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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   1743 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for December 25, 2024

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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I ended up getting a fake Rolex as a gift. Person giving it to me said they inherited it and honestly didn't know if it was real or not. I can't find anything that looks the same on the Rolex website, and other parts of it feel off. Still considering getting it fixed up and wearing it in public. What's The Motte's advice on the fake Rolex? Wear it anyway and tell anyone who asks it's a fake? Spend $700 and get a legitimate watch?

Obviously throw it into the pot of an all night poker game when you run out of chips.

The gifter seems to know it might not be real. Tell them it's not (in private of course). Then wear it or not at your leisure depending on how likely it is that others can spot the fake or how much you care.

Regardless of real or fake... what's the point in wearing status symbols that say you have more money than sense? Do you get any real social gain from it? Emotional benefit? What do you imagine a Rolex says about you to yourself and to others?

"I have enough money that I don't have to care about making sense" is useful to express in some social situations. Even wearing the fake one that sharp people notice is fake can be a tool if you do it very carefully, in a group that will go "aha, not a bad fake rolex, this guy isn't an idiot with more money than sense, but understands the importance of appearing to be."

If it doesn't look like an existing model, it's probably very easy to spot. I like watches and I have seen some heinous crimes against horology with fake Rolex logos.

I don't really judge too hard over people wearing fakes but I do think it's tacky if one could have spent the same money on a nicer but more humble watch.

Mechanical watches are a marvel in themselves. Outdates as fuck, but still a mechanical marvel. I wouldn't think ill of a person that is using them. Same as a person that slices hamon with yanagiba instead of deli slicer. Or one that likes to shoot with Luger P08 instead of glock 19.

Luger? Very cool, but from what I’ve seen gun mechanic enjoyers go for revolvers, with an appreciation of different “lockwork”. S&W, for example, even has a specialist gunsmith machining team named the Performance Center and markets firearms touched by their skill explicitly.

Have you finished your retirement calculation spreadsheet yet? If you're in the US, don't forget to take into account the fact that Social Security is expected to run out of moneyreduce benefits by one-fifth in 2033. (Unfortunately, a cursory search indicates that nobody has set up a betting market for precisely when, or whether, this will happen.)

Many years ago, I visited the town of Smithland, Kentucky; I was there to possibly buy a Lincoln Continental. I ended up not buying it - I have slight regrets about that - but while there I thought, "This would be a nice place to retire to." Just a little tiny town in the total end of nowhere, with houses still being sold for less than 100k in 2024. I wonder if that will still be a viable option when I go to retire in 2058 or so. All I'm really hoping to do in retirement is run a stall in a flea market, play chess, and maybe dig into some really hefty books like City of God.

You could buy the retirement house now and rent it out?

Unfortunately, I have always known I should plan to get exactly $0 out of Social Security. I hate that I'm being basically robbed of money I'll never see a dime from, but there isn't much I can do about it. Except plan to fend for myself, of course.

Social Security is expected to run out of money reduce benefits by one-fifth jack up taxes in 2033

That's another possibility. But, as the saying goes: "Hope for the best, but plan for the worst." Especially in the absence of any information regarding which possibility is more likely.

Having a kettlebell at home is great for a lazy mf who doesn't like going to the gym. One of the best small purchases I've made in recent years.

Just ordered a new one that's 50% heavier. :)

I have two kettlebells, one 12kg and one 16kg. I agree they're an excellent purchase, I've been using them pretty consistently almost two years later, though I feel like I haven't been taking full advantage of them. I've been doing swings, clean & presses, squat & presses. The drawback in only having two kettlebells is that some of the movements feel like they aren't challenging enough, but others feel like they'll mess you up very quickly. Any particular movements that you particularly enjoy?

I mainly do deadlifts, overhead presses and squats. I like deadlifts the most because I can do a ton of them and they improve my posture noticeably. :)

Feliz navidad!

A song that's been utterly spoiled for me by this parody.

lmao this is killing me. incredible art

My family is opening a fertility/IVF clinic. Of all the logistical headaches you can run into in India, the question of whether to get a VPN so the gentlemen in the "Collection Room" can avail of some Pornhub™ (necessary because most porn sites are blocked in the country) or leave them to their own devices wasn't one I expected.

The alternative, getting some paper porno mags, is one where I wouldn't even know where to begin acquiring one these days. Not a conversation I have everyday, I tell ya.

Surely you can order skin mags from Amazon or somewhere.

There would seem to be clear synergies between your fertility clinic and a strip club. How about opening up one of those inside your clinic?

I'm afraid not many people are going to be willing to pay to watch me pole dance. Though they'd probably pay to get me to stop!

A VPN will be $20/mo. Looping potentially mid DVDs, making people download porn to their phones (?) or having to rotate paper sounds miserable. With respect to my fellow commenters, those are bad solutions to the problem.

Rest assured we're not that cheap lol, it's just a rather unforseen and ridiculous problem to have to tackle when I just happened to be back home for Christmas. Arranging for jerk-off material isn't what I saw myself doing!

(I'm sure just about every Indian male has figured out how to get around the bans by now, but whatever happened to the power of imagination?)

I was actually going to make a joke about imagination. I distinctly remember the ability to easily handle things without a visual aid. I suspect your clinic would have a little less business if more men did too.

Imagination is dead, for men anyway. I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.

Also https://youtube.com/watch?v=fQTOAWCpe44?si=eDG7ebQXX_kDQunV

For women, I think imagination is still alive and well. It's all about thinking up scenarios for them. Although I could imagine it's possible to get hooked on erotica to stimulate your mind's eye, I've never heard of any cases.

I don't really know if imagination was ever a consistent way for men to get off, or if people kept records on that, but it probably is less used today than ever before.

I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I managed easily enough that time I got chucked in the looney bin without porn access. Honestly, the bigger problem was the checks.

Can't you ask people to bring their own entertainment? Everyone has a smartphone these days.

This isn't likely to be an actual problem in practise. "Don't you guys have phones?" I'm sure they'll manage, even if porn is technically banned, people have some idea about how to get around it, and if you've seen Indians being horny on the internet, it doesn't have to be visible nudity for someone to jerk it.

Worst case scenario, they can have their wife come in and lend an, uh, hand. No mouths, saliva isn't ideal for semen, but I'm not going to be standing and watching.

Another alternative is to have a screen playing pornographic videos on loop. Japan sells lots of "gravure" DVDs on Amazon (though some of them aren't shipped to foreigners).

It would be an entertaining idea to have to argue with customs here about that kind of shipment at the very least.

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