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PaperclipPerfector  26d ago (text post)   1403 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for June 17, 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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Women and men do not follow the same rules of conduct for dating, your mistake is assuming that the rules are the same or should be the same. This is one aspect of dating most women are willfully ignorant of, and why dating advice from women to men is often misguided.

You don't need to accept the unfairness, but you will want to accept that this is the way things are unless you are prepared for celibacy.

Are there any actually good life coaching services? Less "go get it tiger" and more "here's a supplement schedule, a personal trainer, and an apprenticeship in a good field for you in exchange for 40% of your earnings for the next 10 years."

I'm currently unemployed. A new software development job looks out of reach without college, and college looks out of reach given my current work ethic. Changing my work ethic would be ideal but it seems like it will take something drastic--stimulants are insufficient. Really all I have going for me is that I'm reasonably intelligent and have 5 years of experience doing software development in crypto (less transferable to normal software development than you'd expect). Not even sure what steps to take next, as I seem to be incapable of maintaining healthy habits for more than a few days at a time.

If I can get my act together I think I can degree-hack and then get an entry-level software dev job. But I've been unemployed for a couple months now and even with all my efforts focused on building a doable daily schedule, one where I code as much as a full-time job will require (e.g. 2-4 hours) it is so far still out of reach.

Doing anything when you don't get paid for it and don't have any external push (i.e. grades and a degree) is always difficult. There has been subjects I wanted to self-study but kept putting out for years, and I could speed-run them in a week when the prospect of a relevant job interview appeared.

Are you really sure about that software development in crypto not transferring part? Convincing recruiters might take some "creativity" but imo often any type of software development skill translates quite easily to other types apart from the exceptionally high level jobs. I assume you are looking for some SAAS and not Jane Street. If you are getting filtered out by keyword checks and "3 years Django experience" nonsense, I recommend simply adding whatever is required to your CV, learning the basics with LLM assisted learning projects as you get interviews, and filling the blanks as you go. You just need to be smart enough to actually learn quickly for interviews and then later the job itself.

Thanks, that's pretty good advice, but I did lose my last job despite getting paid for it. Need to figure out the underlying productivity issues.

Yes and no.

The traditional answer is therapy - therapists should not be providing you with advice but can help you explore your motivations and challenges and keep on top of deficiencies. If you know what to do, why can't you do it type things.*

For more directly what you are asking for, yes absolutely this exists but it is out of your price range. Anyone organized and persuasive enough to actually do this well is facing a steep opportunity cost, and working on contingency makes little sense because very few people can be handed success and make something of it.

If you come from a good background the traditional approach was to leverage your parent's network.

I do imagine with the amount of scams, gig economy nonsense and outright LLMs around these days you can probably find something somewhere but I would use caution.

Although speaking of LLMs - this might actually be a legitimately helpful use case.

*And this is a question that really needs to be answered.

Therapists don't come close to trying to answer that question in my experience. If I ever bring up that I want to accomplish a normal amount in a day, the conversation immediately becomes either "where did those expectations come from" or "you must be depressed, depression is the only reason anyone ever fails to execute."

Do you actually have an agency in mind? I'd be happy to dump my life savings into this (a few hundred thousand) if I thought it likely to work.

Therapy stuff

Those questions are part of the chain of reasoning required to figure out what is wrong and address it. Depression is often a cause. Although, therapy quality is annoyingly variable.

Do you actually have an agency in mind? I'd be happy to dump my life savings into this (a few hundred thousand) if I thought it likely to work.

I mean it sounds like you know what to do right? So just do it. ...but it isn't that simple. Paying someone to tell you what to do has the same issue.

"Where did those expectations come from" is not part of the chain of reasoning required to figure out how to meet those expectations. And I'm not depressed. I have never talked to a therapist who tried any other tactic, who seemed remotely interested in actually finding a root cause or solving a problem. Have you?

I mean it sounds like you know what to do right? So just do it. ...but it isn't that simple.

What I need is self-sustaining habits, a system capable of motivating me to both get my work done and maintain the system itself.

Object level: "Just do it". I can do this sometimes, but normally don't.

Enabler level 1: Say, Adderall. If I do this then I will always "just do it", until my sleep debt grows out of control, at which point I seem to lose motivation and spend a day or two playing stimulant-enhanced videogames before realizing this isn't working.

Level 2: The habits and systems that make my level 1 enabler work. Adderall usually fails due to sleep debt, so this would be no blue light after 6 pm, alarm set for 5 am, exercise every morning, daily check-ins where if I feel I'm falling behind on sleep I don't take the adderall at all. If level 1 is instead some kind of reward system, e.g. "work for two hours to earn four hours of creative writing time or a movie night" then level 2 would be making the reward happen.

I'm confident there exists some combination of habits, coping mechanisms, reward systems, psychological tricks, attitude adjustments, if necessary medication, and if necessary external feedback/results, which will render me a very productive person. But I've tried 170 times now (since I started counting), each time a serious try analyzing what went wrong and what can be improved with the last try, what broader tactics work and don't work, etc. and now feel like a solution is simply not attainable without some kind of professional help. And all the professionals are useless, they'll address step-one things like "have you tried improving your diet, sleep, and exercise? Have you tried setting a timer for 5 minutes and working when you feel demotivated?" and then if you have done step 1 they are stumped.

The next step is probably to do a deep (and agressive) dive into chemical pathways etc. until I find a cocktail that works; this just feels wrong and more likely to backfire than other approaches.

It's my daughter's 23rd birthday this month. The first without her father. And I am so incredibly sad.

She got a new job she will be starting soon. He was so proud of her. They had a mutual admiration society. And she can't tell him about it. Or argue with him about minutiae until they both can't stand to be in the same room with each other.

To be a 6 year old for a moment - it's so unfair.

I have lost people who are important to me. Sometimes, I write to them. When I finish my letter, I will burn it or send it down a stream. I don't know if there's something after all of this, but if there is, I hope they see it. If there isn't, it's still important to me that I remember them and care.

I would like to stop being fat.

  • 350LBs
  • not tall

I have tried before, even got some ozempic, did not take it consistently. The inconsistency is from same reason of the obesity - intolerance of discomfort, in the case of ozempic, wanting to shit, not being able to shit etc

My plan is to consistently take the ozempic, but I have questions in support of my goal:

  • Has the science of ozempic and friends continued to advance? What is the best ozempic like to take?
  • How should find a personal trainer - just the gym?
  • How can I stop playing this youtube video - https://youtube.com/watch?v=6JZKgGsVimQ - (Roy Chubby Brown's You fat bastard)

What have you done as far as your diet? I have tended to think that diet is by far the most important thing in body fat level. It's hard to say much, though, without some idea of what your diet is like now and what, if anything, you've tried. But I don't think any level of physical activity can overcome a really bad diet.

I'm skeptical of weight loss drugs too. I never liked the idea of taking multiple drugs to counter-act each other. Similarly, this might be more of a personal ideology, but I never liked the idea of eating a terrible diet and trying to counter-act the body-fat effects of that with drugs. Why not fix the diet first? It may be another thing, though, if you've tried absolutely everything on the diet front and can't make any progress.

Doctors have an old joke that goes something like "if your patient manages to loose weight, check for cancer".

People who don't gain weight have a feedback mechanism where if they eat a big meal in the evening they will not be hungry the next day and eat lightly. In fat people, for whatever reason, that's not working. They'll eat a big dinner and be hungry at breakfast. While dieting their body will respond by becoming lethargic to save energy and store whatever they eat.

Yes you can loose weight by aggressively counting every calorie for the rest of your life, but the effort is huge and the quality of life is bad.

The new weight loss drugs just dramatically improve people's lives. They get to experience the sensation of being not hungry for the first time in their lives.

The good news for thread OP is, basically none of that is true at all. You really should engage with some of the things we've learned about diet and nutrition in the last 30 years before you opine so confidently.

The key trick with fixing your diet and actually losing weight is that you have to take the morality out of it. It's a science experiment, not a religious law. If you want to lose weight, you need to find a diet that works for you. Not working includes not being able to stick to it, feeling hungry, making too much effort, and not having enough energy.

Calories in = calories out is not true; it's a vast oversimplification of how hunger and nutrition work. You don't need to count calories and stick to a limit to lose weight. Most of the failure of many peoples' dieting is a religious/ideological devotion to these terrible ideas about dieting from the 1990s - that you need to treat it as a moral failure that you are not able to stick to an ineffective diet. That is only a road to feeling even worse about yourself and still being fat.

Still being hungry after eating is not some magic thing that happens for "whatever reason", it's a specifically engineered outcome. Many foods are deliberately engineered to not make you feel full so that you keep eating. Obviously you're going to not feel full if you gorge yourself on foods designed to make you not feel full! If you're doing that, in my opinion, you need to fix that before you go on fancy drugs. Exactly as if, if you're doing heroin, and it's causing bad things to happen to your body, you should stop doing heroin, not look for even more drugs to counteract the effects.

This is the complete opposite of my experience. I've tried multiple kinds of diets over the years. All the ones where I didn't gain weight left me hungry and lethargic. The only one where I lost any significant amount of weight was "eat whatever you want, up to a specific calorie limit". The same was true for my aunt. She tried a bunch of different diets, and the only one that worked was the one where she breaks her food into categories and has a limit for each.

So what is your weight-loss solution without ozempic derivatives and do you have any examples where it succeeded at a reproducible scale?

From what I've learned, I don't think there is a universal dietary weight-loss solution. I think there's too much individual variation in how peoples' digestive systems work. Too many people have reported success with a wide variety of diet types, often ones that contradict each other. That's why I think any individual seeking to lose weight should try several and see how their body responds, like a month or two each. Try weight loss drugs only after you've tried several diet types and failed to make much progress. I think it's probably best to avoid the worst types of food even if you've decided to turn to weight loss drugs. Consuming tons of junk food and sugary drinks every day just can't be good for you.

For myself, I went on Keto, and it worked amazingly well for me. I started in about 2018 and was able to lose weight and have kept it off. I actually got a little bit too skinny for a while, and backed off to a more sustainable level. At no point did I ever actually cut calories, feel hungry, or lack energy. I feel more and more consistent energy on it, and several other minor medical problems seem to have cleared up too. Granted, I was never at the 350lb level, but I decided I needed to fix my diet when I had gained 10-20 pounds, not wait until I had gained 200lbs. I have met several people who have been able to lose hundreds of pounds with it though.

I will say again, and more clearly, I do not assert that this particular diet, or any other particular diet, will definitely work for everyone. But I did ask thread OP what, if anything, they had tried so far as far as their diet, not trying to sell them on any particular diet, since they didn't mention a thing about it. I do think it's best to give several different diet types a best-effort try before turning to weight loss medications.

Why do you think it’s best to try different diets before medication? There can be important opportunity costs and health effects from spending a couple years longer than necessary with obesity. Diets like keto where one essentially eliminates certain basic nutrients might also have other negative health effects down the line especially if you stick with it for years.

Given that not a single diet system ever seemed to actually work for the general population before ozempic came along, I can’t help but to see this as a moral preference rather than a medical one. I agree there is a certain beauty to the idea of physical fitness coming from moral fitness but I don’t think that’s worth %60 obesity rates. We can surely find other things to he virtuous about

Perhaps it is a bit ideological. I would note in turn that widespread obesity is a relatively new phenomenon. I am not the person to know for sure exactly what change caused it, but clearly something changed in the last ~100 years to cause such widespread obesity. Maybe it's better to fix that, whatever it is, than for everyone to go on medication for life. Keto, or any other diet, may not be perfect, but I'm skeptical that there's anything worse about eating in a way more like some of our ancestors did than going on a medication that was approved for human use not quite 10 years ago. Where is the concern for what the long-term health effects of that might be?

I would ask in turn, do you think there is any possibility somebody's diet could be so obviously bad that they really should stop eating that, whether or not they go on medication as well? Like multiple 2-liters of sugary soda a day, multiple bags of chips, tubs of ice cream, etc? Do you agree with DradisPing's implication that it is completely impossible for anybody to lose weight and keep it off with dietary changes?

Maybe it's better to fix that

Fix what? Actually knowing what to fix is typically 95% of any solution. We aren't fixing "that" because we don't really know what "that" is other than some vague understanding that food being very cheap and widely available to everyone and heavy physical labour all but disappearing is a toxic combination. I would be interested in hearing your solution to fix food abundance and security. Since you won't fix the "culture" (Scott had a good article for this right?), fixing the human body to crave the right type of food at right amounts is your next best solution. And that is exactly what the ozempic derivatives really seem to be achieving.

I highly suggest zone 2 walking for your case. A 45-60 minute walk will do you more good than a gym session at this weight and given your aversion to discomfort, you're probably more likely to stick to a 1 hour walk (free, literally just step outside and move your feet) than a gym session (costs money, probably have to drive there, takes way longer than 1 hr, have to interact with people). Could probably leave the gym out until you lose 100lbs or so, just walk at fast enough pace where you're right on the edge of not being able to hold a conversation.

Could probably leave the gym out until you lose 100lbs or so

Finding a nearby gym (~20-25mins) and walking there to do some moderate-intensity cardio worked for me (though I was going as much for sleep and general health as anything, I lost via fasting) when I was about 100lbs lighter. So maybe something to tack on when you get to that point.

How should find a personal trainer - just the gym?

Basically every gym employee is also a personal trainer. The gym pays them crap but lets them work as a personal trainer and that pays much better. Usually you'll get a free personal training session

Has the science of ozempic and friends continued to advance? What is the best ozempic like to take?

Tirzepatide is the best at suppressing food noise. Retatrutide is weaker at suppressing appetite at low doses but it also has a chemical to signal your body to spend more energy. So Retatrutide tends to win overall and it'll pair better with going to the gym.

Has the science of ozempic and friends continued to advance? What is the best ozempic like to take?

According to Cremieux Recueil, Retatrutide is better than Tirzepatide is better than Ozempic.

Do we have reputable shady peptides for it yet?

Yeah, all of the shady peptide sites offer Retatrutide.

Okay, need some advice from the smart people here. I'm male 23 yrs old, history of anorexia long-term through childhood, recovered now, osteoporosis as well but recovering quickly from this. I want to try and get a bigger skeleton at my age. I don't just mean taller. I want to get thicker tendons, thicker wrists, ankles, etc. I know strength training + calorie surplus will do this gradually. I am not looking for gradual change, I want radical.

How would you go about increasing any of the following, radically: Hand size, wrist thickness, ankle thickness, height, general bone thickness (vertebrae, femur, etc.) For the purposes of athletic potential (maybe a sports med doctor?), as well as same-gender dysphoria (maybe a psychiatrist?).

If aliens came tomorrow and demanded we make ME taller and bigger skeletally or else they destroy the world, how would we do it?

Is there any doctor out there who might be willing to pursue an actual HGH treatment with me? The reason I want to get bigger is so I can do more athletic activities. I think my bone sizes are small enough that they hold me back, and secondly I have some insecurity about my bone sizes.

My IGF1 levels are normal for age (23) but not where they'd need to be to experience pubertal increase in bone thickness. My hands are too small to play some piano pieces correctly, and I hear HGH makes them bigger. That alone would be nice, my hands are <1% percentile for gender.

Realistically, could I avoid getting diabetes from heavy IGF1 treatment enough to cause acromegaly? Because diabetes is the only side effect I'm remotely worried about.

(I think there may still be a chance of something getting bigger in my body skeletally from continued weight gain, high calcium intake, and fringe supplements like royal jelly, high dose vit D, etc. But I want to make the most of any remaining skeletal immaturity.)

Is there any fringe supplement out there that could work? I hear royal jelly, colostrum, etc. have potential. It appears fresh and unfrozen is ideal, frozen is second-best. I am thinking of reaching out to local farms and paying whatever they want for raw, fresh liquid colostrum. Also thinking of scouring the internet for a royal jelly supplier in the USA (99% of royal jelly on the market is from Asia if you dig into it enough. Some brands are more reputable, but they're all frozen and shipped from Asia. I want to try and find a US-based farm and pay them for their royal jelly).

Is there any exotic food or substance that can boost IGF1? I heard eating raw, fresh beef liver contains actual trace IGF1 that is bioavailable. Some dude on reddit says his hands got bigger from eating lots of raw liver. But I don't want to get mad cow disease. Royal jelly has some testimonials. HT042 from korea, a herbal medicine, mainly astragalus extract, has some evidence in children.

Are there any rumored herbal treatments from any tradition that could radically boost skeletal growth? HT042 from korea is one that has some evidence. But I'm thinking, look into african traditions, chinese, korean, ayurvedic, etc. Anything out there that hasn't been properly studied but is plausible or anecdotal for growth?

WHAT IF: I eat 3g / lb of protein daily? Some absolutely absurd daily protein intake. What would happen? Any chance this boosts IGF1 like crazy? I know SAUNA might help too, there's some protocol out there to boost GH. I know exercise and all that etc. Any secret meditative techniques to trigger pituitary activity and consciously induce GH secretion? Perhaps meditation on the feeling of hunger to boost ghrelin?

Here's another way to think of it: Ahnold had small wrists. If you lift seriously and consistently, and keep a good diet, a slim bone structure makes you look bigger and more sculpted by comparison to the points on the body that don't grow. Aesthetics is about contrast. In many ways harder than hoping for a magic pill, but there's no replacement for iron and chicken.

That is a good consolation for the aesthetic side of my concerns. Not going to stop looking for my magic pill but if I don't find it, this is a good way to think about it. I do still wonder about performance though, but with enough training and proper training you can probably still perform at a high level. I guess I just want to get there faster and resolve any underlying obstacles in bone structure.

The other thing to note is that fixing one's posture and particularly upper-body muscle tightness (traps, chest will make your shoulders noticeably wider. Also, look into Ibutamoren/MK-677. It won't get you the huge results you want but it improves GH secretion in a natural pattern. With regard to athletic performance, in life you have to work with where you are - a lot of amateur athletes learn to live with the limitations imposed by their past injuries, they just came from a different origin than yours.

Will do, thank you!

I'm going to approach your question with a hypothetical. Let's say you can increase your wrist size moderately, with minimal affect on the rest of your body (remember there is nothing you can eat regularly/consume/inject that has zero downstream effects beyond the one thing you want it to do). Then what?

In reading your post--and I may be wrong here--it seems you're Steve Rogers looking to be Captain America, and fast. Why the frantic urgency?

There's a reason you see warnings that you should only proceed with xyz under supervision of a doctor. The body is a set of interrelated systems. If you have, say, kidney issues, increasing protein is not a great idea. And you may need reminding that acromegaly is a pathology, not just an interesting condition.

True, true. Yeah cap is actually my fav hero haha. In part from our histories being kinda similar. I guess I would continue doing what I'm doing, just with easier results I guess? It's my opinion my bone sizes make training harder for me. I think with small enough bones acromegaly would be less pathological, since there's more room for things to overgrow on my body than in most. But good point, I guess the frantic urgency is IF there is some kind of epigenetic signaling that does indeed stop bone width growth after a certain age, (but after growth plates are closed), and whether or not I may still be before that signaling, meaning in a few years maybe HGH really won't do anything for my bone width growth whereas right now, it just might, so I have to act now. But that urgency comes from uncertainty, without the uncertainty I wouldn't have a sense of urgency really, because then the best you can do really is just training + diet + maybe some conventional supplements like creatine etc.

The radical stuff may work, but may have unexpected side effects that make your health much worse. Just go with the traditional slow ramp up of high intensity exercise combined with adequate protein intake and rest. Whey protein is the tried and true nutrition source if you can tolerate lactose. Supplement with omega 3 fish oil pills and that's all most people need. Fresh eggs and meat when you have the time to cook them.

If there were radical, reliable shortcuts everyone would already be doing it. All this other stuff is a waste of your time.

Yeah, I mean given my history it makes sense that I struggle with managing the lifestyle factors properly. I am eating right but I could do better with everything else, and mindset/stress level. I am going to add whey. I disagree that everyone would already be doing it. Most people don't think outside the box. I know because, despite really wanting to get better at this, I'm not even taking my own advice! "it's too hard!" / procrastination / laziness. Humans are lazy. I know from firsthand experience. I could be meditating everyday, I could be trying to push protein even higher, I could be being in nature more, taking royal jelly consistently, etc. Whether or not this stuff works, I'm not even doing it consistently. It's a lot to keep track of for most people. And, most people don't have a history of being starved and possibly retarding their skeletal maturation as a result. I'm not saying I have the skeletal age of a teenager, but at 23/24 I might have the skeletal age of, say, a 20 year old. Which might make a difference. Most people who want to get taller just take HGH anyway, or they don't take anything at all and accept it. And most people don't care about making their bones radically thicker. Hence if they can't get taller, they give up. I'm not going to give up if I can't get taller.

I was into max interval exercise for a number of years when I did roofing work with my uncle. Greatest shape of my life I was ever in, despite having a natural athletic/high energy build; and then after that I continued doing calisthenics before other pursuits drew my attention away; but I’m looking to get back into it. Exercise becomes increasingly important as you get older.

I'm pretty sure it's over for your wrist size at 23. Maybe there's some Chinese research chemical I'm not aware of, but I'm skeptical.

The good news is that you can still play sports and meet women as a wristlet. The bad (?) news is that if you aren't already performing at a high level you're unlikely to be held back by your wrists in sport.

That's the thing though, no doctor has explained to me why it's over for things like radical bone thickness changes. Growth plates determine longitudinal growth, but there's no hard reason why bones can't get radically thicker post-puberty. Especially if, as you say, you intake some kind of research chemical. Or even just plain old HGH.

I'm pretty sure it comes down to hormonal environment. Maybe some kind of epigenetic signaling occurs when growth plates close? Because there's no mechanical reason your wrists can't get inches thicker anytime, as far as I know.

It's been a year or so since I had an MRI but it showed areas of defused bone where the growth plates are, low-intensity signals that are wider than they're supposed to be from comparing. Nobody remarked on it because it's not a full ass growth plate. But I have managed to DM a couple of orthopedic doctors on reddit and they confirmed it might be unusual to have such width of low-intensity signals at the growth plate scars, although not something anyone cares about.

Probably the growth plate fusion happened already but, like the rest of my bones being osteoporotic from starvation during puberty, it's not a tight seal, and the scar contains some (relatively to average, but may or may not be clinically) significant remaining cartilage.

Hence I wonder if the epigentic signaling that occurs when growth plates close, just didn't happen for me, and I'm in some weird never-went-through-puberty (I did briefly, before ending its progression with starvation) hence never-fully-matured state. It may be that with the right dose of lifestyle or chemicals, those plates have two trajectories possible: full fusion, with a tight seal, from the continued influx of resources, or somehow with the hormonal and lifestyle ingredients being just right, the cartilage might proliferate. Starvation is bad for you but it does retard your biological/skeletal age. I'm only getting chest hair now when my father got it at 19-20.

I do have lifestyle factors I need to fix to get stronger physically, and I believe I can get a lot of improvement from that. But I do want to fix my fundamentals if possible. My wrist is 1st percentile for women, but I'm around 15th percentile overall body size for men. That's a mismatch, maybe it doesn't matter that much, but it would be nice to correct it.

That's the thing though, no doctor has explained to me why it's over for things like radical bone thickness changes.

I'm not a doctor, but I bet an LLM could answer most of your questions around this.

Can't, it seems nobody really knows the answer tbh. I can convince it after talking long enough that it is possible, and it can't give me any hard reasons why it isn't, just repeating dogma that people can't grow TALLER once their growth plates fuse, which is orthogonal to my actual question.

My junior survived her internship. Genuinely survived, she had an awful time, and now has a job in Australia waiting: more money, more sun, the universe settling a debt. Very inspirational, I'd be off to the Sunshine Coast if I could, instead I must endure the Scottish sun and coast.

I offered to get her something to celebrate the occasion. She declined. I bought cupcakes anyway, nice ones from M&S, on the medical grounds that her caloric intake is a matter of public concern and I have a firm policy of not listening to women about whether they need to eat. Success rate: non-zero. Still going.

Then I got a migraine and microwaved the cupcakes. Not my food. The cupcakes. She was touched. Took a photo for TikTok, laughed maniacally till she had tears in her eyes, and ate none of them, because she doesn't eat cake. Except when PMSing. Allegedly. I asked how I was meant to know when that was.

"Don't worry, self_made_human. You'll find out."

I have never been more afraid. I couldn't even fob them off on the very broke German med student, mostly because I was too honest and described them as cupcakes from Chernobyl.

World Cup Wednesday:

I've been really happy so far! Many exciting games and for a variety of reasons! With most of the first round over the usual suspects seem to be doing well, although the absence of Italy is a scandal again. The US actually looks good? I feel like I'm seeing a lot of older faces I expected to be gone, which is a treat and sad at the same time.

Some Football Culture War:

The expansion in number of teams has been a point of controversy but I'm liking it. You see some teams with no business holding on and drawing or keeping games tight, at the same time it's obvious who the eventual quarterfinalists are likely to be. On the balance of it I'm happy to let some of these smaller countries get to the stage.

On a less positive note...the hydration breaks. Yikes. Putting aside the American obsession with ads, which is not ideal and against the spirit of the game, I am concerned about the clear momentum changes these breaks seem to be creating.

Real Culture War: (These ones have the possibility to get a little heated, please try and keep it to the spirit of the Wellness thread).

Everyone online and some in the media are criticizing America hard for handling of logistics and immigration, however from what I can tell Canada and Mexico have both caused more serious problems. Putting aside the anti-US sentiment, I do think it is interesting that despite our increasing sclerosis we are actually doing better than our neighbors.

Racism continues to be the "worst thing in the world" one of the new rules is that you can get a straight red for talking near an opponent while covering your mouth. Supposedly this is to prevent racism and other bad-talk. One thing that is not apparently to me is this - growing up in sports in the US homophobia and racism was the default and beloved by all, being close to some of the generations younger than mine they all affirm this. Has this changed now in the US? Was Europe always different? Is it just ethnic tensions?

They don't show it on TV, but I was at a world cup game, and the whole stadium was booing the hell out of the "hydration breaks".

Don't call them hydration breaks, call them TV Timeouts, which is what they are.

one of the new rules is that you can get a straight red for talking near an opponent while covering your mouth. Supposedly this is to prevent racism and other bad-talk.

We live in a panopticon, and everyone demands surveillance.

Don't call them hydration breaks, call them TV Timeouts, which is what they are.

Oddly, some of the Eurosnobs in my life have admitted that...they're actually kind of nice? I'm not enmeshed enough in football to judge myself, but they claim that there's been less time-wasting and fake-cramp-injuries and bullshittery because the players are getting a structured break.

..... but they put in place a bunch of other time wasting rules that seem to have more of an impact????

It's not the break!

Also we are seeing wild momentum swings after the timeout.

Also we are seeing wild momentum swings after the timeout.

And that's a bad thing?

I don't know. Step one is to establish if it really is a thing or I'm just bitching.

From there decide if it is bad or not, but I think so - the endless flow (unlike most other sports) is part of what makes it the beautiful game, anything that gets in the way of that is eeeehhhhhh.

Unlike some of the other modernizations (VAR) this one is more of a taste thing, and a differentiating factor.

I've heard less of this after the first few days but it was hilarious when the commentators had the talking points and had to be like "yes, it's so hot they need water"

temp: 74

Am I correct in seeing that Miami and Monterrey are probably the hottest outdoor venues? Houston and Dallas both have covered stadiums, but I wouldn't even want to sit around watching at an afternoon outdoor game at either this time of year. Probably just as dangerous to sitting out-of-shape fans as active professional athletes.

It looks like the Monterrey games are very late in the evening.

Climate is weird. I think the stadium formerly known as Metlife was actually the hottest one last weekend (NJ).

One thing that is not apparently to me is this - growing up in sports in the US homophobia and racism was the default and beloved by all...

I'm not sure I agree. Even growing up in philthy philly at the Vet, while I still have my "Romo's a Homo/Dallas Sucks T.O. Swallows" t shirt and heckling is a proud city pastime, I never heard anyone use racial slurs against opposing players, and if you had asked me about it at fourteen I would have said "well we all sing about T.O. overdosing on pills, but if you called him a nigger you'd probably get banned from the Vet." The only place I recall hearing racial slurs directed against opposing, and their own, players was in Boston, which is notorious for it, and even Fenway says that any use of racial slurs will result in a permanent stadium ban.

((As an aside, some of the best heckling I remember was the Bleacher Creatures in the Bronx chanting at Adam Jones in centerfield that the batting coach was fucking his wife))

Europe has significantly larger problems with racial abuse hurled at opposing players, it's just a different animal over there. And it seems reasonable to label racist slurs as "fighting words" within the context of a contact sport, you don't want to have players taunting each other into a rage. Some things we understand to be so offensive that we can't blame the taunted player for engaging in physical violence in response. The rules are seeking to cut off escalation at an earlier stage. The "no hiding speech" rule seems eminently reasonable, there's no reason to hide your lips unless you're saying something that you don't want publicized. I actually think the American leagues should police players' on-field speech a lot more heavily, and would if the unions weren't so unreasonable.

I'm amazed at the success of the world cup. I'd bought into a lot of the anti-FIFA, TDS negative reporting on the world cup, and so far it's been a complete success. I do think the efforts to restrict travel for the Iranian team is a little disgusting, the Spartans used to be the enforcers of the Olympic peace, but it's overshadowed by the joy that European travelers are bringing to the country. The saga of Lawrence, Kansas is so good that I have shitlib friends of mine saying that it adjusted their own feelings about the American heartland. Scots are reportedly drinking Boston dry. Selfishly, tickets are staying way too expensive around me, I was kind of hoping that I'd be able to snipe $20 tickets in the nosebleeds, but they haven't appeared yet.

And fuck it, the USA will probably fall apart in the round of 16, but I BELIEVE

I feel like the racial dynamic of European Soccer is a bit different to US sports. Locals have been replaced by random Africans within the last couple decades, and did so at a far quicker rate than the diversification of the general population. The USA's always had more of a mixed population and US sports have had huge African admixtures for far longer. Also the Draft means that there's way less of an expectation/idea that say the Green Bay Packers as an organization represents any sort of a local population directly. Soccer academies (prior to big business and international scouting atleast) meant that Football clubs would frequently be a lot more hyperlocal.

Hurling racial slurs at the only Black Person you're going to see day-to-day in a second-tier Italian city when he's ostensibly 'taken the job' of a local player is a lot easier than when you might offend somebody else in the stands.

Europeans don't throw bananas at black players because of their economic anxiety, dude. They do it because European soccer fans are aggressive and offensive in ways that make American football fans look like they're at a golf game. Philly fans threw some batteries at somebody once and we've never lived it down as a city; that's barely a Tuesday in a European minor league.

But I was making the point to my learned frined throwaway that a) racial slurs haven't been acceptable in American sport in my lifetime, with near certainty of being ejected from the game (if you get caught...) and b) racial slurs are considered offensive enough that they are likely to inflame tempers on the field, potentially leading to escalating fouls and violence. Both are, if anything, more true in Europe.

And anyway, you're a professional fucking soccer player. We can teach you to use your feet with unnatural dexterity but not to throw around racial slurs during the game? That's an unreasonable degree of discipline?

We can teach you to use your feet with unnatural dexterity but not to throw around racial slurs during the game? That's an unreasonable degree of discipline?

I mean, they have been hit in the head a bunch of times.

Honestly it's surprising it isn't more of a problem in any sport with head injuries.

General comments.

I think I skipped the "as a player" element (my bad). Yeah fans abusing players is more of a problem but as a player the shit we did to each other was heinous and we loved it.

The "no hiding speech" rule seems eminently reasonable, there's no reason to hide your lips unless you're saying something that you don't want publicized

In my mind the issue is that if sometimes you want to hide stuff from the other team, and while it's supposed to be only in confrontation with other plays, well bad rulings happen.

Iran team.

I think this is exaggerated and likely involves stuff we don't know, the Iranians likely try and smuggle in spies all the time under cover of sport and other things. Canada is outright banning players I heard though?

https://thehill.com/policy/sports-gaming/5925843-iran-world-cup-travel-issues/

It seems like it would be elementary to keep eyes on the members of the traveling team while they are in Los Angeles, and attempting to use them to spy on Tehrangeles is a silly conceit to begin with.

Maybe I'm caught up in cold war nostalgia, but the story used to be that when Soviet bloc teams traveled to America it was the commies that locked them up in the hotel to make sure they didn't defect, rather than the Americans that hustled them out ASAP. We should WANT Iranian players to see rich happy free America, full of rich happy Persians, and go home and think about how their home could be less of a shithole if they spent less energy hating Jews.

And I think you need to be more specific re:racism. In my lifetime there is no level of organized American sport where a white player calling a Black player a nigger isn't a major foul. Because we understand that in a contact sport you can't say shit like that and not get violence. We can argue about where on the hyperstitious scale we should fall, or about how slurs are the only real profanity left, but for racial slurs to be accepted in sport in America you're reaching back to Hammerin' Hank or Victory's Glory.

The other aspect is the issue of holding an entire world's worth of players to anglo-american HR standards. Hence the controversies about South American players calling each other "negrito" or similar as a nickname. Generally, in soccer, intentional racial slurs from players are as vanishingly rare as they are in the US, but very common from randos in comment sections or occasionally in the stands.

Is the Iranian thing solely due to US officials? The womens' team had like half of the team trying to defect in Australia during the outbreak of the war which surely has to be some part of the calculus here.

And I think you need to be more specific re:racism. In my lifetime there is no level of organized American sport where a white player calling a Black player

You're right, maybe I'm over indexing on the teammate experience, where we'd drop all kinds of insults and slurs on each other but very rarely say something to the other team.

Oh that I'd absolutely agree with, my apologies if I misinterpreted. We were absolutely racist to eachother all the time. In Scouts we often noted that we made jokes about our one Chinese kid all the time, but when another troop said a word it was fightin' time. I don't think it would have even occurred to us that if you called an opposing player a slur during a game in front of a ref you wouldn't face consequences.

I'm sure World Cup players are free to say all kinds of disgusting things in non-public training, but on the field there should be standards of sportsmanship. That should be understood as part of the deal: we let players be famous and wealthy and praised, and in return they agree to act like role models. But then I'm an old codger who misses the Yankees' appearance rules, and thinks players with visible tattoos should have to pay a fine every match.

No no I think what you are saying makes sense.

Maybe I'm caught up in cold war nostalgia, but the story used to be that when Soviet bloc teams traveled to America it was the commies that locked them up in the hotel to make sure they didn't defect, rather than the Americans that hustled them out ASAP.

I think that's more than likely the exact situation that's happening here. Note this very important point from the article you linked:

Ghalenoei did not say who ordered his team to depart the U.S. back to Mexico.

It's all blamed on "officials", not specifying where from. Unless you're quite far gone in the "the US is a fascist state!" propaganda, I think you'll agree that if it was US officials doing it, the coach could have just said so and not suffered any repercussions, which leads me to be about 98% certain the request was from Iran's side. The Hill (and the AP they're sourcing) are just being disingenuous in implying that it could be the US, because they want their readers who already believe the US would do this to come to that conclusion. In fact, if they had any belief it was the US they could have asked and investigated. What seems likely here is that the "multiple members of the team’s traveling party" that did not get visas were the team's IRGC chaperones and Iran is not comfortable with their players being in the US without them.

Yeah the Iranian Womens team had a bunch of defectors in Australia at the start of this year. I don't get why the US would benefit from fucking around the players so much whilst the Iranian government has a far clearer motive to stop potential defections and/or make the US look unreasonable.

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2026/apr/17/iranian-womens-football-team-players-asylum-australia-brisbane-roar-training

You know you might be right, I look forward to the classification from DHS that the Iranian team is welcome to stay as long as they please.

The more I look into this story, the more I see tortured journalism.

Here:

“This issue has been resolved,” the State Department said Tuesday. “As soon as we became aware of the issue, we worked to ensure that the player can participate in every game.”

Giuliani said during an interview broadcast Monday night on CBS News that some of the Iranian team’s support staff and team officials were denied entry into the U.S. But he said that all the players and coaches had received visas. He also outlined the conditions by which the Iranian team would be able to come into the U.S. for their games.

“The team will be allowed to come in, match day minus one, so the day before the match. They’ll be asked to leave the day that the match wraps up, so the evening of the match. And they’ll be able to do that again in Los Angeles. They’ll be able to do it again in Seattle,” Giuliani said. The team's next match is Sunday, in LA.

"They'll be asked to leave" by whom? Of course, the article is written to imply that it's the US that's having them leave, but... Who gave that order? The whole thing seems to be deliberately written and carefully quoted so that if this arrangement was made and decided between Iran and FIFA it would still be true, and having it be said by an american official is just so that they can imply the order is from him without stating it. About all the articles I find are sourcing the same stuff and are all carefully avoiding stating that the US is forcing the team out, only stating "this was the plan", not stating whose plan. Note that when something IS an order from the US government, the wording is much less weasely and attribution is clear:

When asked about why some support staff and team officials had been denied entry, Giuliani wouldn’t go into details but referred to previous comments made by Secretary of State Marco Rubio about denying entry to people with direct ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.

“Secretary Rubio said very clearly: Anybody with direct ties to the IRGC is not coming into the United States of America, and they’re not going to let the World Cup be the reason why they can come in,” Giuliani said. “So I think it’s very clear why.”

Also note that Iran's delegation has clear spooks in it, so to me, the story sounds a lot like: Iranian team has as part of its delegation IRGC elements in it. Probably not to spy on the US but to keep an eye on the players and dissuade defectors. The US and Canada refuse them visas. Iranian team complains to FIFA, they arrange with FIFA that ok, the players are allowed but they play their games and get back to Mexico where they do have handlers. This plan is communicated to the US officials who say "ok, whatever, as long as the obvious IRGC elements are not coming in that's not a problem".

Yeah this is also my read of the situation. High profile defectors from the Soccer team happened at the start of the year and the US isn't being totally unreasonable in filtering some of the more politically-exposed people from the Iranian Team's posse from entering the country.

Also a spot where the USA can't really directly contradict the narrative without opening up further vectors for attack in the press. I'm sure there's some effort from the USA to fuck with the team, but realistically the players defecting is like the only potential scenario of consequence that could happen here.

I think this is exaggerated and likely involves stuff we don't know, the Iranians likely try and smuggle in spies all the time under cover of sport and other things. Canada is outright banning players I heard though?

From what I gather, not players but officials, but this is likely your best indication that it's not petty animosity against Iran from the US. Canada would love nothing more than to showboat about mean ol' americans, so if they do the same, you can be quite sure there's something to it.

Though it could also be Iran doing this on purpose to try and spoil the World Cup good vibes: send people over that you know will be rejected for good cause then complain about it.

New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week and again yesterday evening. Can deadlift 1.84x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.25x for 6 reps and bench press .87x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

Working out when I can be bothered, which is not never but also nothing to write home about. Otherwise? Life isn't bad.

I stayed back late yesterday, on my own terms, for a patient. Nobody asked me to do a cognitive history, just the MMSE. But I did it anyway. The hospitalist who requested it is probably very skilled in his his chosen field, but I am of the strong opinion that a cognitive test that doesn't take into account the full context isn't worth the paper, or the ink. A lovely old lady, with a shopping addiction that her just as lovely husband had to put a pause to a few years earlier. And much more serious issues, which warranted the admission to what isn't a psych ward. I took my time. I enjoyed myself. She had attention issues and hadn't finished previous cognitive screens because she got bored in the process. I am many things, but not boring. And somehow I managed to hold her interest, and get the annoying instrument completed, and also get her tissues when she broke down halfway while writing a sentence about how much she missed her parents.

I said that my history might be superfluous, since they're seeing a better psychiatrist (a nice enough cons I knew), but they made me blush by telling me that I was the better psychiatrist. I'll take it, bashfully.

And of course, as I slightly hoped for but was prepared to never receive, the hospitalist consultant said very nice things about me during the ward round this morning. I wasn't there to hear it, but I'm not very secretly pleased. By which I was very pleased, but tried to keep it a secret. And failed miserably.

No, I'm doing just fine.

Doing alright. Big life stuff going on but still going to gym. Started smoking again.

My laptop is fucked and I'm extremely annoyed.

Spending is $1,075.46 less than this time last year. My only known big-ticket expense that isn't a recurring one is the second half of my home repair bill, which will cost ~$2,650 and come due in about a month. I have about $1,500 in insurance reimbursements that I still need to deposit, so I think I'm on track to stay neutral for a while.

  1. Work. Summer slump, but about to finish the final replicates of a very annoying experiment, so will happy to be done.
  2. Fitness: Did 2x tempo sessions last week and won a pride 5k in ~16:40, slower than expected but I've stacking the mileage. 61 miles and gym+sauna once.
  3. Intellectual Stuff: Been having a great time having Claude coach me through writing an Anki add-on to calculate lexical coverage/ CEFR level from Anki cards. Wrote my Italian update last week and novels are all going well.
  4. Finances: Spending is going to be pretty high this month with higher rent and having to book hostels for Germany. Still hopefully should be in the black.
  5. Dating. Deleted my dating apps because I was tired of them/not meeting people I liked. Independently my friend Bella asked me out and we are going to make pizza together at her house Thursday.
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Went to the beach with some EA people, Spanish happy hour, and hanging out with running friends.
  8. Screen time: 1.5 hours phone. This could be better
  9. Mental health: feeling more relaxed without dating apps on my phone, and finishing up some work deadlines.

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