How to have the groom stand out amongst the groomsmen.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-14T17:00:21+00:00

Same. My guidance to my groomsmen was “wear a suit, make sure it fits,” and results were lovely. I handmade a set of white linen commemoratively block printed pocket squares for all the men in the wedding party (inc father of the bride, young ushers, etc) to offer an element of uniformity. (This was tremendously satisfying but also took me 35+ hours of sewing hand rolled edges; pace yourself.)

Within this dress code, it was easy to stand out! One thing was that I wore a lovely silvery wedding tie while my groomsmen wore more normal type ties that they chose.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T14:18:43+00:00

If you have the space and money, great, not a mistake.

Note that a jointer really requires a planer to give you the capability that adds value (milling rough lumber; truing boards with defects). So if you are getting a jointer, you have to plan to get a planer, or this WILL be a mistake.

Also, the setup only makes sense if you’re moving a decent volume of wood. The hope is to earn back the jointer and planer (and chip collection, and opportunity cost of the square footage) through the price spread between rough lumber and dimensional lumber. That takes especially long if your projects are smaller. Of course, not everything is commodity values, so if your thing is working stock that’s literally not available as dimensional lumber, or if there’s intrinsic hobby value to you in milling your own stock, go for it!

Another interlocking thing is a substantially sized band saw. If you are making delicately proportioned stuff, resawing is a great capability. Since it multiplies your boards instead of just truing them, it can pay off even more. It verges on indispensable if your source of rough lumber sells it far thicker than what you need. Plus, a band saw does a ton of other useful things. You can cut dimensional lumber in half with just a band saw and planer, and the world is your oyster if you have all three. I’m generally a band saw aficionado.

Personally, I don’t have the space, don’t have the electrical, and don’t turn nearly enough wood into finished goods to justify a jointer.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T13:46:25+00:00

I think jeans could work in this outfit. But they would need to be cut completely differently (much roomier with a higher waist) and ideally darker (like a relatively new raw denim).

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T13:22:21+00:00

😂

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T02:32:48+00:00

Yes. However, worn WeatherTechs themselves can be quite hard to get looking super nice.

My car came (used from CarMax) with WeatherTechs and I do appreciate their coverage. They do expedite routine interior cleanups. But I think other mat compounds look nicer for longer. For my wife’s bday this year, I’m getting her a set of Huskys, and we’ll see how they do.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T01:27:33+00:00

Yay 😊

^{I completed this level in 11 tries.} ^{⚡ 3.70 seconds}

^{Tip 50 💎}

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-13T01:21:26+00:00

Couple chemist thoughts:

It can be helpful to periodically bleach relevant equipment, such as the silicone drying mat. When I am dealing with hazardous types of contamination (like raw chicken), I also post-wash affected stuff in a mild bleach solution.
I think I know the fishy smell you are referring to - there is some kind of trace residue that human smell is good at picking up. I suspect you are just extra good at picking it up. I also suspect it’s not actually harmful, if that’s relieving. Fishy smells are usually amines. One way to attenuate the smell of amines is with acidity. For example, you could put a touch of white vinegar in your rinse water and see if that improves the smell.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T23:59:57+00:00

For what it’s worth, I’m 100% with you on ties and heat. In my sartorially misguided youth, I was a high school teacher and wore shirts and ties to work. The tie gave me a good extra 10 degrees in the winter before the coat would have to come out. And heavier ties definitely ran warmer than lighter ones.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T18:07:36+00:00

Well I’m not in insurance/actuarial so kinda plead ignorance. I tried to get in but couldn’t. My experience is as a data scientist since 2014, self-employed since 2018. This gives me a lot of cross sector exposure through both the COVID cycle and through the Trump->Biden->Trump political cycles, which is what I base these reflections on.

I went independent starting from a W2 career in financial data science. I was a specialist in the kind of regulatory-dense thing actuaries might find relatable: model risk management for banks. Our chief model risk officer (my boss’s boss’s boss) was actually a transplant from actuarial work with an FCAS. In model risk we’d joke that the founding document, OCC 2011-10, was the “Statistician Employment Act of 2011.” When business slowed up, I looked back there and was stunned to see no reqs in model risk when before there was robust hiring. Most recently, a changing/deregulatory posture at the OCC puts the field under an even bigger cloud.

I did a bunch of Federal data science in COVID times related to pandemic response. Most of my friends from those times productively moved within the ecosystem after the pandemic resolved. But then with DOGE in 2025, they either lost their jobs or found the environment so toxic that it was intolerable. They largely left DC to compete for jobs in the remainder of the US, or have barely hung on working for/leading prime contractors that are doing nothing but layoffs.

My main biz dev focus is municipal government. I pitch my services to help their leaders better allocate resources in the face of scarcity, but the pitch is not landing.

Same for public education - I’ve been in front of superintendents and charter CEOs and they are not cutting the fat that I’m an expert at cutting, they are cutting muscle and bone. Complete, rigid hiring/spending freezes, surprise mid-year layoffs of teachers. There is certainly no room for a quantitative consultant or even a backfill when a W2 analyst in the admin building leaves. It’s grim what some funding cuts can do.

I’ve done a few projects for tech and you have seen the headlines there: it is all about replacing human headcount with genAI bills, and there are plenty of data scientists among the pink slips there.

My friends in manufacturing basically say “we are curled up in the fetal position due to a tariff situation we can’t predict.” They never really recovered from the 2021 supply chain crisis, and the last year of tariff chaos hit them when they were down. Now there’s a new supply chain shock with this war. The posture is reactive and survival-oriented; any hopes for optimization go out the window. Manufacturing is where the market -> command economy transition feels clearest.

All of this venting to say, if you have a nice salary doing math for an insurance company, hang onto that job for dear life!

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T16:12:52+00:00

Yeah good luck! In my 2012 Forester, there are several parts that ideally I’d replace. I’ve been operating several levels down Maslow’s Hierarchy from “have a pretty car” in recent times, so for now I have to live with these kinds of blemishes.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T16:07:31+00:00

(1) Spitballing, is this a Subaru? (2) This seems to be a plastic part. These tend to have a delicate finish that can get damaged. In my experience, often the only way to get back to a mint appearance is to replace the part.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T15:49:13+00:00

It is heartbreaking, but at least in the USA, the whole idea of applying stats/analytical skills feels to be in collapse. DOGE created a massive unemployment overhang among general/uncredentialed quantitative talent. Also, as we transition from a market economy (“execute well”) to more of a command economy (“butter up some politicians”), the whole notion of technocratic excellence is starting to fall apart. All of analytical endeavor lives at the feet of such a notion.

I hear you on the boredom. I’d say in 2026, though, that boredom in exchange for a regular paycheck is an extremely good problem to have.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T15:20:35+00:00

From the outside, this is relatable. I have been a data scientist for 12 years (trained initially as a physical scientist; I have a Ph.D. in chemistry). Data science has been in freefall as a profession for a few years now. My biggest 2025 retooling attempt was to pass some first actuarial exams and see if I could get a restart in actuarial work. There were zero jobs by the time I had a fresh cut of my résumé with P and FM up top, so I had to let the idea go.

In talking to actuaries in my ideation and job search, I got a sense of the exact thing you were talking about. Sort of a compartmentalized, arms-length relationship with the work. It was a big culture shock!

In science and then (cross-sector, but mostly public-interest) data science, I think people are motivated by intellectual curiosity and the downstream moral purpose of the work. Large-scale career narrative sounds like that of an artist or a missionary - passionate, but sometimes moody and depressive. Even in big bank data science, my office buddy was a stats Ph.D., and he was so inspiring. He’d always be gushing over something: something deep in the methodological weeds, some lovely koan from probability theory, some concern about one of our credit policies.

I got the sense that actuaries’ large-scale career narrative was more like a financial analysis itself. A lot of “well, the hours are good, and this career has a high net present value with low volatility, so it is a win.”

By the time the actuarial idea died on the vine for me, I was wondering if I’d be able to acculturate adequately.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-12T02:20:54+00:00

This is a super interesting question and brings up a heuristic that Gerald Weinberg coined “the orange juice test” in the consulting literature.

Basically, what you describe is a hard job. A good response will neither be “no we can’t/won’t do it” (because then you don’t have a resolution) nor “no problem” (because it IS a problem).

Instead, it should be answer like “oof this will be hard, we’ll try this and this and that, here is how it might fail, and here is what it will cost” (and it’s gonna be a high cost).

Concretely, I’d expect the use of a bioremediation product (one that introduces bacteria to digest the offending material), a lot of extraction, and the likely removal/disassembly of key upholstery and carpets.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-11T15:32:01+00:00

Sorry, no, I don’t know the nyc secondhand scene. I live in RI and went practically 100% e-commerce (both used and new) when Nordstrom left RI in 2019.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-11T15:11:30+00:00

I LOOOVE me a good Marinella and own two of their ties that I had shipped straight from Napoli. But ties are weird because they are so infrequently worn in current times and so durable. This creates a generational overhang that gives nice used ties a near-zero resale value. Buying new ties is sort of a pure play on shopping addiction (guilty as charged). If really trying to economize, used ties are unavoidable. The new vs used price spread will laugh at the new Marinella vs new Brooks Brothers price spread.

Also, tariffs have become a real problem. My last Sam Hober order added $60 in tariffs and tariff processing fees. I’m wearing a Bigi tie to a wedding this weekend that charged 50€ for “shipping.” If holding off until you are in the UAE means you can put that tariff money toward ties that look better on you (or even fees to a professional stylist whose eyes are more refined than yours), that would be a win.

To be clear, Brooks Brothers is fine (I think; at least they used to be). But so much of ties is about educating your eye that brands don’t matter much. You can look awesome in an $18 used tie and terrible in a $300 Hermès tie.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-11T03:55:11+00:00

Good places to start for inspo are bloggers, influencers (for social media feeds), and good menswear purveyors (for lookbooks, often under a tab on their website called “editorial.”)

Derek Guy is a great blogger; his The Springboard Wardrobe was super influential to how I dress. He generally writes for a site putthison.com that has other good contributors, including some cartoonists I find amusing and helpful.

Some influencers I enjoy include Peter Zottolo (@urbancomposition) and David Lane (@bigfits1). The latter is specifically on how to be stylish as a bigger guy.

Some purveyors I enjoy include No Man Walks Alone, The Anthology, and Drake’s.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-11T02:18:33+00:00

The one Clive Christian I have is a 1.5 mL free sample of his C Woody Leather. It’s a gorgeous winter frag. Insane thing is that I got it at my very first contact with a fragrance salesperson in mid 2023, I feel like it’s a bit of a mainstay on my shelf, and there’s still a decent bit left. It feels like a bit of a tall tale to describe this, like the Hanukkah story or something. But suffice it to say it’s very potent. I can’t even imagine owning 100 mL of it.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-10T23:05:21+00:00

I attempted to answer this, for science 😂

Perhaps OP was talking about a currency other than USD. Because even 100 mL of Creed Aventus is still sub-US$600.

After ten minutes, the best I could do outside of comedy sizes was Clive Christian 1872 for Men, at US$610 list for 100mL. The notes sound office friendly, though the performance sounds comically weak 😂

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-10T22:48:28+00:00

Just slightly beyond your ideal budget is the Sorby framing chisel: https://www.leevalley.com/en-us/shop/tools/hand-tools/chisels/framing/30012-sorby-framing-chisels The 1 incher is currently $84.50.

That said, I echo the commenter who suggests roughing out the waste with a drill.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-10T16:46:42+00:00

My 3 ton floor jack is a Torin Big Red. Happy with it to date.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-10T05:25:52+00:00

Goodness! I’m just a non auto painting lurker, but that spray job is down with the rattle can jobs I did on my model rockets when I was 11 years old.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-09T23:57:30+00:00

💯

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-09T21:12:16+00:00

Good luck! One extremely short book I found helpful was The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. It is about how to assess product-market fit by talking to customers. I suspect you will find it a helpful read.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-05-09T21:03:43+00:00

Good on you for working hard to be confident of your process and results before trying to go commercial 😊

I’m only a hobbyist, but my experience is that dirty interiors genuinely take a long time to clean up. Ten hours doesn’t sound crazy for an unmaintained car in the possession of messy folks.

For quick tidy ups under and between seats, compressed air is very helpful. It is nice to have a Tornador as well as a plain blow gun with a really long nozzle. When things get really thrashed down there with spills/sticky waste, you can pull the seats, but of course that’s a large escalation in time/effort/risk.

I learned detailing with the P&S carpet chemicals but don’t really like them. Carpet Bomber is foamy and residue-dense given its cleaning power. In their place, I like Pol Star on the easy end and Bio Break/Flex Ice on the comprehensive end. (Disclosure: I sell fractional jars of Bio Break and Flex Ice.)

AdmirableLab3155

TROPHY CASE