MollieTheMare
No bio...
User ID: 875
The Princeton site does have individual report card data in JSON format. There is a download button slightly inconspicuous.
How gerrymandered is difficult to score in a single metric, but the largest tell tail is probably a step jump in the "District by average partisan win percentage" chart. It is evidence that the districts are being arranged to isolate one party in fewer districts. Especially if the jump spans the "competitive" line. Shape irregularity is the most common "look at this map it must be gerrymandered," but is not a necessary or sufficient condition to show a map is gerrymandered. That video cites openprecincts(dot)org, but it seems to be down now.
Some of the step jumps are also simply the results of people "gerrymandering" themselves. e.g. Drawing a box around metro-Miami could be chosen based off of pure geographic considerations, but if all the Ds in Florida move to Miami they have secured on "safe" district but given up contesting every other district. It seems this a natural result of choosing to draw the boundaries based on geography, but there being clear partisan differences in geographic distribution. Maybe someone has a clear counter example, but shouldn't there be a trivial lemma as a result of Arrow's impossibility theorem where you just substitute candidates with candidate map. Essentially saying there is not perfectly "fair" map. Or if you substitute candidate representation system for candidates to show that there is no perfectly "fair" representative system.
Edit: To add an example of why you can't just take the grade from Princeton. VA gets an A because it is fair in the sense of proportionate. The jump around the competitive zone on the average partisan win percentage chart is still there. This is probably so that the vote is proportionate for court intervention prevention, but locks in a strong gerrymandered incumbency advantage.
I've done some overnight bike touring and quite enjoyed it.
The main impediments are:
- taking the time off for the trip its self
- justifying yet another bike purchase and associated storage in the garage (I know the optimal number is n+1, but the real optimal number is divorce-1)
- not wanting taking time off from strength training to devote to cycling
I realize these are not great reasons not to, but I honestly think I enjoy imagining doing it more than I would actually doing it.
I do quite enjoy casual cycling, but having to drive to a trail for real training is a pain, the roads where I'm at are too terrifying to ride on, and training indoors is the worst. We did do an overniter this summer without any sessions over 90 min in the month before. My taint was not prepared.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
Interesting, as usual. I almost think we should have a dedicated Saturday Series of Court Opinions: brought to you by ToaKraka™.
I wonder if the dissent with respect to "marriage and child-rearing" is some positioning in case the US Supremes ever revisits Obergefell Re. Roberts dissent:
It (marriage) arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
Annoying nitpick. Civilization ending and the human species existing are not necessarily equivalent.
I personalty would prefer for any future descendants to live in a high functioning civilization, but presumably the anarcho-primitivists might still have preference for human species existing but also for civilization ending. Return to Monke, and all that.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
10k mAh bank
I understand that mAh is the most common way to quote power bank size, but why do the manufactures insist on quoting it that way? Do they really run the cells in a 1SnP configuration? Or is it mAh per cell times n cells? Why can't they use Wh?
At 10 Ah, assuming nominal cell voltage of 3.6 V, and a 1C charging limit, that probably does limit you to 30W input banks. It's surprisingly hard to find banks that will charge at a full 1C though. A 60W+ charger still might be worth it, they can be pretty compact now. Then you could also plug in your phone, and over a one hour lunch, you should be over 80% on both the phone and bank.
I feel for you on the lunch situation. We once got trapped from 11:15AM-2:30PM in that area. There was only one hostess working a pretty decent sized floor and she decided to work it first in last out for a bunch of multi course meals.
It's very strange, given the high standard of living, but my anecdotal experience is that people from the US often get inexplicable GI things in the Franco-Swiss region. I had a friend who ended up hospitalized. She wasn't even drinking for streams or anything, just eating more or less normal stuff. I wish I knew what we are doing wrong.
Sounds like an awesome trip. Bikepacking has always fascinated me, but I've never been brave enough to embark on a "real" expedition like this one.
I'm a bit surprised that power was such an issue. What kind of power bank did you use? For (American style) backpacking using a power bank to charge devices, then charging that when you have a stop with wall power, is a somewhat common strategy. At 30W even a 15 minute charge while using the bathroom at random chalet or ski-lift should make an appreciable difference. A reasonably compact travel charger should be able to do 60W now, though you might be limited in light weight banks that can handle that kind of power.
I know that drinking directly from alpine melt is very common, but I always used a Sawyer Mini when drinking from streams in Switzerland. I once drank from a stream thinking we were well above cow level, ran into a Chamois 100 meters up stream. I assume they can pick up E. coli or giardia from all the cows. Aquamira might be lighter weight and more compact if you are space limited. For serious GI problems I recommend bring Pepto Bismol when traveling in continental Europe. It's surprisingly hard to get in parts of the continent. Not medical advice, but, it seems more effective when combined with imodium (which is available) than either alone. Again, combine at your own risk, the directions probably tell you not to do that. IMO though, better than having a blowout on the plane.
I guess you were bathing in a touristy part of Montreaux? There used to be a beach oh the other side of Lac Léman in Versoix that I quite liked. It had a roped off swim area and a floating platform. So it's not that weird to swim in the lake, just location dependent.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
I recall making the point that athleticism and endurance performance were not wholly synonyms when the original post mas made. The qualifier of "at least in endurance sports" is appreciated. I would probably concede, not actively harmful, controlling for macro nutrient composition and micro-nutrient availability.
Its interesting you cite a gravel cyclist in your discussion. I see marathon distance running as one of the sports where it is the least sub-optimal. Cycling nutrition was a area where there was surprisingly little systematic study. It seems like not that long ago World Tour teams were only doing like 60 g/hour of carbs, while 120 g/hour is normal now. Given that, it does seem possible that the state of the art will change. That being said, Dylan Johnson is certainly cutting against the grain of what the World Tour teams apparently think is optimal. Honey is a common binder and carb source for rice cakes for Pro teams. I think most teams also allow riders milk with their coffee, even during the Tour. Whey is an extremely common ingredient in post-race recovery drinks, you see it featured in essentially every Tour nutrition interview where they disclose whats in the drink.
Looking at the very top level of gravel riding, arguably the Monuments like the Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix, and Strade Bianche were the top level of gravel before gravel was a category. Based on the UCI Gravel World Championships it seems like the classics riders are still at least one level above those in the UCI Gravel World Series. All this to say Pogi and Cancellara are clearly levels above Dylan Johnson (who is very very good). I'm very sure I've seen video or photos of them drinking either flat whites or cappuccinos. I think I even recall a video of Cancellara eating fish back in the Leopard-Trek days, and one where Pogačar has beef in his fridge. It doesn't seem likely that adopting a vegan diet is the key to optimal gravel riding performance. Not necessarily actively very harmful, but I'm actually a bit surprised Johnson claims it's for performance reasons.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
I would posit that seeing window mount or other external AC units in a city is actually evidence of poor AC infrastructure. A residential structure with a bunch of window units sticking out means that there is no central AC available to the building. That means every window without a unit is a room without AC. For example, my high school was built before central air handling was common. It was absolutely covered with window AC units. Even still 0% of teacher offices had AC, maybe 20% of common areas, and only about 50% of class rooms had AC. Of those that had AC about 80% were inadiqute to cool the rooms to normal office temperatures. The office building next door, however, was built to modern North American mid-rise building standards. It had no external AC units, central air handling, and district supplied chilled water. Handling a bunch of IT and computer equipment the whole thing was kept at a chilly 72°F (22°C) all year round.
Besides that though @FtSoA is clearly right. It's trivially easy to find statistics showing less AC availability in Europe. From the International Energy Agency The Future of Cooling (emphasis mine):
Household ownership of ACs varies enormously across countries, from around 4% in India and less than 10% in Europe, to over 90% in the United States and Japan, and close to 100% in a few Middle Eastern countries.
Things are changing, as new homes in Europe are often heated with heat pumps that can be reversed for cooling in the summer. The pace of retrofits and new construction is slow though. In the mean time "Heat claims more than 175,000 lives annually in Europe."
If you insist on trading anecdotes though: "How is it that the most advanced research facility on Earth forgot to install air conditioning? " This is in a place that has reached 40°C (104°F). The "birthplace of the World Wide Web," but all the network switches overheat at 2PM every July.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
I’m finally on ‘The Far Side of the World’
Give you joy on reaching the antipodal point on your circumnavigation of the series. I think The Far Side of the World is where O'Brian was at the height of his powers. The five novel sequence from The Thirteen-Gun Salute through the The Commodore is where I most like to get lost in though. One just flows into the the next.
junkie Maturin
To be fair to Maturin its clear he deals with chronic pain from his
It's quite clear his physical recovery was very slow from the bowling-green scene in The Commodore.
Even though the film could never live up to the novels, I have mixed feelings about a sequel. I think they still did a beautiful job, especially with the sound stage. I wish we could have had more of at least the same quality, but I'm afraid that any sequel moves would be a shameless cash grab at far lower quality.
MollieTheMare
1mo ago
Honestly, it might be for the best for you personally. The conversion rate from in a Ph.D. program to tenured physics professor is laughably small. Even if you make it to the tenure golden land, you will have given up what will probably be the most productive years of your career in opportunity cost to make the starting salary of a quant at a B-tier fund. You'll also have to move a zillion times anyway for a very likely postdoc grind.
I don't know what the state of the art is in fusion research, but if you can manage to crank out even one marginal paper applying ML/RL techniques, call it AI on your CV and you should be able to get into the interview pipeline at some big tech or quant finance firms. Crush the coding interviews with leetcode grinding. Practice not doing anything too weird in the face to face. If you update your linkedin and are at a top 30 program, you should have recruiters contacting you regularly. They will provide interview prep. If you are not at a top 30 physics program you are never making it to the tenure golden land anyway, it doesn't matter how good you are. Something like 70% of the faculty in R1 research institutions have at some point attended one of something like 10 schools. Of the remaining, something like 90% come from a pool of the next 20. (US based, there's a paper about it somewhere on I think the arxiv)
Once you have your foot in the door, join the line of people hoping to jump to the next unicorn, or rest and vest.
MollieTheMare
2mo ago
Sorry for the late reply, offline for the long weekend.
Cheap bike is fine for rolling around the neighborhood. Like I said l, I do think there is a pace for them. The short version is good metallurgy is expensive. The sub $500 "mountain" bikes from Walmart come with a warning not to ride them on unpaved surfaces. Making a mountain bike where it's light enough to be rideable but tough enough where you don't taco a wheel is surprisingly difficult. On the road you'll feel every Watt a cheap bikes cheap bearings rob from you, but for "city" rather than "road" riding it matters less.
Because cycling is only semi-weight bearing and has no or little exentric you generate less strain per unit power/cardio zone. Stimulus to fatigue is still good, but raw stimulus is lower. So for arobic fitness you might need to put in 50% more time than running for the same cardio benefit. For example, for the same VO2 max increase from x hours of preceved zone 2 work. If you have a good bike fit it will still be easier on the knees though.
MollieTheMare
2mo ago
The thing I see done "wrong" the most is starting/stopping in combination with saddle height being too low. Everyone who hits they gym knows hitting a squat ATG makes it way harder to produce force compared to 1/4 squatting. But for some reason people do not translate this to raising their saddle to where they can produce the most torque. I'm pretty sure it's because they want it low enough to put a foot down when they stop. The canonical site about this topic is here.
Honestly some of it may not be your fault but the bikes. It's Not About the Bike, but I'm 80% sure what you have is a bike shaped object from Walmart. I actually think there's a place for that kind of thing, especially for kids bikes, but unfortunately "good" bikes are unreasonably expensive in the US. At least the Euros can get decent city bikes or entry level sports bikes from decathlon for non-absurd prices. Like seriously bikes easily start getting into motorcycle territory pricing in the US.
Riding on the road on the US is frustrating for everyone, as a recent thread here talked about. I do quite like mountain biking still though. Trail systems are color coded like ski slopes. Hit full send on trail where you just about but don't lose it. Upgrade colors as you improve. For fitness basics of any cardio apply, watch out for over use injuries and assume you will have to put in more hours than if you were to train aerobic capacity via other modality.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
If the setup is something where an average sized man has to lift a moderate sized woman, and you're in a position to get the lifting joint below her center of gravity, I do think even a moderately fit man should be able to do it. I assume the original euphemism was more or less a proxy for moderately fit man is able to generally man handle, which isn't that high of a standard.
There's different levels though.
With zero training I would think most guys could lift a moderate sized woman off their feet.
At a 225# bench I would expect you could basically floor press a cooperative calisthenics/yoga woman where you have her hands in yours and she is in a sort of planche/peacock/crow pose. Seems like it would be amusing in a "I’m flying, Jack!" sort of way.
Assuming you are just by grabbing her (handleless) hips and she is not cooperatively holding a nice grasshopper pose or plank but flopping around or bratting. I wouldn't be supersized if it took the equivalent of a 300# bench to cleanly press a slightly larger than average 175# woman from laying directly on top of you. It's not really the absolute load that's limiting, the leverage is just bad. It would be worse than touching a bench press to below your navel. It's hard to find good statistics on it, but a 3 plate bench is low single digit percentage of men. Totally doable for most men, but does require serious training.
It's like the difference between getting a cooperative partner into a fireman's carry and a lifeless dummy. Pound for pound the latter feels at least twice as hard.
To be fair, pressing from a bed is more like a very very unstable JM press than a proper bench press.
Biomachanicaly the pecs are in a more advantageous position, since like a floor press the elbow can't cross the frontal plane. But The delts and particularly the triceps are in a substantially less advantageous position. Assuming your partner is more narrow than you it's also technically close grip. You also don't have a nice ergonomic bar to hold on to, so the wrists are in much greater extension. Finally, you don't have the advantage of a relatively firm platform or leg drive.
If the load is your typical skinny women, it's likely to be somewhat... flopy. Like an earthquake bar. If they are more muscular they can probably hold their body more rigid, but then you have more mass to move. Assuming a random women, you would have to luck out with a gymnast or competitive cheerleader who is being cooperative, in order for it to be anything like lifting straight weight.
Maybe rather than pressing them fully off of you though, it would be more prudent to follow Nelson's advice at Trafalgar and "Engage the enemy more closely." He did seem to have some taste in these things.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
Impressively accurate.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
You can tell a lot about someone from assessing their choice of car. Even if you think your car says nothing about you, it does.
I'd be interested in a car horoscopes reading on the what do you drive thread. I'm a Pleiades. Not a lesbian or an old person, believe it or not.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
Depending on the market it might sort of be there. I don't remember where @naraburns lives, the length of his commute, or the size of car he wanted. But... You can get a used electric Hyundai Kona for a list of $14.5k right now. All up you would probably just push over $15k, but you can probably find one for $15k private party in the right part of the country. With a level two charger in the garage, you would probably come out okay for all but the longest commutes.
It is probably small and crappy relitive to an equal cost compact crossover, though I have never driven one. Could be great or horrible for all I know.
I would expect the Hyundai IONIQ 5/6 is probably roughly as comfortable as a comparably equipped new Honda HR-V/Accord. With a few years of depreciation it should hit that 15k point sooner rather than later. You probably don't need 100% of original battery life if you are just using it for a city commuter and have a gas car for road trips/backup.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
The heavy things also have numbers on them, and if you keep doing it, you can watch the numbers go up.
The analogy I make to guys who don't lift but are into vidya is, it's like an RPG but IRL. (With a few exceptions) When you first start 2pl8 (100 kg) bench is like the first world boss. You'll get smacked down if you approach it without enough XP or skill. But once you level up a bit it just becomes random fodder you blow by in your warmups. You get to pick where to devote training/XP to, strength, size, endurance, etc. And have manna (recovery) you have to manage.
The inevitable regression does suck, but the meta is always changing. You'll see influencers go from "functional" training to pure strength. Then to bodybuilding/aesthetics. Then they'll pick up running. I suspect it's because one training modality does become stale when you saturate that attribute or regress. But having good general physical preparedness lets you transition to all sorts of things as your life evolves.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
The cars I have driven the most:
- Mazda 323 (6th gen BF, 5MT), my first car. Interior was 100% 80s plastic including the seats. Supper zippy compared to anything anyone else in high school had. Surprisingly good rear visibility, probably because it was so short. Promptly riced then totaled by the guy I sold it to.
- Honda CRX (1st Gen 1.6i Si, 5 MT). Probably the worst example you've even seen driving. The previous owner didn't believe in oil. No AC. Had to parallel park it every night with no power steering. Poor rear visibility. I miss it dearly though.
- Toyota Prius (Gen2 XW20 "touring"). Probably the lowest total cost of ownership car in existence. Much safer and quieter ride for highway commuting than the CRX. Surprisingly spacious for passengers and cargo for the footprint. Very poor rear visibility. Possibly the pinnacle of transportation appliance.
- Subaru Forster (4th Gen SJ, post facelift, 6MT). The least soul-crushing family mid-sized crossover I could find. The last of the standard transmission "regular car" Subarus before they switched to exclusively CVTs so the electronic nanny could take over.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
see for example the Statue of Liberty poem about bringing America the poor and hungry and persecuted.
I do wish people would not truncate the stanza:
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
(Emphasis mine) Sometimes people even truncate the poem mid line "Your huddled masses." There's not even a comma breaking the sentence there! Critically she doesn't say send me all. Her command for who to send does not require nobility, but does require carrying an essential notion of liberty with you. It is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty after all, not the Statue of Unlimited Open Boarders.
There's not an entirely negligible portion of the population that is fine with even fairly generous immigration policy. They might prefer, though, if the plan is to vote for the same shit policies that you are fleeing from that you do not come to the US.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
Don't have anything really helpful on the rest, but:
getting different conditioner so my swimmer hair isn't so straw-like
Swimming always messes up my hair, and I keep mine very short and pretty easy to manage. Leave-in conditioner at the opposite end of the day as my regular shower or after swimming seems to help. I take a full shower at night with shampoo and conditioner. So if I swim or gym in the morning I would just rinse off, but then use a very small amount of leave-in conditioner after. I also started moisturizing my face with a SPF 15 face moisturizer as part of the same routine. I think it at least reduces irritation from shaving.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
You also don't need to start a new hobby to meet people. For hobbies with any women and even a modest number of young people taking any initiative, even the bare minimum, is often enough to make a big difference in your social life.
For example, my local hiking meetup was always desperate for hike organizers. What is involved with organizing a hike? Sending a single email to the list saying "Hey I'm going to X trail at Y time I expect it be Z difficultly. I can take 3 people from W parking lot, if you are arranging your own transport we leave promptly at Y from the trail head." By spending 30 seconds composing an email you get to:
- Choose a trail you actually enjoy
- Any single women that do show up will be primed to talk to you, you did "organize" things after-all
- Meet other men and couples who will expand your social circle. There might not be a bunch of single women who show up, but if you do not give off mega weird vibes you'll probably get at least a couple of social invites per event.
You don't need to directly pull numbers at your hobby to have it expand your social circle.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
Based on a vague recollection of your training history, you should be able to at least temporarily recomp effectively.
One of the nice things about strength vs muscular mass is it's much easier to measure benchmarks , especially with respect to proficiency. For someone with no training history they should be able to go from untrained to somewhere in the novice/intermediate range while maintaining or even losing weight. My recollection is you had taken training "some what seriously" before, which probably brought you to mid-intermediate. In that case it should take 50-75% of the time it took the first time to reach the same place. All doable while in a 0.25-0.5% BW per week lost deficit. So if you went from a 65kg to a 100 kg bench in 9 months before, myonuclei retention might get you there in in 4-6 months. There is a bit of a compounding effect where if you stop and restart repeatedly strength and size seem to come back even faster. Longer if it's been more than 4 years. Beyond the proficient level and outside of a retraining effect recomping is a slow and painful process.
Protein recommendations I would still shoot for the tried and true 1 g/lb body weight. 2 g/kg bw for round metric numbers is probably fine. There had been some (pretty sus) analysis that got cemented as lore for lower recommendations. The newer stuff seems to have rediscovered the tried and true. Why would you expect a hard threshold in the first palce? If you are not that lean 1 g/cm height works surprisingly well as a benchmark. The easiest way to drastically increase protein uptake is to have a pre and post workout whey shake. Whey is very fast digesting so should not decrease appetite much for your "normal" meals. If you don't want to do dairy for some reason brown rice/pea combo, or soy protein is probably fine. If you are worried about phytoestrogens from soy, corner an endocrinologist in a dark corner of the hospital and wring the truth out of them. Report back what exactly the deal is with phytoestrogens is, I'm interested in knowing.
MollieTheMare
3mo ago
Congratulations, savor this period of rapid progress.
very little way to cheat form-wise
Just make sure you're being honest with yourself on this one. It's easy to get carried away as progress slows. Make sure you're keeping you elbows tucked to protect your shoulders, especially as the weights start approaching the 200# mark. Try not to cut ROM on the bottom, only count reps where you touch your chest as PBs. It's probably better if you keep your butt on the bench too, though I have to admit I've counted reps in training where my butt came off.
Don't do anything stupid, like going to failure alone in the gym. Bench is the only lift that regularly kills people.
On that front, deadlifts are probably the hardest to cheat. My deadlift comparatively sucks to my bench though, fortunately "how much ya' bench" is a much more common question than "how much ya' dead."
One of my more unhinged pet ideas for the house is that the the main problem with Arrow's impossibility theorem and Gibbard's theorem are the requirements for a deterministic process.
In my fantasy each voter would be able to nominate one person to serve in the House for a two year term. You would then select 2,500 ballots to establish the house for the next two years, continuing to select random ballots one at a time in the case of duplicates. No one would be guaranteed incumbency, so you couldn't trade as much on future electoral success. Very popular politicians would still be more likely but not guaranteed a spot, so they would also have to maintain a real job or do a good enough job to maintain influence even when not in power. With a 2,500 strong body crazies should be a small enough minority, on an given issue, to be safely ignored. And if the sample is random you would have enough statistical representation to match the populace to within 1% on any given topic, even tighter if things are not 50/50. The idea would be that the majority go back to their regular life after serving.
Leave the institutional knowledge building and statesmanship to the Senate.
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