Bodybuilding Classic Physique Division Offseason log

That's impressive. I barely ever log food because it's so close to the exact same thing every day anyway. I barely even weigh unless I'm deep into a cut and things are getting hard and I mostly eyeball/approximate. But I usually end up in a +-25g range just from eyeballing stuff.

146lbs... I can't imagine weighing that little unless you are like 5'6 or below.

Luckily my autism around weighing and tracking food has waned over the last 5 years, but I will admit that I'm less controlled with what I eat when I don't have to enter it into the app that no one but me ever saw.

I'm 5 foot 9, so definitely on the skinny side. I was 180 pounds for a few years, but that was sufficiently fat to cause deleterious health effects. So I dieted to to my current 140-ish 6 years ago, losing the 40 pounds in 3 months. I think I've been skinny for 36 years and was fat for 17 years throughout my life.

I got in the habit of logging on the diet, and never quite got around to giving it up.

haha... previous iterations of this forum would have said "omg 180lbs at 5'9 is so skinny! you are unhealthy! SS+GOMAD NAO!". But yeah, the threshold at which fatness negatively affects health is much lower than most people think. I was there just over a year ago. 130-160 is probably a healthy weight for a person who doesn't have a ton of muscle at your height. Girls on this continent simping and thousands of dollars to spend time with and bang men who are around 5'9 56kg with almost 0 muscle and have dyed hair and wear copious amounts of makeup.

Arms+Lower

Superset
EZ curl: 27.5kgx15, 12, 17.5kgx18
Tricep pushdowns: 3 sets failure
lying hamstring curls: 46x12, 9, 32kgx11

Cable curls: 4 sets failure
Overhead tricep extensions: 4 sets
Paused toes elevated SLDL: 100kgx15,12 huge loss of work capacity and strength. It could very easily take me 2 months to get back to strength levels I was at 14 days ago from being sick+time off this lift

Leg extensions: 3 sets failure

got it done in one hour. No single leg leg press. I think I'll keep it that way. Next lower workout I'm not sure if I'll do leg press or FFESS.

I guess it's time to start eating in a surplus fr again.

I'm going doing this 4 days a week thing, it's really important session length doesn't get out of hand.

Working saturday... charity run event+work dinner so not training.

98.25kg AM and I'm "not that depleted" after vacation. I decided 18 week prep, finish cutting Saturday, then 12-13 weeks of moderate controlled surplus. After filling out i might be aroudn 100kg AM and then I hope to limit weight gain to around 102.5kg maximum before I start cutting.

Push+quads and then Back+Hams would be another way I could arrange my training days... now is kind of exactly the time to play around with different splits, different exercises, and different training approaches in general. The only thing I'm sticking to for sure is 4 or fewer days per week in the gym. I kinda like having arms first in a fairly recovered state because I like having comparatively better developed arms.

The gym I'm at now is managed by a Hong Kong ex-military guy who is really into lifting and bodybuilding and he's given a good amount of autonomy on equipment. He's turning the place into a proper bodybuilding gym. Where I'm at now, by extremely good fortune, is seriously about on par and in some ways slightly better than BPC gym in BKK which was among the best gyms I've used in Asia. Muscle Factory in both their Pattaya and Bangkok locations still MOG as far as equipment goes, but it's way too hot in there with no AC and some machines are pretty run down.

Since I got back, we've gotten a new belt squat machine, a really good v-squat machine, and what appears to be a very good hip thrust machine (I haven't used it yet; the hip thrust machine at one of the new gyms I went to I maxxed out with 25s and still didn't feel anything). I'm really spoiled for choice on lower body movements now... leg press, hack squat, selectorized leg press, v-squat, belt squat, 5 normal squat racks with both olympic and power bars (!?!, I'm astonished to meet somebody who can even tell the difference), full bumpers.

Today after work I will do:

Machine flat press 3 sets
Unilateral plate loaded pulldowns 3 sets (superset these but lots of rest)
low incline db press: 2 sets
barbell row: 2 sets (superset, long rests)
Machine fly 3 sets
Pullover: 3 sets (superset, short rests)
Cable side delt raise: 4-5 sets

I think there was one dude at the men's decathlon who might've weighed over 200lbs. He is also 6'7. Keep in mind all these dudes are on drugs and multi-sport athletes who generally trend on the tall/thin/insanely strong side. Lotta people think 6'5 195 is looking like slenderman. But pretty sure this dude isn't struggling to keep his bed warm: https://www.instagram.com/yungharri/?hl=...

Sure, there are some outliers like Wemby or any of the women shot putters, but everyone thinks they're a special snowflake.

WLing bar v Normie... Do they not just see center knurling? Do DL specific bars have center knurling? Don't think I've ever seen one in person, so can't comment on that.

power bar vs wling bar is also rings placement+oscillation+spin, but only people who have actually done sn/cj will ever notice that and that's like <1% of the gym going population overall. I miss it sometimes... I'm in the perfect setup right now because i could train at work with bumpers+very high quality oly bars in the school gym and then bumpers+slightly worse but still very good bars at this gym. Like I said before, SN 30 minutes of singles autoregulated, C+2j 30 minutes of singles autoregulated, then triples to a max in FS+1 down set or max triple in push press and one down set. Maybe 2 sets of pullups to failure. 3x/wk training. That's how I should have been doing it after my technique was solid.

There's another fellow who's woken up to the "you shouldn't train so much" idea. Ibanez Weightlifting on instagram. He does oly lifts 3 days a week only, but he does train 5x/wk and does various accessory lifts the other 2 days. Something like squats+overhead work 2 days/wk and oly lifting 3x/wk with very short sessions around 70 minutes on the oly days and 40 minutes on the other days would probably also work well. I could have gone so much further in oly If I'd had a more sensible approach to programming. The info wasn't there and the internet wasn't what it is today so I won't be too hard on myself.

Maybe after I hit that pro card+debut goal I'll take a break from bodybuilding for 20~ weeks or so and try wling for a while for some diversity in my fitness endeavours. but in the event I start actually doing well at pro shows, I'd absolutely try to qualify for the Mr. O and just continue focusing in on bb.

Had a great upper training today, but it took 65 minutes even when I was really hauling ass and hurrying up.

Plate loaded flat machine press: 2ppsx14, 10
Plate loaded unilateral pulldowns: 3ppsx15, 9
low incline db press: 40kgx12, 10 (!!!!)
underhand barbell row: 70kgx12, 10
HS high row: 40kgx14, 9
Machine flies: 33kgx21, 40kgx11
Cable pullovers//hip height cable side delt raises: 3 sets each

15 minutes of posing and socializing and ****ing around after the training session clocked in at 65 minutes.

A few thoughts.

1. I've made some really insane progress... it isn't necessarily huge session to session, but when I look back to when I started at 24/7 fitness at their other location back around October, it's pretty wild how rapid the progress has been on many things. My BW has stayed the same, I've gotten much leaner, and all my lifts went up (except barbell rows but they keep getting stricter and more paused)

2. I used a reverse grip on machine flies. Holy moly this lit up my pecs and took all stress of my bicep/pec tendon. This is going to be a new staple. If I don't find a way of machine pressing that i like, my push half of workouts may literally be 3 sets of this, 2 sets of an incline dumbbell with 2 different angles, and that's it.

3. I cut back volume from what I initially planned. I gotta be careful with session volume/session length going up to 4x/wk. Expect similar cutbacks from other sessions.

4. Since this session was a bit longer than I wanted it to be, I think maybe I might have one upper session without free weight pressing where I do machine flies, machine incline, machine flat press. That would be a good session to barbell row. Incline db press and barbell row are too fatiguing to superset at all and I also like to take off my shoes for rows which jsut feels weird walking around the gym barefoot.

5. I'm going to be playing around and experimenting with different exercises, exercise orders, and ways of executing. I'm not sure which machine presses I like and dislike as far as feel and as far as safety on my existing pain. I am writing this to remind myself that reverse grip might be a good option for me. I did identify the source of my problem as bad internal rotation on shoulders, but now after many months of mobility while it has improved, it's not fully alleviated and maybe mobility work won't ever fully fix it so I should try some new stuff. 2 sets of free weight pressing per week only and then a lot of reverse grip pressing and flying on machines might be an option. We'll see. 3 sets of flies and then 2 sets of an incline db might also be an option, as aluded to above. 10 sets/wk of chest is definitely enough.

Re Decathlon guy: Total chad. I'm sure he out squats me too. Skinnier looks better, is healthier, and is more athletic in general. Rip's people were/are pretty delusional about how big a human being should be. That said, if you have more lean tissue you can definitely get away with being heavier and not being unhealthy or unaesthetically appealing. But even then, as you push extremes of LBM you start to lose some of both. Am I there yet? close for sure. But the whole point of men's physique/classic physique is allow people to compete in bodybuilding competitions without having to lose that general mainstream aesthetic appeal that comes with getting absolutely massive.

I mean... jeez... go from 40kgx11 as first exercise to 40kgx12 as second exercises db incline press from November 19 to January 10? And that was with an injury flaring up in between that required me to cool down on the pressing training... waow.

Arms+lower

Triset
cable curls: 17.5kgx30, 21, 15
pushdowns: 28.25kgx30, 22, 15
leg extensions: 33kgx 27, 22

Superset:
bb curls: 20kgx21, 16, 12
db skullcrushers: 10kgx30, 16, 13

Leg press: 3ppsx22, 18
hip thrust: ???

Hip thrust machine doesn't feel good. It's too hard to get into position as an adult male with a 30+ inch waist, this machine made for girls. It's okay, I'll just swap leg press to single leg press to get that glute emphasis and call it a day. RDL+Single leg leg press will prob be enough for glutes. Could maybe play around with glute kickbacks either at home or at the gym.

I really enjoy this way of arranging training, although it is more cardiovascularly taxing with all the supersetting. It's so time efficient. I was done in 55 minutes.

"limbs day" and "torso day" lol

Pec/Bicep tendon feeling a bit wonky like around 95% good but not 100%, so next "torso day" I'll do machine only for chest. Chins, machine rows, pullovers, machine flies, flat machine press, incline machine press all supersetted. Then assuming it's 100% I'll try for a pr doing low incline db as first lift and see if we can't get 14-15 reps at 40kg.

Fat loss phase is basically over but I'm not going crazy on the food and still eating my normal bodybuilding meals of white potato/sweet potato, chicken breast, guacamole, oatmeal, frozen berries, cream of rice, green mangos, and apples. I will make a 600g ribeye tonight though for a nice indulgence.

Upper
Chins: bwx16, 10
reverse grip flies: 47kgx15, 12
plate loaded hammer rows: 2.5ppsx12, 11, 7
machine flat press: 68kgx12, 14, 10
HS high rows: 40kgx11, 9
incline machine press: 40kgx13, 9

cable side delt raise: 3 sets failure
cable pullovers/lat prayers: 3 sets failure

Got it done in around 53 minutes and wasn't particularly hurried. Machines make the workout so much quicker and rest times are much shorter compared to free weights.

Chins gave a little pressure to pec-bicep tie-in so I decided to stop after 2 sets.

I think maybe free weight presses as first lift every 3rd upper workout will be fine. Don't superset it with anything on that day and don't do barbell rowing on that same day. 2 sets only, fairly close to failure.

still playing around with exactly what machines I connect well with. The selectorized flat press was pretty meh. The flies were great; def gonna hit those for 3 sets next time. Maybe the plate loaded flat press again too even though the rom is kinda high and puts my shoulder in a crappy position on first rep.

All the back/pulling movements I did today felt great. It's just the pressing machines I'm having difficulty connecting with.

Lower

Tri-set
Leg extensions: 33kgx33, 20, 19
cable curls: 21.75kgx24, 2 more sets
tricep pushdowns: 32.5kgx24, 2 more sets

Tri set
Ham curls: 39kgx20, 11, 9
dual cable curls: 8.75kgx25, 2 more sets
db skullcrushers: 10kgx32, 2 more sets

Paused toes elevated sldl: 110kgx15, 12 long pauses, felt comfortable

some single leg leg press, I'm gonna drop this. I'm getting enough glutes from my sldl.

I should really do FFESS on the other leg day and just drop leg press. Easier and quicker to warm up for, but slightly more cardiovascularly taxing. Still better exercise than leg press overall for a quad dominant physique that needs more glute+ham, just annoying because you gotta actually concentrate when executing it compared to leg press where you can just blank out and crank out reps. If I do that, I should probably just FFESS first precisely b/c it does require actuall coordination and concentrating so want to go in with very little fatigue. Then just do my normal trisets for leg extensions and either ham curls or some kind of glute kickback.

Wow reading back that training log that is some very confusing off the wall programming. The "real" bbing people in the gym probably looking at me thinking "wtf is this guy doing?" It's so weird pairing arms+legs but I'm loving it. This session took a bit longer clocking in at 64 minutes

Next workout I'm gonna do machine flies 3 sets, plate loaded pulldowns 3 sets, barbell rows 3 sets, machine plate loaded flat press 3 sets. 6 sets hard sets each muscle group and then some lol cable lat prayers.

Been off the clen since Friday or so last week and coupled with reintroducing food my hunger hormones are going crazy. I'm still managing to fast from 6:45 to 12:20 most days in the mornings to help reduce overall food intake.

non bodybuilding kindergarteners: The hunger hormones don't get you in the diet, they get you as you're stopping the diet. It's incredibly easy to start adding a lot of fat as the hunger hormones just go nuts when you transition from fat loss to maintenence or bulk. I ended up waking up around 4 o clock the last 2 day suddenly ravenous. One day I ate a hk style pineapple bun (don't ask why I even had it around) and the other time I had an apple.

upper (very half assed)

machine plate loaded flat press; 2ppsx16, 12, 8
plate loaded unilateral pulldowns: 3ppsx16, 12, 9
machine flies: 47kgx18, 11, 9
plate loaded hammer rows: 2ppsx16, 12, 9
Some incline db presses up to 30kgx8

by the time I got to presses I was exhausted. I went to the gym much later than normal.

I put blocks on the machine to get a higher starting position for chest press. I don't think this is the answer...

I think the answer is probably not going to be found in exercise selection, but rather load management and never really giving too much effort and keeping the RIR high but sticking to mostly free weight chest presses. I think 2 sets of a db horizontal press (rotate between high incline, low incline, maybe flat), 3 sets of machine flies or cable crossovers, and that's it for upper pushing/chest training. that still puts me at 10 sets per week. Maybe program in 4 heavy 1 light. When I inevitably yolo in too hard and it starts hurting, do my best not to quit training presses/flies at all or change movements. Keep doing the movements and just use lil baby weights. or maybe ohp, that seems to usually be okay.

Tomorrow I will go meet my mom who is flying to China for the first time. We will chill for a few days in HK and then go to Thailand. I may have some unplanned days of training. But you know... first time seeing your mom in 5 years is a decent enough reason.

The test only is cool and all, but despite the lack of estrogen I am getting fairly water retentive. It doesn't just happen through estrogen; test also changes minerale electrolyte balance stuff. I will re-allocate some miligrams to masteron to stay a bit dryer. I've been off GH since around xmas and don't plan on going back on until after my Chinese New Year holiday is over, which will be Feb 8th. When Chase irons was on his 3500 test 1400 mast and his 5000mg test per week cycles he was running 25mg of hydrochlorothyazide DAILY. I took one 25mg tab, peed 8 time sthat night, and woke up 3kg lighter and very dry but also very flat. Chronic water retention isn't a great thing even if it doesn't necessarily show up as bad on one's bloodwork...

I don't think I'll come back to start cutting and want to stay in a surplus right until I'm around 20-22 weeks out. That said, I reserve the right to start minicutting with clenbuterol+stims earlier if I need the performance boost at work, as my teaching load is about to get considerably higher with many teachers leaving mid school year like I was originally planning.

There are so many tempting offers, including six figs USD in HK. But i'm trying to think very long term and being on bad terms with this chain of schools is a really bad idea. I'm not unhappy here. There's no reason to fall into FOMO seeing so many other teachers bail. We got a new headmaster and he's a humble guy with a good head on his shoulders; I think he'll make some meaningful reforms. Basically the problem, in a nutshell, is we do too little hard academic teaching and classes and too many activities and "pastoral care" nonsense. That stuff is important, but if its diminishing the time you have available for the meat and potatoes in a way that is hurting the kids prospects of scoring well on standardized exams, you gotta cut back and increase the protein. We literally only have 1 internal exam period every year in Janaury, which is not nearly enough. Most schools do 3+1 external exam. 1+1 external exam is just baffling. Literally all of the teachers are complaining that we don't do enough actual classroom sit down and write acadademic exam subject teaching and learning and a bit too much "let's have a sign language bee for this week's pastoral care friday activity". (I'm not exaggerating... we actually spent time on this... while the average score in IGCSE mock exam was a 48%, maths is 61%, and Chemistry is 54%... wtf...)

Our 2 year IGCSE program has only 4 periods per week, which is unheard of in China. Our 1 year IGCSE is a pointless relic to appease the most delusional of parents. Why tf are you offering kids a one year option and then not having them do the IGCSE exams and expecting them to do well the next year in A-level? Just have them take an extra year and start A-level a year later... changing the language of your main medium of instruction and examination obviously is a good justification for slowing down and taking another school year. But delusional parents who have no idea how hard it is to learn a second language think that "since my kid is 16, they MUST be in the 10th grade. I CANNOT send them back the 9th grade because I've carefully planned all milestones they are supposed to reach by specific ages. top 50 UK undergrad finance offer by 18, graduate by 21, MBA by 23, married to a man with less than 3 partners and a net worth of at least 400k usd with at least 60% in real estate who is no older than 31 by the time she's 25, loses her virginity at 25 on wedding night, will never see a sex toy in person or perform or or anal either receptive or giving in her lifespan and if she does I should die of spontaneous cyanide poisoning, exactly 2 grandchildren birthed at age 27 and 29, both boys, both at least 180cm tall by age 15 blah blah blah blah". Bitch shut the **** up and slow down a ****ing year or two jfc....

4/wk 2 year igcse can work for VERY high ability level students, but as a brand new private school with no zhongkao requirements, our median/average student is actually much lower ability level than the typical Chinese school offering British curriculum and exams. It's deceptive because their English is much better, with a high % of Macau/HK/Foreign students, but often times daily conversational english speaking and comprehension is less correlated with IGCSE/A-level exams than somebody who isn't in front of the classroom might realize. A kid with weak English brute forcing past paper questions with a lot of contact time in lectures every week is going to bulldoze a kid with great English who's just not getting enough classroom instruction time and is too consumed with after school activities and pastoral care to sit down and do an adequate amount of homework to compensate for the lack of classroom hours.

Anyway, I think our guy will fix it. And I'm probably wrong b/c some corporate dickbag who has never spoken to one of our students face-to-face and hasn't taught in front of a classroom since 1998 said "no". And frankly who gives a **** if they don't care about improving the school then I should feel no guilt for collecting a paycheck and not taking it too seriously. Never take your job more seriously than your boss or boss's boss does. Then get a good recommendation and go to a place with a good long term future; because yeah it's cool to collect a check and all, but from a psychological standpoint it's much better to work at a job you actually care about and want to participate in collective continuous improvement of. I def had that feel at my previous one, I literally quit entirely because of a lack of heating in winter. They are moving to a new building as they get approved to accomodate more students, and i could absolutely return there in 2026 and stay indefinitely if the heating issue is fixed. Yeah, urban environment blew donkey dick but it was a fantastic workplace, best I've had in my life even though it was a far more demanding and difficult job than my current job which feels like collecting welfare.

idk where that rant came from, prob sounds like gibberish garbage ot my readers.

So yeah uh bodybuilding amirite LOL!

Western and even HK shcools all know that chinese students just pay somebody 1-10k usd to wirte their personal statements for them, their GPAs are fake and inflated, and things on their CV are made up unverifiable nonsense. Their only metric is basically A-level scores. That's why we have an obsessive focus on them. And that's okay. The probability of a student doing well on A-level exams and then NOT doing well in their university academics is very very low. They're overall excellent preparation. Have you actually looked at the Further Math curriculum?

Education doesn't have to be about learning critical thinking skills. that's a disaster in a totalitarian centralized power country with very high cultural, world view, and linguistic diversity. We need robots and that's actually okay. And even in a '"""DEMOCRACY"""" , the two main goals of education are 1. Socialization and learning to interact with peers. 2. Filtering and sorting. We give arbitrarily hard academic tasks as basically more comprehensive IQ tests that can be gamed with work ethic so that we can allocate more educational resources as well as social status and prestige to people with either work ethic, resources to game the exam more effectively like private tutors, or IQ. but let's not lie, it's mostly just iq lol.

I don't write this as a criticism or to try and sound edgy. I think there's basically nothing wrong with this. "bro education is just about CREDENTIALS bro" is the midwit edgelord line.

tik tok ban only got srs once palestinian started showing war crimes up close and Americans can actually see it and see the truth of America's complicity in Israeli genocide and war crimes. This XHS exodus is hilarious. But westerners are in for a real shock when they see how Chinese social media deals with excessive thirst trapping/sexuality/anything LGBT/Taiwan related looool.

okay I think I'm finally done

"brooo....lecturing is like soo badd brooo. You need ACTIVE learning and FLIPPED CLASSROOMS. Students need to have AUTONOMY!!!!" Whenever I hear this I know i'm dealing with a dogshit teacher who is coping with the fact that they don't understand their subject very well and thus have problems communicating important ideas or solving questions in front of the class to faciliate their students doing the same on exam day.

Nope. When the objective is for kids to perform well on a written standardized exam, there is nothing wrong with a "sit down, listen to teacher, write down notes, and follow along as he solves problems as an example for you. Try to replicate what he/she does on similar problems he gives you as practice. prepare to be cold called on b/c he needs to make sure you don't zone out and the shame of a wrong answer in front of your classmates is a powerful motivator".

How long is your contract with this school? You make it sound like you're locked in for a very long time.

Also, I have noticed you often make up statements to then respond to them. Which is fine, but I have no idea how these statements come up for you.

Who are the people saying these things? Aren't your peers on the same page as you? Like, who is walking around your area in China saying "YOU NEED ACTIVE LEARNING. FLIP CLASSROOM, FLIP IT FLIP FLIP FLIP"?

oh great question. This was a huge thing that was spouted endlessly in my first 2 schools. This one and the one before it were way more realistic. I am not making up statements, I am summarzing things other people say to me repeatedly. And generally these types of statements (anything regarding education) is coming from a clueless foreigner who has 0 knowledge of Chinese culture and language, has never had a single Chinese monolingual friend, and often has delusional and wrong ideas about China and Chinese people and the way they do things.

contracts are all 2 years in this industry. Occasionally 3 years. I'll be done in ~19 months.

That second school I worked at... 2018-2021... that place was legendarily dysfunctional. But it was in a sort of absurdist comedic way, not in a "miserable" way. And they did nail the actual academic teaching and learning part just right. Which actually kinda goes to show that even if everything else is done wrong and you have some really bizarre people among the teachers, admins, students, and parents all together who exihibit some very strange, neurotic, and overtly crazy behaviours on a routine basis, the school can be enormously successful (from a business standpoint) if it can produce good exam results in core IGCSE and A-levels subjects and get a handful of oxford/cambridge/ivy offers every few years.

Me and some of my friends I made working there made a list of all the absurd things that were straight out of a "The Office" episode that happened there. I gotta find it and summarize it here for nostalgia and b/c it was legitimately funny (and terrifying... imagine a balding 54 year old 1/10 face married Filipino music teacher from NYC messaging a 14 year old student "I miss you and I love you"...and not being fired immediately)

lower+arms

leg extensions: 40kgx25, 21, 13
FFESS: 15kg dbsx15, 12, 10 each side
ez curl//pushdowns: 3 rounds
hammer curl//db skullcrushers: 2 rounds

very lethargic today.

I do feel something resembling "addiction" with clen. I feel so good mentally on it and coming off I get withdrawals which are mostly just fatigue, tiredness, sleep apnea from no longer having the bronchodialation.

2x/yr for 12 weeks each, don't get carried away.

gonna get a cpap soon

workout just under 60 minutes and I was too lazy to finish with more ham curls

Next 3 days off then an upper workout where I'll prob just start with db incline press but sandbag it and do like 35kgx15 for top set which is well within an RPE6 type of effort.

i never was a fan of those buns, can't eat them anymore anyway cause celiac but i remember how crazy some people were for those things

菠萝黄油包 they are like **** crack. very easy to get addicted to. as good as a really good donut.

So these quotes are from ex-pats in China, or the actual Chinese administration at the schools you were at?

This seems like a lot of wishy-washy bogus optimization if it's only 1.5 more years imo. Just do your thang and leading up to the end of the contract you'll know what's what in terms of an ideal move (or not move).

Wow. Well, what's the age of consent in China, maybe it's 14? lol I dno

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

Medium

IQ is largely a pseudoscientific swindle

--This Medium article from Taleb has been getting a lot of play on X (at least in the circles I travel).

--His basic premise is that IQ isn't real predictive of anything once you get beyond some lower threshold, which he doesn't really determine, but says is immoral to talk about.

--From the wording you can tell the point of this article is to refute the idea that differential outcomes between some races/nationalities can be attributed to lower average IQ. So I guess he is blaming all the problems of the "Global South" on colonialism, institutional racism and Jews.

--I can conceptually see the general point he is making; but he doesn't seem to address the real world reality that for all its faults, IQ does seem to have some utility and predictive power, unlike progressive concepts like institutional racism or white supremacy.

--As a semi-real world example, if some hypothetical African nation had an average national IQ of 75 in its black population and 100 in its white population; I would argue raising the IQ of the black population as much as possible (through education) would yield greater utility than deciding IQ doesn't matter and the real problem is institutional racism, and if we can just transfer enough power from whites to blacks that will solve the problem.

I mean...surely this is why a lot of older white guys go to live and work in Asia?