site banner
PaperclipPerfector  19d ago (text post)   1895 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 10, 2024

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).

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Anecdotal observation - sport and hard physical work are not the same. I don't know why but even people doing properly backbreaking labor - they can get really strong, insane endurance, but not really lose extra fat - at least not to the point where a person would expect them to be with their energy expenditure.

Does anyone has observations/explanations?

Agree with other replies but will offer one counterexample; to the extent they still exist, actual cowboys tend to have almost comically good physiques. The buff-but-not-puffy bodies to maybe "just" extremely wire-y (I.e. very trim or cut with ropey muscles).

My theory is that the specific nature of range work means that cowboys can't afford to tote around extra weight all day, so they naturally develop a leaner body composition, yet, the power / strength activities of handling livestock also mean they don't fall into marathon runner levels of non-muscle.

The typical construction worker is an alcoholic who drinks soda for hydration all day and eats fast food daily. There are athletes with similarly unhealthy diets, but not in positions emphasizing endurance and sprinting, and they look the same way- a lot of fat on them over their muscles.

If you look at construction crews that skip lunch, they’re typically fairly skinny although not necessarily toned(the muscles that look good aren’t necessarily the ones you’d use on a jobsite).

Sports are dopaminergic in a way that hard labor isn’t, and dopaminergic pathways compete against each other. So sports players are growing the pleasure pathways of competition and socialization, which compete against the pleasure pathways of food salience, whereas someone digging a hole isn’t having fun at all — and in fact craves pleasure after work, like in the form food.

A completely different explanation is that you are noticing class differences. Adults who do sports recreationally are healthier and more intelligent on average, whereas construction workers are not.

They probably just enjoy food, a lot of construction workers eat huge portions of greasy fast food twice or more a day, for example, even if you’re expending a lot of calories you’re still very liable to get fat. Bodybuilders and gymbros know they have to both lift and eat well (or at least monitor their caloric intake and maintenance), “strongfat” manual laborers often don’t care. The young ones often do, and in that case they tend to be leaner.

I use a bike trailer to tow my children. I take them to and from a playground, which is around a 30 minute ride in each direction.

It is 90% greenway, with some sleepy 2-lane connector roads. While I am of course an incredible pedal pumping engine capable of incredible feats, I average only around 12 mph.

The bike trailer has a 5-point harness and an aluminum roll cage.

The problem: Putting helmets on my kids looks fucking miserable. Their heads are cast downward, they have nowhere to look around, and the youngest is clearly upset after around 15 minutes in the trailer. The oldest still has an OK time but is far quieter than when we rode together with a secondary saddle. FAQ says deal with it.

Assume you're a typical parent (I.E. your children are the most important thing in your life and you can't imagine causing them harm through negligence) but you also loathe the vapid stupidity of "better safe than sorry" in the face of all rationality, would you consider forgoing the helmet?

"Other Site" discussions:

From that FAQ:

If the trailer is being used in Bike Mode, YES, the child should always wear a helmet. A helmet will protect him or her and also help develop the habit of always riding with a bike helmet.

I consider this a point against the helmet. I want to inculcate a sense of reasonable decision making and risk assessment, not the pure safetyism of donning a helmet literally every time you're biking.

Personally, I wear a helmet when I'm road biking because I'm going to go fast enough and ride enough miles that there's a non-trivial chance of having a nasty wreck at some point. On the flip side, I never wear a helmet when I'm going a couple miles on a hybrid because I'm not going fast and there's very little chance of me just randomly falling down while tootling along a bike path at 13 MPH. I skip the helmet there for the same reason that I don't wear a helmet in the car or while running. I also just think helmets look incredibly dorky when worn with street clothes, but YMMV there. I have no real interest in encouraging other people to wear helmets more or less often than me, I think people should wear them in accordance with their own risk assessment and personal comfort.

I would want the same flexibility for a young cyclist rather than the obsessive safety of being scared to pedal a couple blocks without getting a helmet.

I wouldn't bother. Some risk is acceptable, otherwise we would all wear helmets all the time. I am one of the last skiers not wearing a helmet because at the speeds I ski at it wouldn't help me at all. I recently had a bad crash that injured my knee, a helmet would have potentially made me a quadriplegic if it had caused my head to hit the ice wall instead of my leg.

Helmets are not a panacea and have no benefit in many cases. I personally feel like they restrict my field of view and make my neck more likely to be damaged. I have worn one as required for races. This study found no benefit in snow sports. https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ijatt/28/4/article-p173.xml

This sounds like cope.

I snowboard, fast. I can't count the number of times where I've had "I love helmets" moments on the slopes. Snow is softer than concrete, but it's hard enough that I'm sure I'd have had a concussion if I wasn't wearing one, and instead I got up without a scratch. I appreciate you've linked a study, but my lived experience disagrees.

The objection my European skier buddy always had was "well, you don't catch edges like that on skis, so you don't need one", but no matter what's under your feet, if you bail at any speed, you're still falling vertically at least your own height, then tumbling down the mountain after that uncontrolled. Funny enough, same guy now wears a helmet after slipping on ice and bonking his head hard enough to knock some sense into him.

You can get very light helmets. Most don't obstruct your vision, since the front piece is cut away past where your goggles sit. You can get a glossy exterior that doesn't catch on the snow, and if anything presents more of a smooth surface to glide along and not wrench your head any direction that would hurt your neck.

A cope? What am I coping with? Extra convenience and comfort? It would be a cope if I had brain damage from smacking into a tree with no helmet that a helmet would have prevented. That said I think they may be of some help in avoiding skull or skin injuries to the back of the head for slowboarders like yourself.

Snowboarders tend to spend a lot more time on their backs and close to the hardpack and tend to tip over backward and give their noggin a good smack. But unless you're hitting your head so hard that you're fracturing your skull and exposing your brain directly to the groomer you're on, that concussion comes from your brain bouncing off of the inside of your skull from stopping fast, not from hitting the snow itself.

"Results from the four studies8,9,12,13 evaluated show slightly varying results with the majority of the studies trending toward no difference in head injury occurrence when the snow sport participants are either helmeted or not helmeted. According to Dickson and Terwiel,8 head injury rates did not differ by helmet use status. Porter et al.’s9 study demonstrated that helmeted participants were more likely to suffer an intracranial hemorrhage, but less likely to sustain a skull fracture or scalp laceration"

"Seven hundred and sixty-six cases of snow sport head injuries were identified over six winter seasons. Of these cases..."

Without going into every study in that review, the obvious flaw is: people who aren't injured don't show up in the data. They're taking people who already have a head injury, and then noting helmet or no helmet.

Yeah, you're still going to have a bad time if you accelerate your head into something solid at a high enough speed, but given that it might happen, I'm 100% going to choose to put foam and plastic in the way to dissipate the impact. If you had to fall onto groomed snow and land on your head, say from a standing position, not even at speed, and I offer you the choice of wearing a helmet or not, would you really prefer not to wear one?

But as some studies have shown I'm less likely to hit my head in the first place due to overall awareness and a sort of "I'm safe to take risks" feeling from using a safety device like a helmet. Yeah if you're going to hit me in the head I would rather wear a helmet, but the odds of you connecting are less if I'm not. Skulls are built to dissipate force as well, it is just a lot uglier than if the helmet does it.

Interesting quote from an article citing an ongoing meta study, "Studies show that helmets reduced non-serious head injuries, such as minor concussions, by nearly 70 percent in the 17 seasons between 1995 and 2012. But to Shealy’s amazement, there was no change in the number of fatalities. “The question became,”he says, “Why aren’t helmets saving people’s lives?”"

"In the early ‘90s, only about 5 percent of skiers used helmets. Flash forward 20 years, and nearly 80 percent of snow riders opt-in." With no reduction in fatal head injuries.

So I think that strikes a nice middle ground with what we are both saying here. I ski at a pace where a fatal mistake is a fatal mistake. Yes a helmet could mitigate some minor injuries, but who is to say I would even have been in a place to be protected from those if I wasn't wearing it?

No, he's right -- I also ski very fast and have been doing so since well before helmets were a thing -- I used to ski more in places with a lot of hard things (ie. rocks), where helmets might have been a good idea -- but falling on snow is not a problem that needs solving with a helmet. I ski hard and still fall from time to time -- used to be much more, I was quite silly when younger; I've fallen a lot in my life, and taken some long rides too. No helmets, no concussions.

I do also think that the modern prevalence of helmets has contributed to collision risk -- depending on design it may or may not be peripheral vision related (you know you don't strictly need to wear goggles to ski either, right?) -- but hearing and general situational awareness seem to be much more of a problem now than in the past; ie. I can ski up right next to (helmeted) people on a cat track and they don't notice me until I'm several yards ahead of them. It's like they are skiing in a bubble.

Anyways you are neglecting the 'feels good man' factor -- I am very sad that people growing up in the last 10-ish years will not experience a nice spring day in a sweater and sunglasses with the wind in their hair out of manufactured fear; this is what they've taken from you.

Sure, I'll grant they reduce auditory awareness, and possibly lead to accidents like this (though, snowboarder should have shoulder checked, and skier should have seen them since they were uphill).

On the other hand, accidents like that happen regardless, and if they're going to happen to me, I want to be wearing goggles that won't shatter into my face like sunglasses, and a helmet that will protect my noggin.

I want to be wearing goggles that won't shatter into my face like sunglasses

Riiight: Just things everyone knew in the 90s

Face it, you've been fed a bag of shit since the day you were born by these safetyists -- retvrn to the 90s, you will not regret it. (nobody worried about people ramming you from behind then either, but everyone also knew that the uphill skier/boarder is the one at fault)

The bike trailer has a 5-point harness and an aluminum roll cage.

So it's a car.
I don't wear helmets in my car, not even if I had one with a removable roof.

For that matter, that FAQ more or less just says "they should wear a helmet in the car(t) because normalization of safetyism is important".

I feel like I have to join any online discussion about bikes and helmets. But I live in the Netherlands and see about a million kids a day on bikes themselves or towed by their parents. Helmet ratio is probably a couple percentage points tops. And it’s almost always neurotic American expats. Is it really worth ruining the whole experience and habit of biking over a minuscule safety improvement? (Assuming you aren’t cycling through infrastructure unsafe for biking)

I'm American but I feel the same way... it's much less fun if I have to wear a helmet, since that makes my head sweat like crazy, and then once I'm done I have to carry the helmet around with me everywhere. But that's just me as an adult, riding on very easy bike routes, I might feel differently about small kids

On the flipside, though, I will say that the Netherland's helmet culture is a bit of a chicken or the egg situation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but people are generally riding heavy bikes very slowly in highly protected lanes.

If we're road riding in America, there's a significant cohort of negligent drivers. There's even a small group of drivers who want to actively hurt and kill cyclists. Helmets on public roads for riders - even to my risk-pooh-poohing self - are necessary. Not to mention the sort of downhill mountainbiking I do every once in a while.

Even our greenway, while at least an order of magnitude safer, isn't without hazards. Other cyclists are moving at a huge variety of speeds, myself included, from a drowsy beach cruiser to someone chasing a KOM on a segment. Pedestrians weave back and forth with abandon, huge groups take up the whole path, and dogs on leashes dart in front of cyclists at will.

I can minimize these greatly by being verbal and passing slowly. When I'm towing the trailer, the risk of me having to emergency stop or swerve is extremely low.

People do wear helmets when mountain biking or cycling on racing bikes as a hobby (probably the most popular hobby around) though

people are generally riding heavy bikes very slowly in highly protected lanes

It’s true most bikes are pretty heavy. But no people definitely don’t ride them slowly. And highly protected lanes depends very much on where you are. Suburbs or newly built cities yes. On more historical cities not at all. Also virtually nobody wears helmets with e-bikes either. Scooters going in the bike lane have to use helmets since last year though.

Pedestrians weave back and forth with abandon, huge groups take up the whole path, and dogs on leashes dart in front of cyclists at will.

This is my average everyday cycle in Amsterdam city center to be honest.. but it’s not very safe and with kids in tow definitely understandable to be cautious. Don’t you think something like a “bakfiets” would be safer against rolling than a tow?

bakfiets

They do sell these. I've considered getting some sort of variant of this or a longtail cargo bike for sure.

Truthfully, I'm out of room in the garage for another huge bike (for a total of 3). The price for a new one is $2,500+, wheras this trailer was $100 used. I do have some grocery and playgrounds in pedal distance and it's not out of the question, though.

I tried to keep my tone neutral to get genuine feedback but for what it's worth, my default opinion is very close to yours.

I think this is insane. I'm taking my kids to the park in what's essentially a stroller with a roll cage and a five point harness and I'm still having this disagreement with my wife//the reddit hivemind suggests I would be a piece of shit.

Riding with my toddler on that Shotgun saddle (wearing a helmet! totally necessary!) has been one of my favorite parenting experiences and he went nuts for it. Now I feel like they're miserable.

I skimmed the reddit threads and most people seemed to say that they wouldn't put helmets on the passengers.

Ruining?

I love that I can use a bike as almost an extension of me. No planning, extra equipment or hassle needed, just leave the house unlock and go. It’s just fun and increases my mobility greatly. Carrying a helmet would make this much less smooth and fun.

Probably not. Children can be trained into being comfortable wearing a helmet, and 12 mph is absolutely sufficient speed to cause life altering (if not ending) head injuries. The cost/benefit ratio of helmets is very far into the positive. It might take some work to get them used to it, but teaching your kids to wear helmets when doing dangerous activities like bicycling, skateboarding, etc is a very good idea.

What's the mechanism for a head injury when strapped into a cage?

I can't speak to bicycle trailer roll cages specifically, but in cars with roll cages hitting your head on the roll cage itself is a very serious possibility. Having a roll cage makes you safer from many kinds of injury (crushing etc), but makes you much more likely to have a head injury because it puts hard parts in range of your head. It is typical in basically all motorsports activities that if you have a roll cage must wear a helmet.

I appreciate the input - thank ya!

The animal-parent part of my brain agrees. My youngest fell off a part of the playground recently, and it makes me want to have him wear a helmet there as well.

I've towed children in a trailer like that with no helmet but for a total of 30min and perhaps half a dozen times.

If this is a routine transit then it's not a bad idea to optimize safety, and have the kids get used to it/get over it. If it's once every couple weeks, probably not worth the hassle of the helmet.

I expect a helmet to be required only in the case of a collision, as you're probably not going fast enough to do any damage if you had a sudden stop.

If you expect a small chance of a collision on that route it'd probably be wiser to forego the whole endeavor altogether as I don't think these trailers are really designed to take any kind of collision with a much larger vehicle. Or if this is already optimal transportation for you, make peace with the idea that perhaps the kids will get hurt if something bad happens. If having a helmet makes them upset and distracts you from potential road danger, then foregoing the helmet might be the safer option.

I've never been super comfortable pavement road riding by myself (vastly prefer gravel) so minimize road time as much as possible. I believe the chances of us being hit by a car on these roads is adjacent to zero. I agree that being hit by a car is pretty much game over regardless of roll cage etc.

I can see the helmet coming into play if I've forgotten to secure the 5-point hardness and there's a flip.

I do like taking them pretty regularly - perhaps 2x a week?

Great thoughts, thank you!

Oh I didn't consider a flip. Yes in that case a helmet would definitely help, even if they are harnessed.

What I think would happen is that we'd first get into a minor flip and perhaps I'd reconsider the whole idea of pulling them for a whole hour. It probably depends on the terrain because with 4 wheels and quite a bit of weight on the back, I don't really see that thing flipping, but I have a very casual experience with it.

Gotcha - FWIW the hour is cumulative (30 minutes there, then we hang out at the playground till they're tired, then we head back).

Getting it to flip would be really difficult in my experience. There's a flex joint that prevents it from doing so if the bike falls down, and I'm not exactly hopping curbs or speeding around corners.

Watching the anger boil off of this place. Is it an evaporative cooling trap? Weird sexual and violent video games have provided the same outlet for a neutered Japan. Is this happening here? Is this a trap?

I don't sense much anger tbh. I might see a post get downvoted because it's too left-wing or something, but all the responses are still usually polite even when they disagree. Even when someone's accusing the outgroup of destroying civilization it's done in a very literary way over multiple paragraphs, as opposed to what you see on twitter

I suppose it was mostly a reaction to kulak's posting of that Indian hate video. It has a lot of upvotes for a front page post.

All I saw of it was Self Made Human casting shade on Pakistan, the title didn't make it very appealing to actually click through.

Oh lol, I didn't even click it

Upvotes don't necessarily mean "Agree with everything stated in the post", especially, possibly, with posts by Kulak, who can be relied upon to post passionately held, longform, brave, and often objectionable posts on a periodic basis. I could be wrong and there are several people who buy into the Indian hate, but that's not my experience here.

Edit: People are free to hate whoever the hell they want. Not trying to suggest there's a Motte consensus.

What people do you hate?

There's only two things I can't stand in the world.

The French. Actually I don't hate any group, but there are one or two individuals out there that I have no use for. (I'm sure there would be more but something something Dunbar number.)

I'm not sure that I've noticed more anger than in other internet discussion spaces. There's more anger on my local Nextdoor about the proper prosocial speed to go in relation to the speed limit than most Motte threads.

Are you thinking of anything in particular?

I'd like to provide a response, but I legitimately don't know what you're talking about.

I watched that crazy racist indian video, it has a lot of upvotes here. It also has a gross thumbnail that I had to use my ad blocker to eventually remove. I guess I was just reflecting on that, and some of the more interesting posts I've come across here. There is some deep seeded anger at the world in many of them, including some kind of death drive judging by how many sort of hope some kind of disaster occurs to shake things up and make life interesting.

I watched that crazy racist indian video, it has a lot of upvotes here.

There were a lot of emotions involved there, but I don't think "anger" was a prominent one. Contempt and disgust, maybe, but those are distinct from anger.

There is some deep seeded anger at the world in many of them, including some kind of death drive judging by how many sort of hope some kind of disaster occurs to shake things up and make life interesting.

Are you sure you're not just thinking of that one Kulak post about decentralization? I don't think that's a particularly common sentiment here.

I mean, I do know the phenomenon you're talking about. 4chan was filled with that kind of posting in the early days of Covid. There are people here who are waiting for the robot god to rapture them up into post-singularity digital immortality, but that's fundamentally a constructive view of the future (bizarre as it may seem) rather than a destructive one.

At any rate I don't think it's as bizarre a fantasy as you make it out to be, particularly because people are able to compartmentalize and only imagine the cool and adventurous aspects of living in a post-apocalyptic hellscape rather than the mundane and dangerous ones.

Whomever made that video had a lot of anger. That is the only way they would spend weeks putting it together. People here upvoted his analysis of it, as well as the video, both of which do not contain a charitable view of the world.

I've been around the block. People are mostly good, if you meet them where they are; many are limited. The only true bad apples are the people that read "will to power" and "635 keys to manipulate all around you" strivers. Sometimes kind of interesting at first, but they suck, and I cut them out like a rotten piece of fruit. I'm always saddened when I watch them work on fresh prey.

This is not my experience, or my read of the 4chan video.

The 4chan video is sophisticated race-baiting and trolling of a sort I expect from the chans. It is specifically designed to incite anger, disgust and revulsion, an inflammatory piece of content in search of an audience. This is incredibly consistent with the standard 4chan MO, which largely boils down to trying to get a reaction. As this behavior is now widespread across the entire internet and it becomes harder and harder to shock people, they have to try harder to get a reaction.

To put it shortly: Gawker and their ilk turned trolling into a clickbait business. And then clickbait proved to be not really all that profitable, in the end. What are outrage merchants to do except escalate?

I don't think people are mostly good. I also think power law is universal and those who don't strive lose to those who do. People who don't think this is true have not lost hard enough yet, or are sufficiently isolated from the consequences of their losing that they don't notice those who are losing. I think the latter is one of the great tragedies of human civilization, and the more divorced from reality the elite or ruling caste get, the closer disaster gets (c.f. Marie Antoinette).

Why would anyone spend weeks or months cobbling this thing together for a reason other than hate and sadness? It contributes only negativity and disgust and crude evil to the world. There is no money in it like for Gawker etc...

What does losing even mean in today's world? As you say, "natural selection" has been well done away with for a long time, and good riddance, or odds are neither one of us would be here today having this conversation based on historical child mortality rates. Is there really something wrong with insulating humanity from the sheer brutality of gross nature? We should strive for that in all things, with overcoming death itself as our crowning achievement.

Side note; very few "popular" uprisings al-la the French Revolution are what you think they are, it is almost always elites and the sub-elites trading places. Here is a great podcast on revolutions the world over. https://open.spotify.com/show/05lvdf9T77KE6y4gyMGEsD

The only true bad apples are the people that read “will to power”

The Nietzsche book? I highly recommend his work if you haven’t read it.

Anyway if you think this place is a uniquely wretched hive of moral degeneracy, why are you still posting here?

I do think that there are perhaps missing outlets for anger in our society. But I don't really know.

I think all text posting tends towards hysteria because exaggeration is one of the ways to get your point across without being able to moderate tone, volume, body language etc.

Most people here are essentially smart, relatively normal people who lead mostly good lives but have minor to substantial issues with how their societies are run. But I wouldn’t say it’s one of the angrier places on the internet, the board probably tends too old for that anyway.

Unfortunately exaggeration is a very efficient way to burn through the charity of people who disagree with you :/

What strategies do Mottizens follow for a good social life?

Much has been written about the so-called “loneliness epidemic”.

Pew documents the decline in the number of close friends:

There’s an age divide in the number of close friends people have. About half of adults 65 and older (49%) say they have five or more close friends, compared with 40% of those 50 to 64, 34% of those 30 to 49 and 32% of those younger than 30. In turn, adults under 50 are more likely than their older counterparts to say they have between one and four close friends.

Similarly, Fast Company reports the decline of social clubs:

In his 2000 book Bowling Alone, Robert Putman makes the case that in addition to all of the social changes in America, technology played a big role in encouraging people to leave clubs. Television and the internet, for instance, encouraged people to spend their leisure time on their own, rather than with other people. Social media allows people to feel like they are in a kind of community, but they don’t actually have deep relationships with them.

I chose that excerpt because I think it’s closest to the root cause. People back then had to choose between socialization and boredom. Now we have very good solo entertainment. Many would agree that something important has been lost in the exchange.

I’ve tried to fight this trend in my own life, with limited success. Even if you personally resist, your friends still need to choose to hang out with you, over, say, bingeing the latest TV show. As the decline of social clubs demonstrates, we social-seeking individuals now have fewer options.

One potential option is to embrace technology and socialize on the internet. I spend so much time on Twitter because I like talking to people.

What do you guys think?

I socialize online. It's the easiest place to find lonely people in need of love and devotion, and those are things I give freely in spades. It's not hard to find the people who just need a friend, or a lover, or a confidant, and its not hard to drastically improve the emotional health of those people.

You can typically form bonds as strong as you want them to be among such an audience, as long as you maneuver slowly and gently as not to spook them.

It might be because I live in a city, but I've found the easiest way to socialise is just to invite people round to mine.

They enjoy not having to plan or host. I enjoy not having to travel or spend too much money.

Board games, film nights, drinks, house parties, dinner parties. I've found that people are looking for an excuse to meet up in person. If you build host it, they will come.

Having a girlfriend or wife who you live with also helps. I've outsourced a lot of my friendship maintenance to her. Plus our joint friendship group is larger than our individual ones.

I’ve often thought that a part of the issue is that there are so few cheap/free entertainment options. If you don’t want to just hang out and watch tv at a friends place, or play a tabletop game, you’re generally going to have to spend $30 a person to go out on the cheap.

My strategy is being so likeable that my friends insist on dragging me out to places even when my natural inclination is to nap at home and play video games when I'm not working or studying.

Sadly most of said friends have scattered to the four corners of the globe, but I'm moving too and don't really have issues making friends, though that gets difficult when you don't have an environment like college where you're forced to spend hours together and suffer through the same shit until you end up trauma-bonding. Most of the doctors at my workplace are (or now were) more senior to me, and the people at my level too busy with their own exams to have much in the way of a social life.

But I look forward to starting afresh, I don't have issues with making friends, and my sadness was mostly from what felt like Sisyphean struggles with no clear end in sight rather than because I miss human company too much. Said boulder has now reached a nice comfortable plateau, so I hope I can get out and see the scenery and drink my sorrows away.

And of course I'm here on The Motte because there are people I enjoy talking with, it's not a parasocial relationship because I genuinely end up, if not bosom friends, close enough that there plenty of people here I can hit up when either they or I are around.

During the times when I did have a good social life, I participated in a lot of church activities.

Right now, I'm a bit overwhelmed with young children, a gestating baby, a full time job, on Saturdays we go on a family outing and possibly shopping, maybe see another family we're friends with; on Sundays we're mostly tired. Now it's spring, and the weather is finally warm, so we've started getting the yard in order a bit, and should work on some brush cutting and assembling a swing set someone gave us. Sometime we'll probably have enough energy to go back to church; I like the people well enough, there are soup suppers, ladies teas and what not going on that I could participate in.

Edit: Something else that occurs to me is that many of the good social situations I've found myself in have behind them a full time pastor, his wife, perhaps a deacon or other designated minister, and several organizationally capable women who do not have young children or a full time job (perhaps retired or a former housewife without much of a job). The ladies tea I could attend is run by an older but not yet elderly woman with grown children, who makes a dozen beautiful tea foods every month for fellowship purposes. Or educational settings with actual staff getting food for ongoing get-togethers that keep going as the student population changes.

People have noted before that these roles are undervalued in most modern communities. People mostly won't tith to support full time ministers, the "two income trap" will force women to work full time outside the home, and everyone will come home to reheat a frozen meal together, so there's less social infrastructure in place for anyone else to participate in.

The two things I try to do most weeks to get me away from screens and into the real world are go to my running club and go to bar trivia with friends. I added board games with friends this year and it's been a nice additional plus. As a general introvert, that set of things pretty well suffices to make it feel like I'm not isolated.

I'll say a few things.

-1 is having a family is far more detrimental to my ability to socialize than any and all technology. In my entire childhood, I don't recall my parents really ever doing anything social without it being related to their children. I at least hang out with friends about once a week. But with 3 kids, that's a ton!

My point here is that I think 'too much technology's is the wrong issue. It's young people not starting families that's changed. Any comparison between what single people in their 20s-30s are doing today vs 1985, is a weird comparison of we're not considering that they were having and raising kids in 1985.

-2. Have siblings close to you in age. Live nearby them as an adult. Built in social club. If you didn't get that, do it for your kids for fucks sake. Build a strong close knit family life, and provide whatever financial support you can to allow your kids to stay in the community as an adult.

-3. Get involved in your church. There's not a lot of substitute that get you a group of people who share your core values, orient their lives and worldviews around those values, ground them in a physical place visites weekly and build social clubs around this.

If you're a young adult get involved. My closest adult friends I met though young adult activities while single.

-4. Be a conservative, or more specifically a conservationist. Find something you believe in preserving and get involved with other people who want to preserve it. Maybe being an progressive activist can give the same thing here. I'm not sure.

-5. Run clubs.

I’m actually in a pretty similar situation.

Most of my days are spent with my coworkers (mostly all men) and then my wife, daughters, and nanny.

Next most time spent after that is with my family and at my tennis club.

People I would consider close personal friends I only spend time with maybe once or twice a month.

I’ve tried going to church a few times but it’s hard to get started. I’m a Catholic and it’s been a long time since my grandparents would take me with them as a kid.

What strategies do Mottizens follow for a good social life?

Creating and following a tradition. For over 12 years my friends and I made a weekly habit of meeting at a specific neighborhood bar every tuesday evening. Not everyone is there every week, sometimes life gets in the way, but being there is the expected default, and we can assume we're busy those evenings and try not to schedule anything else then.

Sure, once a week is nothing compared to the socializing people used to do, but most people I mention this tradition to seem to envy it.

How did it get started?

Nothing special really, my friends and I were mostly living in or around the same neighborhood, the bar in question was opened by a friend of ours and was the only pleasant place in the neighborhood, so it made for an obvious meeting place. Tuesday evenings were convenient for everyone the first few weeks, and after that we were just explicit in calling it our weekly tuesdays hangout. I think what helped is being explicit about it, and doing it on an "opt-out" rather than "opt-in" basis. There's also an open invitation to any friends, SO of the regulars. Anyone who wants to be there is welcome, but from the start we were already a stable core group of relatively mature and easygoing men, so there was little risk of personality clashes or drama spoiling it.

All my (new) friends come from work, business, or hobbies, either first or second hand.
Hobby friends are better because you always have something to do or talk about. Vaccinating a hundred animals together is a better bonding experience than just "hanging out."

When I was little I made friends and even a boyfriend on the Internet, but it's been years since I've started any lasting relationships that way.
Meeting up with people from a forum used to be normal, but I cant imagine doing that with my Twitter mutuals, no offense to @aryancunnyrapist1488. Maybe because forums used to be for a specific hobby rather than an Everything social media site.

What is the best way to block upvote counts? I can't find it in site settings. That said... the site settings do support custom CSS, so- I think the best way is going to be to set the vote elements to render blank using css. That should blank them out anywhere you're logged in.

Right now I'm using U-Block origin. I use this line:
##button.m-0.p-0.nobackground.caction.btn > .score
to target the comment score elements.

Ublock origin is very nice. I also use it to block things like youtube shorts, adds, and other unnecessary GUI elements on any number of sites. So I do recommend it even if there's a better solution for TheMotte in particular. But I'm curious what other people think. And also whether I'm missing a settings button that disables them... It does seem like an odd thing not to have in the settings unless its an intentional exclusion... and then that might imply that they don't want me blocking them myself either. I'll be surprised if the answer is that it's simply never been requested but- That is another possibility.

P.S. Some may notice that this is a reversal of my previous personal policy regarding vote-counts. This is true. This new policy gives me less attunement to community opinion, but it also appears to reduce my social anxiety,

I mean, I don't think me and the other mods particularly care (in the sense it's something to disapprove of) if you don't want to see your own upvote count. It's an intentional design decision, and we don't fuzz votes and do show exact vote counts unlike Reddit, so it's not entirely a legacy thing.

I consider them a sign of quality when I see high numbers (of course there's noise and partisanship, but surprisingly little of it on this site), and I certainly get a dopamine boost when a comment of mine is appreciated. I think it incentivizes good behavior quite a bit, given that we have a rather civil and even handed userbase, both active and lurking. Most of us here are because we like what this forum tries to achieve, and upvote for quality even when we disagree. Well, mostly.

But it you don't like seeing upvote counts and really want an option, raise it on the github, though I think it's niche enough that it's unlikely to be a priority anytime soon. We keep up votes hidden for 24 hours anyway, from others and our own users, to avoid feedback spirals.

My “medical cannabis” prescription was approved. I’m not a huge stoner but I don’t like feeling like a criminal and, while the penalties for possession in the UK are very low (as far as I understand it you just get a warning and the cops confiscate it) I think it’s embarrassing to buy drugs like a sixteen year old when you’re approaching thirty. I also want to avoid smoking if I can avoid it but the vapes available on the UK illicit market are pretty much all dangerous synthetic cannabinoids where you have no idea what’s in them; the only way to get safe vape oil is legally.

The process was very straightforward. You have to have tried treatment for whatever condition (anxiety, ADHD, back pain, Long Covid, whatever) before, so I said I needed it for ADHD because the medication had not satisfactorily resolved my symptoms. This was indeed true. They checked my medical history (I think this is to detect schizophrenics who can’t have it), had one consultation and then approved it.

Interestingly, while my ADHD diagnosis consultation to get lisdexamfetamine cost £900 or something like it and took an hour, the medical weed one only cost £200 and took like ten minutes. After this you order what you want from an online store and it gets delivered to your house.

One interesting thing I’ve found is how few people in Britain even know that legal weed is a thing here at all. On the subreddit it’s common to see stories of police raiding people’s houses or even of people being fired before those involved are informed of the person’s prescription. It’s been legal since 2018 but is only available privately, not on the NHS.

I think weed is particularly dangerous for young people because it kills motivation. That said, as a gainfully employed adult, I find it strictly preferable to alcohol for most occasions because of the lack of hangover and lack of calories. Booze is more fun, almost always, but I’ve been more alert, have found waking up easier and have done more in the morning since replacing drinking at dinner with it (on perhaps 4/7 nights a week).

Huh. I didn't know this either..

To be fair, I never had any issues grabbing some, given how little the cops gave a shit and how unabashedly I've seen people smoke it in popular public spaces in London.

Guess I can try that if I really want to, but I'm not the biggest fan of the devil's lettuce though I did discover that CBD vapes, which are not supposed to be psychoactive, still get you high if you do enough of it.* I don't know why, but I suspect that even the small amount of THC they contain adds up when you're really puffing.

Well, as a psych trainee, I expect I'd have even fewer issues grabbing a hold of some, though the UK doesn't seem to have the same degree of medical fraternity or sense of professional courtesy that compels most doctors here to either waive or discount their fees for another doctor.

*However, CBD vapes taste awful.

UK doctors are banned or at least very strongly discouraged from writing prescriptions for family members iirc, something unusual even in many other Western countries.

It's not banned, but it's something that's frowned upon by the GMC, I can't really speak as to the degree of enforcement, but my impression is that they usually don't cause a ruckus unless you hand them narcotics or benzos and so on.

I think it's retarded myself, in India everyone accepts one of the perks of being a doctor (or having one in the family), is the massive benefit it gives you someone that is on call for you, invested in your welfare, and willing to take your issues even more seriously than is the norm. I have never seen it cause any conflict of interest or other things the GMC wrings their hands about. Thankfully I don't have all that much in the way of very close family left in the UK, so it's largely moot.

But UK doctors are only now pushing back against how hard they've been cucked, maybe they'll get around to this eventually. After all, I doubt lawyers get in trouble for representing family in court do they? (Never checked)

I got involved in an argument on the Nextdoor platform with someone who's working on opening a cannabis and dog gift shop in our very small local shopping area, that currently only has three things in it, despite the nearest town (6 min drive) already having about 8 dispensaries. Mostly, I want an ordinance saying they can't have giant green flags in an otherwise beige setting, huge leaves on their signs, and other attention grabbing street side signage. My opinions aren't very strong on the substance itself, other than I tried it a couple of times and it did nothing for me. I don't care for getting drunk, either, but drink a cocktail occasionally for the aesthetic presentation.

I was a big user for a couple of years here, after we got full legalization. Saying it kills motivation is right; I wouldn't say it does it directly, but indirectly by making you boring and okay with being bored. I've mostly stopped not because I made a choice to stop, but because my wife is now living with me, she doesn't use it and I don't think it would be fair for me to be so boring to be around when she's there. When she's not there, I usually have other things I want to do that would bore her but entertain me so I don't really need to make myself okay with boredom.

Maybe that's why I didn't really care for it. I already prefer very low stimulation, and things like meditation sitting alone in the dark.

Every now and then, I'm reminded of how absolutely ridiculous the treatment of "medical cannabis" really is. While I can buy that there are a variety of maladies where people are able to mitigate symptoms by using weed, these often seem to be along the same lines as someone saying that their arthritis bothers them less after a nice dram of whisky in the evening. Strictly true, they're not lying, but not really something that rises to the level of needing to come with the trappings and verbiage of medicalization. There's something both hilarious and depressing about governments needing to maintain the facade that marijuana bans were actually a pretty good idea and very justified while also providing a trivial path to workaround the bans and get weed anyway. That this has become a somewhat normal position for politicians to state openly that they support "medical marijuana" but are against recreational use is just one of the absolute dumbest aspects of American politics despite there being a veritable see of stupid things to choose from.

Obviously the vast majority of medical marijuana users have no actual reason for using beyond wanting to get high. But to the extent that medical marijuana replaces opiates for chronic pain, this is a net positive. In all other ways, except maybe for the like three people who actually have the kind of cancer it works on, it’s a bad thing.

Disclaimer- I don’t like pot. I hate the smell of it, I find potheads annoying and contemptible in a way that alcoholics don’t affect me, and I Just Don’t Like Seeing It. If potheads would smoke weed in their living rooms I probably wouldn’t care very much, any more than the bottle of whiskey a night drinkers at home.

And I think that’s the real crux of my objections to weed. It’s the inability of our society to say, ok, this is a bad thing we don’t approve of, but it’s not worth really cracking down on. If it became legal advertising for it would be everywhere, public places would stink like it constantly, and heavy users would get a platform for bitching about discrimination against them. I don’t want those things, and they’re what happened in other states that legalized the stuff. I think there’s probably also some technical arguments about driving, and adolescent use, but they’re not my real reason.

But circling back to my second paragraph- our present society doesn’t recognize ‘stop celebrating things I hate, it’s really annoying and offensive, just get it out of my face’ as a legitimate complaint. There’s something missing there; if I went to a mosque and set up a booth entitled ‘Mohammed was a pedophile’, I would have no right to complain about getting my ass kicked and being physically removed(I’m given to understand that radical Muslims in the US tend to not actually go to mosque very often, so I wouldn’t expect a beheading). But that’s a general principle, and the need to promote things I hate is one of those annoying parts of modern society.

I think in the US we've managed to find this balance with cigarettes. Smoking is perfectly legal, but banned in most places where non-smokers would be forced to encounter it and advertising is highly restricted. I am a big fan of weed but I see no reason why anyone would need to consume it publicly nor any reason why we need to tolerate garish advertising for it.

I agree, but it's because liberal societies struggle to just say some things are bad but allowed (or tacitly tolerated). For centuries, this was the default treatment (at varying times) of a huge number of different things, from gambling and prostitution to homosexuality and adultery. At varying times the acts themselves may have been illegal or legal depending on social mores, but enforcement was often rare (or waxed and waned) and the idea wasn't really to prevent anyone at all from doing these things, but to keep them underground. Society should discourage gambling whether it is or isn't legal, that's the big issue with Draft Kings ads aimed at teenagers during football games.

A similar change happened with consent-based frameworks for sex, which have caused huge problems since the sexual revolution since they either make highly unethical behavior technically legal (in which case liberal society encourages it, which led to the worst excesses of the sexual revolution), or (as has happened more recently) they lead to the state flipping and becoming the sex police and handing down questionable sentences based upon limited evidence, as with Title IX trials. Actual adultery seems like one of the last areas where (most) people can agree it's extremely shitty but not a crime.

We struggle with the concept of legal self-harm. Medical cannabis is no more justifiable than medical alcohol was during prohibition, but the fact that the latter was a thing has become a joke about enforcement all the same. In some ways it even reminds me of the Canada euthanasia debate, is the state capable of legalizing medical euthanasia without encouraging it? These are tough questions.

It's really interesting to me that someone could post regularly on this board and yet still enjoy cannabis. I'm envious of your mental robustness tbh.

A strong plurality of people posting here could fairly be called "anxious overthinkers" - the board is a bilge pump for excess thought, and eg expressing any worry whatsoever about AI risk (whether the worry is grounded in real things or not) ought to be a criterion for anxiety diagnoses.

I smoked a fair amount of weed in my teens/early 20s, took plenty of other recreational drugs, and a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious. Weed to me now is solely a tool I would use if for some reason I wanted to give myself a panic attack. Maybe I'm a little more dramatic in my dislike than normal, but it's very normal to find weed unenjoyable from mid-20s onward.

So what's your secret? Youthful brain? No prior history of smoking? Iron resolve?

I actually would quite like to like weed again, and agree with the demerits of drink that you outlined - so if there's One Weird Trick you can share, please do so.

a near-universal thing I've heard from peers with a similar profile is that around age 25, they started to find weed disagreed with them. Specifically, it makes them/me really unpleasantly anxious.

Exactly the same for me. Smoked more often than is healthy for several years as a teenager/early-20, for a couple of those years basically daily, and always enjoyed it. Stopped completely for a year or two and now a single puff will trigger a panic attack. Did not realize this was a common pattern. Would love to know why this happens.

Because weed builds up psychotic potentials in your subconscious. Be thankful it only results in a temporary panic for you (so far).

I have always loved weed, though as I've gotten older the side effects have gotten more intense. Same as others already mentioned:

  • High Heart Rate (same as alcohol)
  • Difficulty being alert right after waking (noticeable, but far superior to alcohol)
  • Anxiety (Worse than alcohol)

I typically create my own "Green Dragon" tincture. This allows precise dosing, eliminates damage to your lungs either through burning flower or vaping, it's easier to socialize with people who haven't tried weed before, and is a great excuse to make a citrus cocktail for consumption.

Like others mentioned, just taking a lower dose can be almost as fun with far fewer side effects. I'm an extremely cheap date at this point, and go through maybe a quarter ounce a year when partaking 1-2 times per week.

Biggest piece of advice is to control the dose. It's like alcohol. If I pound six shots in a row I'm probably going to throw up and feel like shit the next day. If I drink two glasses of wine over the course of four hours I'm going to feel great and have no ill effects. Unsurprisingly weed works the same way.

If I overdo it and get anxious then I practice mindfulness. I find it's easier to do this because you know the anxiety isn't "real" so you can sort of go "I know why I'm feeling this way, I'm just going to accept it and observe it instead of fighting it." I feel practicing mindfulness in this way has helped me manage anxiety better when sober as well.

I'm the same - I enjoyed it for a couple of years in college and then it just became a panic attack trigger. I'm always amazed that some people are able to use it as a treatment for anxiety.

Similar experience but I always thought this was due to the types of weed commonly sold changing

I never smoked much weed as a teenager, I typically refused it even at parties unless very drunk, certainly never smoked by myself or just with a few friends, so maybe I had a puff or two 3-4 times a year between the ages of 15 and 18? Between 18 and 25 I pretty much didn’t smoke at all, so I only really started as an adult. I’ve also never smoked cigarettes or mixed tobacco and weed (which is how most British people consume it), but I’m not sure if that has any effect on this.

The only time I’ve ever experienced the anxiety spiral was on one of the few occasions I tried cocaine as a teenager. I get moderately anxious (palpitations etc) on very high caffeine doses and once or twice on ADHD medication, which I no longer take (as discussed in last week’s thread). I suppose that makes a recommendation difficult. Do you find the anxiety sets in very quickly? Does it happen after a small amount of THC or only if you get stoned?

I’m an extremely neurotic person. The last time we did one of those five factor personality quizzes on the friday fun thread I was literally 99th percent neuroticism, so I’d say I’m pretty anxious. But weed calms me down, clears out my head, makes me think of ‘nothing’ (or just what I’m doing in the moment, whether it’s watching TV or making dinner or talking). I do think it’s different to alcohol or LSD which have a much stronger happiness effect (I’ve never been a sad drunk), weed doesn’t make you happy. But it does clear my head. What’s your experience?

I stopped because after a while it started making my heart beat really fast. It always elevated my heart rate somewhat, but initially it was more like 90-120 beats per minute. Later on I would take one puff and it would immediately go to 200-250 BPM. That just doesn’t seem healthy from a cardiac standpoint.

On the thing about motivation, I never learnt to source weed or how to make a joint so that I do not become a pothead. In fact I do this for all intoxicants on purpose. So I do not know how to make any cocktails or de seed the weed my friends have or source any other things since I know that I will end up being an addict.

What is medical weed like as compared to the kind you can get on the streets? is it harder or does it make you sleepier? I have never tried that or vape pens with weed in them because of health hazards, anyways, I can never smoke anything ever again since my throat is super sensitive, I will say that weed is quite fun.

The only concern I have with intoxicants is habitual usage and it causing mental issues, since many people end up being functioning addicts who see a noticeable dip in their baseline sense of happiness. The chick I was into is a cokehead who went from default happy to depressed after a bunch of her hookups got her ghosted.

Also for adhd, do try out meditation, worked wonders for me.

What is medical weed like as compared to the kind you can get on the streets? is it harder or does it make you sleepier?

tl;dr: they're the same weed.

Longer: The effects depend on the strain. Ratios of THC:CBD in prescriptions appear to be up to the doctor's discretion rather than legally mandated, and in some states medical weed is taxed less (or not at all) compared to recreational purchases from the dispensary.

Street weed isn't always homegrown, you'll often find that someone in a legal state sourced your flower/cartridge/edible from a dispensary. Before recreational weed was legal in my state, my dealer got their supply from a friend with a medical card in California. I've also bought from a friend who grew it in their garden. The point is that "medical" and "recreational" and "street" are largely just rule-based distinctions about how you got it, with the additional qualifier that dispensary weed has some assurance that you're actually getting the weed you want.

Sourcing street weed (or drugs in general) tends to be a matter of "knowing a guy who knows a guy" and who'll vouch for you not being a snitch. I met my dealer via my roommate, who I drank with regularly on a dry campus. Something something #networking.

Obvious caveat: my perspective is US based, I'm not familiar with international weed legalities. I've also stuck to dispensary weed once it was legalized in my area because convenience.

If you had coke those hookups could have all been with you. Embrace the chemicals. You don't have to use them, but you should understand why people enjoy them and like to party. I mean if you're on ADHD meds you already know that drugs can be good in the right dose.

lol coke is amazing though I am afraid that doing it a bit too many times will make me addicted. I love intoxicants, this is why I stay away from them unless I have friends or a pretty girl around. I do wish to try something psychedelic soon.

I am not on adhd meds, they did not do much, and meditation somehow seems to work better with me.

Also that girl is fucking weird. I would have hooked up with her had I met her irl but cut contact as soon as I realised that she would see other dudes. This was in 2021 march, way before I learnt about PUA and started doing the same.

Well yeah PUA works, I have two friends that took it all the way and did very well, they have worked into a marriage and a serial monogamist at this point, but that never would have happened if they didn't "get it" first. It is upsetting to me that it works so well, but I am a romantic at heart haha.

I am confused that you just said

"Also for adhd, do try out meditation, worked wonders for me. and

am not on adhd meds, they did not do much, and meditation somehow seems to work better with me."

Which is it man?

It did well for me tinitially but petered off quite bad afterwards, I felt a much higher sense of sustained relief because of a regular meditation practise than with meds. I do acknowledge that i miscommunicated this stuff so sorry lol. I wanted to encourage others to try out meds since they help, they helped me but in the long run, I found meditation to be the ideal thing.

I was a romantic too but I realised that there are plenty of fun things I can learn from ladies and for that I will have to keep romance on the side. At least that is the mentality I have since I know that I will get married in the future.

PUA is awesome, especially for people like me who were low on confidence and all, changed my life. I do not have a large lay count rn but I shall soon.

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