So many memories… Thanks !

Wikipedia defines snack as a small portion of food that is eaten between meals. The way I think about it, that is the only distinction between a meal and a snack. That “in between meals”.

This, as far as weight goes, carries with it an inherent quality that makes regulating weight harder. If not impossible, depending on your sleep patterns (the etymology of the term breakfast indicates exactly how this is relevant to what I am saying here). It’s nearly impossible to find snacks that have zero insulin response in your body. Insulin not only promotes energy storage, but it also prevents the body from using energy already stored. Making a habit of doing that, even when you don’t face weight problems (which are related to health issues), is essentially making a habit of preventing your metabolism of using energy already stored from previous meals.

This is also probably the most important reason why people speak highly of intermittent fasting or low carb diets. Most of them, through these two approaches, regardless of the other positive/negative aspects, completely eliminate the habit of constantly spiking their insulin levels, effectively allowing the body to regulate energy levels through both the energy still available from a meal and the energy stored from previous meals.

I agree with the sentiment.

Especially in the case of video rental stores… Entering a space blasting concord dawn & massive attack after Pi was released. Having to discuss, sometimes literally for hours, movies I 've watched with an actual filmmaker that was working the shop like they owned it. Witnessing an absolutely androgynous person pushing back through art in a place where bigotry was unquestionably the norm being respected by everyone entering the space. Trading music (in the form of CDs or even worse cassette tapes). Even arguing about the worth of certain filmmakers, which sometimes even resulted in the obligatory (free) viewing of a film in much cared for private space built just for this purpose. Let alone actually making friends through this process. Actually having a person knowing my taste and instead of browsing endlessly I would just have to say a few words about my mood and I would get a new movie to watch (actually in VHS). I mean who wouldn’t hate all that. Thankfully digitalization and broadband first, then Netflix and the like, came along and rescued me and many other inefficient people from all this drudgery. Fortunately we are not going back.

Also, thankfully, younger people won’t have to go through such shit. The get a more efficient social life, without a doubt.

The television went from being a babysitter to a mistress

Technology made it easy for us to stay in touch while keeping a distance

Til we just stayed distant and never touched

Now all we do is text too much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8hzUDXvtk

As someone who grew up with a (quite) younger sibling in the most disabling end of the spectrum, witnessing all the development from infancy to adulthood, I am very reluctant to recommend for/against any specific approach, because I think that what matters most is the people who actually practice it. So, I absolutely agree with the last sentence of your comment.

The negative aspects of ABA are not entirely in the past. I am not in a position to verify the information I will quote, but this is mentioned in the third of the linked articles:

Mandell says ABA needs to renounce that history — especially the early reliance on punishments like yelling, hitting, and most controversially electroshocks, which are still used in a notorious residential school in Massachusetts called the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center.

To be clear: I am not arguing with your experience here. Rather, I am pointing out how important is the kind of practice of whatever theory and what the focus of the practice actually is. It’s really very difficult to find professionals who are actually both able and willing to care properly for autistic people. At least in the place I live.

Beyond that, I have to say that there are many things that now have positive effects on people’s lives that weren’t exactly positive in their original forms.

At least, not at first. As the scandal heated up, EFF took an impassive stance. In a blog post, an EFF staffer named Donna Wentworth acknowledged that a contentious debate was brewing around Google’s new email service. But Wentworth took an optimistic wait-and-see attitude—and counseled EFF’s supporters to go and do likewise. “We’re still figuring that out,” she wrote of the privacy question, conceding that Google’s plans are “raising concerns about privacy” in some quarters. But mostly, she downplayed the issue, offering a “reassuring quote” from a Google executive about how the company wouldn’t keep record of keywords that appeared in emails. Keywords? That seemed very much like a moot point, given that the company had the entire emails in their possession and, according to the contract required to sign up, could do whatever it wanted with the information those emails contained. EFF continued to talk down the scandal and praised Google for being responsive to its critics, but the issue continued to snowball. A few weeks after Gmail’s official launch, California State Senator Liz Figueroa, whose district spanned a chunk of Silicon Valley, drafted a law aimed directly at Google’s emerging surveillance-based advertising business. Figueroa’s bill would have prohibited email providers like Google from reading or otherwise analyzing people’s emails for targeted ads unless they received affirmative opt-in consent from all parties involved in the conversation—a difficult-to-impossible requirement that would have effectively nipped Gmail’s business model in the bud. “Telling people that their most intimate and private email thoughts to doctors, friends, lovers, and family members are just another direct marketing commodity isn’t the way to promote e-commerce,” Figueroa explained. “At minimum, before someone’s most intimate and private thoughts are converted into a direct marketing opportunity for Google, Google should get everyone’s informed consent.”

Google saw Figueroa’s bill as a direct threat. If it passed, it would set a precedent and perhaps launch a nationwide trend to regulate other parts of the company’s growing for-profit surveillance business model. So Google did what any other huge company caught in the crosshairs of a prospective regulatory crusade does in our political system: it mounted a furious and sleazy public relations counteroffensive.

Google’s senior executives may have been fond of repeating the company’s now quaint-sounding “Don’t Be Evil” slogan, but in legislative terms, they were making evil a cottage industry. First, they assembled a team of lobbyists to influence the media and put pressure on Figueroa. Sergey Brin paid her a personal visit. Google even called in the nation’s uber-wonk, Al Gore, who had signed on as one of the company’s shadow advisers. Like some kind of cyber-age mafia don, Gore called Figueroa in for a private meeting in his suite at the San Francisco Ritz Carlton to talk some sense into her.

And here’s where EFF showed its true colors. The group published a string of blog posts and communiqués that attacked Figueroa and her bill, painting her staff as ignorant and out of their depth. Leading the publicity charge was Wentworth, who, as it turned out, would jump ship the following year for a “strategic communications” position at Google. She called the proposed legislation “poorly conceived” and “anti-Gmail” (apparently already a self-evident epithet in EFF circles). She also trotted out an influential roster of EFF experts who argued that regulating Google wouldn’t remedy privacy issues online. What was really needed, these tech savants insisted, was a renewed initiative to strengthen and pass laws that restricted the government from spying on us. In other words, EFF had no problem with corporate surveillance: companies like Google were our friends and protectors. The government—that was the bad hombre here. Focus on it.

I don’t know whether it is illegal for someone to open a letter addressed to you or not, in the country you live, but this is pretty important. If the information presented here is accurate, this is not simply EFF focusing on the government, its EFF actively resisting similar rules to be applied on e-mail as those applied on regular mail. Would anyone use any of the non-electronic mail service providers or courier services if it was a given that for each piece of mail sent, there would be exactly one open and read, shared with multiple other parties besides the sender and receiver?

It seems to me that this is the whole point of this (quite long, but interesting) article and this instance probably illustrates it better than any other chosen to discuss in the article.

So what is it with Anakin’s picture? Javascript is the dark side of the, web development, force? XD

Seriously tho, valid points.

Hey have you ever been to https://www.neocities.org? It’s reminiscent of geocities and kind of cool.

No, haven’t even realised that Sheldon Brown’s site was hosted there. I used to have a website up on geocities when I was a kid, browsing neocities brings back so many happy memories… Thanks!

Sorry if I sounded disagreeable, I didn’t mean to be. I was just taking a trip down memory lane.

No worries. Felt exactly like that. That’s why my mind went to how I felt when altavista’s babelfish appeared, I did the same thing for a few minutes before responding :-)

Well, I guess not everyone had the same experience. Maybe I should have spoken only for myself. It’s not that I didn’t use search engines before google appeared or that I don’t do it now. Just the fact, at least in my experience, that I would get to know way more and way better web locations, related to what interested me, through discussions with other people with similar interests, than I would through search engines. Even when discussions are not possible (like in magazines) or are too massive to follow, it is often, especially in technology-related subjects, preferable to have them archived (through subscriptions) and search directly those archives when I need something specific. It was true for me back when engines didn’t have as good indexes, it is true for me now that their role as businesses is becoming obvious. I guess it also depends on what someone considers interesting.

I did love how altavista translation service was called though, really liked the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy :-)

There was a time before google’s search engine, when all the previous attempts had not managed to become the dominant entry point for the web. During that time, we would find interesting web pages through people and/or specific interests. Then, google came, and for a time it was good (read like The Second Renaissance Part I story from animatrix). Ads and SEO were not everywhere yet, content mattered more than those two. So, while I came here to suggest what @bbbhltz@beehaw.org commented, when I read your post text I thought that maybe, at least for what we tend to constantly look for news, articles and discussions, we shouldn’t constantly rely on search engines. For example, most technologies have news letters, weekly/monthly magazines, mailing lists, community boards or other forms of group communication through which you can gradually discover better content sources (individuals or groups) on what interests you. Without the search engine service and its cost (direct or indirect) between you and the content.

Believe it or not, what you swallow has almost nothing to do with your weight. The only place the body absorbs energy from food is in the intestines, and the brain controls that process.

I would believe it if I started gaining weight by just breathing. Also, no. Not the only place. Part of the alcohol consumed is absorbed through the stomach.

The digestive tract is a tube, open at both ends, through which food passes. The process of extracting energy from that food is complex and highly tunable: the brain controls the production and secretion of hundreds of enzymes and other chemicals, as well as the physical action of the muscles lining the tube.

The brain controls pretty much everything, and this everything is highly tunable. I mean, how else would well adjusted people adapt to the highly complex lives they live as adults? With commercial pills?

I never tried to limit the fat too much, for various reasons. Always considered it important for hormones. Also, it is nearly impossible to cook real food without using some kind of fat. Then, I always enjoyed nuts. Whenever I wanted to lower my bodyfat, I always tried to limit carbohydrates, which, again, I don’t really want to lower too much because getting them from unprocessed plant foods is actually a side effect in the attempt to get sufficient quantities of micronutrients.

Never thought about gallstones before this article. It also contains a very nice explanation of how fats are usually categorized. Also, the point about fat soluble vitamins (some of which we store in our own bodyfat) is very interesting to remember when considering deficiencies. Really worth the read, even though it doesn’t provide definitive answers on anything (which would actually be suspicious if it did), it contains some very important points one has to consider when thinking about food and quantities.

Btw, since I enjoy a lot of cycling the past few years, I think it doesn’t really make sense to consider competitive (especially elite) athletes as an example of healthy individuals. I mean, some of the top cyclists drop to insanely low single digit bodyfat percentages for the competitions they participate in. Which is neither sustainable nor healthy.

Anyway, that was a very interesting article, thanks!

which is once again improved with the addition of body language and further complexity which comes via video.

Maybe it’s just me, but, I 've never felt that video calls add the body language element that in person communication has. I mean, I get a very different feeling (and my facial expressions, are different because of that) when looking directly at the camera than the one I get when making eye contact with the other person. Doesn’t this mean that you actually add an altered body language to the interaction?

Or is this something included in what you meant with “further complexity”? Not sure what you were referring to there.

also, on a personal note, it sucks how difficult it is to get clean, environmentally friendly protein and fat that doesn’t have milk or soy in it. as someone who does keto, there’s basically no brand out there who does meat substitutes right except for Beyond, which is free of allergens (although i’m sure there are a few people who are allergic to pea protein out there) and doesn’t add a bunch of carbs

It’s sad to have issues with soy :-/ I really love tofu.

I’ve been on keto in the past (for a year or so), mostly as an experiment to test various aspects of it and I learned a lot of things about how insulin and glycogen works (I am a complete nerd on food among other things XD). At some point I re-introduced carbs and started relying heavily on plant based food sources (and what a relief it was to stop worrying about getting out of ketosis when eating plant based foods). But avoiding to spike my insulin levels and avoiding the excessive heights stayed with me as a good thing. So, I try to spike my insulin before or after emptying my muscle glycogen (long bike rides or runs) and avoid spiking it in the last meal of the day, where what I eat can be considered keto. Coconut oil, olive oil are my preferred fats, a few veggies, and a protein source like seitan/tofu/tempeh in a stir fry.

Nuts & seeds are also heavy on protein and fats (but need more care on keto because most of them contain a few carbs too) and really very rich in most of the other nutrients too.

Anyways, I started typing because I wanted to tell you that you might find seitan a good option in order to limit or replace whey. You can prepare it in many different ways (really a matter of taste and variety) and keep it both low on carbs and easily accessible when you are hungry. I usually make a small loaf (remains okay for 5 days -probably even more- or so in the fridge), cooked (so that I can just toss it in a salad if I don’t want to stir fry), and like 3-4 portions of around 30grams of protein. Easy, lazy, tasty, cheap dinner :-)

So, the rock is the guy that carries muscle mass 7 - 10 times what normally fits his frame because of steroids supporting it instead of his gonads, right? Obvious answer then is -no. Not unless you are blasting all kinds of PED.

I am no expert by any means, but my experience (in decades of sports and experimentation) is really close to a study I 've seen in the past, that proposed 0,8 to 1,6-2 grams per kg of bodyweight. I go for the upper limit when I increase activity (especially strength related, instead of endurance), I go for the lower limit when I decrease activity. Been healthy and strong during all this time.

As for food I try to find the least amount possible my body needs to process (why overload my vital organs? is there a good reason?) in order to support my lifestyle (active, and heavy on sports). Going for the most amount possible without a good reason, I consider greedy and harmful for both the environment and the rest of the people. Resources are not limitless.

As for the expensive part, protein exists in cheaper foods too, not everyone relies heavily (or at all) on animal products. Simple (cheap, especially if you prepare them yourself) examples: legumes & beans, seitan, tofu (and all kinds of tofu related products), tempeh. Especially legumes & beans are incredibly rich in most of the other important nutrients too. One might consider vital wheat gluten a protein powder (almost 80grams of protein in 100grams total), even though its lacking a bit in the amino-acids that legumes/beans are full of, comparing the price it has with an actual protein supplement makes it pretty clear what overpriced means.

Great topic! Looks like a very fun book to read too. So do the Sapiens books mentioned in the article. Nice.

In this scenario, “Bob” is a hypothetical guy who believes that a woman has cut in front of him in line at the supermarket checkout. He and the woman get into a brief shouting match before she informs Bob that she’d just ducked out of her spot in the line to replace a carton of eggs that turned out to be cracked. He apologizes, and that’s the end of it—except someone recorded the incident on their smartphone, then uploaded only the shouting match, reading all kinds of deplorable motives into it. “The video need only include a hint of cultural asymmetry,” Rose-Stockwell writes:

It may be seen as an angry outburst by a man (Bob) toward a woman (the other shopper). Or a Democrat (Bob) toward a Republican (the lady). Or any heightened reflection of their implied group identity. It can be repackaged as an example of a troubling trend in society. People who feel this way who see the clip now have an opportunity to explain exactly why it’s offensive. They can link it to a larger narrative that may have nothing to do with the actual event itself.

That outrage is often stoked by journalists, who, Rose-Stockwell notes, “are shockingly susceptible to reporting on this kind of thing,” furthering what he calls “trigger chains: cascades of outrage that are divorced from the original event.”

This is so common… And not only with incidents where a part of them can be taken out of context and used to evoke emotional response related to rage.

Elon Musk tweeted on his official account on Sunday that Twitter would be changing its logo to an “X”

Am I the only one that thought of house Bolton ?