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lr4444lron Why do we keep gravitating toward complexity?

React piles concepts into your mental backpack: rendering models, hooks, state libraries, routing, and a build pipeline. ... The simple alternative is just around the corner: sprinkle vanilla JavaScript where it’s needed and don’t build your identity around a framework

Yeah, except that a sprinkle becomes a dusting, and then a dusting becomes a coating, and then a coating becomes a clog of dust bunnies, and it's often hard to tell when you need to stop and do it a better way when the business side is pressuring you with deadlines for changes on "what already works".

The whole reason frameworks exist is to _reduce_ the mental backpack by using something that has solved the same problems in the same orderly way.

lr4444lron Why do we keep gravitating toward complexity?

IIRC, their society depended on it. During peacetime, it was a major economic engine paid for from the royal treasury, with the work starting as soon as a new pharaoh ascended the throne, and the labor provided steady work when agricultural activity stopped due to Nile flooding. Of course, it's only in hindsight with our modern understanding of economics that we can see how such an activity at face value not important to any basic survival need was in fact a key piece of the economic fabric.

lr4444lron Cannabis use associated with quadrupled risk of developing type 2 diabetes

I took CBD twice and both times it worsened my sleep, so I really wanted a pure CBN product.

Not sure where you live, but this is what I use for CBN: https://www.charlottesweb.com/products/stay-asleep-cbn-gummi...

One gummy (10mg) works for about 2-3 nights, then I get another 2-3 nights effect with 20mg. Then I have to cease taking it for several days.

lr4444lron Why We Spiral

Much as I criticize CBT, this is one of the few kinds of problems it seems suited for: there is so much data surrounding and so many inputs for a single negative event that it can be very easy to find a pattern breaker, re-frame, or alternate hypothesis without looking too hard. You just need to train it.

lr4444lron Cannabis use associated with quadrupled risk of developing type 2 diabetes

I occasionally use CBN for sleep, never THC, so maybe it's different, but I quickly develop a tolerance, like within a week of daily use and have to cease for many days or a few weeks to get any further benefit at all.

As I read, the endocannabinoid system in the brain is pretty homeostasic.

Does something similar happen with cannabis munchies subsiding to people who ingest THC or whole leaf products daily?

lr4444lron Myocardial infarction may be an infectious disease

IANAD, but

1) Isn't ApoB measurement pretty much in tandem with LDL, VLDL, and triglycerides? I realize it's being recognized now as the necessary factor for arterial dysfunction, but it seems like a lot of hoopla is being made as if it were some "silent" overlooked factor when for the vast, vast majority of people their ApoB levels are entirely explained by the other 3 lipid panel line items carrying it, and they have been in use for decades and are strongly targeted by the medical establishment

2) Isn't Lp(a) a separate lipoprotein altogether which is an independent risk factor for MACE? I've never heard of it "disguising" other cholesterol in testing.

lr4444lron Health care costs are soaring. Blame insurers, drug companies and your employer

I'd say we have an easy way to compare this: look only at Medicare and Medicaid spend vs. the other countries.

lr4444lron Health care costs are soaring. Blame insurers, drug companies and your employer

That's because the monopsony of universal health care fixes the prices. We're kinda caught in the middle in the US.

lr4444lron Health care costs are soaring. Blame insurers, drug companies and your employer

We see that already with LASIK and other cosmetic procedures. They are not cheap, but often an order of magnitude lower than medically necessary insurance-covered work.

lr4444lron US High school students' scores fall in reading and math

All this demonstrates is that outcomes are not uniform, not that the culture explanation is necessarily wrong.

Schools in many urban districts where we see this same disparity control for teacher qualifications and per pupil student funding. In fact, various anti-poverty measures and intensive interventions on low performing schools even tip the scale in their favor on thr "supply" side.

Education isn't just something "delivered" like manufactured product; it is something that had to be properly received and used.

We have to start asking some better questions to uncover what's going on, and they will be a lot tougher to quantify.

lr4444lron 996

Consider 2 million carefully, though. Collectively in a 9-5 job over decades you would probably lose more time with your kids than you would with how much earlier you could retire with even doing the 2 million grind for one year.

Depending on the specifics, for that level of comp. I would consider it even having 2 kids.

lr4444lron Who Owns, Operates, and Develops Your VPN Matters

That assumes that the user isn't connecting to a hotspot he doesn't know is compromised.

lr4444lron MIT Study Finds AI Use Reprograms the Brain, Leading to Cognitive Decline

I'd be very cautious about calling LLM output "an abstraction layer" in software.

lr4444lron Amazon has mostly sat out the AI talent war

Why would they? I hear their main revenue is in AWS and AdTech. Assuming this is true, why would they need bleeding edge AI?

lr4444lron Andrew Ng says bottleneck in AI startups isn't coding – it's product management

I am sorry you've had only negative experiences. Most of mine with PMs were negative as well, but a good one is a dragon slayer and bottleneck unclogger. They feel not like your manager, but like your servant, listening to exactly what you need, relaying messages accurately from other teams of what they need from you, and with the big picture perspective required for you not just to fulfill the task, but do it in a long-term strategically productive way.

lr4444lron Microbial metabolite repairs liver injury by restoring hepatic lipid metabolism

Makes me wonder how much of the positive research on fermented foods generally has to do with liver function improvement, since the organ is crucial to the health of most of the body.

lr4444lron Paracetamol disrupts early embryogenesis by cell cycle inhibition

It's not just that it causes liver failure: it's that the difference between the therapeutic dosing range for pain relief it's prescribed for is dangerously close to the toxicity level.

Other drugs like theophylline have ceased to be prescribed for a similar reason alternatives were available, but due to drug marketing, acetaminophen is touted as the "safe" pain reliever.

lr4444lron Illinois limits the use of AI in therapy and psychotherapy

It's not therapy.

It's a simulated validating listening, and context-lacking suggestions. There is no more therapy being provided by an LLM than there is healing performed by a robot arm that slaps a bandage on your arm if you were to put it in the right spot and push a button to make it pivot toward you, find your arm, and spread it lightly.

lr4444lron Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

You're counting warehouse and delivery workers though in that number, which IIRC is the significant majority. Google doesn't move physical products. (At least, not anything near that scale.)

lr4444lron NYC mayor Adams uses free internet to expand police surveillance at NYCHA

Are we supposed to be upset about this? NYCHA is public property for one. A disproportionate amount of the city's violent crime happens there, a significant amount also gang related. (IIRC, it's 4% of the city's residents and about 20% of the violent crime.)

And that line about chilling public assembly and protest? Spare me: as the nucleus of Occupy Wall Street, pride celebrations for dozens of identity groups, and a major center of the BLM movement, NYC is not exactly a 1984 hellscape of conformity.

lr4444lron AI Ethics is being narrowed on purpose, like privacy was

AI ethics are like nuclear ethics: the incentive to break them is too powerful without every major player becoming a signatory to some agreement with consequences that have teeth.

lr4444lron Ex-Barclays VP who completed a PhD in prison: "All my former colleagues ignore"

Change it to what?

Economies today are incredibly complex, because products and services are complex, laws are complex, and trade is international.

There is a need for people who specialize in risk assessment for loans and investment to separate the wheat from the chaff for new business ideas. It would be very hard I think to recreate some alternative institution that does not by in large recreate the same structure and incentives of modern banking.

Cryptocurrency advocates have multiple times had to learn the same hard lessons as fiat currency users.

lr4444lron Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

Fascinating. I wonder whether they'd sleep less if fed a less toxic, more easily digestible diet.

lr4444lron Sleep all comes down to the mitochondria

When he says lack of "restorative" sleep, he means stage III NREM? I wish he were more precise.

lr4444lron The year of peak might and magic

World of Xeen was an enchanting experience. The interlocking quests in an open exploration world with a party of characters you could custom select with different attribute strengths, the large spells and weapons compendium, and the music just all came together in a way that no other RPG before or since engrossed me.

lr4444lron ICE is getting unprecedented access to Medicaid data

Oh really? And charge them with what? The USA doesn't have vague laws around social harmony by which to prosecute people. This is exactly why it's so important to protect so called "hate speech".

lr4444lron ICE is getting unprecedented access to Medicaid data

> Most of these departments have rules about how they use our data

Yes, but law enforcement agencies can typically be granted access for investigations, so long as the information is used only for such investigations. This is how CSAM distributors are hunted down. They don't literally need to amass evidence for each and every suspect and then get a warrant: they have a legally recognized enforcement directive, and so can perform surveillance of information sources where that people breaking those laws can be caught. Or in this case, they may have imperfect information on a variety of actual suspects, but not enough to find them or build a case. Medicaid data may provide those clues.

lr4444lron SCP-055 is an "antimeme" – it erases itself from memory when observed

Agreed. It got lost in plot holes and its own abstractions after a certain point, but I did overall enjoy it conceptually.