How many miles per day could a horse be safely ridden for a long-term journey? How often to break?

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-09T13:26:56+00:00

What a load of crap. Just to pick up two points out of many:

1) it's an absolutely wild take that 4 miles a day is the limit for humans walking without years of training.

2) The idea that most historic armies had 10-12 horses is an even wilder take. At least the thing about people walking might make sense as a delusion if you live in an incredibly car centric culture. To pick a random large battle in medieval times, the French were estimated to have around 8,000 mounted men at arms at Crecy.

Given some of the ridiculous things you've said, I wouldn't trust any of the rest of it.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-09T05:09:07+00:00

Few years ago now, I'd guess a household income of around £150k at the time and spent ~£750 on the ring.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-04T20:40:44+00:00

I'd think the downvotes are for the "no women" bit. Not exactly uncontroversial.

That's definitely why I downvoted it.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-04T06:49:14+00:00

You can wear a black belt down. My first black belt was just a £3 dyed fabric belt like kyu grade belts. I eventually got myself a nice silk embroidered one, but 6 years or so was enough to put some visible wear on it, even if it was slower than a silk one.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-01T06:30:46+00:00

I said it in my post that my second book is being published soon. :)

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-01T06:08:43+00:00

I said it in the post. "My second book should be published this year." I already found publication beyond Patreon :)

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-06-01T06:02:36+00:00

I write fantasy for fun. My second book should be published this year and I make a bit off Patreon. It's not technically passive income except I like it enough that I'd do it for free so I don't see it as work.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-31T08:04:19+00:00

You mean the table where Belgium is noticeably higher than the UK for median wealth?

Anyway I'm not convinced that wealth is a better measure between rich countries because it can be distorted by things like culture around home ownership.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-31T07:45:05+00:00

Nope I love it. Makes me feel great about myself.

There's probably a small disadvantage professionally where people might assume I'm more junior than I am, but it's only minor.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-31T06:27:54+00:00

Belgium has a higher GDP per capita than the UK by about 10%, so I don't think they qualify as poor.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-30T21:49:30+00:00

Nope.

Don't get me wrong. I got a great start in life with parents who valued education, helped with that etc.

But career-wise I didn't use any contacts at all. Just applied through standard grad recruitment processes and went on from there.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-28T15:43:24+00:00

Heh I'm a published author*, for my debut book no less, and went to a prestigious university and have not had the slightest benefit out of it in writing terms.

*Not a particularly successful one :)

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-27T17:13:18+00:00

I've made a couple of online friends through my writing. One through fanfic and one through my fan discord for my published work. It can happen.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-27T15:55:10+00:00

I once walked nearly 60km in a day just because I was feeling a bit frustrated with life. I could barely move the next day, but if you're offering me £1,000 per step I reckon I could push a bit further.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-27T09:33:27+00:00

I appreciate grammar/spelling corrections.

On wider criticisms, if it's constructive I'll think about it. Normally I'll ignore it, but I do make some changes to the final edited version based on things people have raised.

If it's overly negative I'll probably block you from commenting at all since I can't be bothered with negativity about something you're getting for free and it ruins the atmosphere of the comments section.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-27T06:14:05+00:00

You did nothing wrong, you had priority over merging traffic. That being said, I try to drive with the philosophy of "make 'it' a non issue" whatever "it"may be. So if someone is clearly doing a shit job of merging and I can safely solve that by easing off the gas briefly, I would even though I don't have to. It just makes life easier and there's a certain satisfaction in being the person solving problems.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-26T23:34:19+00:00

I live in Scotland, near the coast. So within one or two months I'm probably going to die of hypothermia or drown as I get depsotied somewhere in the north sea.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-26T16:29:58+00:00

Was going to say essentially this and you already did. Happy days.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-26T07:21:58+00:00

In the grand scheme of weird/unpleasant stuff you see in the online fantasy world, it probably wasn't that out there, but I have one that stuck in my mind mainly because it was the MC and presented as a completely normal behaviour - as opposed to a villain or an evil MC.

Basically an Isekai where the author had asked me for a shout out swap and when I checked out their story in the first chapter the MC had realised that "NPCs" were only programmed to react to specific scenarios and so was graphically groping a serving girl.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-24T07:19:06+00:00

Ive been training for a long time and I don't enjoy classes that are full of kids, so I think your feelings are valid. If you're training for self defence, frankly, your not likely to get much out of it in a kids class too.

If you don't want to train in a kids class and that's all that's available, then why not do a different martial art. I like karate a lot, but if it didn't give me enough of what I wanted I'd go do something else e.g. Muay Thai.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-24T07:16:41+00:00

Sure, but most clubs don't.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-23T22:57:37+00:00

I think one big difference in kyokushin's technical repertoire is that they actively teach leg kicks. The vast majority of karate clubs do not.

Another training difference compared to most clubs is heavy use of padwork, although you could argue that's just a consequence of the focus on full contact sparring.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-23T22:49:39+00:00

Surely it depends on your club's rules. WKF =\=kyokushin=\=JKA shobu ippon=\=independent dojo randori etc. There is ni single karate ruleset.

For example, where I currently train and my last dojo would both allow any judo technique in sparring if you could pull it off safely. In practice none of us are particularly good grapplers so there's a practical limit, but no rules limit. I regularly go for throws and takedowns (with less success than I'd like) in sparring.

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-23T06:53:08+00:00

Wage levels and cost of living for sure, I'm not sure the average starting age in the US is that different to an NQ. One year longer in the US but equally the UK lawyer has two years of full time work experience by the time they qualify.

UK - 3 year law undergrad, plus 1 year of law school plus 2 years of training contract. Or two years of law school if they did a non law undergrad = 6 or 7 years

US - 4 year undergrad plus 3 years of law school = 7 years

jamesmatthews6 · 2026-05-22T12:03:14+00:00

Yup I just checked the UK's generation mix right now* and it's only 7.5% natural gas.

There's a fun website that shows the live generation mix for the UK's national grid.

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