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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   1548 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for July 15, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

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A good friend of mine published their debut novel earlier this week. I was very proud of them, so in my naivety, I decided to break my usual rules against using social media, and look for some early reviews online to see how it was being received.

Mostly I just found banal comments along the lines of "I liked it" here and there, but on Twitter I came across a screed alleging that my friend was a hack and that the novel was completely AI written for absolutely inane reasons.

Honestly, it's been ruining my whole day and I'm not quite sure why; objectively it was probably just some LLM or third world engagement farmer trying to ragebait and get views. Yet, it does feel like we've lost something as a society where incentives to drive engagement are so deeply a race to the bottom that the semantic meaning of writing only matters insofar as much as it evokes emotion and generates clicks, and where it's so easy to counterfeit human effort.

I suppose that on an intellectual level that this was something I always knew was happening to the world, but it does feel worse when it's directly about someone that's close to you.

There are some truly rabid anti-ai people that accuse anything they dislike even a little of being AI, even in channels for people that are paying for an ongoing novel, where they couldn't possibly be engagement baiting.

alleging that my friend was a hack and that the novel was completely AI written for absolutely inane reasons

I kinda get it.

Starting around January 2025, AI writing hit publishing like an atomic bomb. Publishers got deluged with generated submissions, and their entire system collapsed under the strain. Major publishers stopped taking open submissions for months while they were trying to figure it out.

At the same time, the publishers started seeing various court cases around ownership and copywrite of generated works, and now they're scared shitless about what happens if they publish one. (@ToaKraka recently had some links about this)

On the author side, a lot of writers are pissed about it. I mean fucking incandescent. For a long time, it's been a joke that everybody thinks they could be a brilliant author if they just sat down and applied themselves, because they gave such fantastic ideas. The thing is, those ideas are usually half baked, and actually fleshing them out takes a level of bloody-minded effort that few people possess. We call that small group of people "authors". Everybody's gangsta until it's time to do gangsta shit, and everybody's an author until it's time to do author shit. Generative AI let a disturbing number of people play-act at being authors without actually having to put in the time. The thing is, generating passable text with an LLM takes effort too, and it's rare that somebody who won't put in the work to be a human author will put in the work to be a robot herder. They sure will say they're an author though. Good God, they will fucking say it.

At the same time, the publishing industry has swallowed so much of their own bullshit that they're stuck. Publishing has pretty much been captured by what people call "woke" around here. Getting published is wildly easier if you are some form of favored minority. It's reached the point where I have taken to publishing under my partner's name, because it has quintupled my acceptance rate. This is not bullshit. I track it in submission grinder and the numbers are ugly.

The reason this matters is because a lot of the LLM writers are custom tailoring identities and prompt outputs to be "too good to check".

https://www.bona-books.com/news/we-bought-an-ai-story

One chosen story was a steampunk, anti-colonial fantasy, titled “The Machine-Breaker of Aba”. It hit our brief with a perfect intensity that felt difficult to resist. A queer woman, building a machine from scrap metal and rage to destroy her colonial oppressors? Of course we loved it. The author was an emerging Nigerian writer named Bella Chacha.

It's a perfect storm. The industry has backed itself into a corner. The technology is literally designed to barf out content faster than any human can process it. A significant population thinks they can get away with throwing generated content over the wall for money and adulation, and in the short term they're probably right.

The entire community is jumping at shadows and seeing secret robots everywhere. I've gotten it a few times myself because I tend to have a lot of discursive sentences with a shitload of nested clauses. (1)

It sucks for your friend. It sucks for you. It sucks for me. It sucks for the industry. All I can suggest for now is that she develop a thick skin until new norms sort themselves out. I hope it doesn't hurt her too much in the meantime.

  1. It turns out a few slurs can convince an editor that you're human real quick, if you're willing to take the risk.

At the same time, the publishing industry has swallowed so much of their own bullshit that they're stuck. Publishing has pretty much been captured by what people call "woke" around here. Getting published is wildly easier if you are some form of favored minority.

Freddie deBoer points out that:

  1. the publishing industry collectively made a loud pre-commitment to publish more books by writers from "historically underserved communities" i.e. fewer white males
  2. This wasn't just cheap talk, and the composition of the writers whose books they published changed accordingly

but when you point out the obvious inference of the former two points (namely: that publishing more books by women and minorities means publishing fewer ones by white males, and consequently that it has never been harder for a white male novelist to get published), people tend to scoff and roll their eyes. It's just basic mathematics: if you don't increase the total number of books published (and there's no evidence that this has happened), then publishing more books by women and minorities logically entails publishing fewer books by white males.

Despite being a white male and an aspiring novelist, I am not completely opposed to the trend towards publishing more books by female novelists. Although the proportion of Americans who claim to have read a book in the past year has fallen dramatically over the past fifteen years, women have always read more than men, and this remains true today. All things being equal, I can imagine a female novelist having an easier time writing a novel which would appeal to female readers compared to a male novelist doing the same thing. It follows that the drive to publish more novels by female writers might be a fundamentally sound business decision. It's the same basic argument as to why I could never get too bent out of shape about female underrepresentation in video game development*: PC and console gamers are overwhelmingly male, and all things being equal I imagine a male developer would have an easier time designing a video game which would appeal to men than a female developer would. Note that this argument does not apply to the drive to publish more writers from ethnic minority backgrounds: white Americans read far more books than every other ethnic group (including Asians, to my surprise).

But my question is this. As with any affirmative action-adjacent argument, the drive to publish more books by women and minorities logically implies that, for the last ~decade, literary agents and publishing houses have been optimising for something other than literary quality and/or commercial viability**. Has this resulted in any concomitant decline in revenues? Are revenues from publishing meaningfully lower now than they were ten years ago, controlling for inflation? And consequently, is there a potential gap in the market for a new publishing house to announce "at $Publisher, we don't care about a writer's identity markers and only care about how good the book is?" Or is publishing such an effective oligopoly that this isn't a viable option?

*Not to mention another more, uh, prurient entertainment industry.

**Spare me your "always has beens": I'm not completely naïve. I don't think it's controversial to say that the publishing industry is loudly, conspicuously announcing its decision to optimise for something other than commercial viability for the last decade in a way it wasn't before.

At the same time, the publishers started seeing various court cases around ownership and copyright of generated works, and now they're scared shitless about what happens if they publish one. (ToaKraka recently had some links about this.)

Discussion

Novels just aren't very valuable anymore. There are so many of them, it takes exceptional skill and/or luck to stand out.

I think you're directionally correct, but realistically there has already been "too much to read" for like, a century; current trends with the internet and AI are only exacerbating what paperbacks and desktops began, the marginal value of the median novel has been approximately zero in the living memory of anyone still alive.

Unless you're one of the rarified few who actually make civilizationally consequential discoveries or decisions, pretty much anything a single person is capable of in one lifetime rounds to worthless if you zoom out far enough (and even those few, if you keep zooming out!). If a novellist can provide a small amount of value to their readers, I'd say that they're creating more value than most people manage in their lives.

The difference is in the shape of the funnel. It's been first widened by universal literacy, then by word processors, but LLMs have really opened the floodgates. Anything that doesn't have an automated filter that shadowbans LLM "authors" will be inundated.

It's not weird to be upset about it. It sounds like potential libel to me and it could, if it went viral, cause your friend serious reputational damage. The yellow journalism era had exactly the same incentives and produced exactly the same problems.

Yeah, you're right.

Luckily, the post wasn't very popular, but these are the inevitable consequences of a world where the wrong post going viral at the wrong time can ruin the lives of people who did nothing wrong. I don't envy those who need to be publically on the internet for their careers at all.

I've been attempting to cut back on algorithm driven internet content for a while now. I go on big "quit reddit" streaks every few years but lately I feel that youtube and twitter have become just as bad of default behaviors. And its genuinely possible i'm defaulting to scrolling over living my life.

I am one week into my digital fast. Its easier to call it that rather than say "I'm giving up twitter/youtube/reddit" forever. I've had 24 logged slips, none longer than 15 minutes and most of which were 1-2 minute headline cruises of google news. the technique I'm trying is to have a project in codex where I log slips. Interestingly, although youtube is the thing that takes the most time, it is has been the easiest to resist, only one slip. Twitter is the one I really crave. Feelings: Bored, irritated, lonely. Strategy: logging to codex/chatgpt when slips happen, usually after I close them but once when I couldn't close twitter. It suggested standing up and then I was able to close it, for some reason. I've attended two ITAA meetings*. Locking my phone in the food safe a couple of times. Outcomes: I've been to 2 meetups with strangers (HARD!), to the gym twice (great!) and watched two movies. I've also finished two or three novels but that is normal.

Goals: to reestablish the quality of social life I had pre-pandemic in terms of local friends. Right now I have 7 people I do activities with. Only one of them is a friend acquired post-pandemic. That may sound like enough but three of them are married with kids so they are more "once a month" friends rather than "twice a week" or impulsive "lets go to X tomorrow" friends. I really feel it if one or more of them is out of town. I sat down and wrote it out and this list used to have an additional 13 names on it.

I also would like my life to have dating in it again. I'm having some trouble getting that restarted. Obviously age changes things. My preferred platform has been multilated (Okcupid) and I struggle to feel interested in people from the simpler platforms. Apparently Hinge is where I need to be, numbers wise. Maybe I'd be more comfortable with match?

*I have very mixed feelings about ITAA. It has a lot of restrictive rules that limit the specificity of story telling and honestly the sharing aspect is very boring compared to (I imagine) NA or AA. I often feel a basic dislike of the people so it is a pain to attend. I think it works for me, to the extent that it works, by showing my nucleus accumbens that this is a priority because I took the time to do it.

I don't know most of the acronyms you're mentioning, but I applaud, at least, your quit reddit strategy. If you must go there, go to a sub that never has anything political or culture war (think /r/watchescirclejerk ) in it and only visit that. I quit reddit years ago and my life has only improved. Also log out from this site immediately if you're on a digital fast, because just by reading this you're breaking the fucking fast.

Nah, Reddit is toast man. No where is safe, even your old safe havens.

If you must go there, go to a sub that never has anything political or culture war (think /r/watchescirclejerk )

I clicked on that link and the top post was a rage-bait photo "Mark Zuckerburg wore a very expensive watch while firing a bunch of people"; the comments were, predictably, full of marxist teeth-sucking.

George wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of a dubious, sometimes unsavory sub called /r/watchescirclejerk.

Zuck wearing a $2M shitter is objectively funny though.

I've never been shy about being an advocate for peptides. It's ironic, however, that despite me having to gently cajole and harrass and nag my brother to try them given all the benefits I've gotten, once he started using them he fully went head-first down that rabbit hole. While I've been content to gently climb down that rock face, he skipped all the steps inbetween and went straight for cliff-diving into the waters below.

During his research, he noted not only alternatives to Semaglutide in terms of hunger suppressants, but also what could be best termed as 'rest months', where taking a month or two off of Semaglutide would help to reset it's effectiveness as well as encourage further weight loss.

A few months back, he decided to do just that; eschewing his normal Semaglutide, he instead opted for a two-month dosage of Cagrilintide, which operates in suppressing hunger in a different manner than Semaglutide. Cagrilintide isn't a GLP-1 agonist; instead, it works by mimicking the hormone amylin. What this means is that, in theory, someone whom isn't afraid of taking peptides can let thier body rest from taking an GLP-1 agonist, while still getting similar results.

Once back on Semaglutide, the end results spoke for themselves. Before taking Cagrilintide, he had hit a rough plateau of a weight around 195 to 198 - now, his lowest recorded weight is around 186, and it shows very much in terms of his overall body shape. Why this is so remarkable is because he started taking Semaglutide when he was 245, and in high school, his weight was 215 - a barrier he was never able to get past via dieting. He has, quite literally, never been at this weight in his entire adult life.

Yay for peptides.

Naturally, being on Semaglutide longer than him, I decided to do similar, having been stuck at my expected weight plateau.

Speaking now from experience, Cagrilintide is very much a different beast than Semaglutide. I described semagltuide in the past as a sort of suppressor between I and the hunger - present, yet not overwhelming and easily ignore. Cagrilintide, however, killed the sense of hunger entirely, so much so I became just a tad worried about my food intake. Also of note, where people have described being on Semaglutide and not being able to stomach as much alcohol anymore, something that I was never afflicted by, being on Cagrilintide meant things I could drink without issue now damn near put me flat on my ass, which was quite the experience!

While taking Cagrilintide proved effective by atleast keeping my weight even-keel, I could also tell that I had less energy than when I was on Semaglutide, though it wasn't a dramatic shift. Sadly, roughly one month in, another side-effect arose - bruising at the injection site. Apparently, I'm one of the small number where that can arise, though I find it interesting that it took roughly a month before such symptoms arose.

So. Cagrilintide was out; I had planned for an initial 8-week regime, now cut down to 5. So I've been roughly 2 weeks free of any peptide, and what I find remarkable is that the changes I noted from after taking Semaglutide has persisted. Hunger is much easier to manage, water still retards hunger(this was never the case before taking Semaglutide), food intake is much slower even when I'm hungry, and skipping meals without any dramatic side effect is now possible should I feel the need to do so.

I am not a medical doctor in any way, shape, or form. Not even close; my college degrees dealt with numbers, not the flesh. So any postulation on my part is pure theory and supposition.

But.

I'm begining to suspect that the right stack of peptides for people can have longer-term beneficial alterations than what's going on with the surface, that they can actually shift, change, alter, augment, and repair the body in unexpected ways, some beneifical, some not. I don't ever expect to stop taking Semaglutide - again, I like the benefits it gives above and beyond the weight loss - but there is an iota of reassurance that, should a black swan event occur and I'm no longer able to source peptides that I won't be out too much of a loss.

Naturally, I could be wrong. I only have a single data point - me - and testing long term effects of peptide injections would require me to stop taking said injections for much longer, whereas I plan to resume Semaglutide in roughly 2 weeks or so.

Here's hoping I can get out of peptides what my brother got. Heh.

(TLDR: If you're still on the fence about taking peptides, just do it.)

Obligatory comment that "Peptides" as a category characterizes an enormous group of varied substances, from insulin to calcitonin to parathyroid hormone, that have different qualities, benefits, and risks.

I got off the fence thanks to posts like this praising GLPs. In particular, thank you @erwgv3g34 for your post on Cremieux Recueil.

I'm getting compounded tirzepatide shipped to me at the moment. What I really wanted was retatrutide, but I'm too scared to buy the peptides without an intermediary pharmacy verifying the quality. I expect reta to eventually be available to compunding pharmacies at some point, so I will stock up on reta then if tirz is no longer effective for me.

While waiting for Reta, I might try your trick of a month off and using Cagrilintide as an alternative. So many options these days.

FWIW I went with Reta from a semi-sketchy source (I'll share in message, though the site I bought from has different sources now.) and it went fine. I picked a supplier that had respectable (but not the most amazing/expensive) reviews and COAs (too cheap and lazy to test the batch that I received) and it's been fine. If anything, the only issue I've had has been with inconsistent dosing (This was noted in the COAs; purity tends to be good from batch to batch but the suppliers have a habit of overdelivering on dosage.) and my own overly aggressive dosing schedule (I was aggressive and it worked, but I felt like shit a lot of the time before I reached a dose that I've stuck with. Most of that "feeling like shit" was just the result of a very aggressive calorie deficit. I didn't want to eat but I was tired AF and constantly cold.).

As for results, I lost 60lbs in 5 months and going on/off have hit a sort of plateau and not really been trying since then. I might go for another 10-15lbs but beyond that (and maybe then) I'd be venturing too far into "skinny nerd" territory. For reference, I'm currently 175lbs at 6'1.

should a black swan event occur and I'm no longer able to source peptides

Do you get your peptides gray market, and if so, where?

(TLDR: If you're still on the fence about taking peptides, just do it.)

Any suggestions for someone who has never been 200# and doesn't need to lose weight? GHK-Cu? TB-500? BPC-157?

Online supplier.

As I mentioned in my post, my brother would know more - the only other peptide I've taken is the BPC-157 / TB-500 blend for healing purposes, and oh boy does it work.

If you have any persistent/long term injuries and you don't mind site injections, I'd give that a shot.

Sorry to be a negative nancy but the clinical evidence for BPC-157 is eyebrow raising in a bad way. The best that can be said about it is that it's apparently harmless and that some athletic associations are concerned enough about it to ban it.

But the evidence base for it comes entirely from one lab which also happens to hold the patent on it, and the only pre-registered trial for BPC-157 that was actually done has never published results. This is an extremely low bar of evidence and may as well be interpreted as anti-evidence. They've been investigating BPC-157 since at least 1989!

On the other hand, peptides like Semaglutide, Tirzepatide and Retatrutide have FDA trials that prove their efficacy (though Reta is not officially approved yet). But the gray market sites will sell you a bunch of other peptides while you're there and the rest of them are not nearly as well established.

Interesting. I can only go by my personal experience in that said peptide has been surprisingly beneficial - I did come into it with skepticism in mind, nor have I noted any detrimental side effects.

I'm just going to say it, I think the interest in "peptides" is a category error.

"Peptide" is a chemical class, not a mechanism. Insulin is a peptide, so is vancomycin. Saying "I'm on peptides" is about as informative as saying "I'm on molecules".

I'm not only complaining about semantics though.

You almost certainly mean "exciting peptides synthesized in China sold on gray market sites" that appeal to bro scientists, which, fine.

The one case where the bro scientists are genuinely ahead of orthodoxy is Retatrutide: real phase 3 data, ~28% weight loss, and the only way to get it is by constituting your own freeze dried vials you ordered for "research purposes only" from a gray market supplier.

But that's the exception. The rest of the peptides being sold on gray market (that aren't already FDA approved drugs available cheaper than pharma out of pocket/gatekept by insurance) are very unfounded. They're coasting off the legitimacy of GLP-1s.

The rest of the peptides being sold on gray market (that aren't already FDA approved drugs available cheaper than pharma out of pocket/gatekept by insurance) are very unfounded.

There are some myostatin inhibitors, if validated, that sound like they are going to be crazy for muscle growth.

I wonder if the facts play out that the myostatin inhibitors you're thinking of could increase lean muscle mass or volume but have nearly no effect on strength (nonfunctional hypertrophy) if people would still want to use them. This could also fuck up things like tendons due to increased load due to perceived badassery where there is none.

If no one could guess I am skeptical about trying to hack the body in these ways--not in principle but in our new era of bro science based on anecdata instead of empirical studies, clinical trials, and third thing goes here. People on this very board will doubt statins (which have had many, many studies done on their efficacy, have improved over the years, and, while not completely safe, are about as safe as any drug at the population level) yet embrace peptides from China with zero regulation or assurance that they contain what they are supposed to contain, based on a few good stories of people who've used them for almost a year, and wow.

I'm probably wrong. I sound as if I am dismissing OP and everyone in here, but I do not mean to do so. It is interesting though to see how people swallow whole perspectives that are based on flimsy evidence and anecdotes when it suits them or is in line with what they wish to believe, yet if a cause they abhor were to offer up the same type of data as proof they would scoff and call for a wrecking ball to universities. Or whatever.

(Full disclosure: Universities do seem to suck in their current iteration. I do not deny it. I am rather pointing out an inconsistency, and one that I would realize I am probably equally guilty of were I a bit more self-aware.)

I'm not on the Chinese mystery powder train myself. I have doubts that most of these substances will pan out as people hope. However, I'm all in favor of bro science people using themselves as guinea pigs for my education and entertainment.

Fingers crossed they pan out!

Now you're speaking my language.

Erm, how's it for fibrous collagen plaques? Asking for a friend, natch...

I wouldn't know, personally; my experience involved healing an old knee injury(not debilitating, just worrying) and alleviating back/muscle pain for several hours after a series of very questionable decisions and learning that I've been training completely wrong for a very long time and I need to fix all my stuff.

As long as you know how to reconstitute peptides and know a good source, it's so cheap you might as well roll the bones and see what happens.

Thanks for sharing. Are you still able to exercise and build (or at least maintain) muscle while taking peptides, or is it purely for slimming down?

edit: second question, how do you get them? do you go through an actual doctor, or one of the sketchy online services?

And in reply to your second question, yes, it's an online supplier.

It is surely the shady online services, and sometimes even cutting out the shady middlemen to buy direct from shady Chinese suppliers. It's the only way to get retatrutide at the moment. For tirzepatide, online compunding pharmacies abound. I don't think most people prefer semaglutide when it has been outclassed by the reta and tirz.

I've not had problems building up muscle while tasking said peptides, but I will admit with a caveat that I'm exercising every day by this point, except for saturdays - roughly walking 9 to 10 miles a week and training in karate tuesday/thursday.

My brother walks more - and he does a several hour workout every sunday, and he's had no issue building up muscle to the point I've actively noticed.

I'm not sure where the chestnut of 'you can't build muscle while on peptides' began. Either that, or I and my brother are just freaks of nature. Take your pick.

10 miles a week is 16 km. Which is, given a stride length of 75cm, around 3000 steps a day on average. Not a lot.

I only do walking 3 days out of the week - the other 2 are when I'm training. I and my brother walk together, hence why he racks up more miles.

What do you mean by letting their body rest from taking semaglutide? Is that a real thing or what.

I'm on tirzepatide and expect to be on it for the rest of my life, or until something better and more permanent comes along. Which is totally fine with me because the results have been a godsend.

I understand a non-trivial number of people don't regain 100% of their weight when they discontinue, but I have so much anxiety over my weight (and associated worsening health indicators that correlate with higher weight) that I do not want to fuck around with the thing that's actually, finally working.

My own progression on tirzepatide was that running and lifting was harder to do while I was actively losing weight but once I stabilized at certain weight at a certain dose I was able to rack up PR again. That seems under-observed and it makes me wonder if people worry that the bit of sluggishness that comes from going on them will be a permanent thing.

Keep in mind that I'm only going off of second-hand forum posting, but from what I've read, people whom have been taking GLP-1 agonists have had to, for whatever reason, stop taking them for a month or so - and when they got back on, they noticed they started loosing more weight compared to before.

Plus, it's also what my brother did, so, again. Small data point, not sure if it's a trend. If I manage to get over my current plateau once I get back on semaglutide, I'll probably be letting people know about it.

As for sluggishness, I've never had that issue. If anything, I had more energy than ever on SG - whereas my brother reported having a big boost of energy on Cangrilitide, and I never experienced such. Go figure.

Keep in mind that I'm only going off of second-hand forum posting, but from what I've read, people whom have been taking GLP-1 agonists have had to, for whatever reason, stop taking them for a month or so - and when they got back on, they noticed they started loosing more weight compared to before.

Interesting. I wonder what mechanism could explain that.

As far as I'm aware, there's nothing to be gained by taking time off GLP-1 drugs. They're not tolerance forming. They're not habit forming either.

On the contrary, the last paper I recall reading said that people gained back 2/3rds of the lost weight within a year, probably in the context of semaglutide. I've heard people say that this is a knock against it, which is pants-on-head retarded. Most drugs stop working when you don't take them. It's not an antibiotic (which you hopefully don't need by the time you stop the course).

Agreed.

For GLP-1s, if you don't taper off the dosage and replace the hyperpalatable foods in your house with decent stuff while you have the temporary self-control, you'll gain the weight back. Has nothing to do with the drug and everything to do with the individual.

"Temporary self-control" implies it gives me discipline or something. It doesn't. The best way I can describe it is it's 9:30am and I just finished my morning standup meeting or whatever and although the idea of going out for a latte and having a croissant may pop into my head just the same, but there's no hit of dopamine that makes me put my shoes on and head out the front door unless I exert an enormous amount of willpower to stop it. Instead the thought is just an idea with no urgency.

It's not even a struggle. Quite the opposite. It would actually be a struggle to go out and eat despite, since the thought of eating when I'm not actively hungry is so boring.

I would love to believe this is reprogramming me, but I wouldn't be surprised if missing a few weeks of doses brings the urgency behind those intrusive food thoughts back.

I've taken GLP-1s for a single dose so I know exactly what you're describing. It led me to having smaller portions for 3-4 months. I've now backslid a bit and had to come up with more exercise to compensate.

That first hit is the best.

This is how I feel on keto. Even just a couple of days with very low carbs and no sugar takes me from "3/4 of a pizza" guy to "did I remember to eat once today, or twice?"

They're not tolerance forming.

How does that square with the fact that you need to keep increasing the dose (albeit not forever)?

I started on a very low dose myself (<1mg) but am having to increase it because my weight loss is plateauing.

Because you keep asking for more weight loss?

To make up numbers:

Let's say x amount of semaglutide suppresses appetite to a degree that accounts for y kg of lost weight for the average person. They plateau there.

Then they want to lose more weight, and go on to take take 2x of the drug and lose 2y of the weight before plateauing again.

That... is the least surprising thing I can imagine. It would be bad if there wasn't a reliable dose-response curve, or if a single dose of a GLP-1 agonist meant that you lose your appetite completely. We aren't trying to induce total anorexia.

It would be something entirely different if you had lost Y weight on X, and then notice that while you're on your regular dose, the weight crept up. That is not impossible, but it is not typical either. That phenomenon would invite questions about tolerance at a physiological level.

Agreed! Anyone who has actually lost weight through diet and or exercise knows full. well you also regain the weight when you stop doing it. So I don't consider this a knock against the drugs either, they are miracle drugs because they are infinitely easier to tolerate and, I don't know about anyone else, but whenever I've lost substantial amounts of weight from dieting and exercise, I feel fucking hungry all the time and really tired and miserable. There's no "maintaining" that isn't suffering. whereas I just don't on GLPs

New Year's resolution check-in:

  • Published my sixteenth blog post of the year on Monday, a review of ARX-Han's Incel, lightly edited from a comment I posted here.
  • Returned from my holiday on Saturday evening and went to the gym on Monday evening. Can deadlift 1.89x my bodyweight for 3 reps, squat 1.32x for 6 reps and bench press .89x for 6 reps.
  • Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st. Nearly at the halfway mark.

How goes it @self_made_human, @thejdizzler, @birb_cromble, @ThomasdelVasto and @falling-star?

Doing well! Started dancing again, have been having a ton of fun with that. Continuing to gym, going to PT tomorrow to try and fix some issues in my form.

Doing well enough. The back is better, and I'm back to being mostly better. I become increasingly glad that I'm a doctor, and a decent one: it's the strongest ammunition there is when it comes to making other doctors take you seriously and in convincing them to do the right thing. It's a miracle that non-medics engage with the healthcare system at all, but I suppose it beats dying. The human body continues reminding me that there are riders attached to the lifetime warranty. It's good that I read the manual.

No real exercise beyond carrying my fair share of a busy ward on my back. Getting a suitable amount of professional recognition for it.

it's the strongest ammunition there is when it comes to making other doctors take you seriously and in convincing them to do the right thing

Maybe it's different for people who can build a relationship with a specific doctor that follows them, but here where you get whoever you're lucky enough to see, the second a non-doctor suggests they have a suspicion as to what they actually have, the doctors will update heavily against the probability of it being that and will do everything they can to dismiss it being what was suggested, as if their now tainted diagnosis should be your punishment for daring to think about anything medical as a stupid plebian. I mean, I know a lot of people otherwise would waste ressources because of Cyberchondria, but not everyone outside of the medical profession is a drooling moron either. And not everyone inside of it hasn't devolved over time into one since medical school.

You are talking to a doctor who has, at least on LessWrong, written a guide that might as well be called:

"Here's how you, a competent non-medical professional who knows how to use Google and ChatGPT, can maximize the value from the medical system in a manner that won't shoot your dick off."

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/ypnYfPmn6FqAyxCpJ?commentId=PBQGQ3buve228rNXu

You are preaching to the choir. A reasonably well behaved and sympathetic choir.

At the same time, I have explained at length why the behavior of other doctors is understandable, if not laudable. You and other UMC professionals who do their own research are not representative of the super-majority of patients a typical doctor sees in clinics. There are a lot of idiots out there. Or simply average people who watch the wrong influencers on TikTok.

I am genuinely sorry to hear about your negative experiences with other doctors, either personally or second-hand. I would not be so bold as to call myself the best clinician around, but I try and make up for that with good bedside manner, patience and an open mind.

Doctors are not a homogeneous population, unfortunately there are those who react poorly to perceived challenge. I can't bring myself to hate them, I have felt my patience running short when someone with uncontrolled diabetes shows up with their toes on the verge of falling off and reveals that they refused to take medication as prescribed and decided to use a combination of old Google, influencers and other questionable sources to opt for homeopathy. This is has happened more than once, though I didn't keep the toes. Fortunately, even free ChatGPT is a clear improvement in terms of quality of information and presentation to laymen. I would be genuinely surprised if it defended homeopathy without very significant nudging.

I would be grateful if I wasn't asked to answer for the sins of a profession I am associated with. That is quite possibly not your intent, but it happens a lot. All I can do is be better myself, and try to help people navigate the system.

Oh, I was simply concurring about the difficulty of having a doctor take you seriously, not asking you to answer for it!

I imagine the best solution is to have a family doctor who knows you and knows that you wouldn't bother him if the symptoms weren't well listed before you opened the damned medical encyclopedia, and that you understand and care about the statistical probability of zebras but sadly it seems this is a system we cannot afford here, so random dismissive generalist it is.

You and other UMC professionals who do their own research are not representative of the super-majority of patients a typical doctor sees in clinics.

To add to this, some of the worst and most misinformed patients are those who come from a background like engineering and have become highly convinced of something that's very incorrect (with or without conspiracy stuff). The less educated and informed patients can be reasoned with or dictated to in a timely fashion where the higher intelligence or education patients who are confidently wrong need a lot of time and space to unpack the incorrect assumptions.

Spending is $2,807.93 less than the same time last year. The home repairs got delayed a week due to weather. I assume that this will get worse in the next week or two.

  1. Work. Still in this UK class, having a great time. Becoming Europilled.
  2. Fitness: Mileage suffered a little with travel last week but still did 40 miles and 1x tempo session! Back to normal this week I think. Saw the lowest heart rate I've ever record this week (39).
  3. Intellectual stuff: finished Blood Meridian finally. Terrible book, I think both Game of Thrones and The Dark Tower books do the theme much better. Learning loads of language/other stuff from my European colleagues.
  4. Finances: Not even thinking about this until the end of the month.
  5. Dating. I've very quickly redeleted my dating apps again. Not helpful
  6. Tarot. No session.
  7. Socializing: Been very social in bath
  8. Screen time: 2.5 hours, but makes sense given travel!
  9. Mental health: Pretty good, although lots of anxiety on this travel trip

finished Blood Meridian finally. Terrible book

You are not allowed to say this you... you... Whatever you are, I sentence you to be thrown into a pit. At the bottom, looking upwards to the sky, it will be your own tempest stirring. It will be your body thrashing against red clay walls. It will be your voice that lashes out against the inhumanity and indignity of your sentence as your voice booms in fury, hoping to reach the sky with your intentional heresies. Your mortal vessel may fail before this spirit is extinguished, but with the torture of time pressing on your voice will become detached from its defiance. You will find invectives no longer reach the heavens. Instead they swirl around your hole like a pride of Comanche riders set on scalping your soul.

Lashing out upwards no more the sky will become foreign to you. No longer appearing as an escape hatch or an object of desire, the passing clouds and lazy buzzards will only be seen as through a dull window to a queer place. A dream ready to be forgotten, a land you can never return to. Turned inward, the words will flow only as a meagre tool of weeping utterances. Your incoherent ramblings will no longer escape beyond the bounds of this Promethean existence, landing only as a feeble dribble that falls from chapped lips to bare feet, and you will be forced to look downward to find the pit is now your home. The pit is all you need. The pit is where you belong. You will converse with the dirt that surrounds you. You will say things like "Violence is the eternal dance," and as your only loyal friend the pit will eagerly listen to this newfound wisdom. You will speak to the walls and you will bury your hands into the dirt. You will whisper sweet nothings of despair directly into the ear of Gaia hoping to touch her cruel heart. Eventually, after your madness is cured, she will speak back and say, "Delete this. Delete this right now."

Upvoted for a really nice McCarthy parody. Laughed a lot.

Intellectual stuff: finished Blood Meridian finally. Terrible book, I think both Game of Thrones and The Dark Tower books do the theme much better.

I haven't read The Dark Tower, but the other two books have very different themes. The theme of ASoIaF is, to quote another work, "Come see the violence inherent in the system". It treats violence as something humans choose to do. GRRM wants us to judge them.

Blood Meridian, on the other hand, considers violence a force, an innate property of the universe, like magnetism. It doesn't emanate from the people or the systems they create, it permeates them. The Judge is not a monstrous human, he's a personification of violence, its avatar. And, contrary to his name, he doesn't judge and neither does McCarthy.

I did not view Blood Meridian as suggesting that violence is inherent to human nature. The judge wants you to think that's the theme, but the judge is a liar. I think Blood Meridian also wants you to see how a system of social pressure allows people to commit violent acts without blinking an eye because everyone else is doing it. The judge claims that this is a property inherent to humans, but from the first moment we meet the judge he is lying to get people to do what he wants, so why would he be telling the full truth when he monologues to the reader (credit to my friend Emory for this realization).

It's not inherent to humans alone, it's inherent to nature! Human violence is just a single facet of it.

I don't believe that this is the case. The kind of violence present in Blood Meridian is very much not inherent to nature. Animals do not engage in the kind of orgy of killing that Glanton's gang gets up to.

Forgive me for this:

A Game of Thrones is the novel, first book of the series A Song of Ice and Fire. Game of Thrones is a TV show.

I'm surprised you compare The Dark Tower favorably to Blood Meridian. I haven't read the latter, just The Road, so I'm no McCarthy truther, but The Dark Tower was incredibly underwhelming when I read it, and I was baffled it had the following it does. From my recollection, and this was fifteen years or so ago, The Dark Tower had only two good characters (Gunslinger and Man in Black) across two and half good books in it before it just falls apart at the seams and descends into nonsense. Yes, this includes the author insert and the demon-baby. I liked Roland's backstory, but it really didn't do much for the later books, and the suspension of disbelief eventually failed me.

It's the only King story I've ever read, and it didn't leave me wanting to read more. Maybe I need the Stand, or It, or something else, but it just didn't stand on its own very well, and ultimately didn't live up to its promise. Maybe if I had read it when I was a teenager, I'd feel fondly about it the way I do about The Wheel of Time.

I will give King credit where due, there aren't many better lines in fiction than, "Go then, there are other worlds than these."

The Dark Tower had only two good characters (Gunslinger and Man in Black) across two and half good books in it before it just falls apart at the seams and descends into nonsense.

100% accurate. The first 3 books are King at his drunk, coked-out, manic energy finest (I think the 3rd one was the last book he wrote before going to rehab). They are insane in many fun ways. Nothing after that lives up to the first three.

My B, I def meant A Game of Thrones.

I’m thinking of the series before book 5 where it goes off into crazy land. I like books 5-7 but i recognize that they are objectively bad, especially book 7 with its author insert and Spiderman 3 syndrome. I did genuinely enjoy the ending and I think the message genuinely resonated with me when I read the books. In terms of the focus on violence I’m really specifically thinking about The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three, which capture the over the top violence and tarot symbolism of BM without the purple prose, and with dialogue marks and actual character development.

I can understand not liking Blood Meridian - it is awfully grim and gory, sometimes cartoonishly. But what is the proposed common theme it shares with The Dark Tower and Two Towers? To me, The Two Towers is very much fundamentally hopeful - the world has evil and dysfunction, but it can be and is meaningfully confronted with heroism. In Meridian, heroism is rare and stands no chance.

The two towers? Never said anything about that.

With the gunslinger in particular, i see a lot of parallels between the judge and the man in black. The man in black through the whole first book is forcing roland to commit terrible acts of violence: murdering a whole town of people, pushing jake into the abyss, etc

With Game of Thrones I think the parallel is even more clear. There are specific characters who basically come straight out of BM (Gregor Clegane) and even characters who have some more moral complexity don’t hesitate to brutalize the peasantry in a way that Glanton’s gang would find very familiar.

Have not consumed any pornography since waking up on January 1st. Nearly at the halfway mark.

I quit pornography as part of my new religious commitments around the same time.

I was not expecting how difficult it would be to go from cumming once or twice a day to once a week when the kid is finally in bed at a reasonable how and my wife isn't too tired. I was also not expecting to be wondering what fresh fetishes hentai artist might be coming up with, or where certain story lines ended up going. I was not expecting how hard it would be to delete my stash of 20+ years, despite the fact that ostensibly I'm never going to touch it again.

When I was reading Introduction to Devout Life, the chapters on attachment to sin hit like a ton of bricks.

cumming once or twice a day

Gosh, I thought I had a high sex drive, and yet I imagine I could count on the fingers of two hands the number of days last year where I masturbated twice.

Which religion are you, out of interest?

C'mon folks, two-a-days is how men are built.

You know, if it's all the same, I'd rather not say. It's not a weird one, I just have conflicted feelings about turning my entire persona here into "WhiningCoil's newb experiences at church" or the like.

I get your position, but I do wish more people who were not raised with religion would talk about how they found their way to it. I posted a question about that as my first post here, but all the responses were from people raised in a religion who found their way back to it, which is a different matter.

I completely understand, I was just curious.

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