Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

for elder english teachers yes

op is not in that cohort though, his work experience can translate to teaching at prep schools back home if he wanted

i'm talking people who were literally janitors or gas station attendants who moved to china to teach english where they had zero training, scrutiny, or oversight in the classroom

they don't teach normal schedules, let's say that there's 2,000 kids in a middle school broken up into 25 classes of 80 students

an english teacher will teach each of those 25 groups once per week, usually broken up into a thing like 5x30 min classes per day

there's no curriculum, no tests, no homework - the entire purpose is just to have the kids listen to a native speaker talk and whatever the person wants to do they are free to do, they often have an assistant teacher assigned to them who can help out

the schools do this because it's a big money grab, they can charge each student an extra $100 in fees for the year having this foreign teacher

that $100 in fees means the principal collects $200k, of which perhaps 30-50k went to the teacher, the rest the principal pockets

so they are in high demand and it's incredibly easy to get an english teaching job and never lose it no matter how incompetent you may be

i taught for 6 months during a gap year and it was an insane experience

there was the resident alcoholic american who'd been a carpenter back in california and he would go out and get wasted so much that the school's solution was to move him into the dorms with the kids where they could lock him in each night, i remember he had to get back each night before 9 or he'd be locked out for the night

whenever i went out with him to eat, half the restaurants would see him and scream and yell at me that man was not allowed in the restaurant ever again - he was a terrible drunk

that's also how i found out about 9/11, steve showed up at my door wasted and pounding on my door with "they got us, we've been attacked, it's ww3 man, ww3" - i figured he was on a major bender and pretended like i wasn't home

Rick,

Creepy.

Dun,

Dunno why a 6y old article is recirculating but Taleb has a weird way of taking some generally very good ideas and applying them in immensely ******ed ways. Clearly IQ doesn't matter and stupid people are just as good as smart people at certain tasks that require being smart. Also, I find it more and more excruciating to sift through whatever the **** he passes off for intellectual writing without the slightest hint of irony mocking pseudo intellectuals while simultaneously being completely unable to take the slightest bit of criticism. (IE Mocking academics when he is literally an academic.)

One of my friends had a fairly high reputation of Taleb and it basically stemmed from the fact he had only read his books and never bothered to read any blogs/papers/random **** from him, which in honesty is probably the pro move. Just read his first three, bail on his random ramblings about aphorisms or deadlifts or any of his other weird pseudoscience.

But honestly I can't imagine having an actual conversation with the guy over a beer. He seems rather miserable and kinda deranged.

Guy,

Good rant. I enjoyed it. Almost finished Bleach.

Since this is a safe space. Has anyone found it baffling how the country community has embraced the LGBTQIAAAA2+ community?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7bQwwqW...

This brother darkness with "traditional" hair has the most popular song of the last year in country music charts. Which is an obv hat tip to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwXeN2Fs...

This would not seem shocking to anyone who actually listens to country music, but maybe only boomers and the current folks are aware the black man is in the game.

Does this mean the IQ of performers is lower in country music today?

Great original, great cover. If country music trends to this I will be listening.

Not sure what any of this has to do with LGBTQetc. community but I do like music.

jkwon has like 70% writing credits for that song or something absurd because shaboozey didn't do it through proper channels, just borrowed heavily and hoped it'd work itself out

I think you are over-analyzing things. It is just a real good pop country song, and as far as I know Shaboozy doesn't have any leftist politics that would turn off country fans. As you have commented on eloquently, (White) American "racism" is really overstated.

I dont think country music fans would have much patience for black leftist politics, but they wouldn't care much at all if a black artist was apolitical or had right wing politics.

Country music is basically just pop music with a banjo thrown in at this point. This is one of the better ones, but there is plenty of country songs that are just good pop music.

Here is a couple more recent country songs that are just good pop songs (IMO):

There is a local radio station here that is on my presets. The only issue is they literally just cycle the same 5 songs over and over; so if you listen for 30 minutes you pretty much got all there is.

I generally enjoy his (non Israel related) tweeting.

This particular article is recirculating because he brought it up and has been posting a lot on the subject. He seems to be pushing back on the general right wing energy on X lately that the Global South mostly sucks because it is filled with a lot of not very smart people making a lot of not very smart decisions. But he isn't really offering any better insights into what is going on.

Lately he mostly just complains about Israel. Which is his right, but if you are marketing yourself as an intellectual that brings deeper insights into things, one would hope for a little more than just lizard brain tribalism you can get from a Russian bot.

Dun,

Totally agree with all the country music stuff. I think it is mostly Eurotardia that is well... ******ed.

The irony with the Global South mostly "sucking" and dark skinned peoples is that he's the moron in this situation. But he is also a swarthy man from a land of swarthy men, so he posts nonsense copium because his worldview must correct and academics are idiots (despite being a a professor and editing a journal so his half-baked papers can get published).

He was the first person to block me off Twitter and blatantly ripped off my #Charlatan shtick as well. So I sadly cannot read his Tweets, but I'm sure they're still comical without the slightest whiff of self-irony.

Good for jkwon, the song feels like a cover to me anyway more than something new.

actually made a post about this in the music thread a little while back

was shocked to learn that hootie turned country and thus why he went off my radar

weirdest thing was i'd be in the ozarks and people would very casually drop ethnic slurs in front of me, not even sniffing it out first with a test to see if i were down, just full blown racism right from the start assuming i was in on it

and those same people were playing these songs and singing them at open mic karaoke

i think like you mentioned, when they say the n-word, they are speaking about particular subsets of blacks and not the cool ones who have similar values and make good music

it's people like this they distinguish as different
https://www.instagram.com/doggiediamonds...

like you can dislike that woman above for reasons that don't include race

i blame chris rock for "black people vs n-words" comedy because i feel like that kind of gave a lot of racists carte blanche with "yes but they are real, listen to chris rock explain it"

Here is an example of a recent Tweet where he argues things worked out well for Hezbollah. So yeah, lots of cope and not much self awareness.

rick,

Do you feel less offended when a black man uses the N word?

Personally, I do not believe that there is special privilege associated around being offended by certain language. "I can't wait to forcefully bum that 12y old boy" sounds revolting to me regardless of who says it. Even if it was his 14y old gay partner who is encourages to engage in rapeplay. This also extends to racial slurs. The idea that a community would use a slur routinely but be offended when someone else says it seems absurd to me.

But as per my prior rants, blacks are the darkest skinned people. Which is correlated with being the dumbest.

I don't see Vietnamese immigrants shouting at each other: "Wuz up my zipperhead?"

Or perhaps Jewish children naming their treehouse group: "***** on bikes"

Dun,

His overall understanding of nuanced ideas is exceptional. His application of them is atrocious. The best part of Taleb is his blissful unawareness that he's a dipshit who lucksacked a market black swan he can only quantify in the most primitive terms, then became an academic who writes papers and has literally no "skin in the game". He's Dr. John in his gilded tower, while the real Fat Tony is down actually doing work with skin in the game.

thremp, please post your twitter or dm it to me, if you're perchance involved in gambling twitter there's a non zero chance we already follow each other

i learned long ago that no white person is ever allowed to question how blacks determine to use that phrase - i don't mean that rhetorically, it's literally something taught to us in my all white school as a kid, i was told that from school several years before i ever spoke to a black person irl (grew up in a very white rural new england town and only had one asian classmate starting around grade 5 and that's because his mom moved there to teach chinese at the prep school and finally had first black classmate in 8th grade and it was because their mom married a local white guy and brought her kids with her when they moved to my town) - when i go visit my brother who still lives in that town, it's still 100% white

why am i mentioning this, because this is the first time i've ever actually had a thought on that, and my gut reaction is again, that blacks can say whatever they want, i think it's silly, but again, i haven't walked in their shoes so i'm not in a place to judge

Nah. I don't post on sports betting anymore. I'm happily retired from that portion of my life. Except to say "**** Ryan Eagle".

So that is fine you feel that way. But its weird and inconsistent. Do you feel upset when someone writes "**** ******s"? Do you feel less upset when you learn they are black? Or perhaps you have a kinda hedged view where you feel more outraged when not black or not at all outraged when they are black?

Also, how are we quantifying blackness? Brown paper bag test? One drop rule? Octaroon? Can Meghan Markle use the N word? Can Guy? What about Michael Jackson's "kids"? They are clearly white people and not black at all, but they wanna claim they are half-black. The whole concept of a "race" being able to use a word while everyone else is demonized for using a word is so ****ing ******ed I can't even articulate it. It is Melk, I am illiterate and don't understand proper nouns, level ******ed.

it's rarely come up because most places have profanity filters, but when it has, I am very good at parsing whether it was a black or racist posting that online simply due to the context in which it was posted

as for the rest, that's an interesting question, i know some very black appearing mixed people who do use the word quite naturally, whereas i feel if op used it then it would definitely raise some eyebrows and perhaps feel pretty racist since he looks white to me

in the end, it's not something that matters to me, if blacks want to use the word then i don't care, likewise, i've never said anything to a white, asian, or latino who used the word either, i just go along with the conversation, i don't join in and think "oh we can say this now" nor do i leave/reprimand - it's more a matter of taste for me than anything else

idk if you are american or not, but i can't emphasize enough the societal conditioning i had growing up that i can never judge a black person in these matters and that's definitely stuck with me much the same as to this day i'll pick out the moldy blueberries and eat the rest (which definitely have mold just to a non visual amount) rather than throwing out the entire box like a normal person because i was raised to never throw any food out that could be salvaged under any circumstances - i know it's deranged, i hate myself when i do it, but i'd rather eat that invisible mold than deal with the internal feelings of guilt that'll overcome me if i just throw the entire thing out because that's how i was raised

on another note, here's a bunch of non-fiction self improvement type books i rec'd in another thread that i thought i'd reshare here, i was originally just going to snip the class book and share that, but may as well share the whole thing, but the class book is the real reason i'm sharing this, i think everyone here itt would find it absolutely fascinating

interesting discussion kinda grunching rn sorry lol

In Thailand rn with my mom. I just realized this is the median voter. The idea of middle iq or low iq women in their 60s voting is just laughable. Repeal the 19th yesterday plz this is ridiculous.

Upper
Low incline db press: 40kgx15, 11
machine flies: 3 sets (bad machine, will swap to a machine press here)
unilateral plate loaded high rows: 2ppsx7, 1.25x13, 11
hammer rows: 2ppsx10, 1.5x13, 11
delt raises: lol weird machine idk

incline press was a hy00ge pr. I'm gonna try only 5 sets of push (only 2 sets for big lifts, 3 for smaller) on each upper day. Let's see what happens. Maybe next session go "medium" on my high incline and do like 35kgx15, 12.

Maybe take a beat to think about why democracy was founded by land owning white males.

Were they so ****ing stupid? People keep quoting them so mebbe not.

Perhaps we should take a beat and thing about who they thought was invested in society and why.

Maybe next we can debate whether US involvement in Europe in WW2 is actually good.

no. ww2 involvement shoulda been against the commies. far more destructive ideology than nazism. We should have either fought the real bad guys or not fought at all. Get UK to stop being cucks too obv.

sleep apnea been very extreme in the hotel this time. No clenbuterol vasodilation and extremely dry air from the ac. wake up gasping multiple times at night. humidifer in my house mostly solved the problem. aggressive snoring but not night choking like im getting now. skipping todays workout and going to go purchase a cpap.

I'm gonna regret commenting but this is really meh

they weren't fighting an ideology. they never do. and ideologies aren't by themselves the problem but the empowered people who try to enforce them/use them as their justification for actions.

they were fighting for their interests which is what they always do.

their/their allies treatment of the Japs was IMO the biggest mistake because it forced the Japs to do what they did.

I mean, General McArthur himself said it. Ideologies do matter. Communism did more harm than Nazism would have if the germans had one. Is there any way of proving this? ofc not, just my (and McCarthur's) opinion. North Korea vs South Korea... China and... well lol I can't write it out explicitly given my circumstances but you know lmao.

"evo a right wing neo-fascist anti-semite!!1!! take away women's voting rights! back to being chattel! tryna be a white uncle tom. and he lives in an ETHNOSTATE!!!! gym+testosterone to fascism pipeline OMG"

But I'm still srs that universal enfranchisement+democracy+ubiquitous media=disaster. I obviously don't believe that voting rights should be allocated on the basis of physical characteristics outside a person's control, that should be clear trolling. But something like "net taxpayers only" seems like a very good idea and allows anyone to give themselves the right to vote by just increasing their voluntary tax contribution if they are poor but politically engaged. Ranked choice voting also seems like a no-brainer. In practice it'll mean a lot less female voters voting with their hive minds of "is this acceptable for the tribe for me to believe this?" rather than "is this true?" decision making processes.

arms+lower

dual facing away cable curls: 3 sets failure
pushdowns: 3 sets failure
db skullcrushers: 10kgx3 sets failure
db concentration curls: 3 sets failure

I don't like db conc curls. EZ curls or db facing away curls, but I think ez-curls are still my 2nd fave. Dual facing away curls>ez curls>normal cable curls>db facing away curls>db concentration curls

Ham curls: 30kgx10, 25kgx13, 11 awkward setup trying to get the machine just right
Paused toes elevated SLDL (with wedges instead of a plate): up to 115kgx15, 12
leg press: 2ppsx20x2

Went to sleep specialist demanding a cpap without needing to do a sleep study first. They finally said 'okay fine you can buy it, plz don't get angry sir this is a place of peace and tranquility" and then I said "okay jk fine I'll get the actual sleep study and talk to the doc for the extra $200 usd because I have no clue how this thing works even if I have a clue about how sleep apnea itself works". I should have a new CPAP on Tuesday and I'm placeboing myself into believing it will be a game changer. Read lots of antecdotes of bodybuilders who expected it would do very little but ended up having it be a life-changing medical intervention that hugely improves health, performance, bodybuilding results, and overall quality of life.

i posted about it several pages ago, but I'm extremely impressed with Honkai Star Rail. I had such a bad taste in my mouth from how much wasted potential Genshin Impact had, eschewing both its action combat challenges and its narrative story tellling for the sake of releasing waifus at a frenetic pace to drive sales from whales while doing the bare minimum of actually adding new playable content to the game. Short review to follow:

Genshin's audience literally includes 12-16 year old Chinese girls and lots of things about the single player narrative of the game cater to that specific audience. With Honkai Star Rail, they weren't afraid of alienating their young/tard audience and making a narrative driven single player RPG to appeal to a much more mature audience. The patch 2.0-2.7 story arc is similar to a game like Planscape Torment or Disco Elysium in how dialogue and lore heavy it is.

There is very little actual fighting and a huge amount of the gameplay is just reading and watching cutscenes. The characters don't speak like ******s as they do in Genshin and the plot is layered, complex, nuanced, and told in a very indirect way. This game has the classic JRPG combat of the 1990s SNES/PSX/PS2 era, modern cinematic storytelling, and the narrative focus, introspection, and philosophical complexity of the aforementioned Planescape Torment. I feel like they actually made the single player elements of this game for a very specific niche of story focused RPG gamers and anime fans like myself, while the gacha elements, end game combat challenges, and waifu-collection appeals to their more broad Genshin audience. They've made this game in a way that a person can play it and enjoy the single player JRPG while never interacting with the gacha elements and character collecting at all; just using characters the game gives you for free. Your conventional JRPG grind is replaced with various daily tasks, but they're done in a less "invasive" and more hassle-free way compared to a game like Genshin.

If you play the game as if it were a normal single player JRPG, you will probably spend less time grinding than you would in a game like Dragon Quest 3 remake or Dragon Quest 11, but it'll need to be spaced out and in according with the stamina system normal in gacha games. This works fine for a guy with my schedule that generally isn't devoting many marathon play sessions anyway. The game is also much more playable on mobile compared to Genshin, who's mobile controls just didn't quite play smoothly enough to do harder challenges.

The game would have been much stronger if they'd just made a single player JRPG with normal mechanics and stuck a $60 price tag on it. But it also wouldn't have made them nearly as much $ as if they do it with the gacha system. The ways in which the gacha system detracts from the game overall are relatively more minimal than a game like Genshin, where they straight up destroy the game entirely. And having the gacha system in place allows for several more years of updates to the very well written and consistently improving patch-to-patch single player story of the game.

8.5/10, highly recommended. Try not to be put off by the first 2 hours of the game which will provoke a lot of eye-rolling and cringe. It gets better and better from there.

I've heard very good things about Wuthering Waves. I don't like action combat nearly as much as turn based jrpg style, but I'll definitely give it a shot once I've finished all the single player main story of Honkai. I am not getting into the gacha stuff or minmaxing for the end-game challenges.

My appetite still feels outta control. I haven't regained a ton of weight after cutting, up around .75kg. But I'll take like 15k steps, eat 4k cals of very expensive meal prep food, and still feel starving and end up night-eating a bunch of brownies and not even remembering I did it in between choking on sleep apnea in my sleep. I may as well just bulk a good 3 months and take a 20-22 week prep. This feels so much more uncomfortable than when I was in a real deficit lol.

Getting into gacha, hmm? As a professional* gacha player I approve.

*I just play one and am a "low spender" so, yeah, not professional

I was very into genshin and did play as a f2p gacha. Honkai I'm approaching as if its just a single player jrpg.

Which one are you playing now and which have you played？