I think you’ve hit perfectly why I don’t like the “unalive” and related euphemisms for death. Death, especially violent death, is a big fucking deal, and trying to obscure that impact behind vague or even cutesy words, makes it seem mundane or routine and accessible.

Kettlebells are great for those with limited storage space and budget, to extend beyond what you can do with bodyweight exercise alone.

If you want to get as fit as you can and don’t have any equipment, simply adding a pull up bar to a doorway and having a kettlebell in the house can really open up a lot of options for building more strength and doing stronger cardio routines.

But if you have the space for it, traditional strength equipment (barbell and weights, rack, bench) is probably better for strength.

I liken it to a cast iron skillet: if forced to limit myself to one thing, it would probably be this thing, but in a well-equipped setting it would rarely be my first choice to actually use.

We have plenty of studies that exercise improves sleep, both in people with regular sleep patterns and those struggling with insomnia.

This particular study, which concludes that yoga and tai chi are even better than most exercise, seems to be based on more limited data.

Rather than chase after the type of exercise that has the best results in a particular study, it’s probably better to try for the type of exercise you’re most likely to stick with on a regular basis, for better adherence to the general idea of regular exercise. Then get the general benefits of exercise, including improved sleep, that have been broadly proven with many studies.

You’re right that using geometry and ratios is only good for a few digits of π. Some ancient mathematicians used to draw polygons on the inside and the outside of a circle, and then use the circumferences of those polygons as an upper or lower limit on what π was. Archimedes approximated π as being between 223/71 and 22/7, using 96-sided regular polygons.

The real breakthroughs happened when people realized certain infinite series converge onto π, where you add and/or subtract a series of smaller and smaller terms so that the only digits of the sum that changes with each additional term are already way to the right of the decimal point.

The Leibniz formula, proven to converge to π/4, is 1 - 1/3 + 1/5 - 1/7 + 1/9 - 1/11 . . .

So if you have a pen and paper, you can add and subtract each one in sequence, and eventually they get really small to where you’re adding and subtracting numbers so small that it leaves the first few digits untouched. At that point you can be confident that the digits that can’t change anymore are the right digits.

Later breakthroughs in new formulas made much faster convergences, so that you didn’t have to make as many calculations to get a few digits. And computers make these calculations much, much faster. So today the computer methods generally use the Chudnovsky algorithm that spits out digits of 1/π, which can easily be converted to digits of π itself.

Yup, 100%. Gotta acknowledge the mixed bag.

It’s almost certainly better today for anyone who is gay or trans than 30 years ago. We have a long way to go, and there may have been some backsliding in the last 5 years, but things are undeniably better today than in the 90’s.

Certain aspects of race are better today. As recently as 1993, a majority of Americans still believed that interracial marriage should be illegal.

Food is way better. Back in the 90’s, there wasn’t a ton of variety in restaurants available in all except the biggest cities, and a lot of food trends were still boring with flavor (plus we were still in the low fat craze that made things taste worse). Even groceries were pathetic in comparison: fresh produce didn’t have nearly as many choices, and was expensive, so most people were eating canned and frozen produce by default. Little things like being able to choose apples that weren’t red delicious, or potatoes that weren’t russets, tend to be taken for granted today.

Health and safety are better in most ways, but worse in some others. Obviously obesity and related diseases are worse today. So are some conditions like allergies, certain autoimmune disorders, certain cancers. But most cancers are less deadly today than 30 years ago. Traumatic injuries from workplaces and car accidents are down, and are better treated. And the huge diversity in the population for health means that a lot of people are living healthier than ever, even while a lot of people are less healthy than before. Life expectancy keeps creeping up in the cities, health expectancy seems to be up, too.

Air quality seems way better, with smog and acid rain pushed down with successful regulations. And people don’t smoke as much anymore, especially indoors.

We can pursue our diverse interests from anywhere. If you drill down on pretty much any hobby, people who are really into that hobby have way more opportunities to share in that interest with people worldwide.

There’s a bunch of bad stuff, too. But we should also appreciate the good things that have improved in recent times.

Döner joints per km^2 is the most German unit I’ve ever encountered

That’s basically just em dashes, which these days will get you accused of being an LLM.

We made steampunk a reality by developing the technology to transfer steam power efficiently over long distances through metal wires.

Yeah, I agree. I drop in on CrossFit style classes from time to time, maybe 2-3 times per month (not actually named CrossFit anymore as my local gym de-affiliated from CrossFit itself). They help me identify things that I’m not good at, and give me ideas for programming in stuff to build in those weaknesses.

So compared to the typical regular CrossFit gym members I’m probably much stronger on powerlifting, slightly stronger on Olympic lifting, middle of the pack on steady state cardio like rowing or running, and way behind on metcon type workouts where you do a bunch of barbell or kettlebell or body weight exercises for time.

After I hit my strength goals this summer, I’m probably going to switch to 2 strength workouts and 2 metcon style workouts per week, specifically to address that weakness. And then I’ll have to program mobility and flexibility work, too, as that is another significant weakness of mine.

This week, I deadlifted 455 lbs (206 kg) for a PR, up from 430 lbs (195 kg) when I last tested about 4 years ago. I’ve had unusually good consistency the last 3 months, and had decent consistency throughout most of 2024, so I’m glad there’s an objective indicator that I’m stronger than ever.

I intend to test all 3 big powerlifting lifts (squat, bench, deadlift) around the end of August to get a sense of my total, and then switch to other fitness goals more aligned with conditioning/cardio, while simply maintaining whatever strength I can.

It’s a California Kong, which is two California kings tied together with gorilla leather.

A lot of young people don’t realize just how difficult post-school dating was before online dating. Once we exhausted the pool of 5-10 single people who were friends of friends, that was basically it. We’d have to go find strangers at the bar.

That conditioned everyone to be slightly more willing to settle for less perfect matches, knowing that there wasn’t necessarily a replacement available. That could be a good thing (people more likely to have the patience to let a spark develop) or a bad thing (a higher percentage of couples who just resented each other).

I can see an argument that things were better before online dating for some subset of people. But having lived that period, I can say from experience that it wasn’t easy then, either. And for someone like me, who is a better writer than I am a speaker, especially over the phone, the rise of text-based communication was helpful for navigating the early stages of relationships when that became the norm.

Is there another kind of table?

That’s the possibly apocryphal origin story of Spanish tapas, too: a slice of bread to cover the wine glass between sips (hence the name “tapa,” which means a “cover”), then a few things to dress up that slice of bread, maybe a piece of meat or cheese. So traditionally a single tapa is served for each glass of wine you order.

I like stir frying for the versatility in playing around with different ratios of vegetables to meat as your macros allow (and can be paired with rice as macros allow). Yes, sometimes that’s broccoli, but often it’s something like snap peas, onions, carrots, bell peppers, celery, even peanuts or cashews. And you can rotate through chicken, beef, pork, shrimp, tofu, seitan, etc. It’s basically a formula that takes away a lot of the thinking while giving the versatility to make full use of the ingredients you have on hand, and doesn’t get tedious or repetitive.

Similarly, I use a lot of vegetables for pasta, and do some kind of pasta primavera pretty often: blanch some combination of broccoli, broccolini, peas, snow peas, snap peas, asparagus, fiddleheads, etc., and then put in with your cooked pasta and cover in freshly grated parm, maybe some cream or butter. Add chicken or shrimp if you’d like to take it in that direction. Use high protein or whole grain pasta if you’d like.

Or even a traditional tomato based pasta sauce has a ton of room for other vegetables, meats. And it doesn’t even have to top pasta, if your macros don’t have room for those carbs. A red sauce can be put on eggplant or zucchini and still tastes great.

If you’re accommodating another group of people you should produce enough to always feed them, too, not just sometimes in surplus years. The whole point is that you’ve gotta plan for a surplus, otherwise you risk starvation in bad years (and it doesn’t make it any better, morally, if the people who bear the risk of starving are “another group or people”).

how does waste prevent a shortage from becoming a famine ?

Making the expected production a higher number than the expected need will give the headroom necessary to deal with a shortage without people starving.

If you’re aiming to produce food for a population of 100,000, but have the capacity to make food for 200,000, then you can afford to waste half of your food without starvation. You can also accommodate a 50% drop in production without starvation.

So that buffer is expected waste, but it’s also starvation resistance.

It means you have a lot more strength to gain. I think you can afford to just maintain while getting stronger, maybe for a few months, and then when you start cutting again it’ll be easier.

I am not sure how to judge my strength.

You could always plug in your numbers and take a look:

https://strengthlevel.com/

I’d say that if you still have a lot of strength to gain, then you can afford to keep cutting until it starts interfering with your workouts.

That being said, I find it easier psychologically to stick with a long term plan when I’m not cutting too much or too long.

So when you say your BMI is 30, are you a strong 30 or a fat 30? And have you plateaued in your strength gains from resistance training, or are you stronger than you were a month ago?

Personally, I find it easier to cut when I have the fitness to be able to burn a ton of calories through exercise: being able to run 30 minutes straight, being able to put in a high volume weight lifting workout, etc.

So if it were me, I’d lean towards pausing the cut and just getting stronger and fitter on the same weight, so that the next round of cutting, a few months from now, is easier.

Then again I’ve never been able to maintain a cut for more than 2-3 months, so you should be aware of my bias.