Lots of things like grey hair, moving more slowly, injuries that I would have bounced away from before instead hurting for weeks or months.
But the one that hit hardest was a breakup I had a little while back. She was the love of my life and I fully intended to marry her, and when she ended it out of nowhere I was sad, but fine. She dumped me, and it sucked, but I also needed to finish a staff report for a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that night. So I moved on.
The thing that upset me most was that I wasn’t that upset. There was a time in my life when I would have been a mess. But as I’ve aged, my emotions have become more regulated.
I miss being capable of that level of joy and pain.
Fractional measurements are better than decimal measurements for anything where the level of precision is important.
Decimal measurements can only increase our decrease in precision by a factor of 10.
For example if your precision is accurate to 1/4 of a unit, you can represent that with fractions no problem.
What is that in decimal? “0.25” implies precision to the hundredth of a unit.
What if your measurement is half a unit, but it’s precise to 1/64 of a unit? Just don’t reduce the fractions. “32/64ths” is more precise than .5.
Lots of diver don’t know their buouancy sucks because they overweight themselves and stay neutral by having poor trim. They angle their feet downward and kick to stay neutral, which uses more air and causes them to silt out the dive site because they’re disturbing the water below and behind them, but never see it because they’re not facing that direction.
Most of my photography classes are actually teaching buouancy and advanced kicking because you really can’t do good macro shots from 8 feet away. You have to get to the subject of the shot, and have to be able to do it without stirring up the silt.
The frog kick, back kick, and helicopter turns are essential skills, but a lot of people have shitty or gimmicky fins, which makes it much harder. My thought on fins is that there’s 2 kinds - Jet Fins and Bad Fins. They were designed in the 60s and have never been matched.
Those big, heavy, stiff monsters are great, because you can do a reverse frog kick without them bending and pushing you forward while you’re getting them in position for the back kick.
…stand above the average person?
Kinda opposite of the prompt:
Scuba!
Lots of divers will tell you that buouancy control is difficult for most divers. Mine is absolutely good. I teach underwater photography and can hover within a fraction of an inch over a super silty bottom while swimming backwards and taking video without stirring up anything.
I have other instructors and professionals come to me for buoyancy training.
Kings off-topic, but after listening to the audio book I really want a World War Z miniseries in the style of a Ken Burns documentary.