George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
The things you lean on / are things that don't last
User ID: 107
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
I don't have an answer to your question because its framing is foreign to my way of thinking, but it reminds me of the fierce reaction to when BEV/AAEV (Black English Vernacular) got its 15 minutes of fame in the 90s as "Ebonics."
The point of linguists was/is that BEV has its own sets of rules and even a consistent grammar (in the same way as other dialects). Once this hit the media, however, the appalled reaction by many in the mainstream was that the eggheads were arguing that we should teach Black English in schools. Which was not, to my very clear memory of the time, what anyone was actually arguing.
As I'm sure you're aware, both "pidgin" and "creole" are neutral, descriptive linguistic terms.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
1d ago
The articles quoted seem dated. There have been various interventional trials into sodium intake.
Meta-analysis from 2013: Effect of longer‐term modest salt reduction on blood pressure
*From 2021: Blood Pressure Effects of Sodium Reduction
*From 2022: Impact of different dietary sodium reduction strategies on blood pressure: a systematic review
Obviously you can attack one or all of those sources as illegitimate or ideologically captive. But there is evidence out there. Taubes himself reminds me to a degree of Robert Lustig, also a dude who tries to fight mainstream scientific consensus (in Lustig's case he is also convinced sugar is the ultimate baddie and calls it poison.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
3d ago
The actual psychological l term for that is Frequency Illusion, the term used here.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I am sure, yes.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I am never not awed by the things Mottezins obsess about. My own mother had blue eyes, and so did my dad. My eyes are hazel. My high school biology teacher told me to check the milkman's eyes. My high school biology teacher was an ass.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
I am sure I will at some point. My wife as she has gotten older is drawn more toward Korean dramas and quirky love stories, so I'll probably have to find time to watch by myself.
I stand corrected, thank you.
Edit: Apparently Zepbound is not approved for diabetes, though its cousin Mounjaro is. This makes little sense to me as it's the same drug.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
4d ago
You misconstrue. While terms like "appropriate taste" chafe, I should (re)iterate that I have not said that I judge any of the shows I've mentioned as necessarily bad. (I reserve judgment at this point.) Nor am I averse to serialized dramas (I watched all of GoT, all of Andor, and at least three seasons of Slow Horses. With my wife I've watched various shows like The Mentalist and Burn Notice and even Stranger Things until SE3 when I just couldn't accept the bratty behavior of the kids who were supposedly in the 80s. Plus a few other culture warry bits.)
My point was rather that I haven't seen fit to make time for these shows, that they didn't grab me for whatever reason. Even with Shakespeare some plays speak to me more than others. I pass over some sonnets in my memorization project because they don't do it for me. That's not necessarily a reflection on the sonnet (or the tv show), at least in this case)--but no piece of art is necessarily fit for everyone at every point in life.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
(Adds to notes)
Color blindness and affirmative action are incompatible. I remember wearing a t-shirt saying "Love Sees No Color" shortly after returning from Africa.* Affirmative action was as strong as ever. No one seemed to acknowledge the contradiction.
*around 1993
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
I got through SE1 of Breaking Bad. The scenes that I suspect were meant to play for dark humor depressed me.
Probably because everyone I knew who watched TV was telling me it was the greatest show ever made, I stopped watching it. The same is true of Six Feet Under, The Wire, and The Sopranos. One season, much hype from everyone, me stopping. I am just realizing this now. You'd think I'd go the other way with so many recommendations, especially since all these shows can be streamed with a few clicks now, without having to borrow/buy then insert DVD box sets disc by disc. (Of course I once rented a VCR from Blockbuster in a giant bag for a weekend and watched videocassettes with my buddy, so convenience probably isn't the issue.) Probably dadhood keeps me from devoting the hours of time to games, shows, etc. the way I used to. Most media now that I watch is when I am showing my sons movies or shows I used to enjoy. Is this a stage of life? Certainly my dad never sat me down to watch Shane (though I do remember him saying once it was his favorite movie.)
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
5d ago
I feel like were I to submit this as data in a psychiatric profile I could get a very good paper out of it.
I found this interesting and encourage you to continue the write-ups.
It's notable that tirzepatide Zepbound is exclusively for weight loss (and obstructive sleep apnea), and unlike Semaglutide is not approved for treatment of diabetes.How is your blood work/HbA1c? You're still pretty young but you say you've been overweight a while. Just curious, no need to answer if you'd rather not.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
Ha. I may have inadvertently painted a more violent picture than the reality. There was no head shoving. I placed bowl on table and bid him dunk his head, which he did on his own. After a few weeks of doing this almost every day my wife's worry was that I was providing an emotional crutch where it would be better to simply power through on force of will alone. Which, of course is the right attitude. Thankfully he was able to eventually realize that what was happening to him was within his own control and the ice water bowl was no longer needed.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
You mention here that a year or so ago you were on propranolol, with encouraging results. To what degree (not much?) have medications aided you?
I've traveled solo quite often, but I'm not particularly good at it. Unless you're approached by someone else, would you be the type to initiate an interaction? Nor am I all that social most of the time, though I can fake it. But I don't have the type of anxiety you're describing. You also mentioned before having hobbies and interacting with people in those hobbies--has this not been an effective strategy? If you're an introvert that's one thing, but if you're an extravert trapped in a situation where being extraverted is stressful, that's another.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
Not so useful in the wee hours of the morning, but you can dunk your head in a bucket of ice water for 15 or more seconds and pretty much stymie such attacks. This is the dive reflex, which stimulates the vagus nerve. My youngest son used to have concerning anxiety right before going to elementary school, and he'd spend minutes in the toilet, sometimes making his classmates who were waiting for him late. I'd rig up a tub of ice water for him to dunk his face in, and he'd calm down, dry off, and be fine. Although my wife thought this was coddling it worked, and eventually he didn't need it.
Problem is it will also probably wake you up pretty effectively, and that may not be what you want at 5:30 a.m.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
You seem savvy to the usual advice on hydration, fiber, etc. so let me insert the idea that sudden changes in bowel habits, in particular if persistent, bear checking out medically. In particular if you have worsening discomfort, an inability to pass gas, rigidity, etc.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
8d ago
I'd generally advise against anything that feeds jealousy, even light-heartedly, though maybe I'm overcautious.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
10d ago
I am still in touch with my best friend from around age 8. Also in touch with HS and undergrad friends. Currently I have at least two very close friends in Japan, as well as a few drinking buddies from my doctoral program. A few female friends, one from childhood with whom I'll occasionally exchange emails though she sucks at staying in touch. One woman from college whose own kids are the age we were when we met. An artist. Used to quite fancy her until I didn't. I value old friends very highly and I consider myself loyal. I've been betrayed many times. Price of the ticket.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
I hope you are still getting mileage out of that suit!
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
Blood Meridian required me to re-read pages at times, but was a singularly trippy experience. At the end I was both confused and oddly disappointed that it had ended. I would warn anyone off reading it, though I've read it twice. I heard once that someone wanted to make a movie of it, and I'd be interested to see how the hell they would try. One of my most memorable reading experiences. And I'd definitely put it in my list of best reads.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
11d ago
The Orchard Keeper is much more similar to the near-inaccessible fiction you describe (I tried to get through Ulysses and failed.) It took me a while to get used to McCarthy's style. I'd say The Road is one of his more readable books, though of course it isn't light reading.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
What do our UFO/UAP enthusiasts make of 3I/Atlas, the interstellar object hurtling through space? I may be wrong but I somehow had @Primaprimaprima as the resident UAP expert.
I recently read an interview with Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb that makes him sound either overly imaginative or Cassandra-like in his analysis of the object, which he says:
is 10 times longer than it is wide
was pushed away from the sun for some reason
followed the plane of the planets around the sun
doesn't appear to have the expected comet 'tail'
All wild conjecture appreciated.
George_E_Hale
insufferable blowhard
12d ago
Not an encouraging response to Takaichi's comments:
Irrelevant possibly but I was given a stack of essays in Japanese recently, some of them handwritten, that I was supposed to be able to understand. I asked ChatGPT 5.1 to translate one based on an image (it was handwritten) , which it did. In reading the translation I was startled by what appeared to be an alarming misapprehension of the person who wrote the essay. I asked ChatGPT about the word choices used and where the writer was going, as well as several follow-up questions about it, and the LLM agreed with my assessment that the person was grossly uninformed.
I then decided to look myself at the essay (which I should have done to begin with but had been lazy.)
Nothing in the translation was in the essay.
On confrontation ChatGPT crumbled, apologizing, saying "because the text was hard to read" it simply pattern-matched the writing with similar writings it had been exposed to and extrapolated the entire remainder from that. In other words a massive hallucination.
I haven't had anything this wrong from ChatGPT in a while and it definitely gives me pause when it comes to requesting translations without scrupulously double-checking it.
The most annoying thing? It then requested I reupload it, promising to "really be careful and be sure only to translate accurately" and....it then gave me what passed for a much more accurate translation. Why this didn't happen to begin with was a mystery, but asking it that just got the usual "You're right to be annoyed" type groveling.
edited for typos
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