FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
And every gimmick hungry yob
Digging gold from rock n roll
Grabs the mic to tell us
he'll die before he's sold
But I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
In this edition of pissant goals I'm working towards, I'm taking my first step towards my long term plan of finishing a century ride on my bike. I haven't gone much farther than 20mi in a single ride before, so my plan is over the upcoming months to set goals of first a metric half century, then an imperial half century, then a metric century, then a full century.
This weekend I'm going to attempt a metric half, down at the Jersey shore. This was where I had previously done my eponymous five hour marathon to settle a bet, in the early or late off-season the shore is ideal for self-planned endurance events in that it is A) Empty, B) Pretty, C) mild weather-wise, D) Relevant flair there's a Wawa every so often that is open 24 hours a day I think there's seven on my intended 50km route, creating natural aid stations where I can get a drink or a Snickers or a band-aid rather than packing all that stuff in, E) It's easy to convince my wife to go there with me for a couple days, F) Navigation is easy as the barrier islands are very long and narrow with mostly grid-layouts, so as long as you know where the sun or the water is it's pretty much impossible to get lost, and finally for cycling it is F) flat. Worst case scenario and I crash or injure myself, I call my wife to come get me. Best case scenario, I call her to meet me at the end for our brunch reservation in Cape May.
It's funny, because I know that this is a truly irrelevant distance for anyone who is even a modestly serious cyclist, but it is also a reasonable challenge for me in that I haven't attempted a distance this long before. I'm excited to try something I've never done before, with what I find to be the right degree of planning and preparation, which is to say less than most people would recommend but enough that I think I can get it done safely. If I do ok on 35 miles, I might try to do a 50 mile next month, but after that I'll have to spend the winter working on getting faster. I've yet to really fail on endurance anywhere, but I struggle to keep any tempo over ~60 for very long, which limits my ability to climb and go very fast, and I think I'll need to sustain 18mph to credibly finish a century. Any slower than that and I don't think I'll be able to stay in the saddle long enough to finish. Then I'll target a metric century in early spring, and a full century in late spring, or if that doesn't work out this time next year. Or I might actually seek out a real event for a century ride.
I suppose I'll need a new username if I finish, but SevenHourCentury just doesn't sound right.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
Oh it's absolutely effective for calorie restriction without counting too much or overly punishing yourself in social situations ("I don't eat after 8pm" is an easier thing to explain than "I don't eat a long list of foods based on a logic you may or may not agree with").
I just find it amusing that "skip breakfast and avoid snacking late at night" is like grocery-store-checkout women's magazine tier advice, classic weightwatchers stuff. While "I do intermittent fasting on a strict schedule" is optimization bro Huberman-pilled advice.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
14hr ago
Not to critique our Gungan friend, but 8pm isn't an early dinner.
Like, 10am-4pm would probably be the longest window that is really intermittent fasting, and it's more classically 12pm-4pm. Once it gets to 12pm-6pm you're just skipping breakfast and not snacking, any bigger window than that you're barely doing anything unusual.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
18hr ago
Congratulations! May you be an example for us all!
I do find it funny/trendy when people label "eating a late breakfast" as intermittent fasting.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
"Young" in this case is 18-40, adults working in a professional capacity.
I ran into this in my local Republican party, I was invited to join the Young Republicans and I laughed, saying I'm 30 and I'm married and I have a mortgage, I think I'm just a regular Republican. They said oh no it goes up to 40, and I was flabbergasted.
Is there anyone who thinks the Young Republicans is an important organization, and not a kind of hanger-on group that doesn't really achieve much if anything? It strikes me as an organization that exists within the party structure so that it doesn't not exist, and hierarchy-wise it gives you a few sinecures for minor apparatchiks working their way through the party, but I don't think the Young Republicans carry any real power.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Notably, Czechs and Slovaks retain the right of return, or just free travel, through each other's countries.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
What really used to get me were the diminutives, which are not intuitive to an English speaker. Ilya doesn't naturally turn Ilushka in my mind.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
So...is there any reporting whatsoever on the giant explosion that killed at least sixteen at an explosives factory in Tennessee?
The latest I can find on it seems to be treating it as most likely an industrial accident, but secondarily a "criminal" matter. The company website appears to have been turned into a flat landing page about the accident.
The early-morning Friday explosion at Accurate Energetic Systems, a manufacturing plant for military and demolition explosives, was a “devastating blast,” Davis said, noting responders were able to secure the site by late morning. The detonation – which was so large that it registered as a 1.6 magnitude earthquake, according to data from U.S. Geological Survey – left charred debris and mangled vehicles across the area. The blast set off smaller explosions, local officials said, and shook homes as far as 15 miles away while scattering debris over half a square mile. Accurate Energetic Systems called the incident at its facility a “tragic accident,” in a Friday statement. Davis described the event as one of “the most devastating scenes” he has ever seen. “It’s hell,” Davis told reporters Friday evening. “It’s hell on us. It’s hell on everybody involved.”
The NYT is treating it as an accident, headlining their work "Detonation Underscores Inherent Dangers of Manufacturing Explosives." This appears to be back page news across the country. I saw it reported in the paper, and a passing mention on CNBC.
But what shocks me is that the right wing news organizations aren't looking into it! Quickly glancing at the websites of FoxNews, OANN, and Breitbart at noon today, I didn't see one of them mentioning it on their front page. Instead headlines were devoted to such pressing issues as some kind of drummed up urban conflict storyline, a state department employee who mishandled classified documents, and Charlie Kirk. Breitbart in particular has their top article: Exposed: The CCP’s United Front Network in America’s Heartland, Part III engaging in extensive conspiracy theories about CCP influence in the United States. But WHY AREN'T THEY TALKING ABOUT THE REALLY REALLY LIKELY RUSSIAN SABOTAGE THAT JUST HAPPENED IN TENNESSEE KILLING 16 AMERICAN CITIZENS AND DESTROYING AN INDUSTRIAL DEFENSE CONCERN?
It seems really bleedingly obvious to me. We have the facts: that Trump announced publicly that he would offer targeting help to Ukraine and is thinking about adding Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine's quiver. Then, not a few days later, a defense plant in Tennessee blows up. Is it not clear that the latter is likely to be a consequence of the former? Russia covertly blows up a defense plant, to tell the USA "we can touch you, don't think we can't."
I might be tinfoil-hatting here. But what's making me tinfoil hat is that nobody else is tinfoil hatting! Even the people who are normally tinfoil hatting! The New York Times and the TurboLib MSNBC contingent has been seeing Russia's wicked hand everywhere since 2016, and more than ever since the war in the Ukraine began. Why are they ignoring the likelihood that Russia killed 16 American citizens? OANN sees wicked foreigners behind every corner seeking to undermine America, why aren't they at least floating the possibility that a foreign saboteur just undermined America's industrial strength? Breitbart doesn't have high standards for proof when reporting on possible foreign conspiracies, and they aren't saying anything!
What's going on here? Am I crazy?
The only explanations I can come to are that it was the Russians, and that's why it isn't being speculated in the news that it was the Russians. Either that the government is shutting everyone up quietly to avoid panic. Or that it was the Russians and they have enough pull with Breitbart to keep them quiet. Because I genuinely can't believe I'm not seeing speculation about this. Talk me off the ledge here guys.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_genocide?wprov=sfti1
I'll confess to knowing nothing about the Bulgarian case, and I'm not going to insult you by immediately researching it as pretending to. But the Turkish-Greek split was not without atrocities on either side.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
My impression was that the pure Jewish birth rate was actually stronger than the Israeli Arab birthrate these days, though then you zoom in closer and it gets into different categories of Jew, though then there's an intra Jewish genocide question, idk it all gets pretty complicated and I'm not sure what we're talking about at a certain point.
But there's no viable contiguous Palestinian state that can be drawn without evicting large numbers of Jews, who show no evidence of wanting to go peacefully. The resources and transit aren't there. You can make a retarded botched abortion of a statelet, but I'm not sure that will really solve the problem anymore.
So you're left with somebody getting kicked out of the place they live.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
Where has it been done successfully and without significant atrocities performed?
People mostly point to Europe, while ignoring the significant violent ethnic cleansing operations against Germans et al post WWII, and the whole context of WWII preceding it, and the EU framework that followed. India-Pakistan certainly wasn't peacefully, and still not entirely successfully. So, where?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
There is no realistic two state solution that does not involve ethnic cleansing of Arabs and Jews both. The remaining areas allotted and allowed to Palestinians are so marginal and split up by settlers that there is no contiguous state possible without expelling large numbers of Jews. Otherwise a Palestinian state is unworkable and unviable, certainly not prosperous.
A one state solution is the only non-genocidal solution on offer. Recognize Palestine all they want, the West will lack the stomach to murder the Jewish settlers who drive wedges through any possible Palestine.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Recommend me any outside the box interpretations I can bring to book club to look smart l.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
IMO this is likely the peak of Palestinian sympathizing as a media/cultural force.
You want to get out at the top, not ride your bit down.
Pre 10/7, Palestinian hard-liners found themselves being abandoned by their long term backers with no realistic path forward. Free Palestine on the western left was becoming a really niche bumper sticker, like Free Tibet or Zapatista tier. Arab powers were showing a willingness to make peace with Israel without reference to Palestine or even the Arab population of Israel. The Abraham Accords were a major step towards permanent defeat of the Palestinian cause. Israel was looking like a normal country with a thriving economy and no problems which would keep international investors out.
The goal of 10/7 realistically was to reopen the conflct, draw Israel into fighting, denormalize Israeli life and economics, isolate Israel on the international stage. At some point you've maxed out the effectiveness of using dead babies for propaganda, and further dead babies have a diminishing marginal return. And at some point, the destruction wrought onto Gaza is net negative for Hamas, the loss of life undermines their ability to govern and rebuild.
So at some number of dead kids and world outrage, they'll cash out and make peace-noises.
Or at least I think a lasting Israeli victory is the most likely to maximize happiness in the region for the Palestinian population if they cease agitating.
The only realistic solution that doesn't involve ethnic cleansing is one state, or effectively one state, containing most of the current populations. How one achieves that without destroying what makes Israel worthwhile is the problem.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Does the Charlie Kirk thing have legs? It's been the Current Thing in our newspapers since before the body was cold.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
To attempt an actual answer
So wait, what system do you prefer or think is best?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
You know, you're right I didn't know that.
But there is a significant difference. On a quick look, only between 15% and 35% of taxpayers in UK, France, Germany get a tax refund at the end of the year. So it's a pretty large difference in scale.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
I wonder if that would improve or ruin my use of the book as my "read a bit before bed" book, the whiskey might cause me to pass out faster by that ruleset, but the hangover would be killer.
I think any profiler should start from a place of sympathy with their subject, even if it is ultimately a hit piece, the story will hit harder if you start by looking at them as a hero. Even a biography of Stalin or Mao is better if you start by looking at them as on Campbell's Hero's Journey and then show them going off the rails, show them becoming a villain. If you start out hating them, it kind of undermines the story. The closest he gets is the kind of standard shitlib "oh he was kind of sad and pathetic and poor before he joined the army" thing.
Particularly I guffawed when he described Delta Force selection ending with a "40 miles ruck that would turn a normal man's ligaments into gelatin." Which, I'm sure I wouldn't pass half the stuff they have to do there, and I'm sure it would suck, but 40 miles isn't gonna kill you. But the guy just clearly doesn't do anything.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
This is my third or fourth attempt to read this book. In the past, I've gotten a few hundred pages deep only to fizzle out as it didn't go anywhere in particular. It's incredibly difficult to read, not so much because of the footnotes or the pure length as because of the structure of the story.
I'd previously enjoyed DFW's shorter work, and to some extent I think Infinite Jest is just a really large short story collection that links together in intricate ways to produce a bigger work. A lot of the chapters, or sub-chapter units of the book, really constitute stories or vignettes or essays of their own, and their significance to any broader plot (indeed the existence of any broader plot) only becomes significant later. DFW's brilliance in writing essays and short stories gives you these really gripping moments throughout that seem to have nothing to do with the entire rest of the story. DFW also uses very non-linear storytelling, with a confusing in world neologism for years, to obfuscate what you are seeing and when.
Then you have the overall setting, which is sort of semi-sci-fi magical realist near future-past in a way that's incredibly difficult to find your bearings in. When I read Tolstoy, I know what the rules of the universe are because they are the rules of my universe. When I read Asimov or Tolkien, I can quickly grok the rules of the universe because they're very different from the rules of our universe in specific fairly well explained ways. Infinite Jest's universe is different in confusing and non-specific ways, and it's not clear when narrators are unreliable or taking the piss, or when we're supposed to take things seriously. At times DFW chooses to be brutally realistic, at times absurdly fantastical, nearly always pessimistic in outlook.
It's also disgusting, viscerally disgusting in a way that only a writer as talented mechanically as DFW can be. Everyone is asymmetrical, everyone is disgusting, bodily acts are described in extensive detail, rape abuse illness and addiction are commonplace, deformity is everywhere. It's just how the book is, but there are significant sections that are just viscerally unpleasant.
Finally, I think the book has gotten a lot harder since its publication, in that it represented a fork from the past around the publication date. For my partner in my book club, who was a teenager when it was published and read it for the first time when she was in art school in the early 2000s, there are a lot of references or just moods that make more sense to her than they do to me, ten years her junior. It's very like Stranger in a Strange Land in that way, a retro-futuristic work that projects the current mores and world forward. In your mind you have to back up to 1995, then fast forward to a world where some technologies never develop and others hyper-develop.
That said, my foolproof method for reading difficult books is to just keep swimming. This developed when reading the great Russians, in that way that Americans typically get confused by the use of first name or surname or patronymic or title or affectionate diminutive to refer to the same character, I used to get stuck trying to figure out who exactly was who in Anna Karennina then I decided one day that I should just keep reading and I'd figure that out later, and that worked. I approach everything confusing in DFW the same way, I just keep reading and I figure it out later. I think this is what @Rov_Scam is getting at, knowing that it's an important book he keeps trying to read it while understanding everything said but it's impossible to understand everything so he can't read it; his brother just read it without worrying about understanding everything and was fine.
The other aid getting me through this reading is my book club, in which I meet up with a pretty lady every few hundred pages and we discuss the book and its themes and broader philosophical topics over drinks. And this creates accountability in that as a man I can't let a pretty woman mog me at something, and also makes the book easier in that discussion helps explain things. Marx's famously dense Kapital was originally published in France serially in socialist newspapers for workers to read in clubs, they wouldn't (probably couldn't) understand such a book on their own, but in a group it becomes comprehensible. The lack of reading groups is one of the unfortunate consequences of our world today.
It's truly a work of rarely-reached genius, a fitting heir to the western literary canon (though in my mind the canon truly ends with Joyce). It's highly prescient philosophically, it has a lot to say about modern concerns on AI. Though I also kind of think the whole book is just about internet porn. Everyone on this forum should put in the work to read it, it's worth it, but I can also see how its cultural impact is mostly negative rather than directly influential.
I do wonder if Parker and Stone were influenced by Infinite Jest when they wrote South Park, though.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
From a revenue maximizing perspective: It's essentially the same as using coupons and discounts for price discrimination at a grocery store. You capture additional transactions from customers willing to put in the work/inconvenience of shopping from the discount rack or using coupons, and broadly speaking these are mostly transactions that otherwise wouldn't have occurred because those customers would not have been getting enough consumer surplus from the transaction at the original price. You offer different prices to people with different willingness to pay by placing slight inconveniences in the way, people who really want to pay less will go through the inconveniences while people who don't care about paying more won't. With taxes, people who really don't want to pay those taxes (or people sufficiently sophisticated that their objections to having to pay those taxes would actually matter to the system) avoid paying those taxes in various ways, through complex deductions and schemes to funnel money one way or the other. People who don't really care about their tax bill (or people who are low-class enough that their complaints won't matter to anyone but their bartender) just pay the taxes because they don't care enough to figure out all the ways to avoid them.
From a freedom maximizing perspective: At the time it was put in place, this method minimized the degree to which the IRS surveilled individual Americans. This is mostly negligible today, when privacy has been so thoroughly compromised under law and custom that it feels irrelevant. But at the time this was an important consideration.
Intertia: But mostly, I think the best steelman is that changing the system would have unpredictable effects on the economy. Between two thirds and three quarters of Americans get a tax refund. The average refund (I couldn't find the median where I looked) is around $3,000. This is essentially a forced savings program by the IRS, in which Americans are forced to save a small amount from each paycheck and then given the money back in a lump sum later. This might have systemically important functions at this point which lead to significant switching costs nationally. For example, it's pretty well known that the best time to sell a cheap used car is around tax refund season, as lots of poor people who otherwise spend as fast as they get it suddenly have a pile of cash and need a car. People also often spend that money on home repairs or security deposits to move houses. Though they also often, of course, blow it on vacations or poor decisions. While the system that leads to a tax refund might be inefficient in and of itself, at this point if we got rid of this system we don't know what impact it might have. Poor people might stop being able to buy used cars, as they go back to saving nothing. Cheap flights to Florida from northern cities might dry up as middle class folks stop getting a tax return in the colder months and eyeing up tickets. Plus, regardless of the total taxes paid, once you get rid of the refund, people won't notice the extra few bucks every week, but they will notice the lack of a big lump sum every year, and will feel worse about it. The tax filing system is a way to trick children into feeling like they're paying less.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I'm really locking into Infinite Jest, a work of unrealistic genius and prescience, so good that I don't even know what to say about it.
On audiobook I finished Two Weeks, Eight Seconds which was exactly what I wanted at the time that I wanted it. A perfect sports book.
In between I've been reading the Fort Bragg Cartel about drug running in the specops world in the South. It's good, but the author is just such a weenie. I'm antiwar as they come, but the book is so preachy about it when it is irrelevant to the action in the book.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I agree with you that's a really interesting and important question, especially for Christians who want to welcome the gay moneychanger as a fellow traveler.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4d ago
I'm not sure what point you're making. Thiel's religious beliefs must be idiosyncratic to contain his lifestyle, but he does consider himself a believer, contra hydro's saying this is all just a metaphor.
I had a climber friend who was super into endurance running, I was pretty into weightlifting, we were jawing back and forth about which one was harder/more impressive. His argument was that running a marathon was much harder because it took much longer and much more effort, one is destroyed after running a marathon where one is just fine after a 1rm. I argued that a big back squat was more impressive as if you can't squat 300lbs, you just can't squat 300lbs, where if I wanted to run a marathon today I could, it would just take a while, give me enough time and I can travel 26.2 miles on foot today no problem, but if you can't squat 300lbs in the morning you won't squat it in the evening either.*
So this bet formed where I would run a marathon, and then he would attempt a back squat at a weight set as a percentage of the world record equivalent to the percentage of my marathon speed relative to that world record.
He basically thought there was no fucking way I would ever finish a marathon without any training, so he was safe.
Ultimately I did finish the marathon, but he welched and started trying to argue about needing to do the squat as a percentage of the world record at his weight class, which I said was stupid because I didn't get the advantage of running a marathon at the 195lb record. Then that argument kind of ended the thing.
I would say that while I did finish 26.2 miles with no training and just guts, it sucked way worse than I thought it would. So we both kinda had a point.
*My argument ignores the option of breaking the 300lb object into smaller pieces, or needing to run the 26.2 miles per hour at a certain speed to avoid something catching you
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