GP said 'open bar with 2 bartenders'. I.e. commercially priced drinks, and staff. Did you have those? If so, pro tip, next time just get a few cases of various drinks, plonk them on a table with a bunch of glasses (rented, if need be) and call it good. People can't drink soft drink for more than, say, 3 USD worth in an afternoon; and even if you served 12 years Glenfiddich to everyone including the children, enough of it to knock them all out, you still wouldn't have spend more than $1000.
So yeah still wondering what sort of party you threw. I mean, yeah it's easily possible to spend that much, but it's also possible to do it for much less and you don't even need to really try.
You seem to be misreading his comment. Some guy making some observation biased comment is irrelevant. It's flat out wrong that Germans 'need' it less. The obesity curve in Europe trails that of the US a generation or two, yes (and several Asian ones trail it more). But the numbers and trends don't lie.
"a dude like Schwarzenegger is probably well in the overweight category"
For illustration, Arnold was 107 kg at 1m88 at his prime, giving him a BMI of 30.3, which is clinically obese. But yeah, LOL at all these people with 130 cm waists going 'BMI is useless'.
BMI still isn't great for fat people. An active fat person is going to have a significant amount of muscle compared to a sedentary fat person at the same body weight - just doing things carrying around that weight will build muscle. Some health markers, this won't matter for - your heart doesn't like pumping blood to a 300lb body, whether that's at 50% BF or 8% - but for a lot it does. Lipids, insulin resistance, etc. are going to be quite different in someone at 40% BF vs. 20% BF at similar weights with similar genetics.
Unfortunately it's not so easy to get a good BF%. BIA scales are probably what most people have access to, either at home or at their local gym, or calipers, but both are very inaccurate at getting totals and at best can help you understand trend directions. There are places to get cheap DEXAs in a lot of cities these days, but not everywhere, and $30 each time you go is still expensive for some people.
BF% and FFMI are both a lot more useful for everyone than BMI.
"Kind of tired of people taking anabolic steroids and then claiming it's a smaller part of their success"
Sounds like you've never taken steroids brother, and with that mindset you shouldn't, because I'll tell you that no matter how much you shoot into your muscles, if you don't put in the work in the gym, there's no way you're going to get jacked.
That position does not appear to be supported by clinical evidence. [This study](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dar.12433) references several studies that show that taking low (in the context of gym users) doses of steriods and not exercising is more effective at building muscle mass than strength training and not taking steroids.
Steroids significantly increase glycogen/water retention in-muscle while on them and for a period of time while coming off of them. This would increase muscle size by the measures noted in Bhasin's study (the big one people reference here), but not increase the amount of actual contractile tissue. There's also a cap there - going up in dosage, going for longer, etc., is not going to continually increase overall muscle size at that rate because you've saturated the stores in the muscle for the glycogen and water.
You will gain some additional contractile tissue doing nothing on gear. The average person, if faced with the two options, will gain more actual contractile tissue opting to lift weights without gear.
You can find huge quantities of people in gyms that are on gear and look like they barely lift.
Bro science bullshit doesn't belong here. I'd rather take roids and not lift than do SS+GOMAD and listen to /fit/ memes. Rich Piana and Zyzz are dead for a reason.
Did you bother to google his handle? While I don't know his pure mathematics credentials, he's nerd-famous enough to not warrant an introduction. In fact, you not recognizing it says something about you.
To be fair, we are on hacker news. I did once use on of his programs, American Fuzzy Lopper (fake advertisement lawsuit incoming if its not american). So he is not nobody apparently
If you're mid-40s (which is the threshold ago where I am), and can afford the up front cost, consider IOL implants. Life changing (for me). (and re: costs, these drops are going to set you back $1000 a year as well, so after 7/8 years implants would be 'cheaper').
I’d really like those. My Mom got them and she said it didn’t help her near vision, which I didn’t understand. I guess she was a weird case because yeah I had just assumed that a new lens would fix the hardening of the lens with aging problem. Thanks for letting me know!
How long should your new lenses last? Did they say? Will they eventually get hard like the human body’s lens or are you set for the rest of your life? It’s really cool you are part cyborg. Did you get a monofocal or multifocal lens?
I was told these lenses are for the rest of my life. I guess I'll know for sure in 40 years. They don't develop cataract like natural lenses do, and I won't develop presbyopia as these lenses don't focus using muscles around them. I have multifocal (trifocal) lenses, for near-, medium- and long distance viewing. Theoretically this means that I need more light to see as well as naturally focusing lenses, which worried me somewhat before, but in practice I do not really experience it - in fact I need less light to see well now than I did when I had glasses. As usual in life, the key to happiness is realistic expectations - as the surgeon told me 'there is no way we will be making your eyes work as well as they did when you were 20'.
Two things I do have: for optimal near vision, I have to keep things closer to my eyes than I did before, 20-ish cm. So I had to adjust my screen viewing and reading posture. Also, I have what are called 'halos' around lights in the dark (this is a known and expected side effect, tons of YT videos that explain why they happen). Driving in the dark on highways with lots of artificial light sources has gotten more straining - meaning I need to focus more and feel more tired after driving say 2 hours in those circumstances than I did before the surgery. All other driving is the same and I don't notice the halos any more in other cases, like say when I'm just walking through the city in the dark. The driving at night price to pay is well worth it for me, may be different for others.
Re: your mom - if she got monofocal lenses (which many people here do as they are the only ones covered by insurance if you're getting lens replacement for cataract), she would have gotten the choice between near- or far focus lenses, and would have decided together with the surgeon which ones are most appropriate for her life. I mean I obviously can't tell as I don't know her, but my dad is the same - he still needs reading glasses after his cataract surgery (IOL implants == cataract surgery).
Most artificial lenses, especially more than 5 years back, had a single focal point and did not adjust. You chose to either have near vision (mostly carless old people), far vision (and still use reading glasses), or blended vision (one eye far one near).
The flexible lens stuff is still relatively new and there are reports of them sort of being like 80% focused 100% of the time, which can suck. Apparently lots of individual variability in results, where as the single-focus lenses are 60s technology and well figured out.
Yeah there's an SK village inside the DMZ, I had lunch there last year on a tour. It's both wild and utterly unremarkable at the same time. There's a high fence around it, and you're warned not to go over that fence as there are land mines around it (as if someone would climb a, what, 2.5m fence while on a tourist tour?). The thing I found most remarkable is that house prices there are not much less than in Seoul proper (that's what I was told at least), which just seemed utterly absurd - what market forces could drive prices of a farmer village (because that's what it is, really - although the houses looked nice) surrounded by landmines and that is a pain in the ass to get in and out of to that of a first world metropolis? And although one after the other bus with tourists drove into the small parking lot, there was only a canteen for lunch (with canteen quality food) and a souvenir shop that is described at best as 'functional'.
>The thing I found most remarkable is that house prices there are not much less than in Seoul proper (that's what I was told at least), which just seemed utterly absurd - what market forces could drive prices of a farmer village (because that's what it is, really - although the houses looked nice) surrounded by landmines and that is a pain in the ass to get in and out of to that of a first world metropolis?
You are literally paid to live there and be a human flagpole through a tax-free salary of $82,000 USD for agriculture (as of 2013, likely higher now), as well as free education, agricultural incentives and preferential tax treatment. [1] On top of that, there's only a handful of homes, effectively amounting to an artificial housing scarcity.
If we are talking about Daeseong-dong, Wikipedia says “Only individuals who lived in the village before the Korean War, or are descendants of those who did, are allowed to move to the village”
So the market of potential buyers is quite limited. (Unless they allow absentee landlords-i.e. you can buy this house, it is illegal for you to live in it, but you can legally rent it to someone who can legally live in it.)
Although I imagine “former residents and their descendants” may be a much larger group of people than the current population. Not sure how many might want to move back to their (great) grandparents village though
> s if someone would climb a, what, 2.5m fence while on a tourist tour?
You seriously underestimate human stupidity. People stand on cliff edges to take selfies, pose precariously next to works of art, walk into people's home to have a look,....
So yeah still wondering what sort of party you threw. I mean, yeah it's easily possible to spend that much, but it's also possible to do it for much less and you don't even need to really try.