jross

I made it to the state finals in youth wrestling, and in one match, Chris complimented me mid-takedown, and again during a reversal. It was the only time I ever heard another wrestler speak during live action. At a major tournament when I was 11 or 12, I took a kid down right off the whistle and cut him for a release. He grabbed my wrists, made them his own, and took me down with ruthless force. It was the first time I’d ever been overpowered. Later, I found out he was a state champ. Then there was Josh V., who used pressure points on my neck and inside my elbows to control me completely. I felt cheated. As a freshman, I dueled Jason B., a multiple-time state champion. He caught me in a headlock in the first period, but I countered with a gut lock, rolling him to his back as I powered through. The crowd’s reaction was the first I’d ever noticed. He recovered and dominated me. As a sophomore, Mike P. pinned me with overwhelming strength. Back when he was the new, chubby kid, I’d pinned him easily multiple times. As a sophomore, I went up from 145 to 153 and tech falled my teammate during wrestle offs. I showered and was ready to leave when coach comes to the locker room and makes me wrestle the upper classman again (first time ever for multiple wrestle offs). I lose by one point. We then have a best of three and I landed on my head from a whizzer position. I sprained a muscle in my neck, had a huge lump, and could only turn one direction without turning my shoulders for the better part of a year. I had bumped up after having to stop cutting too much weight; hospital visit due to dehydration. Returned to wrestle at regionals four weeks later at 160lbs... DNQ. (second year at regionals with an injury) Junior year, at 16, I moved up weight classes. After two stagnant years, I was having success but felt nervous facing a kid with a 20-2 record. My interim coach asked, 'What do you think he’s thinking about you?' I pinned him in the first period. I never had a record intimidate me to that degree again. Junior year summer after high school, I soundly beat Joel T. (multiple time state champ, D1) by controlling ties. I had no idea who he was. My coach had taught my to dig my thumb under the jaw to turn the opponent's head away. He was the only wrestler I ever did it to, and it was effective. As a senior, I majored Adam P., a multiple-time youth champion who’d beaten me at least five times growing up. One of those losses stung; I’d caught him with a cow catcher and taken the lead with 20 seconds left, only to lose. Senior year state semi finals: I'm losing by one point, on bottom, with a minute left int he third period. Hit a standing switch and reversed him to his back. Held him there for the win... on to the finals. At an alumni wrestling event, I was winning against a younger, stronger opponent. About three minutes in, I was on top, but I’d hit my limit. I muttered, 'Enough, I quit,' and he quickly reversed me. Flat on my belly, gasping for air, I heard my old high school coach angrily yell from the sidelines, 'What are you doing? Just roll over and let him pin you!' Too exhausted to argue, I gave in to a chicken wing. Afterward, I stumbled outside and lay on my back for 45 minutes, trying to recover. It wasn’t ego; my heart was about to burst. That match was a wake-up call about fitness. In hind sight, my best win was probably against a kid from Ellsworth (Clint F). It is only memorable because after taking third that year, he won youth state every year from then on. He placed at High School Nationals... I didn't know there was a "nationals"... Looking back, I never learned how to be strategic or wrestle close matches. I found defensive / passive wrestlers incredibly frustrating. I only had one year (junior) with a coach having had college wrestling experience. That coach enabled my mental break thru. My senior year, I had a dollar coach that just graduated from college playing football. That man could bench 385lbs and wrenched on my neck. He made me learn how to power through painful positions to score. I graduated at 17, and I’d have given anything for another year of high school like my peers; to keep growing, keep learning, to dominate. My only options were Neosho County Community College with Terry Pack. I drove myself down there, saw the trashy trailers, and decided my girlfriend was more important. Dog gone it.

art. intelligence

Is the Trade War Worth It? Hard to call it “worth it” so far. Trade wars, like Smoot-Hawley in 1930, tend to backfire, shrinking trade and hurting all sides. In 2025, Trump’s tariffs—10% baseline on all imports (April 5), 25% on Canada/Mexico, 34% on China (April 9)—aim to fix a $1.2 trillion trade deficit and boost U.S. jobs. But Canada’s 25% on $20.7 billion of U.S. goods (March 13) and China’s 34% (April 4) are hitting back hard, and global trade’s already down 15% this year (WTO). Tax Foundation pegs U.S. household costs at $1,900 from these hikes—tough to swallow when prices are up and growth’s slowing (RSM estimates a 0.36% GDP hit). The jury’s out on long-term gains, but right now, it’s a lot of pain for uncertain reward. Is It Working? Not clearly, not yet. Trump’s goal—cut deficits, bring jobs home—hasn’t landed. The deficit’s still massive—$1.2 trillion in 2024—and while first-term tariffs (2018-19) added maybe 1,000 steel jobs (EPI, 2023), they cost 300,000 elsewhere (Fed, 2019). In 2025, Canada and China’s counter-tariffs are slamming U.S. exporters—soybean farmers lost $27 billion since 2018, and manufacturers are scrambling. The commenter’s “net loss” point holds: escalation’s driving higher costs (2.3% price bump, Budget Lab) without shrinking the deficit or sparking a factory boom. Supply chains are shifting—some to Vietnam, not the U.S.—but that’s not “working” as planned. Has the U.S. Benefited Yet? It’s a mixed bag. On one hand, steel’s scoring wins—Hyundai’s $5.8 billion Louisiana plant (2025) shows tariffs can draw investment and jobs, a tangible boost for U.S. industry. Trade diversion’s happening too—China’s export share to the U.S. dropped 3% since 2018 (NBER, 2022), nudging some production closer to home. Politically, Trump’s base is energized—his “Liberation Day” (April 2) pitch fuels a sense of American grit. On the flip side, the costs are real: inflation’s up, stocks slid, and Canada’s 25% and China’s 34% counter-tariffs are biting U.S. exporters hard. Retaliation’s outpacing us—and while there’s progress, it’s tempered by the broader economic squeeze. Bottom Line It’s a bold play with stakes on both sides—short-term hits like higher costs and lost exports are real, but the seeds of long-term wins—more jobs, a leaner deficit—are planted. Worth it? Hinges on whether the economic grit pays off over the political flex. Working? Not fully, but it’s early. Benefits? Enough to keep hope alive, with room to grow if the tide turns.

AI continues Fair point—Trump’s tariffs, the big 25% ones on Canada and Mexico and 20% on China, aren’t fully in effect yet; they’re set for May 1, 2025, and we’re already seeing chaos. Canada’s slapped 25% on $20.7 billion of U.S. goods since March 13, China’s upped theirs to 34% as of April 4, and markets are freaking out before the ink’s dry. It’s a good parallel to question—what’s happening before the tariffs even hit? But your Smoot-Hawley timeline’s off a bit. Congress didn’t pass it in May ’29—that’s when the House voted, May 28, 1929. The full Congress, House and Senate together, passed it June 13, 1930, signed into law June 17. Mid-1929’s decline—industrial peak in July, crash in October—was already rolling before that House vote even happened. So, it’s not “just before mid-1929” for the law; the House move was early, but the real deal was over a year later. Your unemployment jump—~1% to 12% by year-end, 15% in seven months—and inflation to -10%? That doesn’t track with May ’29 either. Unemployment was around 3% in early ’29, crept to 5-6% post-crash by December, hit 9% by late ’30, and 15% by mid-’31—way past seven months from the House vote. Deflation got to -10% in ’32, not ’29. The crash and pre-tariff slump drove that early pain, not the House passing it. Reciprocal tariffs—Canada, Europe—didn’t bite ‘til late ’30, after the law. The anticipation angle’s real, though. The House vote in ’29 spooked markets—exporters worried, stocks got shaky. Could’ve primed the pump for October’s crash, like some say about Trump’s threats now. But the big unemployment and deflation you’re citing? That’s post-June ’30, when tariffs actually hit and trade tanked—$5.2 billion in exports ’29 to $2.9 billion ’31. Smoot-Hawley made it worse, no doubt—just not right off the May ’29 bat.

AI responds: The House of Representatives passed its version of the bill (H.R. 2667) on May 28, 1929. The Senate took longer, debating and amending it extensively, and didn’t pass its version until March 24, 1930. After that, the two chambers had to reconcile differences in a conference committee, which finalized the bill in early June 1930. Congress as a whole—the combined House and Senate—officially passed the reconciled bill on June 13, 1930, and President Hoover signed it into law on June 17, 1930. Scale of Impact Short-Term (May ’29): Minimal direct impact—more psychological than material. Trade didn’t collapse overnight; the bill still faced a year of Senate wrangling. But it amplified uncertainty in a bubble about to pop. Think of it as a tremor, not the quake. Long-Term Setup: The House vote locked in momentum. By the time the Senate passed it in March ’30 and Hoover signed it in June, markets had been stewing on it for months. Some argue (e.g., economist Allan Meltzer) that prolonged debate worsened the ’29 crash’s fallout, though hard proof’s elusive. So, in May 1929, Smoot-Hawley’s impact was real but indirect—rattling nerves, shifting plans, and priming the pump for worse to come. It wasn’t law, so no tariffs bit yet, but the signal mattered. Compare it to now: Trump’s 2025 tariffs aren’t in full swing, yet Canada’s already hitting back. Same vibe—anticipation can hurt before the ink dries.

The steelman arguments for each case—"Smoot-Hawley did not cause the Depression" and "Smoot-Hawley exacerbated the Depression"—appear strongly different because that’s the nature of steelmanning: it involves constructing the strongest possible version of a position, even if it means emphasizing different facts or interpretations. For the "did not cause" case, I leaned into the timeline of the Depression’s onset, the relatively small share of trade in GDP, and the dominance of monetary policy failures. For the "exacerbated" case, I highlighted the tariff’s role in shrinking trade, triggering retaliation, and worsening domestic conditions. These arguments diverge sharply because they’re designed to stand as robust, standalone defenses of opposing views, not to reconcile with each other. As for the "real truth" of Smoot-Hawley’s impact, it’s messy and lies somewhere between these extremes—history doesn’t offer a single, tidy answer. Most economic historians agree the Depression had multiple causes: a speculative stock market bubble, massive income inequality, overproduction, and a banking system prone to collapse, all compounded by the Federal Reserve’s disastrous tightening of the money supply. Smoot-Hawley entered this already chaotic picture, so pinning down its exact role is tricky. The consensus view is that Smoot-Hawley didn’t cause the Depression—the downturn was well underway before June 1930—but it likely worsened it to some degree. Trade data backs this: U.S. exports and imports cratered after 1930, and global trade volume fell sharply. Studies, like those from economist Douglas Irwin, suggest the tariff explains part of this decline, though not all—maybe 20-30% of the trade drop, with the rest tied to the global slump. Retaliatory tariffs from countries like Canada and France amplified the effect, but their impact varied by region and wasn’t always as severe as popularly claimed. Quantitatively, trade was only 8-10% of U.S. GDP, so even a big hit to exports couldn’t have been the sole driver of a 30% GDP collapse. Compare that to the money supply shrinking by a third or 9,000 bank failures wiping out savings—those were bigger blows. Qualitative evidence, like contemporary accounts and the 1,000+ economists opposing the bill, suggests Smoot-Hawley damaged confidence and strained international relations, but it’s hard to measure how much that mattered. The "real truth" is probably this: Smoot-Hawley was a bad policy at a terrible time, amplifying an existing crisis without being its root. It’s like throwing a punch at someone already falling down—painful, but not what knocked them off their feet. The debate persists because its effects are entangled with everything else that went wrong, making it a perfect scapegoat for some and a footnote for others. Without a counterfactual—no Smoot-Hawley world to compare—we’re left with educated guesses, not gospel.

Here’s a steelman argument for why the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 exacerbated the Great Depression: While the Great Depression was already underway by the time Smoot-Hawley was enacted in June 1930, the tariff significantly worsened the economic collapse by disrupting global trade at a critical moment. The legislation raised U.S. tariffs to historic highs—averaging around 20% on dutiable imports and affecting over 20,000 goods—making foreign products prohibitively expensive. This didn’t just hurt U.S. consumers; it triggered a cascade of retaliation from trading partners, shrinking the global market for American goods precisely when the economy needed every possible avenue for recovery. The impact on trade was immediate and severe. U.S. exports, which had been a lifeline for industries like agriculture and manufacturing, plummeted from $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion by 1933—a drop of over 60%. Imports fell similarly, from $4.4 billion to $1.4 billion. While some of this decline stemmed from the broader global downturn, Smoot-Hawley accelerated the collapse by inviting tit-for-tat tariffs from dozens of countries. Canada, for example, imposed steep duties on U.S. goods and redirected trade toward the British Empire. European nations, already struggling with war debts and economic instability, followed suit, erecting their own barriers. This shrank world trade by an estimated 25% between 1929 and 1933, turning a national recession into a global catastrophe. Domestically, Smoot-Hawley hit key sectors hard. American farmers, already reeling from overproduction and falling commodity prices, saw export markets vanish—wheat exports, for instance, dropped by nearly half. Manufacturers faced higher input costs for raw materials and lost foreign customers, leading to layoffs and factory closures. These effects rippled through the economy, deepening unemployment and reducing consumer spending power when recovery demanded the opposite. Moreover, the tariff undermined confidence at a fragile moment. The stock market, which had briefly rallied after the 1929 crash, took another hit as Smoot-Hawley loomed, with investors fearing a trade war. Business leaders and economists—over 1,000 of whom signed a petition urging President Hoover to veto the bill—warned of its dangers, and their predictions proved prescient. The policy signaled American retreat from global cooperation, amplifying uncertainty and discouraging investment. Critics might argue that monetary policy failures or pre-existing weaknesses were the Depression’s true drivers, but Smoot-Hawley poured fuel on the fire. It wasn’t the sole cause, but it turned a manageable downturn into a deeper, longer-lasting crisis by choking trade, inviting retaliation, and eroding economic stability when resilience was most needed. In this view, it’s not just that Smoot-Hawley happened during the Depression—it actively made it worse.

Friendly reminder to us all that AI can sound incredibly convincing until you know the subject well enough to see the errors. Here's a steelman argument for why the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 did not cause the Great Depression: The Great Depression was a complex, multifaceted event with roots that predate the passage of Smoot-Hawley. While the tariff act is often blamed for exacerbating or even triggering the economic downturn, a closer look reveals that its impact was likely overstated. First, the decline in economic activity had already begun by mid-1929—industrial production peaked in July, and the stock market crashed in October—well before Smoot-Hawley was signed into law in June 1930. This suggests that deeper structural issues, such as overproduction, uneven wealth distribution, and a fragile banking system, were already driving the economy toward collapse. Second, the tariff’s effect on international trade, while significant, was not catastrophic enough to single-handedly cause a global depression. U.S. imports and exports combined accounted for only about 8-10% of GDP at the time, meaning domestic factors dominated economic activity. Even if Smoot-Hawley reduced trade by raising tariffs on over 20,000 goods, the volume of trade affected was relatively small compared to the broader economy. Historical data shows that U.S. exports fell from $5.2 billion in 1929 to $1.7 billion in 1933, but much of this decline can be attributed to the global downturn already underway, not just retaliatory tariffs from trading partners. Third, the retaliatory tariffs from other nations—often cited as a key mechanism by which Smoot-Hawley worsened the Depression—were not as widespread or immediate as critics claim. Many countries had already begun adopting protectionist policies in the 1920s, and their responses to Smoot-Hawley were often more symbolic than economically devastating. For instance, Canada, a major U.S. trading partner, did shift some trade to the British Empire, but its overall economic contraction was tied more to falling commodity prices than to Smoot-Hawley alone. Finally, monetary policy failures, particularly the Federal Reserve’s decision to tighten credit and allow thousands of banks to fail, played a far larger role in deepening the Depression. The contraction of the money supply by nearly a third between 1929 and 1933 choked investment and consumer spending, dwarfing the impact of trade disruptions. In this view, Smoot-Hawley was a misguided policy that worsened an already bad situation, but it was neither the spark nor the primary fuel for the Depression’s fire. In summary, the steelman case is that Smoot-Hawley was a scapegoat—a high-profile but secondary factor in a crisis driven by pre-existing economic weaknesses and catastrophic domestic policy failures. Blaming it for the Depression oversimplifies a much larger and messier story.

Many forms of never argue with a pig; you both get dirty, and the pig enjoys it. And jerks… Don’t argue with an asshole. They will bury you in and call it a victory. The smell isn’t worth digging through for a nugget of truth.

yea would be interesting to plug that into ai to have it made as performant as possible in python or C code. 10-100x faster than VBA.

Jimmy, this place is better when the jackasses are the ones I don’t agree with. It’s not rocket science; stop being a dick.

I am a forum member, not an admin. I have not suspended anyone. But if I was an admin, I'd implement guidelines. The current guidelines seem that you get suspended when Bob is annoyed. Bob doesn't have time to police this free site all day. Often both the content reporter and offender annoy Bob. Husker seems have a higher annoyance threshold than Bob...

I curate my own experience to when or if I will engage with those I find objectionable, such as your JimmyBT account. I don't silence others. This isn't about views. Fishbane is smart and respectful. He could list just about any view in a respectful manner. I can't hear some people over the sound of their insolence.

Trump said he would do this in the 80s and again before the election. We were told it would get worse before getting better. There are good intentions and reasoning behind the moves. Tradeoffs. I'm going to wait and see what occurs. It will be interesting and expensive to see what surprise is ahead of us. The tariffs are too blunt and broad for my taste. But I do understand the reasoning and what he is attempting to do.

Banned, suspended, whatever. Einhorn is Finkle! Finkle is Einhorn! GreatWhiteNorth is RockLobster! GreatWhiteNorth was a good contributor to the wrestling forum and psychotic on the non wrestling forum. His profile name and photo appears as a trollish sock puppet with blue hair on my stylized Intermat.

Hey everyone, let’s get some stories going! I want to hear about the most memorable match you’ve ever been in; win or lose. Spill the details... weight class, opponent, moment that stuck with you, whatever made it unforgettable! What’s your story?

As a paying Rokfin member, I use an adblocker to manage my browsing experience. Intermat, which runs on the Invision Community platform (noted in the footer), assumedly labels its ads as "non-intrusive advertising." However, this label doesn’t always hold up. On desktop, these ads can overlay content, images, and other elements. I toggle the "non-intrusive advertising" setting in my adblocker depending on the situation: when the ads are genuinely unobtrusive, I’m fine leaving it on so Intermat can earn ad revenue, but when they’re disruptive, I turn it off since I’m already supporting the site financially through Rokfin and don’t want the hassle.

name fits

Highest -215. Now between 180 - 190. Body fat changed from 5% at 22 to 13% at 42. A little fatter now at 43. Maybe 14-15%? Youngest boy is 12 and I expect we’ll get fit together soon.

High school girl went from 145 to 235 in one year. What? Won state both years. NAIA AA true freshman year this year.

6 - 58; 9-15 7 - 64; 23-10 **8 - 73; 27-3 *9 - ? **10 - 85; 32-8 11 - 96 **12 - 110; 28-6 *13 - 120 *14 - 130; 12-8 injured knee (from 140ish) *15 - 145; ill from cutting (from 165) **16 - 160; 27-4 (from 175) **17 - 171; 35-2 (from 180ish weekly) * don’t have record or missing matches ** medaled between 1st - 5th at kids or high school state Qualifier for state all years except when 14 and 15. Strength issues… —- baseball in college 18 - 195…

It is never easy to lose a parent; I am sorry.

Banned before and still this charming?

The journal shows crazy https://tennesseestar.com/covenant-school-shooting-investigation/

Steelman on tariffs. https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1907880105369845865.html