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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   3418 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 25, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Is it just me, or did Twitter just completely nuke all content from being viewable without logging in?

Earlier today, all entries in accounts' /with_replies disappeared (though without the redirect to /home now happening for everything)

Nitter still works for the moment, though I can't imagine it will for long.

RIP geohot

What is the genuine health threat of the current level of smoke/smog in the midwest, specifically Chicago? For reasons that should be obvious, I no longer trust any institution to give reasonable public health advice. I've personally just been putting off recreational outdoor activities, but I'd rather enjoy the summer than not enjoy the summer.

What’s the deal with protein dosage when you’re building muscle. Taking the broscience rule of thumb of 1g/lb means you’re eating your whole body’s worth of weight of protein in 1 1/3 of a year.

Obviously there is some efficiency curve, but what else is going on here?

Over 20 other studies have consistently failed to find any benefits of more than 1.6g/kg/d of protein. [. . .] This recommendation often includes a double 95% confidence level, meaning they took the highest mean intake at which benefits were still observed and then added two standard deviations to that level to make absolutely sure all possible benefits from additional protein intake are utilized.

The myth of 1 g/lb: Optimal protein intake for bodybuilders

Protein is used for the maintenance of existing tissue, but it can also be used for energy. The point is not that all the protein you eat is going to be turned into muscle, but that having a lot of protein available encourages your body to turn it into muscle.

100 grams of high quality animal protein is probably enough, with rapidly diminishing returns above that

Not all protein is equally bioavailable, not all protein actually gets digested, and there is a tonne of other processes in your body that uses protein, you want to publicize a value to work even under the worst case scenarios.

And finally.. Your model is weird. You eat your bodyweight in carbs in probably less than a year.... Are you strictly made out of carbohydrates?

You constantly shed protein via skin and intestinal lining sloughing off their outermost layers. That's why you don't gain 75% of your starting weight in muscle in a year when you start eating 2g/kg protein.

To what extent is the Arab world's relatively low average IQ due to cousin marriage? After all, we know cousin marriage lowers IQ, and Islam is strongly associated with cousin marriage.

Moreover, the Islamic golden age is associated with lots of intellectual accomplishments, which would be odd coming from a civilization with an average IQ of 80, and many of the constituent peoples that later became Arabs have histories of 3,000+ years before Islam in which they seem to have made notable intellectual contributions, something which is not true of, say, sub Saharan Africa. Finally it seems like middle eastern Christians generally have a higher average IQ than Muslims?

The alternative hypothesis of importing massive numbers of sub Saharan African slaves lowering the average HBD of the majority population also explains that pattern, but most Arabs don't look black, so I'm skeptical of the amount of actual admixture.

I think many Arabs look like they have African admixture, and indeed the evidence says they do:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002929707606302

We have analyzed and compared mitochondrial DNA variation of populations from the Near East and Africa and found a very high frequency of African lineages present in the Yemen Hadramawt: more than a third were of clear sub-Saharan origin. Other Arab populations carried ∼10% lineages of sub-Saharan origin, whereas non-Arab Near Eastern populations, by contrast, carried few or no such lineages, suggesting that gene flow has been preferentially into Arab populations. Several lines of evidence suggest that most of this gene flow probably occurred within the past ∼2,500 years. In contrast, there is little evidence for male-mediated gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa in Y-chromosome haplotypes in Arab populations, including the Hadramawt. Taken together, these results are consistent with substantial migration from eastern Africa into Arabia, at least in part as a result of the Arab slave trade, and mainly female assimilation into the Arabian population as a result of miscegenation and manumission.

not much. elites in Europe and even US interbred for much of the 19th century and didn't seem to hurt them much in later generations

2-3 generations of cousin marriage is different from 1000 years of it(and even then, I’m given to understand that European elite cousin marriage was more distant than the trend among Islamic peoples).

The Islamic Golden Age was really more of a Persian Golden Age than anything else given the backgrounds of most of its eminent figures, and even today Iran is no slouch when it comes to intellectual achievement, producing multiple Fields medalists, and sending many brilliant science and engineering students to study abroad (in the course of interacting with international students in graduate school, Iran was the country I came away with the greatest increase in respect for).

I think the clearest test of the cousin marriage IQ reduction hypothesis would be in South Asia, where we can directly compare Muslims who have practiced cousin marriage for several centuries now with their non-Muslim neighbors who should be otherwise genetically identical (controlling for caste origin and language group), but I don't know if anyone has done that particular experiment. Just looking at how dysfunctional Pakistan is I assume it must be bad for them somehow.

As for Arab Christians being smarter, that's the result of the least successful and poorest among them leaving the community each generation by converting to Islam in order to avoid paying the jizya tax. I think the amount of black admixture in Arab Muslims is 5% or less, similar to your average Mexican or Afrikaner, so not enough to affect appearance or much else.

The “Islamic Golden Age” seems quite overrated to me. A lot of it was just preserving the intellectual achievments of older civilizations. Pretty minimal achievments in math or engineering. Maybe some sketchy medical techniques were developed.

How do I figure out the email address attached to my account? I forgot which email address I used when I signed up.

Go to settings, then security is another way, I believe, but it sounds like you've got it resolved.

You may not have an associated email because it is optional for sign up. In the security settings you can add one if that is the case.

Run a search in all your email accounts for the confirmation message that you received from themotte.org.

That worked, thanks!

Is Phollda an alt?

A fresh account that just posts top-levels and takes shots at people who are allegedly overcomplicating things. Feels oddly familiar.

I’m voicing this suspicion here so that, if he does interact with the rest of the community, he can respond.

Feels oddly familiar.

Who?

just posts top-levels and takes shots at people who are allegedly overcomplicating things

Feel free to report them. I thought about taking some action after their third kind of lame top level post in a row. But I didn't see any reports (maybe I just missed them), so I thought it might just be me getting annoyed over something other people don't mind.

Reminds me of felipec, who went dark a couple months back after getting butthurt about the intuition contest.

I don’t think my annoyance has justified a report yet, either. The commons remain only moderately trodden.

Ah I blocked felipec at some point, so I'd stopped noticing him. Maybe that is why this new poster annoys me so much.

Well, it's not private, so that decreases the chance slightly.

I play a Co-Ed recreational sport in my spare time. One of the players has annoyed enough people that I'm thinking of kicking her out. But she has shown a willingness to report people to the national board for minor offenses.

Any thoughts on how to remove her without triggering national board reprisals?

She sounds like she has issues socializing, but she's also trying to play rec sports. Doesn't make much sense on the surface. I infer from this that she's at least somewhat aware of the former and using the latter as a way to fix that.

Which is to say: she might be more amicable to a frank one-on-one than you're presuming. Given that she seems to have no real power, I don't see any risk in giving it a try.

That's what I'd do. But I also kind of get off on roleplaying therapist.

But I also kind of get off on roleplaying therapist.

I do feel like we are being unwillingly recruited for her group therapy sessions. I do not like roleplaying therapist.

One approach is to make her want to quit, instead of firing her -- not sure what to suggest for making her life difficult in the context of a rec sports league though. Light-duty plausibly deniable bullying might do it, but for that you need a heartless bully.

Hilariously this is sort of what my wife suggested before she stopped herself and realized "oh, im suggesting bullying her out of the league ... let me think about this some more".

She is more likely to report the bullying I think. Someone on our mailing list jokingly called one of his friends fat, and she reported him. She is a little fat herself, so was obviously sensitive about that.

Also she is an anxiety ridden mess. Cries at tournaments, gets devastated by the slightest criticisms, etc. I feel like the slightest bullying would destroy her, or send her on a crazy war-path. I'm not really interested in dealing with either of those.

My default option right now is that she will just quietly never be on the team again, and never allowed to register for tournaments we host. No reasons ever given. I've also thought about removing her from the email list, but that would be obvious and lead to questions.

“Are we the baddies?”

Ghosting her is better than bullying. Straight up asking her to leave is better than either.

We are definitely the baddies.

I think I agree with that rank ordering

[asking her to leave] > [ghosting] > [bullying]

But I think the incentives are all screwy. Anyone who asks her to leave is probably going to get reported by her. The default behavior going forward will probably be to ghost her a bit. If someone tries to be "nice" and "inclusive" and make sure she is not ghosted, she will probably end up getting bullied by the people that are tired of dealing with her.

I'm in the league to play a sport, have fun, and stay in shape. I'm not here to be someone's group therapy outlet. There is a sliding scale of selfish <-> selfless. And I am admittedly much more on the selfish side when it comes to inter-personal interactions.

Tell me this is CoEd softball in Denver.

No, underwater hockey. Can't say where since that would narrow my identity down to a dozen people.

underwater hockey

I gotta be real, I was the DM of my DND group in college and this somehow seems nerdier.

It often attracts a sporty nerd type.

As if the underwater hockey part doesnt do that

There are dozens of us!

Haha fair. I know of a woman who may fit this description

Also she is an anxiety ridden mess. Cries at tournaments, gets devastated by the slightest criticisms, etc.

"The better to bully you with, my dear"...

I don't think I personally would be mean enough for this either though -- maybe you could recruit some Motteposters to your team as enforcers?

If she has any friends at all I guess the sensitive alternative would be some sort of sit-down chat -- it doesn't seem like she's getting what she'd like out of the sport, and could be better served by trying something else. (or a less competitive league? not sure the sport, but there's definitely opportunities out there for drop-in etc where nobody will criticize you for anything ever)

First of all, have someone else do it. Some will decry this as cowardice, but actually having lackeys to do the dirty work is one of the surest signs of competence in a leader or organizer.

Second, manufacture or record significant evidence of bad (in this case, unsportsmanlike? annoying?) behavior to show to your superiors in the national league. Every little thing, blow it way out of proportion. Have a dossier.

After your man or woman fires her, you call her, tell her the situation is tough, your hands were tied, but wish her all the very best and tell her to keep in touch. Fin.

I might have someone else do it. I'm willing to do it partly because I'm not very concerned with the consequences. She will hate me and report me to the league organization. Thing is, the people in league organization probably dislike her too. They ratted her out when she complained about someone else.

The only real evidence / reason we have for kicking her out is that she is annoying and multiple people don't want to play on a team with her. I suppose I could collect a list of all the people who have told me "dont put me on a team with her".

I don't really want to appear as the "good guy" when all is said and done. I also find her annoying and would rather never talk to her again.

Count me at least as in favor of you doing it yourself. He who passes the judgment swings the sword, etc. As for signifiers of competence, let be be finale of seem, as it were. My allusions runneth over. If you're worried sbout repercussions, weigh that against her presence. If the board has her on radar as a valued snitch/lackey/presence, that gives her a certain immunity. If not, why not just say she is disruptive? Of course none of my advice here is particularly strategic. Yet you suggest you're not so concerned with consequences, so I'd suggest following conscience.

I suppose I could collect a list of all the people who have told me "dont put me on a team with her".

Can't you just tell her that a lot of people don't want to play with her (without naming them)? "You're not a team player....so you're no longer a team player". The social humiliation, and the threat of even greater social humiliation (if for example she loudly asks for a vote), might be enough to shoo her off. It's honest, unburocratic, and you're not even the bad guy.

It’s going to trigger her either way, just fully document this to the national board beforehand and pull the bandaid off. You’re not dealing with your life savings here.

Yeah I was looking through the national league's website last night and wondering if there is some process for basically exiling people.

I quit playing a rec league because of the interpersonal drama, so I feel ya. Only thing I can think of is inform them early on about why you are booting her with some basic evidence and justification before doing so. Couldn't hurt!

Part of the problem is that we don't have a great justification. She just annoys a lot of people. She cries at tournaments, seems to be an anxiety ridden mess, and is unpleasant to be around. Also tattling on someone to the national org for some light ribbing between friends has not endeared her to anyone.

Would there be interest in a book review or summary of kantian philosophy and/or john locke's treatises? The goal would be to relate them to our current political situations under my own personal lens.

I find them to be incredibly prescient, even hundreds of years later, and the online material which covers them is only what can be gleamed by browsing wikipedia, and therefore rather shallow.

As long as the takes make some sense, I'd be delighted.

I’d love this, especially if it were written SSC style: plain English with actually insightful analysis that does more than summarize

I’m all for it.

Yes definitely. I don't know much about Kant or Locke myself but since they are rarely discussed here I'd imagine more people than you might expect will come out of the woodwork to discuss.

Yes, very much so.

Sure! In Eastern Europe and former Soviet countries people are familiar with Kant a bit better, as he influenced Hegel, which had a great influence on communism and dialectic materialism. In comparison, Locke, I feel, is much more influential in the anglo world (him being English and contributing to the early liberalism), so I'd like to read about his philosophy.

I want to get Tinder data before Tinder stops working in Russia, but i cant get working https://account.gotinder.com/data returns 404. Does it even work?

I was able to go there and register successfully. Indicated that I would receive a .zip file shortly with the information.

Thanks! It worked for me this time, I probably wouldn't have tried it for 3rd time if not your message. Still somewhat disappointed that received messages (even those still visible in normal account) not available.

Update to this post: https://www.themotte.org/post/498/smallscale-question-sunday-for-may-21/101809?context=8#context

where I wanted advice on getting an engagement ring for my girlfriend. I have since proposed before getting the ring (as planned), it went wonderfully, and we are now engaged. After looking at a bunch of examples together and honing in on concepts and features she found appealing (turns out she doesn't simply like flowers, which I already knew, but she really really really likes flowers), we settled on this ring

https://cms-media.taylorandhart.com/2021/11/11194729/Round_white_diamond_pear_diamond_halo_flower_engagement_ring-1000x1000.jpg

from Taylor and Hart. It uses diamonds, but they use lab-grown diamonds, so I'm happy with that. We considered substituting some colored gems in the flower, but then there's also leaves which would look a bit weird if we made them green, but would also look weird if we colored the rest of the flower but left them white. Most importantly, my now-fiance thinks it's really pretty exactly how it is, so we don't want to change things in case it accidentally ends up looking worse.

Thank you for everyone who offered advice, regardless of whether I ended up using it or not.

Congratulations. May you have many long and happy years together.

Classy

Mazel Tov! Here's to the happy couple!

Always awesome when you hit the nail on the head with any gift, especially something as symbolic as an engagement ring. I hope the proposal was a great experience as well.

I went the route of using my mom's stone reset in a band to my wife's taste while my mom moved to a bigger rock. Hoping to continue the cycle of saving a fuckton of money/treating my wife once retirement is lined up with my son when he gets engaged.

Congratulations!

Congrats!

Congratulations! Happy for you! Marriage is the best decision I ever made.

How do I use this site’s upvote feature? I know it has one, and I can see it when logged out, but don’t have the button logged in. I’ve just been reporting exceptionally good comments as quality contributions, but there has to be a way to access the in-between step.

Click on it? Maybe you have a misconfigured adblocker or something.

This ended up being correct. For some reason my adblocker removes the upvote button and literally nothing else. Upvote for you!

How do you remember large amounts of information indefinitely without making a sustained, concerted attempt to do so? The system I have developed so far is to maintain a series of detailed notes which I refer to periodically whenever I want to recall things. But these notes have become almost prohibitive in length, and read any section of these notes infrequently enough and it's like the information is Teflon-coated, things become difficult to recall very quickly and this is especially true after I've made concerted attempts to cram new information into my head. It gets displaced by other things and the topics I want to learn (and argue) about are typically topics which are quite deep.

This is partially for the sake of helping me make persuasive cases in real life. It's something I've been trying to do more of for the past half-year, and it is at least part of the reason why I am participating less on social media now (other reasons for this include personal stuff, such as a family member having a stroke - this has put things into perspective a little bit and has made me deprioritise spending as much time on political screaming matches on the internet as I used to).

It would also be nice to get tips on how to handle real-time debate. I think I've generally been doing well and think I've been able to marshal a good amount of evidence in favour of the claims I make, but sometimes I trip up because I'm still not acclimatised to the dynamics of real-time debate and haven't yet grown fully accustomed to the unique characteristics of that specific debate format. Online, the speed of information recall is less of an issue simply because you can take time to refresh your memory, compose your thoughts, smooth out any holes, etc, before putting out the best version of your argument you possibly can. In real life, discussions are very scattershot and claims and counter-claims get thrown around all the time, questions get posed to you that you aren't always capable of recalling the answer to, and you need to remember and consolidate all the information you have in your brain in order to cope with it. No mistakes or hesitations or God forbid admissions of "I don't 100% remember at the moment, but I think..." are allowed, or your credibility slips. You have to be very careful with the words that come out of your mouth, and momentary slips in concentration can be fatal to your persuasiveness.

I would like to debate as well as I possibly can, and while that's easier online (you just have to put in a lot of detailed work, which I can do) in a real-time setting the demands and pressures are different.

Depending on what you want to achieve, Peter Boghossian & James Lindsay (yes, really) have a book: How to Have Impossible Conversations

They generally advise not marshalling evidence for your claims, but instead seeking to understand why your opponent believes their claims, then just asking if they can think of any evidence that would change their mind. This both helps get to the root of the disagreement, and also zeroes in on the kind of evidence you could provide if asked.

I think the way you're encountering the information is relevant—it's a lot harder to commit to memory information that's coming across in a list than whatever the scattered thing me naturally coming across information on topics that interest me is.

I suppose something that vague doesn't help, and it's not like I do something too different from you if I'm deliberately memorizing.

I try to engage in discussions based on what I've been reading and those solidify things in my memory. Maybe I won't remember the specific facts but I'll remember that I've talked about them and know where to look for a quick recap if they become relevant again.

Yeah, having had a discussion on the topic before definitely helps on later ones, assuming similar points come up.

I simply read it once and remember it for the rest of my life (unless it is a specific number. I can only remember ratios or formulas without trying hard; so I try to cast numbers I need to store as ratios of each other).

I am simply built different. Built autistic, if you will.

I don't know why I have the speed of light in meters per second memorized down to the standardized value, but I'm sure it'll come useful when I'm inevitably thrown into an uplift isekai.

Do you know what a "meter" or a "second" is, though?

Heading off on a tangent, one thing that annoys me about (most) uplift isekais is that the authors know less about physics (etc) than their characters do, and their worlds act on highschool (or simpler) physics as well.

As an example, Delve has a scene where the main character calculates the elastic energy stored in a bow at different draw lengths (fortunately, the draw force is linear). He has a magic measuring stick, so getting meters and seconds (and therefore probably kilograms as well) is possible, but the results are insane to anyone who has done a physics experiment: It is exactly two points of damage per joule of calculated energy input. A second trial had a 2.5% error. Either the System doesn't care about the arrow as a physical projectile, or else the energy lost to the limb mass, air resistance, dampening in the material, etc. "coincidentally" line up and cancel each other out.

As a counterexample, Ar'Kendrithyst has a scene where the main character doesn't know about the (low) hardenability of austenitic stainless steel, but his teacher does.

Also, I'll recommend https://www.patriciabriggs.com/articles/silver/silverbullets.shtml for an author's quest to cast silver bullets.

I know that a meter is approximately 1/millionth of the length of a Great Circle on Earth (or so I remember, I haven't checked yet).

Assuming the world was earth-like, that could help.

As for a second, no I can't think of any easily conserved phenomenon I could represent it in.

Your own height? Should get you within 1% or so. The "one 10 millionth of the way from the equator to the pole" will get you more accuracy, if your isekai destination is an actual alternate earth and not just an earth-like planet, but in that case "24 hours in a day, 60 minutes in an hour, 60 seconds in a minute" might get you even more precision on the time front, and then you can do either stuff with pendulums or with rotating mirrors depending on the tech level of your destination.

Not that I've spent any time thinking about this, ha ha why would I have put a lot of thought into this.

You seem unusually prone to being nerd sniped, but is that really a bad thing when the world rewards being a talented nerd so much these days? Haha

You certainly put a lot more effort into things than most posters here, myself included!

1/40,000,000 of the Great Circle (10,000 km from pole to equator through Paris set the standard, IIRC)

Aside from the obvious fraction of a day, there aren't really any easy ways of precisely rederiving the second without modern technology. If you know what a meter is and are in a 1 g gravity field, then you can build a 1 meter long pendulum which has a period of about 2.006 seconds. If you have perfect pitch, then the second is 440x the period of middle A. Other than that, you're out of luck as far as I can tell. It's not like you're going to be looking at any cesium atoms in your spare time.

I don’t think there’s much utility in having information memorized versus having it nearly organized in your phone by topic, but for maximal memorization you’d have to go the route of

  • Anki, or other spaced repetition software

  • Memory Palace

The memory palace method was common among intellectuals memorizing information for almost two thousand years, and Anki is used among doctors.

I'm a doctor and I use Anki!

Well, with massive caveats on use, I downloaded the app and a deck oriented for the USMLE, but found it to be useless for the PLAB. I'm certainly not patient enough to make my own flash cards in any numbers.

However, I will still endorse spaced repitition in any form, it's quite effective, and even when I didn't have the patience for flash cards, I was still aiming to follow the basic principles to engrain vast gobbets of facts in my head.

In real-time debate, are you trying to win, or persuade?

Just because "I don't remember at the moment, but…" is probably better when you're in a setting where the second is understood to be the aim?

I'm typically trying to achieve a little of both. I would agree that admitting ignorance when you're not certain about something is always the better tactic (additionally, making errors during a discussion disturbs me so much that I often feel the need to retrospectively correct it in future discussions when the opportunity presents itself).

Of course, the optimal strategy is to remember as much of the information you've encountered as humanly possible, but that requires a concerted effort and is a huge time sink.

Not an answer to your question, but what is the driving force behind your desire to debate or out-argue someone? In real-life this kind of behavior is like planting dragon's teeth, and online it seems like the payoff of feeling you've out witted some random person isn't worth the candle.

You've no obligation to respond and I know I am not answering your question. My condolences on the family member's stroke. Unfortunately, I experienced a similar situation only a year or so ago, and it's a grueling experienceI wouldn't wish on anyone. I hope that in your case he/she can recover.

Not an answer to your question, but what is the driving force behind your desire to debate or out-argue someone? In real-life this kind of behavior is like planting dragon's teeth

Feel free to ask questions.

I agree that it's like planting dragon's teeth and certainly has the effect of making everyone unhappy. I'm personally happy to just generally not touch the topic of politics in real life, and I've really tried to get off it, but debate often organically arises when other politically-minded people bring politics up. Let it go unchallenged, and if they know their assertions are going to be allowed to stand their rhetoric just continues to escalate, in many cases it escalates into regular outgroup-bashing because they have learned they can do it around you.

This is, to say the least, an annoying situation to be in, especially if engaged in by someone you are interacting with regularly. Letting them know that bringing up politics is poking a hornet's nest, and enforcing that rule, is the only way to deal with it. Tit-for-tat. If they defect, you defect, and you do it better. Having your beliefs challenged is unpleasant. It feels like an attack, and the same qualities that make it so divisive also make it a fairly good method of deterrence, if nothing else.

I would also like to believe that debate actually does something and that people do update their beliefs, though the more I do it the less fruitful that endeavour seems. But I am ever the idealist.

My condolences on the family member's stroke. Unfortunately, I experienced a similar situation only a year or so ago, and it's a grueling experienceI wouldn't wish on anyone. I hope that in your case he/she can recover.

Thank you, and sorry about your family member as well.

Why do mosquito bites itch?

Is it entirely accidental, as in, evolution only cared about whatever stuff mosquito inject acting as an effective anesthetic for the duration of the bite, not about what happens next? Or maybe it's beneficial for humans (makes us much more alert and aggressive towards further mosquitos) or maybe even individual mosquitos due to intra-species competition?

Mosquito bites transmit bacteria and such as well as mosquito saliva which triggers an intense and localized inflammation response. Same thing with ticks and other blood suckers.

These are substances that require some amount of time for the body to notice and react, which is why bites don't hurt immediately or even shortly after receiving them. The mosquito has already fed and gone by the time the bite starts swelling and itching.

O, tick bites are a great example because they do not itch pretty much at all (and don't swell at first either), while mosquito bites start itching within minutes. So it is possible to anesthetize the bite location without immediately causing an immune response: why don't mosquitos do that, do they simply not care (evolutionarily speaking) or maybe there's some non-obvious benefit to it?

Ticks will stay on your body for comparatively a much longer duration than mosquitoes. I don't see how there's any actual benefit from a mosquito having any kind of analgesic property when they'll finish sucking and fly off in seconds. The benefit to a tick is much more obvious.

Additionly, as someone in the American south and no stranger to "skeeters" and ticks, I don't know that I've ever had a mosquitoes bite become itchy as quickly as you describe.

Ticks will stay on your body for comparatively a much longer duration than mosquitoes. I don't see how there's any actual benefit from a mosquito having any kind of analgesic property when they'll finish sucking and fly off in seconds. The benefit to a tick is much more obvious.

I understand. To reiterate, my question was: do mosquito bites become itchy because the mosquito doesn't care what happens after it has fed, so whatever it injects is optimized for short term anesthetic and anticoagulant properties, which by default causes itchiness later? Or are mosquito bites especially itchy because there is in fact some benefit in that to mosquitos or humans?

To that I received several responses basically claiming that itchiness is inevitable, because scabs itch when healing, skin itches when pierced, an immune/inflammation reaction is produced in response to introduced bacteria and foreign proteins, and so on. However ticks provide an excellent counterexample: it turns that when it's important to pierce skin without causing neither pain nor follow-up itching for days, Nature finds ways to do so, despite all of the problems above.

So then back to my original question: if it is possible to be entirely non-itchy, are mosquitos itchy simply because they don't care, or are they especially itchy for some reason?

I don't know that I've ever had a mosquitoes bite become itchy as quickly as you describe.

Well, yes, maybe not in a couple of minutes (it can be hard to determine when the bite itself occurred), but in 10-15 minutes for sure, based on the interval between me entering a mosquito infested area and realizing that I've been bitten in a bunch of places.

While a tick/mosquito is hooked up to you, its anticoagulant is not spreading under your skin -- when it pulls out, a little bit spreads from the wound site causing swelling/irritation. Neither creature 'cares' about this, because they are gone by then.

It's an allergic reaction to what mosquitos inject. If you live in the same area all your life your body will adjust to the local mosquitos and you won't get the bumps and itching. Or at least it'll be much milder.

Google suggests this is just the normal response to anything irritating your skin, which is a crazy, self-sealing, flexible membrane that keeps most contaminants out. Scrapes and cuts, especially scabs, itch too.

Scrapes and cuts, especially scabs, itch too.

It's not comparable at all. A cut doesn't begin to itch until after several days, and don't itch at anywhere the intensity proportional to the affected area. Needle pricks don't itch at all and they are tens or hundreds of times larger by area than mosquito bites. So no, it's evidently a reaction to the anesthetic stuff they inject.

Mosquito bites, being very small injuries, begin to itch much faster than bigger ones because they heal faster?

From what I remember, mosquito saliva is in fact an anti-coagulant, not a anesthetic -- this doesn't quite answer why it would be itchy, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were something to do with the healing process.

So, what are you reading?

I'm reading some Sherlock Holmes stories. I don't know why, but I suddenly feel impressed that these stories were ever written at all.

I'm reading The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder by David Grann, an interesting read about nautical life in the 18th century.

I’m not reading anything (of substance) that I haven’t reported on previously, so I guess I’ll ask you to elaborate.

What do you find so unusual about Holmes?

It's just the entire thing, it's all just a large enterprise, and to what end? I guess with all that's been going on with AI (tired subject by now, but), the idea of putting effort into things like evidence standards, law, morality, intrigue, culture, has seemed a little surreal despite myself. And yet the work might be important.

It always seems like people in the past were moved by something that mattered to them. Perhaps I'm wondering what that might have been. I've always been interested, but now it's become a little more personal, and questions of salience have taken on a Promethean quality- the attempt to steal fire.

I don't mean that there's an overt seriousness, just that there's a quasi-superstitious feeling that there's something waiting at the end of the ride (or the read), if I can just pay the minimum necessary fee of discipline and thoughtfulness.

There's probably a lot of confusions in my mind as to what historical greatness really is, so this will likely be a jumble. I apologize if none of this seems to cohere:

I suppose I've landed on the side of those who feel that suffering is in some sense an illusion, and that a state of health and wisdom is in some sense normal. It's the whole "people are fundamentally good" thing, where problems are said to be caused more by a poorly organized environment than by innate problems of the original sin variety. In other words, yes, you can suffer horribly, but when you're back into everyday life, there's probably a way to shake yourself off and carry on as if nothing truly debilitating happened.

The way I see it, the reason that "black box" solutions like AI are popping up is because we're on the cusp of more explicit solutions. I don't think the future is everyone augmenting themselves with ChatGPT, I think the future is us finding a way of spreading knowledge by human hands alone which can compete with ChatGPT in its ability to bring forward implicit knowledge to those who would otherwise take years to learn it. It's probably not even that complicated.

I've rejected the Jungian style of imagination-as-history, where our thoughts stretch back through the ages. It's something more immediate- the feelings of complexity which arise from stories often originate from (universal) structures already existing in the mind, rather than some evolutionary buildup seeking release. So I think what I'm looking for isn't so much an understanding of lost possibility, so much as the state of mind which generates possibility, in the hopes that the stories were intended to be read in such states of mind, and that the message can be heard once I attain it. And I feel as if it can be found in the idea of "character," or in its most reduced form, one's actions. I suppose in this sense I've been studying more the desire to do great works than the great works themselves. The stories seem to be dripping with motive force, and I need to know what that is. Maybe a structure of mind is waiting to be discovered.

I suppose it boils down to a pseudo-gnostic theory that, yes, the goal is to liberate oneself from one's fallen state, but it's probably unusually easy and even normal to do so. One just needs the right knowledge, and nothing will seem so difficult anymore. So the question becomes "what is discipline and thoughtfulness?" and I have a feeling that the price of wisdom is far lower than any of us realizes. The difficulty is in getting it exactly right.

I'm reading A.J. Cronin's first novel, Hatter's Castle. The story of how he wrote this novel has stuck with me forever. From wikipedia:

"In 1930 Cronin was diagnosed with a chronic duodenal ulcer and told to take six months' complete rest in the country on a milk diet. At Dalchenna Farm by Loch Fyne he was finally able to indulge a lifelong desire to write a novel, having previously "written nothing but prescriptions and scientific papers." From Dalchenna Farm he travelled to Dumbarton to research the background of his first novel, using files from Dumbarton Library, which still has a letter from him requesting advice. He composed Hatter's Castle in the span of three months and quickly had it accepted by Gollancz, the only publisher to which he submitted it, apparently after his wife had randomly stuck a pin in a list of publishers. It was an immediate success and launched Cronin's career as a prolific author. He never returned to medicine."

Man I wish I could do that myself. And this coming year, I'll be the same age that Cronin was in 1930. So anything is possible I guess. I certainly wouldn't be surprised if I have an ulcer forming.

Anyway. I'm a big Cronin fan. Writing in 1930, he wrote like it was 1870 - he really comes off as quite ridiculous if you compare him with contemporaries like Fitzgerald or Hemingway, he's much closer to someone like Wilkie Collins - but you can get into the flow of his prose after a while. He was quite good at his very dated style. (And he did get much more modern later in his career.) The Judas Tree, Keys of the Kingdom, The Citadel, all are thrilling, moving, well-plotted books. And furthermore: while Cronin's novels share a ton of elements with each other - there's always a doctor, there are always Scots, there are usually Dickensian parental figures who you want to sock in the face the entire time - he does not recycle endings. Some end with pure tragedy, some end up with happiness for all involved. So this does make reading Hatter's Castle very exciting. The titular hatter, James Brodie, is one of the most unrelentingly evil people I've encountered in several years, so I'm looking forward to Cronin telling me how he got that way, and hopefully to seeing him get his richly deserved comeuppance at some point. But the terrible thing is, Cronin being Cronin, Brodie might win. If nothing else you know he's at least gonna take some of the nice characters down with him.

The same as last week, Reverend Insanity.

Given that I usually devour thousand page books in a day or three, the fact that I'm still reading this monstrosity is a testament to how long Xianxia works can be.

And I'm not complaining! I'm quite rational in assessing sunk costs and ditching a long novel if it no longer keeps my interest.

While RI is technically incomplete due to the CCP yelling at the author, the fact that I'm 1000+ chapters in probably attests to it being worth reading.

I usually devour thousand page books in a day or three

This is impressive by its own right.

I read pretty fast, the last app I used estimated at about 450 wpm averaged over all the books I'd read in it!

Did fast reading come naturally, or did you acquire from years of reading?

I was an absolute bookworm since I learned to read, but I only realized that I was outpacing everyone else later on in school, so it's hard to tell either way.

You read on your phone?

Yes, I'm completely comfortable reading at length on a phone screen, and prefer it to tabs for laptops, except when it comes to textbooks.

I haven't noticed any eye strain either, I'm just as comfortable as with a dead tree book, and my phone is way more convenient.

I read House of Leaves after seeing it recommended so many times. I cannot recommend it honestly, because I don't think I understood it. However I liked the experience of reading it, because I like solving puzzles and I enjoy books that are interactive which this one definitely is. It rewards the work you put into it and you really have to be alert and pay attention as motifs and words are repeated.

No spoilers but this book has so many layers that you can keep peeling back one after another after another but never get to a core. It's unreliable narrators all the way down nested within each other. The, I guess what you'd call the main narrative, a house with a mysterious pocket dimension, is certainly compelling and creepy. There is a lot of pretentious academic analysis and digressions, which I got the sense the author was poking fun at that sort of thing so I felt free to skim or skip large chunks of that. Whatever its purpose, it did bog down the narrative because it was just everywhere and I would have enjoyed it more without that element.

The most unrealistic element that I keep coming back to - there's a story supposedly written by a blind man praising at great length the visual cinematography of a film that he could not have possibly experienced firsthand. The blindness is only mentioned once or twice but that fact colored my reading of the rest of the book. I don't do drugs but if I did, I feel like a drug trip would feel like this book.

I read it after falling for the hype. I thought the notion of a house that is irresolvably slightly larger on the inside than the oustide was an original surreal idea. The rest of it was just a haunted house story wrapped in layer upon layer of meta. That might be thrilling if the reader isn't familiar with meta-reference but if you are it begins to feel over indulgent.

There's a good enough short horror/surreal story at the core, but it's not quite as big and clever on the inside as it looks on the outside.

I read it back in high school during the mid-aughts. I remember liking The Navidson Record, but not particularly caring for the Zampanò and Johnny Truant elements of the story. I was too impatient at the time to fully investigate the footnotes.

I found the story structure more interesting in theory than in execution. It felt like a critique or deconstruction of something I was unfamiliar with.

It was okay. Kinda gimmicky. I think The Navidson Record is a nice little horror story.

I dropped the book halfway through, it was far too insufferably into sniffing it's own butt crack to be worth the slog. And it wasn't even particularly scary, which might have salvaged the more pretentious parts.

I'm slowly plowing through Foucault. Dude like his metaphor, but that panopticon shit sure seems prescient. Explains a lot of normal mind shit I never got on account of the 'tism. VERY sad he didn't finish his sex book; I bet it would have been interesting as fuck.

I recently enjoyed reading Romance of the Rails and American Nightmare, two books by Randal O'Toole, the Antiplanner. They provide interesting overviews of the history of transportation and housing (respectively) in the United States.

A quote from Romance of the Rails:

The second blow to urban rail transit was a shift in the nature of work. In 1920, nearly 40 percent of all American jobs were in manufacturing, and there were just 1.3 service jobs for every manufacturing job. The number of manufacturing jobs continued to grow through 1980, but that growth was vastly outpaced by the growth in service jobs, so, by then, there were three service jobs for every manufacturing job. While manufacturing jobs were concentrated, most service jobs were diffused across urban areas. I call this the nanocentric city, because, to the extent that jobs had centers at all, there would be uncountable numbers of such centers in major urban areas. "Nanocentric" also sounds a bit like "noncentric", meaning there is no one center.

Just as urban planners were beginning to recognize the demise of the monocentric city, the service economy was leaving the polycentric city in the dust. Transit did a poor job of serving the polycentric city, with buses working better than rails. Transit is even less suited to serving a nanocentric urban area, especially a growing region whose job locations and patterns shift almost daily.

That's very interesting, I always see reasoning that the shift was due to corporate and government intervention shifting users toward cars.

How do I build a stomach of steel?

There is alpha in being able to eat food of questionable expiry-date/hygiene and being able to brush it off. Namely cost savings, more choices for eating out, and more peace of mind.

I've already noticed that eating yogurt seems to iron out a somewhat lackluster diet. And it works extremely well within 1-2 days of daily consumption.

Anything else I should go for?

This seems more risk than worth. It's not that hard to avoid foods of questionable expiry date and hygiene.

You can't. You get used to the diet you eat; but going outside it can fuck you up along paramteres detemined by your biom and your genes.

IE, I can eat raw meat and dirt and bugs and milk that is 5 seconds from cheese; but one drop of bad fry oil sends me to toilet purgatory

How do I build a stomach of steel?

I've had success with immune boosting nootropics. I seem to get sick less often and if I do start to feel sick the symptoms are minimal and don't last long. This could just be a coincidence as there is no way to really prove that the nootropics improved my immune function.

cost savings

Nootropics will cost upwards of several dollars a day so don't think you will get any alpha from it (possible exception if the nootropics help you avoid a visit to the doctor's office). The main reason to build a stomach of steel is to improve your quality of life/health so you spend less time being sick. Using the immune boosting nootropics can be especially helpful if you are doing something where the food/hygiene conditions are less than you're accustomed to such as: camping, traveling out of country, or large gatherings.

What are these immune boosting nootropics ?

  • Andrographis paniculata

  • lactococcus lactis strain plasma

  • Reacta-C (vitamin C)

  • Reduced glutathione

  • Immune Defense by Nootropics Depot (blend of Yeast Extract, Black Seed Extract, Oleamide, Tyrosol, Zinc, Palmitoylethanolamide, and mushroom extracts)

I take the Reduced glutathione daily and then usually take 1 of the other 4 per day. I'm very in tune with my body so if I start to feel anything off like a dry throat I'll take more that day.

Let's say I had to restrict myself to only one for quality of life (laziness) reasons, which one?

Immune Defense is the strongest, but it is also the most expensive. If you were to pick something else, or a single ingredient from Immune Defense, I'm not sure which would work best. It varies a lot by person.

build a stomach of steel

There was a man who could literally eat steel, Michel Lotito. His stomach was just literally thicker but he also ate most of the non-food materials with mineral oil.

As for eating questionable food, I'd suggest strong stomach acid.

There's a big difference between food that has genuinely gone bad and things that are past their expiration date, since the later are often quite conservative, especially if things are kept cold or sealed. You may still be able to build up your gut microbiome, but I wouldn't think of it as some kind of superpower.

The most direct approach would be a fecal transplant from a person whose diet you wish to emulate. Barring that, I suppose diversifying your diet with an emphasis on fermented foods and probiotics has the best shot of working e.g. yogurt as you mentioned, kimchi, kombucha, natto, miso, different sorts of pickles and vinegars, etc. Also maybe figure out whatever this guy does to survive eating century-old military rations.

I'm not really sure, but intuitively this isn't necessarily easy or possible? Things that make you sick are various microorganisms, and you could probably build tolerance to some of them, but not really arbitrary microorganisms. Compare to diseases - "how do you build an invulnerable immune system" isn't really possible, because each organism has its own mechanisms, so we have the adaptive immune system that learns.

Any tips on how to ensure I do not feel beat up after working out. I do 4 workouts a week in the morning (upper and lower split) using HIT and do 6 days of MMA for 6 days a week. I began last week and have terrible sleep and bad food habits so feel sore all the time. I have seen a reduction in my levels of soreness so just wanted to get some decent advice. I am a farily skinny rail untrained person and have in fact made progress whilst working out infinitely slower by fucking up my sleep previously so please lemme know what things I can and should expect and possible remedies. Thanks!

Some adaptations come quickly -- the soreness in particular should improve over the next weeks. On the other hand, at 10 sessions a week even experienced folks can easily outstrip their recovery capacity. To push that kind of volume you need to keep most of the workouts easy and monitor for signs of injury or over training. Bad sleep is one of those. It's been a while since I was 23 but I'd suggest cutting your schedule in half and building up slowly as you learn to listen to your body.

4 workouts are enough stimulus even without MMA.

how to ensure I do not feel beat up after working out

more reps x lower weight; basically just lower the weight until you can do 20-40 reps instead of 5-10 (like 30% 1RM vs 80%). I just by chance watched this video. Haven't verified anything but sounds good and has science papers behind it.

When exactly did you start with what? What is your workout history? It sounds like you're doing way too much man. 6mma sessions a week are by themselves a very high work out load.

Are you on gear?

No. I'm a 23 year old male who has never done anything physical in his life besides some inconsistent working out. I'm 6 foot and weigh 150 lbs. I have been working out on a neaely semi consistent basis for a month or more.

My coach saod that my body will adapt to the mma in the weeks to come but I thought getting a different opinion would help. I just don't wanna look Michael Cera like.

Cut out either the strength training or the MMA, whatever you find less interesting.

If you can stick with 4x a week strength or 6x a week MMA then that is more than enough. Working out and building muscle is a marathon, not a sprint. You're going to injure yourself or lose interest because you'll get so exhausted if you stick with this (and actually do the workouts for real).

10 workouts a week for an almost complete beginner is insanity. See if you can stick with one program for at least 6 months and then re-evaluate.

If you're training mma 6 days a week, you should keep your strength training simple and stay far away from failure. HIT is going to make you sorer and cut into your recovery.

How much should I work out then. I am aiming for an upper lower split, working out on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. Is this too much? I like HIT because it's better for my joints and takes little to no time. I workout at home using basic equipments and a forearm forklift for timed static contractions.

If you always feeling sore with this level of training then it's too much for you(for your age and level of fitness) by definition, which isn't saying much. So if you want to be safe - decrease the pressure for sure, the consistency is way more important than intensity. However if you're a healthy person then pushing things hard will benefit you mentally and as a consequence physically, it can be nothing or it can be absolutely life-changing experience IF you really push for it hard, as a challenge or if you're masochist, or for any other stupid reason.

It all is kind of triviality really, but it seems to me your original question is triviality as well, meaning that any person who wants an actual answer will find the clear answer in 5min of googling, if not from his own common sense. However I can totally simphatize with the urge of seeking support/validation in those kind of interactions. Whatever helps you, brother, we're all gonna make it!

I was just looking for ways of sticking to both my strength training and mma. I really wish to be consistent this time around. Most info on google is pretty clickbaity.

"I began last week" - the first weeks hit the hardest even if everything else is perfect, it'll improve a lot with just time and consistent exercise. That said, terrible sleep especially is worth fixing anyway and will make it worse. (lower confidence) Terrible diet isn't as bad if you're getting enough calories and protein.

What is the benefit of allowing users to hide their posting history?

I'll actually toss this into the upcoming meta thread to see if there is strong objection to its removal, but yeah we should probably just remove it.

I agree it's pointless and annoying and I would like to see it removed.

We got the feature from the rdrama codebase, and they, i think, added it for no particular reason, like many of their features (it obviously reduces drama).

User.is_private is a legacy of Ruqqus. We considered dropping it on rDrama (though after the time of the Motte fork), but rDrama has an influential minority of paranoid users.

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