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With my recent comments on this blog, I might be giving off the impression that I’m unhinged and pro-violence. You can all rest assured that I’m not.
I believe Marc Macyoung and his peers were among the early self-defense instructors who pioneered the idea of “Soft-skills” (Awareness, Avoidance, De-escalation, and Disengagement). Back in the day when we had martial arts magazines marketing they could make you a tough guy (and that learning to fight and being the tough guy by itself will magically solve all your problems), the idea that there skills that are more important than the ability to unleash mayhem was not a popular one. We’ve come a long ass way from back then.
But now the pendulum has swung to the complete opposite direction. I sometimes check out the martial arts section on reddit and whenever I see a poor child in destress about being bullied every day in school, very upvoted comments tell them to just “run away”, “Just take it and put up with it, be proud that you will be their boss later in life!” or that “YOU are the problem” (expecting shy, inhibited, unconfident people to just magically change their whole vibe with a snap like its magic), etc. (I’ve posted a thread here where I helped one such kid, which I’m very much proud of, even though I got accused of being “weird” for caring. lol)
The “Avoid a fight AT ALL COSTS” mindset is just as bad and unhelpful as being willing to throw hands at the drop of a hat. What, are you going to tell child/teen to go demand their parents to take them out of school, switch living locations, and uproot their lives and if they don’t, they run away, rebel against their parents and end up homeless? all for the sake of “avoiding a fight”? as if all fights are destined to end with someone dying or permanently crippled? (I have never put anyone in the hospital when I fought, or have I witnessed it with any other student that fought. it can definitely happen, but lets not act like a fight in school grounds is fucking Armageddon.)
They don’t say it this way, but with the way they present their “advice”, that would very much be their implied messaging. Even the self-defense instructors that they mindlessly parrot admit there are very much times when violence is not only necessary, but even the best solution in certain cases.
The last theropist I saw was very surprised that I wasn’t bullied from a young age. It started in my teenage years. And from my sisters. I’ve come to realize that the bullies did target me throughout, but they just messed with the wrong bull. I’ve never had formal training. Some guys are just born with “it.” So the bullying came when I was more “civilized” and from female family members that I thought I could trust. A real broadside (lol “broad”).
Standing up for yourself goes far beyond being willing to get into a physical fight. There are people out there who will try to walk all over you and take advantage of you. A common example is people trying to pass off someone else’s work as their own. While women are often portrayed as the supposed victims of this, in reality it is the other way around. There are plenty of women in an office environment who try to get the geeks to do their work, just like in high school and college. It seems that the guys these women leech off would find it even more difficult to refuse to help those damsels in distress than to put a bully in his place.
Yeah, I used to do the work for women I found attractive all of the time. Then I realized they will find me more attractive if I don’t do their work. At very least you maintain your self esteem and save yourself excess work.
The unattractive, older women who form clicks at work are a whole other story, however.
Aaron,
I thought you might find this documentary interesting. I’ve been learning about seed oils for the last three years, and its impact on our health.
Thanks for the recommendation! My wife is deeply interested in nutrition, so I knew about the dangers of seed oils, but I will have a look at this documentary regardless. My view is that information on nutrition is heavily politicized, so anything coming from the government I view with a grain of salt. For instance, a common recommendation is to eat very little meat, in particular red meat, and instead consume a mountain of carbs. I think we can safely ignore that advice. Doing the exact opposite is probably closer to our ideal nutrition.
Chris:
I’m not a big fan of videos for communicating facts, so whenever I’m faced with one that’s more than a few minutes I do a “skip test” to see if seems worth watching or not. I skip a few minutes at a time through the video, to see if I can find any glaring issues.
About two minutes into this video, they talk about how the obesity rate has gone up from 30% to 42% from 1999-00 to 2017-18 despite no significant increase in calorie intake.
Wtf??? There has been a _massive_ increase in calorie intake! Compare this data published in 2004:
“The study finds U.S. women increased their daily calorie consumption 22 percent between 1971 and 2000, from 1542 calories per day to 1877 calories. During the same period the calorie intake for men increased 7 percent from 2450 calories per day to 2618 calories.”
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/calorie.htm
…to this:
“The average American consumes around 3,864 calories per day, according [to] data by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last updated in early 2023.”
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2024/10/14/weight-loss-drugs-american-calorie-decrease/75596926007/
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The political equivalent of making such an absurd statement would be if one said “Immigrants and refugees cannot have caused an increase in crime or public spending, as there has been no increase in the number of immigrants or refugees in the past 20 year,” or something along those lines.
It’s just detached from reality.
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In terms of the topic, I’m not overly familiar with the topic of seed oils in particular. I do know that that video is not to be trusted, however. Sorry to diss what you linked, man. 🙁
The official line in Germany is that Islamist terrorist attacks have nothing to do with Islam or the number of Muslims in the country. I just watched a video clip on Telegram in which Reem Alabali-Radovan, the Federal Commissioner for Migration, Refugees, and Integration (no, I am not making this up) makes this claim in response to a pesky AfD politician who connected Islamic terrorism to refugees from Muslim countries, boldly asking if Germany was a safer country if there were fewer of those people.
How irrational of that pesky politician – surely there can be no connection between Islamists and Islamist terrorism!
That lady’s last name made me chuckle, by the way. Alabali sounds like a joke term for an Arab* – “Hey, look at that alabali over there!” – but I guess she’s Assyrian. Virtually the only non-Muslim-majority group in Sweden which is heavily involved in organized crime. Obviously a product of random chance, and nothing to do with Middle Eastern culture or heritage.
Seems she married a Slav, Denis Radovan. Anything to avoid Germans, I guess.
*Personally I prefer the term Tusken Raider, the nomadic warlike tribe of Sand People from the deserts of Tatooine in Star Wars. No connection to real Arabs, of course. I just think the term sounds cool, and honor them with it, as I revere the Tuskens so much. 🙂
I’ve written before about my interest in architectural renewal (or perhaps I should say architectural rebeautification). Poland seems to be doing well with this trend. Here are two examples from them:
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid05Hhw2n9ft8QFU6dRc3fdjeiTCdJxMK5uXntXgoE7axKUYsKWXLa21qK6hQBpNosml&id=100088429311515
https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid038P2a6MGPEpzc5q14Bz1vFUpLLgzpMMeP2Z7orz8XWjqTFbfNndaJ16dJyfWFxcSwl&id=100088429311515
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Interestingly enough, even Yale, one of the more woke elite schools in the USA, has gotten in on the trend:
https://www.facebook.com/ArchitecturalUprising/posts/pfbid0ZPZMSdTJhyPVBUMYByXxhyLzGgXwoVPaKa4MdX7P29PKQJSA6kb58BrwumaCzfzFl
Not nearly as beautiful as true (neo-)classical or Gothic architecture, but a great improvement on the brutalist garbage that the leftist crowd normally promotes.
Clubs are mostly dead these days, right? I suppose this question would be outdated then, but oh well…
Aaron, when you used to go into clubs by yourself, did you happen to carry any tool in case you needed it for self-defense? Like Pepper Spray. Or the popular use of “keys” in the women’s self-defense industry, lol.
https://rumble.com/v1n36qx-terrible-womens-self-defense-advice.html?e9s=src_v1_ucp
Tbh, if I were to go alone in a bar/club, I’d probably want some protection (in more ways than one, lol) with me. Bars seem to be a common place where violence (especially between strangers) seem to occur. If I have the right impression though, this may not be all that relevant of a concern anymore. There is much less of a reason to get involved in the bar/club scene anymore.
(There is a chance I might have asked this in the past. Do let me know if so.)
Now that I bring this up, I’m reminded of an arrogant smartass I had to put up with in a discord group I used to hang out in. Claiming that learning martial arts or learning how to hold your own with just your hands is all just a “macho fantasy” and that a pepper sprays solves all your problems where a gun is inappropriate.
When I pointed out the fact that there will be times you won’t just be able to pull out your spray (or whatever little doohickey you’re relying on) because your adversary is actively attacking you and you’ll have to fight for your draw, his answer was “well then, don’t let people close in on you”, which betrays a lack of meaningful experience (if any) in the subject matter. You don’t get to decide when you are attacked, nor will you always have the opportunity to preempt before violence occurs.
Dunning-Kruger is lovely.
I did not have this problem. My recommendation is to avoid alcohol and drugs. Violence normally does not suddenly break up, after all, so you need to be aware of your environment. There is normally a build up. Once club I loved going to in London was a very rowdy place. More or less every time I went there there was a brawl at some point. You could sense that something was about to happen, so you either left the venue or stayed far away from the action. In these situations I have unsuspecting bystanders seen getting involved involuntarily, i.e. there is a brawl with a dozen guys on the dance floor already, and then someone shoves people into the crowd of fighters. Before they knew it, somebody hit them on the head from behind and they were down or about to go down. I have seen people getting smashed over their head with a bottle or a beer glass.
I was only once in a situation when someone tried to attack me. Some cute girl was looking at me with big eyes and a huge smile, so I turned my attention to her, but then a guy came rushing towards us. It was a pretty jealous boyfriend. He gave me a push, which was potentially dangerous as I was standing on a the stairs, but nothing happened. Drunk or drugged guys are a wildcard. This guy would most certainly not have been aggressive towards me had he been sober. On that note, the two main reasons why people did not mess with me were probably my height and me coming across as somewhat unhinged. You do not want to mess with a guy you cannot read.
I experienced something similar in a bar one time. I was actually pretty far from the guy and looking at his girl (I did NOT know they were together). He yelled at me from across the bar, caused a scene etc. Like in your case, Aaron, it’s not that you’re looking at the girl. It’s that she’s looking back.
About substances ,I think plenty of people can use them and not act like that. If they react that way, they should definitely quit. It’s a huge red flag about the individual, who probably needs help in general. It might be different in the US, but I do know of big tough guys who have guys start fights with them, and learn the hard way. My dad has to deal with punks like this. My friends and I used to call it “beer muscles.” I’ve also known dumbasses who think they are suddenly smart when they get drunk, and try to start debates with me.
I don´t remember where you are based, but it may vary from culture to culture. Here in Latin America I get the impression that clubs are much more prone to episodes of violence than bars. Every time a case makes it to the news, its happened in a club, or most frequently, outside of the venue. On the other hand, I hang out at bars very often, and only once in my lifetime was I involved in an episode of violence (more below).
I dont go to clubs now, neither did I go very frequently when I was younger, so my experience is somewhat limited. But my hunch is that this may have to do with the fact that people usually go to clubs in larger groups, so if any rivalry breaks out it may turn reinforcing (it takes just one guy from the group to get too drunk or approach the wrong lady, and this may drag in the rest, you gotta stand by your buddy, not lose face in front of friends, etc…).
Back when I did go to clubs every now and then, you would sometimes be frisked by security at the entrance to check for hidden weapons (i remember this especially in Brazil), so bringing something with you might not be the brightest idea. Heck, if you need such a security check to get in in the first place, perhaps that is an indication you should avoid it altogether.
As far as self defense goes, having pepper spray with you is not a bad idea. As Aaron said, interpersonal violence usually does not come out of the blue, but there is a period of buildup. You mentioned Marc McYoung in a post above – while I think he is somewhat of a bullshitter regarding how much violence he actually did engage in (I have seen people in forums credibly questioning his alleged backstory), I found a lot of his writing really made a lot of sense.
His typology of causes for violence, as I remember, was very useful – you can identify not only when violence is likely and why, but also identify disengagement options. Almost always the buildup to violenct episodes comes with clear off-ramps. And almost always, when you think about it with a cool head, it makes little sense to escalate situations even if you are sure to have the upper hand – in a civilized society, the cops will be on YOUR ass, in a less than civilized country, the other guys buddies, family or clan will avenge your victim in the name of their groups honor or something along those lines.
If you inflict grave bodily harm or death, sorting through the legal aftermath may take up years of your life and a fortune in lawyers, depending on the jurisdiction you may end up in prison for a lenghty stay.
Its good to do martial arts (full disclosure, I used to practice TaeKwon-Do for many yers), its good for your health and your mental balance, and it will give you added confidence in case you do get into some trouble. I did get some bullying in high school, not excessive, but not insignificant. After I began my TKD training I was willing to stand up to them, and lo and behold, the bullies chickened out. I never had to enter a fight with them. One buddy of mine who was the new guy at school got picked on at the beginning, until he punched one of the bullies hard, after which they left him alone for good. Not a fight, just a single hard punch in the middle of the face.
Now, in a street situation, knowing martial arts can help but it can become a double edged sword. One danger that everyone points out is that streetfights are not clean or fair, like at a gym. There are no rules there, and several guys may gang up on you, without waiting in line to get you punches like in Hollywood movies. Someone may feel justified to pull out a gun or knife. Also, you may get an excessive confidence in your fighting abilities after being used to sparring with more accomodating gym partners, where you rarely use your full force. Force control was an important part of sparring.
Fun side story, but its illustrative: I remember once we had some guys visiting our gym and my instructor paired me up with a guy who did kickboxing, and it was a shock for both of us, as our fighting styles clashed. I was not used to the quick sequence of hard punches this kickboxing guy could land, he was not used to the long kicks we used in TKD. I won that fight because I could land my kicks on him at a longer distance than he could reach with his arms, so he could barely land any punches on me. But on those few occasions he managed to close in enough, I got a good beating. In a street fight, just one missed or ineffective kick might have been all it took for me to lose (thats why you should learn some of the basics of grappling too).
BTW, if you want to be effective at fighting in real life, you should above all practice a few basic punches and kicks, and learn to do them very well and land them hard. The more elaborate techniques many martial arts make you practice are more for show, or to train your body, but in a real fight quick, simple and hard will give you a greater payoff.
Oh, BTW, I forgot to tell:
During my nights out, I can only remember 2 episodes of violence I was involved in. One of them I posted in the forum back then, but I will summarize.
I was out with my girl on a pubcrawl, and some guy was trying to talk her up. She gave me the “come get me out of here” signal, so I went in and led her away. While walking away the guy attacked me from behind and put me in a chokehold. I broke free, turned around, and got into a fighting position with my fists raised. At that point his friends got inbetween and separated us. Interestingly, instead of taking his side, his buddies spent the rest of the night keeping him apart from me and apologizing that he was too drunk, and that he meant no ill.
Even funnier, a month or two later my girl and I were out on a pubcrawl again and we me the guy in line while waiting to enter a bar. He apologized profusely, told me he had been drunk and drugged out of his head, and that he had no memory of that night. We ended up drinking together that night.
Second time was in a bar, just before the pandemic. An american tourist was drinking next to me at the bar, and he was on some drugs as well. No idea what he had taken, but he became increasingly violent and paranoid as the night went on. He attacked one of the barmen, and tried to attack one of the waitresses, and yelled stuff in english. I was a regular at that bar, so I knew some of the people there, and nobody else spoke english. So I put myself between him and the rest of the people, and tried to talk him down. He attacked me a few times, but I blocked his punches quite easily. I could probably have taken him down if I wanted, but – see my post above: not worth getting in trouble for that.
We managed to get him out of the bar, but we noticed pickpockets were already eyeing him, so I stood by him trying to avoid him doing something stupid, and prevent him from being robbed at the same time. I called the cops and tried to have him arrested, but the cops were reluctant to put him away in case he died in their patrol car or police station, which would have caused a lot of trouble (and paperwork) for them. They told me better to wait until he calmed down and got sober. In the end he took a taxi back to his airbnb and I lost sight of him. Oh, and I got free beers for the rest of the night. 😉
“As far as self defense goes, having pepper spray with you is not a bad idea.”
My main point was about the importance of having some hand-to-hand competency, which the guy I mention was dismissive (and rather smugly too at that) of. If I got hounded by some meth addict, I too would prefer to spray and run over punching him, but having the ability to “fight for your draw” (Gonna be hard to pull your spray/gun/knife/etc. out while your face is being beaten or you’re trapped in a hold) is pretty important.
“BTW, if you want to be effective at fighting in real life, you should above all practice a few basic punches and kicks, and learn to do them very well and land them hard.”
https://wimsblog.com/2013/05/boxing-for-self-defense-is-it-effective/
Yup. Honestly, I’ve seen some pretty ignorant normies out there think that Boxing is somehow the “weakest martial art” just because of the limited moveset. Sure, if you put a Boxer in MMA match against a well-trained MMA fighter, the MMA’er has all sorts of tricks up his sleeve (Either taking the boxer to the ground or leg kicking him from afar seem to be the most popular strategies) to kick the boxer’s ass.
But I don’t think the situation is quite that simple in a street altercation. Lets take those same two fighters and lets say they know absolutely nothing about each other. They get into a confrontation (maybe in a bar or something), and a fight breaks out. The MMA guy, not knowing that he’s up against a boxer, charges into fist fighting range. The boxer, being significantly better with his hands (not always the case, but lets assume it is here) quickly gets the upper hand and KO’s the MMA guy.
Granted, there’s definitely more than one way such a scenario can play out, and I would prefer/advocate to being the more well-rounded fighter, but I’m well aware that fights outside the ring are very different from those in the ring.
There was a real life incident that somewhat mirrors the scenario I give of the above. Look up Tito Ortiz vs Lee Murray. Had the two fought in the ring with them having knowledge of one another, Ortiz probably would have taken Murray down and ground and pounded him to a win. In a bar altercation however, the two exchanged fists and Murray quickly knocked Ortiz out with a combination.
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Also, you may get an excessive confidence in your fighting abilities after being used to sparring with more accomodating gym partners, where you rarely use your full force. Force control was an important part of sparring.
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https://chirontraining.blogspot.com/2008/04/mr-rubber-meet-mr-road.html
Yeah. A full-blown altercation just feels nothing like a sparring match. I got into altercations (and read Macyoung and Co.’s writings which gave me clarity on some of my experiences) long before I ever got into training, so it was a difference I was able to recognize and appreciate right away.
I mention having ran into issues with unruly sparring partners in the past training Muay Thai. Even in those, there was a lack of true malice. I began hitting the guy as hard as he was hitting me (he never wanted to screw with me again after, lol), but if I really wanted to hurt him, I could have charged right in with a flurry and threw him unto the ground to pound him out. Or I could have pushed him unto a wall and started wailing on him to make his skull bounce off the wall. (the gym didn’t have a proper ring) Or I could have even tried to corner him into the stairs that weren’t that far from where we were sparring. We were resetting position every time it looked like we were about go out out of bounds or he wanted to catch his breath. lol.
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After I began my TKD training I was willing to stand up to them, and lo and behold, the bullies chickened out. I never had to enter a fight with them. One buddy of mine who was the new guy at school got picked on at the beginning, until he punched one of the bullies hard, after which they left him alone for good. Not a fight, just a single hard punch in the middle of the face.
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Bullies are cowards in general, but there are definitely those who are mean enough to stomp you flat if you lack the ability to physically back up protecting your boundaries. I don’t think you disagree with me on the importance of learning to fight though. That “vibe” that you actually have something backing your words/threat display may have played a significant role in getting your bullies to back off.
About Macyoung…
Yeah, this isn’t about drinking anybody’s Kool-aid. There’s definitely things I don’t agree with him on (I’ll get to a few of them in a bit) and even times where he contradicts his own writing. For instance, I’ve linked his articles on de-escalation and negotiation, and that a big part of being able to do these things successfully is having the ability and willingness to ‘rock n roll’. This is a message that I 100% agree with.
But then, in a different article, he will talk about how “training to be a better” fighter is not worth your time, and will even make your problem worse (i.e. attracting bigger predatory fish to you) and that “People Skills” alone are the answer.
Training to become a better fighter will make your problems worse ONLY if you don’t fix anything else that could be attracting violence in your life. (i.e. a bad and inconsiderate attitude towards others or even just living in a shitty area) That’s true and its a trap a lot of macho young boys fall into. Thinking that becoming the best fighter means you can treat everyone however the hell you want because everybody will be too scared to do anything about it. That shit will indeed attract violence to you.
But then to go on and say that “People Skills” are all that matters contradicts a big part of his message regarding effective de-escalation and negotiation at the sharp end.
In his article about bullying, he says that for “victims” to get left alone, all they would have to do is copy the people who don’t get picked on, and that they don’t have to learn how to fight/hold their own. Again, you can’t just change your mannerisms/demeanor like its magic. a big part of a confident demeanor (especially in the presence of somebody whom you might feel is a threat) is having the security that you can at least hold your own if things go sideways.
and finally, he’s definitely expressed some ignorance on “sports martial arts/MMA”. Like, I’ve seen him call BJJ “ineffective”.
There is nothing “ineffective” about the submissions/joint locks in BJJ. Sure, you can make the argument that going to the ground is a bad idea in many altercations. That’s a fair point. But those “submissions” are some of the easiest ways to mutilate or even kill another human being when take to the finish.
Anyway, Macyoung’s Nononsenseselfdefense is free and worth perusing, just don’t drink the kool-aid and think he’s automatically right about everything. The biggest value I’ve gotten from Marc though is discovering other violence professionals/martial arts bloggers. I’ve mentioned Wim Demeere before as an excellent instructor/writer whom I discovered through Marc, and I find myself agreeing more often with him than with Macyoung.
Marc MacYoung’s website has a lot of good information, and is worth perusing and taking seriously, EXCEPT for the parts where he talks about himself or his history. Those are almost certainly made up in most cases.
I mean, take a look at this article:
http://nononsenseselfdefense.com/alphablogtwo.htm
He’s basically just mentally pleasuring himself for the first half of it. 😀
But the actual information on the website is pretty good, and I’ve used some of it to good effect myself. I can’t say I’ve been in any extremely high-risk situations, though, so I can’t vouch for it in those situations. But they’re usually extremely easy to avoid whether you’ve read Marc MacYoung or not. 🙂
The cultural shift yields us another victory:
https://www.lpga.com/news/2024/lpga-updates-gender-policy-for-competition-eligibility
The LPGA (the ladies’ equivalent of the PGA, the major golf association in the U.S.A.) no longer permits “transwomen” (born men who have “transitioned” to being women) to compete in LPGA tours:
“Accordingly, under the new policy, athletes who are assigned female at birth are eligible to compete on the LPGA Tour, Epson Tour, Ladies European Tour, and in all other elite LPGA competitions. Players assigned male at birth and who have gone through male puberty are not eligible to compete in the aforementioned events.”
This is not a complete victory, though, as this organization is still using the bizarre language of the left, speaking of people having been “assigned” the male or female sex at birth. Biological sex is not “assigned at birth”. You are born male or female. The sex of the child is determined already during fertilization.
I agree with you. Not a complete victory, but a victory nonetheless. 🙂
I think they’re using that wording in case of legal challenges. If they just said the truth: “Only women can compete against women,” then you can bet some transgender person who had their birth certificate changed to show they’re a woman (several U.S. states allow this) would sue them if they were denied and probably win, since they’d be a woman “officially.”
But if the policy states woman “assigned at birth,” then they can’t bring up later changes to support a challenge to the policy. It’s pretty common legalese, and since the U.S. is such a litigious society with so many activist judges, you always have to plan ahead for potential legal challenges.
As an example, the U.S. government uses the same language when it comes to registration with the Selective Service:
https://www.sss.gov/register/who-needs-to-register/
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Hopefully, one day soon we can go back to speaking like normal human beings. Until that day, I’ll take any win we can get, heh. 🙂
I reported some time ago that I have kidney problems. I have mild renal insufficiency (GFR 75) and there are erythrocytes in my urine. I was sent for a kidney biopsy with the suspicion of IgA nephropathy. The suspicion of IgA nephropathy was not confirmed. The kidney tissue is slightly scarred, it is tubulointerstitial nephritis. Cause unknown. The cause is still being investigated. My next appointment is in January.
I hope this all turns out well. How was this condition discovered? A while ago I started taking my health more seriously. As a consequence, I regularly get check-ups done, about twice a year. One is a “complete blood count”, the other an electrocardiogram.
Thank you. Random findings (blood and urine) at the neurologist I consulted because of Restless Legs Syndrome. The values were already conspicuous in earlier blood and urine tests done by my female general practitioner, but my general practitioner didn’t take it seriously.
My experience with female doctors has been mostly subpar but this surely had nothing to do with their sex. My experience is that they are very quick to just prescribe anything and do no bother to do a proper anamnesis. I have detailed one such negative experience in a blog post last year. A related example was when a female doctor noticed that I had high blood pressure. She said I should go on a particular medication and take it permanently. Asking about alternatives, I heard that there is none. The reason for my elevated blood pressure was the bullshit working environment I was in where I had to deal with morons eight yours a day and at some point it simply got to me. My current blood pressure is optimal, i.e. below 120/80, as it was in the past. This is not the result of any medication.
I have also noticed that quite a few people seem to be rather casual about their medications. There is one guy I spoke to about methylphenidate. He said that he experienced elevated blood pressure at first, but this is fine now because he is simply taking a different medication to take care of that. When I hear that I am thinking of my late grandmother who had to take so many pills that she needed to use a special pill organizer for the week so that she could keep track of when to take what, seven times a week, three times a day. Some of the medication she got targeted side effects of other medications.
I mentioned being prescribed Statins back when I was in college for high cholesterol, took them for awhile until I just stopped and no consequences came of it.
In one of my past checkups not too long ago, I got prescribed something for high cholesterol again after I sadly regained quite a bit of weight. (a different medication this time though) I just repeated what I did in the past. Took them temporarily, then just stopped and didn’t return for check up on that. Been fine.
We could say Doctors are just way too quick/eager to prescribe long-term maintenance medications, but maybe its not fair to put the blame entirely on them considering how the average joe/jane lives. They can recommend weight loss and find a regular physical hobby they can stick with, but lets face it, most will definitely not heed that in comparison to taking pills. and from their perspective, the latter is better than nothing.
BTW, in regards to issues with doctors not being able to offer useful solutions, I think you’ll be interested in reading this:
https://wimsblog.com/2014/11/chronic-exertional-compartment-syndrome-martial-arts/
Scary to think how the incompetency of the previous doctors he visited could have led to him unnecessarily putting up with pain for the rest of his life (and even being dismissed about it by folks around him, almost like gaslighting), if he hadn’t been persistent with looking for help.
“When I hear that I am thinking of my late grandmother…”
Do you happen to know any elderly that DON’T take multiple medications, Aaron?
Pretty much every elderly I know of in my personal life do, enough that it almost gives me the impression that this is inevitable if you don’t want to die soon. I would like to think however if you are able to maintain a consistently healthy and active lifestyle, you can live out your lifespan without relying on medication, (or at least not a cabinet of medications…) but I don’t know if this is naively optimistic.
Both of my parents used to not take any medication at all. Thanks to the vaxx, they need to take blood thinners nowadays. Without that pitiful mistake they would probably not have to take any meds. My grandfather also did not take any medications, as far as I know. He was physically active basically until his death. For instance, he chopped wood in his 80s.
My experience with female doctors is not the best either. I often had the feeling that they were not interested in my health and even wanted to harm me out of feminist hatred. The exceptions were old female doctors about to retire.
Cascading medication is unfortunately also common in the psychiatric field. You are prescribed an SSRI, have apathy and little motivation as a side effect, are prescribed bupropion, which attenuates apathy and lack of motivation, but then you can’t fall asleep, get trazodone, and so on…
I got the vax shot, but only once. A big part of the reason for that is because of just how goddamn inconvenient it was to get the appointment (the first one was already hell, and none of us were eager to repeat it), hospitals were FLOODED with long ass lines. so while my folks attempted to schedule follow up appointments, they never got followed through.
You also played a role though, in that knowing what you’ve written, I never tried to push to further the appointments, and I even gave out the reasoning that I stayed mostly indoors, so its pointless to get further shots since I now have the vaccinated ID. It was a good enough reason not to put ourselves through the shitty inconvenience again.
I got that 1 shot when I was at my absolute fattest, before I made my serious attempt to lose weight. Generally speaking , the higher the bodyweight, the higher our “Drug tolerances” are, right? (that’s why bigger people need higher dosages of medicine for effectiveness)
That makes me wonder if that helped minimize any damage the vaxx might have caused me (I don’t notice any damage today. Still don’t have to rely on any maintenance medication), alongside not getting further shots.
I was very disappointed with the procedures at the hospital. The kidney biopsy was supposed to take place on a Friday. I went to the hospital and was then sent home again because the doctors were needed in the overloaded emergency room. They misplaced my 20-page patient admission form (general information, data protection, biomaterial research, etc.), so I had to fill it out again. In general, it was one big mess. Nobody knows anything. Multi-ethnic Staff is illiterate.
In the hospital, the staff use Samsung cell phones, but the walls there are so strong that the signal can’t get through. The internal inpatient telephone network there was abolished / dismantled a few years ago.
Welcome to our diversity utopia! Worse than female doctors are foreign ones. I had some downright bizarre encounters. When I had braces I had to change dentists once, going from a white guy to a Middle Eastern woman. At the start of my first appointment, she suddenly put her fingers on my lips to pull them down in order to have a better look — and she did not wear gloves. This was quite unexpected so I immediately protested. She responded with some bullshit that current standard practices are to not wear gloves but she obliged. Apart from that, she did a fine job even though I view it somewhat ambiguously. The white dentist I had earlier told me I had to get jaw surgery in addition to braces to close a gap whereas the female doctor said that this was not necessary. Functionally, she was correct as my overbite could be fixed without additional surgery. However, I have two small gaps in my teeth. This is normally not visible because I obviously do no pull down my lower lip in everyday situations. The occlusion of my teeth is fine. Two teeth are simply a bit angled, leaving a gap at the base. While this was maybe not a perfect solution, it spared me from jaw surgery, which would have reduced the protrusion of my chin. By and large, I am probably better off with this outcome than the alternative.
When it comes to doctors, I think where they were educated is one of the major considerations. Poor education is especially a problem within the EU, since because of EU regulations, countries have to accept medical educations from other EU countries.
This has led to situations where people go to eastern European countries where you can either bribe your way through your education, or they recycle exams. Some of them use the exact same questions from the same question bank, so if you look at a few old exams you know every possible question.
Others literally use the same exam over and over with multiple-choice questions only – there have been articles in the Swedish media about schools where the students would just memorize the question numbers and answer (1 – c, 2 – b, and so on) and go through medical school that way.
Non-EU educated people are less of a problem, because they have to sit for a major exam that covers the entire medical school curriculum. So even if someone buys a medical degree from an African diploma mill, they won’t get a medical license unless they pass that exam.
So my policy is to pass on any doctor educated in eastern Europe. I’d recommend anyone in the EU to do the same.
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In the U.S.A. you don’t have that problem, but you have issues with affirmative action, which has plagued even the top medical schools. Hopefully that will be resolved now that the Supreme Court has banned the use of race in admissions, but even if that ruling is respected, it will be many decades until the previous affirmative action cases are all out of the business.
The only solution to this would be to see exclusively white and Asian doctors, but I very strongly recommend against this, as it would be racist and very naughty. If the only way to combat racism is to receive subpar care and suffer medical mistreatment at the hands of a minority doctor, then it is your duty to do so! After all, there’s malpractice insurance to pay for your permanent injuries.
Maou, and everyone, would you agree to this?
Be nice ….. .. before it’s time to not be nice:
https://youtu.be/O8aNfg0LBgQ?si=1c6FvCV7gdiA-AU2
I’ve never been a bouncer or taken on a violence profession. I probably have enough hands-on experience, Martial arts training, sufficient temperament (I put up with bullying in school for years before I finally said enough is enough), and research on the subject matter to qualify for that kind of job.
But I don’t think its worth risking having a beer bottle smashed unto my eyes. especially for the kind of low grade pay you usually get working this kind of job. There was once a website called allexperts.com where you can ask experts of varying fields whatever question you want and if the expert answers, it is shared publicly so that others may benefit from the answers too. A few self-defense instructors were there too. That was how I got the chance to speak directly to Marc Macyoung and Peyton Quinn and ask some questions to get clarity on some of my experiences. (My sharing of my stories here came from those convos)
Funny enough, one of the questions Macyoung addressed on the website was someone asking about Bouncer work. He recommended that he’d be better off taking up a job as a Pizza delivery boy over being a bouncer. LOL! (Funny, but true.)
Anyway, I guess to answer your question directly…
If you mean if I agree with the statement in the context of civilian self-defense…then yes.
My personal experience with violence came in the school environment, and I’ve said before that sadly a lot of what is normally good self-defense advice goes out the window in that environment because you are stuck there with the bullies. (Unless you can talk your parents into moving into a better school or better yet setting a good homeschooling system, but lets face it, that’s not always practical/realistic. It was definitely not doable in my circumstances.)
It took me awhile to recognize that though. When I was young, I was initially very dismissive of good self-defense advice because they would have marked you as an easy victim in high school. I was (because of PTSD) unable to think outside of that box at the time. The only thing that kept me on Macyoung’s page at the time were because a lot of what he described about how violence works has been accurate to my experiences (Not the higher-end violence stuff though. I never had to deal with weapon attacks, though I have been threatened with a knife once), and I wanted/needed clarity.
With time, psychological healing, and accumulating wisdom from further life experience from past high school, I now recognize that this is good information for life outside of high school. You get insulted on the street by some pissed off guy in traffic? Just suck it up for now, resist the urge to insult him back and drive away. You won’t see the SoB again.
I’ve certainly had run ins with some douches on the road and I was able to easily walk away knowing I won’t have to deal with them further and I’m secure about my fighting ability as a result of standing up to my bullies. So I don’t feel the need to prove myself by kicking this stranger’s ass.
Of course, when its time to “not be nice”, then you have better made peace with the decision and go forth with FULL commitment. As I’ve already shared the story, the one time I “lost” a fight is because of this. I was punching the bully in the chest because I just wanted him to go away and leave me alone, I was neither ready nor wanting a full-on fight right then and there, and I earned my lehrgeld there as a result. Fortunately, I didn’t make that mistake again in my next more important and final fight.
And if I ever get into another fight (which hopefully will be never), I definitely know not to make that mistake again.
Sorry, this is a probably a longer response than what you were looking for. But, well…violence is a pretty complex subject. There is definitely no “You just do this…” answer.
The German loanword “lehrgeld” seems really rare in English. Keep in mind that you pay, not earn lehrgeld. In the past, people had to pay money to learn a trade, which is the origin of this word. Nowadays, it is only used in the phrase “Lehrgeld bezahlen”, literally “pay one’s tuition fees”. The meaning is that you made a mistake that cost you some money, but learned from the experience so that you do not repeat that mistake. For instance, if you fall for a scammer, you have paid lehrgeld — but only if you do not fall for another scammer in the future.
Aaron:
Exactly the same in Swedish. The word is “läropengar,” so probably a direct translation from German.
When we are talking about actual tuition fees, we use the word “kursavgift” (course fee).
Karl, an interesting question is when “läropengar” appeared in Swedish. It is possible that this term was only used after the modern meaning of the German “Lehrgeld” had been firmly established. I am not sure if Sweden had strong guilds of craftsmen, for instance. Given the size of the country, it is not possible to have had a similar system as in the German states where trainees traveled from city to city, in a time well before there was mass transportation.
Aaron:
I checked Svensk Ordbok (Swedish Dictionary), and it says Swedish usage of the word is recorded since 1621. Not sure when the word changed its meaning in German, though?
(Also I seem to be behind the times – the contemporary spelling of the word is apparently “lärpengar.”)
We had a strong guild system with apprentices, masters, etc. in Sweden. I don’t know if they were expected to travel, though. Generally they were pretty tightly controlled. For example, until reaching master rank, craftsmen weren’t even allowed to marry!
Either way, our system was almost certainly heavily influenced by Germany, then adapted to local conditions. Until the 20th century we were in many ways Germany’s “little brother.” Heck, until like the 18th century the majority of people living in cities in Sweden were Germans – a lot of German traders came here to do business and settled.
(Real Germans – while we did have a few Jews, they were highly discriminated against, and legally repressed. Sweden was not a very popular destination for Jews at the time.)
So pretty much every aspect of Swedish culture is heavily influenced by German culture, except what has arrived since the 20th century (especially post-WWII).
This cracked me up:
https://x.com/gunnar_1488/status/1864837370375201008
Someone actually made a fake video (probably with AI) to encourage migration to Israel, even specifically mentioning Africa and India. 😀
Some Easter eggs slipped into there as well, like “doctors and engineers.”