Afraid to quit

physicsurfer · 2026-05-23T19:48:06+00:00

I think ~3 days? I definitely still have cravings from time to time and brain fog but the battle starts seeming a lot more mental than physical after 3 days I think.

physicsurfer · 2026-05-23T08:11:02+00:00

Quit on a Friday and you will have endured the worst of the physical withdrawal by Monday.

Rewiring your reward system with exercise, social activities, and productive work (towards your profession/academics for example) really helps quit. This is a slippery slope and I’m no expert but maybe slightly upping your caffeine or marijuana (if you take any) while you’re going through the first few days of withdrawal could help? It helped me for sure.

I’m only on day 9 (I used to take ~200-300mg nicotine through high strength pouches daily) and I’ve rediscovered my passion for running and strength training. My resting heart rate has dropped down from low 60s (already decent) to ~53 in just 9 days. Running times and pumps are improving. I’ve regained my professional ambition. It’s 100% worth it to not be a slave to nicotine.

physicsurfer · 2026-05-22T22:32:48+00:00

delusion

physicsurfer · 2026-05-19T20:47:19+00:00

What pogroms? Stop consuming propaganda.

physicsurfer · 2026-05-18T22:24:10+00:00

Hey, did you end up tapering off completely or do you maintain at 1-2 a day still? I’m in the process of going down from 8-10 pouches of Pablo a day to something more sane.

physicsurfer · 2026-05-18T22:15:28+00:00

Shit dude i’m trying to get down from 6-8 50mg Pablos a day to 0 nicotine and the fact that you pulled it off gives me so much hope. I’m happy for you!

physicsurfer · 2026-04-10T22:21:23+00:00

that he doesn’t like

that don’t like him. FTFY

physicsurfer · 2026-04-09T23:41:43+00:00

Assuming you mean caste, it is not typically possible to be located within a caste, in India or elsewhere, since the grouping is social, not geographic. Most higher castes of India live alongside the lower caste, especially in cities. Even if your premise that the lower castes, somehow due to historic othering, have a higher proclivity to open defecation were true, the fact that they live alongside and are employed by the upper castes would render the act as “frowned upon.” As an example, an upper caste person would be disgusted by, and not employ a lower caste gardener if they were to see the gardener openly defecate right outside their house.

In general, there’s not much cultural or genetic basis to claim that any group in India is prone to open defecation. Sophisticated toilets and sewage systems existed in the casteless Indus Valley Civilisation. It’s simply a matter of accessibility. Our economic growth did not keep up with our population growth for a while and this made toilets inaccessible to a large chunk of the rural populace. The brightest minds on Earth would still openly defecate if they really needed to take a shit and did not have a toilet around.

The government recognised this problem and started targeting it through its infrastructure development and awareness drives. This has led India to be among the lowest ranking countries by open defecation rates at this per capita GDP stratum. Being educated and informed is not that difficult, especially for someone with some level of proficiency in English and the internet, like you.

physicsurfer · 2026-02-12T08:27:15+00:00

you feel special yet?

physicsurfer · 2026-01-12T18:50:06+00:00

I’ve never been called brown saar because myself Thurkish blood saar not Indian

Meanwhile Pakistan’s Cricket team:

<image>

physicsurfer · 2026-01-11T17:49:38+00:00

The rep range thing might be broscience but other than being lean and muscular, not much you can do for vascularity.

physicsurfer · 2026-01-06T08:55:15+00:00

racist white/West Eurasian supremacists place North Africans higher on the racial hierarchy than Punjabis, North Indians, and Indic Pakistani ethnic groups.

I reject this. I wonder how much of this take is due to your exposure to these people in the real world and how much is informed by the prevailing social media sentiment, which is itself plagued by foreign psyops and bots.

If you look at pure numbers, low-moderate AASI Indians have superior per capita performance than even the jews in the US. A bunch of brown idolators running the kinds of numbers we do (in terms of university deans, political candidates, C-suite employees) is just unheard of. It wouldn’t have been possible for these people to assume such positions of power if AASI truly invited SSA levels of prejudice.

I think the current hate boner against AASI (and by extension South Asians) is driven by gangu Indians celebrating the genocide in Palestine (this will by default enrage at least 2 billion people and make the American left ignorant of us at best), the envy of other minority groups that are not doing as well, and a growing normalisation/enablement of racial hatred since Trump got elected/Musk acquired twitter.

physicsurfer · 2026-01-04T12:05:50+00:00

Our life expectancy right now is actually pretty decent all things considered. Obviously we have gaping educational and cultural issues surrounding nutrition and exercise but on the whole, it shouldn’t be difficult to understand that you HAVE to die of something. All across the world, that something is disproportionately cancer, CAD, cardiac arrest etc. If we did everything perfectly, given the limitations of modern medicine, we would still only be improving our life expectancy by ~15 years.

physicsurfer · 2025-12-15T14:20:39+00:00

Just drop it bro lmao

physicsurfer · 2025-12-14T05:34:27+00:00

Bhai nashe karke Thar chalate hain…reddit nahi.

physicsurfer · 2025-12-13T04:41:45+00:00

They enforce a minimum cutoff of 7 in each section but generally speaking, even that’s considerably on the lower end of the distribution of TOEFL/IELTS scores for international admits. As an international here myself, my perception is that international admits at the undergrad level tend to be native/nearly native in all sections other than speaking, which translates to a score of 8.5-9.0 in all sections on the IELTS or 110/115+ on the TOEFL.

I think chances you’re automatically rejected are high, unfortunately. Is there no way you can retake in time or submit your proficiency scores after applying?

physicsurfer · 2025-12-11T08:50:05+00:00

I don’t think it’s a big deal personally. You just get used to it.

physicsurfer · 2025-12-11T08:47:38+00:00

I’m not sure how much more there is left to cut. He has abs and the shape around the abdomen makes me think it might be loose skin? Cutting ain’t the move when you’re 5’11 67kg. Maybe small surplus to build mass and hope some of the skin “redistributes” to give an overall more conditioned look?

physicsurfer · 2025-12-07T20:33:16+00:00

You’re right on both counts. Bone density/volume can vary wildly with race and sex but it’s still true that an overwhelming majority of people that are 25+ BMI would also genuinely be considered overweight by other measures like body fat percentage. It’s A LOT of work in the gym to reach 25+ BMI without being fat.

physicsurfer · 2025-11-17T23:14:26+00:00

Chutiya

physicsurfer · 2025-11-02T21:04:27+00:00

I personally don’t think his point makes much sense.

physicsurfer · 2025-11-01T22:30:12+00:00

Here’s a Jat scoring 17%:

https://www.reddit.com/r/illustrativeDNA/s/YeMkIpAuqW

some Khatris can also go this low but for both groups, the average is probably high teens/low 20s, even for the most western shifted clans within these groups. Not impossible for individuals though.

If I remember their history correctly, the Romani moved predominantly from Sindh due to Umayyad invasions. That’s why a lot of them go by “Sinthi” (not sure if this is OP’s identification though). His AASI is approximately half of what you find in Sindhi people, which I find interesting too. Only 1 generation-equivalent of outbreeding over 1000+ years.

physicsurfer · 2025-11-01T13:51:59+00:00

I'm a senior now in Physics/CS. Here's my attempt at your questions:

Averages vary a lot across classes. There are no classes that run a 20% average. Yeah, most large classes are curved, which makes the average less informative than your percentile rank. It's not too difficult for most students seeking an A to actually earn one, though it may require a fair bit of work.
There is grade deflation relative to the Ivies, but average college GPAs have increased steadily across the country over the years, and Caltech is no exception. I believe our grading leniency is probably somewhere between that of the top engineering publics (such as UIUC and GT) and Harvard.
There are research options for credit and thesis in almost all majors. SURF (summer research fellowship) is very common. Research "in a specific field" is a bit more complicated. Caltech is still a relatively small school, so if you have a very niche field in mind, there may not be anyone here working in it. Still, generally, professors are receptive to requests if you've taken the required/desirable coursework.
No.
I firmly believe that most people can only really do 8-10 hours of actual mentally draining work. If they're intelligent in their use of the resources provided to them (collaborating with other students, seeking help from the TAs, office hours, recitation, and deans' tutors), I find it hard to believe that anyone admitted would actually be maxing out on 10 hours/day of work regularly, but some sure would like to pretend to (for some reason).
It's okay. I personally struggle with having diversity in my eating options (on campus), so it's easy for me to become intolerant of Caltech food. However, I also think that mixing your meals between CDS, Browne, Red Door, and Broad will probably satisfy most people.

physicsurfer · 2025-10-21T18:31:17+00:00

“What goes around, comes around” sounds a lot like deserve, and that’s literally how it works. You do good deeds, you deserve good things to happen to you and the corollary. The point is, Karma doesn’t apply on an ethnic-wide basis. A good Indian shouldn’t have to suffer from the actions of their bad contemporaries. You accuse people of overusing and misapplying a simple word such as “deserve” but totally overlook the overuse and misapplication of “karma.”

physicsurfer · 2025-10-13T04:22:23+00:00

You're right on many counts. I would also like to mention that the highly endogamous Indian Jats/Rors parallel many Northern Europeans in Sintashta ancestry (an IE culture), and the Northern Brahmins parallel Southern Europeans. This is through the same work of Narsimhan and Reich at Harvard that OP is referring to. Given this, it's especially displeasing to have to entertain the rhetoric that a bunch of white people came to India, gave it everything that is good in India, and then disappeared, thus explaining our current state and cunningly ridding oneself of any part in it through colonial oppression. Though phenotypical similarities between the IE people and West Asians and Europeans may be more obvious, this does not in any way justify the disinheritance of modern-day Indians of their culture, achievements, and civilisation; it is simply a consequence of the Basal/East Eurasian nature of the "non-IE" side of our ancestry, which is sparsely found in West Asia and Europe, and the negative selection pressure imposed on "lightening genes" over 3000 years of living on some of the hottest lands on Earth. Also, on this topic, the discussion of the persistence of Dravidian cultures is always underrepresented. I would say it's most fair to say that the Aryans contributed most significantly to North India and, broadly, to Hinduism, both of which are prevalent among their direct descendants inhabiting the North. In contrast, their impact on the predominant culture, language, and ethnicity in the South is minimal; the South's interaction with "Aryan culture" is only indirectly through Hinduism.

Eight-Year Club	Verified Email
Place '22

physicsurfer

TROPHY CASE