• Australia's largest state hits record-high COVID-19 cases despite weeks of strict lockdown. 'It's a tinderbox ready to explode,' one official said.
• eToro says crypto made up 73% of trading commissions in the last quarter, as retail customers dived in
• A flight attendant says she was too exhausted to report a passenger who shoved her when a flight was overbooked: report
• US jobless claims climb for first time in 5 weeks, to 353,000

I FINALLY FIGURED out finally figured out why most people at my gym are so much fitter and more chiseled than I am, and the answer may ring true for you, too.

It all comes down to a form of the friendship paradox, which explains how most people’s friends seem more popular than they are.

That paradox happens because while most people have a small number of friends, some people have a large number of friends, and those people push up the average number of friends for everyone else.

Something similar happens at the gym. Let’s assume most members of my gym (including me) go only two to three times a week, but some members are fitness nuts who go every day. Because those fitness nuts go more than everyone else, the set of people in the gym will always be disproportionately weighted toward them.

Planet Fitness memorably portrayed how this feels in its ‘Gymtimidation’ ad.

Thus I may go to the gym an average number of times for members of my gym, but any time I go to the gym I am surrounded by people who go more than I do on average.

- Gus Lubin