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PaperclipPerfector  24d ago (text post)   2847 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 27, 2024

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 there a reason there's been practically no significant laser based terrorism? From what I understand IR lasers whose mere reflections can blind instantly are easily available and fairly cheap. Why hasn't there ever been some sort of mass blinding attack?

Is the technical difficulty of an attack like this significantly below building a two-axis gun turret or building a bomb?

If you still need to aim the laser, might as well aim a gun. If you don't need to aim the laser (e.g. you use some clever way to reflect the light onto people, which will cost you in effective range), might as well build a bomb.

All those things almost never happen, because the people with the skills and high agency to do something like that almost universally don't want to.

There are a number of things that could be done by bad people that are more effective.

A few things prevent this:

-Lots of this stuff is trend based.

-Lots of this stuff is supposed to be showy, certain things are less so.

-Lots of stuff is enormously more impactful than what we normally see, but everyone who is aware of those options doesn't publicize them.

I'm being vague because the idea is not to give anyone any ideas.

JD Vance reads SSC.

This is not at all surprising (though the people over at /r/slatestarcodex seem to be surprised), given his association with Peter Thiel, whom he met in 2011 and has worked with/for over the years. Thiel played an important role in Vance's political career, donating $15 million to his successful Senate campaign. Thiel also helped "smooth over" JD Vance's relationship with Donald Trump in 2021, according to the New York Times

Even without this obvious connection to Thiel, I think it should be pretty evident from how he talks and conducts himself. He's young, smart, and went to a good school, is right-leaning and somewhat of a contrarian—why wouldn't he be aware of Scott's blog?

I mean, has mentioned Curtis Yarvin before on Jack Murphy's (cuck) podcast back in 2021:

"So there's this guy Curtis Yarvin..."

It's actually quite funny how easily you can spot other "rat-adjacent" people in the wild nowadays. I've met a few at a completely unrelated event. This didn't use to happen before. But, now, I could tell from just a few words into our conversation. So maybe the event wasn't all that unrelated, after all. Apparently, there's demographic overlap between these seemingly disparate interests. I don’t know if I like that there are others like me.

To Scott Alexander's credit, he has had an outsized influence on intellectual discourse online, which is now beginning to spill into real life. Looking at Google Trends, the search volume for "Effective Altruism" peaked in 2021-2022. This matches my perception of TheMotte's popularity at the time. But that peak might've only been the beginning.

The growth of the "gray tribe" in that period, whether they (you?) like it or not, follows a tangible "vibe shift" in culture. As Curtis Yarvin is quoted musing in a 2022 Vanity Fair article, the liberal regime will being to fall when the "cool kids" abandon its values and worldview. We've seen it already. A pretty funny example is Red Scare, who, following the winds of culture, went all the way from Sailor Socialism to larping Tradcath aesthetics. And with JD as VP, maybe it'll go truly mainstream.

I have felt the effects of internet gentrification and cultural appropriation over the years, as different obscure niches have gone similarly mainstream. I feel validation but also resentment and frustration at the loss of exclusivity and ownership.

"Everyone dresses like a duck hunter now [in 2022]."

But also Brandy Melville is in, Ozempic is in, being thin and pretty is back in fashion. Thanks, I guess? I like it (I like pretty, thin women), but I also hate it (I hate the lack of edge).

Terms that were popular only in small, socially ostracized circles of internet weirdos and incels are now mainstream. "Looksmaxxing" no longer scares the hoes away—it's all over TikTok. Why did people have to learn what the maxilla is?

I feel robbed.

I need to find something new. I am obsessed with trend forecasting. I need to find a niche to gatekeep.

Any suggestions?

Terms that were popular only in small, socially ostracized circles of internet weirdos and incels are now mainstream.

I still have yet to see "Bayesian", "quokka", "defectbot", "epistemic status" or "toxoplasma" in the Washington Post. Heh.

"Bayesian" has been the hot new word in my (non-rat) part of the internet for the last few years! And now I'm starting to hear rationalist argot in real life, which feels surreal.

I will not be satisfied until young men leaving for the Hock each winter becomes a tradition.

Leaving, but turning around long before they get there. It will be an in-joke, and we get to make fun of the idiots who actually fly to Alaska.

Not gonna lie, gearing up on an absurd amount of survivalist gear for a long winter hike, only to head to the local bar and get shtifaced with the bros, does sound quite fun.

Following that /r/SSC link was depressing. I hadn't realized how Reddit they'd gone, with /r/transdiy leftists berating walls of <deleted> comments.

Guess that's what "no culture war" really means. Just one hivemind's boot doing all the stomping

I swear someone had a comment thread recently about late term abortions, reasons for them, how many are motivated by maternal health/health of the fetus versus otherwise...I thought I had saved it but cannot find it. Anyone have any ideas?

Have any of you tried those "protect your personal info" sites, that promise to 'remove your data from the web' and stop spam calls etc?

I don't get a huge amount of spam calls, but always a few per week. I hesitate to provide my info to some company on the web so that they can stop others from getting that info. Unless the company is trustworthy...

I've done one before, forget which one. Did a bit of research on them beforehand.

They basically emailed a bunch of places and requested that my name and personal data be removed.

Not sure what effect it had if any. I still get the occasional spam call.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=AXfZ8remiDE

This video is exactly about this. The guy is promoting his (future) business, but what he’s saying still holds true.

I wouldn’t trust data broker removal services.

For these services to remove your information from the internet, you first have to give them all your details.

Then, they either spam companies with emails requesting that the pages be removed or outsource the form filling to Indians or Pakistanis.

They also usually take down your info from completely irrelevant websites that Google doesn’t even index. To actually get the results you want, you’d have to pay for their more expensive tiers or whatever.

Yeah, that's pretty much what I assumed. It feels a bit paradoxical to give out sensitive info in an attempt to reduce sensitive info.

They don't (as far as I know) "stop" others from getting that info, but they try to take it down from various places that are obligated for one reason or another to honor takedown requests. I have never used such a service.

How would they do that?

I don't know! Hoping someone will enlighten me.

My baseline assumption is "they don't do that, it's a scam".

You could pretty easily automate a Euro "right to be forgotten" request and call it a day I guess?

Installed the new factorio and noticed how bad my mouse is for the fast and precise clicking needed to make furnace rows. Worse, my mousepad actually shifts around when I move fast.

Are there any pro gamers on the motte who'd like to share their mouse and pad setups?

Kensington Pro Fit — specifically the full-size version if you have big hands, specifically the wired version if you hate wireless, and specifically not the “ergonomic” version in any case. A no-nonsense, very solid desktop mouse. Had one for 11 years (about 9 of which included ~10h/wk FPS gaming) before the scroll wheel started bugging out, and I just bought the same model as replacement.

Nothing usable to report mousepad-wise, but have you considered nabbing a friction glove for use with drawing tablets, if it's your skin contact (rather than the bottom of the mouse itself) that's yoinking the pad around?

That's a great tip: I tried using my drawing glove to check, but it was just my overly slick desk surface letting the pad slide, which didn't happen with my old sticky pad. Changing to a much lighter mouse and a better surface fixed it.

Logitech G102 and a large mousepad. Don't listen to the guys saying you need a 100USD mouse, those days are behind, even cheap gaming mice have OKAY sensors nowadays.

I'd actually switched to an old Logitech M100 that was sitting around, and it completely solved both problems! It's so lightweight the pad doesn't shift, and the cursor accuracy is better than any of the others I tried.

If a M100 works, you didn't need a gaming mouse to begin with, just one that works at all. `

I went for a maximalist mousepad. It's essentially a deskpad that's also a mousepad, comfortable to rest on and pretty good for gaming.

Artisan mousepads are very popular in the aim community. They're pricey, but the quality is good. And in terms of mice, the current trend is for ever lighter, smaller models. The zerømouse is an extreme example, but it's indicative of the general trend. Mouse preference depends entirely on your needs. Unless you’re playing aim-intensive movement shooters, there’s absolutely no reason to get a 26-gram gaming mouse. That said, the Logitech G Pro X Superlight is regarded as a good all-around mouse. At 63 grams, it's still lighter than most mice out there, and I think it will work great for most people and most use cases.

The aim community?

The core of any FPS game is mouse control. You need to react quickly, flick your crosshair onto the enemy's head, and shoot before they shoot you. All else being equal, the player with better aim will always win.

With the rise of games that demand this kind of precise aiming (eg., Overwatch and competitive Fortnite), a demand for synthetic aim trainers also emerged. The goal of these trainers is to improve your "raw" aiming abilities, that is, hand-eye coordination and fine muscle control, skills that can transfer from one FPS game to another.

In aim trainers like KovaaK’s or Aimlabs (the two most popular), you choose from a variety of scenarios, each designed to target a specific aspect of your aim. In one scenario, you stand in a greybox room and shoot static balls that appear on those grey walls. In another, you shoot moving balls, still in that same grey room. Three, four, five balls. Or you track those balls instead.

The choice of scenario depends on the aim mechanic you’re trying to improve. Training routines for Dynamic vs. Static clicking or Precise vs. Reactive tracking, for instance, will vary greatly.

It's like targeting a muscle group in the gym.

The idea is to use an aim trainer as a tool to help you get better in the actual game that you're playing. But a subset of people will just never leave the aim trainer. They enjoy grinding these benchmarks for hours on end, trying to beat their own high scores. It's addicting.

It is somewhat comparable to those who get very good at solving Leetcode problems, but struggle with applying these skills practically.

This is the aim community.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=wD-WRSD3LmQ&t=50

Logitech thumb track ball. Its faster and more precise than any 'arm flailing' mouse. There is however a substantial learning curve and adjustment period when switching, up to 6 months before you're better with it than a normal mouse, which turns a lot of people off. I've been using one since 1997. For a classical mouse, any good corded optical one is fine and you don't need a pad for these at all if you have a good desk surface. If you have to have cordless then avoid bluetooth if you can (this is good general advice, bluetooth is terrible tech). A lot of competitive players also use a small armature that holds the mouse cord up and away from the desk surface so it doesn't get in the way. Here's a popular example: https://www.amazon.com/Razer-Gaming-Mouse-Bungee-RC21-01560100-R3U1

What's wrong with Bluetooth?

A lot of things. There are more exhaustive breakdowns of the problems with bluetooth. This thread on HN is pretty good, if technical breakdown. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39028440 To summarize, its a very low power signal that uses a very congested range. Additionally manufacturers often go as cheaply as possible on the hardware and software controllers as possible. This is BTs main appeal too: its dirt cheap compared to the alternatives. Its extremely susceptible to interference from other devices electronic devices and also from the human body itself. There are some robust software controller options for abating some of these problems but they add to manufacturing costs. For non critical applications like listening to music for leisure its fine. PC peripherals are another issue though. The PC itself creates a good amount of interference, multiple BT devices will interfere with each other, and WIFI also is fighting with BT for the same bandwidth. Tiny hiccups that would be unnoticeable in streaming music, which can buffer audio, when using a BT mouse or keyboard can mean 1-2 second intervals where commands from the mouse/kb either aren't received at all by the PC, or are processed a few seconds late. This might be fine for many applications but if the user is concerned with response times when entering commands while gaming, BT is an exercise in frustration. A good option here is what Logitech uses, which they call Lightspeed, which is radio waves over a dedicated dongle that is permanently paired to its device. https://www.logitechg.com/en-us/innovation/lightspeed.html

For peripherals, bluetooth only goes up to 125 hz if I remember correctly. You want 1000 hz for your mouse. Very diminishing returns beyond that.

it operates on a pretty crowded/noisy band of the wireless spectrum. For example, if you're using a bluetooth mouse on a modern desktop computer, it's very likely that your USB3 ports are interfering with the bluetooth signal whenever they're active https://www.usb.org/sites/default/files/327216.pdf

Not to mention microwave ovens.

Somebody really needs to write a history about how a small chunk of unregulated spectrum set aside for microwaves ended up containing all the stuff we actually use.

Is the entire rest of the spectrum just camped? I think we're missing big chunks of 5ghz wifi spectrum because it was licensed to some satphone operator who never even used it(?)

Yeah, it’s pretty congested. There’s a ton of stuff we want to broadcast.

I was going to say that going higher in frequency is more expensive due to requiring faster sampling, but then I realized I don’t know the receiver architecture. Do they just down convert everything to baseband?

Either way, there’s definitely historical reasons to want those tasty lower frequencies.

G502 and a pretty large mousepad.

Logitech G502x wireless is nice mouse (using it to play factorio in fact). I use a large Razer mouse pad.

I'm pretty basic but I have a Mira-M mouse and a SteelSeries QcK mousepad

The Mira is super lightweight and really basic in terms of buttons but for the games I play its perfect. Two side buttons, clickable scroll wheel, middle button for adjusting DPI. All re-programmable with the software. Braided cable which is nice and long. Only complaint is that stuff can get inside due to the honeycomb design but its pretty easy to just blow out. If you've never had a mouse this light it can feel kind of toy like at first but it feels perfectly natural to me now. I should add that it's been a couple years since I bought the mouse so I'm not sure about availability.

Not much to say about the mousepad, but I've never had slipping issues.

I am wandering lately about the point of extreme spicy foods/souses etc - why bother with the pepper intermediary when you can just buy and dilute pure capsaicin for whatever is that you need? When I am eating something above 150k I never manage to get any other tastes anyway.

Once you get used to pepper enough you can still taste the flavor and so on even at high heats.

Think of it like metal music - once you get used to the genre you can hear the melodies and vocal talent on display, but if you aren't used to it can sometimes sound like random noises and screaming.

I need to know: what is the standard index order for Plato? What order are the dialogues put in?

Why is the Phaedo 4th in my copy? Why would the one that chronologically must come after all the other Socratics be 4th? Why was it that last night, sitting with my grandmother on her last night, I found that when I opened my copy I just happened to be on the dialogue specifically about facing death and the nature of the soul?

At least I didn't decide to reread the first chapter of Evgeny Onegin.

2spooky4me

There's the in-universe order, and the order in which they were written. The former we can work out from clues from the text—most have some indication as to when they're set. The latter is mostly just divided into early, middle, and late, and I've generally heard people find it doubtful—a lot of that is just categorizing things in increasing order of complexity, rather than anything more demonstrable.

Rereading the introduction, they're in a proposed order of writing which seems to be pretty idiosyncratic to the editor and is not universally accepted.

Still honestly very freaky to me. I'm not superstitious but I'm a little stitious.

What's the order?

Pétri de vanité il avait encore plus de cette espèce d’orgueil qui fait avouer avec la même indifférence les bonnes comme les mauvaises actions, suite d’un sentiment de supériorité, peut-être imaginaire.

So I've recently been getting back into managing my personal finances. Historically I've used a mix of beancount, fava, and beancount importer as a combined method of getting my finances into a digestible format. The reason I stopped after 2+ years of tracking is that certain banks will change their export format every once in a while and I found every few months I'd go on to update my bookkeeping I would have to rewrite my importers. Part of the problem could be I dont fully understand the code behind it, therefore rewriting the importers became harder than necessary, but I've taken this opportunity to look into other methods. For posterity, here's what I've found in order from most managed to least managed in terms of alternatives, with my current method falling somewhere near the bottom:

  1. Monarch Money: https://www.monarchmoney.com/

    Paid. 6$ per month. Uses a mixture of commerical importers (Plaid, MX, etc.) to track both investments & current account balances. Haven't tried yet.

  2. Copilot Money: https://copilot.money/

    Paid. Very similar to Monarch money. 8$ per month. Also uses commercial importers, although less of them than Monarch Money. Reviews say it breaks sometimes, although those could be more historical.

  3. Actual Budget: https://actualbudget.org/

    Self-Hosted via docker. Able to sync with a semi-commerical integration called simpleFIN-bridge which uses MX on the backend https://beta-bridge.simplefin.org/ This seems somewhat legit but also somewhat sketch as there is no privacy policy etc. In terms of the actual 'actual' software. The native CSV import function is great. My main pain point is that it isnt Double-Entry Accounting, and there doesnt seem to be a way to specify a X-x-X date account balance y was z$. There is a way to reconcile to today, but in their method that just means add a reconciliation amount of xxx$ to fix whatever it is off by. I dont like this. Previously I was tracked meticiulously and it made sense. I also dont see a method to track investments, ie you own X shares of Y stock that are worth Z today.

  4. Maybe: https://maybe.co/

    another pretty app self-hosted via docker. Apparently there was a large dev push behind it that folded and they decided to open source the code base. I like this. For importing options, so far I've only seen import via csv. When doing so, they have a myriad of options, and it works well enough. It also allows for syncing investment holdings and updating their prices on the fly. For this, it makes it the most promising. What I dislike most about it is when automated sorting fails, the only method I've found for correcting categories etc, it manual with a lot of clicks. I liked the streamlined nature of beancount importer where I could bust through 1000 transactions in a couple minutes. I'm still testing to determine if there is a way to do this quickly with maybe.

  5. Firefly III: https://www.firefly-iii.org/

    Also does not support tracking investments as part of networth. I think for this reason alone its off the table.

I like the idea of using plaid, and accountants I've talked to show support. Hackernews is skeptical of it. I guess I'm asking the motte, do you use a plaid like software and trust it? It seems many banks now support Oauth. I have not yet, but would like to. I would probably be willing to pay for monarch or copilot if I did trust these integrators.

I use Monarch. Having multiple commercial trackers is incredibly useful as a number of banks don't play nice with Plaid (including my primary bank). It's great as it is quite comprehensive, I can track all of my investment accounts on it quite easily from individual accounts to 401k, manage budget and expenses and add notes for purchases for reminders (very useful if you have multiple revenue streams and you need to match expenses to income for tax deductions). I find it fairly comprehensive.

I have a referral link here if anyone wants to try it.

https://www.monarchmoney.com/referral/zu98cfajjp

How does monarch authenticate with banks? Did you need to fork over your bank password?

Monarch uses 3rd parties for authorization, so Plaid, MX, or Finicity will log into your account. Monarch itself does not store passwords. Whether you trust the 3rd parties, of course, is another discussion.

Plaid requires you to give them your bank password, right? You'll never catch me doing that.

Yes, but not always. Some banks (e.g. WellsFargo) support protocol that actually allows to give aggregators limited access without giving away the password. Unfortunately, not all banks support it.

This is where I’m not so sure. Current iterations as far as I can tell generally use “Oauth” which again is a bit of a black box but from what I can tell you’re logging into your bank and giving plaid an access token, which I think can be configured to be read only. Although more black box. In practice, plaid doesn’t have your password generally (although maybe for some banks as your link discusses.) what it can do with that token (is it read only?) is even read only bad enough? Etc. is up for debate.

Current iterations as far as I can tell generally use “Oauth” … In practice, plaid doesn’t have your password generally (although maybe for some banks as your link discusses.)

I've never heard any reports of this. Are you saying you've seen some bank for which Plaid supports OAuth rather than merely doing screen-scraping? If so, what bank is that?

“Oauth” which again is a bit of a black box … what it can do with that token (is it read only?) is even read only bad enough? Etc. is up for debate.

It really shouldn't be “up for debate”.

If your bank supports OAuth as a protocol, but doesn't tell you exactly what authorizations you're granting the relying party when you approve a request, that's a massive failure of your bank, and arguably a violation of at least the spirit of the OAuth spec:

If the request is valid, the authorization server authenticates the resource owner and obtains an authorization decision (by asking the resource owner or by establishing approval via other means) … If the resource owner grants the access request, the authorization server issues an authorization code and delivers it to the client …

The last time I was faced with a plaid page, they wanted me to enter my password in a plaid page, rather than my bank's page. Perhaps this has changed, but there's simply no way that I'd trust plaid not to retain my password in some regarded way.

Yes, even when banks offer secure "front door" API access, Plaid still refuses to consider those integrations over "back door" screen-scraping; here's an example:

Fidelity has established a secure, integrated connection that better controls how customers can connect the third-party apps they use to their Fidelity accounts. Fidelity is requiring all these third-party websites, applications, and data aggregators to adopt this integrated connection to access our customers’ data.

It is with our customers’ financial well-being in mind that any third-party applications, websites, or data aggregators that do not utilize our secure, integrated connection will be prevented from accessing Fidelity customer data.

I don't know if Fidelity charges for that access, imposes some genuinely unreasonable security requirements, or if “plaid sucks and is dangerous” is just the whole story.

How complex are your finances that you need these tracking systems? Would simplifying them be an alternative?
I guess I'm not seeing what your aim is.

Generally not super complicated. Although seems to grow somewhat more complicated as time passes. Get a credit card at a separate bank, get a company 401k at some weird holdings company that can’t be changed. Etc.

I like https://financier.io/ a lot; there's a free dev-operated instance for on-device budgets (with the option to pay $12/yr for cloud sync of unlimited budgets, so it can be used as a “family plan”). Doesn't support tracking stocks, but if you're fine to just add a “market value change” transaction at the end of the month it works great.

Doesn't have any bank integrations or statement parsing / bulk transaction import ability whatsoever (though I've heard there are 3rd-party Python scripts to do this); however it does have a pretty nice transaction "reconciliation" flow (items go entered → marked as reconciled → confirmed as reconciled.)

It's seemingly inspired by EveryDollar and YNAB, but (compared to EveryDollar) it is much more graceful about overflowing dollars you neglected to budget in the first place (and/or dollars you overspent) to the next month.

Inspired by another poster who wrote about misadventures with Tylenol, I just want to provide a brief commentary on medications.

More medication is not necessarily more better.

Many medications essentially work by targeting a receptor of interest or receptors of interest.

If you double the dose you might go from 95% of the effect you want to 98% of the effect you want, while also saturating other receptors that cause side effects.

For ones that are more receptor specific (like Ibuprofen (Advil)) we find that things like doubling the dose from 400 to 800 has little impact on pain, more of an impact on anti-inflammatory properties, and a massively increased risk of side effects.

Don't just take a handful of pills expecting more to do more of what you want!

Here's everyone's daily reminder that the standard melatonin dose sold (10mg) is literally 100x too strong. 0.1mg is much more effective.

Welllllll no.

I know Scott's article makes a case but it's way more complicated than that.

Sleep medicine, Psychiatry, and PCPs all have wildly different views about Melatonin all of which can be simplified as "sure, fine, it's safe" but a lot is happening under the hood there.

Some evidence it does absolutely nothing.

Research is complicated because anxious college students, the elderly, someone in a Psychiatric inpatient unit recovering from an episode of something, and a 40 year old man with a bowel perf in the hospital all have wildly different sleep needs and problems. Makes research very hard.

Then you add in the stuff like spaced dosing being more effective...

I’m pretty can still feel pain if I pinch myself while on Ibuprofen. Different receptors? I assumed it was low-strength but didn’t think too hard about what that meant.

The physiology of pain is very complicated. Briefly - Ibuprofen is an NSAID, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug it basically works by turning off a part of the inflammatory response which is a large part of most types of pain. Bowel pain? Inflammation. Healing wound? Inflammation. Stub your toe? Inflammation.

If you have the right type of pain it can be immensely effective, even more effective than opioids in the sense that it can actually "heal" the pain instead of just doing other stuff (if swelling is pushing on a nerve for instance).

However it can be bad for you because you need inflammation......

For the wrong type of pain it's not going to do a lot.

A good rule of thumb is that if swelling is involved you'll want to use ibuprofen, if it's not Tylenol.

However how functional your liver kidneys, and gastric system etc. are matters a lot.

The specific example is interesting. I don't notice a damn thing from NSAIDs for pain that can reasonably be assumed to be inflammatory, and IIRC they're indistinguishable from placebo for osteoarthritis pain.

I found NSAIDs to do literally nothing for me for like 30 years across all sorts of injuries, then I encountered a very specific sort of neck-back ache resulting from poor form on power cleans that two ibuprofen instantly fixed. I could literally feel when the last dose would metabolize because the pain was so intense when present. I was basically chowing down on 8 pills a day for the week of that, otherwise I was unable to sleep or move my neck. Pain is weird.

Like I said pain is complicated, likewise pharm is complicated - some people are fast metabolizers of certain medication and get no effect at all.

Personally I find NSAIDs to be even better for low dose opiates for pain associated with significant inflammation (for me).

Suppose there is some trait in people which increases their wish to disregard everything and vote against ruling party or candidate who's in name party as ruling one. If this trait is already named, what is its name, and what are its correlates?

Perhaps "anti-establishment orientation". It's a measure of how much one is against the current elite establishment. That research article I linked to argues that it's an independent dimension from the Democrat/Republican partisan dimension, and this article goes through political history of the past three decades to demonstrate how voters with anti-establishment orientation keep switching parties.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock and Galactic Patrol. Rereading Bernays’ Crystallizing Public Opinion. Bernays has been on my mind often while watching the US election unfold. I think he would have disapproved of the Harris campaign's choices.

Howard Marks' books. He's not as funny as Lynch, but he's pretty good too.

I read The Andromeda Strain. It was somewhat interesting but I definitely wouldn't recommend it; the plot and character development are almost nonexistent.

Now catching up on 12 Miles Below which is just such a fun story.

Andromeda Strain is pretty boring. Crichton was just starting to figure out how to write novels with that one.

Haven't read Andromeda but completely agree on 12 Miles Below. I read the first one and ended up devouring the entire series several months back and I'm hoping there's more soon!

I having been chewing my way through William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land. It is incredibly repetitive and an excellent soporific. Given to a vicious editor I expect 2/3rds of it would end up on the cutting room floor, and be better for it. Whilst incredibly boring it is refreshing to read something so sincere and unselfconscious.

In my quest through Plato I've gotten through the Euthypro, the Apology, the Crito, and I'm now on the Phaedo. Good hospital bedside reading.

On audio I just finished Moby Dick. A truly universal work, it feels like an allegory for the presidential election 175 years early. I've now started lonesome dove, which I recall someone here recommending, and Lord in heaven is it amazing. After reading a lot of non fiction and literary fiction, lonesome dove is like a firehose of content. Just action on action on allegory on allegory on setpiece on setpiece. The book just GOES. I'm totally digging it.

I desperately need any tips for reducing pain with laser facial hair removal that might not be easy to find on Google.

I'm 2 sessions in so far, and this is so painful that I cannot find words to express it; I end each session with tears dripping down the side of my head, and I get flashbacks to the session for a few days afterwards that are so intense as to be distracting. I do not have any kind of anxiety disorder, but entering the second session I felt panicked at the pain that was coming (and it did not seem that “the anticipation was worse than the event”.)

I believe the technician is not actually mechanically fucking up and burning me, because I am experiencing absolutely zero redness, blisters, or lasting pain; but this is still such an unpleasant experience that I'm considering aborting the sequence even if they won't give me a prorated refund for the unused sessions.

First session:

  • Didn't take any special precautions
    • the clinic's website said “Most patients describe the laser hair removal process as uncomfortable or mildly painful”;
    • I am a pretty optimal candidate as I have rather light skin and medium/medium-dark facial hair;
  • Did standard recommended prep such as shaving 24h beforehand, avoiding vitamin A the week beforehand (applies to all sessions);
  • attempted dissociation / wandering mind during the session (applies to all sessions);
  • applied a cooling aloe gel provided by the clinic at the end of the session (applies to all sessions).

Second session, after asking the technician for tips and doing a bit of basic research (I'm not sure how much any of this actually helped):

  • 3000mg acetaminophen 30mins before;
  • smearing on a thin layer of lidocaine gel 30mins before, washed off at the clinic immediately before the appointment;
    • this was the technician's recommendation, though I just got whatever was to hand at the local store, which happened to be a 4% gel;
  • requested a stress ball to squeeze during the session.

Current plans for the 3rd session, coming up in around 3 weeks — asking for stuff to add/remove/change here:

  • avoid coffee the morning of;
  • drink water the morning of;
  • 4000mg acetaminophen 1h before, so it has time to properly kick in;
  • 100mg diphenhydramine 30min before;
  • smearing on a 1mm layer of 10% lidocaine cream advertised for tattoo artist use and applying saran wrap on top of it 30mins before, washed off at the clinic immediately before the appointment;
  • bringing a small plush toy of my own as a comfort item to squeeze instead of the clinic's stress ball.

I do not know what laser type this clinic is using; I suspect it's diode (810nm), but I sent them an e-mail this weekend asking so I should hear back within a day or 2. I have read that alexandrite (755nm) might be better and less painful for my skin type. I'm currently e-mailing other clinics in the area to see what laser types they have.

https://cambridgelaserclinic.com/laser-treatments/hair-removal/lasers-explained/ (edit: their great diagram doesn't seem to want to embed as an image)

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10886276/#:~:text=The%20800%20nm%20diode%20laser%20causes%20greater%20discomfort%20than%20the%20755%20nm%20alexandrite%20laser.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/acetaminophen-safety-be-cautious-but-not-afraid

https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-warns-consumers-avoid-certain-topical-pain-relief-products-due-potential-dangerous-health

I don't have great connections to trans women spaces, but that seems pretty on the higher side of the typical range of pain most I've talked to have reported. It's probably worth emphasizing exactly how painful you find it to the technician; in other contexts I've definitely seen doctors overlook pretty clear pain from a patient because they didn't want to highlight it (even as a necessary step to bring up options) until the patient did, and this does seem like some matter where people have wildly varying responses.

From the literature, 'spot size' is adjustable, and smaller spot sizes seem consistently less painful than larger ones regardless of laser type. Still some tradeoff in effectiveness, and since I think this involves swapping the heads it may not be something that this particular office is set up to do. Some people I've talked to found alexandrite much less painful than diode, but it's not clear how much of that difference reflects the swap also coming at the same time that they went from debulking to fine cleanup work.

You can get 10% lidocaine cream, and I'd consider that. The FDA doesn't like it and I definitely wouldn't use them regularly or outside of this procedure, but the bigger concern about higher OTC concentrations are less likely to be relevant for well-spaced intervals with entirely topical uses on unbroken skin. You may be able to get a script from the tech, though it's also just the sort of 'illegal' that's on Amazon.

I'd reiterate the concerns about general anesthetics: acetaminophen is a helluva drug, and not really good for skin pain regardless of dose, and doesn't mix well.

Fw: exchange with the technician (all bold emphasis added):

Technician: You sent in a message asking about the type of laser we use and how painful the treatment is.
First of all, I am sorry you're having that experience. Our laser is the Rohrer Epilaze. You are being treated with the 810 Diode attachment currently.
Use a lidocaine cream about an hour prior to our appointment and ibuprofen or tylenol at that time as well. When you come in I will have you remove it completely so we can have a more effective treatment. As far as the pain goes, those are the only options for pain relief.
I do want to reiterate that this is not supposed to be a pain free experience unfortunately. There is a hot laser going into coarse hair follicles to try to kill the follicle so hair doesn't grow back. The first treatments are usually the worst because you have the most hair. It should eventually get easier, but the face is always going to be a very tender area.
Do you want to continue treatment?

Me: Is there a reason the 755nm alexandrite isn't being used in my case? I've read that it's less painful for sensitive areas, and I thought that my facial hair is dark enough & skin light enough to support its use.
I'm currently trying to get my hands on a stronger lidocaine solution; the 4% gel and tylenol I used before our previous session didn't seem to help much. I'll also try adding ibuprofen in.
I'd like to proceed at least through our next appointment[.]

Technician: Everyone [fitzpatrick] 1-3 I debulk with 810 diode due to its debulking power. I have found in my experience with 755, I only pull it out once we have gotten to the point in the laser process where the hair is very fine and sparse. That is when 755 is most effective. If you’d like I can use 755 at your next appointment, but your results are going to take longer.

Me: Do you mean that it would take more overall sessions, or that each session would just take a bit longer?
I’m perfectly OK to be in the chair getting zapped for a few more minutes if the pain could be a bit less intense; but I absolutely don’t want to risk making the overall treatment slower or less effective. If using the 810 is the best way to ensure that the debulking gets done well in as few sessions as possible, then let’s stay with that for now.

Technician: Using the 755 would take more sessions! We will continue with 810, and if you ever want to swap before necessary let me know!

I wonder how much of that is “genuinely true” vs. just a consequence of clinic-wide policy meant to keep these $67 sessions as short as possible for maximum patient throughput...

$67 sessions? I have a sudden urge to talk to a lawyer about the thousands I spent, only for it to turn out I had enough greys left over to just look mangy and artificially aged. ... supposedly with an 80% off coupon which I am not convinced was properly applied.

In any case, I don't know the laser details. The procedure sounds the same. I experienced pain, but it doesn't sound as intense as what you described. More like getting repeatedly slapped in small areas. Although, it grew more painful with later sessions, presumably because they increased the power.

DO NOT fuck around with pain killers, also don't drink acetaminophen, at all, ever. For any reason.

I'm following the range posted on both the label and on https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/dont-overuse-acetaminophen

If you would like to recommend a different source advocating lower doses, please do. I've seen a lot of people chiming in with comments to this effect but I can't validate any of them.

Are you saying don't drink acetaminophen based on the risk of overdose, or for another reason?

I ask as I often give my toddler liquid acetaminophen for teething.

Liquid acetaminophen is safe as long as you mind the doses, and IIRC, paediatric suspensions are usually intentionally made in sizes and concentrations where even consumption of large amounts or the whole bottle won't be lethal.

He may have accidentally dropped some words and meant "don't drink [alcohol with] acetaminophen, at all, ever."

4000mg acetaminophen 1h before, so it has time to properly kick in;

Unless you have a relevant advanced degree and significant domain specific knowledge DO NOT DO THIS.

Tylenol overdose is one of the worst ways to do imaginable.

So why are you doing this yourself?

Aesthetically, I hate the presence of stubble between shaves. That said:

this is still such an unpleasant experience that I'm considering aborting the sequence even if they won't give me a prorated refund for the unused sessions

I also don't like the hassle of shaving, but obviously “hassle” pales in comparison to the goddamn torment nexus that this — I want to emphasize — was advertised not to be:

the clinic's website said “Most patients describe the laser hair removal process as uncomfortable or mildly painful”

Wait, you want a permanent babyface?

Being clean shaven is not babyface. I only really hear this from guys with beards, the same way I hear people with tattoos describe perfectly fine skin as a "blank canvas."

If you can pull it off, having no facial hair just looks better. Male movie stars generally don't have beards. I can't think of a single romcom where the male love interest had a beard. Male models usually don't have beards. Sure, in many ways these examples all appeal primarily to women, but even very male movies generally have clean-shaven stars.

If you can pull it off, having no facial hair just looks better.

Taste is subjective and all, but wow I disagree with this. If you can pull it off, facial hair looks way better than being clean shaven.

I think the majority of people would disagree, which is why I brought up movie stars.

I grow a nice beard. IME most people mildly preferred the beard but the minority that didn’t like it really didn’t like it.

There's a difference between a clean-shaven face (that has a visible shadow) and a babyface.

Aesthetically, I hate the presence of stubble between shaves.

A shocking response. I thought for sure you were a transwoman. I work with a few and can guess at the physical difficulties they go through.

I kinda sorta technically am, according to maybe 90% of peoples’ definitions; but I don't crossdress either publicly or privately (that is, I don’t dress as a woman; I do dress as a man.)

The question, “why would you undertake a painful process in order to remove facial hair?” contains its own answer; @Southkraut gave me no seed of direction on which to build a high-effort or interesting answer, so I figured giving a true and precise literal answer to his content-free expression of shock as-stated was appropriate.

I do enjoy trying to reconcile massively disparate philosophies of gender identity, trying to make a stance for my own when the counterparty is actually up for it; but that didn't seem to be the case here; I only had something tantamount to “can you believe this guy disagrees with my own opinion on what the consensus on the attractiveness of male facial hair is?”

That's a bit strawmanny, but then again now that I know you're a transsexual (I previously assumed you were a woman or simply a metrosexual) this behavior matches what others of your kind have displayed in the past; the rapidly escalated assumptions of hostility when faced with anything other than affirmation. And instead of asking simple questions and getting worthwhile answers to better understand each other, we can instead pattern-match the other to our preferred ideological enemy group.

@Southkraut I edited the toplevel to note that it looks like alexandrite was found to be less painful than diode when used on thin skin; I am pursuing the “switch to a provider that uses alexandrite” option in parallel with the “reduce the pain by whatever means” option, with the latter being my main request for advice.

Not to be smug, but...that's advertisement.

The steelman I've heard is that it's much less painful in the case of legs (which could make up a large portion of their treatments), where the skin is thick enough that the overpenetration of the 810nm beam doesn't matter.

This is probably the reason. I’d imagine most laser hair removal is actual natal women getting their legs depilated for beauty reasons.

Facial hair (esp mustache) on natal women is not a rare area of focus, though one where there’s likely the biggest difference in require laser application between amab and afab.

Underarm hair is extremely common, and supposedly worse for pain than face or even nether regions, though.

3000 milligrams of acetaminophen in one dose is dangerous to your liver. That’s one third higher than the recommended maximum dose for a entire day. 4000 would be double the maximum allowed daily dose. Especially if you regularly drink any alcohol at all. Can you ask your doctor to put some lidocaine on your face before he starts? Or use an injected numbing agent?

[3000mg is] one third higher than the recommended maximum dose for a entire day. 4000 would be double the maximum allowed daily dose

The source I linked in the toplevel says that 3000mg would be the “Safest maximum daily dose for most adults” and that 4000 is the maximum allowable 24h dose. Where are you getting your numbers from?

I do not take pain relievers for any other purpose; I had to buy a bottle of acetaminophen specifically for this use.

Especially if you regularly drink any alcohol at all.

I have 2 drinks per week for good health superstition, but will obviously refrain for the week surrounding that dose.

Can you ask your doctor to put some lidocaine on your face before he starts?

At the technician's recommendation, I already did try lidocaine, but I'm not sure how much it helped, so I'm going to be using a higher dose next time. (This clinic doesn't seem to include it with service, in any case.)

A few years ago 4000 was the maximum daily dose but the FDA has recently revised the recommendation down to 2000 mg because of evidence that acetaminophen is more hepatotoxic that previously realized. And to reduce the risks of accidental overdose from multiple medications, and because of the synergistic damaging effects with alcohol.

I've got to ask again where you are getting those numbers from.

I googled fda.gov acetaminophen safety and the first result, explicitly labeled “current as of” February of this year, has the same number as the Harvard article I cited in the toplevel comment:

The current maximum recommended adult dose of acetaminophen is 4,000 milligrams per day

https://www.fda.gov/consumers/consumer-updates/dont-overuse-acetaminophen

Does anyone have any tips for managing stimulant use? I currently use fairly copious amounts of caffeine and nicotine - both I find extremely difficult to go without for 24 hours. My tolerance to nicotine has built to the extent that I don't feel like I receive much cognitive boost from it anymore.

I've tried taking breaks cold turkey with the idea that I can start using both again in smaller amounts once my tolerance is reset, but never get further than a few days. I actually find both about equally difficult to stop or cut down on - if I had to give up one or the other forever it'd be hard to choose.

My ideal is not to stop using either completely, but rather to use lower doses of them, less regularly and more effectively - so preferably not every day, and for specific purposes. For example, nicotine to deliberately build a habit, or caffeine to boost motivation and performance for exercise. I realize there is no free lunch with stimulants but right now I feel like I'm using them in quantities far more than optimal.

EDIT: thanks all for the advice!

Can't help with the nicotine (which likely complicates things), but I have had a real easy time reducing caffeine by switching from coffee to black tea (with milk, but you get the idea). It's a much smoother experience I think due to the Theanine or other chemicals that come with the package. No jitters, no crash.

edit: Really hard to have too much tea (and you can even sneak some into your afternoon with less impact on sleep disruption.)

I take Vyvanse for my ADHD & 1-2 cups of coffee per day.

What works for me: tl,dr: less carbs + spacing out stimulants.

Details:

  1. Have 1st coffee later in the morning. Usually, right before starting focus work. (around 10am). Avoids afternoon crash and avoid 2nd/3rd coffee.
  2. No coffee after 3pm if I plan to sleep that night. Not worth it.
  3. No heavy carbs for lunch. Avoids afternoon crash.
  4. Alternate daily Vyvanse consumption. I skip it on meeting days, and have my coffee earlier to compensate.
  5. No Vyvanse on holidays. STRICT.
  6. Only 1 coffee on holidays. STRICT.
  7. 3 coffees max per work day. 1 is ideal. 2 is borderline. 3 only if really needed. (each coffee is ~double shot of espresso)
  8. Get full night of sleep every night. No work is too important. When I'm sleep deprived, I have coffee at odd times and it messes up my routine.
  9. Not exactly cardio. But, I cycle to office and get a good bout of sun in the process. Indispensible.
  10. Hot concentrated drinks >>> everything else. For me, the punch of a hot cortado delivers a strong placebo that a mug of American coffee, milky coffee or cold coffee simply can't match. It's free (placebo) lunch. Highly recommend.

Ah the carbs thing I never considered, will have to think about trying that!

I don't over-use stimulants, but I do generally have a hard time getting my brain to work and get enough done. Some things that help me:

  • Quick morning cardio
  • Steady, solid sleep schedule (7 hrs ish per night)
  • 5-10 minute naps as necessary
  • Keto
  • Caloric restrictions

Dieting in particular is very helpful, when I'm hungry I'm sharp.

Echoing all of these except the keto because i don't really do the keto thing but i do find the rest to be helpful.

I would suggest trying to gradually cut back to a significant amount before you go cold turky. It will ease the shock.

When it comes to caffeine, after finals every year in law school I would need to cut back severely, but I got headaches if I went to none. So I went from drinking about six shots of espresso every day to drinking two cups of hicaf tea, to drinking just enough black tea to keep the headaches away, to cold turkey. Would normally take two weeks to get down to nothing.

What worked for me with caffeine was going cold turkey and then staying off for 3 months. After that i started drinking 1-2 cups a day (instead of 7) and it has been easy to keep it at that for the past 10+ years.

Now my caffeine use feels like a wholly positive habit.

Similar feeling.

Staying off it completely for 2 months helped me come back with a healthier system. (went from anxious eye tremors to being back to normal).

Cold turkey was really hard. It's like the whole world is grey and you're half asleep. An entire month passed me by in zombie mode. The 2nd month was better, and I have been careful to never go that far with coffee ever since. (8-10 shots per day to now 2-4 espresso shots per day)

The non endorsements from the newspaper - is it only fear from Trump retaliation or something is changing and people are realizing that they should be less political?

I don’t think they fear Trump. I don’t see him deciding that LA Times needs to be burned down because they ran an editorial. I think it might well be that they want to be less political. The pressure on everyone in media to get in lockstep is very strong, and I think the owners are trying to ratchet things down a bit.

I couldn't believe the audacity of employees wanting to use their employer's profit making organisation for their own political ends. But I guess entryism has been around for a while now so I shouldn't be surprised.

Seriously though, you're trying to use your boss's business to promote politics against his interests? What did you think was going to happen?

I couldn't believe the audacity of employees wanting to use their employer's profit making organisation for their own political ends

Very few of the employees would have seen it like that. The thought process is roughly as follows:

A lot of the time in vocational jobs like newspapers, publishing, research etc., the boss feels like just another irritating stakeholder that you have to satisfy. At worst, a wrecker that you have to sabotage. I imagine that goes double for a legacy, non-founder company.

To put it another way, the LA Times isn’t their employer’s business. He’s just paying for it, often with other people’s money. The employees are the ones who build it and sustain it, so by rights it belongs to them. The owner is really just a sponsor.

That doesn’t mean you can get away with anything you like - the law and the board have the whip hand - but the idea that you owe fealty to whichever bozo bought the paper wouldn’t compute at all.

Maybe they realized there's a real chance of Harris losing, and being on the losing side is not super fun. "We are neutral objective observers and we criticize Trump because he's bad" is a stronger position than "we were on the losing side and now we're sore so we'll dump on Trump no matter what", and that's the position they are looking to occupy.

USA today joins the festivities: https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-usa-today-declines-to-endorse-kamala-for-president-after-backing-biden-in-2020

USA Today endorsed Biden in 2020, but other than that has generally had a policy of no endorsements.

Kamala’s tax plan is just uniquely threatening to the sorts of people who own newspapers, possibly.

It's very, very unlikely that this is motivated by a desire to influence the outcome of the election, because it's so obviously and wildly implausible that it would actually do so. Nobody who reads the Washington Post or LA Times editorial page is going to change his vote based on an explicit endorsement or lack thereof from one of these papers. They've been implicitly endorsing Harris since Biden dropped out, and implicitly endorsing anyone-but-Trump for eight years. Anyone who's receptive to the message already got it.

An official endorsement from either of these papers would be purely symbolic.

Fear of Trump retaliation.

In Jeff Bezos' case, he doesn't want his most provocative asset, The Washington Post, making public endorsements that could prevent his more important venture, Blue Origin, from obtaining lucrative government contracts if Trump is elected. Bezos and Blue Origins are still up a creek without a paddle because Trump values loyalty, and Musk, who has big plans for SpaceX, has proven to be a worthy subject.

Maybe the newspapers are trying to cause some of their staff to quit because the newspaper wants to reduce staffing and/or get rid of disagreeable staff.

It would be similar to how some companies use return to office policies to get a portion of their employees to quit. When an employee quits they don't get severance or unemployment. Causing an employee to quit, instead of firing them, saves the company money.

Endorsements from newspapers are probably also increasingly irrelevant to persuadable voters so the choices are weighted differently.

If it was worth a two percentage point bump towards Kamala on the Nate Silver model, but if Trump wins there's a strong chance of retaliation and/or it causes a loss of conservative subscribers, that's one thing and I think the papers would have endorsed under those circumstances.

In reality, virtually no one is persuaded by a newspaper endorsement. The readers are mostly all liberals already, and any conservatives left won't be persuaded by the editorial board, but they might finally be driven away by it. If anything, the strategic move would be to not openly endorse, to try to keep as many conservatives inside the audience as possible, where they'll be exposed to liberal (or to the true believers in the newspaper "truthful") reporting. There's no or negative actual value in the endorsement.

Trump retaliation? Respectfully, that doesn't sound realistic. He didn't retaliate in 2017.

And it's probably not for business reasons either. Regardless of who the papers endorse or don't endorse they will continue their slide into irrelevancy. If all they wanted was money, it's a better business model to be explicitly left wing and then solicit donations like the Guardian.

The simplest explanation is that the owners want Trump to win. Getting the left-wing staff to endorse Trump is a bridge too far so they go with no endorsement.

He didn't retaliate in 2017.

He has more influence now than in 2017.

More influence how? If he wins, the swamp will kick into #resistance mode the next day after his win is announced. What exactly will he be able to do more than he was able to do in 2017 and why?

I agree. A lot of rich and powerful people realize that Trump is actually good for business because he can be easily persuaded by charismatic, successful, smart people who know how to flatter his ego and who treat him either as an equal or as a superior.

What’s the actual deal with ‘seed oils’?

Obviously a topic right now. Does RFK have a point about polyunsaturated fats?

Maybe, who knows. Saturated, unsaturated, polyunsaturated are only words. We'd have to listen to nutritionists to understand what they really mean. And nutritionists have not covered themselves in glory over the last sixty years. The experts have overseen the biggest public health disaster since smoking, they don't have a clue.

Just stick to the foods our ancestors ate, back when the very fat were circus attractions. Eat Fruit. Vegetables. Meat. Fish. Milk. Grains. Olive oil has been tried and tested for thousands of years, there's no reason to use canola oil (first used for cooking the 1970s).

Not breakfast cereals, not fast-food, not these syrupy Starbucks coffees, Coca-Cola, candy bars or jelly beans. At least not very often.

Similar to various so-called health influencer claims, I suspect the panic over seed oils is bullshit.

The claim is that omega-6 fatty acids in seed oils cause inflammation. There's a 2017 study that suggests there's no relation between systemic inflammation and linoleic acid (the typical source of omega 6 in seed oils.)

Some pundits, like the endocrinologist Robert Lustig, claim things like olive oil, when heated up enough, become transfats. This is, alas, bullshit, at least for the home cook, as olive oils would have to be heated to >200 C (about 390 F) for extended periods to have any effect. The typical temperature for deep frying may reach around 180 C, but not when sauteéing. And you'd have to be reheating the oil numerous times.

I'm not the biggest fan of Consumer Reports but here is an article suggesting the claims against seed oils are overblown.

I'm also not really comfortable with claims against so-called "processed" or "ultra-processed" food, as there's no widely accepted definition outside certain bubbles. All food really is processed--once you wash it, peel it, cut it, you're processing it. All of these things have different effects, and sometimes take away vitamins (see: washing your rice--a common, even culturally prescribed method of rice preparation in Japan--this rinses away some of the few nutrients contained in white rice) but it is not going to kill anyone. This may sound like a weasel-wording way around the term "processed" but like the push for "organic" or against "GMO" (both bullshit alarmist claims) I think the terror of processed foods is largely a storm in a teacup.

The basic knowledge we have about not eating tons of saturated fat (some is fine, just don't make it your whole diet) and eating plenty of fiber I think really covers the bases as far as a healthy diet goes. Most foods called "processed" (think things like apple juice) are essentially stripped of fiber even when it's in the original fruit. So eating lots of food that is high fat and low fiber, and doing this exclusively and all the time, is bad for you.

Sauteéng using canola oil or something, contrary to being bad for you, can actually be heart healthy.

This post appears to contradict a lot of others replying to you, which is one of the reasons I've tried to add sources (though you may not buy them, of course.)

Atleast a few studies on soybean oil implies that is has alot of effects, none of them good.

I personally try to keep them out of my diet. Your mileage may vary.

This is the best source I've found- https://dynomight.net/seed-oil/

In practice, avoiding seed oils is probably really good for you, because it forces you to eliminate most of the processed crap you shouldn’t be eating anyway.

seed oil theorists push a much stronger theory: that seed oils are the cause of Western disease. I’ll just be honest. I think this view is completely indefensible.

My real worry about seed oil theory is that it’s a distraction. If you want to be healthier, we know ways you can change your diet that will help: Increase your overall diet “quality”. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. Avoid processed food. Especially avoid processed meats. Eat food with low caloric density. Avoid added sugar. Avoid alcohol. Avoid processed food.

I know this is hard. You could even argue it’s unrealistic. That wouldn’t make it wrong.

I've reached a similar conclusion.

The sort of foods that cause high consumption of seed-oils, are the type of foods that you should avoid anyways; Seed oils or not. I personally love extra-virgin olive oil, because if can use a little and get a ton of flavor out of it. Kirkland brand EEVO is cheap enough.

So yeah. Olive oil for everything. Unless it is high-temp wok cooking, when Canola is permissible.

I try to limit my intake of olive oil simply due to how calorie dense it is, though I've been going back and forth over finding a good pre-made vinaigrette to go on my salad and just throwing my hands up and making my own from scratch.

You'd be surprised how many of said pre-made vinaigrettes use soybean oil, hence my annoyance.

When it comes to cooking, I typically prefer lard or butter.

Unless it is high-temp wok cooking, when Canola is permissible.

If you aren't sold either way on the theory that hexane-extracted oils are inherently unhealthy, but want to suspend judgement and act in an abundance of caution in this epistemic hellscape, there's always cold-pressed peanut or avocado oil, which have higher smokepoints anyway.

Yeah I feel like there’s enough evidence to warrant avoiding seed oils from a precautionary principle standpoint.

Since there are no real benefits to seed oils except for their low cost it’s an easy choice to avoid them whenever possible.

I don’t use them in home cooking because saturated fat tastes better. But where is the evidence that polyunsaturated fats are worse for you? Like there’s all sorts of claims about soy, and some of them are likely true, but it seems like disentangling polyunsaturated fats from phytoestrogens is beyond the ken of current knowledge. Where’s the evidence against canola oil(and no, it having once had an unfortunate name is not evidence) and cottonseed oil and the like?

I don't have the studies at my fingertips. I'm confident I could dig some up quickly because there is a large and active anti-PUFA community. But it's definitely not in my wheelhouse so I'd leave that to others who are more qualified.

Nevertheless, I see no benefit to eating foods which were created essentially de novo in the last 50 years and whose use has correlated highly with the rise in obesity. The processes for making safflower oil, for example, are completely foreign to anything granny would have done, and typically involve the use of industrial solvents (Hexane) and machinery.

Flip your question. Where are the studies proving that seed oils are healthy? Got a source for that?

When I have a choice, I'll try to avoid seed oils until they can be proved healthy. There is no downside if I'm wrong. People who eat lots of seed oils can't say the same.

It's possible there's some minor impact from eating particular foods, but I am generally an IIFYM guy when it comes to the big obesity/health stuff.

Seed oil consumption tracks obesity because it is used in so many processed foods. The majority of technical diets that major in the minors just track with "create a restriction that prevents you from eating at a convenience store or fast food restaurant;" this prevents most people from eating mindlessly and serves as an effective calorie stopper.

Seed oil consumption tracks obesity because it is used in so many processed foods.

What's bad about processed foods? Does the act of processing a food introduce sin into the food that causes obesity?

Talk of hyper-processed foods causing obesity seems very hand-wavy to me.

What, specifically, is causing the problem? Is it seed oils? Is it additives? Is it hyper-palatability (press D to doubt). Is it ease of use?

Of all those factors, I'd say seed oils feels like the most likely candidate, low confidence.

Yes, it's hyper-palatability. Processed stuff simply tastes better and can be eaten mindlessly. To eat an apple mindlessly you have to mindfully wash it, core it and slice it. You can't eat an orange mindlessly at all. You can eat apple- and orange-flavored candy mindlessly and it's much more calorie-dense.

Well, first of all, I think it works like all restrictions— it makes it hard to just eat anything without thinking about it, reading labels, etc. This is important because America is stuffed full of convenience foods and they’re available just about everywhere you go. If you can’t eat processed foods, or seed oils, then you’re not going to be able to buy chips at the gas station, go through the drive through, get a pizza at the grocery store, etc.

Second I think there is something to hyper-palatable foods being a reasonable hypothesis as most processed foods have more intense flavors than anything in nature. The cheesyist natural cheese is not as intense as something like Cheetos. The sweetest fruits pale in flavor intensity compared to fruit flavored candies.

Third, processed foods often remove the things that allow your systems to feel full for example engineering mouthfeel (https://agrilifetoday.tamu.edu/2023/11/07/mouthfeel-of-food-determines-whether-people-go-back-for-seconds/) to induce purchases. Now the article was about hamburgers, but mouthfeel is just one aspect of the engineering of food to induce people to eat it. Now, once your diet reaches a certain point with foods engineered both to induce eating, and to perhaps keep you from feeling full, becoming at least overweight is pretty much a done deal.

What's bad about processed foods? Does the act of processing a food introduce sin into the food that causes obesity?

Talk of hyper-processed foods causing obesity seems very hand-wavy to me.

I literally explained the proposed mechanism in the next sentence:

The majority of technical diets that major in the minors just track with "create a restriction that prevents you from eating at a convenience store or fast food restaurant;" this prevents most people from eating mindlessly and serves as an effective calorie stopper.

Most Americans/Westerners aren't getting fat off of home cooking, even though one can quite easily make high calorie foods at home. Most people are getting fat off of fast food, takeout, and grocery store junk food, not high calorie home cooking.

The sin being introduced is mindless availability of calories. I would bet that consumption of seed oils tracks obesity less closely than percentage of meals eaten outside the home.

Yes, it introduces "sins". To process food is to remove healthy, valuable parts and introduce cheap, unhealthy parts, even straight up waste that not even animals can live on.

Watch this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk

Can you summarize the video?

I pretty much already did.

Glad I didn't watch a 57 minute video that can be summarized in one sentence.

Lol this is rude but I love it because I really hate when people link long videos as if I’m gonna watch them.

He did ask what's bad about processed foods. The video answers the question. He can scan through it or ask an LLM if he doesn't want to watch it. Asking me for a summary is some lazy Gen Z behavior IMO...

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I'm definitely on board with this explanation. I'd also point to seed oils not tasting as good as the more expensive oils they replace leading to more artificial colours and flavours which jack with endocrine systems. But is it worse to cook your fried egg at home in vegetable oil than bacon grease?

But is it worse to cook your fried egg at home in vegetable oil than bacon grease?

I don't really know and I don't worry about it too much. I tend to go the bacon grease route, I rarely use vegetable oil at home. But I'm not going to ask what oil the recipe used when I eat at someone's home, and if I eat some junk occasionally I'm not going to sweat it.

Sensitivities vary, of course. Maybe there's an allergy response some people have.

What's wrong with the taste of seed oils? Aren't they supposed to be mostly neutral/tasteless cooking oils?

Yes, they’re largely neutral tasting. But saturated fats taste good(and have higher melting points changing the consistency of some food), so to replace them seed oil heavy food tends to have artificial crap added.

I think the science is undeveloped but seed oil consumption tracks obesity rates better than sugar consumption (which peaked in the US around 2010).

Is this distinguishable from CICO?

One of the theories is that seed oils are more calorically dense and cheaper than traditional alternatives, so they encourage more eating.

All fats have about nine calories per gram.

Soybean oil: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171411/nutrients

Olive oil: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171413/nutrients

Lard: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/171401/nutrients

Hoo boy. Don't want to go down that road. Some topics are too spicy even for this forum.

Can someone steelman US tariffs for me? Is there a way that tariffs (or more likely, the threat of tariffs) is a plausible economic policy?

Would you need a large market to be accessible for sales so that overall profit would outway the labor and regulatory costs in establishing production back in the US?

As someone who’s not particularly plugged into a tariff perspective either way, I will summarize what I took away from Trumps perspective on Rogan when talking about chips.

There are certain products we want more made of in America like chips and cars. Today we incentivize it with carrots and end up giving ridiculous subsidies to already rich companies, which further ruins organic domestic competition by picking winners and losers upfront. And it ends up not working to boot because it remains cheaper to produce overseas. So the companies do the minimum to get their subsidies or pull out halfway in leading to tremendous gov waste with little gain.

Since we’ve already agreed we want to market distort these products (I.e incentivize domestic production) tariffs apply a stick instead, making it more expensive to produce overseas to begin with. Thus the government doesn’t have to spend money, it in fact makes money during the transition, it doesn’t have to pick winners (all domestic producers can compete fairly), and it’s harder to cheat.

The other thing Trump mentioned was that this play can work because America is in a negotiating place of power, still very rich, but our advantage won’t last forever and a harsh tariff policy isn’t as effective if you can’t negotiate as well.

Without being able to judge the economic principles of all this, it sounds quite sensical to me, and to get a midwit like myself to disagree, I’ll need more from the other side than ‘experts disagree followed by theoretical jargon’.

I can’t make much in the way of an economic argument but it’s extremely obvious that Chinese have intentionally been using state support and dumping to strip and move entire industries from western countries to China. This has created a parasitic class of rich people in the west whose entire wealth comes from middle manning either the 1)importation of this production to the west or the 2)sale of western financial assets to China which are needed to sustain western trade deficits.

There is nothing organic and laissez faire about any of this. It’s very intentional and it has been very destructive for almost everyone involved. Western working classes are extremely wage suppressed and largely lost the discipline required for industrial production. Middle classes are corrupted into believing their laptop jobs (which usually simply supervise one of the two legs of this trade I mentioned above, or extract profits from it in some indirect way). Cheap credit due to massive Chinese demand for western financial products has destroyed any integrity and competency left in western political classes. Free money plugs every hole anyway so they just keep making disastrous decisions non-stop with no apparent consequences.

Large sections of the Chinese society seem to have benefited but overall it’s not good for humanity that economic “growth” comes from shifting labour and environment externalities around to world instead of technology. We only get richer if we have more robots. Substitution of one European worker and his advanced machinery earning 20x with 10 third worlders with no machinery earning 1x, is bad for humanity.

So I don’t know if tariffs are the right policy to stop this decay but it’s absurd to oppose them as an obvious wrong policy simply because they don’t fit in with some notion of free trade and markets invisible hand. None of this process is classic economics at all. It’s state policy and distortion all the way.

Western working classes aren’t really wage surprised outside of, to some extent, Germany and the Netherlands (which has much more to do with the euro than with China). Inequality is higher than the 1970s, but real incomes haven’t fallen significantly and productivity, while somewhat higher, has lagged asset price growth. Factory workers in Northern Europe are still paid very well, they’re often still in countries like Germany and Switzerland a kind of Marxian labor aristocracy. The working class suffering are those who work service jobs.

How do you figure that? I would suggest that due to immigration and the exportation of manufacturing to other countries, there’s an extremely hard ceiling on what the productive blue collar workers can hope to make — which is exactly the wages at which it becomes cheaper to either replace them with imported domestic workers (immigrants) or outsource the work to some other country. The ceiling seems to be around $16-18 for work that doesn’t require either apprenticeships or college. And this is despite any changes to COL. even in construction in the USA, you’re going to be seeing a lot of Mexicans putting on roofs and laying floors because they work dirt cheap.

Hahaha. Productive blue collar workers, even without apprenticeships or college, make more than that regularly.

The steelman is a combination of what @hydroacetylene has said coupled with the belief that the economic upsides of inceased wages and labor-force participation will offset the likely increase in import costs.

The steelman is that the US economy can sustain raising more revenue per the laffer curve and tariffs are unpopular among the PMC but not uniquely bad.

There is enormous economic efficiency in America because the super-wealthy have resources that they waste frivolously, when these resources would be better allocated to the lower-middle, middle, and upper-middle classes. These super wealthy people make money by selling people stuff made overseas. If you make them pay money to import their overseas stuff, they have two options: (1) reduce their profits and make their business more efficient; (2) attempt to raise the cost of their items. If they do (2), then things made in America can compete against them, which is great for all Americans but the super-wealthy, because your job’s wages are set according to the number of wage-competitive jobs available to you and your peers. Increasing the number of competitive middle class jobs increases all wages of the middle class, as well as the workers’ quality of life. Additionally, there’s a ceiling for the pricing of a lot of overseas items, because if a company like Nike prices them too high, fewer people will buy them and more will buy competitors. This means Nike, Nespresso, Shein, Temu, Alibaba, IKEA, and other sorts of businesses are not actually able to raise their prices in proportion to the tariff. Once their price is too high, people opt for a lower-cost competitor. Fast food is similar. We could tax the heck out of McDonald’s and they could never raise prices proportionately because once it reaches a certain high people will make their own food.

Be wary of talk about “economic efficiency”. If profits go to people who don’t need them then those profits don’t matter.

Actually, even increasing competition of lower class jobs will increase middle class wages

Except that in practice the middle class cares about purchasing power, not paper wages.

I am alleging that this will increase purchasing power.

For overall purchasing power, it might go either way. But what I can say for certain is that it will significantly reduce purchasing power of cheap consumer goods, the kind of crap you buy from Shein, Temu and AliExpress. Stuff that will never ever be made again in the US.

And if you look around the house of a lower middle class person, it's often really all they have.

(2) attempt to raise the cost of their items. If they do (2), then things made in America can compete against them, which is great for all Americans but the super-wealthy, because your job’s wages are set according to the number of wage-competitive jobs available to you and your peers.

But there is a floor on the price of American-made competitor goods due to the much higher cost of labor. Therefore, at least up to that floor, aren't American consumers (largely the middle class) just paying more for goods?

I think so, yes, you need the tariff to be so high that it promotes American industry. Otherwise it depends what you do with the tariff revenue. If everyone pays the tariff but the revenue goes to the middle class, then it’s just a tax on wealthy people really.

Then doesn't this turn into what is essentially an effective consumption tax, which is generally considered one of the most regressive forms of taxation, since percentage of income that goes to consumption is negatively correlated with income? Even worse, imported goods are more likely to be the kinds of goods that the average family spends most of their money on: appliances, groceries, cars, electronics, etc. The excess consumption of the wealthy is largely in the form of luxury services (personal cleaners, drivers, chefs, accountants, lawyers, etc.) or housing, which would be far less affected by tariffs, if at all.

My other concern is that the floor due to higher American wages may in fact be higher that the ceiling you talk about, where most people are just unwilling/unable to buy that good any more.

Which option are you talking about? I do not support a tariff where the revenue doesn’t go to those who have more use for the money. I don’t know the fine print of Trump’s “replace income tax with tariff plan”, but we can imagine a policy where the revenue of a tariff disproportionately benefits the lower through middle classes. Well, if everyone pays the tariff, and if wealthy people pay slightly more of the tariff because they import somewhat more goods, but if all the revenue goes to the lower and middle class, then the lower and middle class wind up having more money at the end of the day, implying that price increases pass on to all consumers equally and no American industry develops.

Unless I’m misreading you, then this doesn’t have to do with % income spent on tariff at all, so it’s simply a case of imported red herring to talk about % of income going to the tariff. Everyone pays tariff, and that total money goes to lower/middle class. I would support that. If that is what you were asking.

But the policy I support is a tariff so high that American industry develops. This has all the benefits of the aforementioned with one key difference: we now see wages rise because there is more middle class employment opportunity and employers must pay more to recruit workers.

The excess consumption of the wealthy is largely in the form of luxury services (personal cleaners, drivers, chefs, accountants, lawyers, etc.) or housing

Sadly it’s also in wasteful vacations, multiple cars, rolexes, foreign alcohol, cocaine, ayuahuasca retreats, multiple homes, homes that are too big, private jets and yachts, superfluous degrees. If we apply pressure on their finances they are likely to keep the stuff from your list but get rid of the truly crazy amount of inefficient resource waste from my list.

where most people are just unwilling/unable to buy that good any more

Before that happens the profit margin would evaporate, with the businesses owned by billionaires forced to cut into their profit margin.

How do you picture this money "going back to the middle class?"

Tax deduction or credit to those earning less than 160k a year. Why not? I understand this is functionally just redistribution from wealthy to less, but if you call it a tariff more people will be supportive than “we are literally going to redistribute money now”. It has a nice conservative tinge. But also, this isn’t my steel-man of tariffs per the OP.

I just have strong priors against "government gets all the money then moves it around" so I wanted to clarify.

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What do you mean by “plausible?”

Tariffs are a way to incentivize something other than pure efficiency. Pay more, but get it made at home. The question is how much more, and what you’re getting instead. In a great-power conflict, that’s supposed to be security.

Trump’s narrative, where bringing manufacturing back home will make it better overall, probably isn’t going to pan out.

Sure! I think I actually believe this argument to some extent as well.

Redistributive taxes and tariffs both reduce societal wealth and also reduce inequality.

But redistribution poisons the well of social discourse and creates a class of “useless” people who rely on the government for payouts. The share of Americans receiving some sort of welfare payment has never been higher.

Furthermore free trade results in the hollowing out of many industries, resulting in permanent societal skill loss, depopulation and brain drain from affected regions, and dependence on China.

And the downsides of tariffs from a US perspective are overrated. Other countries may eat much of the cost because the US has by far the most lucrative export market. We have huge trade deficits so a trade war will hurt other countries more than us.

To achieve our goal of maximum growth with the least inequality and other negative effects, it would make sense to reduce redistributive taxes and increase tariffs.

This is a good response and I'll add one more thing. Tariffs reduce the amount of stuff being produced because it costs more to produce it. If the price of raw materials doubles people are more thoughtful about what they produce. A lot of what gets produced just ends up in a landfill after x years. Maybe it is good for the planet if the world produces less trinkets that ultimately end up in the trash.

Aren't a huge percentage of greenhouse gases due to shipping? If you make more things closer to where they're meant to end up, there's likely an environmentalist appeal somewhere there as well.

The entire transport sector is 20% of CO2 emissions. But ocean shipping is only around 3%. Ships are incredibly efficient.

No, I don't think so. International shipping is very efficient. IIRC, it uses less carbon to ship something from Shanghai to NYC then it does from Chicago to NYC.

Perhaps you were thinking of the "pollution from one container ship = 1 million cars" meme that went around a few years ago. That was referring to sulphur emissions which are not a greenhouse gas and actually reduce global temperature.

Any suggestions for how to do spin bike sessions properly. I tried hiit sprints and that was a disaster as my foot would slip from the bike at super high pace, I can't use it like an assault bike and want to do something for my heart on days I don't work out. I do hope I find a better gym soon with an airdyne, till then, this is all I got

Do you have no ability to increase resistance?

I don't see the value in cadence over 110, and even that's questionable. I tend to play exclusively in the 60-100 space. Saddle positioning can help. Many people have the saddle too low, fewer have it too high, and fewer have it just right. That will help you get to higher cadences.

Do you own the cycle? Do you plan to cycle outside? If so it may be worth investing in clipless pedals and cleats you can use on multiple machines.

If you can't increase resistance then there's no magical technique to get better besides practice, and I don't know what value you'd get out of spinning out at no resistance all the time.

This sounds super weird to me. I did entry-level competitive cycling on a college team for a few years, and have never heard of that being a problem for anybody. Even with plain flat pedals and ordinary shoes, your foot shouldn't ever slip off. Maybe you're trying to pedal way too fast or have some kind of weird foot motion or position or something. The axis of your toes on your foot should be roughly directly above the axis the pedal rotates on.

Pedals with straps to hold your foot on are indeed a thing, as are various types of "clipless" systems where your shoes lock in and only come out with a specific twisting motion, but they're only really beneficial for allowing you to exert force on the pedals on the upward stroke. If your foot is coming off the pedals, you should fix whatever issue is causing that before you do an equipment change.

My feet come off only when I try to go 100 per cent, so the bike works if I am going slower than 90 per cent. thanks for the pointer about the toes btw. Any suggestions on how many minutes or what intensity I should use it for?

What do you mean by "going 100 per cent"? Are you just pedaling very fast? The exact ideal pedaling cadence varies between individuals, but you should probably be in the ballpark of 90rpm max, no matter how hard you're working. On an actual bicycle on the road, you use your gears to keep your pedaling in the range you're most comfortable while going faster and exerting more force. On a stationary trainer, you should be able to increase the resistance to get the workout you want without pedaling excessively fast. If your trainer can't increase the resistance enough to put you at the effort level you want without pedaling way too fast, then that is an equipment problem that needs fixing.

You might want to try and find a spin class at a proper gym to try, at least once, just to see how you compare to everyone else and get some input on what's really wrong.

Suggestions for how to do interval training and times and intensities aren't really something I know enough about to give advice on. It probably depends a lot on exactly what your goals are - general cardio performance versus actually being competitive at some particular type of racing.

Being able to spin fast without spazzing out is a learnable skill especially on flat pedals, one-leg drills and so on, but outside of some fairly specific applications I endorse all this.

For the viewing amusement of the board, here's a trackie hitting some high revs on rollers: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ZiVa0zTRHJk&pp=ygUOMjUwcnBtIHJvbGxlcnM%3D

What sort of spin bike are you using? There is a reason serious cyclists (both mountain and road) use "clipless" pedals. The name is historical: it refers to cycling shoes with a cleat that locks firmly into the pedals. For very maximal force efforts, track cyclists then often add straps ("clips") even now.

I've seen spin bikes with the hardware to optionally connect to cleats (usually Shimano SPD mountain bike cleats) on pedals that can also be used with regular shoes. But sometimes they just have flat pedals.

There is probably also something to be said for good technique. Are you having trouble at high cadences/efforts specifically or more broadly?

A cheap one without any ways of seeing how fast I'm going or any metrics. It has flat pedals without anything holding my foot back like straps.

So I figured that just doing 30 minutes at 70 percent of what I can do would be a start, maybe 40 if 70 is too much.

The seat is fucked too as not super ergonomic but I just want to get my heart rate up. It's safer than running.

There is probably also something to be said for good technique. Are you having trouble at high cadences/efforts specifically or more broadly?

I'll say this: I thought the idea of technique on a stationary bike was silly coming from much more technical exercises, but it takes time to get the rhythm right.


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