Think of it like DOD pricing but for local police departments. My broader point is that both sides of this graphic have massively underestimated the true costs of both professions, largely due to corporate profit inflation and captured markets.
I mean hell, you can’t even buy a decent bike helmet for $125, do you think they’ll send police out in something less worthy than that?
I think shifting your reward cycle would help. Right now you are hooked on the dopamine from going hard, which is fine , but if you want to change, you need to replace the reward system. It also might help to ask how old you are? It is a tendency of the youth to have a lack of long term vision, which can make it hard to create a more sustainable reward cycle .
Its real simple. It gives them identity and something to go after in a society that offers them nothing. So they get into woodworking, hunting, fighting, only eat meat for a while or some shit.
Males are expendable, the way that all people in capitalism are expendable. But to quote Babe from animal farm: Some are more expendable than others. Males have lower impulse control and have a biological more likely to engage in high risk/ high reward. Most white males are facing the same dilemmas and contradictions around the shittiness and meaninglessness of their existence as everyone else; every one else just doesn’t have a direct pipeline to radicalism engineered for them. For years YT has been trying to steer me down the white nationalist rabbit hole, in-spite of how unappologetically leftist the programing I consume is. I’m a bit older and I’ve been around and politically aware since I was a teen and made the impulsive decision to enlist, then months later we were invading Afghanistan and then Iraq.
This same issue plagues young men from all nationalities and walks of life, not just young white men in the US. We have to collectively find a way to give meaning to peoples lives or that innate search for meaning will be taken advantage of.
I would probably plan on fixing the hole by first cutting some pieces of (looks like particle board??) down to size and reducing the overall size of the gap.
Filling that thing with foam seems like a mistake in the making should you ever need to service it again and a kind of shitry diy cus I didn’t know better solution.
The hole in the back is more concerning to me. If that goes to the exterior of the structure you need to much more seriously consider sealing.
like wise those seem like water pipes? maybe gas? so condensation should be a consideration. You should put some kind of sealing insulation around them to prevent condensation build up otherwise you’ll be setting up a mold bonanza.
Honestly, with the tools and solutions you are proposing, just get a contractor if you are the owner. you prob gonna end up setting this shit up to be redone regardless, and thats maybe a 200 dollar job