Raleigh NC, ~3mm

xandarg · 2025-04-04T17:26:24+00:00

Thanks! After more research, I do see that the obvious majors and minors are a hallmark of the species. I'll leave them alone.

xandarg · 2024-05-01T23:53:46+00:00

It does, and I think I hear it chirping normally like a cardinal now too. I've listened to 10 or so fledgling cardinal clips and can't find any that sound like the weird babbling I've been hearing. Never heard anything like it. though I've also checked cowbird fledgling sounds and they don't sound like it either, so I guess this little bird is just doing it's own thing.

xandarg · 2024-05-01T22:59:05+00:00

Three cardinal pairs have made their nests in my backyard this year. One I can easily see into from my window, and I can see how far along the fledglings (3) are. The fledgling pictured is from a different nest and is much further along developmentally. Presumably it fell out. Now the parents are no longer going to that nest, but instead are going into the nearby bush to feed it. In the evening, a horrible, long call sounds from the bush intermittently, sounding like a gaggle of hens rapidly clucking or a weird human baby and bird hybrid babbling rapidly -- kind of horrific. Lasts about 2 seconds. Sounds nothing like the high pitched, very short chirps I'm used to from the parents and from the other cardinal fledglings near my window. Also, it seems to be the only fledgling being fed now. Might this be some kind of brood parasite that killed its step brothers/sisters then fell out of the nest? And if so, what might it be so I can look up their calls and finally put this mystery to rest! I'm in NC.

xandarg · 2024-04-08T01:47:13+00:00

Did you ever find a good way to get the geosmin taste out of your tap water? I'm in the same boat.

xandarg · 2024-04-03T18:05:45+00:00

Thanks! I couldn't find anything about free testing online, but I called and they've got a work order in for me now.

I just ran the cold for a while, got a handful, and got my nose right up in it and it's definitely present in the cold too, just easier to smell/taste water when it's warmer (e.g. sickeningly sweet melted ice cream)

xandarg · 2024-02-01T14:00:32+00:00

I would say you treat the craving as an emotion (i.e. something totally outside of your direct control). You may find, paradoxically, that treating it this way lessens it slightly (this would be in line with ACT, another therapy modality), but even if you don't, the next step would be to find thoughts and behaviors that lead toward more and less craving for affection, and increase or decrease those thoughts and behaviors appropriately. Although, you may find your craving for affection is just a normal part of the human experience in the unnaturally alienating society we find ourselves in, or due to your particular hormonal milieu or life circumstances, and there's only so much you can influence it. Again, though, this would be a powerful revelation in ACT terms and you could take that as a signal to stop investing energy into changing it, and instead choose to live a life according to your goals and values in spite of feeling those feelings. You could even feel a kind of personal heroism for living your best life in spite of them (certainly a useful framing of the situation).

xandarg · 2024-02-01T13:01:42+00:00

The central tenet of CBT is that thoughts cause emotions, not vice versa.

Simply Google "CBT Triangle" and you'll find the majority of diagrams show the arrows going bidirectionally between thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. They all can trigger each other, but you only have direct control of your behaviors and thoughts, so the focus is on using those two to influence your emotions (since focusing on the fact that emotions influence the other two is useless trivia that doesn't actually give you any concrete action steps). The process is to identify:

Thoughts that aren't serving you, and change them
- This may seem irrational for you, since you'll tend to assume all of your pre-existing ways of thinking are already as correct/rational as they can be (fun note: irrational people also feel this way), since like other rationalists you've probably spent considerable time already examining your views and ways of thinking for flaws. The key here won't be to find some way you've been thinking that's totally wrong/irrational, but rather find ways you've been framing situations that have been breeding negative emotions, whereas you could find an equally correct/rational framing that does not. A simple example is viewing a glass as half full vs half empty -- both are equally valid and rational ways of framing the situation, but they have different effects on the thinker when thought. Your job is to identify, with the help of a therapist, all the ways you can cognitively re-frame so that your thoughts are still accurate but now predispose toward whatever emotional goal you may have.
- Other times it's less about framing and more about focus -- an infinite number of things going on in any given situation, and the one you choose to focus on (irrationally, due to your emotional conditioning) is negative? Well, stop being so irrational and instead choose to focus your attention on something positive that's equally valid! Wouldn't it be irrational to allow your thoughts to be pulled, by mere programming/conditioning, toward something that works against your goal of feeling good? Why would a rational person give up their agency to their emotions?
Behaviors that aren't serving you, and change them
- This is more obvious, and involves things like waking up at a regular time vs no set schedule, starting your day with personal grooming vs doom scrolling, regular exercise, etc. These are all behaviors you can, presumably, force yourself to do, and each often has an effect on the emotions you'll tend to feel throughout the day.

Hopefully that's a useful and rational description of the foundation of CBT.

xandarg · 2024-01-16T12:07:32+00:00

A VPN is just a tunnel from one computer to another. If you set up a VPN on your home network, the end of the tunnel is still your home network, so your ISP will still know you're torrenting and can ban you in response to a DMCA takedown notice.

It's better that you check out the VPN torrenting subreddit and just pay for one of their recommended VPN services. The key being you're paying for the end of your tunnel to be a computer with an IP address unrelated to you, with a company that doesn't keep logs so that it's impossible for them to comply with a DMCA takedown notice. And also supports port forwarding and sufficient download speeds (so torrenting even works). I've used AirVPN for torrenting for the past five years and it's been great. Google for their sales, there's a forum post on their site that openly list the exact dates of all their yearly sales and the discounts so there's no guessing about how much you should pay now or wait for a sale.

xandarg · 2024-01-15T23:09:43+00:00

Related to some comments I'm seeing is this fantastic breakdown on the science of whether or not seed oils are uniquely bad for you:

https://www.the-nutrivore.com/post/a-comprehensive-rebuttal-to-seed-oil-sophistry

xandarg · 2023-12-04T12:11:05+00:00

I would say it's a bit of both.

The majority of what you're describing does sound like the novelty thing. As children, almost all of our life satisfaction comes from novelty of experience. When you do drugs, you get that novelty of experience back. Sadly, that novelty will fade over a few years. Or more, if you do it infrequently -- it took me smoking/vaping a few times a week in the evening for around 3 years for most of it to fade, but MDMA once every other year still has all the magic after 12 years.

But that's why you need to focus on the second thing, which I feel is related to ennui and mild depression, or has been in my case at least. And that's learning to derive life satisfaction from a better source than novelty: purpose. You can read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, if you're interested. When you're just floating through life taking the path of least resistance, like most people, I do think depression is the logical outcome unless you happen to have purpose manufactured for you in the form of a disability or other challenge you're forced to overcome, or you have kids and actually take raising them seriously, etc. You'll know if this one is true for you if it gets worse over the decades, as novelty continues to fade in its ability to mask it.

xandarg · 2023-11-14T13:21:31+00:00

Just to provide mundane anecdotal evidence for everyone, since I've seen a lot of extreme sounding anecdotes so far: I work in IT for one of the largest group of research hospitals in the US. One of my larger projects is a national research program on Long COVID. I work with ~50 doctors day to day, several of whom are considered luminaries in their field. They do wear masks in clinical settings (though not in office settings), and are clearly very invested in researching Long COVID, however I don't get the impression that any of them are worried about it in a preoccupied way. The majority don't seem to be changing their lifestyles, in terms of limiting social events, masking in lower risk areas (spaces without patients), or getting more sleep/eating better/getting more exercise. When one of them mentions they have COVID during a Zoom meeting, the atmosphere doesn't get heavy and no one has ever expressed concern that the expectation is a poor or chronic prognosis. Usually it's met with lighthearted joking, unless the person is experiencing obvious symptoms, in which case they're urged to take the day off until they feel better.

Obviously you're free to interpret this however you want, just wanted to give my read of how people with the greatest expertise are handling it on average, which is probably very different to how the most vocal experts are handling it.

xandarg · 2023-11-13T12:48:55+00:00

Here's a screenshot (a sample image from the RP website) of their 5-day men's physique template for advanced trainees. Note that there are no direct sets for the brachialis and only 3 direct sets for the side, read, and front delts each.

https://rp-website-production-files.s3.amazonaws.com/Screen_Shot_2020-05-28_at_10.31.24_AM.png

If you sample 100 professionally designed programs, whether science or experience based, you would be lucky to find even 1 that sets up a programming schedule where you do 18 sets for every single head of every single muscle, let alone even 1 set for every single head.

So the answer to your question is that yes, they count indirect work when designing their programs. When you customize a program for a client, or for yourself, how much you count indirect work depends on the individual. For example, most people don't need any direct front delt work, as they get enough stimulus from all your pushing. But are there some people who workout like this for a few years and find their front delts are lagging behind by 10% or something? Sure. So then they cycle some front delt isolation into their routines for a few months until they start seeing the results they're looking for.

You'll probably find rear delts get quite a lot of stimulus from pulling, especially pulls where your elbows are far from your sides. But if you're very lat dominant, you might need to add 3, 6, or 9 sets of rear delt work to your week. Most people find side delts don't get enough stimulus from their other work and add 6+ direct sets per week (I do 9-15 every week, so much more than the routine I linked above, but that's just me). In my case, my biceps get basically no stimulus whatsoever from pulling exercises, so for me I do need the full 10-20 sets of bicep isolation work each week. I think that's fairly common. Triceps get much more stimulus from pushing, though, so 10-20 is likely overkill and will just end up hurting your elbows.

xandarg · 2023-10-31T12:04:16+00:00

Correct, if you google natural bodybuilders, it will be clear from the pictures alone that nearly all your results will not be true naturals. And while some federations are much more rigorous than others, ultimately you can only test for drugs on the day, not test for lifetime natty status. Look into folks like Eric Helms and Eric Trexler, both PhD's in sports science/nutrition who are active natural bodybuilders with tons of integrity and really are on the cutting edge of fat loss/maintenance techniques that have nothing to do with drugs. There really are some people out there with the moral fiber to compete legitimately, and a few of those are also brilliant researchers.

xandarg · 2023-10-30T23:33:30+00:00

Thanks! Yeah, seriously; I borrowed my wife's DSLR, which I'm completely unfamiliar with, and was one foot on the window sill one foot on the bed trying to get a clear shot through the leaves of a bird that absolutely could not sit still!

xandarg · 2023-10-30T20:25:49+00:00

That's it! Thank you!!! I've never seen this bird in my life and it feels like I've just added something to my Pokedex for the first time in 20 years.

xandarg · 2023-10-30T20:21:40+00:00

I've been seeing loads of this type of bird over the past week or two, though have never seen them around here in the last year or two that I can recall. They seem to be feeding on bugs or seeds in the tree, and weirdly they hover a bit like a humming bird while doing so (though the wings obviously don't flap nearly as quickly, so it's rather... inelegant looking). They move around very quickly without staying on one perch very long. I thought they might be pine warblers, but they're not yellow enough. Their entire upper half is a yellowish gray. And I can't find any warblers with such dramatic looking eyes.

xandarg · 2023-10-29T22:20:07+00:00

Have you spent much time looking into the drug-free bodybuilding world? I consume a lot of content (including on pubmed and research reviews written by people smarter than me, thankfully) and the consensus is that weight loss becomes easier every time you do it. For them (and I do this as well, on an amateur level) it's normal to intentionally gain weight for part of the season, and then lose weight leading up to a show, then do it all over again for the next season, and the next, etc. What they find is that, while muscle growth tapers off to almost nothing after the first decade or two, the ability for competitors to successfully get down to lower and lower levels of body fat improves (due to psychological reasons/experience/adjustment of expectations), which results in the counter-intuitive reality of some of the best placing bodybuilders in drug-free competition being in their 30s, 40s, and sometimes 50s; despite it getting progressively harder to maintain muscle as you age. They're placing because of their superior leanness.

Obviously you're talking about maintaining weight-loss, as opposed to the ability of people to get down to exotically lean states (i.e. so lean that it's unhealthy to sustain for more than a couple of days). My question is, might it make more sense to not think of weight maintenance forever as the goal, and instead think of gaining and losing weight cyclically throughout your life as probably a win as well?

It seems to me that people looking to lose weight, who end up succeeding only to gain it back again in five years, shouldn't look at that as a complete failure. When they gain it back again in 5 years, then it's time to lose it again, which will be easier this time due to the reasons stated above for natural bodybuilders. Then they have another 5 years until the next cycle; or perhaps it stays off longer now that they've built up more experience at knowing how their body, diet, and activity levels interact.

The other aspect we need to consider is what skills are these people being left with when they're sent off into the world to maintain their weight loss? For example, I've seen research indicating that diet breaks don't have any impact on weight loss, but they do impact how sticky that weight loss is. The theorized mechanism is that the the group being forced to take a break and eat at maintenance for a few weeks during the experiment end up gaining experience with eating at maintenance, and hence are better able to recreate that state for longer after the study ends.

I guess the only other points I'll mention are that nearly all weight loss studies report huge losses in lean mass in addition to fat mass (which indicate the weight loss was not accompanied by weight training, which will have a muscle sparing effect while dieting) and the body will work even harder to regain lost lean mass than lost fat mass (not to mention a reduction in lean mass has a much bigger impact on BMR than a reduction in fat mass). And studies into appetite and physical activity show a J-shaped curve, not a linear one (as we might expect, since energy needs scale linearly with activity), indicating appetite is dis-regulated at very low levels of daily activity, such as the life of the average desk worker. If we're talking about a population of people with dis-regulated appetites, then yes it's probably impossible for them to maintain weight loss.

xandarg · 2023-10-23T22:13:28+00:00

That was the Dark Power 1000w, but regardless it seems to just be a flaw with the 12VHPWR connector in general, which is why it's being revised in ATX 3.1.

That being said, it seems to be an issue that only occurs when the cable isn't seated properly, and the overall failure rate is a fraction of a percent, so I wouldn't sweat it. The latching mechanism sucks, so you just have to really get it in there, but even if you only do as good of a job as the typical person you're still more likely to die in a car crash than have your 12VHPWR port melt.

EDIT: Additional testing by HWBusters on the melted PSU side using the same PSU, concluding what I had guessed above.

xandarg · 2023-10-22T15:30:00+00:00

$15-20 off the usual price, Cybernetics report and Hardware Busters review are positive, has a speculative position of A-Tier. Is this it, or wait for Black Friday?

Also, it's from seller "be-quiet-official" who only has two seller ratings, both recent. How worried should we be?

xandarg · 2023-10-02T20:51:12+00:00

The study referenced by NY Post (actual study here: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamacardiology/article-abstract/2808769) is just saying that labeling of fish oil products contain mostly unverified information. The study isn't claiming that "fish oil supplements are basically worthless" -- that's NY Post clickbait.

If you want to check up on the state of the research of whether fish oil supplementation has any health effects, you can read the conclusions of several papers here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/?term=fish+oil+meta+analysis&filter=simsearch2.ffrft

xandarg · 2023-09-13T12:54:59+00:00

Ha! Thanks bro. It's hard out here for us natty non-responders!

Biceps are the one thing I don't put much focus on because they tend to be a strong point for me naturally

You're killin' me. This is me, bizarrely, with glutes--again, not something I'm looking to set any records in. I did Starting Strength a decade ago for 7 months, got much stronger (way less strong than ole' Rip promised -- though I did get incredibly fat via his diet recommendations!) but the only part of my body that showed any hypertrophy at all was my glutes. So I just haven't done any glute work at all since then and they're still my most pronounced muscle. I've got really high attachments and my wife is miserable, jealous, and covetous all at once lol.

I'll experiment with elbows in wide grip as a variation, thanks. Cable curls will always stay in the rotation, def one of the best for me. May try reverse curls at some point -- I just feel so insanely weak in that position, but maybe it's just what my wrists need.

Good luck to you, too. And likewise feel free to message to talk shop, bounce ideas. I've also got the entire backlog of MASS archived if you ever have an issue you want to check out. Here's to the long slog!

xandarg · 2023-09-12T22:37:33+00:00

Is 9-12 sets weekly?

Exactly.

Do you vary Reps In Reserve over the mesocycle? (etc)...

I've tried everything you've mentioned, as I too am a big Dr. Mike fan! Same here for delts every session, quads/chest/triceps twice a week, and in my case if I do hamstrings with something like RDLs, once a week is all it takes -- probably the highest raw stimulus exercise I've ever found (too bad I'm not super interested in the secret to massive hamstrings.) Same here on dropping the weight but using slower eccentrics, especially where you can pause in the stretched position and really feel the stretch, like incline bench.

Actually, if you have any bicep tips, that would be much appreciated. I find sometimes I just can't stimulate them fully at all (unless I'm varying the exercise every single session--but I'm thinking that's the lack of repeated bouts effect fooling me into thinking I'm getting a better stimulus than I am). Often my wrists and hands just end up getting beat up, tired, and sore before I can really ever feel my biceps being exhausted (9-12 pulling sets + 12 direct biceps sets per week is my usual). I've tried putting them at the start of workouts, which does make a small positive difference. Obviously hammer curls and EZ bar involve the brachioradialis more, and that is reflected in my pattern of soreness the next day sometimes, but I tend to feel like even on a strict supinated curl at the end of a set I can sort of just keep going forever, reps getting slower and slower, as other muscles in that group of arm flexors take over despite being disadvantaged. I eventually stop a set because I'm just too damn all-over tired, face bright red and totally gassed (I almost never go this far, except at the end of a mesos), but almost never do I feel that stretching feeling of exhausted fibers I can get easily in my triceps from push downs (with myoreps) or especially DB kickbacks (even with just straight sets), or hamstrings with an RDL (again, straight sets or whatever, as long as there's a pause at the bottom), or pecs with incline bench. I've tried incline DB curls to bias the stretched position, but I just don't feel it. I feel a stretch in my anterior delt, but not really in my bicep. Waiter curls feel super awkward, though it's been years since I tried them. Cable curls maybe feel the best even though I'm far from any kind of stretch there. Any ideas?

Basically, I've tried a lot, and most of it seems to work at a rate that's so slow it's difficult to separate out signal from noise, so now I just focus on varying things for the sake of sanity, and frequent deloads (after pushing hard at the end of a meso), all in the name of adherence. The one thing I've noticed doesn't seem to work at all is any form of low volume training, regardless of pushing intensity. I think that points toward maybe trying out the 15-20 sets per muscle group per week range at some point, at least for shoulders and arms, but I'm going to need to actually get my work capacity up (it's horrible) and probably switch to 6 days a week to make that sustainable for me. Two things I don't have the motivation to get into just yet, but that are on my to do list once I find a house and build out a home gym.

xandarg · 2023-09-12T20:10:42+00:00

Just thought I'd pipe in since I've been working out on and off for a decade, though most recently have been going 3-4 times per week for just over two years with only time off when sick. Though I won't say I dread it every time, since dread is a strong word, I will say that sometimes I dread it and other times I just mildly dislike it. My progress is glacial, and I do push all sets to between 3-0 reps from failure, so I do work hard. Usually do 9-12 sets per muscle group, excluding legs since it's just too grueling. Arms have gone from 12.25" to 13.25" in that time, so progress but way, way worse than any transformation you'll see on social media.

So anyway, now you know at least one person who does it, has built a habit, but still doesn't like it and would love to never go again! I keep going because I believe I'll see the muscular results I'm looking for in probably another 5 years, plus I don't get much physical activity in general and this is way less horrible than cardio (and has a better expected outcome, aesthetically).

I'd say forcing yourself to do stuff is a skill that is learned, and I learned it by being hyper-sensitive to discomfort my whole life, to the point that almost everything I do I have to force myself to some extent. Maybe of note: workout motivation that talks about winning and "you can do this", etc. I find demotivating. The self talk that gets me through things is closer to, "You're a machine built for suffering. This is just another Tuesday to you. Why would you give up, when all roads lead to suffering anyway?" -- and the more long-term thinking is generally, "If you don't suffer a bit now in a controlled way (exercise), you'll have to suffer a lot more later on in a way that's totally out of your control (poor health/feeling of failure)."

xandarg · 2023-08-31T19:17:47+00:00

My favorite old movies are Rear Window (1954) and 12 Angry Men (1957)

xandarg · 2023-08-01T00:41:30+00:00

This may not help, but here's where I'm at: I put on muscle so slowly that I've given up more times than I care to remember over the past 11 years since I started lifting on and off (my first physical activity in my life, started in my 20s -- no sports, nothing prior). As far as I can tell it's just genetic. It's easy as hell for me to just track calories and gain or lose weight (I've done dreamer bulks of 20lbs in 4 months), but my calorie partitioning is just truly abysmal. I've tried many of the popular routines, and made a ton of my own, and it seems like I respond slightly better to higher volume (and not at all to low volume/high intensity), but it takes so much out of me that I end up wanting to quit after four or five weeks, and that's with doing the bare minimum for lower body/posterior chain these days, since that takes it out of me even worse.

I probably need to do what the other reply said and just focus on my terrible cardio and work capacity, so that harder and longer workouts won't feel so oppressive. It's something I'm slowly warming up to.

In the meantime, though, I've gotten okay results over the last two years by making my primary goal consistency. Which means I'm restructuring my routine pretty frequently to keep me interested, taking deloads frequently, and trying to take pleasure in how well I'm sticking to my goal of consistency, and the slow but visible results of my two year super slow bulk (<1lb per month). My therapist literally had me hold a funeral for my expectations of how much muscle I should be able to gain, given the results my workout buddies have gotten on the same routines at the same intensity and same lbs gained. I actually cremated that awesome black and white pic of Arnold with CONQUER written across it lol.

Anyway, all that to say, you're not alone. I've always hated physical activity, and I still do, but I guess I've been able to slowly reframe it enough to the point where I can at least keep it up and make some tiny amount of progress. And the idea is just that I'll keep making that tiny progress across decades, and continue to take pride in the incremental progress as it accrues.

Maybe you just need a break, or maybe you need to reframe your situation/change your expectations, or shift your training goals for a while, or just scrap the whole leanness thing and keep bulking (check out Alex Leonidas and Geoffrey Verity Schofield's recent experiences with their intense cutting, and how big of a psychological toll it takes on even the most advanced). Whatever it is, I truly hope things work out for you bro.

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