MollieTheMare
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User ID: 875
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I know expecting people to show empathy for a (presumed) member of the enemy tribe is too much, but ffs we don't even actually know if she is in fact a woke liberal BLM-supporting enemy tribeswoman, we're just doing some sort of pseudo-Bayesian reasoning where she probably is so fuck her.
The argument that you should show empathy even to an enemy is noble, and I wish I had the generosity of spirit to really do it in this situation. I'm impressed by the people who still have to fortitude at this point in the culture war to do it.
That being said I don't think it's correct to say people cannot correct infer likely tribal affiliation in this case. In the canonical formulation blue tribe and red tribe do not necessarily perfectly align with political affiliation. Being a professional class, urban, person who cycles to work is already enough to fully establish blue tribe. Even if someone does occasionally vote Republican. In addition to that, her official gofundme, which admittedly is managed by her uncle, says:
...She holds racial justice and equity dear, and has dedicated her life to serving NYC's most challenged individuals.
That's enough to move from probably to almost certain in my book.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I'm also confused by this comparison, surely if you are going to pick a comparison this can't be the most dis-favorable to modern Jacksonville. The density is arguably higher, at least the buildings are taller.
It does show something I did think to myself last time I was in downtown Jacksonville though, the area has an absurd number of parking garages. I assume it's because I-95 is the most convenient way to get there.
I don't think "more" transit is the solution though. There's already several stations within close walking distance along downtown. But look at the top review for Central Station:
Not safe even if security is around they are useless, trams don't come on time. Doors closed on me twice which is dangerous at the same time consuming for commuters since tram time isn't accurate at all.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
For long form content I use a citation manager. I use Zotero specifically. I especially like the browser integration with snapshot. It helps with link-rot quite a bit. The search is not quite as powerful as web search, but tagging and folders help with content I really want to keep track of. I also like that I can keep notes with the other other searchable meta-data.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I think a plain frame can be a noticeable aesthetic improvement that complements the lines on a car. Especially if the plate design contrasts with the styling of a car having a frame can make the transition look more intentional. It can also stop a rattle and noticeable dirt lines.
Frames that advertise the dealership the car is from, looks a bit tacky to me but I understand not wanting to be bothered to remove them. I'm not advertising your business for free though.
Frames that advertise your hobby or that your kid is on the honor roll, better than a bumper sticker I guess.
Frames that have any sort of translucent, or even mostly transparent material, covering the actual plate. Illegal in most states, and rightfully so. I always assume the driver is going to do something erratic, illegal, or dangerous if I see one. I honestly think the cops should impound every car they see with plates obscured on the road.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I just wanted to add, that there is a clear binary "scientific" definition, but its not about the normal two possible outcomes its about the only two possible contributions to a single outcome (up to some very new IVF stuff).
The most binary definition of sex is with respect to sexual reproduction. The male participant in sexual reproduction (the male sex member) contributes the smaller and usually more mobile gamete. The female participant in sexual reproduction contributes the larger and less mobile gamete. Together the two gametes makes a zygote, and sexual reproduction has occurred. This definition of sex might be extend to members of the species who could in the future, currently are capable of, or have in the past been capable of contributing that gamete. Members of a species that reproduces sexually but are not capable of producing either viable gamete are not capable of sexual reproduction, and therefore do not have sex with respect to sexual reproduction.
Other definitions with respect to chromosomes, phenotype, etc. are down stream of the reproductive if you are looking for the most precise and binary definition of biological sex.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I now get a weird pain in front of my hip joint
It's impossible to tell without a more detailed description, and probably seeing your squat in person. Sounds like it might be something getting pinched or impinged from your more narrow stance. If that's the case, in the words of the GOAT Ed Coan: "open your taint." The extra external rotation should relive pressure near the head of the femur as well as reduce twisting strain in the knees.
It can also be hard to tell whats going on while you are changing body weights. The angle the tendons pull at change as your body changes. Some very minor tendon related discomfort can go away as you move away from random highly disadvantageous leverages. Either because you fat leverages change, or muscle growth changes the angle of pull on the bones. Do not ignore acute or chronic tendon pain though, that's a recipe for a very long and sometimes irrecoverable setback to training.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Those look like percentiles for general population to me, though I have no idea of the source. For college aged population the Health related physical fitness test manual by the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance has some tables. For the 1980's era publication it puts the 99th percentile male college student norm at 5:06, 99th percentile female norm at 6:04, 80th percentile male 6:05, 50th percentile male at 6:49, and the 50th percentile female at 9:22. The exact percentile levels are very sensitive to selection, there's a 30 second gap in the 99th percentiles they give for different college aged males for example.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I was thinking of slide 33 of the presentation of the USAPL report I had referenced down thread. That sample is best raw total for elite powerlifters 2011-2018. People often cite the grip strength study in untrained people, but I would have thought it was less applicable to trained individuals participating in sport. I think the quantile cuts are similar though. For virtually any otherwise equal selection, the strongest woman is about as strong as the average man.
Your situation makes a lot more sense now that you've explained a bit more. I do think that prenatal androgen exposure is a more important factor in athletic performance than most people realize. At least on par with puberty effects and free testosterone. It seems to dominate neuromuscular efficiency effects in animal models. That neuromuscular efficiency is what really separates elite athletes from mere mortals. It also effects androgen sensitivity which in turn effects how well people respond to training.
I do consider college sports to be elite. Even a D III player is on a totally different level than an average person.
I was imprecise by the implication that highschool level didn't matter. It sort of depends on what the purpose of scholastic sports is, but doesn't fit into the same bucket as elite levels to me. In the US most highschoolers that are eilite enough to get to the colleget level play club as their most competitive team. I guess that belongs to the same category as college? For the sports sponsored by the school, I'm sympathetic to the notion that trans girl want to play. On the other hand there are plenty of regular cis-boys that aren't good enough to even play on the JV team. Are school sports supposed to be accessible to literally everyone? I don't think they are at most high schools. I say this as someone who's best chance at a varsity letter would have been convincing my school to add a scholastic bowl team. I also don't think the institutionalization of sports for youth has been a positive development. The neighborhood sand lot games seem better to me at accommodating a variety of skill and strength levels.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Are we using the same sign for the quantile direction? There's virtually no overlap of the top 5% of male athletes and female athletes.
Seems like you were also adversely selected for arm wrestling. Like weight makes a huge difference when comparing with male classmates, not just because being bigger makes it easier to carry more fat free mass. Fat leverages make a big difference in strength sports. I would also assume female classmates willing to arm wrestle are not random? Like they were probably in the top quartile of self assessed strength and that's why they would participate in such a challenge. I can't think of any instance where I've seen a petite woman seriously challenge a man to arm wrestling in person.
I sort always had the implicit assumption that much of the culture war aspect of the issue comes down to the elite levels. It's not clear to me that the local D level rec-league shouldn't just be an open league. For individual sports no one cares if you win the novice, 35-40 yr old, 65-70 kg, nearsighted division of your local park run. Like if it matters to someone, anyone can find a "competition" where they hand our participation trophies.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I don't want to speak for KMC, but is the commonly understood usage of the term "competitive advantage" not generally understood to apply to the performance gap between the n percentile man and nth percentile woman? Like you might define it as a factor that positively affects performance in a given discipline. In that definition an 80 kg lifter has a competitive advantage over a 70 kg lifter, even though the 70 kg lifter might be stronger. Or as another example, you could take an average amateur cyclist and dope them to the gills with EPO and they would still get instantly dropped by the worst Tour de France rider. That doesn't mean EPO isn't a competitive advantage for a cyclist.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Slightly tangential, but relevant to the overall theme of the discussion the statement:
... sports where there testosterone does not give you an advantage
and
If men don't have any advantage in these sports...
Are not actually talking about the same thing. The 2019 report by usapowerlifting found that androgens like testosterone contribute about 10% to power-lifting total, where as male-female sex difference in total is 64%.
Somehow most of the discussion misses differences in motor neuron density, which primarily occur in the prenatal environment.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
This is good advice.
For an estimation of how slow is slow, you can find the equilibrium estimated BAC rate by inverting the formula here. Which gives (beta * Wt * weight in kg) / (.014 kg/std drink * 100%) as the approximate standard alcohol units per hour you can clear without getting progressively more drunk. For an average 70 kg male it's about 1/2 a unit per hour.
For me this equates to a drink or two start the night, then switching to soda trying to average a bit under that rate for the night. I like to leave a bit of buffer as depending on drinking culture of the event there may be rounds of shots, games, or toasts at various points, which is usually enough to keep near the tipsy/buzzed but not drunk sweet spot. You can always add another alcoholic drink in if your buzz is wearing off, but if there is any chance of a round you would feel socially obligated to partake in coming up, I would delay a bit.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Unfortunately, I don't think it was that sensible. I've never bothered to dig down through all the references (you have to go back to actuarial tables from 100 years ago), but this review paper quotes a 1995 WHO report (internal citations omitted emphasis mine)
WHO Expert Committee on Physical Status referenced the meta-analysis ... presented the U-shape mortality rates that sharply increased when BMI <18.5 and >30.0 kg/m2 with the acceptable BMI range as 18.5–25.00. The WHO experts underscored that the cut-offs were chosen arbitrarily based on the “visual inspection of the relationship between BMI and mortality”...
I don't understand why you would set the low threshold at the point where the curve turns up sharply, but the high threshold at a point close to the minimum.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
F) Healthy at more weights than you thought. IMO, people overstate the health risks of being overweight and don't sufficiently differentiate between overweight/obese and active/inactive.
I'd be interested in this if someone wanted to dig a bit deeper on the subject. In particular I'd be interested to know if some one could figure out how the original BMI based thresholds were set. I'm particularly interested in knowing why a BMI of 25 is considered unhealthy while a BMI of 18.5 is not. I've yet to see an all causes mortality chart where the point at 25 had a higher hazard ratio than the point at 18.5.
This was of particular interest to me when states were rationing COVID vaccine shots. In the state I was living in, having a BMI of 25 made you eligible for the full two shot sequence before people with a BMI 18.5 were even eligible for one. When I tried to figure out why, the state department of health website referenced the CDC. Clicking three or four times and past a circular reference on the CDC site reached a paper that showed minimum risk around 24, if i recall correctly. I don't think this is the same paper, but It seems to show something similar. With the identified minimums in Figure 2. between 23.7 and 25.9. I still can't fathom how the state health officials justified to themselves prioritizing otherwise healthy 18-39 year olds with a BMI of 25 over 49 year olds with a BMI of 18.5.
I'd also be very interested in high quality population level research that controls for body composition as well as BMI with respect to mortality. Surely for a male at 5'10" (178 cm) it healthier to be 175 lbs (80 kg), BMI of 25, with 15% body fat than 130 lbs (59kg), BMI of 18.6, with 20% body fat.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Your own post contradicts your claims.
I was more or less going to post this. "Not actually that hard" is incompatible with obsessively tracking micro-nutrients. That is way beyond what an average person is willing to do. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as a vegan requires a wall of text to keep track possible sources of nutrients you actively have to seek out. Eating without any nutritional deficiencies as an omnivore requires have a palate more refined than a five year old.
It also seems like claims of being "successful athletically" on a vegan diet are primary made by participants in endurance sports. While I can appreciate those sports, this is somewhat outside of the average mental picture for athleticism. Outside of the niche of endurance sports most people think of power, muscularity, or strength when they think of athleticism. A vegan diet is also pretty clearly not optimal, even for endurance sports. I don't follow marathon closely enough to know if this has changed since
But you know, there’s a also a reason no vegan runner has qualified for the Olympic marathon trials. Not the Olympics. The trials.
It's clearly possible to sustain life as a vegan, but success athletically has to be defined before you claim to have proven that possible to be successful athletically on a vegan diet.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I've had good results with Spigen and Speck cases combined with screen protectors. I've never had a phone break from a drop with those on, but it's not really at the bullet proof level.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
It's probably worth noting that that 38 t U was probably not from active mining. The link in the wiki is dead, but the current Red Book has a note for the recent entries were from mine water treatment and "In 2018, conversion work of the water treatment facility at the Königstein mine halted uranium production." None of the reserves in Western Europe are viable at current prices. In practice any Uranium used in Western Europe would probably be imported.
I think all the processing facilities in Germany have also been shut down, so processed ore would have to be imported from France, which itself sources Uranium from Canada, Gabon, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Namibia and Niger. I think the French nuclear industry has an explicit goal of diversifying the locations it sources from.
Based on user name you are German? Eyeballing a map, Western Europe might be the most Uranium scarce populated region. I'm not sure Western Europe has an energy option that doesn't require importing materials, or finished products requiring rare materials. The main advantage of of uranium would be relatively high energy density making up for some of the more logistically challenging freight issues. In North America, Canada has substantial reserves. The most complete reference for Uranium resources is the "Red Book", but you need to be a bit careful in interpreting the entries.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
These seem like not amazing but not bad numbers. It would also be helpful to know how tall you are. Plugging them into symmetricstrength, I get intermediate on the edge of proficient, which is what I would expect given your description of motivation, training history, and lifestyle. I do tend to believe that the qualitative descriptions there line up pretty well with what I've observed in the gym. For intermediate: "The majority of those who go to the gym regularly fall into this category."
Are you sure the people you are comparing yourself to who are stronger are not more athletically gifted, younger, bigger, or on gear/TRT? It also depends on how old you are. If you not in your early 20s or a noob gains come at a glacial or negative pace eventually, especially if you aren't at a point in life to hit it supper hard.
Also, I guess its fine to pick random programs if your just trying random stuff out for fun. No one is forcing you to do power cleans. Pick a different program if you don't want to do them. I can't comment on the quality of the program and don't have the inclination to read the ebook. But based on the advertising, are you sure you had realistic expectations going in? It doesn't really look like the kind of thing that is engineered to work for intermediate natties. Like, why would you think that someone who is physically gifted and on a shit tone of gear would have particular skill at designing a cooky cutter program for average natty people? If you are just doing it for fun that's fine, but then I don't understand why you would be disappointed by the results.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Are new cars not less affordable now? I mean a new car in 2022 averaged $48,080. A new car in 1980 was something like $8,025 or $23,920 in inflation adjusted dollars. Part of this is consumer behavior and non-emissions or efficiency improvements. "CPI: New Vehicles" already "corrects" for quality improvements including emissions or efficiency improvements, so shouldn't be used to compare affordability.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
I do think this is a major drawback, with a very sudden drop-off in independence. At one time I was hopeful that self-driving cars would help relieve this issue, though now I wonder how much cheaper it would really be than an Uber. For those that can afford it, I do think that an Uber offers a better experience for those with limited mobility over even very good transit systems.
There does seem to be demand for walk-able communities with a variety of amenities like the "age-restricted communities" such as the The Villages. I suppose that a charitable interpretation for their popping up over choosing to move to an existing dense urban core, is that the amenities are more tailored to older people's interests?
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
just increase taxes on cars to capture their externalities.
I'm not really arguing against doing this, I just don't think this seems very politically viable as a "solution."
Improve the strength of our institutions and management
Sorry if this was unclear. I meant to express the idea that in general public transit management and planing is the US is clearly worse than counterparts in other places. It's not clear to me that improving this does not require clearing substantial hurdles with deeply entrenched interests.
Even with current systems
Yes, but I'm arguing that increasing adoption will likely require substantial improvements, not that increasing adoption is bad?
Can't afford a good car
I am sympathetic to this argument, like I said I find many of the Urbanist arguments appealing. I do think that some of the cost comparisons are a bit tricky though. Realistically, someone on the edge of poverty should not be paying the Experian number quoted by OP. When I was driving around in a 20+ year old Honda Civic my lifetime total cost was about 1/3 of the IRS standard mileage rate at the time, including fuel, insurance, maintenance, and repairs. Driving certainly can be expensive, but it doesn't have to be as expensive as the average diver in the US spends.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
Interesting point. I do wonder what a comprehensive analysis of how you should value transit time and driving time for commuters would show. I wonder if there clean data on relative like/dislike of driving vs various quality metro systems.
I also don't think that even on safe and non-crowded trains you should value the time at full billable hour rate. Or that you should value the car time as total waste. Commuting by train requires walking time on either end that does not allow for reading, so on equal total commute time basis you don't yield the full time for semi-productive pursuits. Of the possible activities mentioned I think the closest analogs in a car are: talking with friends you are carpooling with, listing to audio books, listening to music, podcasts, or the news. I would concede there aren't close analogs to playing games or checking emails; though you might be able to take a call in a car but not on a train. I'm also unsure how much is lost from reading on the train vs audio book. Personally, the motion, sound from other commuters, and having to listen for the station call negate most of the advantages of reading over audio books for me.
MollieTheMare
1yr ago
This seems like a reasonably fair summary to me.
While I find many of the Urbanist arguments appealing — and have at times commuted by transit, bike, and foot — for me there are two big weaknesses. First, that we should prioritize possible efficiencies at full capacity over observed performance. Second, is the strength of irreversibly of the situation. It seems quite possible that pure car-oriented and pure transit-oriented transportation are relative equilibrium states, but the transition state is not equilibrium.
I think the two objections are related. Ranking trains over cars in efficiency in long-term thinking requires some optimism about actual ridership. If ridership is expected to remain low over the long term in the US, it is by definition not short-term thinking to deprioritize it.
If all that has to be done to make transit superior is (1) Convince people to abandon existing driving infrastructure. (2) Figure out how to contain the high costs of projects in the US. (3) Improve the strength of our institutions and management (4) Move forward transit spending to update all outdated systems. Then there is NOT a small potential barrier to cross from the O’Toole analysis world to the idealist Urbanist paradise world.
Three small side notes to round things out. I generally thought the DC metro system was one of the more pleasant metro experiences in the US, but even that wasn't free from people involved seemingly actively trying to make it worse (sorry for the source but you can check the twitter thread if you're skeptical of the slant). I also can't say there were never uncomfortable situations on the DC metro. Second, it is fair to consider the impact of transit on infectious disease. Some transit analyses try to discount the recent drop in ridership, but unless you think there will never be another infectious disease again it seems silly to call for relying on a transportation method that will either not be there when you need it or be a vector for the disease to spread. Third, I'm unwilling to defend minimum parking requirements, but in terms of reveled preference I do think it's quite possible American really do prefer car-centric neighborhoods. And those that do rightfully bear (at least part) of the cost of the preference.
I don't think I disagree with any of this. I certainly recognize the importance, and do feel sympathy and sadness for the situation. I would say that I have "empathy" in the sense of an intellectual understanding of what the people in the scenario are experiencing, but not in the visceral sense. When I see the video I only see something I would absolutely never want to be involved in.
Just to be clear, I'm not the person @Amadan was responding to. My main objection was to the "don't even actually know." I thought it was clear that we do know, but that doesn't mean I endorse embracing tribal hatred.
I will say one of my guilty pleasures is novels like Sharpe's Revenge, where Sharpe teams up with with his long time battlefield enemy Calvet to defeat his nemesis the duplicitous Ducos. I realize its fiction, but I do think that kind of justice resonates with me strongly. That there is a right way and a wrong way to do battle with an enemy, and that in a just world those that do it in the wrong way would be the ones to suffer.
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