site banner
PaperclipPerfector  18d ago (text post)   1380 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for August 19, 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).

2
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Something else I'm currently struggling with is my libido, I don't know if it's supposed to be this high for me. To my knowledge, it hasn't gotten to the point where it actively interferes with my quality of life, but it periodically flares up and feels oppressive. I've managed to always avoid pornography, and make a point to minimize any content that will feed the cycle, but I've been feeling constricted by it nonetheless. Any advice on how to put it in remission?

If you don't have a religious thing against wanking, just wank a few times to your imagination. If you do, focus that energy into trying to get laid. If you're really no sex til marriage... Idk bro, figure out how to sublimate it. Being horny is lowkey a mild stimulant. Deal with the distraction and reap the added energy.

Libido is a natural hormonal prompt. You can put it in remission the same way you'd put other natural hormonal prompts like hunger in remission by eating or put tiredness in remission by sleeping.

If you're worried about ethical aspects, again, just treat it like hunger or sleep. Eating a simple balanced meal when you're hungry is healthy. Eating two pints of peanut butter ice cream topped with deep fried M&Ms because you're bored is unhealthy. Likewise taking five minutes to rub one out so that you can wrest back the capacity to think about something else is beneficial, but gooning to niche internet porn for six hours a day isn't.

How old are you? And how high is your libido?

Late teens, don't know how I go about quantifying it.

How many times a day are you masturbating?

I make a point to keep it to a minimum, usually go on 1-3 week streaks of abstinence. I'm not even some evangelical who views masturbation as actively sinful, but I do believe it is suboptimal as acting on my impulses will only keep me in a negative feedback loop, whereas when I do manage to avoid it, my sex drive will enter a 2-3 hour flare that at that moment will feel insurmountable but will later mellow out. Cc: @5434a

You could try to find a better balance between too much and too little, but it sounds like you're already there. It will always be a trade-off between the distracting thoughts that accrue during abstention and the relative sexual lethargy that follows relief. You might as well get used to it, it doesn't go away and there's no practical way to merely dial it down to the perfect level and keep it there. It would be like trying to keep your bladder half full, only more challenging.

The psychological approach would be to sublimate the drive and direct it into other activities but I think that's misleading. Exercising or competing for status or what have you might be more personally productive but you'll come out the other end just as horny as you went in, probably more so. This is not a phenomenon that originates within the mind. You can't meditate your way around it. You can either find a sex partner, masturbate, or endure until it resolves spontaneously.

I meant more along the lines of how much you would like to masturbate if you didn't try to limit it.

Like if it's once or twice a day then that is perfectly normal for a teenager. If you would like to spend all your time gooning then that is another matter.

Young men are just horny and it will peter out as you get older. You might have a preference to masturbate less but the desire to do so more is normal. I've found that keeping busy, spending time with others and exercising once or twice a day helped.

If I tried to limit masturbating to once every 1-3 weeks in my teens then I would have gone crazy.

Congratulations, you're a healthy young male! Do not try to put that into remission in any way, as annoying it might be.

All I can say is that feeling extremely horny in your late teens is completely normal and you have nothing to worry about. There is nothing medically or psychologically wrong with you.

(1) Using this website's NSFW/18+ button is viewed with some disfavor.

(2) Possibly relevant may be this ancient incomplete article from Gwern (originally at this URL, but now deleted).

The doctor will probably give you some antidepressants while you're there getting your speed prescription if you ask him with the right magic words?

About a month ago, I posted about my realization that my family dynamics are abnormal and not a classic case of a generational/cultural disconnect I suspected them to be, but that my parents are in fact emotionally unstable. At the time I was pissed and believed that my relationship with them has fallen to rock bottom, but little did I know that was not the case quite yet; I still had the residual baseline of respect for my narcissistic father on the basis that he is my biological father who raised me, who when on an emotional high freed of all discomfort in life, can actually behave decently. I clung onto the idea of what could have been if he sought help. I was willing to be polite with him from a distance, if only I could move out and catch my breath. Even that is no longer the case.

I most likely have inattentive ADHD, and on the off-chance that I don't, there certainly is something else on board. The fact that I am not hyperactive, have always performed well on exams until high school, have always been described as an analytical person with a vocabulary above my grade level, and have seldom inflicted any difficulties unto my teachers or peers means that no teacher has entertained the idea that ADHD could be the issue at hand. Some teachers have flagged that I may have Asperger's, though usually the justification for that has always been weak (e.g. I knew Africa was a continent and not a country at age 5 when most of my peers didn't, in 9th grade I struggled to make friends when navigating a language barrier in a country notoriously difficult for socialization, etc.). My parents never went ahead and did anything with that information, not because they believed I didn't have Asperger's, but rather because they were too prideful and didn't want some naive pedagogues be the reason I land on a mandatory autism registry that does not exist. They still weaponized the notion that I did have Asperger's against me in arguments, using autism as an insult at times if I said or did something they didn't like. The overlap that I did have with autism was that my coordination was poor, and I was curious about subjects most people my age were not. That said, my niche interests have never been a monomaniacal obsession I needed to force onto others, but rather a tool for synthesizing ideas and finding ways I can apply them. On the contrary, the demonization of autism that I've constantly heard from a young age have led me to be hypervigilant about people not picking up that I know more than what's expected of me in a certain subject, though thankfully my inhibition has now gone down considerably after attending church for the past year and meeting people who I know value me for who I am with no strings attached.

When I recently heard somebody say that when teachers give a student the "you're not realizing your full potential" line, there's often a high probability the student has undiagnosed ADHD, I began to investigate the symptoms further. I've always felt a constitutional incapability of being neat and organized, teachers have often observed a delta between my oral participation and performance on formal examinations vs. my output on a regular assignment/project, I am capable of hyperfocusing in one subject and go down a rabbit hole of Substacks and academic articles, while one I've never been passionate about such as biology may simply not click with me and I will be unable to initiate the process of studying to a point of near-paralysis. The posts I've made about my paranoia when making advances with women, that's likely rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Handing a woman my number over DMs knowing damn well it may get left on delivered is even more draining for me, I did it today so we'll see how it goes. For the same reason, I also get more pissed when I see a misrepresentation of my reasoning or any uncharitable behavior when trying to have a constructive discussion online.

Well, the other day, I mentioned to my father that I am in the process of pursuing a formal diagnosis for inattentive ADHD. He accused me of taking the easy route (I guess brushing off academic performance beyond my caliber, settling for poorer educational institutions and workplaces, and refusing tools that facilitate my success is the difficult route per his contortions). He justified his skepticism towards the medication by mentioning one anecdote of my younger brother taking Concerta with no discernible effects, saying that he'd rather not take any mind-altering chemicals as his output would then not be entirely his own doing. I asked him why he wears glasses, another tool that allows people to maximize their success and eliminate a tractable disadvantage, and he told me it's an apples-to-oranges comparison as glasses are a physical object and not medicine. He told me that there are many things I can do before taking medication, such as improving my sleeping schedule, managing my screen time, eating more, as if it isn't a Catch-22 problem. What I find most disconcerting is the fact that my younger brother who is at an age where he's not quite as analytical and self-aware will have to endure this negligence and disregard for his well-being for another few years. In the end, I got despondent and was visibly agonized, and my father had the audacity to tell me I'm the one gloating over this. He was always capable of treating me in a very undignified manner, but it was typically calculated and subtle. For him to brazenly invalidate my medical needs is a new low.

If all goes according to plan, I'll be out of this house in a couple of weeks, and now that I see him for all that he is, I will unhesitantly be cutting contact with that prick. I remember when I was 13 or so, I watched a video adaptation of several sci-fi novels by Phillip K. Dick on Amazon Prime. One of them was The Father-thing, where an alien eats a child's father and perfectly replicates his external appearance. Relating to its plotline was not on my bingo card, but here we are.

It is entirely possible you do have ADHD. Based on what you've described, the clinical suspicion is at a degree that warrants formal assessment, and pursuing one is a move I would happily encourage.

That being said, I wince at anyone invoking "rejection sensitivity dysphoria," which in this context strikes me as a rather useless pseudo-diagnostic label that pathologizes being a Sensitive Young Man.

RSD appears in neither the DSM-5 nor the ICD-11, has no validated measurement instrument, and the term traces back mostly to one enthusiastic clinician in the 90s rather than any systematic research program. The construct it gestures at (emotional dysregulation in ADHD) is real enough, and the DSM-5-TR now acknowledges overreactive emotionality as an associated feature. That is very different from being a core feature, or being helpful in terms of narrowing down the differentials. Feeling terrible when a girl leaves you on delivered is not a neurological syndrome. Young man, that's the human condition, plus youth.

I used to be one, you know. Which is to say young. I'm still a man. In terms of sensitivity? Mostly I've just become increasingly willing to tell people to go fuck themselves, or more politely, to stand up for myself when I'm clearly in the right. There was a time when being left on read would have felt like the end of the world to me. These days I shrug and move on, or at worst wince slightly and forget about it by the next week. This will happen to you too, and it will manifest as external confidence. People can tell when you've got it, and they act accordingly. Time and reps, mostly. No pill need popping for that particular problem.

At best, marked rejection sensitivity might point toward a comorbid anxiety disorder, which is worth mentioning to whoever assesses you, since the comorbidity rates between ADHD and anxiety disorders run somewhere around 25-50% depending on the sample. But as a diagnostic marker for ADHD specifically, it offers little.

Now, I am a psychiatry trainee, and I do have ADHD. And my life has interesting parallels:

My dad, despite being a good doctor, was loathe to acknowledge that his son(s) have mental health issues. I'd blame it on him being from a different generation. When I was older and telling him about my problems again, he mentioned episodes around my age that sounded awfully like depression to me, except he hadn't had the vocabulary at the time, and more importantly, he had managed to push through and flourish anyway. In his eyes, a son who was clearly intelligent, academically and professionally successful, couldn't possibly be mentally ill, let alone chronically. He flinched away from the notion. In his cosmology, that's the realm of the insane and the delusional, and if you're objectively succeeding, everything must be fine upstairs.

I wish that were true.

On that note, I'd be careful bandying accusations of narcissism about. Not because you're necessarily wrong, but because I remember being around your age and being quite mad at my dad, and the heat of the moment is a poor time to hand out cluster B diagnoses to family members. Hold that belief lighter than currently feels natural. You can always revisit it when you're older and know better. That would the kind of statement that would have annoyed me when I was younger, but it's true nonetheless.

Pragmatically speaking: stimulants work on just about everyone. This has been known since we gave dextroamphetamine to entirely normal prepubertal boys in 1978 and watched their motor activity drop and cognitive performance improve, a finding replicated in normal adult men. That makes "I took Adderall and functioned better" a poor confirmation of the diagnosis, in the same sense that telling someone who perks up after a cup of coffee that they're "caffeine deficient" is a suboptimal diagnostic framework. Scott's essay on Adderall covers the gatekeeping problem well: attention is a normally distributed trait, the diagnostic cutoff is somewhat arbitrary, and most psychiatrists and possibly the majority of patients knows it.

Even more pragmatically:

ADHD is associated with a life expectancy reduction that is more alarming than I originally remembered. This paper found an apparent reduction of about 6.8 years for men and 8.6 for women, and Barkley's earlier estimates are thereabouts too. The mortality rate runs roughly double the general population's, pushed up by accidents, substance use, and the general downstream consequences of poor impulse control and executive dysfunction.

And treatment works! A Swedish registry study of around 150k patients found medication initiation associated with a 19% reduction in all-cause mortality over two years, concentrated in deaths from unnatural causes. The usual observational-study caveats about confounding apply, and the follow-up window is short, but the direction of the evidence is consistent across studies of injuries and hospitalizations too.

That's why I don't much care about gatekeeping this diagnosis as zealously as some do. The failure mode of slightly over-prescribing a well-tolerated medication with fifty years of safety data is considerably less bad than the failure mode of leaving a disorder with those base rates untreated because your dad is a dum-dum. I care about results uber alles, and I care even more about the fact my disease is comparatively mild. The medication changed my life for the better.

I wholeheartedly appreciate you taking the time to write such a conscientious response with your experience and the statistics you've included! I don't have much to add, but one thing I will tell you is that the suspicion of narcissism has been present for a while. It was certainly not triggered by this alone, though this sure as hell adds insult to the injury. Without getting too personal, I began picking the suspicion up after spending time reading literature, observing healthy family dynamics in movies, having dinner at my pals' houses, etc. and recognizing that something was off about my family. Obviously I ought not to take them as the gospel, but have researched what medical professionals had to say about NPD and have delineated the concrete exchanges I've had with my father to Claude. I provided some examples of the behaviors exhibited by my father a few Wellness Wednesday threads ago, which I've linked in my response to another person replying to my post.

You're welcome! Don't worry, your dad could well be a narcissist, and if he's an asshat, you have the right not to contact him regardless of a formal or informal diagnosis.

A word of caution: It sounds like you believe very strongly that your dysfunctions are due to ADHD, but have not been formally diagnosed yet. In that case, it is possible that the problem is something else, in which case being attached to any specific diagnosis can make it difficult to diagnose the actual problem. Since the criteria for mental health disorders are based on your subjective experience, it is not that difficult to convince yourself that the criteria match perfectly, removing focus from other whatever else is going on. I would thus strongly recommend listening to the doctor if they suggest that it is not actually what you think. Calling this a "medical need" when you have not been diagnosed yet sounds a bit premature.

Now, I am sorry about your father. If this can legitimately help you and is perfectly legal, then he really should not be concerned about an "unfair advantage". Giving advantages to your kids is part of being a parent after all.

I would also caution against cutting contact over this. It has not been that long since the mental health system was only a place for society's losers, those absolutely incapable of functioning in the ordinary world. Thus, many older people still regard it with stigma and fear. Somewhere you only end up if something is well and truly wrong with you, not a place that normal people go to for help. While his conclusions are wrong and his arguments bad, the things he says could still come from a good place. Not that I mean to excuse any kind of abuse, but at least the situation you described does not sound that bad to me.

Now, there could be many other things wrong that I am not privy to. Your anecdote about the father-thing definitely sounds serious, but I would expect that to be spawned by something a good deal more sinister than not believing his son's claims about having a mental health disability that will require treatment for the rest of his life.

Regardless, I wish you good luck in your medical journey.

Not that I mean to excuse any kind of abuse, but at least the situation you described does not sound that bad to me.

Now, there could be many other things wrong that I am not privy to. Your anecdote about the father-thing definitely sounds serious, but I would expect that to be spawned by something a good deal more sinister than not believing his son's claims about having a mental health disability that will require treatment for the rest of his life.

Here's more context if it's of interest: https://www.themotte.org/post/3815/wellness-wednesday-for-june-24-2026/456315?context=8#context

I don't disagree that some degree of healthy skepticism must exist towards "big pharma" because of dubious intellectual property and regulatory practices as well as liability concerns, but that was not at all what he articulated. Do notice the cherry on the top that pissed me off was his later reaction, pushing me to the breaking point when I was already despondent, regardless of the substance of his argument. This is just one of many unpleasant experiences I've had with him growing up, but I'm at my limit.

Cc: @VoxelVexillologist

My argument was about skepticism towards psychiatry, not big pharma.

My main point though, was to caution you against acting rashly, since it seems like you might be jumping to conclusions. I see your other thread, and I apologize if this came off as minimizing your struggles. What I was trying to get at is that having a family is a really valuable thing, and that it is worth occasionally suffering through stupid and stressful arguments. The two of you can you can disagree, you do something he disapproves of, and at the end of the day you will still be father and son. That dynamic might end if you cut him off.

However, if this is the cutoff point for you after a long life of him causing you to struggle, then who am I to say otherwise? I don't know you or your dad. At the end of the day, you have to do what you have to do. Especially considering this is the wellness thread, I don't want to spread bad vibes by arguing against a situation that I know nothing about.

My argument was about skepticism towards psychiatry, not big pharma.

I was trying to quickly type up a joint response to you and the other guy under the same post. Yeah I hear you, but the way that he handled the conversation regardless of his line of thinking is what did it for me. His constant caustic and dismissive attitude towards other people's concerns transcends this particular instance. My relationship with him hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows with this as the turning point, I thought I was already at rock bottom prior to this, and then I realized we hit an even newer low.

I don't blame you for providing the advice you did while operating on limited context, one can never be sure to include every detail that may change the calculus in one way or another when rapidly typing up posts like this. I appreciate your willingness to offer your two cents.

He justified his skepticism towards the medication by mentioning one anecdote of my younger brother taking Concerta with no discernible effects, saying that he'd rather not take any mind-altering chemicals as his output would then not be entirely his own doing.

Are you sure skepticism of stimulants to treat ADHD is completely unwarranted? Sure, the ranks of skeptics include Scientology and RFK, but even The New York Times has published such opinions relatively recently [1] [2]. I'm not going to call myself a complete skeptic here --- I know people for whom the medications seem to work well --- but the diagnosis criteria are really a spectrum, and the rates at which we're prescribing these drugs (23 percent of 17-year-old American boys!) is concerning with respect to how we've pathologized cases that really can't be that far from the median, and the drugs have very real side effects. To the extent that they're performance-enhancing for most people, there is a real question of fairness and applicability, but I won't claim to know enough to have a strong opinion about that here. See also the fraction of high-achieving "mentally disabled" students at top-tier universities demanding special accommodations.

Medication might well work for you. I'm not a doctor, and I'm definitely not your doctor, but I would recommend a little sympathy for differing views here. There might well be other reasons to cut off contact, but IMO "ADHD skepticism" seems, alone, well below that bar.

Been trying to slow bulk for the past 2 months. Thought I was doing alright, occasionally weighing myself here and there and seeing +2-3 lbs gained so far. Week ago finally decided to weigh myself on fully empty stomach - +3.2oz net gain. Upped my daily intake from 2.5k calories to 2.7k now and it's been hell. 2.5k was already tough, but manageable, and 2.7k is hell. I pretty much eat something every other hour from 11am til 8pm and still often fall 50-75 cals short. Don't know if I can keep this going without succumbing to mass gainers. I've already started eating more dirty - ice cream daily, welch's 'fruit' snacks daily, but it's still difficult. The times when I was cutting and only eating 2k calories a day were so much easier, I just had to have a light breakfast, 1 heavy meal and 1 snack and all my needs were taken care of, I miss it.

Don't know if I can keep this going without succumbing to mass gainers.

There's infinity protein formulas and of course simple instantized whey. You don't have to slam 1000 kcal of mass gainer if you don't want to. Is there a reason you want to avoid this?

2.5k was already tough...ice cream daily

~200 calories in 2 tablespoons (32g) of peanut butter in a bowl of cereal. It's nothing. With whole milk that's a "light" 500 calorie breakfast. Protein fortified yogurt slop or skyr a couple hours later? Bam, another 150. Eating perfectly lean is too hard. I say don't go crazy, but CICO. Work it out later.

3 meals a day, 2 snacks could come out to 500 breakfast/150 yogurt/700 lunch/350 shake pre-gym/1000 dinner rice chicken avocado extravaganza. 7am/10am/12pm/4pm/7pm.

Full Disclosure: messed up bulk big time and got fat(ter than I wanted) by stuffing my miserable not hungry face all day. Not particularly dirty, just bad at arithmetic and studiously monitoring the scale. Still got stronger, didn't care. I cared.

Is there a reason you want to avoid this?

No specific reason, just trying to eat healthy whole foods as principle.

3 meals a day, 2 snacks could come out to 500 breakfast/150 yogurt/700 lunch/350 shake pre-gym/1000 dinner rice chicken avocado extravaganza. 7am/10am/12pm/4pm/7pm.

That's roughly my routine now, it's annoying. I go to the gym early midday, I try to not stuff my face before then, so breakfast is only 500-600 cals. Quick carb snack right before gym 100-200 cals. Then a quick carb snack right after gym 100-200 cals. Then late lunch at around 3-4pm 800-1000 cals. Then dinner 800-1000 cals at 6-7pm. And finally, if there's any leftover macros to hit, quick snack at 8:30pm latest. I pretty much get like 30-90 minutes in between food breaks, it's not ideal. Comparing it to when I was at 2k cals: medium breakfast before gym, 1 huge late lunch/early dinner, evening snack. That's it, all needs covered. Food was an afterthought, now it's a big part of my day.

messed up bulk big time and got fat(ter than I wanted)

I don't think I'll have that problem - I naturally don't eat enough if I don't count my calories unless I'm abusing uber eats.

2700 calories is only two pounds of good cheese. What's the problem?

2 pounds of good cheese is also 4-5 days worth of my target fat intake. I'm trying to gain muscle, not fat.

Eating fat doesn't cause you to get fat.

I am aware, but it doesn't help building muscle either. I eat 165gr of protein, 360gr of carbs and 75 grams of fat daily. The hard part is hitting the carbs, not fat. I should've went with my macros in the original post rather than calories.

You probably don't need that much protein unless you're 230 lbs. It helps you build muscle in the sense that you need to consume sufficient calories to do so.

I thought you had posted a different article or I had misremembered the contents based on:

don't need that much protein unless you're 230 lbs.

But from the article:

A protein intake of around 2g/kg (0.9g/lb) is required to maximize gains for men, on average.

Which would only put him at 185 lbs? Which is not ultra huge for a normal height man.

Am I missing something? Personally, especially on a bulk, I don't see a downside of just using 1g/lb for the simplicity. Whey isolate is dirt cheap, for anyone who is reasonably taking macros this seriously.

From the same article:

If we split the difference, the old “1g/lb” rule actually seems to match the research quite well.

For sure, I'm definitely consuming too much protein but that's not the worst problem to have. I'm trying to overcompensate for having only around 60% come from perfect protein sources like chicken, the rest comes from incomplete slop. Like I said, the hard part has been carbs. Protein and fats are a solved problem, for now.

In all seriousness, the last time I needed to build muscle for a role, I had to cut my carb intake and up my fats just to get the required calories inside a reasonable volume. How married are you to those macros?

I'll stick with it for 2-ish months, then we'll see depending on results.

Trying to lose a few pounds eating slightly less and exercising slightly more. Not really seeing progress so far but at least I'm no longer gaining weight. Thinking about buying a condo with a gym in the building just to make things more convenient.

Took about 30 days after getting my shit together for the "hey I feel better" flywheel to start going. Keep at it.

A diary in this regard logging calories is helpful. People tend to be bad at estimating caloric intake. There are several apps that can do this, in particular if you're eating what everyone else is eating (MyFitnessPal actually has barcode scanning for many foods). You may already be doing this.

I did a food log about ten years ago going in the opposite direction (i.e. I was trying to gain.) Set a goal weight, the app tells you based on a few metrics what calories you'll need to get there by however quickly you enter. You also enter exercise. I ended up sending my triglycerides through the roof due to my food choices and metabolism, but I reached my goal. I have made adjustments since.

Get on the peptides.

What does this mean, specifically? Insulin? It's a peptide. Are there a group of peptides you're thinking of in particular? I'm admittedly out of this loop but I know among a certain number here the use of these drugs is popular.

If I eat whatever I want, I oscillate between 260 and 270 pounds. I'm also tall with very broad shoulders so this isn't as bad as it sounds. I'm pretty physically active too so a lot of that is muscle.

Point is, if I watch my diet like a hawk and eat no breakfast, a small snack for lunch, and a reasonable dinner, I seem to level out at 260 pounds, making me wonder why I bother. To actually lose weight I need to be in enough of a deficit that it makes me feel terrible and cuts my cognitive ability roughly in half.

A friend of mine once said that once you're 40 a diet is now mandatory but no longer effective, and that's about right.

ETA: I did try retard and it shifted everything down about 20 pounds, such that I plateau'd at about 240 and stayed there no matter what.

ETA: I did try retard and it shifted everything down about 20 pounds,

Is this an odd autocorrect of an abbreviation of retatrutide, or are you insulting someone, or is this some hot new "retard strength" diet/workout plan?

Retatrutide yes.

New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Went to the gym three times last week and again on Monday evening. I can deadlift 1.76x my bodyweight, squat 1.26x and bench press 0.71x.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st.

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

Doing rough lately boys. Pray for me if you're the praying kind. Living alone after the breakup has not been easy for me.

Sorry to hear it, sir. Though my situation isn't that different from yours, I'm grateful that living alone, in and of itself, hasn't been too rough on me this time around. That said, I remember what our last separation felt like, and I can easily sympathize. Like /u/FttG/, you can feel free to DM me as well if you want to talk about break-ups sucking and all that.

Will do. Sorry to hear you're having trouble.

Sorry to hear that pal. Feel free to DM me if you need a sympathetic ear.

Tracked my calories 6 out of the past 7 days. Actually reaching 3k feels like a fucking crusade. Unpleasant conclusion I'm coming to is I need to halve my caffeine intake to make eating easier. Ordered a food scale. My gym buddies have been super unmotivated lately so I might just switch back to a solo 5x5 routine.

  1. Work: Got the job for next year which is nice! Doesn't pay amazing (62k to start, rising quite a bit every year to a max of 80k after 5 years), but I will either be transitioning to industry or taking a faculty position after 3-5 years, so it's fine. I'm excited about the project too and having a cut-off for the end of my PHD.
  2. Fitness. Another week another 60 miles. Think I could be eating slightly more as my sleep and anxiety have been a bit worse than usual. Returned to swimming this week too. Hours: 8.3 running, 1 swimming
  3. Intellectual stuff: Wrote a blog post on my Spanish learning journey. Finished our summer novels for philosophy book club and we are returning to philosophy, with a focus on historical materialism reading either Lenin or Peter Turchin. Spanish Immersion hours last week: 8. Blog posts this month: 2
  4. Finances: Just trying to keep spending below 4k. Next month is going to be great with reduced rent and utilities and hopefully a large ZIM divvy because they had some good earnings. Now that I'm going to be staying in Baltimore, I'm going to be house (and car) hunting. This should help both my finances and dating. Monthly spending so far: 3340.
  5. Dating. Went on a date with a girl Sunday. Have another one this Sunday. Was fun, but I think I may find her to be too boring.
  6. Tarot. No session this week
  7. Socializing: Ran with the pacemakers Saturday, which is a group of a bunch of old people. Nice change of pace to hear from some boomers. Also got dinner with my lab mate Thursday and saw the Odyssey with some friends last night.
  8. Screen time: 1.4 hours.
  9. Meditation: 5 minutes 3x last week. Would like to make this more of a priority.

Spending is $2,317.45 lower than this day last year. My contractor is running behind schedule due to the non-stop rain, so we're splitting up payment between now and September. He's happy because he gets some cash up front, and I'm happy because I get to spread out the impact a little.

I’m curious, why not just pay your contractor everything up front? Unless you obviously don’t have all the money together.

My employer is undergoing a major construction program with the city. It actually drew a little news coverage when it was first underway, and there’s billboards and signage about the permits with the city, and how many jobs it creates, all your standard faire corporate propaganda. Not too long after everything finally began and construction was hard at work, everything immediately ceased and they started protesting on the sidewalk, complete with signs of their own, an elaborate corporate dummy and some entertaining flair to it all. Word going around was that they aren’t getting paid. One of the guys I work with asked them what they were getting paid and I was pretty shocked. These guys (construction workers in the blazing heat, doing everything to commercial coding laws, etc.) are getting $20 an hour. That is insane to me. These guys are getting robbed blind.

I've had contractors in the past who lose motivation if they already have all the cash.

He also didn't want it all up front for reasons he didn't explain, but I'm not going to fight him on it.

I was so stressed out I could barely get out of bed over the weekend. But I manned the fuck up and went to work, and ended up using my own judgment, arranging urgent scans and discovering an acute and extremely concerning pathology in a patient my seniors, including my supervisor, had been blase about. That is it's own reward, but it helps that I also was congratulated on this and also got assessments done. I also had my supervisor (the one I had a difficult meeting with) explicitly say I'd been doing a good job, and that he'd heard and seen excellent things about me. Go figure.

I have given up on the NHS, and am pursuing private psychiatry in earnest instead of just contemplating it while emailing around. That involves coughing up a significant amount of money for a re-assessment of my longstanding ADHD, but it's better than the alternative, and I'm getting what I half suspect is a collegial discount.

As I tell everyone, insight is necessary but not sufficient. I try to supplement this extremely novel observation with getting shit done and improving. I dare say I succeed.

I very rarely ever have them but when I know I’m having a bad day relative to the self-judgment of my own performance or where I think I should be, if a manager or someone else comes around (which has happened before) and tells me to keep up the great work, my immediate thought is to say to myself “man, everyone else must be really working like dogshit if they think I’m doing all that great…”

Awhile ago we put up this whiteboard at the entrance of our department where everyday the managers write individual names with stats next to them and slogans like “doing a great job,” etc. It’s become a joke among some of us that the whole department has found itself on that board, the laziest people get the biggest shoutouts, the hardest working people never get mentioned and are always taken for granted, it’s become more of a monument to how out of touch management is with activity on the ground. It does nothing for people except to make a mockery of things behind the scenes. If they really wanted to motivate them, that whiteboard would turn into a wall of shame; and it would have a lot of names take.

I presume you missed the drama from last week. I particularly care about what my boss says for multiple reasons:

  1. He's my boss, and my career progression is gated behind his approval
  2. He's not lavish with compliments
  3. I can trust him to be a pretty fair dude

That's why his praise matters, and why his criticism stings. He'd been concerned about my performance earlier, while operating off what he personally acknowledged as outdated information. Instead of developing a martyr complex about it, I decided to go above and beyond, and I had the good fortune of being able to demonstrate it live.

He's the kind of guy who cares far more about action and results rather than getting into group cuddle and commiserate sessions. I spoke his language and, as I hoped for, he reacted very positively. We might not always see eye to eye, but I can have a productive professional relationship with him, and that's more important.

Make sure he knows you appreciate him. Good manager’s are hard to come by. I recently stepped up to support a manager that I could tell was drowning in work.

I have told him that, and I could tell he appreciated it.

What is this place?

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

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

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


Why are you called The Motte?

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

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


New post guidelines

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

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

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats