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PaperclipPerfector  30d ago (text post)   2289 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 22, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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What is your theory for choosing baby names? Generally it seems the reason for picking one falls into a few categories: family name, celebrity name (including historical, religious or fictional characters), unique name, “I like the sound of it”, meaning (in a literal sense, like naming your daughter Chastity). Obviously you can choose a name for multiple of these, but I think this covers most common reasons.

Feel free to answer even if you don’t have children.

As for me, I only have one child and I went with my father’s name. I had no strong attachment to any figure I wanted to name him after. I felt chasing uniqueness was pointless, and too difficult to predict. I still can’t believe we live in a world where the commonly thought-of common/generic names like John are less common than things like Ezra. With no strong direction I figured at least I could make my dad happy if nothing else. But for a second child? I have no idea what I would do.

I have the slight (common) problem of having an ethnically Italian last name while my children will be 1/16 Italian. I can’t choose an Italian first name or it would give the impression of being 100% Italian. But non-Italian first names feel somewhat aesthetically incongruous with the last name.

I think name trends are interesting to observe as far as what they say about our values and social classes. The departure from traditionally common names like Mary/John/Peter in my lifetime obviously has a lot to do with falling religiosity, but I think it also speaks to declining respect for family. Without those anchors it seems most people are left chasing the phantom of uniqueness or trying to stay ontop of trends associated with social class.

I went with an associative approach - the name should maximize positive associations while minimizing negative ones. The wife just wanted whatever sounded good to her, which would've been a bunch of fashionable but meaningless names.

In the end we settled on names that sounded acceptable to her, held no negative associations for me, and had a connection to our ancestors. So it ended up being a bunch of biblical names after all.

I'm a great fan of "meaning" names - especially ones evoking natural beauty (Brooke, Cliff, Dawn, River..), months/seasons (April, May, June* Summer, Autumn..), animals (Bear, Fox, Raven..). I feel they have a certain metaphorical upside. They're ripe for wordplay, poetic double-entendre, etc.

You're safe to pick from a huge number of respectable options, but on the other hand, someone has to blaze trail and name their son Marmot first. It's going to weird the first time. Everyone hears it, rolls their eyes, doesn't like it. Then someone "does it well", owns the name, normalizes it and gives license for future use.

*June is kind of a double reference, if you think about it

For all 3 of my kids, my wife and I made a big list of names we liked, made it into a short list, then didn’t decide til after the baby was born. For some of them it took a day or two til we decided.

I don’t think you should try anything too systemic or algorithmic. Do a bit of it to get an idea and to narrow down the range. But at the end of the day, pick a name that you can say over and over and not hate. Trust your gut.

Something not mentioned in this thread that we considered fairly important, that we see some other people not do, was to choose a name that works both as a name for a child and as an adult. Some people pick names for their children that only really work for young children. They're more like a pet names than real names.

This is not necessarily a wholly modern phenomenon and some older names are like this as well.

'Pick a saint's name and spell it normally'. I've noticed a bit of a revival of names that were last in fashion in the twenties; I think these are best as middle names, which can just be omitted if they stand out.

I have an ethnically distinctive(although often mistaken for a different ethnicity) last name. I suppose this rules out going with conspicuously Mexican first names, but I don't particularly want to use one anyways. It doesn't seem to clash with old-style southern names.

'Pick a saint's name and spell it normally'

This one. Middle name is often an ancestor, which is also a saint's name but sometimes in a language from the old world. For example my middle name is Tomasz, after my great x2 grandfather. You get another saint's name on confirmation.

edit - the Twilight movies inspiring a wave of Edward and Isabella saved a lot of kids imo.

Well, here’s a few of them:

  • Spell correctly and unambiguously. Assigning a name like ‘Mychael’ might be cute, but I don’t want my kid reminded his parents are literal retards every time someone says his name. Asking how things are spelled is for last names, not first ones.

  • No meme names. Again, Abcde might make you smile, but I don’t need others making the perfectly reasonable assumption it’s parents are selfish and/or easily-influenced.

  • Pattern should compliment or at least not clash with your last name. This is part of the reason names get recycled in the first place; Bible names tend to go with everything (at least, the ones that don’t violate the above rules). Probably a non-trivial factor in marriages, too. Middle names can be as weird as you want, though.

  • A name that doesn’t easily abbreviate is better than a name that does, but you may be limited to two syllables that way. Come up with the invectives ahead of time, remember your middle school self and choose accordingly.

We went with a moderately common girl's name from my ethnic background, a variant of a common girl's name that is itself uncommon in the US from my husband's background that we like the sound of, and a fairly common boy's name associated with a historical figure we like. Middle child will have to tell everyone how to say her name, because it isn't obvious from the spelling, but it's only two syllables so I don't expect a problem. There are names we ruled out because we don't like the sound, for instance Olga. Their last name is Polish, but short and easy enough to not sound notably foreign.

We did not consider any names that the same as immediate relatives for first names (though we do have some middles). We're both very high in personality trait openness, and generally don't like anything to be the same; we like visiting new places, moving, making things we haven't before, new foods we've never tried, and are more attracted to names that are new to our respective families. We didn't consider anything like John, George, or Mary because they were overused in our parents' generation. I think there's some kind of cycle there, and maybe someday we'll have a grandchild named Mary and it will seem right again. Baby boy has a common enough name he could conceivably end up in a class with another boy of the same name, but apparently that's a risk we're willing to take.

The departure from traditionally common names like Mary/John/Peter in my lifetime obviously has a lot to do with falling religiosity

I'm not sure they're related. The very religious people I know are naming their kids things like Euphrosynos or Xenia or something.

Xenia

Warrior princess, or Onatopp?

Of St Petersburg.

Wikipedia indicates that "Xenia" is Greek for "hospitality".

Yeah, the opposite of xenophobic.

I'm not sure they're related. The very religious people I know are naming their kids things like Euphrosynos or Xenia or something.

I see lots of David, John, Mary, Sam, etc from the children of very religious people I know, although I live in the south where very religious normies are still a thing.

That makes sense. American Orthodoxy selects heavily for people with Byzantine preferences. When I was Evangelical, some that stood out are Peter, Christian, Bethany -- the Johns that spring to mind are from my parents' generation

I felt chasing uniqueness was pointless

At least a modicum of uniqueness is desirable in a name. Using suffixes like "Jr." and "II" is highly inadvisable, as too many software systems do not play well with them. The child may be annoyed if he is unable to buy a domain name that matches his legal name because somebody else with the same legal name has already purchased it. And confusion between people with the same name can occur.

Does anyone know how to donate funds directly to Haitian citizens? I've been reading about all of the graft and waste for various charities donating to Haiti, and I literally just want to send individuals money. It wouldn't be much, maybe $200 a month, but I feel like even that small amount could help a family or two. Has anyone ever looked into sending money directly people in need?

There are a few charities like that, e.g. GiveDirectly.

I'm moving to a new area that will have a lots of agricultural development which will greatly boost the economy of the area. What would be some good businesses to get involved in this kind of place? Not a wealthy place. GDP per cap US$4k and population low 6 figures. Year round hot climate. Projects planned could increase local economy by multiples over time.

Guessing an island nation, looking at every gdp/capita at US$4k+/-1 under 1 million population. Could just be a subnational region of course.

Evergreen if island: improve and modernize port infrastructure.

If there's going to be that much agricultural development, business importing and fully repairing tractors, with apprenticeships and courses for proper tractor use and care for farmers, proper repair for mechanically inclined locals.

Does anyone have insight into the business model of food delivery apps? (Doordash, UberEats, Deliveroo, etc.)

Right now, I can order restaurant food delivered at half price with a coupon deal, maybe 60% after the driver's tip. In order to qualify for the deals, I must have it delivered, so if I want half price food from the Thai place on my block, I have to go through one of the apps and get some international student (always an international student) to go in and pick it up, then ride his (always his) scooter ~100m around the block and hand it to me.

I would prefer to pick it up myself, but this invariably voids the deal, and it doubles in price.

Who is paying for this absurdity?

  • It can't be the restaurant. Restaurant margins are notoriously thin, and if they could be doing a pad see ew at $7, not $15, I'm sure the normal price would be lower. I can't get the deal direct through the restaurant either. Has to go through the app.
  • It can't be the delivery person. Even if they're getting paid literally nothing but tips, I'm still saving money on the food. Also, my area has a minimum wage law, which means they must be getting at least that much when they're on the clock.
  • Must be the app companies, right? I'm eating VC capital for dinner every night, and it's cheaper than cooking for myself. But how is this at all sustainable? The restaurants and delivery drivers use all the apps, so they're not capturing market share. They're just burning money. Are they stupid?

It's VC/investor capital.

For example, in its existence as a company, Door Dash has lost over $5 billion.

Nevertheless, their stock is valued at $70 billion (as compared to $7 billion for U.S. Steel) and is up 70% year to date. So clearly someone thinks that, any moment now, they are going to turn the corner and become profitable.

I think they're wrong, but what do I know?

Note: $DASH can actually lose money for eternity and be fine as long as they continue to find new suckers index fund investors to keep buying their stock. In the last 3 years, they've increased their share count by around 20%. They can sell stock and recoup more than the losses from their businesses. It's kinda a ponzi.

Isn't watering down stock illegal?

No. Most companies do it. Some to extreme levels.

I've been seriously looking at my index funds and trying to find a way to avoid taking a bath in the next crash. It's going to be incredibly ugly.

I use something called the Golden Butterfly portfolio which is a prosperity-tilted allocation of the Permanent Portfolio. I chose this because I have no idea what I’m doing.

If you really want to avoid one specific company, short-sell it in proportion to the index fund. For example, if you have 100,000 in an index fund, and Door Dash is 5% of the index, short Door Dash for 5000. This sets up a hedge which effectively strips out Door Dash from the rest of the index. You don't gain when Door Dash goes up, but you also don't lose money when Door Dash goes down.

DoorDash constitutes less than 0.1 percent of Vanguard's "Total [US] Stock Market Index Fund", and is not even large enough to appear in its "[S&P] 500 Index Fund". So it isn't worth worrying about in the end.

The struggle between not wanting to miss out on the rally, but not wanting to be left holding the bag.

I wonder what an "S&P 500, but weighted by profit rather than by market capitalization" index fund would look like.

It probably wouldn't look too different. Most of the megacap tech companies are very profitable. And the S&P 500 already has a profitability filter that keeps out the worst garbage.

On the other hand, something like 40% of the Russell 2000 companies (ranked #1001–3000 by market cap) are unprofitable. A significant percent are essentially zombies, kept afloat by cheap debt and shareholder dilution.

In the last 20 years, stock market breadth has been decimated by software eating the world. I wouldn't be surprised if software has captured >100% of the increase in corporate profits in the last 20 years, with non-software being in a deep depression.

It probably wouldn't look too different.

Actually, according to this (not-very-trustworthy-looking) website, it would look quite different.

Very lazy assessment of the 28 companies that are in the top twenty of either capitalization or profit

Some notable differences:

  • Apple: 12.9 % of capitalization, 6.5 % of profit (6.4-% decrease)

  • Nvidia: 11.2 % of capitalization, 4.0 % of profit (7.3-% decrease)

  • Microsoft: 10.9 % of capitalization, 6.0 % of profit (4.9-% decrease)

  • Amazon: 7.9 % of capitalization, 3.4 % of profit (4.6-% decrease)

  • Saudi Aramco: 6.0 % of capitalization, 12.0 % of profit (6.0-% increase)

  • Berkshire Hathaway: 3.3 % of capitalization, 7.6 % of profit (4.4-% increase)

  • CEMIG: 0.0 % of capitalization, 14.2 % of profit (14.2-% increase)

  • Toyota: 0.8 % of capitalization, 2.3 % of profit (1.5-% increase)

If you pick the most extreme companies by any two metrics, even highly correlated ones, they'll exhibit that kind of divergence, because the tails come apart (you'll also select for anomalies like data entry errors or fraud).

No, this isn't accurate.

Saudi Aramco, CEMIG?, and Toyota are not members of the S&P 500.

Also, the numbers for CEMIG defy logic and are likely the result of some sort of currency translation or data entry error.

Sincerely and Bah Humbug! -Ebeneezer Scrooge

They're called value ETFs (perhaps not exactly but they're an approximation of what you want)

But how is this at all sustainable?

It isn't thats the secret. As for "are they just stupid?" The jury is still out.

The app is using this as a loss leader so that you'll use delivery services costing four times as much when you're stoned at 2 AM with the munchies.

A lot of it is VC, a lot of it is customers at more expensive delivery times who are less price sensitive, a lot of it is restaurant markups.

Consider that food is routinely marked up by restaurants on these apps by 35-40% plus that there are high service fees (which is where the apps make their money) plus delivery fees and tips (which is where drivers make theirs), and you can see why these 30-40% discount codes are ubiquitous. At most the restaurant might make 10-20% less than from an in-person takeout order, but for bulk slop food (which most delivery food is) margins are both higher and fixed costs like rent, salaries for kitchen staff etc are being paid anyway. Raw ingredients are a modest part of the cost of a meal. Takeout apps also let restaurants switch on or off delivery whenever they’re busy or even to do dynamic discounting; on a quiet Tuesday night, a hundred extra delivery orders sold for somewhat less revenue is great.

Say the app’s usual cut is 30% of the menu price plus the 10% service fee. When they issue you the discount code for 40% off, they’re not really burning money so much as not making it (ie Uber Eats will waive a huge chunk of their fee on the restaurant side). The rider is still being paid; the restaurant agrees to a slight discount (nowhere near 40%) in exchange for more sales, the ride share app is revenue-mostly-neutral and hopefully hooks a new customer.

When I am flying, if I check in the bag, they weigh it and if it's over some specific number (50lbs? Don't remember, but it doesn't matter) they demand I pay ridiculous money for it being overly massive. Unless I, right in front on them, take some stuff out of the checked bag and put it into my carry-on bag, which they know I will be taking with me onboard. Last time we did this dance over 2 pounds. How does it make any sense? I understand carrying more mass takes more fuel, but putting it into my carry-on does not change the mass, and I could be traveling with a box full of lead bricks and nobody would tell me a word if it fits the carry-on size. One could suppose maybe the handlers are not allowed to lift over 50lbs - but if I pay the ridiculous payment, they suddenly become allowed?

I'm not even saying they charge the same for 2 yo kid and for 400lbs landwhale, so clearly the mass is not that important here. Why are they doing it? Just to piss me off because airlines secretly agreed their goal must be to maximize the amount of frustration in the Universe? Or there's some logical reason for it?

Probably something boring like workplace safety (mentioned blow), but I want to believe it's for boarding efficiency. Other travelers fussing with their ridiculous oversized carry-on is one of the most infuriating parts of air travel.

You line up nice and orderly, pass the ticket check, walk down the corridor, greet the flight staff, awkwardly try not to make eye contact with every row of passengers on the way back to your seat and then - hold up. What's this? Traffic is stopped ahead? A middle-aged fellow with t-rex arms is trying to clean and jerk 120 pounds of laptop charger and winter clothing in a wheeled suitcase that he 100% won't use at all on this 5-hour flight. That takes a full minute because he's short and the person in front of him put in their giant wheeled suitcase first, and his won't fit. Finally he manages to turn it on its side (and you can tell the compartment bin isn't going to close now and the flight attendant will have to fix it anyway..). Then he turns around and does it again for his wife.

Then the scene plays out again in reverse because you're stuck behind them deplaning too.

The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished. And don't even get me started on baggage carousels..

Edit: (oh, I misread. you're having the opposite problem, which makes the carry-on weight even worse)

The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished. And don't even get me started on baggage carousels..

Carry-on is fine, you just shouldn't be allowed to bring your wheeled luggage and hard-sided baggage. If you can't actually carry it, well, it's not a carry-on. I use a Cotopaxi Allpa 35L and it's just absolutely trivial to shrug it off my shoulders and toss it in the overhead. Even on smaller regional jets (e.g. CRJ900), it squishes into the overhead with no trouble. I also don't know what the hell people are doing with their gigantic bags in the first place - that backpack suffices for week-plus international trips that include casual clothes, dressier attire, and running gear.

Other travelers fussing with their ridiculous oversized carry-on is one of the most infuriating parts of air travel.

While the size of the allowed carry-on is officially limited (and, to be fun, different for different airlines, in theory), in all my years of travel I have never seen anybody actually check that. If it fits the compartment (however much force and effort and time it'd require to make it), it's ok. Yes, delaying boarding to stuff your oversized luggage into the undersized storage compartment is an asshole move, but I have never seen anybody deboarded or even forced to check in the bag (unless it completely failed to fit) for that.

The whole concept of carry-on should be abolished.

With properly run airports, I'd go for it. In some airports, my bag got to the baggage claim the same minute I got there, so why would I object to that? My only reservations are: some airports are shit at this (among other things) and you have to wait for like 20 minutes for your bag, and b) United breaks guitars. And suitcases - it broke one of mine, and managed to put a huge dent of the size of my fist in the corner of the other (which is supposed to be the most resilient place of the whole structure, so maybe they were just flexing). But my local airport is small, so I can check in the bag literally in minutes. In some mega-airport it can turn into a hour-long adventure, so I can get why people don't want to deal with it.

Also, you are not allowed to put laptops there, but that's no big deal since I have a separate under-the-seat backpack for that.

European airlines absolutely check the size (but not weight) of carry-on bags. Full-service airlines will gate check the bag for free if it is a close call, low-cost airlines will charge you double the usual checked bag fee because you didn't pre-order.

Low-cost airlines now also charge for overhead bin space (or bundle it with speedy boarding) - if you don't pay for bin space, your carry-on has to fit under the seat in front of you.

Yeah, I don't think US has a lot of those nickel-and-dime airlines - United has some attempt at it with "Basic" but that has many exceptions.

My understanding was that Spirit was the US equivalent of Ryanair (the scuzziest and most successful of the EU low-cost airlines). Southwest were low-cost once, but last time I was in the US they generally cost more than basic economy on the crappified full-service airlines.

But the thing that makes Ryanair so successful is that the underlying hard product just works. The planes get you from A to B, on time, and cheaply if you follow the easy-to-understand rules about things like bag sizes. I prefer Easyjet, but probably only because there is something about the aesthetics of stepping onto a Ryanair plane which somehow rubs in the fact that you must be falling out of the upper-middle class.

Interestingly, Southwest has the best default service package now - free checked bags, no change fees, etc.

Spirit is definitely seen as lower class.

I could be traveling with a box full of lead bricks and nobody would tell me a word if it fits the carry-on size

Which, honestly, is kind of ridiculous because it seems much likelier someone gets injuried by a heavy pack falling on them opening the overhead bins than by checked luggage.

Customer tolerance of established customs and traditions. Everyone has more or less agreed that is what you are charged for and that's fine. Customers would perceive any other system as more unfair and ridiculous than this system.

In the same way that off the rack clothing items are priced at a single price point for all sizes, rather than increasing the cost with each increase in size for the larger quantity of material, or charging more for odd sizes that are more expensive on the margin for the store to produce and stock. People would be upset if fatsos or tall guys had to pay more for a shirt to pay for the material, or if skinny women paid more for a dress because it's not as profitable to stock that size. The perception of unfairness would harm the company. This holds even where crossing size categories produces weird arbitrage: my wife buys boys extra large LL Bean flannels rather than women's S, because the boys price is cheaper. People would find it inequitable to charge parents of fat boys more money, so the price is set at the median cost the same as for a smaller kid. Meanwhile, while I would happily pay more to be able to buy 11ee sneakers, stores can't really charge extra for the "same" product so I have to buy from specific stores and brands, with worse prices and/or results than if I was just charged extra.

Although, for your carry on lead bricks example, I think the airline would say fine pussy do it. Most people won't choose to carry more than perhaps 30lbs around the airport. Let alone do it twice. As for moving the items between bags, imagine how many pissed off customers they'd have to deal with if they didn't allow people to remove items? And if they don't let you move them right there, you'd just go around the corner and do it and pretend you threw things away.

In the same way that off the rack clothing items are priced at a single price point for all sizes, rather than increasing the cost with each increase in size for the larger quantity of material...

Actually, larger sizes do always cost more in my experience. Once you get above like an XL, maybe 2XL it will cost you more.

https://www.schottnyc.com/products/steerhide-perfecto.htm

So this is what I was thinking of. 945 between sizes 32 and 46. That's a pretty damn wide material spread! A 46 (xl or XXL?) is probably close to twice as much leather as a 32 (xs). That's a remarkable uniformity in pricing!

I rarely even see sizes above xl stocked at most stores I frequent so you're probably correct. But my point stands: we don't start charging more until you're in truly circus freak size categories and will accept it. For folks in the normal-ish range we just accept that some are paying extra for material and some are getting a bargain on material.

But my point stands: we don't start charging more until you're in truly circus freak size categories and will accept it.

I'm not so sure that is true, in the US at least. A fairly hefty chunk of the population (perhaps most, IDK the statistics) is in the "you pay more" zone. I suspect that it's not about how many people have to pay the increased cost, but how much the increase is. Even if you pay 20% more for a shirt, on a $10 shirt that's only $2 and that's small enough that most people won't notice it.

Many companies discriminate by having separate lines for standard and plus size. The brands I shop from regularly stop at XL or XXL, and people larger than that have to buy from a different brand altogether. When I looked into it, that seems to have as much to do with certain styles not even working as intended on larger figures, as much as amount of fabric used. That makes it hard to compare costs, since many items are simply unavailable in larger sizes, but brands that cater to explicitly carrying all sizes at the same price point, such as Universal Standard, are pretty expensive for what you get.

All of this(the entire comment chain) is pointing to 'a fairly small part of the price of clothes is materials', which I think is actually the correct answer to the original question.

The people who write the rules aren't the same people who enforce them. The individual airline workers don't care if you move things between your bags because it doesn't affect them. As for reasons why the airline might insist on the rules:

  1. As mentioned below, workplace safety rules
  2. The assumption that some passengers will pay the fine rather than bother with the hassle
  3. A means to incentivise passengers to purchase more bags

I know that at least Samoa Air did what you want and what sounds logical: charged people by the total flying mass. It went bankrupt, though.

So a passenger flying from Apia to Asau weighing 80 kg (180 lb) and carrying 20 kg (44 lb) of luggage would pay US$132 for the flight (100 kg x US$1.32 base fare), while another passenger weighing 60 kg (130 lb) and traveling without luggage would pay US$79.20 (60 kg x US$1.32 base fare) for the same flight.

Regarding the limit on the checked luggage, @rverghes probably has the right idea.

Sadly, the airline business is very volatile, so it's hard to know if the policy worked or not. Though it's funny that it was implemented by Samoa Air, given the mass propensities of Samoans.

Given the mass propensities of Samoans surely the best place to try out a policy like this is in Samoa where there's large variance in weights. There's no point in all the overhead for a policy like this if the standard deviation in how much people pay is going to be like $10 or so.

My guess would be it's related to machine tolerances, workplace safety laws, or negotiated union limits. For example, workers transferring luggage might have a limit (legal or contractual) where single worker only lifts 50 lbs. Oversize bags probably get tagged and go through a different process. For example, maybe 2 workers lift the oversize bags.

For example, maybe 2 workers lift the oversize bags.

I think this is probably it. In the US the standard is set by the NIOSH Lifting Equation which sets the starting threshold for required two person lift at 51 lbs. The airline probably faces liability if they do not mark bags over 50 lbs as oversized.

From the marginal fuel consumption point of view, most xUS airlines do set a limit on carry-on baggage weight too. Lufthansa for examples sets it at (iirc) 9 kg. They don't normally enforce it, but I have seen people being asked to weight their carry-on baggage after moving items from overweight checked bags on Lufthansa in particular.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock, 12 Commandments, Closing of the American Mind, Beyond Good and Evil and The Book of Knowledge. Picking up The Neoconservative Persuasion, a collection of Irving Kristol essays. Will probably read some C. S. Lewis for Christmas.

The Leiden Synopsis.

Finished My Brilliant Friend during the week. It was pretty good, but I'm not exactly dying to read the sequels.

Started The Unbearable Lightness of Being the other day. Much more accessible than I expected.

Just Finished The Instigator: How Gary Bettman Changed the NHL and Remade the Game Forever. It's significantly better than The NHL, if only because the scope is sufficiently narrowed; it's not a comprehensive history of the league under Bettman but a series of case studies demonstrating why Bettman's reputation among hockey fans is misplaced. It manages to go into significantly more detail on certain things like Winnipeg's relocation to Arizona in 1996, and while it leaves out Hartford's relocation to North Carolina the following year, this doesn't seem like a critical omission. My biggest complaint is that author Jonathan Gatehouse is a writer for Canadian magazine Maclean's, and it shows. He uses the present tense and presents the interviews he conducted as such rather than just using the information they provided or quotes the way a regular author would, which gives some of the chapters the feeling of being extended magazine articles rather than parts of a book.

For the uninitiated, Gary Bettman, the NHL commissioner since 1993, is widely despised among hockey fans and is regularly booed during his annual presentation of the Stanley Cup to the winning team. Canadian hockey fans are especially critical. The following reasons are usually put forth:

  • He was commissioner during three lockouts, one of which wiped out a whole season.

  • He allowed teams in Quebec, Winnipeg, and Hartford to relocate non-traditional hockey markets during his tenure.

  • He presided over an expansion that put more emphasis on growing the game in Sun Belt markets where hockey is a tough sell than on giving traditional hockey fans (i.e. Canadians) more teams that would always sell out.

  • Following the lockout, he signed a deal with the obscure Outdoor Life Network (which at the time mostly aired hunting and fishing programs, plus the Tour de France) rather than resigning with ESPN.

  • More recently, fans looking to watch all of their team's games often find them blacked out on their preferred platforms.

*He's not a "hockey guy", he's a New York lawyer who spent the '80s and early '90s working for David Stern in the NBA, and has no experience with the game beyond being a spectator.

*Since Montreal won the Stanley Cup a few months into his tenure, no Canadian team has won it.

Most of these arguments are seriously flawed. The most common defense of him is that he works for the owners, so nothing he does can be attributed to him other than to the extent that he's doing the bidding of the owners. But this is just a cop out. To take them individually:

  • The 1994–95 lockout was largely a consequence of the prior labor dispute, a 10 day strike in 1992 that was only resolved with a bargaining agreement that lasted one year and was renewed for another year. While the players were willing to begin play in the fall of 1994 while negotiations were underway, Major League Baseball players had struck in August, and at the time the lockout was announced the World Series had been cancelled. The league was well aware that, if negotiations were unsuccessful, something similar would happen, and they locked out the players to ensure that a resolution would occur earlier rather than later. There was no confidence that NHLPA president Bob Goodenow would negotiate in good faith while he had that kind of leverage. The NHLPA was successful in preventing a salary cap that year, which caused team finances to spiral out of control. By 2004 it was clear to the owners that something had to be done, and Goodenow was unwilling to negotiate. The owners were united and while missing a season was an unfortunate consequence, it was ultimately necessary. I'll grant that the 2012–2013 lockout could have been avoided.

  • The Canadian teams other than Toronto and Montreal had serious problems that weren't made any better by the paltry exchange rate. Bettman takes the blame for allowing Winnipeg and Quebec to relocate, but he doesn't get any credit for saving Edmonton, Calgary, Ottawa, and even Vancouver, simply because no one realizes how close to the brink these teams were and is unfamiliar with the behind the scenes work he did to save them. Hartford was in a bad market and wasn't viable long-term.

  • There was no chance that the league would be able to make any significant revenue growth without expanding to untapped markets. Putting teams in small Canadian cities may sell out a building, but something like 40% of gate revenues come from sales of luxury suites, and these don't sell in cities without a large corporate presence. The NHL would be resigned to the regional sport it was with teams in Canada, the Northeast, and Upper Midwest and would never achieve true major league status. I don't know why hockey fans wouldn't want their sport to be more popular.

  • The deal ESPN offered was so bad it wasn't really an offer at all. The NHL had made bad TV deals before chasing immediate cash over exposure, but ESPN in 2005 wasn't even offering much exposure. The money was low, it only called for a limited selection of games airing on ESPN2, and there was no addition of any studio analysis show. There was no reason ESPN would do much to promote it. OLN soon rebranded as Versus and later NBC Sports, and revamped its programming to be more of a general sports channel with an emphasis on covering things ESPN ignored, like Premiere League soccer and F1 racing. With the NHL as its flagship product and Comcast money behind it, the league would get serious promotion.

  • The blackouts are due to a complicated array of contractual obligations and aren't in Bettman's control. It should be noted that being able to watch all of your team's games on television is a relatively recent phenomenon. The gist is that if you pay for a streaming service some televised games are going to be blacked out because the networks paying the big bucks want exclusive rights.

  • Bettman was hired specifically because he wasn't a hockey guy. The league had been run by hockey guys up to that point who ran it like a bush league and had no business sense. When Gretzky and Mario were exploding in the '80s the league didn't even have a US network TV deal and didn't even seem to be trying to negotiate one. Prior president John Zeigler left the league in such a mess he was forced out. His predecessor, the venerable Clarence Campbell, left even more of a mess that Zeigler had to clean up.

  • The idea that Bettman has anything to do with which teams win is ridiculous, but there are still conspiracy theories about refs intentionally favoring teams. This is contradicted by the fact that, in most series, there's no obvious evidence of this (Bettman certainly wouldn't have picked Edmonton–Carolina to be the first Stanley Cup final after the lockout, and Sidney Crosby would have a few more cups).

I think people have largely come around on Bettman. The booing is mostly a fun tradition at this point and Bettman is very much in on the joke.

In recent years my biggest issue with him is the ridiculous lengths he went to to keep the Coyotes in Arizona long after the writing was on the wall. (Especially in contrast with doing little to keep the OG Jets from moving there in the first place, albeit almost two decades earlier under quite different circumstances.) He still doesn't seem to have wholly given up on Phoenix even with the team's de facto move to SLC. (Technically it's a new franchise that just happens to have inherited all the old one's assets, but it walks and quacks in a remarkably duck-like manner.) But still... trying too hard to keep a struggling franchise where it is, possibly against the league's financial interests, hardly seems like the worst of sins, especially next to the stuff from the 90s he gets blamed for.

The going conspiracy theory of biased-looking refereeing these days seems to be that it's got something to do with sports betting, not the league itself putting its thumb on the scales.

Sir John of Joinville’s biography of king Louis IX. I just finished the chapter where he meets the assassins, and they do not come off well- they’re cowards who are easily bullied by small numbers of crusaders, accept bribes readily, and seem to have effect mostly through bragging rather than actual ability.

I need to reread that! I'll never forget the priest who got fired for grabbing a crossbow to chase down and shoot the guys who robbed him. Only for Louis to rehire him as a soldier.
Wonder if the poor guy survived the whole thing. Probably not.

Highly recommended CS Lewis, I do wanna upload my review of the great divorce somewhere. I'll pick up the ramayana next as Faust is way too difficult for a noob like me. I'll give it a fair shot this time though.

I listenend to the Collected Essays as an audio book followed by Bishop Barron's commentary on Lewis (After Humanity) a few months back and highly recommend.

How was After Humanity? Any new insights based on recent developments, or just an exposition of the core theses of Abolition of Man? I've never heard of the author, Michael Ward.

No insights i would call new or ground breaking, but still a solid read. Mostly it contextualizes and expands upon various bits. IE "this is what Lewis was going through when he wrote that", and "chapter A is a effectively a reply to essay B written by so-and-so", that sort of thing. Fascinating for those who enjoy the "inside baseball" perspective, but far from essential.

Cool, I'll probably check it out then. I'm interested in the context in which the book was written.

Can someone who’s good with economics explain to me, as you would a child, is “global GDP” a useful measure of human productivity, or of anything at all for that matter?

My understanding GDP is a measure of productivity (via total value goods/services), but it’s measured in dollars, which are a self-referential measure of people’s willingness to work or pay for a service. All of these goods and services also have differing values to consumers based on their circumstances. If I’m trying to conceptualize a “fundamental unit of productivity” I feel like no matter how I do it I end up in a recursion loop. What am I missing?

Secondarily, I was recently in a fast food place and realized what I thought was a police officer taking a break was actually a full-time security guard employed by the restaurant. This guard is presumably paid some amount X per year, which is rolled into the national GDP. If we compare to another country where low crime rates mean they don’t need a security guard at every McDonald’s, it seems in this instance that GDP has captured a societal drag on productivity and is treating it as a gain. True, the guard is producing a service, but the fact that the service is needed at all when in other countries it is not seems like there should also be some factor captured as a negative that is being missed. Are similar warping effects (e.g., make-work projects or services that are created to compensate for a societal failure) a major contributor to variations in GDP values? And if so, how useful can GDP be really?

is “global GDP” a useful measure of human productivity, or of anything at all for that matter?

Productivity probably not, it can be useful as very rought measure of how much economic activity is going on. Within understanding that "very rough" means if I sell you a pumpkin for $2M and you sell it to me back for the same, we generate $4M of "economic activity" without actually doing anything useful. But since most people actually do not carry about messing with econometrists, the measurement still somehow may reflect the roughly correct picture. Of course, other people - like national-level politicians - may engage on purpose in messing with the measurements, e.g. to make themselves look good for the elections, and then national-level measurements become much less useful. But since they probably won't do it everywhere all at once, there still some value remaining.

What I am trying to say is that your critique looks correct and appropriate, so one probably shouldn't put too much value into those but still there may be some value there - i.e. if there's 10x "GDP" stuff happening at time T1 compared to point of time T0, then without going too much into detail, we could claim there's significantly more economic activity at T1 than at T0, though we should be very carefully about taking "10" as an actual mathematic number and not a somewhat symbolic expression of "more things".

Are similar warping effects (e.g., make-work projects or services that are created to compensate for a societal failure) a major contributor to variations in GDP values?

As a thought experiment, if nobody got sick, we could eliminate healthcare from GDP, which would be a huge paper loss (and lots of jobs) but doesn't seem to be a loss for what I'd consider "forward progress". I'm not really an RFK-stan or anything, but we presumably have a net GDP gain from incentivising unhealthy lifestyles and then paying for expensive mitigation treatments.

You know, I started to write a post but I think my thoughts just boil down to the same old idea I always reach about GDP and economic measures, which is: economic measures have a narrow definition and meaning and are useful when used in a very specific context, but our society overuses them as a measure of societal health and wellbeing because we've lost all moral common ground as a society save for a horror of poverty and physical suffering. And so, because the means to alleviate poverty and physical suffering (wealth) is the only metric we can all agree on, it de facto becomes the sole axis on which to measure the health of a society. Laymen mistakenly think that this is because The Science has proven that GDP is the best metric, but it's really just an accident (or maybe a legacy of Marxist economics, I dunno).

There's no objective definition of "the economy," but people act as though there is. Like many other soft "sciences," (looking at you, social "science"), the common usage of "the economy" smuggles in assumptions about what has value. In a 4x game framework, modern economies would have resources like "oil," "metals," and "information." But in a medieval economy (let's borrow CK2), it might have been "food," "artisanal wares," "piety," and "prestige" or something. If the Duke of Aquitaine's realm produced 9 trillion tapestries a year and had a glut of food, but there were no churches and his family was widely derided, I don't think he would consider his realm fully productive.

Others have given good answers but you seem to be trending in this direction for a question of fundamental assumptions or what productivity or gain really makes. Try this:

https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/page-one-economics/2020/11/02/examining-the-lump-of-labor-fallacy-using-a-simple-economic-model

Addressing your second point, as someone who knows next to nothing about economics [^1]: your question seems to be answered by the parable of the broken window.

Suppose it cost six francs to repair the damage [to a broken window], and you say that the accident brings six francs to the glazier's trade – that it encourages that trade to the amount of six francs – I grant it; I have not a word to say against it; you reason justly. The glazier comes, performs his task, receives his six francs, rubs his hands, and, in his heart, blesses the careless child [who broke the window]. All this is that which is seen.

But if, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, "Stop there! Your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen."

It is not seen that as our shopkeeper has spent six francs upon one thing, he cannot spend them upon another. It is not seen that if he had not had a window to replace, he would, perhaps, have replaced his old shoes, or added another book to his library. In short, he would have employed his six francs in some way, which this accident has prevented.

Applying this to your question about the security guard: any society in which stores (and in particularly bad cases, individual families) must spend on hiring security guards is a society where this money is not being spent on research and development, or on education, or on infrastructure, or on other investments that generally raise the GDP of that society (and often make life better in that society too). We should thus expect to see this opportunity cost of hiring security guards to be reflected in GDP figures, as societies that hire them are more likely to be beset with lower GDP. This is borne out in reality: there are many developing countries where elites live behind expensive walled compounds staffed by large security details, but no one particularly thinks that they’re major players in the world economy.

[^1] That is to say, don’t put too much stock in what I’ve written here.

similar warping effects

Not an economist, but you can find this lots of places.

My wife is a full-time homemaker. We could increase GDP if she went to work outside the home and then we paid others to care for our children and DoorDashed our meals etc. Our children are still cared for and fed but there would be a countable number to describe the economic activity that is now uncounted.

Goodhart's Law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

Yes, there are all kinds of ways you could distort GDP if you really wanted to, but because nobody is particularly invested in maximizing measured GDP, it's not that big of an issue.

Sure, we could come up with am alternative measure that includes an estimate of the value of home production, but what problem would this solve?

Any good stories about people getting fed up with the mess created by occupational licensing and just getting a license/certificate/whatever on their own, not even planning on making it a full-time occupation?

I saw a reddit post this week from someone who became a real estate agent just to sell their own house, with a, "Maybe it'll be helpful in future situations, too." Requirements differ by state, but it's typical that a basic requirement would be a relative short, relatively easy, relatively cheap course plus a relatively cheap, relatively easy test. I think they still had to "attach" themselves to a broker, but there is apparently a little industry of brokers who will pretty much just accept a small fee and otherwise let you pretty much do what you want. Looks like in some states, you can just do a small amount of additional coursework to upgreyyyed to being able to ignore even that and just do it under your own name (or and LLC or whatever).

I know a small-time landlord who got fed up with finding good HVAC guys. He just went to a community college to do the learning (not sure if this is even strictly required) and took the EPA's test. He's not contracting out to do work for other people, so he doesn't have to do the insane number of hours/full-time work to get contractor certified.

I'm sure there's a wide range of possibilities, with a range of ridiculous regulatory barriers. My guess is that the worst (to industry-protectionists, "most effective") barriers are ones that require a bunch of hours/years of full-time work underneath someone else who has already paid in to the cartel. What's surprisingly feasible... or maybe even a good idea/valuable? Any good examples of people doing seemingly-infeasible things just as a middle finger to the BS? Like, someone out there has probably gotten a law license just to not have to deal with any of that shit (my sense is that in a lot of places, yes, you'll have to pay a bunch of money to the cheapest online school you can find, but then, you pretty much just have to pass a test, no BS about needing to further work full-time for a long time under another licensed attorney or anything)... but even I can't imagine climbing the utterly insane walls that are set up to protect doctors.

I'm not sure the premise is correct. AFAIK, you generally don't need a license to provide professional services to yourself.

I've been told some home improvements require permits, and you must pass the inspection when it's done, and I suspect the inspector would probably be inclined to double and triple check stuff if they learn that the project is DYI and no licensed professional has been involved. So unless the matter is trivial, you'd still have to learn the codes and the regulations to the point that passing the exam may not be that big of a deal.

Some home improvement permits require license numbers from relevant professionals, too.

I think the premise is valid for the four examples I gave. Some are softer/harder barriers, but they're there for all of them. Like, yes, you can sell your house on your own, but you will have The Mark of The FSBO and the cartel will go to great lengths to prevent their buyers from even looking at your house (and warn them off very strongly if they find it on their own; maybe let's not get into details of MLS access). There are similar barriers for buying "unrepresented". You can't do your own AC work without passing the test (no quibbles with @hydroacetylene's statement; that is the nature of the barrier; you can just get the certification and not have to deal with contracting it out). Having someone with a law degree does open some barriers (in fact, in some states, having an attorney is required for real estate transactions, and in others, you can automatically get a real estate license, just for one example). And of course, the biggest one of all is that you absolutely cannot provide professional medical services to yourself... at least not anymore, anyway.

Perhaps I've managed to hit on the only four examples of certifications/licenses that are like this at all. I'd be a bit surprised, because those are four that just came to mind briefly. That's kinda why I was asking; I figured there would be other examples.

I know a small-time landlord who got fed up with finding good HVAC guys. He just went to a community college to do the learning (not sure if this is even strictly required) and took the EPA's test.

Minor counterpoint- the EPA’s test is not intended as an occupational licensing regulation. It’s intended to enforce an environmental regulation.

Now most HVAC techs will tell you that that regulation is stupid. But what he did is entirely in line with the EPA’s regulation, which does not really care very much about having a contractor supervising the work- just about not venting Freon. You do not have to take classes at community college for the test- there’s study guides you can order online and take the test at a supply house, and honestly not using the study guide might get a passing score- but community college classes are certainly a way to get it.

Contractors licenses are mostly about insurance responsibility and code compliance. Now the lower grade(s) of licensing is straightforwardly a poll tax, but outside of unionized blue states no more than that.

US warplane shot down by friendly fire in Red Sea, pilots eject safely

Two U.S. Navy pilots were shot down on Sunday over the Red Sea in an apparent “friendly fire” incident, the U.S military said, marking the most serious incident to threaten troops in over a year of targeting of Yemen's Houthi rebels.

Do you think it was friendly fire or the Houthi leveling up and the pentagon wants to cover it up? Iran do needs wins after Syria.

As I understand, shooting F-18 out of the sky requires either unbelievably good luck, or advanced anti-air equipment which if Houthis had it should be the first thing that gets destroyed (actually months ago when the whole thing started). And it should be quite hard to shoot down something like F-18 with lighter systems or MANPADs. So I'd rather believe somebody screwed up and accidentally turned their air defenses on a departing aircraft, which would be extremely vulnerable in such scenario.

Plane had just come off the deck and ran into the tico's range. I'm guessing they were running with the local PD in "shoot everything that moves" mode and weren't used to handling flight operations while running in "shoot everything that moves" mode.

If it was hit with a ram or phalanx it'll be confirmation.

They should probably keep the system in "pretend to shoot everything that moves" mode more often for training purposes, so they can log errors like this before they happen live. Have the phalanx go "bang, I would have shot that if I had any ammo, did I do good?"
On the other hand I'm not sure you can run them like that without the hydraulics slewing the barrels round to aim the sensors, and braining sailors on deck already accounts for most of phalanx's kills iirc.

Edit: supposedly the cruiser is a rusty piece of shit dragged out of mothballs and nicknamed the Ghettosburg. Navy culture sounds like a huge mess.

Edit edit: now they're saying it was 2 sm2 missiles fired at returning planes. If true someone's going to hang for this one.

The US has been laundering casualties for a while now. I’ve noticed that every time there’s a big offensive in Ukraine, two weeks later there’s a helicopter crash off the coast of America that kills half a dozen special forces guys. Or how there was another helicopter crash that killed a bunch of guys from the USS Eisenhower air wing two months after the Houthis totally did not hit it with a missile. Or how a helicopter crash killed some Delta Force guys two weeks after a big Israeli raid to try and rescue hostages in Gaza. Or that general that was mysteriously “found dead” at Twentynine Palms three days after he supposedly got back from Ukraine. Open source intel had indicated that a building housing American advisors in Ukraine had been hit by a missile a week before. Or going back a while, how half the SEAL team that killed Bin Laden died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan. Witnesses in Pakistan said that one of the stealth Blackhawks crashed during the Bin Laden raid with many casualties, but the Government maintained that the Blackhawk crash during the raid hadn’t killed anyone. They just happened to all die in a separate helicopter crash in Afghanistan a month later.

Training/deployment accidents happen absolutely regularly. Especially in any active army - US, Israel, etc. If you pay attention to it, there are a lot of them. Attributing them to "casualty laundering" would require some very strong proof - or at least evidence of a large statistical anomaly. Otherwise it just pointless posturing pretending to know more than the rubes, while not actually knowing anything.

I mean yes they happen fairly regularly, but having a high fatality accident every time the us or her Allies get involved in a battle does seem somewhat provocative to me.

Typical mistake. To show the correlation, you would have to demonstrate that accidents do not happen when US is not involved in a battle.

Helicopters are very unstable and crash a lot.

My father was a career NCO in the USMC. His stories when I was a little kid have left me with a lifelong fear of helicopters. I've never been in one and probably never will. I'm perfectly fine with airplanes have have gone skydiving twice.

I think this is dumb, but in a way which basically can’t be disproven. It just screams “confirmation bias.”

Is there a site somewhere that tracks casualty announcements?

This. We need disprovability and statistical averages, not anecdotes. How many incidents that might plausibly create casualties that need laundered occur, how many accidents involving military personal happen, and then do these correlate with each other more than we would statistically expect?

Friendly fire by US forces or other allied forces?

I’m doubting the Houthis shot this plane down, but the friendly fire explanation has a hole in it- namely, who did the navy think they were shooting at?

It’s not like the Houthis have f-18’s.

Couldn't some automatic system erroneously detected it as a drone?

Probably, but there should be safeguards- an IFF system to start with, and probably also a human that needs to sign off on weapons free. And IANA navy sailor, but that human is almost certainly an officer who should know better.

TDLR, someone screwed up big.

The USS Vincennes shot down a scheduled passenger flight back in 1988.

Huge screw ups happen.

The passenger flight wasn't data linked to the fire control of the Vincennes, whereas in theory fighters are always talking to every US ship with CEC capabilities, which are the ones launching missiles.

Edit: in this case I'm guessing it was an independent low altitude point defense system that shoots first and doesn't waste time asking questions. And someone forgot to flip the switch from "kill everyone" to "don't kill everyone" when they launched planes.

The pentagon really isn’t very watertight when it comes to leaks, if it was the Houthis I imagine that they‘d both claim it and that the NYT/WaPost/Reuters/AP/etc would have the leak relatively soon.

That’s just survivorship bias. You never hear about the many many things that don’t get leaked.

Why would they want to cover it up if the Houthis did it? I'd have thought that the US military would be happy to glass Yemen and Iran, but are worried that popular and muggle politician sentiment isn't behind it and they'll be dinged for warmongering - a case of Iran/proxies hurting American national pride and almost killing one of its finest would be just what they need. More likely that they'd cover up such an incident if it were Russia/China/NK, where popular enthusiasm for a military adventure could easily pull ahead of how beneficial the military thinks it would be.

Any tips on dealing with injuries whilst lifting? I got a partial tear and minor back tweaks while doing super light rdls but with an extreme ROM without bracing. I will keep working out but how do you deal with injuries psychologically and not be afraid of having a much bigger one in the future? I got my tear this June and have been using super light weights so that I slowly get back and started PT but I am sometimes afraid mentally even if there is no pain. My back tweak did go away after sleeping for 8 hours, i usually get 5, got 3 the day i fucked my back up.

The nice thing about lifting is that it's almost always possible to do something productive that doesn't piss off the injury. (In an endurance context, similarly, a well-known triathlon coach says "as a multisport athlete, you usually have at least one that's going well."). ROM, tempo, exercise selection, upper body pump on the machines, whatever. John Sarno's concrete advice and explanations are probably wrong but he's probably mostly right in spirit. The Painscience.com guy is also pretty good. While I can't endorse Starting Strength as an organization, I appreciate having been exposed to Rip's attitude about injury (it happens, it heals, there's usually something you can do to keep moving) early in my personal physical culture history. My training injuries don't generally hurt that much, the distress comes from not knowing when or if I'll be able to get back to what I was doing, so knowing that I can still do something alleviates my distress considerably.

I agree with @gog about physical therapy, with one sorta-caveat--a good physical therapist can help calm you down if you're spun up and suggest exercise modalities that don't piss off the injury. The downside is that you generally don't know who's going to do this and who's going to give you a stream of soothing babble and, like, Graston therapy and icing until you've shopped around a bit.

Your injuries will heal . . .eventually. I'm certain I tore some kind of CL (mcl/acl/whatever) chasing a 500lb DL. I got stress fractures in my wrists chasing a 400lb BP. This was a 14 years ago when there was less info easily available. I scaled way back for like 2 years, then got back into it and got some kind of cramps in my back that put a sideways curve in my spine (visible to random strangers). That eventually went away when I scaled way back. I got back into it and hit the 500lb DL. Then I got tendonitis so bad that when I was playing music at a jam session, my biceps tendon popped back into place and the audience heard the crack over the music. Then I scaled way back. Then I got back into it and hit a 600lb DL. Then a 405 BP. Then I felt something tear in my lower back/upper glutes while doing . . . .super light rdls with an extreme range of motion and couldn't walk for like a week. It was the worst gym injury of them all. The fear of the pain hung like the barbell of Damocles over every workout, and I eventually tore it again. That was about 2 years ago. Now I'm all better, do a ton of cardio and pretty-boy machine work. I'm not as strong as I once was, but I'm in overall the best shape of my life.

I don't recommend my kamikaze approach to training, but I racked up enough injuries to be able to say that the fear that an injury won't heal is totally understandable and almost certainly unfounded. Play the long game; just keep doing something and you'll bounce back. Unless you're like 60.

PS: PT is only a half-step removed from chiro and aromatherapy. Kin tape is fake. Electric acupuncture is fake. Acoustic accupuncture is fake. Laser therapy to "break up the scar tissue" is fake. 5lb curls while standing on a wobbly board are fake. Massage for anything other than hedonistic purposes is fake. Strength and flexibility are real, but that's what the gym is for.

Massive respect, a 400 lb bench is no joke, same for the deadlift. I agree wholeheartedly with everything here. I'll go workout after some sleep, avoid stuff that will hurt my back, do my pt and keep hammering away until I'm as strong and big as I'd wanna be.

Every single decent physical culturalist I've interacted with has gotten injured, worse than me, as long as I don't act stupid, I'll be fine. I do appreciate the comment, seeing others having done and gone through worse is reassuring.

Has anybody here founds success with hypnotherapy? I've been toying with the idea of trying a couple sessions, but the one hypnotherapist I contacted priced at £100 per hour-long session, which seems very high. I wonder if CBT might be the better way to start with therapy.

My mother successfully stopped smoking with hypnotherapy. She had been smoking for over 30 years, and was incredibly prone to addictions to drugs and alcohol. She didn't have another cigarette for the last 20 years or so of her life. I have no idea how much it cost.

For what?

Paging @self_made_human to field this one.

I'm not familiar with hypnotherapy at all, and I would wager that's more an indictment of it than my knowledge. I'd recommend going for bog standard CBT first and foremost.

My understanding is that hypnotherapy does actually work, but its biggest flaw is that if it works or not is something of an unchanging and independent variable. The small fraction it works on? Pretty good. Doesn't work on you? Not going to work on you, ever.

Obviously it can't do any of the crazy Svengali shit.

No reason not to lean on CBT first either way.

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