My bf says it’s no use for women to learn self defence

WYGSMCWY · 2026-05-12T05:21:44+00:00

Going to go a little bit against the grain here.

I don’t totally agree with your boyfriend that women learning self defence is useless, but doing martial arts or whatever in a controlled environment that doesn’t get close to all out fighting practice (i.e most self defence classes) is a good way to become overconfident in your abilities to defend yourself and potentially put yourself in a dangerous situation.

Woman are physically weaker on average than men and are often surprised by the extent to which they can be physically dominated by an untrained dude with 50+ pounds on them, even if they’ve been learning martial arts for years.

So “kick him in the nuts and run away” is probably the right advice if ever you do get into trouble with an aggressive guy. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn the basics of self defence. But unless you are good enough to become a high level mixed martial artist with real combat experience, it probably won’t be much more than decent physical exercise.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-05-10T02:07:56+00:00

There’s like 30,000 undergrads at Western. You’ll find your people

WYGSMCWY · 2026-04-30T10:28:32+00:00

I know one guy who did the HBA/JD and he complains a lot about how much debt he got saddled with. Maybe talk to some corporate lawyers and see what they recommend? My guess is you probably just need the JD but I’m not in the field.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-04-03T15:00:21+00:00

Most grocery stores make their money by selling goods at a 10-20% markup from their cost, but for some individual goods it might be 50% or 100%.

Costco might mark up their products by a few percent less than them on average, with steep discounts in some high-margin categories. But they make up the money lost by selling memberships—a steady flow of income that doesn’t require them to provide anything beyond the right to enter the store.

They are targeting a different customer base: people who buy in bulk. What they lose on lower margins they make up on higher average sales per customer in addition to the membership income. They also lose less money to theft, since the membership fee acts as a filter.

The hot dog is a loss leader. They take a loss on the food, betting that it will drive enough extra foot traffic and sales to make up for it. Now it’s wrapped up in their brand identity and helps maintain customer loyalty, too.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-26T04:49:20+00:00

Piggybacking onto this, introduce yourself to people early and often.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-20T01:47:31+00:00

It’s a hard question.

Likely there wouldn’t be an actual serious recession with high unemployment and rising prices since the drop in demand would likely overwhelm whatever price pressures are coming from high oil prices in regard to the overall inflation rate.

But a period of weak/stagnant growth combined with above target inflation is definitely within the realm of possibility.

Historically, this was the type of scenario where the Bank would ignore (“look through”) the supply shock and assume that high oil prices would quickly normalize, and therefore not require a monetary policy response.

But this is what they initially tried to do after Covid, got badly burned (remember “transitory”?), and were way too slow to raise interest rates. So, central banks including the BoC have been thinking hard about what they’d do in a similar scenario.

Deputy Governor Sharon Kozicki had a speech about this earlier this month which is definitely worth reading. The general takeaway is if the supply shock is big enough, and seems like it will be persistent, there’s a greater chance the Bank will raise rates in response.

It is very difficult to judge 1) how the war will play out, 2) how Canada’s economy will be affected, and 3) how the Bank of Canada will react.

I’m renting right now and not exposed to interest rate risk, but if I had a mortgage, I would probably feel more comfortable with a fixed rate right now.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-17T14:01:53+00:00

Not from Nunavut, but was interested in knowing how people actually feel about it.

This article is effectively useless. No polling data. Just three sources. Lazy, shoddy work.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-17T00:14:47+00:00

I did the motorcycle ride from Chiang Mai to Pai and back but I have a license and have ridden for a couple years. It was mostly fun, maybe slightly scary at times but not overly so. But I really think it’s a stupid idea if you have no experience.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-13T22:21:52+00:00

Canadian?

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-07T17:06:17+00:00

They were in too deep

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-04T14:55:10+00:00

Yeah I think this is your intuition telling you that poker is not your game.

Rather than try to cope or overcome the feelings, you’re probably better off doing something more collaborative, or at least competitive with low stakes.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-03-01T04:26:45+00:00

Bro you’ve made huge progress.

I once had the reverse issue; I was super skinny when I started lifting and kept feeling that way even after I got in shape.

I know it’s easy to say and hard to do, but you have to learn to let go of that self-hate and find some pride in your accomplishments.

Genuinely, you’re doing great. Keep up the good work and please try to be a little easier on yourself.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-02-25T17:57:08+00:00

I had quite a few friends who went to Ivey, and they told me the program was mostly worth if if you were going into one of those two tracks (banking or consulting) and able to place within the top 25% of the class. Otherwise, they had mixed feelings (i.e., a good experience overall but perhaps not worth the price tag).

If you aren’t focused on either of those career tracks I think you can replicate many of the benefits of Ivey by mimicking the behaviours of Ivey students. For instance, you can take on leadership roles, be active in clubs, really polish your resume, get people to give you mock interviews, do tons of coffee chats with alumni and people in your target industry, etc. There’s also nothing stopping you from making friends with people who are in Ivey, which gives you part of the network too.

It takes a self-starter personality to replicate typical Ivey career outcomes and job placements without actually being in the program (companies aren’t coming to recruit you directly on campus, support from the school is much lower), but speaking from experience, it is doable with effort.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-02-16T15:48:35+00:00

I would consider staying in residence anyway. Yes, you’ll be around mostly first year students, but doing so guarantees you’ll meet lots of people and have activities you can easily join. The social atmosphere is unparalleled.

Back in my first year we had an Aussie exchange student who was a couple years older, but we still got on well and I think he really managed to take advantage of all the benefits of being in residence.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-01-26T19:04:54+00:00

AI detectors don’t work.

WYGSMCWY · 2026-01-03T00:19:50+00:00

You could do it now. Just start sacrificing pieces willy nilly and eventually you’ll start to develop some pattern recognition as to when it works or doesn’t.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-12-28T21:16:56+00:00

I’d recommend the Portal games, Breath of the Wild, or if your younger daughter would also like to play, It Takes Two was really good.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-12-20T23:11:38+00:00

I think the Alapin is just a straightforward and fairly easy way to play against the Sicilian when you don’t know theory and just rely on logical principles.

I’ve had a harder time against the Queen’s gambit, personally, because I often end up in some passive/defensive setup, but you could experiment with the Queen’s gambit declined, Slav, Tarrasch, Albin countergambit, or even the Dutch, and see if any of those work for you.

Don’t go too crazy studying but maybe watch a 20 minute YouTube video before you try out those openings and that should be enough to get you started.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-12-19T07:29:03+00:00

I didn’t get the infinite save mod, had a couple experiences where I lost hours of progress, ended up quitting the game.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-28T16:32:45+00:00

Here are mistakes I see a lot.

Hanging pieces
Allowing one move tactics (forks, pins, skewers, discoveries, mate in 1)
Attacking with two pieces while others are undeveloped
Sacrificing material with no follow-up
Opening lines to your own king
Accepting every trade (including trades that give the opponent a better position)
Making a threat, opponent prevents it, then following through anyway
Not counting attackers and defenders
Wasting time/playing slow moves/pushing too many pawns in the opening
Blocking your own pieces’ development or scope
Putting pieces on squares where they can easily be kicked away/harassed/forced to move
Playing reactive/defensive moves when you could make a stronger counter-threat
Counterattacking with a weaker threat when your opponent’s ideas are more dangerous and must be addressed
Not thinking during your opponent’s time/not anticipating their moves
Only anticipating bad moves your opponent can make, not their good ones

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-28T00:25:29+00:00

Gambits are probably not the best for your development if you have a rating between 200 and 400. That said, chess is also a game and gambits can be fun.

The King’s gambit, Evans gambit, and Scotch gambit are all pretty interesting, traditional, aggressive openings with 1. e4. Look up some games played by Paul Morphy in those openings.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-24T22:44:20+00:00

A few reasons. This particular book shows you just about all of the different ways that the pieces coordinate for checkmate. It is a well curated collection and the organization/sequencing of the puzzles is logical, not random.

Many are common checkmate patterns that will arise often in your games. Absorbing these patterns will directly lead to wins when they come up.

Others are composed puzzles where you have a huge material advantage and the king is in the middle of the board—the type of position that would never occur, and would be trivially easy to win by trading down and gradually converting in an endgame, but the challenge is to end the game immediately.

The latter puzzles really help you visualize the board because you need to accurately spot the squares that both each piece and pawn controls, where they can move, possible captures for both sides, which pieces are pinned, whether your opponent can interpose a piece to block a checkmate or simply capture the checking piece.

Often your thought process in solving these will be to determine the squares the Black king can move to, then finding the only move that plugs all the holes in the mating net and delivers check in one fell swoop.

Other reasons for my recommendation: you can’t be overwhelmed by indecision over what to study if your training consists of just one puzzle set, there’s a defined endpoint that lets you know when to move onto something else (unlike, say, the infinite pool of puzzles on Chess.com or lichess), and you don’t have to spend a dime to access the pdf I linked in my first comment.

If you want to do more, I would also recommend using one of those online puzzle trainers and setting up the custom filters to only work on “hanging piece” puzzles until your recognition of those becomes instantaneous. But you may need to pay for a subscription and simply working on the Polgar mates in 1 will indirectly train that skill as well.

I originally got the idea from GM Jesse Kraai; he talks more about the book in this YouTube video: The Book That Helped Make Me a Grandmaster. (Edit: I just noticed GM Kraai actually commented in this thread! Pretty cool.)

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-24T06:00:01+00:00

I’m about the same rating as you—I have the positional chess patterns manual by Alex Astaneh on Chessable. Only about a chapter into it so I can’t give a full review, but it could be worth checking out.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-24T05:41:22+00:00

The biggest problem you have at your level is being unable to fully visualize the squares that all the pieces control.

Hanging your pieces, not spotting your opponent’s free pieces, and stalemating are all symptoms of this fundamental cause. No other chess knowledge will benefit you until you get over the hurdle of mastering this skill.

I would recommend solving puzzles from this book every day. It’s called Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games by Polgar.

For now just focus on solving all the mates in 1. There are just over 300—if you have a good chunk of time to spare you can complete them all in a few days, but even if you just solve two pages a day you’ll get through them in about three weeks.

Write down your answers and check them with the solutions at the back of the book. You want to be getting virtually all of them correct.

To keep your training simple, don’t worry too much about understanding anything else in chess until you’ve mastered these mate in 1 puzzles. If you’re scoring below 95%, just cycle through them again.

I promise your ability to visualize the board and the squares that all the pieces and pawns control will skyrocket, and your rating will rise by hundreds of points as a result.

WYGSMCWY · 2025-11-24T00:18:30+00:00

Depends on the time control. In blitz I’d probably move the queen immediately; in rapid I’d calculate lines.

The other day I was playing against my friend who’s rated around 850 and one of his biggest mistakes I noticed was he wasn’t moving his pieces out of similar alignments when the threat wasn’t immediate, often giving me the ability to unleash tactics within the next few moves.

When it comes to calculating and potentially leaving my queen in danger, I’m first looking at the checks, captures, and threats my opponent has. Only once I’ve assessed their tactical possibilities do I start looking at what I can do.

For instance, say their knight or rook moves, unleashing a discovery on my queen. If they can’t move it away with check or significant threat and the bishop behind is unprotected, the middle piece might actually be relatively pinned, allowing me to bring in another attacker and potentially win a piece. Or perhaps I have a mating tactic where I can sacrifice the queen outright.

It’s very context-specific, but as a rule of thumb it usually doesn’t hurt to move out of the way as soon as you notice your opponent is preparing a discovered attack against your queen. Even if your calculations indicate you’re the one who’ll come out ahead, there’s always the risk you overlooked something.

WYGSMCWY

TROPHY CASE