justmotteingaround
No bio...
User ID: 2002
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
then it makes explanations involving hallucinations and weather balloons less plausible.
I think you're dramatically underestimating the likelihood and causes of misidentification. Extremely smart domain experts misidentify the benign for the outlandish all the time. Michael Shermer's old TED talk 'Why people believe weird things' gets into this. Also, youtuber Thunderf00t has several videos debunking UFO stuff, including more recent claims, with lots of examples of people mistaking the benign for the outlandish.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
This article is an semi-coherent jumble of truth mixed together with ludicrousness.
That's basically my take on everything I've read on amren. Extremely well written and inspiring, but the claims and leaps of logic that follow are indeed ludicrous. I understand the allure of the narrative, but trying to map it on to the world as I know it leaves be utterly bewildered.
justmotteingaround
3mo ago
While I think your initiative is extremely laudable, just know that the path ahead of you is fraught. You may have a serious medical issue which forums could exacerbate. But keep documenting things, trying new things, and taking the initiative. I'd recommend a heavy bias towards experts who can see you in person, even if you have to shop around for the ones that work for you. Cautionary note: cascades of care, and incidentalomas.
Lastly, this reads like you're looking for a simple fix that has a clear mechanistic explanation. Generally speaking, I would not expect such specificity, but keep trying to make things better.
So, here is a layman speculation (without knowing your age, weight:height, mood, stability, aerobic capacity etc).
sorta-permanent emotional numbness and pleasure deficiency.
This sounds like anhedonia. It could be hormones (testosterone, free-T, T:E ratio, various thyroid hormones, medications you are taking, cortisol, micro or macro nutrient deficiency). These can all be looked at in one blood panel. I'd start with a full workup from a GP. (and the results will give us amateurs more to (possibly dangerously) speculate about!)
It may be a neurotransmitter imbalance. This can be an appealing thought, as it seems to promise a clear mechanistic solution. IME, it isn't nearly so cut and dry. If you can get through your day without chaos, I'd investigate this last.
For now:
Consider cutting caffeine. It isolates one variable and should improve sleep. I won't sugar coat this, this is awful for a week or two. However, you'll get back good data quickly. Sleep is a miracle drug.
Consider following a balanced diet of whole foods with a tiny caloric surplus. Whole foods and sufficient calories are the goal.
Supplements: vit-D+k, zinc, and magnesium are the most common deficiencies. Might want to wait until after the blood panel. Creatine 5g per day because almost no harm, many potential benefits. L-citrulline (malate is fine). May improve blood flow at 10g per day. Glycine for sleep. NAC works for some to clear brain fog. Can also allegedly cause anhedonia (did neither for me). Prob some others but the supplement world is waaaay overhyped imo.
One-crazy-thing: Carnivore diet. Never tried it. Seems insane. The good: It's simple (but not easy) to adhere to. It's an elimination diet so fewer variables. Its radically not the same, perhaps resulting in different outcomes. Wide anecdotal support. The bad: most support is anecdotal. Its wild. Diarrhea for a week.
Again: have a bias towards experts in person, but keep the initiative. Its your life you're free to experiment and deviate. Best of luck.
She's had a string of jobs in Cali for the last decade, but twitter says she either posted from Maryland, or her bio says Maryland (I don't use twitter). Weighing that evidence, I'd bet she's a California resident.
Edit: actually on her wiki page it says.
They moved to Silver Spring, Maryland in 2021 when she assumed the presidency of EMILY's List.[17][18] Governor Newsom's office stated Butler would reregister to vote in California before taking office as a senator
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
The people who say weed is some harmless wonder plant are annoying.
Agreed, but its worth considering that "weed is harmless" is a considerably better approximation of the truth than weeds classification as a schedule 1 nacotric in the US.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
This literally begs the entire argument.
At one nanosecond after fertilization, has a person formed? Is the affirmative obvious and/or rational? If not, what about 2 nanoseconds? Should murder charges apply for disposed IVF embryos? Why don't we have funerals for every lost embryo? Should the State be able to enforce veganism? Etc, etc.
The State shouldn't be able to force behavior in accordance with unfalsifiable beliefs without broad consent/consensus from the governed - which is lacking with abortion. It's exactly the kind of thing that should be left to people's own mind.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
I'm okay with any politician being thrown in jail for a decade for merely doing what Trump did on his call with Raffensperger.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
Based on the source you provided it sounds like the outright majority of sexual abuse happens at school.
It does sound that way. And it might be that most sex abuse outside of family (most common iirc) happens in schools. However, my confidence on that proposition is proposition is quite low because of some bayesian reasoning. For example, the established prior is that men commit 80-90% child sex abuse. This is a high confidence, long standing datapoint. Because it's so heavily weighted towards males, any male dominated group should have dramatically more abuse. Like, my heart says the sources we have, but my math side says just default to maleness as a proxy.
Around the time of the Sandusky scandal I recall reading that some abusers spend years inserting themselves into professions which might have the ability to provide access, acting gregarious and helpful. Its all very frightening. The sources we have indicate waaaay to much abuse.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
It is a defense to disparate impact along protected class lines if it can be shown that the discriminatory factor is a business necessity. I'm less confident in how this plays out in practiced, how many bullshit claims of prevailed since the CRA, and how much bullshit claims have trailed off since.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
I think he is correct. I find HBD plausible in principle, but it's terrible political tool in practice. For one, its radioactive and attracts a high proportion of radioactive supporters. Second, many better tools already exist (standardized tests, colorblind policy, merit based immigration vetting). HBD is a worse substitute than existing policy frameworks. It purports to partially explain a wide variety of complex human behavior of ill defined groups. Interesting in principle; a bad policy tool for a nation that focuses so much on the individual (culturally and legally).
justmotteingaround
5mo ago
I fly international a lot. My strategies work for me and I have my typical routes mastered. Timing your sleep/wake cycle on arrival is most important.
Melatonin is great on paper, doesn't seem to do much for me. I time caffeine, cardio, and sleep so I'll be most tired at the local bedtime on the first few nights. (Example: NYC to Switzerland takes off 6pm, so I get up at 3 am in NYC, binge coffee, work, take off 6PM, and I can sleep a few hours on the plane. Arrive 8am, caffeine around 10am and I'm fresh for the whole afternoon. I make sure to to push through to at least 8pm and then pass out for the night.)
Never stay up too late. Plan everything so you're tired as hell for bedtime the first few nights. Try to avoid caffeine after 12pmish the first few days after arrival so you can sleep well later. If you absolutely have to nap, do some math to calculate if you'll be tired that night, and set SEVERAL timers. Otherwise, just push through. Get on a regular schedule. Cardio/loooooong walks are great if you have too much energy and its getting late. You need pass out and sleep well at the normal bedtime for the first few nights!!!
As for the planes themselves, noise cancelling headphones if you got them. I drink at least 1L water every 2 hours minimum. I go to the back and have them refill my airport plastic bottle. Nobody else does this and its crazy. Planes are so dry. A good book or magazine is the best to pass the time. I have a kindle with 100's of books to read or re-read, and I'll put boring ones down in search of something that is great for long trips. Download any potentially interesting podcasts before takeoff. Series are great to binge. (I recommend alphabet boys, especially season 2). I've never had a 7 hour layover. The lounge might be worth it. Going into town might be worth it just to have a mini adventure, but you have to like random stuff like that (ie not find it stressful).
Nice deadlift! At ~23sec I saw your hips come up first. I don't use a belt, but I think I take a deeper breath and expand my stomach more to fill out my leverages, then brace. Perhaps something to play around with. You may want to mix in straps just to put more attention elsewhere (hips, leverages, whatever). Just some ideas.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
Everything is on the table for change, but its not equally wise or good to change any aspect. The US nearly wrecked itself to get rid of slavery. Legal slavery in perpetuity probably wasn't a stable solution, and the US paid dearly to change a fundamental aspect of its operation, deleting the 3/5 compromise and adding new lines to its "code". The Catholic Church moved away from Latin mass because that was probably a sub-optimal configuration. If, in the year 2300, society has determined that being anti gay is as bad as being pro slavery, I'd bet that the Catholic church will bless gay unions, or something similar (its unlikely, but possible). Solutions like "making killing legal to solve murder" are generally unstable solutions to law and order institutions.
Well, just as a quick sanity check, which sects of Christianity are flying the rainbow flag right now?
Oh, I have no idea. I wasn't raised with a religion, and haven't really chosen one.
"progress towards what?"
Kurt Vonnegut would sarcastically argue its to make more plastic. Ellul would argue 'technique' is progressing to separate us from nature for its own ends. Dawkins would argue for the successful propagation of replicators. Steven Pinker would argue its a move towards less violence and loger, healthier lifespans. I'm closest to the latter arguments.
Not all changes are good just because they're changes
Agreed! Chesterton is a very wise part of the conversation. The pride-flying sects are either blowing themselves up, or evolving to a more stable structure. I think the latter, but who knows. The ACLU is blowing itself up imo, but FIRE is filling the void. The reactionary and unwise BLM movement is blowing up racial progress imo, but they seem to be cashing out. There may or may not be some wise findings in the debris (for example, I'm in favor of skepticism to police power, training standards, and attitudes, and I hope these change at the institutional level).
Should Christianity endorse Satan worship, if it increased it's chances for survival? Should progressives endorse white supremacy?
This sounds like should X become not X to survive. Not sure it fits. But say in the rubble of WW3 might progressives become totalitarian to put society back together. Yeah, but they won't claim to be progressives anymore. Have to run, getting increasingly less thoughtful.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
Right, but this line of reasoning could be used to dismiss as inaccurate anything sufficiently complex and niche. The human body, the universe, and AI are complex, but people don't dismiss medicine, astrophysics, and LLM's because of complexity. What is special or unique about decades of climate science that gives people pause?
I don't want to put words in peoples mouths. If people think decades of climate science is uniquely dubious because they reckon its just too complex, that's fine. Special pleading is an informal fallacy anyhow. OP found climate science to be nonsense, and the idea of climate modeling to be outlandish, and didn't elaborate. But saying this isn't special pleading by pointing out complexity is a non-starter. It's rare that, for decades, 90+% of trained scientists agree on some domain specific thing in a heavily quantitative field, yet popular sentiment demurs without easily explaining why.
justmotteingaround
8mo ago
This still seems like special pleading. Perhaps you can argue/explain to me how its not. As I see it, we can figure out chess, engineer billions of transistors per sq in, manipulate genomes, program LLMs with billions of tokens, perform a million-trillion operations every second. Therefore its not unreasonable to suspect that we can make good climate models.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
how do you keep a strict diet without counting calories?
For me its getting really good at estimations after logging everything in a paid app for a couple of months. Now I just log my weight a few times a week, and the scale keeps me honest. Everything is a habit now. I cook most of the food I eat, and I think thats important. If I go out, I try to eat a filling snack before (veggies, fruit, low-cal smoothie, water, etc). I just assume the calories I consumed while out are double or triple my norm, so I just go hungry for a meal or two afterwards. If the scale is trending up, I just get more strict for the next week and see what happens. The key is never letting the weight creep back up.
so I figure 1g / kg will be sufficient; do you disagree?
I'd up the protein. Iirc the research shows that protein drives lean body mass and helps spare muscle. You may have more muscle than you think and probably want to save it as much as possible. I think you have a lot of headroom for additional calories and should be mindful of crashing, yo-yoing, and lowering your BMR for a few months. Whey and filtered milk (ie Fairlife)/water might be a good low carb protein and calorie adjustment; 40-50g protein, 6g carbs, and 250-300 calories. I don't know much about keto to say if 6g is too much. Also, I do know that people take keto supplements like magnesium for some reason.
I've thought about what you're trying; melt the fat then build back the muscle. The research convinced me to go the very slow route of 0.25-0.5% body-weight loss per week for 15-30 weeks. My base metabolic rate, satiety, and fitness should be exactly where I want it as soon as I'm done. But I love to cook and lift weights so it also suits me personally.
If you go for operation fat-melting, you should start a really dialed-in fitness routine when finished, which should take 4 months to figure out. Done correctly, that should stoke your metabolism. Then you can maintain easily (with keto or whatever). I've had friends that had success going this route. Eventually they found the keto too boring, but I eat a lot of repetitive meals so who knows. You'll gain water weight if you stop keto, which isn't something to worry about. Then just keep your eye on the scale. Best of luck.
As I mentioned before, I got most of my info from youtuber Jeff Nippard. He has a lot of videos going through quality research on diets, proteins requirements, cheat meals/compensatory overeating, rep-ranges, and progressive overload.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
When the POTUS asks someone to overturn election results immediately after falsely notifying them that they are committing a serious crime if they don't, just chuck them in a jail cell for a decade to teach them about reckless disregard for the truth, and intimidating election officials.
justmotteingaround
9mo ago
I couldn't find the link for this claim:
The U.S. Department of Education found that 5% to7% of public school teachers engage in sexual abuse of children per year.
It seems outrageous. 1:15 teachers sexually abuse kids? And only 20% are males? The a-priori likelihood is low because of the offender rate and composition of the institutions. Unless schools hire females with a 10x offending rate, AND churches (broadly) hire males with 10-100x lower offending rate (based on this averaged with this, accounting for this. Its a-priori statistically very unlikely for male dominated or 50/50 places, to have higher offending rates than 60/40+ males spaces. But its possible.
All that said, the offender rate comports well with a good article from a solid source. But definitions make everything wonky, conflating language with acts sometimes. So I don't really know with any confidence. Bayes makes me think sex abuse is always much lower the more female dominated a place is.
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
I am optimistic, especially compared to what I gather is the median for themotte. I think institutional bias over fake racism claims is an issue, but Bayesian thinking leads me to think it cannot possibly be a primary concern (ie it cut the other direction for a long time so that is the initial given, and you update towards the current state with examples of it cutting the other direction. Sanity checking my guesswork seems to indicate that outcomes are in line with expectations, and have been for decades (given both the priors, and the explanatory assumptions of HBD). Each individual example of the current bias is infuriating, but I don't yet see dispassionate quantitative reasons to think it has large consequential effects (although I'm open to such reasons).
justmotteingaround
2mo ago
Would be a shame if we stopped using them because of incorrect beliefs about the root causes of group differences…
This is essentially what I am earnestly claiming, because I do see how we get back to equal protection without explicitly acknowledging point 1. The courts have been doing this since the 1970's, clarifying that disparate impacts are fine so long as a non-arbitrary business necessity can be demonstrated.
justmotteingaround
3mo ago
Oooof. That's rough. Yeah, I'd say you're at the theorycraft stage. Add some info to your post. I'm still unsure exactly what your symptoms are, how they present, your clinical history, and current status.
I'm stumped, and this is way beyond my pay grade anyhow. I perused the "The Mechanical Basis of ME/CFS" post. Interesting stuff from deep down a rabbit hole. And from your other comments its seems like you know how things work. Best of luck!
justmotteingaround
4mo ago
Write a post-dated check to an organization you loathe for a sum large enough to sting. Give that check to someone you trust. If you don't weight 'x' with 'y' bodyfat on Jan 1 2025, they mail the check. This is a semi famous commitment device. YMMV.
But when it comes to diet, its really up to you and your habits. There is no end to dieting until your habits keep you at a healthy weight. You might be tempted to crash diet at the end following the above, but its an interesting idea.
justmotteingaround
5mo ago
I think it's me not pulling the slack out of the bar.
I was thinking something like that too, but I'm no expert. The straps are only to theoretically free up concentration on other body parts, and dial those in.
I usually "sit back" just before initiating the movement. My final cues are "big chest, chin neutral, sit back (this takes the slack out too), drive through the heeeeeeeeels". This keeps my hips low, makes for a better hip hinge for me, while accentuating leg drive. For practice I found that breaking up a set of 5ish into a set of "consecutive singles" to near failure (ie quickly re-set and fully re-cue after each rep) really helped me dial in my form and approach failure. My toes are mostly parallel, but I've been told this can come down to personal preference. Enjoy the trip!
justmotteingaround
6mo ago
The hypothetical choices are (doctor/ software engineer/ young educated person with needed skills) vs (native speaker of the primary language). I'd bet more social good come from the former over the latter. One virtually guarantees paying more than their fair share of tax, and their offspring are almost certain to be native speakers, and likely successful as well.
justmotteingaround
7mo ago
I didn't make any claim about causality. I'm curious if people think these changes in widely consumed popular media/art represnet an improvement or degredation of cultural mores. Feel free to opine!
When the PODUS, or any higher ranking politician, calls someone to tell them "The ballots are corrupt and that's illegal... Its more illegal for you than it is for them. You know what they did and you're not reporting it, and that is a criminal offense. You can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you... And you're letting it happen. I'm notifying you that you are letting it happen. And all I want to do is find X votes" just put them in jail.
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