Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/20/

(Lord’s day). My wife and I lay talking long in bed, and at last she is come to be willing to stay two months in the country, for it is her unwillingness to stay till the house is quite done that makes me at a loss how to have her go or stay.

But that which troubles me most is that it has rained all this morning so furiously that I fear my house is all over water, and with that expectation I rose and went into my house and find that it is as wet as the open street, and that there is not one dry-footing above nor below in my house. So I fitted myself for dirt, and removed all my books to the office and all day putting up and restoring things, it raining all day long as hard within doors as without. At last to dinner, we had a calf’s head and bacon at my chamber at Sir W. Pen’s, and there I and my wife concluded to have her go and her two maids and the boy, and so there shall be none but Will and I left at home, and so the house will be freer, for it is impossible to have anybody come into my house while it is in this condition, and with this resolution all the afternoon we were putting up things in the further cellar against next week for them to be gone, and my wife and I into the office and there measured a soiled flag that I had found there, and hope to get it to myself, for it has not been demanded since I came to the office. But my wife is not hasty to have it, but rather to stay a while longer and see the event whether it will be missed or no.

At night to my office, and there put down this day’s passages in my journall, and read my oaths, as I am obliged every Lord’s day. And so to Sir W. Pen’s to my chamber again, being all in dirt and foul, and in fear of having catched cold today with dabbling in the water.

But what has vexed me to-day was that by carrying the key to Sir W. Pen’s last night, it could not in the midst of all my hurry to carry away my books and things, be found, and at last they found it in the fire that we made last night. So to bed.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/20/

kaberett

Reading. ( Wells, Lister, Tufte, Brosh, McMillan-Webster )

... I also technically started reading a little bit of Descartes, and more around Descartes, for the pain project -- but really not very much as yet.

Playing. A round of Hanabi with A & houseguest! We were playing with very different House Norms which led to some hilarious miscommunication, but A Good Time Was Had.

A good time was also had following the toddler around a playground, including some time On A Swing where we worked out How Legs Do. :)

Cooking. Several Questionable loaves of bread (mostly "too much liquid, ergo puddle"). Three more recipes from East, none of which were particularly interesting to us. (Piccalilli spiced rice; Sodha's variant on egg fried rice; a tempeh-and-pak-choi Situation.)

And Ribiselkuchen! I have been very very happily eating Appropriately Seasonal Ribiselkuchen.

Eating. A made us waffles for breakfast this morning. I had them with SLICED STRAWBERRIES and SLICED APRICOT and MAPLE SYRUP and also LEMON JUICE and VANILLA SUGAR and I was very happy about all of this.

Making & mending. It is Event Prep Week. There are so many potions.

Growing. ... I got some more supports in for my beans? I have just about managed to break even on the sugar snap peas this year (should NOT have eaten the handful I did...) and might yet manage to do a little better than that, with luck.

Squash starting to produce female flowers (yes I was late starting them). More soft fruit (which desperately needs processing; I will be sad if I wind up needing to just compost the jostaberries that have been sat in the fridge for ...a while, now). Many many tomatoes, none of which were actually ripe yet last time I actually made it to the plot...

Observing. Peacock butterfly at the plot! Tawny owl (audio only)! Bats (ditto)! The Teenage Magpie Persists!

Also a variety of awkward teenage waterfowl in Barking Park, along with a squirrel who was most unimpressed when our attempts to feed it mostly involved accidentally handing it an empty half-peanut-shell. It made it very clear (well before any of us had independently noticed The Issue) that it understood we were willing to feed it but that we were doing a terrible job at this and Should Try Harder. I was delighted.

redbird

We went into central London this afternoon, intending to visit the British Museum, but we made a very late start, and after our late lunch discovered they were sold out of (free) tickets for today.

So we went to the National Gallery, a few bus stops away, and looked at paintings. I wasn't up for a huge amount of walking, but bny the time I was ready to leave, so were Adrian and Cattitude. We spent a few minutes just enjoyong being in Trafalgar Square on a sunny afternoon, then walked to Charing Cross to get the Underground. Annoyingly, while it was (as whickever app Cattitude was using said) only a few minutes walk to Charing Cross, there was a lot more walking underground, and we had to go down several flights of stairs.

I was pleasantly surprised by how little my joints hurt by the time we got back to Mom's flat. I took both naproxen and acetominophen before we left, and wore my better walking shoes and a pair of smartwool socks, and the combination sdeems to have done me a lot of good.

We're flying home tomorrow. I booked a cab, which will pick us up at 2:15, and logged onto the British Airways website and changed the (acceptable) seats it had assigned us to ones we like better (I got us all aisle seats, instead of all next to each other so one person was in a middle seat).

ysabetwordsmith posting in

crowdfunding

Welcome to the 145th Crowdfunding Creative Jam! This session will run Saturday, July 19-Sunday, July 20. The theme is "Heroism -- Real and Perceived."

Crowdfunding Creative Jam

Everyone is eligible to post prompts, which may be words or phrases, titles, images, etc. Prompters may request a specific creator, but everyone else may still use that prompt if they wish. Prompts may specify a particular character/world/etc. but creators may use the prompt for something else anyway and post the results. Prompters are still encouraged to post mostly prompts that anyone could use anywhere, as this maximizes the chance of having creators make something based on your prompt. Please title your comment "Prompt" or "Prompts" when providing inspiration so these are easy to find.

Prompt responses may also be treated as prompts and used for further inspiration. For example, a prompt may lead to a sketch which leads to a story, and so on. This kind of cascading inspiration is one of the most fun things about a collective jam session.

Everyone is eligible to use prompts, and everyone who wants to use a given prompt may do so, for maximum flexibility of creator choice in inspiration. You do not have to post a "Claim" reply when you decide to use a prompt, but this does help indicate what is going on so that other prompters can spread out their choice of prompts if they wish.

Creators are encouraged, but not required, to post at least one item free. Likewise, sharing a private copy of material with the prompter is encouraged but not required. Creative material resulting from prompts should be indicated in a reply to the prompt, with a link to the full content elsewhere on the creator's site (if desired); a brief excerpt and/or description of the material may be included in the reply (if desired). It helps to title your comment "Prompt Filled" or something like that so these are easy to identify. There is no time limit on responding to prompts. However, creators are encouraged to post replies sooner rather than later, as the attention of prompters will be highest during and shortly after the session.

Some items created from prompts may become available for sponsorship. Some creators may offer perks for donations, linkbacks, or other activity relating to this project. Check creator comments and links for their respective offerings.

Prompters, creators, and bystanders are expected to behave in a responsible and civil manner. If the moderators have to drag someone out of the sandbox for improper behavior, we will not be amused. Please respect other people's territory and intellectual property rights, and only play with someone else's characters/setting/etc. if you have permission. (Fanfic/fanart freebies are okay.) If you want to invite folks to play with something of yours, title the comment something like "Open Playground" so it's easy to spot. This can be a good way to attract new people to a shared world or open-source project, or just have some good non-canon fun.

Boost the signal! The more people who participate, the more fun this will be. Hopefully we'll see activity from a lot of folks who regularly mention their projects in this community, but new people are always welcome. You can link to this session post or to individual items created from prompts, whatever you think is awesome enough to recommend to your friends.

Current Mood: busy

studyhacks_feed

Posted by Study Hacks

https://calnewport.com/no-one-knows-anything-about-ai/

https://calnewport.com/?p=16630

I want to present you with two narratives about AI. Both of them are about using this technology to automate computer programming, but they point toward two very different conclusions.

The first narrative notes that Large Language Models (LLMs) are exceptionally well-suited for coding because source code, at its core, is just very well-structured text, which is exactly what these models excel at generating. Because of this tight match between need and capability, the programming industry is serving as an economic sacrificial lamb, the first major sector to suffer a major AI-driven upheaval.

There has been no shortage of evidence to support these claims. Here are some examples, all from the last two months:

Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of the AI company Perplexity, claims AI tools like Cursor and GitHub Copilot cut task completion time for his engineers from “three or four days to one hour.” He now mandates every employee in his company to use them: “The speed at which you can fix bugs and ship to production is scary.”
An article in Inc. confidently declared: “In the world of software engineering, AI has indeed changed everything.”
Not surprisingly, these immense new capabilities are being blamed for dire disruptions. One article from an investment site featured an alarming headline: “Tech Sector Sees 64,000 Job Cuts This Year Due to AI Advancement.” No one is safe from such cuts. “Major companies like Microsoft have been at the forefront of these layoffs,” the article explains, “citing AI advancements as a primary factor.”
My world of academic computer science hasn’t been spared either. A splashy Atlantic piece opens with a distressing claim: “The Computer Science-Bubble is Bursting,” which it largely blames on AI, a technology it describes as “ideally suited to replace the very type of person who built it.”

Given the confidence of these claims, you’d assume that computer programmers are rapidly going the way of the telegraph operator. But, if you read a different set of articles and quotes from this same period, a very different narrative emerges:

The AI evaluation company METR recently released the results of a randomized control trial in which a group of experienced open-source software developers were sorted into two groups, one of which would use AI coding tools to complete a collection of tasks, and one of which would not. As the report summarizes: “Surprisingly, we find that when developers use AI tools, they take 19% longer than without—AI makes them slower.”
Meanwhile, other experienced engineers are beginning to push back on extreme claims about how AI will impact their industry. “Quitting programming as a career right now because of LLMs would be like quitting carpentry as a career thanks to the invention of the table saw,” quipped the developer Simon Wilson.
Tech CEO Nick Khami reacted to the claim that AI tools will drastically reduce the number of employees required to build a software product as follows: “I feel like I’m being gaslit every time I read this, and I worry it makes folks early in their software development journey feel like it’s a bad time investment.”
But what about Microsoft replacing all those employees with AI tools? A closer look reveals that this is not what happened. The company’s actual announcement clarified that cuts were spread across divisions (like gaming) to free up more funds to invest in AI initiatives—not because AI was replacing workers..
What about the poor CS majors? Later in that same Atlantic article, an alternative explanation is floated. The tech sector has been contracting recently to correct for exuberant spending during the pandemic years. This soft market makes a difference: “enrollment in the computer-science major has historically fluctuated with the job market…[and] prior declines have always rebounded to enrollment levels higher than where they started.” (Personal history note: when I was studying computer science as an undergraduate in the early 2000s, I remember that there was consternation about the plummeting numbers of majors in the wake of the original dot-com bust.)

Here we can find two completely different takes on the same AI issue, depending on what articles you read and what experts you listen to. What should we take away from this confusion? When it comes to AI’s impacts, we don’t yet know anything for sure. But this isn’t stopping everyone from pretending like we do.

My advice, for the moment:

Tune out both the most heated and the most dismissive rhetoric.
Focus on tangible changes in areas that you care about that really do seem connected to AI—read widely and ask people you trust about what they’re seeing.
Beyond that, however, follow AI news with a large grain of salt. All of this is too new for anyone to really understand what they’re saying.

AI is important. But we don’t yet fully know why.

The post No One Knows Anything About AI appeared first on Cal Newport.

https://calnewport.com/no-one-knows-anything-about-ai/

https://calnewport.com/?p=16630

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/empty-me-of-everything-but-your-love.html

Lord, send me staggering with the wine
Of Your love!

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/empty-me-of-everything-but-your-love.html

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/20/otter-is-in-disguise

Via MTSOfan

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/20/otter-is-in-disguise

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished!

Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) The Sudden showers of rain rain yesterday and last night have refreshed the air

2) Dinner at my parents’s place

3) Enjoying their garden if it remains dry today

pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/19/

Up early and to some business, and my wife coming to me I staid long with her discoursing about her going into the country, and as she is not very forward so am I at a great loss whether to have her go or no because of the charge, and yet in some considerations I would be glad she was there, because of the dirtiness of my house and the trouble of having of a family there. So to my office, and there all the morning, and then to dinner and my brother Tom dined with me only to see me. In the afternoon I went upon the river to look after some tarr I am sending down and some coles, and so home again; it raining hard upon the water, I put ashore and sheltered myself, while the King came by in his barge, going down towards the Downs to meet the Queen: the Duke being gone yesterday. But methought it lessened my esteem of a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.

Home, and Cooper coming (after I had dispatched several letters) to my mathematiques, and so at night to bed to a chamber at Sir W. Pen’s, my own house being so foul that I cannot lie there any longer, and there the chamber lies so as that I come into it over my leads without going about, but yet I am not fully content with it, for there will be much trouble to have servants running over the leads to and fro.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/19/

redbird

We are essentially done at Mom’s flat. I didn’t have a lot to do today, but am still tired. We will decide tomorrow what if anything we want to do.

Leaving for Boston Monday afternoon.

We had Chinese food delivered tonight, and it was basic good Cantonese food. They included a small bag of those weird shrimp chips, which I turned out to be in the mood for.

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/19/otters-dont-bury-their-heads-in-the-sand-they-bury-them-in-the-ice

Photo by Teagan Dumont via Mark Dumont

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/19/otters-dont-bury-their-heads-in-the-sand-they-bury-them-in-the-ice

redbird

We expected to finish going through Mom's papers, photos, etc. yesterday, but despite me and \mark both pushing hard, we realized in the late afternoon that we were both badly worn out, so we stopped. He left, and I got Adrian and Cattitude to tale care of me. I was worn out both mentally and physically; Adrian pointed out that \I hade worked steadily for longer that the previous couple of days. Mark will coming back to the flat a bit, but we did not set an alarm, because I needed the rest.

We reached a point yesterday that I could be satisfied just packing everyting the three f us have decided to take--photos, the gorgeous candlesticks Mom left to Adrian (officially tp me, but she had discussed them with Acrian), and a few other s,mall mementoes, but there's a stack of paper that Mark wants to take a second look at: he was lookinmg both for financial paperwork as well as photos and other mementoes. It felt like it might be 45 minutes more work today, but could take tjhree times as long if we had tried to push through last night.

I told Andy and Adrian to go out and play yesterday, so they spent the afternoon at Kew Gardens. It is raining steadily now, and foercast to do so for several hours. I#m thinking I want to do not much today, just finish the tasks here, and maybe go out and do something interesting tomorrow, before leaving for Boston on Monday.

I am very glad we saw

liv on Tuesday, when we were still feeling energetic.

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) I’ve spent the evening reading on my balcony until it became too dark ♥

2) Visit to the libraries today (yes, both of them ^_^)

3) Yummy leftovers for dinner

sine_nomine

So HGB on Wednesday (after 1st iron infusion on Friday) was 11.3 so we're getting somewhere. Second infusion (it's in two parts) was Wednesday. Transfusing tomorrow. I presume they're not running labs before transfusing though it would, in fact, be pretty helpful if they did (data nerd that I am the hospital spoiled me with the daily labs).

Then Monday I go for IV insertion at my surgeon's (because it finally occurred to me that it makes zero sense to try and start an IV when I'm dehydrated, tired, stressed, etc. So day before surgery and we super tape it down and pray.

Surgery Tuesday. He's actually going for a larger area than planned originally. Which might mean one less procedure. That would be super nice, but not holding my breath.

Off work two weeks. Hope that's enough.

Okay, time for bed.

pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/18/

Up very early, and got a-top of my house, seeing the design of my work, and like it very well, and it comes into my head to have my dining-room wainscoated, which will be very pretty. By-and-by by water to Deptford, to put several things in order, being myself now only left in town, and so back again to the office, and there doing business all the morning and the afternoon also till night, and then comes Cooper for my mathematiques, but, in good earnest, my head is so full of business that I cannot understand it as otherwise I should do.

At night to bed, being much troubled at the rain coming into my house, the top being open.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/18/

kaberett

Pilates. Managed to drag myself onto the mat, at gone 9.30 p.m., and wound up smiling to myself and the ceiling.
COOL SHOWER. LOW ENOUGH HUMIDITY TO AIR-DRY.
Listening to the bats as I type this up. (Less active than closer to dusk, but definitely still poking their heads out intermittently!)
Local supermarket has resumed stocking an apple-and-pear juice, and I do in fact prefer it to the significantly more expensive stuff from the ridiculous fancy veg box people. HURRAH for Treats For Me.
Played a round of Hanabi this evening. Enjoyed discovering a Clash Of House Styles, but nonetheless pleased with how we'd done. :)

(I have also made two extremely questionable loaves of bread -- the soda bread I managed to leave out half the flour, which meant it was... not quite inedibly salty, but... definitely Really Quite; the sourdough was just too high a hydration and Wanted To Be A Puddle -- and sent a couple of e-mails I was avoiding. And ordered a Small Treat.)

liv

It's been a full and emotional couple of months, friends. The main thing to report is that I was supposed to be in Israel as of a week ago, but Israel bombed Iran and Iran retaliated and the go/no-go date for my summer programme was right in the middle of the 11 days when Israel was in full lockdown due to lots of missile attacks, so they really had to cancel it. I have a whoooooole lot of emotions and thoughts about this, and I also have an unexpected summer month with almost no commitments.

( rab student life in interesting times )

I will fully admit that I'm glad I didn't end up getting on a flight two days later. Intellectually it goes without saying that I would far rather Israel was in fact safe enough for me to be there, and that it had been consistently obvious it would be over the past couple of months. But personally, I am absolutely delighted to be at home. And have a chance to see my family and do fun summer things like go to concerts and have picnic dates and sort out practical things that I've let slip with the intensity of everything since Mum got sick. I even managed to overlap in London with

redbird and her partners this week, which was an unexpected and wonderful bonus. Among many chill, non-urgent summer plans I am hoping to be a bit more present here.

Current Mood: relieved

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/18/sea-otter-pup-gets-an-x-ray

Via Alaska SeaLife Center, which writes:

During our weeks of caring for Un’a, the orphaned female sea otter pup from Homer, our veterinary and animal care teams have been closely monitoring her arm injury.

Radiographs revealed an unusual growth plate fracture near her elbow (a Salter-Harris type II fracture), which, to our knowledge, has not been seen in otters before.

While she sometimes holds her arm at a slight angle, she’s using it regularly and shows no signs of discomfort. Luckily for Un’a, floating is a big part of her day, and it means minimal weight on the injury.

In the wild, this could have been a serious setback. But under professional care, we’re optimistic it won’t impact her long-term welfare. Our team will continue to observe her closely and carefully consider options, including surgery, if she shows signs of pain or limited use.

These photos show Un’a during a recent veterinary exam under sedation. While she was asleep, our team carefully assessed her injury through physical manipulation, took radiographs, and used a K-laser to help promote tissue healing—all before she woke up.

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/18/sea-otter-pup-gets-an-x-ray

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-bells-sri-ananda-acharya.html

Alone all night I watched the stars
through the opening in my Cave,
And the springing rays of the Northern
Light came as welcome guests to
my door,

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/the-bells-sri-ananda-acharya.html

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) I’ve bought a gorgeous flowering plant in discount yesterday and this morning i’ve properly installed it on my balcony

2) Reading a good book on said balcony surrounded by colourful flowers and friendly bees

3) Picking up my latest painting at the atelier this afternoon

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

choco_frosh

Ugh, I apparently am not allowed to eat fried food after 8pm.

Especially since I am driving to Vermont tomorrow.

Except I apparently have a job interview first.

< dies >

pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/17/

To my office, and by and by to our sitting; where much business. Mr. Coventry took his leave, being to go with the Duke over for the Queen-Mother. I dined at home, and so to my Lord’s, where I presented him with a true state of all his accounts to last Monday, being the 14th of July, which did please him, and to my great joy I continue in his great esteem and opinion. I this day took a general acquittance from my Lord to the same day. So that now I have but very few persons to deal withall for money in the world.

Home and found much business to be upon my hands, and was late at the office writing letters by candle light, which is rare at this time of the year, but I do it with much content and joy, and then I do please me to see that I begin to have people direct themselves to me in all businesses.

Very late I was forced to send for Mr. Turner, Smith, Young, about things to be sent down early to-morrow on board the King’s pleasure boat, and so to bed with my head full of business, but well contented in mind as ever in my life.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/17/

kaberett

Beginning of last week: experimented with dropping my amitriptyline dose from 75 mg to 50 mg, after a week of having been really fairly good at actually taking it at or around 9 p.m. rather than... later... as an experiment in "does this reduce daytime sleepiness?"

(Prompted by the all-nighter I pulled filling out the EHRC consultation and trying to get the house to cool down overnight during the 35 °C weather: in service of same I did not take my amitriptyline and... felt weirdly good all the following day? With no naps? Like, not even sleep-dep euphoria, just... relatively cheerful and with it and so on and so forth?)

And, see, I'd been aware that last time I tried dropping the ami dose my insomnia got much worse again, so I was alert for that, but after the first night of Fretting I've actually been doing remarkably well! It is possible that I have more or less learned how to go to sleep! I'm super proud of myself!

... and then at the beginning of this week I started going "huh, I'm getting a bunch of endometriosis-y abdominal twinges. that's... interesting. like, it's about six months post-op, and that's when pain commonly recurs, but this doesn't feel like my pre-op pain at all, so what's... going on?"

WHAT IS GOING ON IS THAT I HAVE REDUCED THE DOSE OF MY ONE AND ONLY PAINKILLER.

But the really unfair bit, right, the bit I am actually aggrieved about?

... is that apparently last time I tried this my pain also kicked up a gear and I was also surprised then and I had completely forgotten about this. I remembered the insomnia!!! I did not remember the increased pain. How dare I produce evidence that Sometimes Painkillers Work. :|

anais_pf posting in

thefridayfive

This week's questions were suggested by

bindyree.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1 . . .

5. Name five favorite movies.

4. Name four areas of interest you became interested in after you were done with your formal education.

3. Name three things you would change about this world.

2. Name two of your favorite childhood toys.

1. Name one person you could be handcuffed to for a full day.

Copy and paste to your own journal, then reply to this post with a link to your answers. If your journal is private or friends-only, you can post your full answers in the comments below.

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Location: home
Current Music: The Fence (after)/The Wind

farnam_street_feed

Posted by Vicky

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/daniel-kahneman-algorithms-make-better-decisions-than-you-the-knowledge-project-ep-238/

https://fs.blog/?post_type=podcast&p=59136

Daniel Kahneman (1934 to 2024) won the Nobel Prize for proving we’re not as rational as we think.

We discuss how to think clearly in a world full of noise, the invisible forces that cloud our judgement, and why more information doesn’t equal better thinking. Kahneman also reveals the mental model he discovered at 22 that still guides elite teams today.

Public Release: July 22.
Members have access now.
Join us.

Coming Soon: YouTube | Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Transcript

As we revisit this conversation this summer, I also share a previously untold story in the introduction about how a small seemingly insignificant moment in his NYC penthouse changed my life.

11 Key Takeaways from this interview:

Delay Your Intuition: At 22, Kahneman redesigned the Israeli army’s interview system. The old way relied on gut feelings about recruits, and it failed badly. His fix: make interviewers score six specific traits separately, write each score down, then after completing all six scores, close their eyes and give an overall intuition. The interviewers revolted. “You’re turning us into robots,” one complained. But when they tested the new system, it worked dramatically better. That “close your eyes” instruction survived in the Israeli military for 50 years. Most people form an impression in seconds and spend the rest of their time confirming it. The best wait for all the information before letting their intuition speak.
Loss Aversion Creates Permanent Programs: When you own something, losing it hurts twice as much as getting it felt good. Once people have a benefit, you can’t easily remove it. When you try, they fight like crazy. The 100 people losing a government subsidy scream louder (and organize better) than the million paying for it. That’s why the government only grows. Every program creates fierce defenders. Nobody fights as hard for lower taxes. Once you give people something (a perk, a feature, a benefit), it’s nearly impossible to take back. The founder who wouldn’t offer free lunch on day one can’t cancel it on day 1000. Small groups losing something specific beat large groups gaining something abstract. Every time.
Your Rules Become Your Default: Kahneman’s phone rang during the interview. Someone wanted a book review. “My rule is I never say yes on the phone,” he said. This wasn’t about being difficult. Danny was human just like us, he often said yes to things he didn’t want to do. So he created a rule. Not a goal, not an intention, a rule. It reprogrammed his unconscious mind and turned his desired behavior into his default behavior.
Facts Don’t Form Beliefs: “I believe in climate change,” Kahneman said. “I believe in the people who tell me there is climate change. The people who don’t believe in climate change, they believe in other people.” This is how we form all beliefs. We don’t examine evidence and reach conclusions. We trust people we like, then adopt their views. “The reasons are not the causes of our beliefs,” he explained. They’re stories we tell ourselves afterward. Want to change someone’s mind? Facts won’t do it. They need to trust you first. If they admire you, they’ll find reasons to agree. If they dislike you, the best evidence won’t matter. Smart people believe opposite things because they trust different people.
The Julia Fallacy: You have the following information. Julia is graduating college. She read fluently at age four. What’s her GPA? You just thought of something around 3.8, and Kahneman knew you would. Here’s why: a four-year-old who reads fluently seems exceptional, maybe 90th percentile. So your brain assumes 90th percentile everything. “It’s idiotic statistically,” he said. Early reading barely predicts college performance. Doesn’t matter. We can’t help ourselves. Stellar interview means stellar employee. One bad presentation means the person can’t teach. Our predictions match our impressions, even when they shouldn’t.
Winners Want the Score, Not the Prize: Why do billionaires work 80-hour weeks? “They’re clearly not doing this because they need more money,” Kahneman observed. At that level, money becomes proof that you’re good at what you do. His research found that past $70,000, extra money doesn’t make you emotionally happier, it just makes you more satisfied with your life. And these are completely different things. Happiness is social, it’s being with people who love you. Satisfaction is conventional success: money, prestige, achievements. The tragedy? “People don’t seem to care about how happy they’ll be. They want to be satisfied with their life.” We optimize for the story we’ll tell, not the life we’ll actually live.
Behavior Is Situation, Not Personality: When someone acts like a jerk, “look at the situation they’re in,” Kahneman advised. We instinctively blame personality. Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error. When others speed, we think they’re reckless. When we speed, we know we’re late for something important. “People do good things for a mixture of good and bad reasons, and they do bad things for a mixture of good and bad reasons.” The kindest person will snap under enough pressure, and the worst person will help when the conditions are right. Change the environment, change the behavior.
Algorithms Beat You Every Time: “If you can replace judgements by rules and algorithms, they’ll do better,” Kahneman said. Not sometimes, always. We trust our judgment and value human insight, but we’re consistently wrong about this. The real problem is that we prefer confident, intuitive leaders to analytical ones. “People want leaders who are intuitive,” Kahneman observed. We choose the leaders who make us feel good about ourselves, not the ones who make good decisions.
Wherever There’s Judgment, There’s Noise: An insurance company asked Kahneman to test their underwriters. Same exact cases, same information, 50 different people. The executives expected maybe 10% variation in quotes. The reality shocked them: 50% variation. One customer gets quoted $10,000, another gets $15,000 for the exact same coverage. “Wherever there is judgment, there is noise, and more of it than you think,” he said. The solution is simple: use algorithms or structured procedures. But companies would rather live with expensive chaos than admit their experts disagree with each other.
Legitimize Doubt: Before making a big decision, Kahneman recommended this technique: gather your team and say, “It’s two years from now. We made this decision and it was a disaster. Write down what went wrong.” He loved this because timing is everything. “When people are coming close to a decision, it becomes difficult to raise doubts,” he explained. Anyone slowing things down becomes the enemy. The premortem flips this dynamic, it doesn’t just allow dissent, it requires it. It won’t prevent every mistake, but it forces you to face the problems everyone’s trying to ignore.
Clear Intuitions Fool Experts: Experts see all the options. You don’t. When economists design policies or product managers add features, they imagine users comparing every possibility. But you take a job and forget the others existed. You buy a house and stop thinking about the ones you passed on. Life isn’t a menu where you see all choices side by side, it’s one door closing as another opens. “They are completely lost between clear intuitions and strong intuitions,” Kahneman said. The expert thinks small differences matter because they can see them all. You can’t see them, so they don’t. That’s why economists botch predictions and why your phone has 50 features you’ve never touched.

The post Daniel Kahneman: Algorithms Make Better Decisions Than You [The Knowledge Project Ep. #238] appeared first on Farnam Street.

https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-podcast/daniel-kahneman-algorithms-make-better-decisions-than-you-the-knowledge-project-ep-238/

https://fs.blog/?post_type=podcast&p=59136

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/17/hooray-oregon

This comes via Monterey Bay Aquarium, which writes:

Congrats to our west coast neighbor, Oregon, for launching their program to manage packaging, paper, and plastic food ware! This big step will modernize Oregon's recycling system by increasing recycling rates, reducing waste, and improving access to recycling services while shifting costs to producers who create the waste in the first place. In California, SB 54 is poised to go a step further by reducing the amount of single-use plastic produced. Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 54 into law to reduce costs for consumers by making producers pay for the waste they produce.

This Plastic Free July, we are encouraging Governor Gavin Newsom to break up with plastic and remember that robust implementation of SB 54 is the consumer and environment friendly thing to do.

“We applaud Oregon for stepping up to address single-use plastic. With SB 54, California has the chance to go even further by not just managing plastic waste, but preventing it.” – Amy Wolfrum, director of California Policy and Government Affairs, Monterey Bay Aquarium.

We can make a world without plastic that’s healthier for people and our ocean planet.

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/17/hooray-oregon

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/i-saw-my-hand-oktay-rifat.html

While drinking water I saw my hand
Softly fuzzed with pink holes
I said hi there, hi there hand of mine
Pick up a wineglass pick up a fork pick up a pencil

And when the time comes avoid
Picking up a sword picking up a gun
My brave young lad my lion my lovely one

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/i-saw-my-hand-oktay-rifat.html

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) Breakfast and lunch on my sunny balcony while listening to the birds chirping merrily

2) Discovered a new series which is excellent to watch with headphones when my neighbours have visitors ^_~

3) Visiting a garden center in the open air this afternoon

redbird

We got a lot done yesterday and today, Mark and I sorted through a bunch of stuff on Tuesday, and talked to Ralph (Mom's stepson) and figuring out which things are his/his sister's, and then which withim that what people actually want. Legally, he and Liz own the flat and some of the contents (specified\). In practice, there are things none of us want, partly because of geography: Ralph doesn#t need furniture, and he's the only one of us who lives anywhere nearby. So it's mostly what has sentimental value, like Simon's family china.

To our London friends: If we get enough done today, we might still be able to see people tomorrow or Saturday, but I don't know yet.

I also got into a stupid argument Tuesday afternoon with Ralph's wife Jenny, who was trying to convince me that my brother and I had some koind of obligation to arrange for clearing out everything that nobody wants, so Liz (Ralph's s sister) can sell the flat. This started with me telling her that we hadn't traveled from the US to be unpaid labor clearing out a flat for someone else to sell, and then on the third time she cirled back to telling her that by insulting my recently deceased mother she wasn't helping. |She said she wasn't trying to help, I told her to at least stop hurting then, and walked away from the conversation. My brother is one of the executor's of the will, so maybe has some obligations here, but Ralph and Liz own the flat now--my mother had a life tenancy and then it went too her stepchildren. I emerged a while later to find that Mark, Ralph, and Jenny had made a bit more progress in figuring things out.

They left here at about five, and Cattitude and Adrian went shopping to buy a few groceries.

liv, who is staying part-time in a flat half a mile from here, came over for the evening, and we had a very good, long visit. Adrian cooked dinner in an unfamiliar kitchen; I'd checked with Live a fw hours earlier about dietary restrictions. The original plan was just for her to come over here, where we can sit in the back garden, but one advantage of that is being able to comfortably share meals with people.

Wednesday was productive, sorting through papers and Mom's jewelry and a few oddments. The will leaves a few specific pieces of jewelry to Simon's daughter and two of my cousins, so we need(ed) to locate those. Beyond that we can do whatever seems good, and had agreed to offer things we didn't want to our cousins. We've found one piece Adrian is taking, and there's a bracelet of Grandma's that my cousin Janet asked us to sell her. If we find it, it's Janet's, as a gift.

After Mark and Linza left, the three of us decompressed a bit. After supper, I sorted through a bunch of [photos, pulling out a few that \I want and/or thought \mark would want to least see. My mother's youth hostel card, signed by her and Grandpa, was in an envelope, along with a 1949 student discount subway pass, which got her free or discounted trips home from school. Thirty-odd years later, they were giving us passes good for free trips both ways, but only after the first few weeks of the semester.

In going through papers, and figuring out what we need, including things the executors and Mom's account might need, we have so far found four social security cards. What seems to be the original has a number stamped on it rather than neatly printed. One of the others makes sense in that it has her second married name on it--Eve Rosenzweig Kugler--but four still seems like a lot.

I'm going to post this and have some breakfast

hyperlipid_feed

Posted by Peter

https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2025/07/protons-81-crown-like-structures.html

Hyperinsulinaemia, while being unable to suppress basal lipolysis, is still able to facilitate uptake and storage of fatty acids within adipocytes. In this study the rats which were fed an high polyunsaturate diet were fatter and more hyperinsulinaemic than those fed higher saturate diet, all other aspects of the diets being constant.

Diet fat composition alters membrane phospholipid composition, insulin binding, and glucose metabolism in adipocytes from control and diabetic animals

But when you take adipocytes out of the intact rat and ask how well they processed glucose, the high PUFA group adipocytes were *more* insulin sensitive.

The metabolic milieux renders the live rats insulin resistant (elevated FFAs from increased basal lipolysis) while the individual adipocytes extracted from the rats are pathologically insulin sensitive. So the rats become fat and insulin resistant at the macroscopic level but retain insulin sensitivity at the adipocyte level when supplied FFAs are lowered to the tissue culture levels used.

Aside: There is now an on-line calculator which converts ng/ml of insulin to pmol/l insulin. Anyone who has had to convert grams to moles and then get the decimal point correct when converting to picomoles will understand. Happy happy happy. 100ng/ml is 225pmol/l, a mild post prandial value. 1000ng/ml is 2250pmol/l, aggressive hyperinsulinaemic clamp levels. Most "ordinary" high insulin clamps use the highest post prandial levels of around 1000pmol/l, ie a bit less than half highest values on the graph above. The above graph is close to physiology. End aside with happy dance.

To me this sets the scene that elevated plasma insulin, combined with enhanced insulin sensitivity at the adipocyte level, can successfully repackage lipids from basal lipolysis back in to adipocytes. That's Carpentier's idea in this paper, as in the last posts.

Increased postprandial nonesterified fatty acid efflux from adipose tissue in prediabetes is offset by enhanced dietary fatty acid adipose trapping

It is also quite possible to break adipocytes by doing this. We have two opposing processes. Enhanced translocation of glucose and fatty acids in to adipocytes under the failure to correctly resist insulin's storage signal, due to inadequate (but far from zero) ROS generation by linoleic acid. The second is the ability of distended adipocytes to release FFAs irrespective of insulin's action by enhanced basal lipolysis. This limits adipocyte size and supplies a competing substrate for insulin sensitive cells which requires the rejection of a certain amounts of glucose (ie insulin resistance) in proportion to the FFAs available from basal lipolysis.

Obviously excess storage, mediated via linoleic acid, wins. Otherwise there would be no linoleic acid mediated obesity. So when an adipocyte is at maximum size and there is a sudden surge in insulin/glucose/FFA availability then the adipocyte will attempt to get bigger. At some point it will fail.

Which leads me on to this D12492 mouse paper:

Adipocyte Death, Adipose Tissue Remodeling, and Obesity Complications

The photomicrographs are very pretty. The red arrows (placed by the authors) indicate "crown like structures" (CLSs). This is a simple H&E stained image of adipose tissue from a mouse after eating D12492 for eight weeks:

The CLSs appear to be lipid droplets with thickened material surrounding them which looks a lot like cytoplasm. If you go on to use immunohistochemistry to label perilipin A, which labels the protein surrounding the lipid droplet in functional adipocytes, there isn't any. The numbers indicate individual CLSs. Golden brown indicates perilipin A, clearly stained in the (un-numbered) living adipocytes:

If you stain the same section with F4/80, which picks out macrophages, you get this:

which shows that what, on H&E, looks like s thick surround of adipocyte cytoplasm, is in fact a population of macrophages surrounding the remains of a dead adipocyte. Big Eaters. They are clearing up debris

This is the image from a mouse sacrificed after 12 weeks of eating D12942:

and by week 16 we have this

There are no adipocytes visible in this image. It's all crown-like structures. The authors have not placed arrows because they would need to be everywhere. By 16 weeks of the mice eating D12942 their adipose tissue is in crisis, many adipocytes are dead and there is a marked inflammatory response which is clearing up the debris.

By 20 weeks there is significant recovery of adipose architecture, presumably from a supply of stem cells/preadipocytes, but the formation of CLSs continues, a consequence of the continued feeding of D12942. This is the view at week 20 when the study ended:

There is nothing tidy about the death of adipocytes during the formation of CLSs under D12942. The process is known as pyroptosis. I'm not sure how real pyroptosis might be, after all ferroptosis is a well recognised and well researched process which seems to be little more that linoleic acid intoxication. But assuming pyroptosis is real it is considered to be part of the innate immune system by which cells, when they have certain types of overwhelming infection, kill themselves. The process is messy.

Macrophages don't like mess. They get in there to sort it out. They also signal to the rest of the body that something is very wrong and it's time to optimise metabolic conditions to maximally enhance immune function.

Here's what it looks like if you immunostain the macrophages of CLSs for TNF-α or Il-6

Of course both of these cytokines will cause insulin resistance. Which is adaptive (another post there, you think the innate immune system does stupid things?). Not only in the surrounding adipocytes but also systemically. Which leaves a few open questions.

There are thinkers who surmise that adipose tissue inflammation is causal of insulin resistance and even that this insulin resistance, which generates hyperinsulinaemia, might be the actual cause of obesity. I know it sounds strange, but who knows? Everyone is welcome to their opinion.

Or we could hypothesis, as I do, that linoleic acid is the cause of insulin *sensitivity* which enhances insulin's storage signal (without inflammation) to the point where adipocytes die in association with over distension and there is then a massive inflammatory response as a secondary consequence.

There's a lot more to say about unhappy adipocytes and cytokines but I'll leave this post now by suggesting that the residual insulin resistance seen in IGT when FFAs are normalised by acipimox, as in here:

Overnight Lowering of Free Fatty Acids With Acipimox Improves Insulin Resistance and Glucose Tolerance in Obese Diabetic and Nondiabetic Subjects

might be mediated by TNF-α, IL-6 and their kindred signaling molecules from CLSs.

Sadly even this may not be quite as simple as it sounds.

Peter

https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2025/07/protons-81-crown-like-structures.html

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/16/

In the morning I found all my ceilings, spoiled with rain last night, so that I fear they must be all new whited when the work is done.

Made me ready and to my office, and by and by came Mr. Moore to me, and so I went home and consulted about drawing up a fair state of all my Lord’s accounts, which being settled, he went away, and I fell to writing of it very neatly, and it was very handsome and concisely done. At noon to my Lord’s with it, but found him at dinner, and some great company with him, Mr. Edward Montagu and his brother, and Mr. Coventry, and after dinner he went out with them, and so I lost my labour; but dined with Mr. Moore and the people below, who after dinner fell to talk of Portugall rings, and Captain Ferrers offered five or six to sell, and I seeming to like a ring made of a coco-nutt with a stone done in it, he did offer and would give it me. By and by we went to Mr. Creed’s lodging, and there got a dish or two of sweetmeats, and I seeing a very neat leaden standish to carry papers, pen, and ink in when one travels I also got that of him, and that done I went home by water and to finish some of my Lord’s business, and so early to bed.

This day I was told that my Lady Castlemaine (being quite fallen out with her husband) did yesterday go away from him, with all her plate, jewels, and other best things; and is gone to Richmond to a brother of her’s; which, I am apt to think, was a design to get out of town, that the King might come at her the better. But strange it is how for her beauty I am willing to construe all this to the best and to pity her wherein it is to her hurt, though I know well enough she is a whore.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/16/

kaberett

Really enjoying the redcurrant cake I finally managed to make the other evening.
First of the clothes-for-me from the latest Oxfam order showed up and is in fact more or less Perfect, hurrah. (Cargo shorts. Two pairs of linen cargo trousers due tomorrow...)
Mulberries! ewt informed me that they were starting to come ready, so I took a detour via the local tree and did indeed manage to munch a token handful.
I made a batch of mostly-white-some-rye caraway-and-poppyseed bread, and it goes spectacularly well with the cherry plum and vanilla jam a friend gave me at the weekend. I have been having some Very Happy Breakfasts.
My extremely late-into-the-ground squash are starting to produce female flowers!
And I found some more lurking long bamboo to install for the late-sown beans to maybe make their way up.
AND I might actually break even on peas-for-sowing-next-year if the second flush on one of the plants does what it's threatening to, which I would be extremely excited about because I had been mildly regretting eating (instead of saving for seed) the handful we did eat, when my original intention had in fact been to Just Save Seed this year... (... but they were very tasty.)
We are reading Hyperbole and a Half (the book) together a chapter at a time! They are an excellent short Shared Activity.
I have this evening spent a pleasant ten minutes playing around with the dragons game and enjoying getting some very pretty possible dragons out of it. Yes good.
Read about three elephants graduating to the Reintegration Unit run by the Sheldrick Trust and cried a lot. (Also at the accompanying video.) (Good crying.)

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/my-land-martin-camaj.html

When I die, may I turn into grass
On my mountains in spring,
In autumn I will turn to seed.

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/my-land-martin-camaj.html

cmcmck

We went for a walk on the other side of town for a change. One side of us is hill country and the other side is moorland- the Shropshire Plain. The nearest moorland to us is known as the Weald Moors.

We walked out via Apley and its very fine pool.

The blackberries are starting to fruit even since last week when they were still in flower:

( More pics! )

Current Mood: photographical
Current Location: 'ere

daily_otter_feed

Posted by Daily Otter

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/16/see-footage-from-sea-otter-pup-unas-admit-exam

Via Alaska SeaLife Center, which writes:

It’s hard to believe how far little Un’a, the orphaned sea otter pup admitted in May 2025, has come.

When she was first rescued, she was fragile and underweight. Every feeding and time resting was critical in those early days, as you’ll see in this video. We’ve been busy responding to a wave of harbor seal patients, but Un’a has been quietly making big strides behind the scenes.

Now, just over a month into care, she’s thriving: healthy, eating solids, and showing off her playful personality. She’s definitely earned her moment in the spotlight!

https://dailyotter.org/posts/2025/7/16/see-footage-from-sea-otter-pup-unas-admit-exam

hyperlipid_feed

Posted by Peter

https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2025/07/protons-80-carpentier-paradox.html

Preamble.

Direct quotes from Carpentier:

"Raglycerol, a marker of total AT lipolytic rate..."

"Plasma glycerol appearance was lower in IGT..."

"Postprandial palmitate appearance (Rapalmitate) was higher in IGT..."

If we combine the second two statements we can re write the findings as:

In people with IGT the rate of lipolysis is decreased (glycerol release) and simultaneously increased (FFA release) in the post prandial period.

A paradox. Oooh exciting! It would have made a great title for the paper.

So I wrote this post.

Just a one liner based on Tucker's link:

Obesity and metabolic perturbations after loss of aquaporin 7, the adipose glycerol transporter

discussing this paper

Aquaporin 7 deficiency is associated with development of obesity through activation of adipose glycerol kinase

If you knock out the glycerol/water transporter aquaporin 7 you get an obese mouse model, late onset.

This KO increases the glycerol content of adipocytes and, in all probability, drives the reaction

glycerol + ATP <-> glycerol-3-P + ADP

to the right, on the basis of increased glycerol concentration. The enzyme is glycerokinase.

This using a sledge hammer to move reaction kinetics and I doubt it has much to do with generic obesity.

But it does demonstrate that if you drive glycerol-3-phosphate formation you can drive obesity. Then comes this little snippet from the discussion:

"Lazar and coworkers demonstrated that thiazolidinediones markedly increased Gyk [Glycerokinase] mRNA level in adipocytes, resulting in triglyceride accumulation through enhancement of the conversion of glycerol into glycerol-3-P (21)."

This is ref 21

A futile metabolic cycle activated in adipocytes by antidiabetic agents

The glitazones allow "futile" cycling of FFAs from triglycerides back in to triglycerides WITHOUT releasing the glycerol from the cell. Like aquaporin 7 KO mice but without all of that complicated genetic engineering.

Aside: "Futile" cycling is anathema to evolution. You either have an unavoidable thermogenic effect of an essential process, like protein catabolism, or you have a useful thermic effect like thermogenic uncoupling. The latter is derived from essential uncoupling to avoid damaging elevations of delta psi in mitochondria, wastefull but essential. Futile cycling without fulfilling a need or without an essential underlying process wastes energy which should be used to make babies. Survival of the fecundest is how it goes. "Futile" cycling is pathology. End aside.

So you cannot use glycerol release as an index of total lipolysis if subjects are taking glitazones to become fat. Oops, I mean to become insulin sensitive. Ah, is there any difference?

Which brings us right back to Carpentier's failure to discuss the *fall* in glycerol release from adipocytes concurrent with the *rise* in FFA release in the post prandial period.

Of course Carpentier's subjects weren't taking pharmaceutical activators of PPARγ.

But they were Canadians who had managed to eat sufficient linoleic acid to get themselves in to prediabetes.

Which begs the question: Is linoleic acid a glitazone mimetic? Well, no. But it generates functional PPARγ activators which *are* glitazone mimetics. You know, 9-HODE, 13-HODE and, of course, 4-HNE. All of which, at the correct concentration, would activate PPARγ and allow "futile" cycling of intra-adipocyte FFAs back to triglycerides without releasing their glycerol.

I'm embarrassed that I was unaware of this.

Carpentier is being paid a group leader's salary to be unaware of it. Also, who the hell scrutineered the paper?

Oops. And oops.

Peter

https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2025/07/protons-80-carpentier-paradox.html

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) I still have lots more energy :D I’m so happy

2) Went to the market for vegetables and lots of yummy fruit

3) A couple of long awaited packages will be arriving today ^_^ Never mind that I paid for them, it feels like presents are coming my way

nanila posting in

awesomeers

It's challenge time!

Comment with Just One Thing you've accomplished in the last 24 hours or so. It doesn't have to be a hard thing, or even a thing that you think is particularly awesome. Just a thing that you did.

Feel free to share more than one thing if you're feeling particularly accomplished! Extra credit: find someone in the comments and give them props for what they achieved!

Nothing is too big, too small, too strange or too cryptic. And in case you'd rather do this in private, anonymous comments are screened. I will only unscreen if you ask me to.

Go!

pepysdiary_feed

Posted by Samuel Pepys

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/15/

Up by 4 o’clock, and after doing some business as to settling my papers at home, I went to my office, and there busy till sitting time. So at the office all the morning, where J. Southern, Mr. Coventry’s clerk, did offer me a warrant for an officer to sign which I desired, claiming it for my clerk’s duty, which however did trouble me a little to be put upon it, but I did it. We broke up late, and I to dinner at home, where my brother Tom and Mr. Cooke came and dined with me, but I could not be merry for my business, but to my office again after dinner, and they two and my wife abroad. In the evening comes Mr. Cooper, and I took him by water on purpose to tell me things belonging to ships, which was time well spent, and so home again, and my wife came home and tells me she has been very merry and well pleased with her walk with them. About bedtime it fell a-raining, and the house being all open at top, it vexed me; but there was no help for it.

Read the annotations

https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1662/07/15/

fluentself_feed

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/TJgReQxdfw761s3QboHlRi1Ly282xAAw

a glass baking dish filled with halved tomatoes

Reflecting on the process of slow roasting tomatoes into confit, and the alchemy of change with heat and time

A breath for these tough times

Sending out extra wishes of Safety & Sanctuary for everyone in the path of the hard things, what a scary time we are in, inhaling and exhaling, for compassion, strength, courage, swift and steady miracles.

Announcement / last chance for Emergency Calming Down Techniques

I’ve been reeling hard lately in some cursed combination of heartache, numbness, political anxiety, winter stuff and some wild panic episodes.

Have been holding on (for dear life) to my Emergency Calm The Hell Down Techniques from a long time ago, and it’s been helping.

I am giving away a copy of these (ebook + audio recordings) to anyone who gives any sum of money to the appreciation funds / discretionary fund in the hopes that we can all keep practicing together, for each other and for the collective, and also for ourselves in these scary times. ❤️

A useful practice

A useful practice, if you are someone who is interested in self-fluency, which is probably you if you’re here, is developing the ability to notice when we get upset or distressed or activated in some way, and maybe something about what sets us off.

This is a skill that we finesse over time, adding compassion as we go, making room for ourselves and our experience.

As we notice what we are noticing, of course we can add Acknoweldgment & Legitimacy, we can try to bring some sweetness into our noticing.

Spaciousness

Again, we work on creating a cozy yet spacious container of sanctuary space, in which it is safe for us to be feeling whatever we are feeling as we experience it.

Yes, I am feeling angry and upset about this, I’m allowed to feel that way, it makes sense that I feel that way, these emotions are moving through my physical body and I am making space for them to move through me…

Sometimes the emotions feel as though they are bigger than us, and we need to come back into right perspective, we contain them and not the other way around. They are temporary, and we contain the wholeness.

Noticing

Sometimes our noticing practice is about providing context: Oh, I notice that I feel upset in response to [x category of behavior or y words], and I am also noticing that my emotional state is more intense if I’m premenstrual or it’s hot outside or I have a headache, etc.

So there’s acknowledgment and legitimacy for my reaction and my reactiveness, and also the recognition that these emotions might be heightened due to circumstances.

Sometimes this is good and useful! Maybe if I wasn’t having that heightened experience, I wouldn’t have been able to clock my reaction to the same degree. Maybe I need this extra burst of emotion to really let myself be as upset as I need to be.

Situation [now] reminds me of situation [then]

Sometimes I can notice that I am feeling MORE intensely, if the current situation is reminding me of a past situation.

As we practice this over time, you might find yourself becoming more adept at this — noticing faster, recognizing that we get reminded of the same hurts because they still hurt more than we think.

This week I wanted to tell you about a situation in my life currently that really only barely has to do with me that has been stirring up all kinds of big feelings for me, and it turns out these big feelings are yet again about something else!

Practicing, in action, in community

This is the practice of noticing, in action, in community.

Or: I am experimenting with modeling what one form of this kind of noticing might look like, in case this is helpful for you.

Obviously, we bear in mind that People Vary. We are all different people having different experiences, your mileage may vary etc.

You are welcome to take any clues that might apply, and tweak things in a way that works for you.

Noticing, take one…

The situation is my friend’s

My friend, a skilled, competent, warm-hearted yoga person, has run an excellent and very thorough yoga teacher training for some years. If I could wave a magic wand and have everyone who teaches train with her, I would.

Someone else is starting up a rival teacher training in the same extremely small town, and this person has been publicly saying negative things about both my friend and my friend’s training that simply are not true, in order to grow her own program.

This is not what is setting off feelings for me though

This all is, sadly, extremely normal boring yoga world drama, and all it makes me feel is sad that my friend is going through this.

Sad and also frustrated that people who study yoga deeply often still can’t work with the basics (speaking truth, for example), and just sort of generally disillusioned with everything.

But not big waves of feeling. Just a slow lapping at the shore of feelings, if that makes sense.

Where the big feelings come in

Where the big feelings come in is that my friend does not wish to correct these lies because my friend does not wish to “compete”.

My friend wants to believe that the truth will prevail, and light over darkness, and all that.

Which, putting aside that this is not the world we live in (points to plummeting vaccination rates and measles outbreaks) is not the world that I live in, and that’s where my big feelings are coming from…

Scooby-doo rewind

Many years ago, my former teacher and mentor spread untruths about me online, in a very public way, and I don’t know what was going through their head at the time or at all, so I can’t make guesses about why or how this came to pass.

Perhaps they had been lied to by someone else about me, and believed those lies, or maybe something else happened, no idea.

What I do know is what happened as a result of this.

Teapots, fires, mixed metaphors abound

Here is what happened:

I did not defend myself or stand up for myself or try to correct these false statements in any way.

In part because of the same line of thinking as my friend: the truth will prevail, people know I’m a good person with a good heart and good intentions, and that will be enough. They will see this for what it is: a bizarre misunderstanding, a miscommunication, and it will be okay.

And in part because everyone in my life, from my business partner to my attorney to my friends, said that this was a tempest in a teapot, and it would blow over on its own. To give it more attention would just be to adding fuel to something that needed to burn out on its own etc.

Regrets etc

The main thing I regret is that by not standing up for myself, I also didn’t stand up for my own students and their teaching and the beautiful work we had done together.

I hurt them, and let them down, and that is awful. I am so sorry about that.

I think in the moment I was trying so hard to course-correct for my teacher’s misunderstanding (his perception that I did not respect him despite having devoted a decade of my life to spreading his work in the world?) that I didn’t want to say anything all that could be even remotely perceived as undermining him and being actually disrespectful to him.

So in that sense, you can say that I prioritized his comfort over the people who I owed something to, the people I had trained. I regret that. I also regret that despite my best efforts, I was not able to resolve the misunderstanding with my beloved teacher.

Noticing, again

So, I have this past painful experience, that majorly fucked me up, and that experience taught me, right or wrong, that the truth does not come out unless you actively put it out there.

And who knows, maybe even then it still doesn’t come out, but at least you tried?

In my experience, for the most part, people did not trust my good heart or trust that I had my own reasons for not defending myself. They were upset and they walked, and it is on me for thinking it could be otherwise.

I see my friend choosing Not-Competing, and what I see is someone declining the opportunity to set the record straight. I wish I had set the record straight, or at least tried.

I wish I had stood up for my students even if it meant that my teacher received that as disrespectful when all I wanted in the world was for him to know how much I respected him and his work.

Reactiveness

Every time I talk to my friend about what she could do to promote her program, I advocate for being really clear about all the great elements of her program, and correcting the misinformation floating around.

She doesn’t want to do this because she thinks love and light win, or something that sets me off completely, and then I stomp around about this on my own time, in my own stuff about it.

What is useful here?

My job here, in my relationship between me and me, is to provide comfort and compassion for the pain and painful echoes of these past experiences.

It sucks that I went through these painful losses, losing my beloved mentor and my beloved students and an entire community...

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/TJgReQxdfw761s3QboHlRi1Ly282xAAw

fluentself_feed

https://api.follow.it/track-rss-story-click/v3/TJgReQxdfw761s3QboHlRoIAmcWJ0TmB

kaberett

Specifically I have tracked down a copy of Treatise on Man, which is probably the source of the claim I've seen phrased several ways, most eyebrow-raisingly and also most readily to hand by Steve Haines, attributing to Descartes the idea that pain is

something similar to hearing, it is a fixed signal and measurable response

and it turns out I've got access to a whole entire PDF which turns out to be only 71 pages, including quite a lot of fairly large images, so I suppose I'm going to read Descartes now as a break from working my way through the BBC's Higher revision guides on neurobiology, which is itself a detour from reading the introductory text on nerves aimed at undergraduates...

(The things I've actually been reading today consist of two chapters of Hyperbole and a Half, a partial chapter of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, both as Shared Activities with A, and about half of A Handful of Flour, a recipe book I have owned for quite a while now and am rapidly concluding I might no longer wish to dedicate shelf space to...)

jazzyjj posting in

awesomeers

chestnut_pod posting in

poetry

Andrea Gibson died yesterday of ovarian cancer. They were a great guiding light of spoken word, and their poem "Ashes" was a touchstone for me as a teenager. In their honor:

Watch on YouTube

( Transcript )

lhune posting in

3_good_things_a_day

1) The new way of getting my medication is a huge success, I feel much less tired than usual *crosses fingers the next days will remain the same*

2) Enjoyed the sunshine on my balcony in a deckchair, heavenly ♥

3) Starting to diet properly again but with more salt his time ^^

bruces_poems_feed

Posted by Bruce-the-Sheep

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/obstinate-ephrem-seyoum.html

When your good-for-nothing lover
said the beginning and end of
wisdom
is in the smoking of a cigarette
you laughed

https://brucespoems.blogspot.com/2025/07/obstinate-ephrem-seyoum.html

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