Hotspur

It’s been a moment since I lived there, but I’d say the KY side would be less desirable based on your stated needs.

I lived in the Clifton/ northside area near the university, that’s a pretty good progressive area. Oakley would probably be pretty good too, a bit more residential / young families etc. I was in grad school and the cooler younger profs I had tended to live on Oakley for example.

OTR might be interesting as well, not sure how things have gone since I was last there.

Mass transit and diversity are… touch and go in Cincinnati, but it’s generally a decent place, I enjoyed my time there. I’m from Baltimore and I’d say cincy is about as historically racially segregated Baltimore is, which is to say: a lot.

I’d say it’s definitely possible to do mass transit and bikes for sure, but there are thing a where a car makes things much easier.

Also I’m not trying to shit on Covington/newport, but it’s just probably a slightly less good fit based on all the standard reasons you’d imagine. Newport in particular was a kind of party night destination when I was there. Maybe it’s massively changed though.

Take what I say with a grain of salt—it’s been a decade since I lived there. Easily my favorite “big” city in Ohio though. Great bars and food, good topo, some great parks. A personal fav of mine was walking around spring grove, 19th cent huge cemetery. That sounds morbid, but it’s also an arboretum and very beautiful.

This is what peak performance looks like.

Yeah I like the spirit, but BMI is such a stupid and flawed measure. It’s ok as like a population level heuristic to say things are trending one way or another, but like athletes that have lots of muscle and are tall look the same as morbidly obese people to BMI, which is obviously silly.

When I used to have panic attacks, the only thing that used to work for me was controlled breathing. There’s a bunch of different protocols one can follow, but the one I used at the time was circular breathing or something similar: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. Think of a sorta squared circle. You can adjust those numbers for comfort, but rapid breathing quickly ramps up the response, so it’s important to short circuit that and establish equilibrium. Vagal breathing is similar and can also work well, I think that one is usually something like breath in for 3-4, breath out for 6-8. Again you can tinker with the numbers, you just want the ratio.

I practice these sometimes when I drive long distances, although that makes sense for me since my acute panic attacks developed randomly involving specific parameters on highways…

And of course: meditation. It will definitely help with this sort of thing if you can do it consistently. Unfortunately I’ve never figured that consistency part out, myself.

Hahaha

It reminds me of an interview I saw with Alan Richardson (?), the guy playing reacher on the Amazon series. It was in support of the new season, but basically the conversation revolved around how exhausting it was to maintain the required physique for the role, and how it meant he couldn’t do some of the things he normally enjoyed—he was too heavy to run without impact injury, and flexibility and reach was an issue.

I’d imagine transitioning between these physiques can probably be challenging and taxing on the body as well.

Ugh so annoying. So like both in movies and body building, what they’re selling is actually not a healthy or strong physique—but someone who could be on the verge of organ failure.

I like the idea of fitness, and being in functionally good shape, so this sort of exaggeration is something I find uniquely distasteful—portraying a a goal state that is actually just a grift/scam, and that is dangerous to partake in.

Gotcha so the idea is they’re just gonna give it a shot and try to eat you, regardless, because the stakes, they are high?

To be fair, in a moral sense, they should absolutely try and eat every human they can get their claws on; we have done a bang up job on making their habitat and food sources disappear.

So are polar bears considered more dangerous and aggro than grizzlies? I mean it wouldn’t be too crazy, particularly since it’s probably rare to encounter one, compare to grizzlies. But just had never really heard that.

Yep that’s exactly what this is.

An explanation that had not occurred to me, but definitely makes sense in this context.

Excellent—thanks for explaining that, makes a lot more sense.

Edit: giant dick guy is hilarious—must be amusing for locals living near a gigantic Bronze Age keith Harring graffiti 24/7