Link. It takes extreme exercise.
Author Archives: jgordon
“Alan Greenspan wrote a book lauding ingenious new derivative securities that would spread risk to those most willing to take it and lower the cost of mortgages and other borrowing to the rest of us. This would usher in a new era of economic growth and pr
Link. 2007. Forgot he’d done that.
Persian-American scientist: “he placed seventh out of 1.3 million”
Link. Work-life balance isn’t for everyone. His compulsion is a win for science.
Oil and Gas against humanity: “Among the climate provisions that are likely to be left out of the plan is an effort to dismantle billions of dollars in fossil-fuel tax breaks.”
Link. Immense amoral power. Successful with barely any effort.
China’s Latest History: “Traumatic times like famine and purges will fall further into a soft-focus background — acknowledged but not elaborated.”
Link. Reminds me of my 7th grade World History text. (Quebec, 1971, written and published by pre-Vatican II church.)
75 million years ago the Earth burned.
Link. We don’t know why but Oxygen levels fluctuated quite a bit.
Cry socialism: roots of the GOP’s perennial panic.
Link. Hah. They should be glad I am not the Tyrant.
“Mike Elk, a labor reporter and founder of paydayreport.com, has compiled a database of 1,600 walkouts since March 2020 that included as many as 100,000 workers.”
Link. An system of semi-stable local minima has a disruptive jolt.
Cancer therapy changing: less chemotherapy.
Link. Rise in alternative treatments and genetic testing to target therapy — but also a recognition that sometimes there’s no treatment and chemo would be pointless.
“obese people typically lower their risks of heart disease and premature death far more by gaining fitness than by dropping weight or dieting.”
Link. 30% reduction with exercise alone, 16% reduction with diet alone.
Conventional wisdom is you can’t lose weight by exercise. I don’t agree, but it takes far more exercise than most can imagine.
Bots for hacking accounts by obtaining 2FA codes.
Link. Fully automated so performs at scale.
Using Apple Locator devices (AirTags) with an older iPhone
Link. It wasn’t obvious they’d work with my i8.
Orthodox C++
Link. 90s OOP, in retrospect, reminds me 1980s renal physiology.
Refurbished used bikes, supposedly from sponsored riders.
Link. COVID prices now.
“It’s believed that the Fabric of the original M1 probably contains as many as a dozen of these ARM cores.”
Link. I learned more than one new thing.
“Around 60% of people with South Asian ancestry carry the high-risk version of the gene”
Link. Doubles COVID bad outcome risks.
University of Florida President Caves.
Link. He unleashed the hellfire. Sucks for DeSantis.
750-Mile Bicycle Route in New York.
Link. Not everything is terrible. But avoid “80 miles in the Adirondacks between Whitehall and Keeseville”
“loophole in federal regulations that allowed flavors to be sold in disposable e-cigarettes while banning them in the pods”
Link. Doesn’t say how this happened or why it has not been fixed.
California tries to improve math education.
Link. Some parts won’t work, but I’m good with dumping calculus. I don’t think stats and probability is easier though!
“employers keep managing to find people to take jobs.”
Link. But paying more. Wages seem to be finding a new equilibrium state. Lots of adjusting ahead.
Neeva search engine: “revenue would come from subscribers, rather than advertisers.”
Link. $5/mo for individual or family? Fallows shows how bad Google search has gotten. Neeva notifications are ads though.
“When there’s a significant memory leak in an app, your Mac will eventually be forced to use swap space, and that’s another tell-tale sign of a leak.”
Link. Great tutorial. I restart my machines reasonably frequently. Old habit.
“Paxlovid, cut the risk of hospitalization or death by 89 percent when given within three days after the start of symptoms.”
Link. Will want starter dose at home next to the Binax.
“single amino acid change found in Delta’s nucleocapsid protein supercharged the particles with 10 times more mRNA compared with the original virus”
Link. Why Delta spreads so quickly. Also, Lucifer’s ase!
“A flood of antislavery fanaticism and sectional hatred, Davis declaimed, had opened a “moral crevasse” that endangered America’s very foundations.”
Link. Great essay.
Virginia. “Chaplain Garland H. White, 28th USCI, Richmond, Virginia, “
Link. TNC in his glory days.
Old school WiFi sync can drain iPhone battery.
Link. Sounds like iOS 15 bug. Few use WiFi sync now.
“After South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond (who had fathered a biracial daughter he kept secret) engaged in the longest filibuster in U.S. history to stop the bill, Congress passed it on a bipartisan basis.”
Link. A short essential history of post civil war Black voting.
Semaglutide and the promise and troubles of obesity meds.
Link. Like BP or lipid meds these are lifelong. So price has to fall a lot. Eventually billions will take better versions of these meds.
“no significant link between the risk of developing knee osteoarthritis and either the amount of exercise done regularly or the time spent exercising”
Link. Other studies find reduced joint disease with exercise. OA is *not* “wear and tear”.
“Reagan is generally remembered as the Great Deregulator. Really, it was Carter.”
Link. Great corrections.
“Seventeen percent of 65-year-olds will need no long-term care. Almost one-quarter will develop severe needs”
Link. Insurance is made for this but we haven’t figured out how to do it. My personal plan is dead by 85.
Deep brain stimulation for depression: “ventral striatum, involved in emotion, motivation and reward, where stimulation “consistently eliminated her feelings of depression,”
Link. Relieving a living hell.
Stem cells in old follicles: “changed their shapes from round to amoeba-like and squeezed out of tiny holes in the follicle. Then they recovered their normal shapes and darted away.”
Link. Consumed by immune system?
“Was Mao’s son, Mao Anying, killed by an American airstrike during the Korean War because he lit a stove to make fried rice?”
Link. Putin is passé, Xi will be next GOP idol.
Whack celebrity hospitalized with COVID “On Monday afternoon, she said on Twitter: “Fact Check: I have NEVER said I am anti-vax.””
Link. I prefer the crackpots who keep their convictions to the end.
The Inside of the Cell. “automatically labeling major cell structures and producing a three-dimensional picture of the cellular environment”
Link. Fantastic science.
Shortcuts the programming language.
Link. We needed another superficially accessible, fundamentally cryptic, and inevitably incomplete scripting language.
“many people over 65 with a low estimated G.F.R. and no elevated protein in their urine did not have increased health risks.”
Link. The guidelines for renal insufficiency are weird and likely way off base. The protein measurement bit is interesting.
MacOS Wallpapers
Link. I downloaded several.
“Eastman argued that the delay in debate caused by the insurrection meant that Congress had run out of time to count the certified votes,”
Link. Starting to look like a major player.
“risk of dying was about 50 percent lower among the patients who had been instructed to monitor their oxygen at home”
Link. Wow. That’s a huge effect. Underutilized?
COVID toes: “most of the patients tested negative for coronavirus.”
Link. Negative PCR! Extreme immune reaction.
Four mRNA flu vaccines in trial.
Link. Years from use unless we get another 1918. Combo vaccines further yet.
“ an officer’s chances of being killed at any vehicle stop are less than 1 in 3.6 million”
Link. They do a lot of traffic stops, so cumulative yearly death risk is much higher.
Jury of military officers condemns Bush-Cheney directed torture of al Qaeda fighter: “the treatment of Mr. Khan in the hands of U.S. personnel should be a source of shame for the U.S. government.”
Link. Milestone on our hell ride.
How we fixed broken democracy in 1900: “less turnout, less participation, less of a voice for working people”
Link. Trump’s genius was engaging the non-college majority.
“$1 million that the town of about 870 people collects each year from traffic cases
Link. Police function in a broken system. “you are required to write a minimum of two tickets per hour while on grant time and there is zero tolerance.”
Inflation of low quality.
Link. I complained about this in the 00s — with poor quality Chinese products. For a while that got somewhat better.