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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   1404 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for February 5, 2025

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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US residents, I want to check if I'm stingy. What's your current baseline tip percent (pre-tax) for:

  1. Take-out, via online order
  2. Take-out, via self-service kiosk
  3. Take-out, via human cashier (no other services besides taking order/payment and calling you when it's ready)
  4. Dine-in, via self-service kiosk
  5. Dine-in, via human cashier (no other services besides taking order/payment and calling you when it's ready)
  6. Dine-in, waiter for your table
  7. Delivery

My current policy is:

  1. 0%
  2. 0%
  3. 0%
  4. 0%
  5. varies 0-15% based on my mood (always 0% if the default tip option is >=20% out of spite)
  6. 20%
  7. 20%
  1. 0
  2. 0
  3. 0
  4. 0
  5. 0
  6. 10-20% depending on the bill - usually with the increase of the bill the percentage goes down. I also don't live in US so.
  7. Flat rate - 2-3-5 euros.

1-5 there are exceptions if the girl is uber hot.

1-2. 0% 3. 1$ 4-5. 0% 6. 20% 7. 5$

I don't think delivery should be a percentage. If I order from some place expensive or some place cheap, it is the drive where they make the effort, not the price of the food. I also come down to the car and they don't have to park and find me, which is in other locations worth another buck or two.

If a waiter or delivery I give something

What do you consider like a donut shop where someone assembles your order?

What does assembly mean here?

Take-out, via human cashier (only service is taking order/payment and putting pre-made pieces of food into a box)

^yep precisely

Ill typically throw in a courtesy $1 on takeout or when there's a human cashier involved.

1-5 0

Special case: Generally $1 per drink, for coffee or alcohol, regardless of drinking it in or out of the location

6 20-25% for places I like, which is most places I go

7 $5-10

(1–5) 0 %

(6) 15–20 %, rounded up to the next integer (maybe a little higher if the waitress is hot; I guess it could go lower for bad service, but I've never gotten bad service, since I almost never go to full-service restaurants)

(7) 15–20 %, rounded up to the next integer (I guess—I never order delivery; I guess it could go lower for bad service)

  1. 0
  2. 0
  3. 0
  4. 0
  5. 0
  6. 15% baseline, good service gets 20% (more if it's really good) and bad service gets 10% ($.02 if it's legendarily bad, which has only ever happened twice).
  7. Same except I've never had to go below 10% for delivery

Basically anything where I'm just purchasing food and there's no service gets no tip. This idea of adding tips at the cash register for a plain transaction is absurd.

I'd say you're quite generous. As a baseline, I'm 0% for 1-5, and 15% for 6 & 7. I'll push it up to 20% sometimes if I'm feeling generous for some reason.

When I was in middle school, our English teacher played us The Sunscreen Song for the "fill in the missing words" task. Back then I had no idea why it mentioned the knees specifically, but that's no wonder given the original title was "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young".

Anyway, the knees. It started with leg extensions. I would get a sharp pain inside the knee if I added a bit of weight to the machine. Then I started feeling pain when squatting and I don't squat a lot of weight at all. I switched to squatting in a Smith machine, but now even this hurts when I get close to parallel. I can still do ATG bodyweight squats and squat with an empty barbell.

Where do I go from here? I had an xray done - nothing was found. Do I follow the knees over toes guy's program?

Where do I go from here? I had an xray done - nothing was found.

What did the doctor who ordered the x-ray advise?

Skip leg days.

Can you see a physical therapist? They'd be the experts on what would help or hurt.

Both knees, or just one?

Try goblet squats with a kettlebell or dumbell instead of barbell squats. I'd also recommend exercises that require good stability and alignment, like split squats (or Bulgarian split squats, but probably wait until you are comfy with the basic variation). You'll get immediate feedback if you are doing something weird.

Balancing exercises can be good for training. Often there is something wonky happening at another joint (like ankle caving), so balancing on one leg or on a balance board will help engage the whole leg, just so you know what it feels like or if there are any places that are straggling.

Reverse sled pulls are a nice warm up and exercise if your gym has the equipment and space. It trains leg extension in a very natural movement, no awkwardness of the machine.

Both knees. Thought it was just the left one at first, then got the same pain in the right one.

Is it a bad sign that I hate split squats with a fiery passion? Not as much as olives, of course, but they still fill me with irrational rage.

Hahaha, split squats suck! They're hard. Which is a good reason to do them.

Unfortunately, really hard to tell if it's a technique issue without seeing it in person. If you can squat bodyweight (+0 lbs), that would be what I think is most probable though.

I generally don't think leg extensions are warranted if you are not very advanced, like squatting bodyweight + 1.5x bodyweight or even 1+2x. Even then I think there are better quad exercises. The problem with leg extensions is that even if the center of rotation starts aligned, there is only exactly one Q-angle where the rotation of the knee will be exactly aligned with that of the machine. So the probability that your leg has exactly the right Q-angle is roughly 0.

If it is just a matter of the muscularity supporting the knee, very gradually working up from the point where you can squat with no pain works for some reasonable majority of people. Make sure to be very careful with knee tracking, avoid valgus collapse, and engage your abductors and gluteus to hold hip external rotation. Try different heal heights, generally the higher-bar you squat the move vertical the torso, the higher the heel required. You might also find some other variation does not cause pain. I prefer something where you have control over all the degrees of freedom of the knee tracking. Maybe squatting to a box or front squats. Smith machine, hack squats, and belt squats might be okay, but still force you to follow the path of the machine rather than the path that avoid the pain point. Sissy squats are amazing for knee health, but pretty advanced to do in free space.

Sometimes it's just a matter of a bit of warmth and pressure. ACE bandage weight knee wraps or sleeves should be enough. Heavy power-lifting weight versions are probably overkill, and shouldn't be needed to avoid pain. Don't be afraid of a lot of volume with light weights to warm up. Something like 10xbw, 20xbw, 12x45, 5x95, 2x135, 1x185, 1x225, 1x275, 315 working weight. Yes it does take forever, but you can probably eventually take bigger jumps once you find a squat pattern that doesn't cause pain.

With any luck your leverages will change as you train and one day you will wake up and it won't be a problem anymore. If it's not a trivial problem an x-ray probably won't be able to see it either.

So the probability that your leg has exactly the right Q-angle is roughly 0.

What's Q-angle? The extension machine has the benefit of having split weights, so I can be sure that both quads are pulling their own weight (my right side is noticeably stronger). I can't put more than 5kg plus whatever starting resistance it has before the pain starts, though.

Sometimes it's just a matter of a bit of warmth and pressure. ACE bandage weight knee wraps or sleeves should be enough. Heavy power-lifting weight versions are probably overkill, and shouldn't be needed to avoid pain.

I have neoprene knee wraps, but I don't know if they help at all. Sometimes I feel like they keep my patellae from moving naturally.

Don't be afraid of a lot of volume with light weights to warm up. Something like 10xbw, 20xbw, 12x45, 5x95, 2x135, 1x185, 1x225, 1x275, 315 working weight. Yes it does take forever, but you can probably eventually take bigger jumps once you find a squat pattern that doesn't cause pain.

The highest I've ever gotten to was 1x185 (I hope these numbers are pounds) and 135 used to be my comfortable working weight for the 5-10 rep range. Now the pain starts at 10x95 for me.

Q-angle is the angle the quad meets the knee, but I was more generally trying to suggest that it's (basically) impossible for a machine to have same number of degrees of freedom as your leg. If you sit in a neutral hip position, then extend your leg, your foot will generally not track straight in front of you. Or more precisely, the arc the contact point with your tibia traces out will not be on a curve exactly parallel to the sagittal plane. On a unilateral machine were you can only adjust how far forward you sit and the distance of the shin pad, they should try set the pivot so it is coaxial with the pivot of of the average users knee. This can't be aligned for everyone because you have only two degrees of freedom for adjustment and (at least) 4 degrees of freedom for the pivot axis. Twoish translational and twoish rotational.

For sleeves and wraps I would guess the majority of the beneficial effect is proprioceptive. Some people have an easier time feeling where their knee is in space if something is touching it, others can feel the tracking better if there is nothing "interfering" with it. I do not think it is generally good to rely on supportive equipment to hold your body together.

Yes, I was talking about pounds. I personally think isolated quad training is unnecessary if you are squatting less than 1.5x bw (that is 1+1.5x assuming not over fat male). Fortunately? At the weights you quoted the pain will likely go away if you get stronger. Both from a supporting musculature and kenisthetic awareness perspective. I agree with @Boarchariot, for your strength levels goblet squats are a good option. Unless you are a very light person, body weight might be too much for a first warmup for now and reverse sled pulls might be a good general warmup. If using a bike for general warm up, make sure your seat is high enough you can almost lock out your leg, and you are being careful with knee tracking through the whole cycle. You might also consider step-ups, really focusing on controlling your knee tracking and the eccentric, if split squats are just too awkward.

A lot of things happening. So if some of you remember I was on dialysis (kidney failure) for like 10 months, decided to change career from vehicle engineering to basically finding a solution. Now I am in University Medical Center Utrecht, started a day after the transplant, trying to do just that. Its hard of course, creating a bio-artificial/engineered kidney. Harder still when you are so resource constrained, money being sprayed around in consortia with all sorts of other different ambitions and capabilities. But I feel like we are at a position to give a good crack at it. I say bio-engineered because there will always be some degree of bio-engineering, currently that might be simple, but in the future, maybe more extensive.

The current aim for me is an implantable hemodialyser, so something that can be implanted that will dialyse the patient without the need for an external blood circuit and so without the need for needles. This is like an intermediate point, half way line. If we can get this, patient mobility will increase, treatment quality also. More patients will be able to dialyse at home for instance, which is good given how pressed the nursing situation is!

I want to develop a minimal prototype by May 1st. So a lot of hours in the lab, I feel like with the printers and resins we have, we are in a good place to do this. But it requires a shit tonne of optimization and bashing ones skull in to the printer casing I feel. Just the other day I moved the printers in to another room, and physics stopped working. I had prints come out good at first, then wonky later. Turns out that I was not in the grips of delirium, but the lights in this room were emitting too much UV and poisoning the resin. Took quiet a while to figure that one out, now I am mainly in the dark :D

This is all happening in the background of a fundraiser/awareness campaign I am planning for the summer (May 15- October 15). Where I will be doing 41, 4000m peaks through hard routes. I have also invited other people to do their own challenge, hike, climb, walk, cycle, whatever it may be. The idea is inspired by my own experiences in the mountains and the National Donor Monument, which is called 'The Climb' the website is www.climbagainsttime.org. In any case, naked advertising aside, it took quiet some time to knock this together, not on the code side (gpt helped a tonne), but the communication side. Its very hard to communicate things via the web form I find. Presentations I can do, but web, its hard to give enough information but not too much. In any case, now comes to hard part of getting people involved, networking, social media presence etc. So quiet a lot of stuff, because in the end, I at least want to make some noise, money is nice, but not essential.

And also, if I am putting my neck on the line (or spine in this case), I want it to have some pay off, high-risk low gain isn't too desirable. But I do remind myself of the Scottish song 'Will ye no come back again' from Alastair McDonald, he says 'although the cause was ill fated and hopeless, the sentiment is noble and chivalrous and self-sacrificing ' referencing the Jacobite uprising. So I take some solice in that!

I will try to keep updating here on the progress and other details. I said I would keep a dialysis diary here but only managed like 3 weeks, so lets see how far this one goes

Where I will be doing 41, 4000m peaks through hard routes.

Sounds rad, looking forward to summit reports.

Videos and reports! I want to document everything. The thing I really want to do is keep an alpine diary but its always hard to write while you are on 'tour' because you are one of: tired, eating, sleeping, or climbing and nothing else :D

Quick update on.. well, my breakup.

After dropping the bomb on her while drunk, she didn't talk to me for a week. I've seen this behavior before and its how she handles emotional trauma. I won't pretend I had perfect execution, but the perfect is the enemy of the good.

It was a very frosty week with us just not talking to each other at all and her sleeping in her home office/girl's room/den. I tried talking a couple of times and just got curt one word responses.

Eventually she came into my room at bedtime, sat on my bed facing away from me and let it out. I won't recount everything, but she said some hurtful things and eventually accepted what was happening. She identified that she wasn't a victim and was a contributor to how we ended up where we did. I took some slings and arrows that were unjust to let her vent and process things.

Now we're in some weird housemate situation, but we're back to being friends. She throws occasional unnecessary hurtful jabs at me which I've pushed back on ('you can say that once. I don't want to hear it again'), but this is kind of her Chinese personality where I don't think she understands the emotional impact of some words in the same way I do. Not a big deal and to be honest I'm cutting her a lot of slack.

Last night she said she kind of knew that we weren't in a perfect relationship situation but didn't think she would have the courage to escalate things to a breakup while I did. I took this as a compliment. She also did some low level seduction touching which I resisted. I want to make a cleanish break and not muddy the waters by any intimate contact.

I got drunk again last night. I've done a bit of that lately, particularly during Ice Week, but I'm also cutting myself some slack.

I'm going to miss my best friend.

Damn, that last line cut deep. I'm sorry bro, but you made the right decision.

Cohabitation is a mistake no one should make, you did well for recognizing the problem and should go and meet other girls, the problem is now that if you have any residual feelings, she'll hurt you by bringing guys over and if you bring girls over, she'll want you back. Move out when you can and never, ever, even hint at being into her. Don't get physical, don't try to talk about the past with her.

Although being too aloof works quite on girls if you're not doing it as a front. I've never had a girlfriend, it's always sad to lose a connection, keep posting, don't dwell on the past and find new girls. You did well, staying with her when your heart isn't in it would have been way worse.

I'll second this. You have to move out to move on. They'll cry, they'll beg, they'll make faux rational arguements, they'll try to get money out of you. Just rip the bandaid off, no contact. You don't have kids, and let this be a lesson about trying to keep friends of the opposite sex, especially if you think you can just casually try to fuck them during a dry spell.

Sounds like you're well rid of her. Better late than never.

Good job.

Sorry to hear it my man. I hope you know it was for the best, and that you are able to get over it with as little pain as possible.

I feel for you.

So I need some dating advice and an outside perspective.

I have been dating a girl now for about a month. Things have been going well, but rather slow. We seem to understand each other rather well, have a similar education level, have compatible world views, and we both want to have kids. However, recently sex came out as a topic (we haven't had any yet) and she told me she has HSV (in the area below). Sigh, well I really did not expect that. That also explains why she has cautiously kept emotional distance. I don't know am I dumb for even considering to continue dating her. Have any of you guys been in such a position? She was previously in several relationships so apparently some people are completely fine living with the risk. Any input would be appreciated.

Don't the majority of people have that? Pretty sure I have it, because I used to occasionally get a cold sore as a little kid.

Wait, I thought genital herpes was really common and basically mostly benign. What's the deal with genital herpes?? Any input would be appreciated.

Asymptomatic transmission is extremely common; if you're in a relationship with someone that has it, you'll probably end up with it within five years. Behavioral mitigation and some medications can reduce that risk somewhat, but because flareups can be subtle and you can transmit the virus weeks before a flareup has visual symptoms, they're not very effective. At the least, there's at least potentially going to be additional times a year where vaginal sex will be something to skip, either for her sake or for yours.

That said, it's extremely common. About half of the population has HSV-1, and about one in five women have HSV-2; much of both groups are unaware, since you can have the virus and be either asymptomatic or have minimal symptoms that are hard to distinguish from non-viral problems.

What extent it matters depends a lot on the person. Cold sores of the mouth are unpleasant, can last a couple weeks (and flareups often come when you're already sick from flu/cold/whatever), and depending on career can be a big deal. Genital sores are less visible, but they're even more offputting when recognized and can be much more painful. Medication can reduce the length of a flareup, but it's pretty expensive from standard stores. There's not much good documentation on secondary negative effects -- there's some evidence of a link from HSV-1 to Alzheimers, for whatever weight you want to put on that -- but it's hard to tell whether that's because no such link exists or because it's just such a pain to study that we don't know.

There's also psychosexual components which I'll not get into more detail, but in short a lot of people have trouble with sex if they get distracted by stuff around it, and that's not great if sex is important for your relationship.

But it's mostly about impact looking forward: if this relationship doesn't work out, it's something that the throwaway may find themselves needing to disclose.

Are you mixing up oral and genital herpes? Oral herpes infects something like 2/3rds of adults; genital herpes infects more like 1/6th of adults ... I actually didn't know it was so high before I looked it up for this reply; I guess "really common" is a matter of definitions? They're both "mostly benign" in the sense that it's very rare to get lethal complications of them, but they're both only partially treatable and not at all curable. Getting an oral-herpes cold sore every year or so is at least annoying, and having infectious lesions break out on your genitals four or five times a year for the rest of your life sounds like it would be pretty awful.

For HSV-2 in the U.S., the rate varies a lot by race, from 3.8% for Asian to 34.6% (!) for black.

Sounds like she did the responsible thing and gave you the relevant info, now it's your-body-your-choice. There are ways you can minimize the chance of getting herpes infection. Even so, I would not advise it for anything less than your near-future wife. As your friend can attest, getting stuck with herpes for life tanks your love life.

C'mon man, you've been with her for a month. Surely you're not already in love and thinking she's The One? You are not an asshole for deciding this is not something you are willing to deal with. She has to know it will be a dealbreaker for a lot of guys- hence her being emotionally distant, and kudos to her for being honest. Sucks for her, but I would kindly but firmly bow out.

So, two years ago I had a workout goal of doing 5 sets of 5 88# turkish getups, on each side. It was a near run thing, but I pulled it off by my 40th birthday, and then rarely did turkish getups again having kind of fucked my left shoulder.

From my 40th to my 41st I was mainly focusing on keeping up a baseline of fitness, and improving some of the numbers on my yearly physical with diet and sticking to an 8 hour or less eating window at least 5 days out of the week. Accomplished that mission.

I think by my 42nd birthday, I want to work up to doing 200 54# kettlebell snatches in a row. I can do 100 more or less on demand in about 5 minutes, which is a pretty good pace. But I want to see how far I can push it in a year of truly focusing on it. Wish me luck.

200 in a set is fucking monstrous. Good luck.

Impressive. Keeping fit in your 40's is harder than I thought and I'm struggling to work out as much as I'd like.

You need to do it though or things start dropping off real quick.

Also food is something you've really got to keep on top of. Damn it.

Good Luck. Just keep doing what you're doing. Even holding the decline at bay is an achievement.

You know, having spent my 20s and 30s well, it's not that bad. Although if I don't stretch and take a post workout shake I am miserable and sore as fuck the next day.

It's nice to live in the future. I was going through the MRCPsych reading list, and one of the books straight up made my eyes glaze over.

Psychiatric textbooks can have a tendency to huff their own farts, what I'd give to have Scott actually write a textbook (though I'm sure he has more valuable ways to spend his time). I decided to throw it in, 400k tokens, into an LLM to give me a TL;DR (if 10k words isn't too long itself). Truly a more enlightened age, using machines to make succinct what humans made verbose. Just the book alone is about 100 times more text than the original iteration of ChatGPT could hold in its context window.

Which LLM did you use?

Gemini 2.0 Pro. 400k tokens is far from filling up its context window, which is about 2 million tokens.

Out of boredom, I even got it to start rewriting it in Scott's style, and it's a respectable pastiche if not nearly as good as he actually is. I gave up because it took half a minute of processing to just ingest the pdf, and it would take absolutely ages to get a book out of it at the rate it produces new tokens. Not that it's not feasible if you need it, but this was idle curiosity and me being industrious in my laziness.

General updates, productivity and maybe growing up

People here kinda knew me as a guy who would write paragraphs every week and get nothing done, I am not that guy anymore. I still have issues, I cannot perceive time like normal people, I can focus fairly well, and I have an elaborate alarm system where my phone and computer buzz every single hour reminding me of what to do. I cringe when I look back at who I was or how I was, and how much time I wasted which is why I try to never think of the past. There is nothing good there for me.

I hit diamond in Math Academy, their highest tier was emerald and that was 4 percent, this is 1 percent, they started it this week. Sunday is my off day, I watch polo with my dad on those days. I was about to not make it to diamond and cranked out about 3-4 hours of math to not miss getting promoted. Earlier, I would have simply not cared, not been competitive and found ways to justify inaction. Instead, I sat down and did it. This is not a feat, my baseline was just non-existent.

I still have trouble sleeping on time, I still have terrible adhd and all the bad habits and sub-habits I got from it but I have agency to make a difference. I was able to go beyond 40 hours of work in a week for the first time in my life. My friends think I am doing a good job, my dysfunctional family unanimously goes out of its way to be nice to me given they see me working. Perhaps I can respect myself now, a little bit at least for actually doing something, doing something hard.

I was unable to meet my goals for this week because some stuff happened, though I still get better each day. Besides myself, my family, and friends, I hope that my updates give you some positivity too. There is progress in my life, non-trivial and in the correct direction. There is a lot of ground to be covered from here, I have to do a lot lot more programming-wise, get to at least stats on math academy, gain 20lbs, and meditate more. As long as I do my best, it will happen.

On a side note, I have completely cut contact with my ex-co-founder, my opinion of him is really low at this point, I hate logging on twitter, checking reddit or anything internet. Themotte is different, though I apologise if I don't participate much, I just have been a little busy. Life is better this way, I logged out and went back on twitter after a week and it all felt the same.

RSD Tyler's book The Blueprint opened with this line "Do you ever feel like you could change?" most people never do, but quite a few have and can. The satisfaction I get from working till my head hurts and seeing tangible progress in how much more focused I am from all the meditation, the code I have written, and topics in math. I was told by this user named standard_order here to chase sun and steel, in his words, satisfaction from real life, all of it sounds cliched, but it feels great. I don't look back at any point in the past with fondness, which is what my default was, I guess I am finally growing up.

Congratulations! I'm glad you're finally finding a set of habits that work for you.

A 3rd party reseller on Amazon tried to rip me off. I use an iPad to take notes (best in the business, Android tablets are lacking, and I hate Apple).

Back when I used to use pen and paper, I always ended up misplacing months worth of notebooks on a regular basis. Much easier when it's all digital and backed up to the cloud, especially when you can annotate textbooks and notes with a stylus.

My trusty old iPad Air started giving up the ghost, it had a cracked screen that hadn't been a problem for the last 4 years, but I guess the digitizer had enough, and I wasn't willing to pay Apple's repair charges.

I shopped around, saw a good deal on a refurbished m2 iPad Pro, and ordered it, though I had my fingers crossed since the quality was "acceptable".

Turns out it wasn't. The fuckers sent me a 2020 model, the one with the A12Z instead of an M2. It's a good thing I have an autistic obsession with keeping track of hardware that doesn't physically change in appearance year over year.* I was too ticked off to bother waiting for the seller to respond to my angry messages, so I ended up escalating to Amazon. I'm enjoying roasting their chestnuts over a fire, and with any luck I might end up with a third iPad, or at least my money back. Yay for strong consumer protection laws in the UK, though I hope not to need them.

*I noticed Apple's sign up email mention the generation, and went huh, that doesn't look right.

Edit: I was idiot. The larger and smaller iPad pros are out of sync in terms of generation counts, and they sent me the right one. I suppose a 5 star review will make things right.

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