balnaphone

With a bit of an imaginative stretch, this advise appears to hold for natural languages, also.

Use a medication tracker on your phone, for alerts that are distinct from alarms/meetings, and are easy to setup with a label for multiple times per day. Also, "The Power of Habit" by Charles Duhigg, does give a good intellectual basis for resetting habits.

This post does bring a bit of comedy into reality...

Jeff Goldblum in Annie Hall (1977) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nYElwd1mNM

This is common nomenclature to enhance readability in fields that have a large number of neologisms and proper nouns, such as some technical domains, medicine, investment banking, and so on. It's particularly useful when names are in the same language as the base language (e.g. in English "Peter" is easily recognized as a name, but "better fish" means something in the language, but can also be used as a proper noun, so using italics for proper nouns serves to disambiguate the intended meaning).

I went to university at 14 to study math, no problems. I had a good experience. I wish I went earlier, because years are worth more when you're young. The university environment was far superior, both socially and academically.

Note for Brits and Canadians: "house-ton" is not how you pronounce Houston St in New York, it's "how-stun" (IPA /ˈhaʊstən/). In constrast, Houston TX sounds like "hew-stun" run together (IPA /ˈhjuːstən/).

> As we go on you reference Fung (and defend him) a fair bit

I defend Jason Fung because he's one of the few in this area of science and medicine who has gone to the trouble of writing books that ordinary people can understand, and yet still have some scientific rigor. I could cite innumerable scientific papers that very few have the training to read, or the one author who took the time to write something anyone literate can at least follow along with.

There are hundreds if not thousands of researchers and practitioners in this area, so it is convenient to point to someone that anybody literate can read and rely on. His books (several of them overlap greatly) cite hundreds of papers, so that work mostly a compilation of other's work (as it should be).

> He does not hold (to my knowledge) a PhD nor has he published any peer-reviewed studies.

From his books there are some references to his published scientific work on fasting, diabetes, CKD, and so on. See also https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+intermittent... , https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+diabetes , https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+ckd , and https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=jason+fung+pcos for examples.

I'm not sure what a PhD has to do with anything, most of my scientific work was published before I got mine, or even started it, as is common in industry and applied sciences.

> That being said - the link you provided on FFA is about cholesterol. I fail to see how that's relevant to discussion about FFA impact on insulin resistance?

I'm sorry you don't see the connection regarding FFA, perhaps you can re-read what he wrote and click through to the underlying reference to get a better idea (the title is "Fat Oxidation, Body Composition and Insulin Sensitivity in Diabetic and Normoglycaemic Obese Adults 5 Years After Weight Loss"). I couldn't find the text of Fung's book online, but the other paper he references in this connection is "The role of fatty acids in insulin resistance" (2015) which I did find online, here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4587882/ .

> Alas, to make my point. Obesity is certainly a multifaceted problem. Thermodynamics certainly matter, human psyche, inflammation, hormones - essentially all of that has its place. Looking from a systems point of view there's no reason (and probably there isn't one) to look for single causative agent though some certainly play a grater role. In my experience both time-restricted feeding, caloric restriction and macro restriction work and have their place depending on the individual. Generally as a rule IF and low-carb are certainly good ideas, I'm not a fan of keto for everything.

I agree in general. I think IF is fine, I'm favor of balanced diets not very low or high in anything in general, and I believe without regular blood work and expert supervision, keto is downright dangerous for most. Thermodynamics are present, true, but this is in practice perhaps not the most helpful perspective, since things like willpower, hunger, and sustainably maintaining a healthy diet matter more; the thermodynamic perspective fails to model the feedback control system that regulates the human behavior component. Nonetheless, I agree with the overall thrust of your comment.

Best regards, and thank you for the conversation!

> No point in focusing on hormones so much. I somehow don't see people fretting over their ACTH or progesterone.

I respectfully disagree. When I go to USA or Mexico in particular, the frequency of obesity is astonishing. Perhaps with more understanding of the mechanisms around the phenomenon, there would be more success in dealing with the problem. As I mentioned earlier, around 25% of the entire human population has NAFLD, which is also an astonishing figure.

I'm not saying that every person must study these metabolic pathways in detail, but rather that the quick and simple rules and choices people make in daily life should take advantage of what is known, hopefully for a better outcome than what is currently observed.

> insulin IS NOT needed for glucose absorption

I'm not aware of anyone claiming insulin is needed for glucose absorption. The brain, liver, and red blood cells, for example, cannot function properly if they are sensitive to blood insulin levels; this may be because the RBC and brain rely on a steady supply of glucose, and the liver must be able to take up or release glucose on its own schedule.

On the other hand, muscle and adipose tissue DO have insulin-sensitive GLUT4 transporters. The GLUT family of transporters are passive, so glucose flows down its concentration gradient, unlike the sodium-linked transporters of the gut and kidney, which actively transport glucose against a gradient.

So in the case of adipose tissue, it does require glucose in order to store fat. The glycerol backbone for intracellular triglyceride synthesis is provided by glucose. In a person without diabetes, insulin is released from the vesicles when the body detects the amino acids leucine and arginine, or the sugars glucose and mannose. So typically, insulin will also be present, and having its usual effect on the GLUT4 transporters.

This is all covered, to some degree, in the appendices to Fung's book on obesity, by the way.

> Adipose tissue is [...] usually the least resistant to insulin and the least resistant to nutrient storage since it's its primary role. It will just pack more in.

Yes that is my point as well.

> P.S. Isn't Fung a quack? E.g. https://www.myoleanfitness.com/evidence-caloric-restriction/

No, Fung is not a quack.

It doesn't seem fair to even compare Fung's work with the claims of Myolean, because Fung is a trained scientist and knows how to read, interpret, and communicate scientific information in the traditional manner that others can understand. Even if Fung's arguments were wrong, at a superficial level he would be more persuasive because he knows how to use the language and standards of science.

However, examining the discussion in some details will reveal that Fung is correct in all the major points covering this topic, as best as is known at present. (Of course there are major unknowns when it comes to human metabolism, but there is also a lot that is known).

From the link you provided, it seems quite apparent that Myolean does not understand what a non-linear feedback system is (e.g. human metabolism), and doesn't understand the role of motivation and willpower (for compliance) involved in maintaining a calorie-deficient or calorie-neutral diet.

At no point does Fung say the laws of thermodynamics don't apply, but rather that they aren't very relevant when you incorporate the variability of basal metabolism, and motivation/willpower, into the model. One of Fung's major points is that in reality, when people try to follow restrictive diets, doing it in a way that leaves you constantly hungry, with low willpower, and continuously high insulin production leads to failure of achieving desired results.

Here is Fung discussing FFA [1].

[1] https://www.dietdoctor.com/fasting-and-cholesterol

Lastly, it would be easier to take Myoleanfitness more seriously if I didn't get the feeling they are trying to sexually manipulate me with a hit of dopamine and testosterone with their ads such as [2] and [3].

[2] https://www.myoleanfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Su...

[3] https://www.myoleanfitness.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/On...

The point is, the substance of the Myoleanfitness argument is not even wrong, its just irrelevant. But the form in this case matches the content. Distracting and irrelevant.

We use PI/CI (Ponderal Index AKA Corpulence Index) in my lab and it's a huge improvement over BMI. Especially for modern heights in men and women. Still crude, but easy to apply. Wide margins.

The linked-to "Part 1" includes the "myth" that his discussion is referring to, and so is much less misleading. However, personally, I'm not aware of anyone interested in this kind of thing who holds those myths to be true; it's very common knowledge that if you ingest any calories, or taste something sweet, etc, it will trigger the release of insulin. (However, I'm confident that you and the Part 1 author know your target audience, and these myths perhaps make perfect sense to address to them).

Likewise for his comments on glucagon, it does not "cancel" the effects of insulin, it rather has the opposite effect at the same time. Also, in a natural system (i.e. without intervention), secretion of insulin typically suppresses secretion of glucagon, with some rare exceptions. He's stating a supposed myth and then taking it down with another one.

The two papers cited for his interpretation of the role of glucagon are quite old, from 2001. There have been dozens of studies since then, confirming the role of glucagon in lipid metabolism, from many different perspectives.

Here is one published last year

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31068828/

"Collectively, emerging data support an essential role of glucagon for lipid metabolism."

There are dozens of others -- you can get a start on this reading by seeing who has cited the two papers he referred to.

I didn't understand that the main point was "debunking the idea that insulin is what makes us fat", since I don't know anyone who believes that. Chronic poor nutrition can make you fat, sure, and rising basal insulin levels tend to occur as a result of that, but saying "insulin is what makes us fat" sounds a lot like "yellow fingertips cause lung cancer". Nobody I know believes that is true. I have to keep up on these things for my work, in drug development.

Regarding "being 2 steps removed", yes, it seems like some "broken telephone" is going on.

Be well!

The linked-to discussion of insulin has a major error logical error. The title is "Insulin: An Undeserved Bad Reputation", but then the body of the article says for example "Carbs are not alone in being responsible for insulin secretion. Protein can cause just as much, if not more, insulin secretion as carbs". This is a straw man, because the point that is trying to be refused is that "insulin is bad", not "carbs are bad".

Insulin, being necessary for healthy human life, is certainly not "bad". However, a shortage (e.g. Type 1 diabetes) or excess (e.g. Type 2 diabetes) is certainly a problem. Given the current epidemic of Type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and NAFLD, triggering excess insulin production is certainly something to be wary of.

Also of concern is impinging on the glucagon cycle, and in the linked-to post there is no mention of the important function of glucagon, which is typically considered as having effects opposite to insulin. Maintaining the insulin/glucagon cycle is important in maintenance of a healthy metabolism.

The article makes a point about how "Insulin is not needed for fat storage", but omits the fact that in reality, practically all fat storage is mediated by insulin and its effects on glucose. Insulin mediates glucose transport and promotes absorption of blood glucose into the liver, fat and muscle cells. Once the liver has filled its compliment of glycogen, it will indeed produce fat locally. Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease (NAFLD) currently afflicts about 25% of the entire human population, and the linked-to author would have the reader believe that excess insulin production isn't an issue? Very strange.

All in all, this article paints a false picture of human metabolism. People eating a typical Western diet should be concerned or at least aware of the facts of that process, and be wary of having an excess or deficit of insulin; and should know that the excess case is the more common condition. A reasonable scientifically-accurate depiction of the process can be found, for example, in Jason Fung's books, "The Diabetes Code" and "The Obesity Code".

Please research in-depth before experimenting too much. Some common antioxidants are surprisingly linked to modestly increased all-cause mortality; the most famous is the set of vitamin E studies, but there are others.

[1] https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/antioxidants-in-depth

[2] https://www.webmd.com/drug-medication/news/20070227/antioxid...

There is a problem with the BMI [1] calculation, which is the standard measure used to determine "normal" weight, in that it is dimensionally incorrect. The BMI calculation gives results that are appropriate for those around 5'6" (168cm) in height. The units are in kg/m^2.

The Ponderal Index [2] (AKA the "Corpulence Index") gives values that work for any height, with units in kg/m^3. If you are a young child or over 6 feet tall, you might find the PI/CI works better for you.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/healthyweight/assessing/bmi/adult_bmi/en...

[2] https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/ponderal-index

The active enzymes in natural milk are substantially destroyed in the pasteurization process. Lipase is a good example, there are dozens of others.

This area meaning "scientific topics on health".

Quote:

It may seem more problematic to speak of the bias of scientific articles, because many people do not want to see “unscientific” views covered in encyclopedia articles. If such articles are “biased in favor of science,” some people naturally find that to be a feature, not a bug. The problem, though, is that scientists sometimes do not agree on which theories are and are not scientific. On such issues, the “scientific point of view” and the “objective point of view” according to the Establishment might be very much opposed to neutrality. So when the Establishment seems unified on a certain view of a scientific controversy, then that is the view that is taken for granted, and often aggressively asserted, by Wikipedia.

The global warming and MMR vaccine articles are examples; I hardly need to dive into these pages, since it is quite enough to say that they endorse definite positions that scientific minorities reject. Another example is how Wikipedia treats various topics in alternative medicine—often dismissively, and frequently labeled as “pseudoscience” in Wikipedia’s own voice. Indeed, Wikipedia defines the very term as follows: “Alternative medicine describes any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine, but which lacks biological plausibility and is untested, untestable or proven ineffective.” In all these cases, genuine neutrality requires a different sort of treatment.

Again, other examples could be found, in no doubt thousands of other, perfectly unexciting topics. These are just the first topics that came to mind, associated as they are with the culture wars, and their articles on those topics put Wikipedia very decidedly on one side of that war. You should not be able to say that about an encyclopedia that claims to be neutral.

> I cite below from the wikipedia page on raw milk, which is more likely to be an objective source

It seems the co-founder of Wikipedia disagrees with your assessment of it as an objective source, in particular in this area, among others.

https://larrysanger.org/2020/05/wikipedia-is-badly-biased/

See archived copy:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070810204407/http://www.sellsb...

In the first pie chart [0], am I the only one having a hard time with colours in the legend? For example, the second colour in the legend is #ff851b [1], but that doesn't appear in the pie chart. Going by the amount (33.69%), it must be the segment with colour #ffa85f [2].

[0] https://www.csun.io/images/gnucash/expenses_piechart.png

[1] https://www.color-hex.com/color/ff851b

[2] https://www.color-hex.com/color/ffa85f

Yes, and 5-year-olds getting hugs and kisses from their mothers should have to pay a service tax, too.

This unpaid and untaxed emotional labor has to stop!

We need rules and regulations for society to work!

I believe you! The documentation says one thing, but in practice there are often hidden gotchas that can be extremely frustrating. Especially with respect to Azure, but even with the regular product. Microsoft has amazing sales teams, and some amazing engineers, but the overall quality of their engineering as delivered perhaps could use some work -- too much frustration, not enough delight.

Yes.

In theory, "military police" enforce military law and are responsible for policing the army, navy, and so on. They're usually limited in their ability to enforce civilian law. In the USA, it's prohibited under the Posse Comitatus Act and the Insurrection Act, but this isn't universal by any means.

This is a great analysis.

When I was a kid, I used to wonder what the difference was between soldiers and police. I was told that soldiers were meant to protect the State from its enemies, whereas police were meant to enforce the rule of law. I was also told that when soldiers were used for policing, everyone tends to turn into an enemy of the State.

It turns out, this view is correct, but omits that police tend to become soldiers for the State anyway. The ones that actively serve the citizenry's best interests seem to be far and few between.

It's a tough one, for sure.

Personally, I'm looking forward to a pinephone. I'm moving towards asynchronous communications, and leaving my phone at home, or in a "faraday pouch" (made of [0]) on airplane mode.

Networking is done through an elastic ip vpn that forwards to a known host, so web sites that I want to use, but I don't want to trigger the captchas and 3FA stuff, see the same user-agent and IP address. I also have many "disposable" phones, that I use on projects that require Google Hangouts or WeChat. Recently I had to upgrade my daily driver phone, and I haven't installed Lineage yet. It's a slog, so I can totally understand why people would simply accept what's readily on offer.

At a basic level, my thinking is that "is this better for me?". That is, how are these capabilities[1] going to be used, in my favour, or against me? Since I have previously been dragged into a large investigation (regarding someone else operating under a false identity), and have had to get various clearances from various governments to work on projects (which is more common than I would naively think), the approach that I take is to appear unremarkable.

In the past, when leaving countries that require exit visas (like China, Israel), I was shocked at how much information they had on me, and revealed in the course of the exit interview. But I have to assume that Anglo countries, if anything, have more advanced technical means at their disposal, but decline to use them unless the target is juicy enough. So the reasonable approach is to do my best to make my pattern "normal" and "unappealing" -- maximizing my benefit from these tools, and minimizing the risks of false associations and accusations.

[0] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/10056

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2013/8/1/4580718/fbi-can-remotely-a...

That's strange. The offices at Bloomberg, Microsoft, Walmart Labs, etc., all had healthy options when I've been there.

Re (a) the comparison doesn't hold much weight because despite their close geography and culture, there are major differences between Norway and Sweden. The most significant is that the elder care homes in Sweden are much higher density than in Norway. A huge portion of the reported deaths are from elder care facilities in most countries. No citation -- my knowledge comes from a study I worked on 7 years back. Anyone interested can easily verify on their own.

Re (b) No citation is needed. I answered this elsewhere, that depriving a human of their liberties, putting people under house arrest, is in itself a harm. Forcing your neighbour to stay in a box is an assault, and to commit that violence against another person requires the highest level of justification. As for the physical health and other measurable harms, those will be recognized over time. I'm quite sure that "deaths of despair" issue will eventually be covered in mainstream programming, if not already.

Lastly, the "rational" mind (which I never claimed to be) has to acknowledge the response of humans to fear-inducing stimulus, and other mechanisms that lead to Stockholm Syndrome type behaviours. By enforcing this "prayer" to the NHS, the state has induced the public to see their captor as their liberator. It is totally perverse, but is the air we breathe these days.

Thank you for the thoughtful response!

My understanding is that feature (database mirroring) was deprecated many years ago, for availability groups. There were some limitations in the Analytics area, but that customer was using another solution for most of that anyway. There were also some features of SQL Agent that were discarded (scheduling events or something) but in each case there is some officially supported route to accomplish the same task.

You can find most of the material we reviewed in the official MS documentation:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-...

For example, here's the note about deprecating database mirroring:

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sql/linux/sql-server-linux-...

> Database mirroring, which was deprecated in SQL Server 2012, is not available on the Linux version of SQL Server nor will it be added. Customers still using database mirroring should start planning to migrate to availability groups, which is the replacement for database mirroring.

Your reasoned response and respectful tone are truly appreciated. Thank you! As a matter of fact, I do have family in NYC, Queens, and CT. It's perhaps the hottest "hotspot" in the world. In general, children below 5 and older adults don't have immunocompetence comparable to older children or younger adults. So caution is certainly called for for those age groups.

At the same time, for me personally, after spending years in biotech and healthcare (doing academic mathematical research on hand hygiene, including published peer-reviewed study of compliance rates of doctors to their own hygiene protocols, working within and analyzing clinical trials, doing pharmacokinetics, publishing epidemiological studies, mathematics of mass decontamination, etc.) I've realized a few things.

One is that doctors in particular are always calibrating their behaviour to what butters their bread. In the same way American police write "to serve and protect" on their cars, when it really it should say "to serve and protect [THE STATE]", doctors believe they should "do no harm [TO MY CAREER]". Meaning, the treatments and recommendations for patients are totally different than the standards they apply to themselves and their own children. It's safer, and garners more power, to prescribe a lockdown, than to risk getting caught out on the off-chance this is another Black Death.

You'll see the same repetitious behaviour with respect to things like dietary supplements, lockdowns, and masks: do as I say, not as I do. And what I say is always going to be coming from a cover-my-arse perspective. It's the outrageous hypocrisy that drives me mad. No doctors that I know or work with personally believe the hype, yet the peer pressure to conform in public and lick boots is overwhelming.

The impact of the deaths from delayed non-covid-19 medical treatments, mental issues, depression, hunger, economic distress, and so on is going to be enormous. There is no accountability in this scenario, because of the mass hysteria. All the damage gets ascribed to the virus, and none to the policy makers, similar to how iatrogenic deaths get swept under the rug.

The only positive that I see is that the mask has slipped and the possibility exists that soon, some proportion of the people will see what maniacal control-freak lunatic weirdos the people in charge of the state have become. Never shake hands again? Guess what, if strangers never touch each other, it will be the end of the human race in just 50 years. God help us.

Are you sure? The HRW report that the UN report references is quite clear. I don't have time to track down all the recent news, but the keywords "food insecurity lockdown" put into Dogpile, Bing, or Yippy should help you get started on the relevant popular literature.

====

Coronavirus: Food insecurity fallout from Nigeria's lockdownwww.theafricareport.com › coronavirus-food-insecurity... By Oluwatosin Adeshokan, in Ogun. Posted on Monday, 11 May 2020 17:47. Virus Outbreak Nigeria Food In this photo taken on Friday, April 17, 2020, people ...

'Instead of Coronavirus, the Hunger Will Kill Us.' A Global Foodwww.nytimes.com › 2020/04/22 › world › africa › coron... Apr 22, 2020 - It could double the number of people facing acute hunger to 265 million by ... Coronavirus lockdowns have caused many more to go hungry. ... safety net face a future where hunger is a more immediate threat than the virus.

Millions in Lebanon risk food insecurity over virus lockdown ...www.france24.com › Return to homepage › Live news Apr 8, 2020 - "The lockdown... has compounded the poverty and economic hardship rampant in Lebanon before the virus arrived," said HRW senior ...

Coronavirus Lockdowns Are Choking Africa's Food Supply ...time.com › World › COVID-19 Apr 15, 2020 - Lockdowns have blocked farmers from getting food to markets and ... Bank said the virus could create “a severe food security crisis in Africa.”.

Coronavirus crisis could double number of people suffering ...www.theguardian.com › world › apr › global-hunger-c... Apr 21, 2020 - Lockdowns and global economic recession have already decimated their nest eggs. ... Global hunger could become the next big impact of the pandemic, ... save people stricken by the virus only for them to fall prey to hunger.

Severe hunger threatens Africa during COVID-19 lockdowns ...www.dw.com › severe-hunger-threatens-africa-during-... Apr 22, 2020 - The government imposed a nighttime curfew and shut businesses down in early March to slow the spread of the virus. To help with food ...

Coronavirus: Your one-stop blog for food industry updateswww.foodnavigator.com › Article › 2020/03/23 › Coro... 2 hours ago - Coronavirus: Betting on aeroponics to increase food security ... the UK's national lockdown, according to a John Lewis and Waitrose Report. ... hands, take supplements: Researchers urge leaders to extend virus advice .

Coronavirus: Fighting food poverty in a lockdown - BBC Newswww.bbc.com › uk-england-manchester-52228080 Apr 13, 2020 - Coronavirus: Fighting food poverty in a lockdown ... Volunteers at FareShare risk their health to help feed those in need during the virus crisis.

A company I consult for specializes in SQL Server applications. There is a significant push to Linux from both the largest customers, paying over 150k$/month for server licensing and hosting, and from the smallest companies, who are severely budget-conscious. The big customers have teams fluent in both Linux and Windows, and the smallest outsource their DBAs and sysadmins, so in both cases the cost is mostly a one-time development cost and maintenance goes on as usual.

The medium-sized enterprises (100MM$ to 500MM$ annual revenue) are the ones who aren't looking at Linux. These are the ones with in-house tech support, who only know Windows. Maybe they are the average customers that won't switch over?

Note that I'm only talking about cloud-hosted SQL Server installations. When you're buying the whole infrastructure stack, it's a different story. Also, this isn't the area I specialize in, so this is just a narrow observation, not a broad pattern.