Online and computer chess have changed things. 12 year old kids generally can't travel to tournaments, but they can play against other strong players or against the computer online.
Fischer lived in New York, and therefore could play in the Manhattan Chess Club.
Yes, they amass thousands upon thousands of games at a very young age. I did the same programming my C64 in 8th-10th grades. The hours just fly by, doing what you love.
One other factor is that 3500-level chess engines are freely available for anyone with the net to analyze every situation, every move.
And then there are the streamers like Hikaru who teach chess so brilliantly. He is a true one-off, to be that top-level and able to live-comment his own blitz games. It is an underappreciated and completely unique talent, and enlightening for the chess afficianado.
There's also a decent amount of controversy around really young GMs. Basically that their parents game the system by choosing official tournaments with burnt out GMs with low ratings so they can get their norms easier. Mishra recently had a lot of backlash from top GMs with those types of accusations. If that's true, those players will likely never reach the top ranks, but who knows.
I've seen the same suggested of Sergey Karjakin, and he made it to the top (and I've seen it suggested that it helped him get to the top, that being a GM sooner got him more access to top trainers sooner).
But public health agencies warn that if it’s too hot, the blowing air can actually make things worse by acting like a convection oven—and they differ on that threshold.
This is a real problem. A lot of people are found dead sitting in their closed apartments in front of a fan, thinking it would cool them off during a heat wave.
Yes, the CDC is trying to give advice that won't kill vulnerable people - if they get it wrong, people die. Imagine that's your job every day. Whether healthy young people are comfortable is very secondary.
One might imagine the solution to that problem is, 'don't use fans', but that would result in people dying from heat illnesses. They need to find a threshold that minimizes those very bad outcomes.
My parent and an aunt both have dementia and there's no way I'm going to hang around not remembering who the hell my family is or where I am.
I could hang on like Jimmy Carter (who is mental sound) and go 20+ years as a shadow of my former self.
Not putting my family through that.
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