#i would as well if i could read like a marathon sprinter

[ibikus]

I love books and reading so much and there are some book bloggers/vloggers I enjoy watching but jesus christ that whole community scares me.

[awheckery]

DEATH TW and mentions of murder so if that is triggering for you don’t read, but if it’s not then i’d like to ask if you’ve heard of forensic genealogy? while i am uneasy at the prospect of using it to find suspects, it can also be used to find the identities of unidentified decedents, who die of accidental causes or are murdered, and often it’s the only hope to identify those who have been unidentified for decades. the dna doe project is a nonprofit that’s mostly volunteer run, and i think that your research skills could be useful there or somewhere like there. i know this is kind of a random ask to receive, identification of unidentified remains is my special interest but i don’t have the time or training to get better at researching beyond a few tricks here and there.

I feel like we've read the same articles recently; did you see the tumblr post (and linked articles) about Joseph Augustus Zarelli, the Boy in the Box?

Which is to say, yes, I am aware of forensic genealogy and the DNA Doe Project, because like many white American women, I'm a true crime junkie.* My big Thing is investigative procedure tho, so I'm also deeply interested in plane & train crash investigations, medical mysteries, archaeology, anthropology... basically 'what happened, and by which processes and methods do we figure out what happened?'

So far as getting into the game myself, I dunno. I assume there's probably some sort of required formal training, along with the expectation of reliability and sustained effort, and I'm a chronically ill autodidact with ADHD. I'm the research equivalent of a sprinter; investigative genealogy requires a marathoner, because there's so much exhausting, grinding work involved.

Something I've never seen brought up before in any investigation is how many extant family trees are just wrong. Genealogical sites make it too easy to crib notes from other users, and all it takes is one person deciding 'eh that's probably the right guy' for dozens of other amateur researchers to make the same mistake, and then somebody ties that erroneous information to their DNA profile. I don't know how the forensic genealogists deal with that.

You also have to take into account how many people throughout history have just gone missing, or otherwise fallen off the historical record. Just because someone's date of death is absent doesn't mean something nefarious happened to them. (Just because someone's date of death is present doesn't mean it's correct.) People emigrate. They marry. They change their names. They die alone and unknown in a ditch**, or they die somewhere that doesn't make those records public***. Paper records can burn or flood out, and family stories rarely make it down more than one or two generations. History is messy.

I've only done serious research into my family background for two years, in fits and starts interrupted by illness flare ups. Half the time it feels like I find more questions to ask than I get answers. I've found a pair of illegitimate daughters and a handful of adoptees. I've found some two dozen 'missing persons' who may as well have disappeared into thin air, for how suddenly they dropped out of the historical record. I've found a murder victim and a (maybe) would-be murderess.

And four months ago, I found the answer to another family's 150 year old missing person case, and it changed everything I thought I knew about my mother's family.

This is how.

Five months ago, I thought I knew everything there was that could be known about John Robert McDowell.

I knew he was born July 1st of either 1868 or 1869, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. According to his naturalization petition, he came to the United States in April of 1883, when the absolute oldest he could have been was fourteen, and at the time of his naturalization in 1896 he claimed his nationality was English, presumably due to anti-Irish sentiments at the time.

I knew John's handwriting was idiosyncratic: he wrote the J in his name with a rightward upper loop that scooped up again before curving back around the center staff, and his uppercase R was a mess of curlicues. I've never seen the like before or since.

I knew that despite living in America for ten years longer than he'd lived outside it, John still had an accent in 1908 when his second son was born. Spelling is incredibly inconsistent across historical records because up until very recently, it was the practice of the record keepers to write down their best guess at what they heard, and in 1908 a midwife heard and recorded John's surname as McDoul.

John's life was actually remarkably well-documented, in comparison to his contemporaries. I bought myself access to Newspapers.com along with my Ancestry subscription, and he made semi-regular appearances in the Newport News Daily Press for the better part of thirty years as a Navy veteran, successful entrepreneur, and president of a labor union that later became the United Steelworkers Local 8888. (A seemingly throwaway notice in the Daily Press was the only record I've yet been able to find for his divorce, which eventually led me to find out whatever happened to his wife, which is another saga entirely. Pauline, you dirty rotten cheater.)

I knew that John was in and out of the hospital with thyroid cancer, but he was such a tough old bastard it took the better part of fifteen years to kill him, and he died in 1954 at the age of 86.****

According to John's death certificate (and the U.S. Government records at the VA hospital where he died), his parents' names were Thomas McDowell and Isabell Rabb (or possibly Robb, the Accent strikes again.)

This is the only record linked to either of them on Ancestry.com at all.

I have most of a history degree, so I wasn't surprised. There are next to no records of the 1890 census of the United States, and that was down to a fire in the National Archives. Ireland was dragged backwards through hell by the ankles for centuries by a succession of British monarchs and governments, and Belfast was in the prime of especially conflicted territory for much of it. No census records from John's lifetime were kept, and the likelihood his parents would show up in the surviving fragments from 1841 and 1851 was slim to none.

There were transcribed indexes from birth and marriage records available, at least, and I scoured them through, looking for a John McDowell, and there wasn't a single damn one born to a Thomas or Isabelle McDowell in a decade on either side of 1868. There wasn't any record I could find at all of a Thomas McDowell marrying an Isabelle Rabb until well after John left Ireland.

Five months ago, as far as I knew, John Robert McDowell was probably a bastard, who'd either been left out of whatever records were taken at the time, or he was one of the unfortunate ones whose birth record had been lost.

Four months ago, I realized that the record indexes on Ancestry included film numbers, which meant there were pictures of those records to be found somewhere. If they were organized chronologically, I could try to find his birth registration that way. Googling "ireland civil registration records" brought me to the Civil Records search page of a genealogy site run by, of all things, the Irish government's tourism department.

Once again, there wasn't a John McDowell born to the right parents during the right time period, so I went looking for his parents' marriage. And found it.

If they married in 1872, John would probably still technically be a bastard, but I had a point to start from. Once I clicked into the actual scan of the record I nearly snapped myself in half sitting upright in attention, because Thomas McDowell's father's name was Duncan, John named his eldest son Duncan, Isabella's father's name was John, I had to have the right two people, this couldn't be a coincidence.

And then I noticed Isabella was a widow. Isabella was a widow.

Who was your husband, and when did he die, Isabella? I searched again, and found her marriage to a Thomas Logan July 30th, 1866. No men named Thomas Logan died in Belfast between 1866 and 1870, which meant he was probably still alive when John was born. It meant I had been looking in the wrong direction the entire time.

John Robb Logan came into the world on July 1st, 1868, in the Ballymacarrett district of Belfast, the second child of four born to Thomas Logan and Isabella Robb. Once I knew what I was looking for the rest came easy.

John's early life was riddled with tragedies. His younger brother Joseph was six months old when he died in March of 1870. His father died of smallpox in December of the same year, exactly one month after the birth of his sister Mary. Three months before his fifth birthday, his first half-sibling Bella died, at just five months old. And in 1879, his older brother William died after a long, miserably drawn-out illness from spinal tuberculosis.

(As an aside, god, poor Isabella. She had four children with Thomas Logan, and a further nine with Thomas McDowell, and before her early death from a long respiratory illness she buried a husband, two sons, and two daughters. How do you go on after that, how are you not forever shattered?)

If I hadn't been sure I'd found the right family, I was after William died. Thomas McDowell was the person who reported William's death to the registrar's office after sitting by his deathbed. The registrar recorded William as a "child of [the] baker" that Thomas was by profession; Thomas McDowell claimed his stepson as his own.

Duncan McDowell, John's step-grandfather, had a family burial plot in Ballygowan, and he named William Adam Logan as his grandson, with no qualifiers, when they buried him.

All the evidence suggests that the McDowells loved John Robb Logan and his siblings, and he loved them back every bit as much. You don't choose to take on the surname of people you hate, and it seems very much the case that John chose to go by McDowell when he came to America. I'm honestly not sure there was a way for Thomas McDowell to bequeath his name to his stepchildren, given John's brother William died a Logan and his sister Mary married as one.

John Robb Logan disappeared from history after his baptism, and John Robert McDowell made his first confirmed appearance in the historical record in 1883, but I was certain they were one and the same. The problem was proving it to my mother, because McDowell was her family name. She'd grown up with it, as had her sisters and her dozens of cousins and her father and his siblings and her father's father; I only had a paper trail arguing the name she knew didn't belong to any of them by blood.

So I went for blood.

I refuse to give my DNA to Ancestry.com on a principle born from paranoia and ethics concerns. It's absolutely not happening, ever, like hell do I expect a corporation to do the right thing with my genetic material. My mother doesn't share my concerns, either now or four years ago, when she bought an Ancestry DNA kit and then did absolutely nothing with her results besides marvel at the unexpected Swedish heritage in her 'Ethnicity Estimate' because doing anything else looked like too much work.

It took a few days to figure out how to hook my mother's DNA results into the tree I've built, and a few more for all the features to populate, but all told it took less than a week between learning the truth about my great-great-grandfather's parentage and proving it irrefutably with DNA, via several descendants of his full-blooded sister Mary and a grandson of his half-brother Wallace.

Ancestry doesn't tell you when new DNA matches are found, or when someone adds you to their tree (and thank god for that, my mother has somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty thousand matches). To those descendants of Mary Thomasina Logan, the handful of John's descendants who've shelled out for Ancestry DNA kits could be any random person. Frequently the relationships between matches aren't clear, because of all the folks like my mom who never add a tree to their results, or those who don't try to go any further back than their grandparents.

As far as Mary Logan's descendants know, the sons of Thomas Logan dead-ended his line, and when I do find John in their trees there's never more than a birth year and a blank space where there would usually be a year of death. (They all have the wrong Isabella Robb too, but I don't really blame them; apparently Isabella was one of the most popular names for girls for well over a century, and Robbs weren't exactly thin on the ground.)

Someday soon, I'm going to reach out. People who study genealogy do it because they're looking for something: long lost relatives, answers to questions asked too late, or even a better, more personal understanding of history by learning about the people who were there when it happened. Every family has its mysteries and this one, at least, could be solved.

John's story doesn't end here. Here is where it begins.

~

*I'm aware of the problematic nature of White Lady True Crime Brain Poisoning, but I'm gonna have to pull the 'I'm not like other girls' card. I'm incredibly discerning about my crime shows, I hate the fucking cops, and I'm realistic about how unbelievably low my chances are of ever being the victim of a violent crime. I'm white, I'm broke as shit, I'm built like a running back and walk like the Terminator, and most importantly, I'm single and planning to stay that way for the rest of my life. The only way I'm getting murdered is if I happen to get caught in a random mass shooting, which isn't outside the realm of possibility because America.

**In case anyone's gotten this far and is still interested, there's strong evidence that the mystery of the Somerton Man was finally solved last year. At some point I'd like to take a look at the tree the forensic genealogists built tho, because I have some Doubts. There was only one person in that family that fell off the map in the 40's? Just one? I was lightning-strike kinds of lucky enough to find John's real parentage, but I dug up more unanswered questions with it, because two of his half-brothers dropped out of the records after 1901. Completely setting aside the possibility of infidelity in the Webb family and how common inbreeding has been (both historically and in recent memory) in populations of European descent, I have a hard time buying that Carl Webb was the only person who could be the Somerton Man. It's still cool as shit that they have a strong possibility tho.

***Maryland and Kansas specifically can blow me, if somebody died in either of those states I have to find an obituary or a tombstone to get the mcfrickin' date, and I have to either pay money and prove a relationship to see a death certificate, or show up to an archive in person to search on their intranet, MARYLAND WHY DO YOU NOT WANT ME TO KNOW WHEN MY GREAT-GRANDMOTHER DIED. (Being fair, I don't know if she died in Maryland, that's just a great-uncle's best guess, because she ran away from her family in 1949 and nobody ever saw her again after the early 60's. Helen, where the hell did you go?)

****One of the big reasons why I got into genealogy in the first place was to see if I could find how far back the predisposition to early deaths and autoimmune disease went in my family. What I hadn't expected to find was a predisposition for extreme longevity on all sides. Longevity as in 'skewing the life expectancy bell curve' kinds of longevity. As long as someone didn't come down with a freak illness or make a looooooooong string of poor life choices, they were apparently immune to death, which honestly explains a few things about Crazy Grandma, god damn.

[tales-of-magic-and-chaos]

Fic Year in Review

Tagged by: @shinindragon, thank you very much! ❤️

Total number of completed stories: 4

Total word count: 5022 (I only include my finished and posted works, including my WIPs would be a mess haha)

Fandoms written in: Marvel (MCU)

Looking back, did you write more fic than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? Well... At the beginning of the year I wasn't considering writing fic at all so I'd said I totally wrote more fic than I thought I would! X) when I watched the MCU, I fell so in love with FrostIron (and later FrostIronStrange) that I started taking notes of my ideas and writing them.

What’s your own favorite story of the year? A lot of the stories I'm the most excited for are still WIPs but among those I finished.. I think I have a particular affection for Adoration because it's one of my first works and it's supposed to be the first part of a larger FrostIron fic (or FrostIronStrange maybe because I have the habit of always wanting to turn FrostIron/IronStrange works into FrostIronStrange xD).

Did you take any writing risks this year? Well, I started to write fics for the first time! After years of simply reading fics (and writing some poetic/fantasy/original fiction) I finally went for it. Oh, also I wrote age regression unapologetically. I still hesitate something about if I should put it on another account or not but. Fuck it. I'm less and less insecure, ashamed or guilty or what I can enjoy in fiction.

Do you have any fanfic goals for the new year? I don't set goals because I think pressure is really not something my anxious and depressed ass needs lmao. But I hope I can manage to finish some works, especially those I like the most!

Most popular story of the year: Eternity. But, really, it's only because it's written in English. Other than that my other most popular fic is Chaud et froid. Both of them are FrostIronStrange fics.

My most under appreciated story, in my opinion: I would say it's my FrostIron fic, Adoration. Very lyrical, much self-indulgence but I like how I described Tony's feelings.

Most fun story to write: Huuum. Difficult to say. I think than apart for Eternity, who is a mini-fic imported from a Twitter thread, the other fics have been written when I was in... This writing mood of sudden and frenetic inspiration (I'm more of a sprinter than a marathon runner). So, like, in the moment it was exactly what I was in the mood to write. Nonetheless I think I had fun writing Time and Space's Baby! It was the first time I finished and posted an age regression fic and it's always very fun to write.

Biggest disappointment: Not being able to write all my ideas, quickly, and how I want I guess lmao. Also, realizing that I won't have as much interaction as I could have because I mainly write in French.

Biggest surprise: Realizing that 1) I am allowed to write fics, 2) I can write fics, I just have to start. And also: the support I got and non-French speakers reading my fics (by translating them!). Honestly, I feel really honored and happy to see non-French speakers taking the time to read my fics because not being able to interest as much people as I could have if I was writing in English is really one of my insecurities.

Tagging: @kymera219 and whoever want to do it!

[imanes]

hi Imane ❤️ you always have the best advice to give out and i was hoping you could help me? how can i convince myself that being finished with my studies when i’m nearly 30 isn’t a bad thing? because the thing is the people around me will all be having full time jobs when i’ll just be graduating and i feel as if i’ll be way behind everyone my age and i’ve missed so many things that they’ve already been through? i can’t help but compare myself to others my age and i feel like i’m slacking :(

hi angel! first of all thank you for putting your trust in me. idk if i actually give good advice but i just hope for the best lmao. i think it’s always hard to navigate in a society that seems to have a very limited range of predetermined paths deemed acceptable by the majority. i’ve personally never understood why the act of learning in higher education has to come with an expiration date and past that specific age range all graduates are considered to be “abnormal”. i think it’s bullshit! if you think about what pursuing your studies stands for at its foundation, i believe you’ll manage to re-centre the core principle of your pursuit and how positive and self-affirming it is rather than frame it within the narrow lens of outdated, elitist, ridiculous and arbitrary notions. graduating before a certain age, working a certain amount of hours, all these things are symbolic projections of “success” that are arbitrary and subjective. they don’t make any sense. to be honest, as i was telling my friend a couple of days ago, if we were going back to college now we’d be much more well equipped to manoeuvre our time there and we’d probably do a better job overall in terms of critical and creative thinking. as for the comparison with other people, each and every one of us only has one life, and we all go through experiences that are unique to us. even though some people follow a straightforward trajectory, it doesn’t mean that it’s the only one, or the best course of action. you think you’ve missed on so many things, but none of them come with an expiration date! to be honest, the only thing that can stop you from living your life is death itself, and that’s the common lot for all living beings on this planet. if i crack immortality i’ll let you know but in the meantime no matter how key you think other people’s milestones are, they’re not meant for everybody. if we all led the same lives things would be boring as hell. i think the most famous example of unconventional academic and professional journey would be miuccia prada’s and if you want to know more about her you can read her wikipedia entry but she was basically everything under the sun before she founded her fashion house. moreover, it doesn’t matter what people your age are doing because most of them don’t know what the fuck they’re doing and when they do, it would probably be something so far-fetched as far as your personal experiences are concerned that you’d just be like “lmao no thank you”. i have friends who are entrepreneurs, i have friends who got married and have children, i have friends who are going with the flow, i have friends who never finished uni, and at the end of the day we all learned something different but equally valuable on our journey. finally, please remember that it doesn’t matter how fast you reach the top of the mountain as long as you keep your sights on reaching it eventually. some people are sprinters and others are marathoners. graduating in your late 20s will most likely allow you to offer unique insight and a degree of maturity to whatever you put your mind to that will elevate your work and make it that much better than what you could have produced at a younger age, because we are shaped and honed by our life experiences and when you learn from them, they make you a better person. apply that to your academic pursuits and be proud of the work you’re accomplishing. you can compare literally every single minute thing in your life to everyone else’s and at the end of the day you won’t draw out any meaningful conclusion. there are kids finishing college at age 13. congrats to them but that ain’t me and that ain’t you and it’s FINE! i know it’s hard to get rid of that competitive mindset that was embedded into our brain by the capitalist superstructure regulating our lives but know that it is where it comes from and if you want to free yourself from these shackles, you have to accept the fact that these pseudo-rules about what’s acceptable and what’s not are made up and they don’t say anything about your inherent worth. even if one decides to not finish uni, it doesn’t make them any less than someone who ended up with a piece of paper to symbolise years of work blood sweat tears and most likely debt. you’re not slacking, you’re simply doing the best you can within your circumstances and that’s all you can ask of yourself and hold yourself accountable for. the rest is just needless noise and unfounded guilt. i wish you the best of luck! you’ve got this :-)

[ptrghassani]

Knowing My Self

Just finished reading: Better Than Before by Gretchen Rubin. It's a book about making and breaking habits, with strategies that could be chosen based on people tendencies. I thought, it will be a waste to read this without (trying to) implementing it. Although I already did some of the strategies un/consciously, being more aware of my self is always a good starting point. So here I am trying to do the first step of improving my habits: self knowledge.

Gretchen observes four types of people in terms of how we act to expectations: 1. Upholder: responds to outer and inner expectations 2. Questioner: question all expectations, and only reacts to it if the answer is justified 3. Obliger: responds readily to outer expectations, but hard to keep track of inner expectations 4. Rebel: resist all expectations, outer and inner alike. But more likely to follow inner expectations

At first, I realize my self as an obliger. Easier to follow formal deadlines (school project, thesis meeting with supervisor) rather than internal deadlines (self-made milestones for the project or thesis), that's why I procrastinate a lot because the urge is there once the due is nearby. There are a lot of aspects of me connects to the obliger identity. I like to work at the library or cafe, where someone could SEE ME, hence I slack less knowing that people are around, it's one of my outer accountability. On the other hand, when it comes to exercise, I always like running but never consistent. It makes me not progressing, as if I monitored the progress anyway. But I always do it alone. Sure, I found it easier and more fun to run with a friend. I also realize that going running with someone makes me nervous sometimes because I cannot run that far yet. Okay I'm going everywhere now haha focus. I rely on inner expectations when it comes to things I believe will make my life, my body, or even my feelings better. For example, the exercise (now I do it regularly), eating healthier food (more nutritious breakfast, less oily lunch, healthier snack), reading a book, using skincare, and etc. I think this means I am a questioner as well in some aspects of my life, not all. Then if I wanna change something, I should ask my self first, which tendencies are you leaning towards in this matter?.

On the top of the tendencies, the author divided two categories of people in different subjects:

Am I a lark or an owl? I thought I was a quarter-owl, because I did my work a lot at night (in working or in masters) but not so late until past midnight. You know what? I never liked or enjoyed it. I always wish I did it during the day so I would have my night time to rest and do other things. Most of the time I worked with half shut-down brain too. The thing is, I am a lark that sleeps like a koala. "I should go to sleep earlier" "But I still sleep 7 hours even if I slept at midnight!" That is the culprit. Yes, it is hard to change my habit into waking up earlier, it feels like my brain always sleeping around 10 AM after that. Surprising to me, I can still do a lot of things in the morning and work more efficiently with that sleepy brain. Morning sleepy-brain is better than the night one. Am I a marathoner, a sprinter, or a procrastinator? As bad as it sounds, I am a procrastinator, sadly. Trying to be a marathoner because sprinting will damage my heart.

Am I an underbuyer or an overbuyer? Never think of my self this way, I am an underbuyer. I postpone (procrastinator much?) buying thing I NEED countless time. Shopping, especially online, drains me out. Even that I love looking at clothes, it stills tires me.

Am I a simplicity lover or and abundance lover? Simplicity. My mind get foggy if my surrounding seem or sound like a mess.

Am I a finisher or an opener? A finisher for food, and books. An opener for personal projects (scrapbook, blogspot posts -> obliger detected)

Am I a familiarity lover or a novelty lover? I can say familiarity in limited time, then I need novelty once in awhile.

Am I a promotion-focused or a prevention-focused? Prevention-focused on treating and connecting with people. Promotion-focused otherwise.

Do I like to take small steps or big steps? Small steps. Of course "small" is subjective to each person. I did answer this in my head while I was reading the book. There are things that I'm quite surprised but also things I've always known. Honestly, it's fun to get to know my self this way. See you again in the part 2, self! Thank you for spending time with me tonight.

[marklandfinancial]

Two Habits walk into a bar...

During this pandemic, as many of us have, I have had many hours to fill. I have found that podcasts have been a great filler that keep my attention as well as actually contribute something to my life; I have been exposed to many new ideas, thoughts, systems, and people , none of which are available to me on a regular basis. One of my favorite podcasts is the Armchair Expert, starring Dax Shepard, not because of anything particularly ground breaking, but he usually has interesting guests on and they delve into topics not normally covered. One expert he had on really struck a chord with me; B.J. Fogg, a Stanford professor whose expertise lies in habits. Specifically, how they form, good or bad which, when you come to think about it, is a very useful bit of info for a human to have. Essentially, his thesis is that a habit becomes a habit when you have a repetitive action that (emphasis mine) HAS POSITIVE EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK. Are you a woman who loves new shoes? It could be that, as a child, every time you got a new pair of shoes, your family, friends and strangers would compliment you on them. You liked the compliments and attention (POSITIVE EMOTIONAL FEEDBACK) and BAM! you are addicted to Nordstrom's shoe floor and there 2x a week. How about a guy who was the funniest guy in the room after a few beers? Why wouldn't you love to go to happy hour and tell jokes when everyone laughs and feels good being around you? See how that works? So if you have a bad habit that you want to break, try and figure out how it affects you emotionally and you are on your way to breaking it (with some hard work as well, this isn't magic). Conversely, do you want a new habit? Make sure you get praise (either from others or yourself) when you do it. Working out? After you do that, make sure to give yourself a mental high five or have a workout buddy who tells you "great job!". That positive feedback will start a fly-wheel affect and can lead to knock on effects later!

So, in my new found fascination with habits, I search out information that can help me create better habits as well. So listen up, I just found a game changer this AM. Hopefully, it will do the same for you. And, this isn't my research or my information, let me be clear. I want to share what I have found from other sources and give them all the credit!

The source of this info is an article I read on the Ascent, a site I frequent, and the author of the article cites Gretchen Rubin and her book Better than Before. Believe you me when I tell you I will be procuring a copy of this but wanted to give you the short version as this as mentally unlocked so many things for me in around 5 hours. Habits and habit forming does involve emotion but they also need to "recognize the basic aspects of our personal nature". What the hell does that mean? It means that diet that is generally a good idea doesn't work for you, it isn't because there are faults with you or the diet. You just have to customize the diet or whatever new habit it is to you. The author has a few Vs. that are illustrative and that have already helped me identify why some ideas work or don't work for me.

The first is Moderation Vs. Abstinence. The prime example of this would be booze; if you are truly an alcoholic, you can't moderate. You must abstain 100%; it is a binary decision for them. The same can be true for us with other decisions. Is it better to have a cheat meal or is it better to avoid that all together? If you are a moderator, cheat meals can be a pleasure. If you are an abstainer, cheat meals can lead to cheat days lead to cheat weeks and well, you get the drift. Which one are you? I have already figured out I am an abstainer and that will change my diet henceforth.

The second is Lark vs. Owl, which is essentially morning person or night owl. KNOWING that about yourself helps you design your day appropriately. If you are an owl, good luck getting up to work out; same thing with working out after work if you are a Lark. Don't try and fit the habits to what you WANT ("it would be so nice to have the workout done by 7am!"), fit it to REALITY

Third is Marathoner vs. Sprinter. Think about a school project; would you rather start day 1 and have it done the last day of the semester? OR do you need the urgency of knowing you only have 2 days left and haven't even started? This will help you understand the importance of deadlines and how they related to you.

Fourth- Simplicity versus Abundance. Again, another simple way to look at this; would you rather have a beautiful croissant with fresh butter and a glass of fresh OJ for breakfast? OR do you get excited by the thought of an amazing breakfast buffet, overflowing with options from omlette's and bacon to French toast and pancakes? It helps to understand your leanings when designing the habit; to lose weight, do you just want to do a 5 mile run every morning? Or do you need a gym and all the myriad classes and machines to motivate you?

Fifth- Familiar vs. Novel- do you love routines? Or do you really enjoy the challenge of something different every day (somewhat like the Simplicity versus abundance but slightly different)

Finally, there is Promotion vs. Prevention. Do you think "I don't want to get fat and unhealthy, so I shouldn't eat that" (prevention?). Or do you say, "I want to look great at the beach!" (promotion). Again, not right or wrong, but understanding yourself and how you view the world can help you build habits that easily align with you and your values and personality. You will have a lot better chance of losing weight if you pick a diet that includes carbs if you love pasta.

[nelliievance]

Is Cardio Useless Or Harmful? Will It Make You Fat?

Lots of Cardio Makes Your Muscles Waste Away and Makes You Get Fat? Hmmm… what about “Ultramarathon Man” Dean Karnazes?

The “Too Much Cardio is Harmful” Controversy

I promised, in my recent post about shorter more intense training, to talk more about controversies over excess cardio. Much of the discussion is about too much volume of intensity, which can be harmful to the cardiovascular system, leading to conditions like AFIB. as I covered here and here. But there’s another level to the discussion, authors who argue that even lower intensity activity like jogging are useless or even harmful. You can find this all over the internet, just search for “cardio and muscle wasting” or “cardio makes you fat”. Some of it comes from pretty well known strength and conditioning coaches so I’m not inclined to dismiss it. The argument is not that all cardio is useless, high intensity interval training is usually recommended, but steady state cardio is considered at best time-inefficient, or even useless or harmful.

This debate is relevant for the large percentage of people exercising that are interested in body transformation (fat loss along with retaining or gaining muscle). Even people who think their main objective is losing weight probably really want body transformation. For this purpose, those who are not fans of cardio argue that resistance training is the most important type of exercise. Cardio at a higher intensity, such as high intensity interval training, may play a useful role, but many say that the typical cardio you see people doing, such as jogging, is low or medium intensity steady state cardio and is not useful, at least for body transformation.

I actually agree with the priority order of resistance training first, followed closely by high intensity cardio. I avoid medium intensity steady state cardio (MISS) as I’ve discussed here. My main goal in doing low intensity steady state (LISS) is enjoyment and relaxation, but I also feel it has value for fat loss. So whether or not LISS cardio is a good idea is the main point of contention. There are two main arguments to support the view that it is not useful or even harmful.

Excess cardio can cause the level of cortisol to be chronically higher in your body. This puts your body in a catabolic state which over time can lead to muscle wasting.

Concurrent cardio and strength training can lead to an interference effect I described here, so that you gain less muscle than you would have if you did strength training alone.

The potential for muscle wasting leads some to claim that “cardio makes you fat”, because losing muscle slows your metabolism, so you burn less calories and get fat. But as we’ll see, significant muscle loss only occurs when doing a lot of cardio, so I think this claim is exaggerated.

What The Science Says

There are two main pieces of scientific evidence. The first is that if you do cardio training concurrently with strength training, you will gain less muscle than if you do strength training alone: Cardio can interfere with muscle gain. It does not prevent it, it slows it down [1]. There is a really good discussion (with references) here about concurrent cardio and resistance training, which gives tips on how to minimize the interference. In that discussion, I learned the interesting fact that the interference effect is worse for running than low-impact cardio modes like cycling, because the eccentric contractions of running causes microdamage to muscles.

The second piece of evidence is that long cardio events, like running, cause levels of cortisol (sometimes referred to as the “stress hormone”) to rise, for example cortisol levels rise significantly over baseline values during a marathon and remain so for a few hours afterwards [2]. Cortisol, in excess, has a catabolic effect and can lead to muscle loss [3]. So chronically doing an excess amount of cardio could lead to muscle loss. But excess seems to be routinely doing at least the level of training endurance athletes like marathon runners do, which can lead to longer term elevation of cortisol [4]. It is a little more complicated however, because the intensity level matters. I suspect many of the runners with elevated cortisol levels may do too much MISS training. Evidence of this is a study showing ultramarathoners not to have elevated cortisol runners [5]. They run longer distances than marathon runners, so if it were simply a case of “too much cardio”, their cortisol levels should be worse. The difference is that ultrarunners typically train at lower intensities than marathoners. And the average runner doing 30 to 60 minutes a day of LISS cardio almost certainly does not have chronically elevated cortisol.

So the two claims made above are supported by science, but only for excess cardio, and the amount that constitutes excess is quite a bit.

Common-sense Arguments

Another argument that you’ll typically see compares sprinters and marathoner runners, and asks “which body type you’d rather have”? Here is the great Usain Bolt compared to the current world record holder in the marathon, the amazing Eliud Kipchoge, who also informally ran a marathon is less than 2 hours. The attempt does not count as a world record because of the way it was paced. By the way I was saddened to hear recently that Usain Bolt has come down with the coronavirus, and I wish him a complete and speedy recovery:

The rebuttal to the sprinter vs. marathoner argument is that there is genetics involved here, as well as “selection bias“. Eluid was more slender to begin with, which made him more likely to become a marathoner. Usain was bigger and more muscular to begin with, which made him more likely to become a sprinter. But I’ve seen at least one counter example: In Mark Sisson’s book Primal Blueprint, he describes two young identical twins from Germany. One decides to become a bodybuilder, and the other an endurance runner, and the former ends up much more muscular and the latter more slender. I must admit I sometimes motivate myself to try harder at resistance training or high intensity training by telling myself “if you want to look like a sprinter, train like a sprinter”.

Is it that cardio is bad for you, or neglecting resistance training is bad for you?

A lot of people have a single sport they love, and other physical activities are more of a chore for them. If your cup of tea is something like running, hiking, biking, you may want to spend a lot of your leisure time doing what you enjoy and not spend enough time strength training. Note that all the examples I gave are leg-dominated activities. It helps if your sport is something that uses upper body muscles a lot, like triathlon, swimming, rowing, kayaking, etc. For this reason I have intentionally cultivated enjoyable activities that use the upper body, including canoe paddling, kayaking, and cross country skiing.

But even that is not enough, resistance training is still vitally important for health as we age. A good example of an endurance athlete that includes strength training is ultramarathoner Dean Karnazes, who has achieved crazy things like running 50 marathons in 50 states on 50 consecutive days. As seen in the photo at the top, “all that cardio” has not made his muscles waste away or made him get fat. But I’m sure the strength training helped a lot. The only specific cases of muscle wasting I’ve heard about are from people during ultra-endurance events where refeeding was difficult. For example, Scott Jurek lost almost 20 lbs (about 9 kgs) when he set the record for the Appalachian trail, but that was exercising for many hours for over 46 days, and he talks about the problems taking in enough calories in his book North. Since he was lean to begin with, this had to include a lot of muscle loss. I also recently read Mimi Anderson’s fascinating account Beyond Impossible: From Reluctant Runner to Guinness World Record Breaker, of her setting the Guinness world record for running JOGLE (running the length of Great Britain north to south- John O’Groats to Land’s End). She lost a stone (14 lbs or 6.4 Kg). most of it muscle, during the 12-day run. But she again talks in detail of having trouble taking in (or keeping down) enough calories. In contrast, Dean Karnazes is renowned for his ability to eat on the run. In his book Ultramarathon Man, he described running through the night and having a pizza delivery guy meet him with a pizza. How do you eat an entire pizza while running? You role it up like a burrito!

What about athletes whose sport is leg-dominant, but who still need considerable upper body strength to excel? A good example is cycling sprinters who do stage races like the Tour de France. They need plenty of stamina to get over several mountain passes, just to stay in the pack so they’ll be in contention for the final sprint. But they need upper body strength for the sprint, so in addition to hours of cardio per day of training, they do a lot of resistance training. Consider Thor Hushovd of Norway, nicknamed the “God of Thunder”:

All the cardio he does clearly has not caused him to lose muscle mass (or get fat).

Excess cortisol and the cardio-strength interference effect are not the only health negatives claimed for cardio. Other claims are inflammation and free radical production (discussed here). But again I think these claims would only be valid for doing cardio in excess or doing too high a volume of moderate to high intensity training.

I recently cut back on my volume of cardio because of the bad air we were experiencing. But lately the air’s been fine again, so I’ve gone back to my enjoyable long rides and hikes. But I do them at LISS pace, And I am sticking with making sure I give my strength training and high intensity work its proper priority, even if it is in shorter sessions.

References

Wilson, J, et al, “Concurrent training: a meta-analysis examining interference of aerobic and resistance exercises”, J Strength Cond Res, 2012 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22002517/ ).

Cook, N, et al, , “Changes in adrenal and testicular activity monitored by salivary sampling in males throughout marathon runs”, Eur J Appl Physiol Occup Physiol, 1986.

Tataranni P, et al, “Effects of glucocorticoids on energy metabolism and food intake in humans”,  Am J Physiol, 1996.

Skoluda, N, et al, “Elevated hair cortisol concentrations in endurance athletes”, Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2012.

Deneen, W, and Jones, A, “Cortisol and Alpha-amylase changes during an Ultra-Running Event”, Int J Exerc Sci, 2017.

Is Cardio Useless Or Harmful? Will It Make You Fat? published first on https://steroidsca.tumblr.com/

[adventuresinclientservice]

What elite endurance athletes can teach us about client service.

I thought we had made it to the far side of the Covid-19 hill, with new cases on the wane, deaths declining, and the country emerging from lockdown. 

How wrong I was. 

To prove a point that needs no proof, I could throw a bunch of scary numbers at you, but I’ll share just one:  a prediction from infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a lead member of the White House Corona Task Force:  “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 [new Covid-19 cases] a day if this does not turn around.”  

Dr. Fauci made his dire prediction nearly a week ago; day after day, the U.S. comes closer to make his prediction reality.  Do the math:  in one month there would be three million new cases.  Three.  Million.  Cases. Even in a country as large as ours, this would spell disaster, with hospitals overwhelmed by a procession of extremely ill people, some (perhaps many) of whom won’t survive. 

We are in this for the foreseeable future and beyond, extending past this year into the next, until there is an effective vaccine that is widely produced, administered, and effective in halting the progression of the disease.  My wife Roberta and I had been coping fairly well with the hand we are dealt, but the other day was the first time she admitted she was feeling discouraged, and more than a little depressed, by the prospect of month after never-ending month of near-quarantine. 

Seeking a bit of optimism to pierce the gloom, I was reminded of a story in The New York Times:  “What We Can Learn From Endurance Athletes About Getting Through This Pandemic.”  The article claims elite endurance athletes possess four principles that help them prevail, and often excel, in even the most difficult of circumstances, including the predicament in which we currently find ourselves:  patience, pacing, process, and purpose.  The piece points out the principles are supported “by science and practice,” so I’ll assume they are accurate, or close to it.   

So, do these principles apply not just to the world at large, but also, more specifically, to client service?  I like to think of myself as a teacher, but truth be told, I am in equal part a student.  Just when I’m thinking, “I have the mystery of elite client service solved,” it was good for me to go back to class.   

Here’s what I found: 

Patience typifies a client service person striving to be great.  Patience when things go awry with a client or colleague. Patience when it means going back to the drawing board to do the work again.  And again.  Patience when it means needing to put in an extra hour, or three, to get work where it needs to be.  

To draw a term from the sports world, great client service are what you might call “grinders,” people who play the long game, less likely to focus on wining an argument than they are on sustaining the relationship with clients and colleagues. 

Pacing also matters. Great client service people follow the wisdom of legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden, who advised his players to, “be quick, but never hurry.”  They know there always is time to do it over, and strive to get it right the first time, not the fifth time.  Marathoners, not sprinters, they know, “You’ve got to go slow to go fast.” 

Great client service people are masters of process.  They respect craft, learn it, and know when to deploy it.  Able de-constructors, they are able to distill even the most complex task or challenge to its component parts, then accomplish it. 

Great client service people have a sense of purpose; they practice client service not as a job, but as a calling, believing they are on a mission to deliver great work, combined with near-flawless execution, for the clients and colleagues with whom they collaborate. 

Patience, pacing, process, purpose.  Familiar words, used in an unfamiliar way. 

I have tried to define what it means to deliver great client service more times than I can recall.  One example is here.  Another is here.  A third, here.  I could go on – there are many more posts on the subject -- but the approach I’m speaking of today comes from an entirely new and different perspective.   

Read the article, think about what it says about elite athletes.  Then think about what is says about client service.  If you agree the four principles have merit, I suggest you make them part of your routine, given that, now more than ever, they make a difference.

[123designsrq]

TOKYO 2020 | THESE OFFICIAL SNEAKERS REVEAL THE FUTURE OF THE OLYMPICS

Produced through the Gold Partner from the Tokyo, japan 2020 Olympic games, Asics has released a unique edition of the Gel-Quantum running footwear sneakers having a vibrant color gradient and also the Tokyo, japan 2020 branding around the sides along with the shoe tongue and rear. The footwear include gel-cushioning within the rearfoot and forefoot and were produced like a special commemorative series for that Summer time Olympic games in Tokyo 2020, Japan sneakers. I think of the rainbow gradient would look absolutely fantastic while in motion, and that i don’t understand why this shouldn’t be a collectible item sometime later on! Whether you are tackling a road marathon or you’ve just discovered the local 5K park run, the most crucial bit of package you'll need is a set of the very best running footwear for the gait. Finding running trainers that be perfect for your ft and goals could possibly be the distinction between heavily pounding the pavement, and feeling free and simple when you float within the miles. We are dealing with this season's footwear - with reviews rising already - to get the best footwear for all sorts of middle to lengthy distance runner. Sprinters: you are by yourself. Please be aware: these footwear should not be mistaken with the very best workout footwear - the needs will vary for individuals. Nor could they be the very best trail running footwear - but it is okay, there exists a top ten for your too. Tokyo 2020 sneakers are best simply because the elements gets a little cooler, that does not mean you need to stop your running training. In addition to the apparent indoor option (a.k.a running on the treadmill), there is also all-weather running footwear and rule the roads during fall/winter season. Running throughout the cooler several weeks can enhance your overall cardiovascular health insurance and therefore cause you to less prone to illnesses. Running can also be a terrific way to increase serotonin levels within your body, reducing levels of stress and improving general thought of well-being, something people need when it is dark outdoors whenever we awaken plus the afternoons. Be sure to obtain a mind torch for running if you're running on uneven terrain (nobody wants a ankle sprain) and a few compression tights for running or base layers to help keep the cold out. 2020 olympics tickets 2020 olympics logo 2020 olympics mascot 2020 olympics location winter olympics 2020 olympics 2024 olympics locations 2028 summer olympics Read the full article

[fredenglish]

Michelle Whittaker

Hello there again, #FeatureFriday fans! Today, we’re offering a special treat: an interview with SUNY Fredonia alum Michelle Whittaker, whose debut poetry collection Surge is just one topic of discussion alongside her experience as a musician, how Jamaican patois informed her writing, and why so many poets are sprinters.

1. You recently put out Surge, your first published collection of poetry. What are some steps of the publishing process that you think might surprise students who haven’t had to deal with that yet?

Well, a little part of the book came out of my thesis. Although some of my professors thought that “this is ready to be sent out,” I didn’t agree. So, I think one surprising part was that I actually stepped away from it for a few years and really took time to think about the arc, so the arc changed a number of times. I went to a few conferences and workshops just to look at particular poems. So, I really took my time. Even when my current publisher came to me and asked if they could, you know, look at my manuscript, they were hoping that it would even be a little longer than it was. And so I did try to address that, but I really recommend taking your time to build the collection that you want.

Other than that, I had a really good and positive process with my editor, we had pretty good communication. It’s more the business part of it, sort of the marketing, I guess. Not on their end, but just: how do you set up readings and stuff like that. They’ll do some, but there’s just a lot of learning curves once the book comes out. Like, how to get it to an audience, to readers, and that was kind of a new process. So, I recommend maybe having a good plan, time-wise.

2. What do you think drew you to poetry as a medium?

Well, I have sort of an off-the-record joke about that. My dad was a marathon runner, and so he was encouraging me to run cross-country, and it was kind of terrible. I used to fall every few seconds. But it turns out that I could sprint! So I quit [cross-country] and was pretty fast. And so, when I’m in kind of funny circles with other writers and running comes up — like, talking about sports and childhood — I’ve found that a lot of fiction writers like cross-country and a lot of poets like sprinting. More short-form. Don’t hold me to this! [Laughs] Obviously you can have epic poems, and book-length poems, but I like something about the short form. I haven’t quite figured that part out.

I started out of music — playing a lot of classical music pieces — and even if a piece of music was twenty pages, it didn’t feel like it. When you’re in the process of interpreting, I guess. There’s a different type of access [to music and poetry]. I feel like, with a novel, I wouldn’t want to be interrupted too often? I’d rather sit and read it like I’m watching a film. Poetry is like snapshots, almost like visual rhetoric in a way. I like that I get to live in this world, and then move to another world; I like something about that.

3. Speaking of music, you were (and presumably, still are) a classical pianist. How do you think your background in music affects your poetry, and do you see any significant connections between your poetry and your music?

I’ll say: I’m in the process of thinking about that right now, but there’s music as an interpreter. As a pianist, I’d likely be interpreting others’ text. And then there’s being a composer, where you’re generating and you’re in dialogue with those who’ve come before you. Sure, you can generate your own without having to learn about Chopin, but in my journey, I felt that I always had a lot of teachers introducing me to new material. And so, maybe the short answer is that poetry is also constantly in that dialogue. Words are constantly being redefined, in the same way, that no ten people playing a Chopin nocturne are going to play it the same. I feel like they have that, at least, in common. But I’m in the process of trying to figure [it] out.

I found writing music much harder. Just gonna be real about it. [Laughs] I had great teachers, and I definitely was emotionally attached to a lot of different classical music. Many types of composers, what they wrote, I was very emotionally invested. And I was actually, even attracted to composers who stood for something? For, what you’d say in today’s terms as “social justice,” statements about what was going on in their particular time that relates to the human condition. I think I set out to do that, but I just never felt like I was creating a piece that said what I wanted it to. So, it might have been that I just turned to words. Because it was a sort of easier access, in some ways. I definitely think that being a musician for all those years helped that skillset, though. And I had great teachers, here at Fredonia, they were very, very supportive.

4. How do you think your education, both your undergraduate at SUNY Fredonia and your graduate work at Stony Brook, have impacted the approach that you take with your poetry?

I think at Fredonia there was just an openness. I was being introduced to a diversity of writers. And that was exciting. I was a big fan of Octavio Paz, and I don’t even remember whose class it was, but I did a whole presentation on him. Or the Surrealists, or…. at Fredonia, I had to take “Western Civilization and the Arts?” There was a set of courses, and I don’t remember the name of it now, but we pretty much had to understand the history of artists and how they collaborated, and their different aesthetics. And though it would have been great to just take sort of an overview, I really appreciated that they had us take those courses. As a musician, or as a budding artist. [Laughs] Just to understand how artists work together. And I did a lot of that [learning] at Fredonia. I got to play, you know? And then contextualize it later, in real life. You’d never know, but all those skills I’m doing now!

Stony Brook was great because one of my professors at Fredonia had introduced the class to, say, Derek Walcott’s work, and by the time I was at Stony Brook I was sitting in a classroom with Derek Walcott. And that was such a wonderful education. But what I liked about Stony Brook was that they weren’t interested in changing my voice, they were just interested in giving me more tools to work with. Prosody, you know, a lot of essay writing. And they encourage you to take writing in different genres, even though I wanted to study poetry. So I really appreciated that, because I do think that different art forms inform each other.

5. Is there somebody who stands out to you as being singularly important to your career as a poet?

One of my teachers, George Dorsty. He was a teacher out on Long Island, just a wonderful storyteller. He loved poetry (I think he’s a haiku master!). He teaches in Virginia, I think, now. We’ve kept in touch. But I’ve had a lot of great English teachers. In my Master’s program, there was Julie Chen and Star Black. Julie’s a good questioner. She’s really great about being attentive to the facts on the page because my mind can really wander. And Star Black, she studied under Ashbery, I think. Good at thinking about different ways to generate. Terrance Hayes, I worked within a few places, and he’s good at sort of asking questions in his poems and just talking about philosophy and poetics. And just not worrying about the mainstream, he was really good to talk to about that. It was nice to hear from a teacher, face-to-face, that it’s okay to be sort of obsessed with the craft and sitting down to get to work. There’s certainly other poets, of course, but those are the first that come to mind.

6. How do you think your experiences as somebody of West-Indian descent have influenced your poetry, mechanically or thematically?

It’s a good question. [Pause] My parents grew up in Jamaica, and I grew up here. But there was a lot of cultural influence in my house. The joke is, when my mom was living in Jamaica and pregnant with me, she said that at the time that there were two basic radio stations. One that played reggae music, and one that played classical music. And she loved classical music! So we just have a joke that that’s where the love came from, somehow, me in her womb enjoying what she was enjoying. And she introduced me to some poets, early on. Well, folklorists. So I’m sure their language influenced my speech, definitely, language patterns, syntax. I sometimes had a little trouble at school as a kid, a little bit of stuttering issues, and I didn’t know if it was because I’d hear something one way at home and hear it differently at school. These might be pretty current, current and reoccurring themes for first-generation kids. I feel like I see it in certain students when I teach. I’m sure that it’s influenced me in that way.

But from some of the poets that I’ve come across who are known here in this country and have West-Indian background, what I feel like I’ve learned is that you can be open. Talk about anything. I feel like those particular poets, like Claude McKay or even Derek Walcott or Louise Simpson — I grew up on Louise Bennett too, she’s Jamaican, one of the folklorists I was thinking of — reading their work, they gave a sense of talking about whatever was on their minds at times when I think that they might not have felt that way? That unspoken permission, that you have things to say.

But in terms of mechanics, I don’t know. My parents had some patois in the house in Queens. Again, the Queens English, which I think had [an effect] on my earlier comment about syntax and recognizing speech patterns. Understanding the patois, and the Queens English, and the standard Long Island American English. I’m sure they all played a part. And then when you get into music, I love Tori Amos, these early-90’s women and indie artists, which also probably played a role.

7. What would say is the most important lesson that poetry can teach us?

Most important? [Poetry] teaches us how to be a better observer of the world. And how to ask a question. I think inquiry as dialogue turns out to be pretty important in the journey. And maybe enjoying the process of creating, in terms of writing words or writing music. I know a couple of writers who have sort of dropped off. Not that they were [necessarily] more product-focused, but that’s what I suspect, and they just didn’t quite find yet what they enjoy about the process. And I do think it probably takes a long time for some people because there is something that they’re tapping into that they want to keep doing. I think that finding your own process and being patient with yourself [is what a writer needs]. But I think it starts with observing. Like, really observing. Not being afraid to look, and question.

[toldnews-blog]

New Post has been published on https://toldnews.com/sports/ex-rugby-international-braced-for-record-attempt-on-everest/

Ex-rugby international braced for record attempt on Everest

Armed with evasive speed and a wicked sidestep, the diminutive winger crossed for 58 international tries during his career — 18 more than any other Welsh player has managed. He also scored a record 57 times for club side Ospreys.

But during his playing days he could hardly have envisaged the record he’s about to attempt to break next.

As part of a wider group of 30 adventure-seekers — including fellow former internationals Lee Mears, Ollie Phillips, and Tamara Taylor — Williams will attempt to advance up Mount Everest to take part in the highest ever game of rugby.

No stranger to setting himself a challenge, Williams has completed a number of Ironmen — the grueling distance challenge involving a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile cycle, and running marathon — as well as cycling the length of California and trekking across Patagonia since his retirement from rugby in 2014.

Nothing compares, however, to the challenge presented by Everest.

“As a rugby player, I was a sprinter, so the last thing I ever thought I’d be doing was (the) long distance anaerobic training” required before taking on the world’s tallest mountain, the 41-year-old Williams tells CNN Sport.

“But I enjoy keeping fit, I enjoy challenging myself and I enjoy the fact that it takes me completely out of my comfort zone.

“I’ll be on this mountain with a group of other people that are in the same position as me. We’re all going to have to help each other up that mountain and down it as well and break this Guinness World Record and I quite like that.”

READ: The 20,000km cycle to the Rugby World Cup

��The unexpected’

Departing on April 13, the 24-day trek will take the party 6,500 meters up Everest where they hope to play the highest game of full contact rugby and the highest game of mixed touch rugby. At least $265,000 will be raised for children’s rugby charity Wooden Spoon.

The adventure will begin in Chengdu, China, before trekking for over a week across the high passes of Tibet to reach Everest Base Camp.

By the 14th day, the group will have reached Advanced Base Camp, and just beyond that — at 6,500m — they will make their world record attempt which would better the current best effort of 5,752m set in 2015 on Kilimanjaro.

“I’m nervous in the sense that I don’t know what to expect. I’ve done nothing to this extreme before,” says Williams.

“When I was playing rugby I knew what was coming. I knew who I was playing against, I had done my prep, I knew how difficult it was going to be … you get battered around the rugby field so you prepare yourself for that.

“But this one, it’s the unexpected … I could walk up there and my fitness could really help me and I can help people get up that mountain; on the other side of it as well, I don’t know that the training I’ve been doing is enough.”

Altitude sickness

The biggest challenge — and the biggest unknown — says Williams, is how he copes with the altitude. Even seasoned marathon runners can struggle with altitude sickness, and the effects of being exposed to the snowy slopes of Everest can be debilitating.

At the mountain’s 8,848-meter peak, for example, each breath contains one-third of the oxygen found at sea level. Most people can last 20 minutes at the top of Everest before it becomes unbearable.

READ: Could ‘adopted Welshman’ Warren Gatland coach the All Blacks?

Williams’ team of hikers, of course, won’t be attempting to reach the summit, but they will have to run, pass, tackle, and scrum at heights they’ve never previously experienced.

“I probably underestimating the whole trek,” says the former winger. “I do a lot of triathlons and I’ve done a couple of Iron Men now and I thought I’d be fit enough. If I can run a marathon surely I’m going to be able to do this?

“But recently I’ve started doing altitude training and realized straight away that it’s a lot more difficult than I expected.”

What he’s also become aware of is how the challenge is much more than just a physical test. There’s the matter of a fundraising target to hit, too.

“People are working really hard to raise these funds, doing events whilst juggling a family and businesses and jobs at the same time,” says Williams. “That’s blown me away.

“People have been training hard as well. We’ve had a lot of pictures of people on top of mountains and going for walks with their family and everything. I think it’s just brought everyone together so it’s great.”

[phatjosh180]

For The Love Of Running ...

I love running.

That shouldn’t be much of a surprise. And, if it is — I am not sure if you understand what kind of blog this is you’re reading? Anyway — let it be known … I love running.

When I started running some 6-7 years ago, I had no idea where it was leading. I basically started because it was a challenge my personal trainer gave me as a way to help with my weight-loss. It started with runs around the Rec Center before the challenge grew to training for a 5K. After that first 5K I officially had the bug.

Over the those same past 6-7 years my running journey has brought me to many starting lines, across many finish lines and countless training runs with others. My love of running grew through friendships made out on the trails and roads. Running became less of a workout and more of a community over those years. It has my heart.

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:22am PST

I love sharing that love for running with others. My hope is that by sharing that love someone, anyone, can have a similar journey like my own. Sure, a lot of my journey had to come from within, but if it was for the hundreds of friends that I’ve met along the way that also shared that love — I am not sure if I would have these same strong feelings?

And, as much as I love sharing this love of running with friends — I absolutely love sharing it with my family, because they are the ones closest to my heart. When I started running the closest runner I had was my sisters who a few years prior ran a half marathon. But, bad knees and numerous knee surgeries took both of them away from the longer distances. So, it’s just been basically me who’s delved into the running scene.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t expect my family to become runners. I get that life happens and that there are other hobbies. But, I am the one who always invites any of my siblings to run with me, train for a half marathon or even a full. Because, I do want to share with them this gift and passion for running with them.

I’ve been able to get a few of my siblings to run 5Ks with me. My sister has run a couple of 5Ks with me and same goes with my brother-in-law. My younger brother keeps telling me he wants to, but hasn’t yet. And, I really enjoy those moments that we can.

A photo posted by (phat) josh (@fit.phat) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:51am PST

But, last year the focus of my running invitations have turned to my nieces and nephews as well. Last July for my niece’s birthday I bought her an entry into the Frightmares 5K and we ran it together. She even won her age group! We had a blast together and it was a great way to go into my 50 miler the week after.

Running with my niece made the younger cousins jealous. Because they wanted to run with me as well. Especially my niece Callie — she’s been to a few finish lines cheering me on and has been asking my sister when she will get to run with me. I would be lying to you if I didn’t secretly love this anxious excitement of hers.

So, I set to change that.

This past weekend was the Sweethearts 5K here in Bountiful. It’s my hometown race put on by the Rec Center. It’s a great little 5K that I’ve run a number of times — solo, pushing Elsha and a couple times with siblings or in-laws. Considering the price and location I wanted to give all of my nieces and nephews (that could run) the chance to run with me.

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:26am PST

So I signed up with Maya for the 5K and then signed up Elijah and Callie for the Kids K. When I broke the news to the latter two — they couldn’t have been any more excited. They got to run with Uncle Josher and get their own race medal! And, quite honestly, I couldn’t be any more excited to run with them as well.

The 5K started at 9am followed by the Kids K at 9:45am. I didn’t worry about not being able to do both, because Maya and I ran the Frightmares 5K in about 36-37 minutes. I was hoping and feeling like we would do similar or better time-wise.

And, I wasn’t far off. When we started off it was hard keeping up with Maya. She’s a speedster and really quite the runner. I am truly amazed. It really comes naturally to her. I warned her a couple of times to slow down a bit so she didn’t “burn out” going out too fast. But, let’s be honest — it was my feeble efforts to keep up with her.

I was really proud of her effort and natural ability. I would have sent her off on her own, but being the responsible adult (I laugh at that irony) I did want to keep her close for her own safety since this was only her second race. I didn’t want her to wander mindlessly into traffic or take a wrong turn (something that happens to the best of runners might I add). But, when we got to the home stretch I just let her loose. I told her who to follow and where to turn and then just told her — “GO GET IT!”

And, she went and got it! She finished just under 35 minutes! Quite impressive for an eight year old if you ask me.

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:33am PST

She didn’t place her in age group. She was slightly disappointed by that. But, I reminded her the rules to running — 1) Have Fun, 2) Have a Ridiculous Amount of Fun and 3) Repeat — and asked her if she had fun. Which of course she said yes. So I reassured her she’s still coming away a winner.

We didn’t have much time — like any — to bask in our race, because the Kids K was starting in a couple minutes. The 5K started about 10 minutes late, so instead of pushing the kid’s race back too they started it on time. Which I guess is good? But, I was literally catching my breath when Callie, Elijah, Maya and I started off in a mad dash.

They’re sprinters.

Well, at least I swear they’re sprinters. Or maybe its’ their youthful endless amount of energy? Either way — they really left me in their dust. I tried to vain to get my exhausted legs going, but it was in vain — they were gone. Sure it was a 1K race, but they were yards ahead of me while I ran alone — in a kids race — without a single kid of mine in sight. Talk about feeling awkward.

But, as soon as I caught up with them at the finish line any amount of awkwardness was erased as they all showed me their medals. Their excitement only grew — a feeling I knew very well. It was a moment I will cherish.

A photo posted by (phat) josh (@fit.phat) on Feb 12, 2017 at 1:38pm PST

I can’t wait to share more of these moments with them again. Especially my other nieces and nephews — and especially kids. I know it won’t be soon that all of them will graduate from Kids Ks to 5Ks and maybe even longer.

But, that doesn’t matter — what matters is that they had fun. They got to share in a hobby that I love dearly and they got a taste of the life of a runner. But, we were all able to share time doing it and that’s what I will always cherish. So without making this a cheesy Mormon commercial about spending time with family, I’ll leave it there.

Needless to say, Saturday was a great day.

And, a great way to go into this upcoming week as I look to tackle my next ultra — the Jackpot Running Festival.

VEGAS OR BUST, BABY!

T-Rex vs. Panda. The T-Rex wins. #chubbingtatum #firstbirthday

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 9, 2017 at 7:52pm PST

A year ago today this kid burst into our lives like a T-Rex on a mission. Words can’t justly express how much I love this kid. He really is one of the smartest, kindest and loving kids. Stranger Danger is going to be hard to teach to this one. #chubbingtatum #firstbirthday #prouduncle

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 9, 2017 at 6:31am PST

After running the 5K with Maya, I ran the Kids K with the rest of the Kiddles. This was Callie and Elijah first race and they couldn’t of been more excited! #sweethearts5k #running #5k #hashimotoswarrior #hashimotos #hipbone #workout #runutah @fit.phat @josherwalla

A photo posted by (phat) josh (@fit.phat) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:54am PST

Um, yeah, those kids are fast! I seriously couldn’t keep up with them. Proud of them! #sweethearts5k #running #5k #workout #hashimotos #hashimotoswarrior #runutah #hipbone #workout #fitness #health #wellness @josherwalla @joshruns180

A photo posted by (phat) josh (@fit.phat) on Feb 11, 2017 at 9:56am PST

Two years ago today marks the passing of my Grandma. Time comes and goes, but it’s the people who love and care for you the most that make an impact that time can’t fade. My Grandma will always be my biggest fan. She always believed in and encouraged me to keep running, keep writing and keep living life — always being kind to others. Time will never erase that impact. Today might be a day of remembrance of her, but she’s truly remembered daily. Borrowing a phrase to describe our bond she would always tell me, “remember you are loved! Always have, always will!” Right back at you Grandma! #grandmasarethebest #grandmasarespecial #grandmasareforever

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 11, 2017 at 6:32am PST

Celebrating this buddy’s birthday today. He’s turning 38 next week and since I’m out of town I took him to his favorite Chili’s for dinner because they sing to him and give him free ice cream. I’m lucky to have such a great friend like Dave in my life. He’s one of the kindest and friendliest guys I know. Plus, he’s got like 150 girlfriends … so he’s kind of a big deal! #superdave #gangsteroflove

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 11, 2017 at 6:42pm PST

No, I didn’t go to Primary. I made Valentines cards in Elders Quorum today. #thismormonlife

A photo posted by Josher (@josherwalla) on Feb 12, 2017 at 3:02pm PST

RUNNING MILES

95.15 miles

RACE MILES

16.82 miles

WALKING MILES

89.47 miles

TOTAL MILES TO DATE

226.07 miles

A photo posted by The Runcast (@theruncast) on Apr 18, 2016 at 4:40pm PDT

For The Love Of Running … was originally published on PhatJosh | My Life Running.

[godlivesandloves]

Nikon Z 5 Review: Full-frame But Too Slow

“The Nikon Z 5 would be a great entry-level full-frame camera if not for its unreliable low light autofocus and slow burst speed.”

Read More : Buy Best Camera

Good image quality

Compact

Affordable

Dual SD Slots

Slow low light autofocus

Inconsistent autofocus in mixed/low light

Slow 4.5 fps burst mode

As the race for full-frame mirrorless settles from a sprinter’s pace to a marathon, camera lineups are getting more varied — and less expensive. The Nikon Z 5 is the company’s most affordable full-frame camera currently on the market, less expensive than even the aging D610 DSLR. The Nikon Z 5, priced at $1,400 or $1,700 with a kit lens, mixes the size, ergonomics, stabilization, and even most of the image quality of the company’s pricier Z 6. In fact, the Z 5 even offers an upgrade the Z 6 and Z 7 don’t offer — dual SD card slots.

The entry-level designation, however, introduces a few significant cut features from the pricier models. Speed is significantly slashed, 4K video can only be captured with a crop, and the design isn’t quite as rugged. The question is, does the Nikon Z 5 offer enough to drop $1,400 on? Dubbed as a camera for “more than just photographers,” who is the Z 5 best for?

I spent almost two weeks trying out the Z 5 to see where the entry-level full-frame stands. In that time, I believe that the Nikon Z 5 showed itself to be a good entry-level full-frame camera unfortunately held back by subpar low-light autofocus and sluggish burst speeds.

Simple design

While the Z 6’s design is a near twin to the Z 7, the Z 5 strays a bit more from that family line in ways that are both good and bad. On the positive side, the Z 5 manages to fit two UHS-II SD card slots, ideal for either creating in-camera backups so a card error doesn’t spell disaster or to create overflow for less card swapping. The Z 5 also doesn’t use XQD cards, a good move for an entry-level camera considering the card type retails in the triple digits, a lot when compared to the affordability king that is SD, where many high-capacity cards can be had for as little as $20.

Despite adding an extra card slot, the Z5 is only a 10th of an inch wider than the Z 6 and Z 7 and doesn’t add any weight. At less than a pound and a half, the camera is light enough for all-day shoots. (I can’t say the same for the rough texture of the included neck strap, however.) Paired with the kit lens, the Z 5 didn’t cause any major aches and pains while on a two-mile hike.

Hillary K. Grigonis/Digital Trends

The Z 5 uses a magnesium alloy frame but combines that with a plastic exterior that feels just like an entry-level Nikon DSLR. The body is weather-sealed, but it’s not as robust of a seal as the Z 6 and Z 7. As a result, I would still keep an inexpensive camera rain poncho in my bag for anything more than a drizzle.

The camera’s control scheme is a nice hybrid blend between keeping controls accessible yet not overwhelming beginners. The top of the camera doesn’t house an extra LCD screen. I argue that a top-facing LCD isn’t terribly unusual for mirrorless, but its absence here strays from Nikon’s design choices in its entry-level full-frame DSLR, the D610, which kept the screen intact.

The camera’s control scheme is a nice hybrid blend between keeping controls accessible yet not overwhelming beginners.

Instead, the mode dial sits on top within reach of the shutter button, dual control dials, and shortcuts for recording video, adjusting ISO, and tweaking exposure compensation. With some practice, all those controls could be accessed without pulling the camera away from your face, though differentiating between the ISO and exposure compensation button is tough to do blind, unlike with the easily discernible raised record button.

Despite being an entry to the full-frame category, the Z 5 keeps my all-time favorite camera control: The joystick. It’s a quick and ergonomic method to adjust where the autofocus point is. Swapping between autofocus modes, however, as well as a number of other controls that Nikon’s DSLRs leave plenty of room for, requires jumping into the quick menu or assigning to the two custom buttons up front. Most beginners won’t mind, however, because the camera’s controls feel less daunting to learn. Shortcuts to adjust the burst mode and a back-button focus option, as well as playback, menu, and display options, take up a remainder of the camera’s rear controls.

Ports were not stripped for the budget price either — opposite the dual SD card slots, the Z 5 still includes ports for mic, headphones, HDMI, USB, and a cable trigger. Like many full-frame mirrorless cameras, the Z 5 lacks a pop-up flash.

The lower price doesn’t terribly truncate the Z 5’s viewfinder, either. At 3.69 million dots, the electronic viewfinder shows sufficient detail and is denser than the also-new Panasonic Lumix S5. Importantly, the Z 5 shows a pretty accurate representation of what you are about to capture, unlike some budget cameras that I’ve tried that don’t quite show an accurate preview of the exposure or color balance. The 3.2-inch touchscreen tilts for shooting from high angles but doesn’t flip forward for vlogging or selfies.

Stuttering performance

Budget cameras are notorious for being slow, and the Z 5 is no exception. Despite having the same processor as the 12 fps Z 6, the Z 5 offers less than half that speed. Some might argue that is because the Z 5 uses SD cards rather than the faster but more expensive XQD cards, but the transfer rates we are looking at here are well below the threshold for SD speeds. Curious.

With a maximum burst speed of 4.5 frames per second, I’m not even sure why there’s both a low- and high-speed option since even high speed is rather slow. The shutter speed is thankfully still a max of 1/8,000 (entry-level cameras used to be capped at 1/4000 regularly), handy for bright situations.

The Z 5’s 4.5 fps top speed will plug away for about 21 shots shooting RAW + JPEG. The official buffer count listed on the back of the camera is 16, but the pace is slow enough that the camera writes a few of those shots while taking the rest. You’ll eke out a few more shots in JPEG mode, with the camera shooting for more than 20 seconds before stopping.

The Z 5’s autofocus in limited light is consistently poor.

What’s a bit harder to determine from a quick look at the camera’s tech specs, however, is the autofocus. With a 273-point hybrid system, the Z 5’s system looks almost identical to the Z 6, until you dig a little further into the specifics. And if you dig far enough, you’ll find the camera’s biggest flaw: An autofocus detection range down to only -2 EV, or -3 using the camera’s low-light autofocus. However, Nikon rated the AF in low light with an f/2 lens, so the kit lens and many other lenses available for the system won’t work as well as Nikon’s specifications claim, a claim which is already not great. It’s not lying outright, but it is misleading.

That turns out to be the culprit of why the Z 5’s autofocus struggled indoors. Even in a room with windows on three of the walls, the Z 5 was slow to focus. In dim light, the camera would often take two to even five seconds before locking onto the subject and occasionally failing to find the subject at all. While not an issue for still subjects, shooting any sort of movement in limited light becomes problematic with such a delay. The camera will automatically activate low-light autofocus mode, however — a plus considering the original Z 6 and Z 7 require activating the mode in the menu. Low-light autofocus is more accurate and allows for focusing in tough scenarios, but is slow.

Because of how the autofocus system works, the camera will also struggle to focus on dark objects. But, as is true with any contrast detection system, that should be alleviated by the phase-detection points of a hybrid system. The Z 5 has a much easier time focusing on subjects with a lot of contrast, such as lights or a light-colored object on a dark background, but it shouldn’t struggle as much as it did on dark objects. It’s a hybrid autofocus system that’s acting like a contrast-only one in some cases, and that is disappointing.

Hillary K. Grigonis/Digital Trends

Low-light autofocus was a complaint on the Z 6 and even Z 7, with a tendency to be hit or miss, but the Z 5’s autofocus in limited light is consistently poor. The Z 6, by comparison, is rated to hit -6 EV in low-light mode, where the Z 5 is only at -3.5.

What makes the low-light autofocus truly disappointing is that the Z 5 would otherwise be an excellent camera in the dark. The five-axis, in-body stabilization is solid. Doing everything I could to help the camera stay steady short of a tripod — holding my breath and bracing the camera with my elbows — I could shoot down to nearly a half-second at 24mm on the kit lens. That’s an excellent system for the price of the camera, but the slow low-light autofocus will make shots difficult before the camera even needs to go that low. Of course, stabilization isn’t just for low light — the stabilization will come in handy when working with telephoto lenses.

The focus system detects eyes fairly easily and quickly.

Continuous autofocus gets sharp photos most of the time with slow action, though roughly half of the shots where the subject was coming directly at the camera ended up soft. It’s not designed for action but will grab a few sharp shots in more general use, like photographing kids or people moving at a walking pace.

The Z 5’s autofocus isn’t all bad, however. Eye detection AF worked well and even beats out the pricier Canon EOS R6 in focusing on eyelashes when shooting from a high angle. The focus system detects eyes fairly easily and quickly. The system isn’t fast enough for say, using while shooting sports, but as mentioned the Z 5 isn’t an action camera. Pet eye AF is included, but I couldn’t get it to work on my cat. (To be fair, I couldn’t get the Canon version of this to work on my cat either.)

The Z 5 adds a new autofocus bracketing option that automatically adjusts the focal length between shots in a series in order to create a focus stack later on a computer. The new feature is easy to use for anyone who has worked with Nikon bracketing or time lapses before. But the shots are activated by pressing start in the menu — which means you see the menu in the viewfinder and can’t perfect the composition before hitting start. It’s a usability flaw that we hope to see improved in later firmware updates.

Excellent images and video

The Z 5 makes fewer sacrifices when it comes to image quality. Sporting a 24.3-megapixel full-frame sensor, the Z 5 has just a smidgen less resolution than the pricier Z 6. The larger sensor size makes bokeh easy to create even with the kit and offers a lot of flexibility in post. Detail is good, and, when perfectly focused, even the kit lens is quite sharp.

ISO 12800 with noise reduction and crop Hillary K. Grigonis/Digital Trends

Lower resolution bodes well for ISO and, under perfect conditions, I could edit out the noise of an ISO 12800 shot with only a slight loss of detail. Photos are best kept under ISO 6400, where there is some noticeable color noise, but the kind that’s easily corrected with software.

Color was equivalent to what I would expect coming from a Nikon DSLR — on the whole accurate, with an occasional tendency to skew the white balance a tad green for my taste. Skin tones are rendered fairly well.

RAW files are also consistent with what I would expect from an entry-level, full-frame Nikon DSLR. I could recover a good amount of detail and even texture from the shadows, to the point of almost reversing a near silhouette. As with almost any camera, blown-out highlights are tougher to recover, and photographers are best to err on the side of too dark rather than too light.

The Nikon Z 5 offers 4K video, but at a 1.7x crop and without all the bells and whistles of the Z 6 and Z 7, such as N-Log. The 1.7x crop means both a loss of light and lenses won’t be as wide, but it’s not unusual for an entry-level option. Colors and sharpness are consistently good, as with the images, and the Z 5 does less focus searching mid-recording than a Nikon DSLR.

Our Take

The Nikon Z 5 is a good entry-level full-frame camera — but slow low-light autofocus, inconsistent accuracy in mixed lighting, and a sluggish burst mode keep the camera from being a great entry-level full-frame option. The Nikon Z 5 is a good option for enthusiast photographers, influencers, and other creatives regularly taking photos in good light.

Image quality and design are both excellent, while the slower performance is Nikon’s clear differentiator when it comes to the extra $400 for the Z 6. If the Z 5 was $1000 or even $1200, it would be an easy recommendation; but at just $400 less than a significantly better performing camera, it’s a hard sell.

Nikon D3500 vs D5600

How long will it last?

Camera bodies tend to last a few years, and the Z 5 is likely no exception. The weather sealing and materials aren’t as high-end as the Z 6 and Z 7, but with proper care, the camera body should serve you well into the future.

Is there a better alternative?

If you want a full-frame Nikon and can’t spend more than $1,400, no. Even the aging Nikon D610 only focuses down to -1 EV and is $200 more at list price. Waiting to save up another $400 for the Z 6 is a good idea, however, for any photographer regularly taking photos indoors or of moving subjects.

Yet, the full-frame mirrorless market is getting crowded for photographers not yet invested in a lens system or willing to make a switch. The Canon EOS RP has a better autofocus system thanks to Dual Pixel technology and is rated to focus as low as -5EV, but lacks in-body stabilization. Finding another $1,400 camera is difficult to do outside those two models and older generations. The Sony a7 III is a faster camera, but is $600 more. The very new Panasonic Lumix S5 offers better autofocus, more advanced video modes, and faster bursts, but again, sits at the $2,000 price range, not the under-$1,500 range.

Moving into the crop sensor category will fix those performance issues, but sacrifices that larger sensor. Nikon’s own Z 50 is much faster with similar ergonomics and lens compatibility, yet the low light autofocus still isn’t ideal. The Fujifilm X-T30 has a faster burst, more video features, and excellent autofocus, but it lacks stabilization. The Sony a6600 offers a fast burst and autofocus while keeping the stabilization, but again, has that smaller sensor.

Should you buy it?

Buy the Nikon Z 5 if you want a full-frame Nikon, largely take pictures outdoors in good light, and can’t spend more than $1,400. If you plan on lots of shooting in less than ideal conditions, however, including in limited light or fast-moving subjects, avoid the Z 5. Wait until you can save up another $400 for the Z 6, or consider a crop sensor or the unstabilized EOS RP.

[yeskraim]

If a recession hits next year, it would probably be mild. But a recovery would also be tame.

CLOSE

The odds of the U.S. slipping into a recession in 2020 are getting longer.

The probability of a downturn has fallen to about 1 in 3 following a tentative trade war truce with China and a resilient job market. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be one.

Here’s the good news: Economists believe a recession that starts next year would probably be relatively short and mild – more like the slumps of the early 1990s and early 2000s than the devastating collapse that led to nearly 9 million job losses during the Great Recession of 2007-09.

That’s largely because consumer finances are in good shape and there’s little sign of the excesses – like runaway inflation or housing or stock market bubbles – that triggered previous slides.

“The balance sheets of households, businesses and banks remain strong,” says Cristian deRitis, deputy chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. “We have the capacity to absorb a recession, restructure and see growth recover.”

Think of the 10½-year-old economic expansion as a slow but steady jogger who gradually stumbles to a halt in the latter stages of a marathon but can quickly resume the race after a brief rest. By contrast, the mid-2000s economy that ended with the Great Recession was a sprinter who burned out and crashed.

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Here’s the rub: The recovery from a recession that begins late next year is likely to be tepid as well, partly held back by some of the same forces that cause the downturn.

“It’ll be a mild recession with a mild recovery,” says Diane Swonk, chief economist of Grant Thornton. 

A report by deRitis shows the 11 recessions since World War II can be grouped into three categories:

From 1948 to 1968, the U.S. experienced classic boom-and-bust downturns. Consumer and business spending surged, prices soared and producers responded by making too much stuff, leading to a shakeout and lower prices that revived demand.

The recessions of the 1970s and 1980s were marked by oil price shocks that dampened consumer spending. And downturns since the early 1990s largely have been set off by financial bubbles, or run-ups, that eventually burst.

For some perspective on where a 2020 downturn might fit, here’s a look at the past three recessions in the financial-bubble era.

July 1990 to March 1991

The eight-month-long downturn was at least partly sparked by savings-and-loans institutions that ratcheted up lending for risky commercial real estate projects that went bust, resulting in the failure of a third of the S&Ls and discouraging housing and other loans. Other factors included a leap in oil prices after the U.S. invasion of Kuwait and earlier Federal Reserve interest rate hikes to fight inflation.

Economic output declined by about 1.2% and the unemployment rate rose from 5.2% to 6.8% as 1.4 million jobs were lost. But even after the recession ended, employers continued to cut jobs or hire sparingly, pushing unemployment to 7.8% by June 1992 and creating the first “jobless recovery.”

March 2001 to November 2001

The eight-month slump was triggered by the collapse of the dot-com stock bubble, which led to a pullback in business investment. Also contributing: Fed rate hikes to fight inflation in 2000, the September 11 terrorist attacks and the corporate accounting scandals of the early 2000s.  

Economic output actually increased slightly during this mild recession. But the unemployment rate rose from 4.2% to 5.5% as 1.4 million jobs were shed. After the downturn officially ended, unemployment continued to climb to 6.3% by June 2003 and nearly 1 million more jobs were lost in another jobless recovery.

Economists have partly blamed the jobless rebounds of the early 1990s and early 2000s on financial meltdowns that chilled lending and investment. A study by the Kansas City Fed cites skittish employers who brought on temporary and part-time workers, and increased overtime, instead of hiring more full-time workers.

December 2007 to June 2009 

The Great Recession, the worst downturn since the Great Depression, lasted 18 months and grew out of the risky mortgages banks provided to marginal borrowers. When home prices fell, homeowners couldn’t refinance their loans, leading to millions of foreclosures and pushing the nation’s largest banks to the brink of failure.

Lending dried up, consumer spending tumbled and businesses laid off 8.7 million workers. Economic output fell by nearly 4% and the unemployment rate doubled to 10% by October 2009.

Job growth resumed in February 2010 but increased modestly for several years. Economic growth generally has been lackluster, averaging 2.3% a year. For years, consumers and businesses spent cautiously and banks tightened lending standards, though activity has picked up the past few years.

When claim Social Security benefits: This Social Security mistake could result in a lifetime of regret, study says

The next recession

Unlike the past three recessions, no widespread financial bubbles are likely to spark the next downturn. And in contrast to 1990 and 2001, don’t blame the Fed. After raising interest rates in 2018, the Fed has cut rates three times this year to a historically low range of 1.5% to 1.75% amid low inflation and recession worries.

Next time, the culprits will almost certainly be jittery businesses, deRitis and Swonk say. President Donald Trump’s trade war with China and a sluggish global economy have spawned uncertainty that has dampened business investment and clobbered manufacturing. Economists forecast growth of less than 2% in the current quarter and next year.

Despite a tentative “Phase 1” U.S. trade deal with China, larger conflicts with Beijing remain unresolved and Trump could eventually impose tariffs on $160 billion in Chinese-made consumer products that were planned for mid-December but suspended because of the tentative agreement.

Swonk says it likely would take such a “shock” to frighten companies into reining in hiring that has added a healthy 180,000 jobs a month this year. That would dent consumer spending, which makes up 70% of economic activity and has held up well amid solid job and wage growth. And it could result in a recession.  

Scott Anderson, chief economist of Bank of the West, says it wouldn’t necessarily take an escalation of the trade fight to tip the U.S. into a descent. A 15% plunge in the record high stock market could spook households already on edge.

“I think we’re slouching toward recession,” he says.

If there is one, deRitis and Swonk predict a relatively brief six-month episode, shorter than the past three and the 11-month average since World War II.

DeRitis expects a 1.2% drop in economic output, below the average 2% decline over the past 70 years. He also sees the unemployment rate rising by 1.6 percentage points, in line with a typical downturn. About 600,000 jobs likely would be lost, he says, well below the millions that vanished during the past few recessions.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be pain. Less educated and other vulnerable workers are the most likely to be laid off, the Moody’s paper says.

A big reason the next tailspin is likely to be mild is the chill cast by the Great Recession. Besides tighter credit standards, banks maintain deep capital cushions as a result of post-crisis regulations, allowing them to continue lending to creditworthy customers. And after peaking during the last downturn, household debt as a share of gross domestic product has fallen to the lowest level since the early 2000s.

“Consumers will have greater resources available to manage their existing debts and increase their spending to support the economy,” deRitis wrote in the report. As prices for land, equipment and labor fall, enterprising businesses will likely scoop them up, reigniting growth, he says.

There are minefields that could extend the downturn. Corporate debt is at a record high, with the biggest risks centered on companies with low credit ratings. A recession could intensify if those firms default and start laying off workers, Swonk says.

Perhaps more worrisome is that the upswing is likely to be uninspiring.

Policymakers “don’t have the tools” to generate a more robust recovery, Swonk says.

The Fed, which has cut interest rates an average of about five percentage points in previous recoveries, won’t have that luxury with its key short-term rate at 1.5% to 1.75%, though it almost certainly will resume bond purchases to lower long-term rates.

And after Trump took the unusual step of spearheading tax cuts and spending increases during the expansion, helping push the national debt to $22 trillion, Congress may have less appetite for a big stimulus to dig out of a slump, the economists say.

Also, global growth probably won’t ramp up anytime soon, deRitis says, continuing to squeeze American manufacturers that rely on exports.

“It’ll be a jobless recovery,” Swonk says.

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[63824peace]

Friday, 21st of october 2005

I renewed my commuter's pass on my way to the office today. I always get the three-month pass. The one-month pass expires too soon, and the six-month pass expires too far down the line. The three-month pass is balanced perfectly.

I have an idiosyncratic sense of time and its proportions. I feel as though one month were tomorrow, three months the very near future, and six months the only slightly near future. I can discern what will most likely happen three months into the future ; a one-month pass seems too timid; a six-month pass seems too bold.

My new commuter's pass remains valid until the end of January 2006. The expiration date glares from the face of the pass in large characters. I will look at the date every day when I commute via train.

Every time I see the expiration date I think: Will I feel less tired when this pass expires? Will we have completed the game? How far will the new project have progressed? How will the audience react after the release date? Will I still be alive then?

And so on.

I will ask these questions internally every time I look at my commuter's pass . . . every time I walk through the ticket gate for three months until the end of January.

Creation requires a tremendous amount of time. I'm constantly busy. I don't really have time to enjoy the changing ambience between seasons, not to mention the seasons themselves. I need the three-month commuter's pass as a ruler for the year . . . a standard to make the year's passage comprehensible.

Let's consider the metaphor of a marathon foot race. I consider the pass's expiration date as the finish line. I devise a small plan for the future within a three-month limit. A sprinter likewise prepares a plan comprised of several smaller goals while he pushes toward the finish line.

"I'll strain my hardest just until the next curve," he may think. "I'll give my all at least until the intermediary mark." I feel a similar sensation when I shape my long-term future according to my three-month commuter's pass.

The timer that I use as a guide for my inner goals resets every time I renew my commuter's pass. My next life goal coincides with the new pass's expiration date. Time pushes through an expiration date; I renew my commuter's pass; I set my vision farther into the distance ; I increase the time between the immediate moment and my inner finish line.

This habit wouldn't work if I used a Super Urban Intelligent Card. Those cards are prepaid and don't need renewal. I continue using the old-fashioned commuter pass because it gives me structure.

I'll just do my best until January. That is my current life goal.

Dr. F. Paul Wilson (my favorite novelist) sent me mail. He watched the MGS4 trailer from the Web. "You are amazing," he wrote.

I am pleased that he is pleased! I am eager to read the next installment in the Repairman Jack book series. I wonder when the translated edition will be published. Please don't slack and forget to print it, Furosha Publishing Inc.!

I went to the restaurant Kippoji for lunch. I haven't eaten there in a while. I ordered Kurobuta-no-yawarakani and Matsuhanan ordered Yujiro-no-aishita-karee.

I bought the second volume of the manga series Kosaku Shima, Executive Director.

The character Kosaku Shima's progress up the corporate ladder mirrors my own promotions within Konami. Honest! The similarities are purely coincidental of course, but it appears as though I had been keeping pace with Shima's career. It seems a little strange to compare my work with that of a mega-corporation like that manga Hatsushiba, but at least the titles of the posts correspond. We just have to ignore the differences in corporate scale and promotional limits.

I imagined myself achieving the next promotional level available to me whenever Kosaku Shima received a title promotion.

Shima held the title of Division Chief when I started reading the manga. I held the title of Development Chief. Shima got results as the Division Chief and earned prestige; meanwhile I became Secondary General Manager. He became Manager Shima when I received my promotion to Manager. He rose to the title of Director when I held the title of Vice President in the corporate subsidiary Konami-JPN, and afterwards I joined his ranks as Director. And I returned to Konami's head offices and received my promotion to the real position of Corporate Executive Director when he became Executive Director Kosaku Shima.

Kosaku Shima and I appear to have been competing for promotions. Hereafter though we take different paths. He is qualified to become President Kosaku Shima. The manga readers are almost entirely salarymen; their final goal is to become president someday. I am different because I don't care about career titles within the company. I simply love the site where we make the games, as opposed to the other corporate offices. Right now I am a Corporate Executive Officer (CEO), the Head Director of KojiPro, a Game Director, and a Game Designer . . . just as I was at the beginning.

Incidentally, my actual titles stack up like this:

Konami Group CEO

Executive Vice President (Gaming Software Company)

Director of Kojima Productions Studio

Video Game Designer

It's long and complicated, but Game Designer is the most important title. The other titles merely bolster my ability to create a solid environment wherein I can work as a Game Designer.

I assumed the roles of Producer and Company Manager so that the company can create good games. I convince myself that I am not becoming distracted from creation when I remember that I hold authoritative positions in order to unify the development offices. I certainly didn't become an Executive Director just because Kosaku Shima did. Even at my age I would rather enjoy the career life of a younger Kosaku Shima.

Kosaku Shima faced various obstacles while climbing the ladder of success even as a lowly public relations agent. New posts and situations forced him to deal with a variety of unknown problems. That's the interesting part of the story. I could really empathize with the character's anxieties and struggles, so I felt close to him. The manga series holds a special and unique place in my heart.

I regard my job as a vocation ; a true calling. I naturally regard "Game Designer" more as my identity rather than my other professional titles.

Posters advertising the Tokyo International Film Festival were placed atop the cascade panels in the Roppongi Hills square. The festival will begin tomorrow at last.

I returned my attention to MGS4 after a long hiatus. This is so fun. The feeling I experience while working on this affirms the meaning of life.

I have been away from the characters for quite a while, and they seem to have changed of their own accord. They even change as I focus my attention on them now. I don't have control over them. I revise them as their natural development and my creative impulses deem necessary. I unconsciously imagine the scenes in which the characters can use the field training experiences to the fullest capacity. I have so much fun that I even forget to breathe!

I had forgotten for a while that this is my true work. This is the real thrill and charm of working as a game designed! I am home here.

We are incredibly busy preparing for the Enta Festival in Akihabara. The online team hustles to debug and set up the online digital environment. The Subsistence and MGA2 teams are already in the midst of their own protracted wars. Those staffs (as well as others whose work relates directly to the Enta Festival) work without sleep.

I saw the movie Stealth tonight during its final show. "What?" I thought. "I didn't know it was this sort of movie."

I had imagined a different story. I had thought that it would be a drama about young people caught in a love triangle. Instead it turned out to be a pure romance ; that refreshed me.

At any rate, the dogfight scenes were incredible. I was really pleased to see camera work and digital effects that reflect the abilities of current technology. None of the scene cuts would have been possible if the director had been limited to on-the-spot footage. Stealth used some anime-type effects. The dogfight could only have been made using CGI effects. How fitting.

My eyes swiveled and I felt dizzy. I shouldn't have been surprised. Rob Cohen directed Stealth after all. His ability is to make the audience feel the motion on the screen.

I thought that the credits would feature Hyde's new song. Unfortunately it wasn't there. I wonder if it was only included in the dubbed version.

I was most surprised by the latest trailer for Dark Water.

The trailer portrayed the movie as a story about the bond between a mother and her daughter rather than a horror film. Did they decide to advertise it like this because the release was delayed? Or was it because the horror movie boom has ebbed? Crystal Kay's song Namida-ga-afuerte-mo played as the music for a montage sequence in the trailer. It really emphasized the mother-daughter relationship theme over the horror elements.

A friend told me a few years ago about Honogurai-mizu-no-soko-kara, the original Japanese movie remade as Dark Water. "Mr. Kojima," I was told, "you are too sensitive to watch this movie. It might turn out rather dangerously for you, so you shouldn't watch it."

It should be a pretty intense film. That's why I haven't even seen Honogurai-mizu-no-soko-kara even though I'm fond of Hitomi Kuroki, the film's main actress.

I'm a bigger fan of Jennifer Connelly though, so I will definitely see Dark Water.

[almajonesnjna]

The Correct Number of Reps Per Set in the Gym

I have a lot of people ask me, “How many reps should I do per set?”

Unfortunately, there’s no easy, perfect answer to this question without a little more information, but I’m going to do my best to dig into the nitty gritty with today’s article and get you fixed up!

Regardless of what type of strength training you’re doing, having specific sets and reps to aim for will help you reach your goals. After all, as they say, what gets measured gets improved.

What you need to figure out is what you really want to accomplish.

Some people’s goals are to lose weight, which would require a certain rep range, and others’ goals are to build muscle mass, which requires a different range as well.

Think about the physique of a sprinter or bodybuilder versus a marathon runner. A sprinter is built for power and speed in short bursts, so their training sessions exist in small increments (10 second races).

A marathon runner is built for endurance, which means their training sessions are much longer (hours at a time).

Working out is no different.

I’m gonna go out on a limb and assume you’re reading this article because you have approximately one million questions about how you should be training in the gym. Should you do different muscle groups each day? Should you do 5 sets of 4 or 4 sets of 5? What about Starting Strength? Is it the most useful advice ever created? And how do you know you have good form on your squats and deadlifts?

These are all great questions, and they’re the same questions I asked when I got started. Unfortunately, I was an idiot and spent 6 years training the wrong way in the gym before I finally cracked the code and got stronger and healthier.

I’m guessing you don’t have 6 years to struggle as I did, or you’re just looking for expert guidance and accountability. Which is why we created our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program! You’ll get paired with a coach that gets to know you and your life, creates a workout program for you, and helps keep you accountable and can answer all of the questions you might have about this stuff.

You can learn more about the program by clicking in the image below to schedule a call with us!

How many Reps should I do?

“Rep” stands for “repetition” and defines one complete motion of an exercise. When deciding on how many reps to do, first and foremost, decide below what you want to get out of a workout. Then read how to get there. We cover this stuff in significantly greater detail over in our Strength Training 101 intro, but the content below should get you started.

We’ll group different rep ranges into different goals, for muscular endurance, muscle size, and overall strength and power. It’ll get us thinking about endurance vs. hypertrophy.

Let’s chat about the following:

1) Muscular endurance – Endurance means we want your muscles to perform for an extended period time. Thus, your heaviest sets should be greater than 12 repetitions. Aim for a range from 12 to 20 reps. Obviously you won’t be able to lift heavy amounts of weight for 20 reps, so you’ll be lifting lighter loads. Also, because you’re going for endurance, you want to decrease the amount of rest between sets. 30 seconds to a minute, but certainly no more. You want your muscles trained to be ready to constantly be putting forth effort and prepared for the long haul. If you are a runner or cyclist, strength training with higher repetitions can help your muscles develop more endurance as well!

Reps for increased muscular endurance: 12 plus

2) Muscle Size ( Sarcoplasmic Hypertrophy) – This is for guys or gals looking to build muscle size.

Sarcoplasmic hypertrophy focuses on increasing the amount of sarcoplasm, the non-contractile fluid found in your muscle. Up to 30% of your muscle’s size is attributed to the sarcoplasm, so focusing on this type of hypertrophy helps build overall size.

If you’re looking to get bigger, you want to keep the number of reps per set in the 6 – 12 range per set. I find this is best accomplished by doing between 3-5 sets, each time increasing the weight and decreasing the reps. (12 reps at 200 lbs, 10 reps at 220 lbs, 8 reps at 240 lbs, etc.)

Rest time between sets should be short, not as short as for endurance, between 60 and 90 seconds.

Reps for increased muscle size: 6-12

3) Strength and Power (Myofibril hypertrophy) – If you’re happy with your size, or you’re training for specific sports and just want to get stronger with more power, this is for you. This type of training focuses on strengthening the myofibril, the contractile part of the muscle. However, not only are you shocking your muscles, you’re also putting a lot of pressure on your body’s central nervous system. This forces it too to adapt and become stronger, critical for strength and power.[1]

It should be noted, that given proper nutrition, you’ll still develop some muscle and size with high weight and low reps. It just isn’t the primary goal.

For strength and power, your reps are going to be less than 6 with each set, and an increased amount of time waiting between sets (2-3 minutes). You’re going to be lifting crazy amounts of weight for sometimes just 1 repetition, so you need to have a spotter and absolutely perfect form or you could severely hurt yourself. This is how powerlifters train. Low reps, high weight, long time between sets. You need to increase your rest period because lifting this heavy fatigues the central nervous system and you’ll need longer to recover.

Reps for increased strength and power: Less than 6

How many Sets should I do?

A “set” describes a group of repetitions performed for an exercise without stopping.

For example, if you drop down and do 10 push-ups right now, you just did 1 SET of 10 reps of push-ups.

How many sets should you do? In the section above, I mentioned doing “3-5” sets of a given exercise. This is a good rule of thumb in general.

Why?

It’s a rule of thumb with an origin story.

3 sets became popular in 1948 when the physician Thomas L. DeLorme suggested 3 sets of 10 reps to be an effective form of weight training. Delorme came to his conclusion after prescribing strength training to his injured patients, as a way for them to rebuild muscle and rehabilitate. He recorded and analyzed their improvements. When Delorme published his findings, it was one of the first academic looks on how to strength train. As one of the pioneers, Delorme’s recommendations stuck and became “permanently etched into the collective subconscious of the fitness community.”[2]

That’s the history of 3 sets at 10 repetitions…

Which is certainly more information than you needed. Sorry.

Anyway, don’t overthink how many sets to do. Don’t stress yourself out by worrying if you should do 4 sets or 3 sets. Pick one, record how you do with it, and get stronger the next time you do that movement. 

It should be noted, there is evidence of more sets performed leading to more gains, in both endurance, size, and strength.[3] Which makes sense, because you are forcing your muscles to do more work overall. After your third set, if you feel like you can do a fourth, it might be a good idea to try it. Or a fifth. Any more than that, and you should be thinking about increasing your weight instead.

Rule of thumb for the number of sets to do: 3-5 after a warm-up.

Exception: if you are doing endurance work, you may want to do only 2 sets with more reps. Less recovery time will test your muscle’s endurance.

Building a routine!

Now that you have “edumacated” yourself on how your specific goals influence the number of reps per set, and what sets actually are, you can build your workout program around this info.

Don’t want to build your own routine? Not sure what sets and reps to do? Want to remove all the confusion and be told what to do? I got ya! Download our free, comprehensive Strength Training 101: Everything You Need to Know, as we dig into the answers of all those questions 🙂 I’ll send it to you right away after you sign up for the Rebellion in the box below:

Download our comprehensive guide STRENGTH TRAINING 101!

Everything you need to know about getting strong.

Workout routines for bodyweight AND weight training.

How to find the right gym and train properly in one.

I identify as a:

Woman

Man

There’s a lot of different truths and fallacies on plateaus and how your muscles can get “used” to working out and stop growing. If that’s something you’re battling, here’s a way to keep them guessing or send your workout program into a jolt:

Spend a week in a different rep range with different amounts of weight to throw them off. You can go with less weight and more reps. Or vice versa. Experiment with both. This will introduce a little chaos into the system, which could be a good thing, unless you’re Batman.

After a week of mixing it up, go back to your regularly scheduled routine and you’ll be right back on track.

Make sure you know what you want, and then design a plan to get there.

-Steve

PS: If you’re somebody that wants an expert to guide them through the training process, I hear you. I have a fitness coach myself who programs my workouts!

IF YOU WANT TO BE TOLD EXACTLY WHAT TO DO:

Consider our 1-on-1 coaching program where we’ll build a powerlifting and nutrition program for you based on your situation and current level of experience, with video form checks and expert guidance.

On a bit tighter of a budget? No problem! Check out our self-paced online course, the Nerd Fitness Academy, which eases you into strength training with both bodyweight and gym routines.

###

All photo citations can be found right here[3]

Footnotes   ��( returns to text)

If you’re interested, check out this article from Science Daily on the role the central nervous system plays in strength training.

You can read the history of Thomas L. DeLorme and his pioneering work right here.

Check out the study on more sets leading to more gains right here.

Not Happy, Me riding a bicycle, Bicylelifter, Project Story 1/3

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