I know a bunch of classical musicians, and while they study and work hard they all have steady gigs for one or more ensembles & orchestra's.
From the outside it feels somewhat more doable to be a pro , then a band or solo-artist, since there are quite a few orchestra's around that hire people on a stable basis. Spots are limited, but it's not super hard.
This depends on the instrument and your location. If you play a popular instrument (say the violin) in a metro area with just one orchestra (some have zero!) then you ain't getting on that orchestra any way short of nepotism. If you live within commuting distance of multiple orchestras, there are more spots, but you still aren't going to be playing violin in the orchestra, and it's even possible that nepotism won't help you.
This is definitely not my area, but in other contexts I have heard of blind auditions as being a common practice in orchestras (i.e. people auditioning literally are hidden from view while they play and evaluations are then based only on hearing one play) which improved gender diversity in hiring, but not really racial diversity. How does nepotism work in this system?
It still feels incredibly easy to cheat that system if you were motivated? Pre-share the candidates order list, chosen candidate will signal with an additional three note bar on the finale, etc.
I studied and played classical into college during my engineering degree and have some insight into the realities of the profession - it's much harder than that and the pay for those stable gigs are oftentimes less than $300 / month. You're looking at one of the classic professional survivorship bias that I thought even the layman understood very well. Firstly, orchestras are in dire straights currently where programs are oftentimes supported by movie and pop media performances (see: National Symphony Orchestra playing Fantasia, Danny Elfman scores, and even freakin' Super Mario Brothers). This is a similar situation to ballet and theatre - legacy performance media I guess I'd call them. These orchestras don't pay much at all and most of the money classical musicians make are from lessons, typically the children of fairly affluent professionals, including from tech, finance, real estate, and other usual suspects of said caste. I saw grad students have to skip meals and beg and plead students to continue lessons to eat while I went off to recruiting events sponsored by tech companies where I ate food constantly and I never stopped feeling guilty even after inviting some friends to avoid pizza waste.
Some very lucky others that do well are from multiple generations of musicians that were essentially born, bred, and raised to be among the world's best and live and breathe music. There was no way I could ever compete with these kinds of folks and the hard life I saw so many talented people including professors that _are_ established after decades to live a very modest life made it clear to me that it wasn't something I should do for a living despite how much I love and respect it all. My role I feel is to support these folks now, so I go to shows, buy merch at the show, etc. and try not to take up space or attention too much and let people do what they do while trying to show appreciation for the work I was too chickenshit to ever do.
The arts and now entertainment fields are very much "tournament" style careers where given very limited public attention the winners take basically all and the remainder struggle quite a lot. It's nothing like professional fields like tech, accounting, medicine, law, or trades like construction, hospitality. In fact, any field that becomes more mass market-driven seems to become substantially more "tournament" style which has greatly impacted sex work - a top n% take an increasingly higher percentage away from an elastic but fundamentally highly dynamic demand.
The misattributed quote "find what you love and let it kill you" is the typical path of the career musician like most arts. I prefer to at least have some money to have more options to make it more fun on the way without resorting to the trap that is recreational substances.
It would be interesting to understand why the body is lowering it, might also be the body adopting to certain conditions. Could be that artificially boosting it, goes against something the body is trying to regulate. Or it could just be a side-effect of body in decline.
Muscular actors are almost without exceptions on it. Take Chris Hemsworth, he went from skinny to bodybuilder level of muscle. It would be fine if doesn't use it to sell workout programs.
Exactly - I don't have a problem with it. It's just very, very dangerous (and sleazy) to give the public and society the impression these results are obtainable with some random diet, over the counter supplement, etc.
Doubly sleazy for those that are selling something claiming it's how they achieved their results. Not unlike the Kardashians selling some juice, make up, or whatever and attributing their appearance to it. The real answer is lighting, all kinds of editing/tuning apps, surgery, extreme and regular dermatological procedures, veneers, etc. It's their job and they employ every single trick in the book possible and then some to achieve these results.
It's incredible how far the standards have moved. I was re-watching Terminator 2 the other day. Looking at Arnold Schwarzenegger in that role his physique is more-or-less the standard for "action heroes" today and needless to say he's essentially a freak of nature (and has openly discussed his steroid use). There have been advancements in sport and exercise training but not nearly enough to make up that difference.
Christian Bale went from a "should be hospitalized" gaunt physique in The Machinist to Batman in a year - that's just not possible without chemical intervention.
> It's just very, very dangerous (and sleazy) to give the public and society the impression these results are obtainable with some random diet, over the counter supplement, etc.
Unfortunately it's also risky for them to tell the truth ("I achieved this with some sketchy prescriptions of otherwise-illegal drugs")
As I noted in my top comment TRT therapy for older men is far from sketchy/illegal at this point - to the point of hardly being controversial. Joe Rogan (as one example) has no problem saying "I'm on TRT/HRT and it's great"[0] - and he's tiny compared to these guys. Joey Diaz actually says in that clip "let's be fair to everyone out there - you're on some stuff" and to his credit Joe says "absolutely".
Rogan has a different audience. More mature, and TRT is dosed properly and often through a doctor. Young kids just shoot up as much as possible. I still think we need more research to know it's long term impact and side effects.
I do think it's fair to assume that if Hemsworth openly its likely to be possible more young kids will take it. But it also depends on how he talks about it.
Rogan is only tiny in the sense that he's short. He's very beefy for his height, and you can see changes around his face etc vs photographs from a decade ago.
Tiny is relative. Here's Joe[0] - he looks more-or-less like a diet/exercise fitness enthusiast in their 20s, which seems in line for his message/goal of "hey I'm just trying to hold on to that for as long as possible".
Here's The Rock[1] at 48 years old. You can search for in-role Ryan Reynolds, Chris Hemsworth, Henry Cavill, etc, etc - Joe is tiny by comparison and all of these actors seem to get bigger and bigger as they age (look at any of them from roles 10 years ago) - which is the exact opposite of what happens to men as they age.
Here's an example[2] of what they look like (in "Hollywood" shape, but normal for age) when not tuned-up to the max on whatever they do/take for these roles.
You're right, Rogan is smaller than I remembered him being. Indeed, I'm not entirely sure why he's taking any gear, doesn't seem necessary to maintain that sort of body.
On the getting bigger thing, muscle is cumulative as long as you keep exercising it. I have always assumed The Rock was on gear while wrestling (although he had a great frame to begin with) but I don't find it odd that he can maintain that at 48.
It's less than 2% of all adult males. I would guess that the peak age group for anabolic steroid use is ages 30-40 (that is, end-of-youth crisis not the youngest) but I'd be interested to know for sure.
Edit: government data says I am wrong. 25-29, apparently. But that's based on self-reporting so I do wonder.
It's weird to me. We've had hundreds of thousands of years with no dentists and toothpaste and now I'm told only way to keep teeth healthy is to brush twice a day with chemicals and an electric tool.
I also grind me teeth. One dentist recommended me a guard. Just really don't like the idea of sleeping with plastics in my mouth 8 hours a day. What type do you have?
I had one dentist put some kind of lacquer type of thing on my molars (so that this material is ground down instead). But I've never been able to find another dentist that does it
Maybe somebody knows what this procedure is called?
yeah, looks like that's it. It's a bit uncomfortable to chew the first few days but I'm guessing it does the trick. Maybe it's suboptimal for teeth grinding? But sleeping with a guard sounds way more of a hassle
You speak mostly of not getting attached. Which is mostly a method not to build negative karma in Buddhism and build positive karma. But positive karma is not a goal in itself in Buddhism, realization is.
The Madhyamaka way, translated to the great middle way, mostly refers to combining freedom & meaning from emptiness. Meaning things are neither real, nor or they an illusion. Therefore the middle.
This is because understanding emptiness often leads to nihilism: "nothing really matters". The opposite seeing things as real, instead of acknowledging everything is changing, often leads to suffering: if laptop breaks, relationships end etc. Both are true and both are false.
The goal of madhymaka is to explain middle way between those and also practical how that leads to freedom, joy and meaning in every moment of life.
In the end the goal of Buddhism is not to change outer conditions but to get to a state were hapiness is experienced regardless of outer experiences.
> In the end the goal of Buddhism is not to change outer conditions but to get to a state were hapiness is experienced regardless of outer experiences.
I would argue not trying to change the outer conditions is an extreme view, which is a notion rejected in Buddhism ;-)
Some things can be changed, like keeping your environment clean. You can, of course, simply find happiness regardless of the state it's in - clean or filthy - but you're kidding yourself, and only yourself, if you believe you won't be happier if it is clean(er). Therefore, you can find (more) happiness by changing the environment you're _but_ also excepting that it will get dirty again, requiring you to clean it again.
All this being said, neither of us is right or wrong. That's sort of the point.
Interesting that Aristotle's Ethics also speaks about this. Good and bad are not at the ends of a scale, but good is in the middle, and bad either side. From what I understand it, excess of anything, even something normally regarded as "good" would result in bad things. Yea, I'm not very eloquent here, but you get the idea
My university vpn only worked for a few days while studying in China.
But there is this tiny little vpn software being spread around. Not sure if it's true but I remember it's falun gong teaming up with the CIA. Which at the time was able to go undetected, I think they keep rotating the IPS or something.
Was interesting how fast that tool spread "offline" between international students. Also Chinese have it but its less known among them.
Diet drink consumption gone up, but doesnt seem to have made a dent in the obesity crisis.
Your point is only valid if it actually lowers sugar and other carbs intake. Which isn't the case for most people.
Next to that. With diet drinks people drink more since they feel like they can get a way with, some do with sugar variants as well, but seems like more people binge drink diet versions which could lead to higher exposure relatively.
The has been processing sugar for millennia, these chemicals are pretty new.
Most people drinking diet soda aren't limiting other carbs... and we've had about half a century of people thinking that "low fat" diets are the solution and snacking on low-fat, but high carb foods.
More people need to stop consuming garbage that wouldn't have been considered food 250+ years ago.
I'm pretty sure Tolstoy isn't talking about a weekly beer, but the Russian type of alcoholism of downing an entire bottle of vodka every five minutes.
See the wiki:
> According to a 2011 report by the World Health Organization, annual per capita consumption of alcohol in Russia was about 15.76 litres of pure alcohol, the fourth-highest volume in Europe.
> Alcoholism has been a problem throughout the country's history because drinking is a pervasive, socially acceptable behaviour in Russian society
I've done the maths on that and it comes out at 39.4 litres of 40% spirits a year, 750ml a week, or 108ml a day. In the UK that is basically two double spirit drinks.
Four UK units a day is above the recommended 14 per week and I'm sure isn't great for your health long term but most people wouldn't notice they are drinking at that level.
I appreciate this is the average so many will be way above that, but interesting to extrapolate it out.
A great point, and I assume this sort of thing might help understand how prohibition came to America in the early 20th century. I heard a world health report once that implied that Russian men die a lot younger than they would without alcohol.
That was my impression when I travelled in Moscow. Every where I looked there was a kiosk selling beer and little bottles of vodka - along with some tasty cold cuts. It was pretty hard not to stop by and get one of these little bottles of vodka.
(On a side note, alcoholism in Moscow was on a different level then what I experienced. Middle aged men and women struggling to "walk" on their hands and legs at 10 in the morning was quite the experience for me.... This was on one of the Muscovite neighborhoods, not in the touristy places like Kremlin, Arbat, Tverskaya, etc..)
From the outside it feels somewhat more doable to be a pro , then a band or solo-artist, since there are quite a few orchestra's around that hire people on a stable basis. Spots are limited, but it's not super hard.