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
2hr ago
I'm not knowledgeable enough to claim a useful opinion on either keeping it or tearing it up, but at some point that discussion has to become moot because either way it wouldn't have applied anymore.
Not really. A world with/out the JCPOA is different at sunset than the reverse. Iran is starting from somewhere.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3hr ago
Only the minds behind NEOM could possibly imagine an armored pipeline, so it's likely we'll see it.
This might be even dumber than my predicted ending to the war, where the US takes Kharg and charges Iran a royalty on all oil exported, while Iran maintains control of the strait and charges a toll on all oil coming out of the gulf.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3hr ago
The structure is pretty confusing.
I mostly wanted to get in the correction immediately before someone saw it and got unfriendly about your whole point over it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
4hr ago
Chief of Staff not commander in chief, which is the president. Chief of Staff is a mostly admin role as opposed to a direct commander.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
Ok now build air defense for every inch of your pipeline. Pipelines are extraordinarily vulnerable to attack by Iran in case of another conflict. They won't really work as Iran war insurance.
I think a lot of people hear the headline number of $2mm a tanker and think that's high. That's only about 1% of cargo value.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
So we're in agreement that there's age related cognitive decline, but you're correcting my use of the technical medical term in a casual way?
And to be clear, how do we judge a President's mental abilities if not by their fruits?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
This might be the first time I've seen someone actually engage in Zeno's paradox as an argument.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
9hr ago
But it's clearly in their interest since Iran is a long-term threat to them.
I find it interesting the way that Americans (and those LARPing as us on the internet) can recognize that Trump/Biden/Obama doesn't necessarily act in the national interest in the United States, either through wickedness or through stupidity; while we assume that the governments of Iran and Israel are identical with the national interest of those places.
It certainly seems that never-ending war is very much in Netanyahu's personal interest, in that it keeps him out of court for as long as it lasts. I'm less sure that it is in the interest of Israel or the Jewish people that we're hearing things like this thrown around. Yair Lapid on Twitter:
There has never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made concerning the core of our national security. The military carried out everything that was asked of it, the public demonstrated amazing resilience, but Netanyahu failed politically, failed strategically, and didn't meet a single one of the goals that he himself set. It will take us years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu wrought due to arrogance, negligence, and a lack of strategic planning.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
a) Weight classes in competition are fake weights. A guy who cuts to compete at 130 probably walks around much heavier between comps. So he's still a small guy, but much less small than you think he is.
b) Availability is the most important ability for any athlete. When you push yourself in the weightroom, you risk injury, so serious athletes tend to go easy in the weightroom, or do partial RoM or odd lifts that target specific movement patterns while reducing odds of injury.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
Important to note how victory has a thousand parents, defeat is an orphan.
One of the sudden stomach cramp moments of realizing how bad things were was when Trump said it was Pete Hegseth's idea, that Pete spoke up first. That is atypical of Trumpian dialectics.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
Relevant recent experiences:
Over Easter I was up at my in-laws, which means I got to visit my other BJJ gym a few times. While there I got the chance to do something I've wanted to do for a while: I rolled with a female purple belt.
For context, I'm a white belt at BJJ, I've been going for about a year and a half, and I suck. I am not a graceful person. To start I was reasonably strong and in above average cardio condition; but I'm nothing to write home about as a natural athlete, across all sports for thirty years I've capped out at the level right below the level where it would be interesting to be that good. I'm 6', 195lbs, probably between 15-20% bodyfat. A reasonably approximation for a clumsy goon in a superhero movie.
Up to this point, while I've occasionally rolled with girls, I try to avoid it because it's just too embarrassing. The whole time I'm typically in my head trying to avoid going too hard and being a jerk because I'm beating up on the girl, or going too soft and being a jerk because I'm not offering her a decent roll. And God forbid one of them asks me to drill with her, which happens every few weeks, and coach picks a move involving a "chest post;" after a few times of THAT, I carefully position myself far away from any females before we pick partners to drill with.
In rolling against a fellow female white belt or blue belt, my experience is that I'm basically in control the whole time. I can "let her work" as much as she wants, when it comes down to it I can escape or muscle out. Out of ~100 rounds, I've tapped to a girl once, and that was in the particular scenario of drills starting from front headlock, and I think I let her start way too close to finishing the submission, and I'm not sure I couldn't have burst out of it if I were to muscle out as hard as I could but I wasn't about to do that during drilling. Generally when I roll with girls, I try to use as little strength as possible and only take moves that are perfectly technically executed on my part. Where against one of the men in the "equals" category I'm willing to just muscle him into a Kimura, against the girls I'm trying more wacky technical stuff.
One of our white belts is a female competitive powerlifter. Honestly, bros, on the platform some days she might hit bigger numbers on the barbell than I do, and I know for a fact she squats and deads much more than some of the other guys at the gym. She's probably around 180 and her deadlift is extremely impressive! But her functional strength on the mats is little better than the pretty 125lb girls. This is true of a lot of competitive powerlifters male or female: they're hyper optimized for particular movement patterns, and comparatively a 1rm squat test isn't telling you as much about them compared to an untrained woman. She can, and has, helped me move a couch, she's not a weak person in a day to day sense, but she's not much of a threat on the mat to a similarly skilled male. I roll regularly with guys that she outlifts in powerlifting, and I'm clearly stronger than they are, but not to the scale I am stronger than her on the mat.
All of which brings me to Good Friday, when I finally got the opportunity to test myself against a female purple belt. I've wanted to for a long time, for science. Purple is the first belt where I'd say it consistently means something, whites come in all shapes and sizes, and blues can sometimes sneak in or get a pity promotion, but I've seen few purple belts who didn't at least mostly know what they were doing. Typically, a purple belt means four years of training at least three times a week, studying and thinking about the sport regularly, and probably competing at least occasionally, so by any reasonable standard an expert. For scale, I've rolled hundreds of times with male purple belts. Typically against a male purple belt, I will lose 95% of rounds, even if they don't sub me there's no need to keep score it's just obvious who was dominating the round. This holds even against a purple belt 40lbs lighter than me. Every now and then I get lucky and catch a straight ankle or a kimura, but never anything like a head and arm choke or a triangle that requires set-up. Against a female purple belt, rolling casually in a morning class so probably more like 75% than trying to kill each other, without using a ton of strength or leaning on size I was rolling about even. She was clearly technically better than me, and presented problems I had to put effort into solving. It wasn't the case that I could just pass her guard at will, or leave anything open and she couldn't take it. I had to play tight, methodically break dilemmas, and build towards wins. Ultimately the rounds would have scored at worst 50/50, I tapped her a few times and she didn't tap me but I didn't positionally dominate the rounds as much as the submissions would indicate, partly because if she started to get close to submitting me I was more willing to use strength to escape. In enough rolls, I would guess she'd win at least 1/5 if we both brought our A-Game. And she would probably be able to tap out a totally untrained male, she would have dominated me eighteen months ago.
So FiveHourMarathon's n=1 trials indicate: being a competitive powerlifter will not make a female defeat a male who is equal as a lifter, being a trained expert female will not allow her to defeat a novice male in reasonable shape.
That all being said, I don't really find female superheroes any stupider or more Suspension-of-Disbelief-breaking than male superheroes. When you consider how absurdly unrealistically fit and capable Batman has to be to beat up fifty goons or whatever, adding an extra factor of 2x in there because Batman should be twice as strong as Batgirl doesn't really change the math for me. If Batman is 50x a male black belt, it doesn't really make a difference to me to have Batgirl be 100x a female black belt. In my recent WoW run, I'm playing a female Night Elf hunter, both for lorefag reasons (Night Elf females were Sentinel warrior/rangers, while Night Elf males were druid-hippies) and because I think the slim female build in WoW looks better for an archer than the muscular male build, which in my opinion only really works aesthetically for a warrior. Given that a casual questing hour involves killing fifty orcs, thirty men, ten ogres, and a three headed dragon...I don't think I'm really worried about the chromosomes in terms of realism. The far more realism breaking thing for me in WoW is Gnome warriors, but I get why it's set up that way.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
11hr ago
I have strong doubts that Trump is going to turn on Israel because of Israel killing another IRGC commander or Ayatollah in another surprise attack. This entire adventure is built on the predicate concept that if you get the opportunity, one should spurn negotiations in favor of killing Iranian leadership in surprise attacks, and that if Israel is going to do it then America is per se involved in it.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
20hr ago
And if Israel bombs Iran, what happens?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
The entirety of Western administrative government is based around the idea that "managing" "safe" "orderly" use of [x] empowers the government to keep certain people from using [x].
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
Israel, because they have a veto over the negotiation, without spending any credibility on the process.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
21hr ago
The vast majority of 80 year olds suffer from significant memory impairment. This isn't ground breaking news.
Simple way to keep this polite:
If Trump, as Commander in Chief with apparently sole authority to start a war and draft the strategy thereof, starts a war of choice against Iran and Iran ends up controlling better than a tenth of world oil transit in the peace deal, can we consider that simple evidence of cognitive impairment?
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
I would guess that this is not answerable with any degree of rigor without a specific example, which you are presumably unwilling to offer because it's too close to home.
That said, in a general sense I can think of a few reasons. you see that pattern:
-
You have a warped perception of a place. There are lots of towns that had a bad reputation when I was growing up, but have since turned around completely, and it often takes a while for my perception to catch up to the reality. What do you mean hip young people are moving to Pittsburgh? This can also be a case of using county level statistics when you're dealing with the housing supply in a smaller area, the county is shrinking but [town] is growing.
-
The industry in an area is shrinking overall, but the jobs that do exist are shifting, so the housing stock is shifting as well. You have a town that used to have a cardboard box factory employing 1,000 people at an adjusted wage of $25,000/yr, 1,000 houses were built to accommodate the workers. Now that factory only employs 500 people at an adjusted wage of $50,000/yr and a SaaS payroll company opened up an office in town where they employ 100 people at an adjusted wage of $100,000/yr. On the one hand you'd say well there's 1,000 houses and only 600 workers, there's plenty of housing! On the other, you'd say all the existing housing was designed for a worker making $25k, and there's no housing for people making $100k. The old, bad, factory housing is a decrepit slum at the same time that the new shiny stuff is being built.
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Shifting tastes. Greater sprawl is more in fashion with online shopping and less socializing, there's less need to reach amenities, so you see rural housing on large acreage sold as a luxury good, no neighbors is awesome and it doesn't really matter that you can't get to the mall. Flip side, apartments and dense mixed use developments are more in fashion among a different subset of buyers, who highly value being able to walk to get a quart of milk or a beer, and don't want to spend their Saturdays on lawn care.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
We're hearing increasingly unbelievable things coming out of the DoW about each Iranian operation. I can't say with any confidence which things are untrue, or what the truth is, but the credibility given to the official story is dropping rapidly.
Increasingly, I can't offer any alternative theory, because I don't know anything other than what is being said by two (or three) untrustworthy participants in the war. But it's like reading an /r/relationships post, at some point you decide the whole thing is bullshit.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
Gay couples having kids really is a bad thing. It’s obvious girls are just different. I see it every time my gf does little baby talk with her cat. Men just don’t have that silliness where they can actually have fun doing dumb kid stuff for hours every day. Mothers are different.
You need to broaden your horizons.
Neither I nor Mrs. FiveHour have the baby talk skill. This is concerning for our offspring, but we'll figure it out.
Human experience is broader than you and your girlfriend.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
1d ago
If you spend a lot of time with men entering dementia, it's pretty clear they're two sides of the same coin. Some old men shuffle quietly around, mumble unclear platitudes, and try to be unobtrusive and confusing enough that no one can figure out that they have no idea what is going on. Others get angry, yell, insist that they know what is going on; this works as a coping mechanism because eventually the rest of the family or the people at the nursing home realize that there's no point arguing it'll just upset grandpa more so let's just agree and then we'll figure it out once he's out of earshot.
Both are extremely problematic behaviors in the white house.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
As for Iran, there is no reason why they would not believe a threat that was worded more calmly. If anything, I think a calm-worded threat would probably seem more plausible to them.
Honestly, the 4d chess argument I can come up with for this is that Trump is actively trying to make sure the war does not come to a diplomatic conclusion, and as such is utilizing a mix of insults and obvious bluffs to convince the Iranians to stay in it.
Related to my conspiracy theory that this entire adventure is designed to let some air out of the stock market bubble, on the theory that the AI investment process needs to continue in order to achieve AGI, but that a catastrophic sudden bubble pop would torpedo the whole industry, so they needed to do something to bring down the stock market slightly prior to the bubble.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
The difference is that lawyers and doctors are relatively evenly spread geographically.
Where NYC is crawling in finance bros, and the bay area is full of tech bros. There's a vast horde of guys all working in the same field at the same companies who went to the same colleges dominating the social and romantic market in these places.
You never have the same phenomenon of seemingly EVERYONE working in medicine or law, outside of colleges for those progressions.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
2d ago
I'd like to think it's a successful example of seeing through bait.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3d ago
Clausewitz wrote that it's best to threaten the same thing on the same conditions repeatedly, with increasing levels of distress, it imparts seriousness.
I've never watched any of the MCU, so I'm a little out of my depth.
I'll let you know in four years! I suspect at that level of experience she would probably move from "can't-beat-me" to "can-beat-me" but I doubt she'd make it to "should-beat-me" or "will-beat-me-every-time." Which are the basic categories of people at the gym in my taxonomy.
I still hope to get the chance to roll with a female black belt or an equivalent female competitor, I still want to meet a girl in the "will-beat-me-every-time" category, to see what that feels like. But in general I can say that a purple belt gets you to "can-beat-me," so more strength might get her to a push where we roll even.
Important to keep in mind: this is me, I'm a decent comp for a mook in a movie, I'm fairly big and muscular and I've trained BJJ pretty hard for a year. I'm not an average American man. So when I say I roll even with her, that means she'd smoke the average American man, who doesn't really work out and has no experience with BJJ.
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