will be unhappy about it. There's no option to avoid it - just to minimize the unhappiness.

But then what happens? It's a very nice and good and smart modernist idea to think that when a married couple realizes they aren't good for one another that an amicable and professional divorce takes place.

Hopefully you can figure it out before marrying each other. If that didn't happen, it sucks. Hopefully, you can recognize what happened and cut the losses. If you can't, it really sucks.

I want discourse around relationships to actually be helpful to them instead of milquetoast generalities

Don't underestimate milquetoast generalities. They are generalities because they are often true. And a real lot of people dismiss it too readily before actually examining them properly. They feel like "oh surely I do this, everybody does this" - but everybody doesn't do this, and to do this requires untrivial amount of work and attention. Including how to negotiate things with your partner that it won't cause you both being worn down to dust and ashes.

IANAC but I believe that while daguerrean is saying that that specific instance of being drug along to a protest (and certainly the way the guy describes it) is beta-ish, the standard going along shopping/to the museum/etc. (presumably harmless social activities) with your wife/girlfriend are not necessarily.

Certainly a big part of being married is being a good sport and going along with your wife/husband to events that you might not otherwise. In ideal circumstances you'd both only ever do stuff you both enjoy but that's just not realistic unless you've achieved mythical 100% compatibility. I've certainly taken my wife to stuff that she's been less than enthusiastic about, but at least we come away with a shared experience and maybe something to laugh about later. For my part, I tolerate the occasional shopping trip.

So no, your entire life has not been a lie, and yes romantic partners will want you to do stuff.

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