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Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

seattletimes.com

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Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#81

Post by fulafel »

abstractbarista wrote: post #65
matt4077 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole idea that somebody could be so lazy as to become homeless, without any other issues, is somewhat absurd. Being homeless is terribly uncomfortable. A truly lazy person would find it unbeatable.

It seems natural to me - a reflection of harsh reality on this planet. You work for yourself, or you perish. You see this in all living beings. We're animals just like them, bound by the same harsh rules.

Many anthropologists seem to think that a lot of hunter-gatherer populations had a fairly laid back life in terms of hours worked per week. It seems plausible to me that unnecessarily industrious tribes living in rainforest could overtax their environment, for example.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#82

Post by maxxxxx »

sjg007 wrote: post #68
animal531 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She doesn't need to be a regular trainer, she could be training people for various kinds of extreme activities.

The obvious is that she should be a coach for the Olympic cycling teams.

Unfortunately not many athletes make good coaches.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#83

Post by maxxxxx »

notahacker wrote: post #55
trabant00 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She sounds like a person who would have a hard time fooling herself into taking the money. There's little if any good a professional athlete can do for regular person who wants to get/stay fit. She's good at taking health compromises to the extreme in exchange for performance. The exact opposite of what a regular person needs.

The value of the personal trainer for the average person looking to get into slightly better-than-average shape is dispensing advice along pretty well-understood guidelines and helping them overcome their self-discipline issues , which is where speaking with the authority of an Olympian adds value even though the training regimes aren't going to be remotely similar. Of course, she might want to stay well away from he…

I knew a world class track athlete who also left the sport completely. To her it was something that parents and coaches had forced on her so she got out as soon as she could despite all the success.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#84

Post by mcv »

aladinator wrote: post #64

Great story. I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that. We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coac…

Is the mental health issue the cause of the homelessness, or is the homelessness the cause of the mental health issue?

There have been a number of studies that show that poverty has a very real impact on your mental abilities. It wouldn't surprise me at all if homelessness itself causes mental health problems.

But there are absolutely also athletes who have a hard time functioning outside their sports bubble.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#85

Post by jawns »

Former editor here.

This is a really interesting story, but if I were Greenstone's editor I would feel really conflicted about running it.

There's the elephant in the room -- mental health. What did the reporter get on record? "She did not want to discuss mental health but feels it should be treated more seriously in Washington."

Then there's her family. What did the reporter get on record? "Her immediate family in the Seattle area, including her 18-year-old daughter, declined interviews for this story."

So now you have to weave a tale while dancing around the fact that she's likely got mental health issues that she won't talk about, and you've got important people in her life who also don't want to talk.

I'm not saying the story is bad as-is. It's fascinating.

But it feels like there's a lot missing.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#86

Post by Balgair »

aladinator wrote: post #64

Great story. I kind of agree with many others here that it sounds like a mental health issue. But I also think that the story is more complicated than that. We shouldn't neglect the impact on the brain a professional sports career has. I've seen it many times. The amount of sacrifice and energy put into something like this leads to a very unbalanced lifestyle, which is usually encouraged from all sides (parents, coac…

Arguably the most accomplished athlete ever, Michael Phelps, has struggled with these same issues [0]. Today he is more upfront about his suicidal issues and what strategies he uses to help with his mental health. Such issues are incredibly personal, but there does seem to be some correlations with 'Black Swan' people (per the Natalie Portman movie) and later term mental health.

[0] https://www.menshealth.com/health/a24268441/michael-phelps-d...

If you need someone to talk with please call: 1-800-273-8255.

Alternatively, I'd love to talk with you (the reader of this sentence) as well, Hacker to Hacker.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#87

Post by [deleted] »

equalarrow wrote: post #70
angel_j wrote: post #48

Homelessness is the tip of the housing iceberg. Right behind the homeless are those who are a paycheck, or emergency, from losing everything. Behind them are millions of paying out there earnings in high rent, forced to share apartments to live where the job pays. Fronting it all are upper-middle class people, foreign investors, and venture capital, buying up properties to rent out. The cause is not a lack of "afford…

"What's not affordable is spending most of your income on rent, and this is hardly a choice for most people right now." Not a choice? Don't you enter into a rental agreement via choice? I've never met anyone who's said they were forced to rent some place. I don't necessarily disagree with the housing shortage, but there's reasons for that. Look at state, local laws and nimby's that pass and influence local zoning res…

[deleted]

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#88

Post by docker_up »

jawns wrote: post #85

Former editor here. This is a really interesting story, but if I were Greenstone's editor I would feel really conflicted about running it. There's the elephant in the room -- mental health. What did the reporter get on record? "She did not want to discuss mental health but feels it should be treated more seriously in Washington." Then there's her family. What did the reporter get on record? "Her immediate family in t…

Agreed. Those were the things that I spotted instantly. The first thing when you think of for homeless people is mental health. You don't have to be full-on crazy to have mental health issues that bring you down the wrong path of bad decision-making. The fact the family doesn't want to talk, that she was asked to leave by her parents, that she kept losing her job, these all speak volumes.

It's terrible, but it happens: I've learned anyone can suffer from mental health problems. I have a decades-old friend who was gifted and brilliant. He succumbed to schizophrenia in his 30s, lost his job as a patent lawyer and broke off his engagement to his lovely fiance, and started murmuring about evil. He stopped answering my calls and moved around so much I have no idea where he is now, or if he's even still alive.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#89

Post by inflatableDodo »

harias wrote: post #4

>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?

A friend of mine likes to point out that only in programming would two people working together earn itself the moniker of 'extreme programming'.

Re: Olympic medal-winning cyclist Rebecca Twigg is homeless in Seattle

#90

Post by teucris »

xbma wrote: post #18
harias wrote: post #4

>It was a far cry from winning medals for Twigg, and beyond that, she said the solitary nature of programming troubled her. I would like to know what HN thinks about the 'solitary' nature of programming? Isn't programming more or less a group endeavor now?

It is for show, real work still gets done by solitary programmers. Some people may have the capacity for pair programming but I doubt that it is sustainable. The conclusion of the famous Steele/Stallman session is this: "My first thought afterward was: it was a great experience, very intense, and that I never wanted to do it again in my life."

The only excellent, productive teams I’ve ever worked with wrote software as a team. Not pair programming or mobbing, but a group discussing the plan and codebase constantly in person or over chat, reviewing eachother’s PRs, occasionally meeting to hash out a sticky architecture point.

Yes, they then went to their desks, alone, and coded it all up. And yes, they all had the skills to actually put ideas into code. But to say the real work only gets done in isolation ignores the majority of the amazing collaborative work that makes great software.

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