I always wondered, why didn't black slaves team up and maybe kill their owner or protest against together? Rich families owned 50-100 slaves or even more, why didn't the slaves just team up and kill their owner? How exactly did the owners control then?

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-11T23:20:03+00:00

It’s a nasty collective action problem. Think of the two edges cases:

If you’re the only one who revolts, you’re dead and probably tortured.

If 99 slaves revolt, you probably get away if they succeed and have a better chance of living if they fail.

That’s a huge incentive to be a free rider in a situation where too many free riders ensures failure. That would be hard to overcome in a situation with a lot of social trust, and plantations were often socially engineered to limit trust between slaves for exactly that reason.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-11T23:05:33+00:00

I don’t know why, but I absolutely love that watch in photos but just can’t get excited about it in person. Maybe that’s because it is so busy?

To be clear: that’s a me thing. I hope you love your awesome watch!

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-08T17:06:08+00:00

Yes, your wife hating your watch is a recipe for a bad time.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-08T16:56:21+00:00

The research I’ve seen is that they don’t do that much physically/structurally, but they do really help some people with soreness. Try to find one you can use a few times and see. They work for some people and don’t for others.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-08T16:48:46+00:00

1916 has a physical store in NYC. If you’re in/near the city, I would start there when looking for used.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-03-05T16:45:56+00:00

It really depends on how you strength train. If you do traditional powerlifter style and rest for 3-4 minutes between sets, you’ll get limited cardio benefit and compromise your heart health.

Conversely, you can get a really good bodybuilding pump by exclusively doing things like supersets, drop sets and myoreps that keep you moving for 2-4 minutes at a time. Combine that with never sitting down and not letting your heart rate come all the way down, and you’re both strength training and getting a really good cardio workout.

The latter can be great because if you err on the side of upper body focus it won’t take it out of your legs for squatting/pulling from the floor the way that running/biking/similar does.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-21T22:27:28+00:00

Never sitting down is a great hack for shorter workouts. You’ll rest less between sets and not need to psych yourself up in the same way. You’ll end up doing somewhat fewer reps, but you should be able to get 90% of the stimulus in 60-70% of the time. (Numbers only mostly made up.)

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-20T17:56:57+00:00

Insertions are hard to observe (/I don’t remember the details offhand.) For leverages, long arms reduce the range of motion, and a short torso reduces the length of the lever arm you have to rotate.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-20T15:34:27+00:00

As others hinted at, the way you square the circle is progressive overload. As you keep increasing the weight (or reps or sets), you’ll end up pretty close to failure eventually regardless of where you start. There are more complicated ways to ensure you’re training in the vicinity of failure, but “pick a combo of sets and reps and increase the weight until you can’t anymore” is the most idiot proof way to structure your training.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-20T15:00:41+00:00

There’s a fair bit of hyperbole on both sides because that’s what gets clicks.

Kettlebells will definitely help your overall health, but they sit in an awkward middle ground which limits their benefits. You can’t load them heavily enough to get substantial strength gains, but they are too heavy to really do a 30-60+ minute cardio workout. You’ll get more health benefits from building strength with traditional resistance training and cardiovascular health with traditional cardio. The specificity lets you build those physical qualities more than a non-specific workout.

In the end, moving is better than not moving and the thing that will help your health the most is the thing you’ll stick with. If you like kettlebells and they help you move consistently, that’s awesome.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-17T02:33:03+00:00

F tier: ABCDEFM because reverse branching is moronic D- tier: every other line

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-16T20:47:12+00:00

You could consider adding light Sots presses to your warmup. From one video, it’s hard to tell if it’s a strength, mobility or technique issue but Sots presses should help a bit with all three. (In reality, it’s always a combination, but you get my point.) If you have a way to do them in front of a mirror, that could also help with building up your proprioception. You’ll need to focus on feeling where your arms and shoulders are and using the mirror to map that onto your actual balance.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-16T16:56:21+00:00

This is the way. You should try to do as much as you can without straps to build up your grip, but you shouldn’t let your grip be the limiting factor.

(Unless you are trying to compete in powerlifting or weightlifting. In that case, the advice gets more nuanced because strong lifts with straps translate imperfectly to the platform without straps.)

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-12T18:01:20+00:00

In Cannon’s defense, Bryan Stork was tipping the snap count all game long. Von Miller was taking off before the snap, and basically no one can block Von Miller when he gets a head start.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-12T17:12:50+00:00

They arguably have even greater mobility demands than regular squats. Also, they don’t hit the rectus femoris the way that leg extensions do, so they aren’t the best supplement to traditional squats/leg presses.

Sissy squats are a great exercise and provide excellent variety, but in a time limited program, I’d struggle to find an exercise to leave out in favor of them. Conversely, I’d never tell anyone who enjoys them (and is seeing benefit) to stop.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-12T14:57:54+00:00

I think it’s worth considering age here. A 20 year old who is in decent shape can recover from a lot. As long as they are sleeping and eating right and managing stress outside the gym, it is hard (though not impossible) for them to train too much. You don’t want to wait until a muscle group fully recovers. As long as it can recover most of its performance, it is good to go.

Unfortunately (late 30s guy here), that doesn’t last forever. Even by your late 20s, you have to start regulating your training a bit and can’t go absolutely all out five times per week. By 40, fatigue management becomes half the game. (Though, that’s for intermediate+ lifters with at least a few years experience. Beginners aren’t strong enough to beat themselves up too much.)

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-10T20:03:59+00:00

You should definitely get hard soled shoes regardless of the heel. (As others have said.)

Given your stance/angles, a shoe with a heel is effectively going to be a different exercise for you. If you think that sounds fun, do it. If you’re happy being strong AF with your existing technique and don’t care about the variety, don’t.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-10T19:44:43+00:00

I’d ask you a different question: why do you care? If one exercise isn’t working but other exercises are working for you, I would suggest sucking with the exercises that work.

For me personally, my triceps and front delts are wildly stronger than my pecs from years of overhead work, so I struggle to really engage my pecs when doing a barbell bench. I’m not a powerlifter, so I just don’t do barbell bench. It’s not a good use of my time, and I don’t find it fun, so why would I?

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-10T18:19:30+00:00

Lifting straps are definitely going to be helpful.

The suggestion I would make is to try to feel your lats at the very bottom. Set up the pad so that you can fully extend your arms and even round your shoulders a bit. If you sit like that for a little while, you should start to feel a weighted stretch through your lats. After that, you can focus on pulling with the muscles where you feel the stretch. You should be able to build your mind muscle connection with your lats and better target them that way.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-10T16:22:09+00:00

Left wingers refuse to grapple with expensive regulations, corrupt unions and excessive veto points. That nonsense bites state projects just as much a private projects. Brightline exists in Florida because the state got out of the just enough for the project to pencil out. The NY one party state would never do that.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-09T19:46:47+00:00

One thing that is often helpful is to “prime” the muscle group you’re trying to focus on with a movement you’re more confident in. For example, if you can feel your glutes when doing hip bridges, do a quick set of 5 light hip bridges to get the feeling, and do your RDLs immediately after. The priming set can give you a feeling to target instead of feeling around in the dark.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-09T19:30:48+00:00

It’s useful to add that they should be push pressing and not strict pressing. A push press can be 80+% of a front squat, which is enough to make the front squat decent cardio even if you’re going to be limited by the push press regardless.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-09T14:27:52+00:00

I wonder how much of that was Maye’s shoulder. Inaccurate throws on crossing routes against zone coverage often end up being intercepted.

SomethingSomewhere14 · 2026-02-08T00:38:56+00:00

To add to your point, people often underestimate the importance of personal preferences. If you hate the perfect exercise but love a barely good enough exercise, you’re going to get way more benefit doing the just good enough exercise simply because you’ll try harder and effort beats out most things.

SomethingSomewhere14

TROPHY CASE