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Friday Fun Thread for January 10, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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In racing there are amateur series designed around home-mechanics, with price limits and rules against outside work. 24 Hours of Lemons, junk car races. The idea is you limit the purchase price of the car and forbid anyone outside the team's drivers from working on it. The archetype being four buddies taking turns driving in the endurance race, after fixing up a $500 Ford Taurus on weekends in their garage.

And notoriously you run into teams of four that are three professional mechanics and one investment banker, with the mechanics being paid "friends" of their patron, the car too nice to ever realistically find at the price point they claim, and the patron isn't a great driver but with a better machine he gets the anchor spot on the team and pulls across the finish line in first place excited for his trophy.

Of course the reverse attitude can morph into universal envy and ego protection. Physical culture is a hobby of mine, hardly one in which I've achieved much, but even I've experienced the twin levels of bullshit here: people richer than me comment that they can't work out because they are just so busy with work, people poorer than me say it must be nice to be able to afford all that equipment etc. And both have some point to them, but I'm sure if I dug into my interlocutor's lifestyle I could dispute it.

Interesting thing about physical culture. Arnold said that there are no shortcuts. You can only get an impressive body by working for it. But arnold was full of it. You can buy steroids and speedrun to the finish line pretty much. I doubt that Jeff Bezos knows much about lifting yet he looks more jacked than you or me.

"'roids are not for the lazy" is how it's been put to me by... guys who do a lot of 'roids.

Speak for yourself.

But for that matter, I think the impact of steroids is often overstated. Bezos undoubtedly had to go into the gym to build that muscle. Was it easier than it would have been without steroids? Sure. But he did put in work to get a body like that. Probably more work than half the people bitching about his steroid use have put in.