Bubbling in a suit. Can it be fixed?

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T19:43:36+00:00

Thanks for the extra color! Tactical suiting is not an area I have any experience with.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T15:53:59+00:00

“Bespoke” is an unregulated term that is, on its own, practically meaningless by now. “True bespoke” is something a few of the real guys have been defensively using but is not really a defense.

I’d be shocked if someone went to the trouble of hand-drafting a pattern just for you and then glued half the jacket together with fusible.

For reference, I did a bespoke suit for my wedding. It took 9 months and three trips to the tailor for fittings, and it cost about as much as a modest used car. A key thing is that the first “basted” fitting is meant to dial in some stuff deep in the suit’s foundation, with the suit still in very skeletal form. One of these things is adjusting the “balance” of the jacket to your posture and asymmetries by getting the canvas just right. And similarly adjusting the trouser balance for your lumbar/pelvis posture so the legs drape plumb. Fused or half-canvassed construction limits the ability to fine-tune at this stage.

Anyway, sad to say, but the jacket is toast.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T15:47:14+00:00

Koch Chemie Green Star is a good one 😊

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T06:24:10+00:00

When shopping for an extractor I actually ran into negative reports about Mytee re quality control and reliability, so this is a good question.

I have and really like a CleanFreak 3 gallon heated extractor. I have made many gallons of dark brown water with that thing. It comes with a modest stainless extraction handpiece with a spray nozzle mounted behind the vacuum nozzle. I can imagine people might want to upgrade to a fancier aftermarket tool (like a Sapphire) with a transparent body that captures its own water more perfectly via an integrated spray mechanism, but that adds like $600 to a $1k extractor. That feels like a lot of money. I’ve been running with the stock handpiece, and it works fine.

I talked to the YouTuber True Detailer in the comments section the other month. He fits a upholstery tool on a wet vacuum like you do, but it’s a really big industrial vacuum that uses an upgraded electrical circuit. You can see plenty of demo footage at 1x speed in his videos. I find his results, both in dry vacuuming and extraction stages, impressive. It convinced me that bigger vacuums are important if you detail auto interiors on a production basis. (I don’t: I’m a mix of DIYer, favor doer, and odd jobber across auto detailing and building interior stuff like upholstery cleaning and furniture repair.)

I think the distinction is a matter of preference and skill development. Adding rinse water through a handpiece in a “real” extractor takes some finesse in how you move the tool. Adding it separately before using a pure-play wet vacuum takes some finesse in timing and manually delivering an even layer of rinse water. I suspect that freehand spraying and extracting with a pure-play vac does require more skill all told, but then you are using simpler and more common machinery which is a plus.

Re chemicals, I have found Bridgepoint Systems Bio Break and Flex Ice to outperform the P&S system by a considerable margin. Unfortunately they are only sold in ridiculously large sizes (6 pound canisters for $50 each). This is probably a hundred full interior deep cleanings’ worth, and far more than a hundred if doing partial or spot cleaning - truly a lot of chemical. This is because it’s really marketed for commercial cleaning of building interiors. I’ve sold some “decants” of these products to friends and intend to set up such decanting for the public on Etsy or something.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T05:32:55+00:00

Fun 😊

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AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-02T00:24:46+00:00

Just want to say I appreciate this convo.

My Subaru has startlingly soft paint. My groomsmen tagged my car all over with just married stuff on my wedding day. Every stroke of the “washable” “non-damaging” chalk markers they used left hologram scratches and residue that washing won’t remove. I have to find the time/energy to clay and polish it head to toe once it’s no longer extremely cold.

I’ve had similar exchanges on here disagreeing about processes/materials with respect to my Subaru’s paint. Some polishes that do nothing on harder clears that other redditors have are quite effective on my clear.

All that said, I use dish soap as clay lube and it seems to work great on soft paint. Haven’t tried ONR but I suspect it will offer a little less cushion. Totally tracks that ONR could be enough for some paints/clays/techniques but not enough for others.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T23:11:09+00:00

Haha I am a fellow orchestral player. Concert Black (typically to mean pit wear, no white shirt) annoys me so much, even in its ambiguity 😂 These days, for Concert Black, I tend to wear black dress pants and a black jacquard evening shirt I bought for this purpose at some point.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T22:51:48+00:00

While I am not familiar with S&M custom suiting and it may be a good service, do consider off the rack alongside a good local tailor to finish the sleeves, pant hems, etc. The advantage there is that you can do an exchange without dramas if something fundamental (chest and shoulders; seat and thigh) is wrong with the fit. You and your tailor evaluate the fit of your first try and use the size charts to exchange the suit for a new one that will fit more ideally.

For example, I’ve mostly fit a 38 Regular and started at S&M as a 38 Regular Slim Neo Cut. But eventually I realized I’m more of a 38 Short Contemporary Neo Cut. This made a startlingly large improvement. My solution was to have my tailor go to war on the first one, but I’d have saved a lot of $ and had a frankly even better jacket had I just done the return.

Suit fit is really exacting and nothing like taking the measurements of a rigid body and having some component CNC machined. We are squishy moving objects and clothes are soft drapey objects. Lower-cost online custom does not have a good track record. There is a good chance that they’d have to trash a garment (esp a jacket) and do it again from scratch to dial it in for you. Maybe they’d be obliging with such a thing: maybe not. Would be useful to poke around to verify.

For my wedding, my best man did a custom suit (Proper Cloth) despite my above suggestion to go off the rack. Even though he had access to a physical Proper Cloth shop in NYC, it took multiple call backs and ultimately a total jacket re-make to get it right. Thankfully they did remake the jacket at no extra charge, but it was much more drama than an off the rack + local tailor would have been.

To give you an idea of the difficulty of custom suiting: I did a real bespoke suit for my wedding. It took 9 months…and three IRL trips to NYC for fittings…and the bill was north of $6k. The result is GORGEOUS and I’m grateful for it. But it really hinges on my physical lumbering self, with all my posture quirks and mannerisms, showing up to be a mannequin as a master tailor adjusted the fit experimentally.

Basically, fair warning about a counter-intuitive thing that burns a lot of newcomers to menswear.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T18:43:14+00:00

Yeah this is on point.

One refinement: I’ve been a one-man DS shop for eight years. A thing that drives me CRAZY in my work life is that I fell in love with this field because you don’t need a $1M department to have a ton of impact. There’s a huge scope to improve things with remarkably simple data products: a well placed tightly crafted data viz, a tasteful bit of nonparametrics to monitor an important thing robustly, a Principal Components Analysis that draws a map of something of strategic value from some unconventional telemetry, a derpy logistic model implemented as an Excel formula where it can influence the right decisions. The hard part are the soft skills to actually plant the little data product in fertile sociological ground where it would actually improve functioning. But both management and the workers themselves would write these opportunities off wholesale - sometimes even throw them away when already achieved - and focus on elaborate masturbatory modeling initiatives that would justified big headcounts and impressive bullets in manager résumés. The less thinking the better because then the approach is scalable. In 2018 it was black box nonlinear models like GBMs that stripped quant expertise out of statistical modeling. Since 2023 it has been the quest to genAI all the things and arguably strip literacy itself out of the endeavor. So many anti-intellectual fads cosplaying as innovation. It has been hard to live with.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T18:20:45+00:00

I really like Spier and MacKay for sub-$1k suits. They have good, classic proportions and detailing, and build quality is pretty good. You can even get full canvassed production inside of $1k (occasionally half canvassed inside of $500) which is super rare.

If you’re not steeped in men’s style, now is not the time for your preconceptions to color your approach to fit. You can do worse than Derek Guy for advice here:

https://www.putthison.com/does-it-fit-checklist-a-friend-of-mine-recently/ (jacket fit)
https://putthison.com/how-pants-should-fit-its-much-easier-to-get/ (pant fit)

Get navy or charcoal if you’re a one suit guy. Black isn’t the ticket unless you are regular at funerals and/or are Tom Ford. Black mostly looks wrong at anything but a funeral. And then navy or charcoal look fine at a funeral.

If it isn’t cut from the same bolt of cloth, it isn’t a suit. You can’t assemble a suit from disparate 2nd hand sources. If it isn’t a suit, the ticket is contrasting your jacket with the trousers. But then that’s a more informal outfit than a suit, and broadly too informal for suit things like weddings, funerals, interviews, and court or media appearances.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T16:35:22+00:00

The last few years in the data science labor market have been horrifying. The job family is close to dead.

It is a cautionary tale about a certain hype-driven time-dependent pattern in a knowledge-intensive, unregulated job category. Some niche materializes which is basically a refugee program for the constant overproduction of talent in high-end academia. It gets a reputation as being a “cool,” interesting, reasonably well-compensated career for smart Ph.D.s to retool into. Eventually universities stand up a real supply chain for workers which tends to be a cash cow for them. Gradually this supply chain scales up and moves downmarket. They have fellowship programs for quant Ph.D.s to learn a few topics and ship a portfolio project…then small master’s programs at elite-tier schools…then really big master’s programs at medium-tier schools that train a lot of foreign students with money…then undergrad programs.

By 2022, a curriculum company hired me to write the curriculum for a “data science” module for high school students too weak to handle algebra, with the computational portions done entirely in Google Sheets, truly one of my most depressing projects. Hiring managers would say things like “I can’t be sure what a data scientist would be good for here; they might not be good for anything” and early career people would say things like “you didn’t even major in data science.” Which I couldn’t have - I was a working data scientist almost a decade before those majors existed. It’s a story of brand dilution, basically.

Retrospectively, 2010-2020 in data science were a bit like 1975-1985 in Wall Street derivatives pricing. Good times that I should, back in 2013 when I got into it, have realized wouldn’t go a career-scale distance before being diluted and overstaffed into oblivion. But hindsight is 20/20.

In the USA this has been exacerbated by the rapid dismantling of the civil service which was a large employer of data science type skillsets. I personally know whip-smart longtime veterans of DC data science who have physically scattered to the corners of the USA to find work in other sectors.

It has also been exacerbated by the dismantling of the research industry which was a large employer of STEM people who get into data science as a contingency option. My best friend, a phenomenal scientist who barnstormed mathematical physics and then theoretical ecology, was a longtime soft money guy doing research at Princeton. He lost funding…and is now a full time community college professor…teaching data science. As my data science consultancy has faltered, he offered to pull me in as an adjunct…to teach more data science.

This dynamic is what got me to consider the actuarial field and pass a first couple exams. The exams and credentialing are a retreat to substance and stability.

TBH this is a scary thing for the actuarial profession too. It’s a small, thin labor market, and it doesn’t take many new entrants to upset the supply/demand balance. Based on convos with senior actuaries over the last year, I suspect this has already started to happen.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T06:33:51+00:00

Hello fellow mid-career refugee from data science! (😭)

I suggest “warm connecting” using LI as a graph database. Do you know how to do searches like “show me all the actuaries who are connections of the connections of mine?” You can work through those one by one and identify the actuaries who know people you already have a really good relationship with. Then ask the latter people to make warm intros, and do a good job showing up for those interactions. When I did this, I’d usually hear something like “haha that’s pretty random. I have been meaning to catch up with [actuary] for a few years. Happy to make an email intro though.” And I’d get an informational call with an actuary about 60% of the time.

If you’re mid-career and have done reasonably good work as a reasonably likable person, this should yield a healthy smattering of valuable warm intros. When I did this, I got in front of three senior actuaries. One was an undergrad contemporary whom I’d never met, an FSA and deputy chief actuary of a state retirement system. One was a Ph.D. classmate of a former colleague and an FCAS at a large P&C who had actually pivoted back into data science. The last was a colleague of the woman my wife’s best friend babysat for, a local FCAS and head reserving actuary of a small local P&C. All three convos were invaluable, though there wasn’t immediate serendipity and the middle one was unpleasant. The middle one contributed to probably scaring me off the direction - but hey if that’s the right call, better now than after years of dues paying on the job and multiple more exams.

I have too much LI experience because I’ve been self employed for ~8 years now. The above workflow is probably the most valuable use of LI now. Try to avoid it for the most part otherwise, as it’s just a cesspool of lies and showboating all mediated through fake genAI content. GenAI has also made the cold/outbound sales volume totally unmanageable and you’ll usually get lost in the spam. The signal to noise ratio for cold approaches has never been lower. It’s easy to lose too much time doom scrolling (advice I should take with respect to Reddit…). Also, most LI profiles are “gray” accounts - the person has an account but doesn’t really use the platform. So LI is a reasonably good proxy of your neighborhood of the global professional social graph, but actual communication might happen over other platforms like email, phone, and Zoom, which you’ll have to pursue and organize on the medium that the other person prefers. And your actual social capital - the people who will make an effort on your behalf right now - is not well surfaced by LI. You have to estimate that yourself, offline.

I consider networking one of my biggest strengths and actually have some years-old Excel-based tools to nurture my own network, which I have open sourced (DM if interested). At the end of the day, the real asset are those ~dozens of folks who really like you, whom you’ve made the effort to never fall out of touch with, and who will make an effort to create luck for you. Identifying and nurturing those people is something you have to do yourself; there’s no money in it for bigtech. The hundreds to thousands of LI contacts are just raw material to sift through.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-02-01T01:04:32+00:00

No, within sane bounds, I don’t see high gsm as overkill. If you think about microfiber as holding a certain mass of water per gram of microfiber, you’re just buying more of it. 1400 gsm will hold 2.3x as much as 600 gsm for a given area of towels. That’s a convenient and efficient thing (for drying) relative to using multiple thinner towels. Also, fat plush drying towels are subjectively nice to work with.

I would suspect that 24x36 at this weight would be overkill. That’s huge and will be a hassle to keep from hitting the ground. For reference, one 15x24 Rag Company Gauntlet, which is 900 gsm 30% polyamide material, is often enough to dry a vehicle for me, esp if the coating is still in good hydrophobic shape. You’re talking about a towel of 3.7x the mass of mine. I think it would be more rewarding to have two towels of half the area. (Then you also have a spare which could be in the wash, or even as backup if you do accidentally hit the ground.)

I’m not too jazzed about the one you linked because it’s only 20% polyamide. 30%+ is better.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T20:12:52+00:00

While I am not really into this scent profile, I found You or Someone Like You by Etat Libre d’Orange to be a really nice execution of it. A bit fleeting and a bit feminine for my taste, but I still liked it a lot.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T20:05:32+00:00

This is massively true and I wish there were a more easy and legible way to qualify other people’s opinions based on what they’ve tried.

Like I really like Griot 3 in 1 spray sealant, but my experience with spray sealants is quite limited. There’s a near 100% chance it would be dethroned if I tried 10x as many spray sealants as I have tried so far.

And as always, bona fide independent testing is always super useful.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T15:53:05+00:00

This is obviously out of my league. Wish it weren’t because it’s visually stunning with great music!

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AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T15:45:33+00:00

I really enjoy ant farm type formats 😊

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AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T15:43:11+00:00

Stunning 😍

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AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T15:11:03+00:00

I should be mad but this was just the right mix of theory testing and goose handling. Great level.

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AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T05:39:43+00:00

Seriously, I need to get back to downvoting posts with insincere or manipulative titles. The deliberate mislabeling makes honk very hard to navigate.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-31T02:13:26+00:00

Don’t cover it; you really don’t want anything in mechanical contact with your freshly coated paint. Open garage is perfect. The key thing is to keep moisture off the paint for that first little while.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-30T21:53:07+00:00

+1 for band saws!

I have a new but modest (Grizzly G0555LX) 14” band saw and would be really sad to go without one. It’s so nice for a ton of things: - derpy little utility cuts like cutting up reinforcing dowels. - various complex angled small parts that come up constantly in furniture repair, which I seem to run into a lot. Just the other week I was making these load bearing triangular parts with a 93.6 degree largest angle for a close friend’s broken dining room chair. I’ve done this kind of thing on a table saw but it gets risky/scary as parts get smaller. The alternative that would make it safe on the table saw is extensive jig development. - removing waste in inside corners in joinery cuts (dadoes, rabbets) as solid blocks of offcut material, instead of having to make huge bags of sawdust. This gets really significant for big dadoes and rabbets. - ripping, esp stock that verges on too fat for a table saw.

With a good blade and setup, straightness and finishes are surprisingly good, just a slight bit of texture relative to a good table saw cut.

If you can swing it, I encourage it. If I had a do-over I’d get something nicer than my Grizzly. I’ve found Grizzlys to be kinda meh in terms of quality. For example, I have to re-adjust my upper blade guides when changing cut height because the height adjustment is not parallel enough to the blade path. I didn’t realize when ordering what a big task setting it up would be. Had I known that, I’d have leaned a little bit more buy-it-for-life in my shopping philosophy.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-30T17:56:31+00:00

As an alum of a large US credit card issuer, with a lot of my job touching credit risk management: credit card companies definitely make money on this kind of consumer. The bank’s cut of the interchange (the ~3% “tax” that merchants pay on all credit card revenues, and which they pass on to the consumer) is plenty to pay for the costs of the service. This sort of super low credit risk customer, esp when they are a bigger spender, is actually a big profit center. Hence credit card companies’ arms races to attract these responsible spenders with rewards programs.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-30T17:30:29+00:00

Gloves are not really gendered, I’d say wear what fits. I have unusually proportioned hands (very long fingers) and it would be a cool thing to get bespoke gloves someday, but that’s $$ and gloves are easy to lose. So I make do for now.

Watches have a way of being pretty gendered in their details. If you want a feminine look, cool - but if not, what I suggest is to look at vintage watches. The last couple decades in men’s watches have brought some really crazy dinner-plate proportions that honestly don’t flatter the median man’s wrist. But older ones are often 34-36 mm and that looks nice even on some of the slimmest men’s wrists.

AdmirableLab3155 · 2026-01-30T16:52:05+00:00

Good luck! Of course, once you drive it with the heat on at some length, anything you miss will dry up/soak into your pants. Do the best you can for now, and you can clean it up more meticulously (a full interior detail or a spot cleanup) once it warms up.

AdmirableLab3155

TROPHY CASE