windpower

The heartburn has been quite minor, and only at night. Tums has been plenty for controlling it. (But I don't have GERD.) The heartburn itself is definitely not the cause of the weight loss for me, haha.

But intuitively it does make sense, because one of the primary effects of the drug is slowing down gastric emptying, so it causing heartburn isn't exactly surprising.

I'm also on one of these drugs (Tirzepatide) and have been for a few months. The first time I remember knowing I was fat was when a babysitter made fun of me for it at age 6. I've been fat ever since and I'm in my late 30s now.

I've lost significant amounts of weight (60+ pounds) three times in my adult life, through simple calorie restriction (intermittent fasting, including before I'd ever heard the term). Every time, I've gained the weight back. At the beginning of 2022, I was the heaviest I've ever been.

I've accomplished very hard things in my life, including those that take sustained effort. Sufficient willpower isn't a problem for me in general. I honestly only ever hear "it's easy, just eat less and move more" from people that have never actually been fat. "I did it and I lost 15 pounds, no big deal!" and the like. 15 pounds is easy for me to temporarily lose too. I've done it enough times I should know ;)

I've heard people say that the solution is to eat (healthy food) when you're hungry, and stop when you're full. The thing is, I'm never full. I can eat until I physically can't eat anymore (not something I do regularly, of course), and as soon as my stomach has emptied a bit, I feel fairly hungry again. "Eat until you feel full" is literally a human experience I had never really had.

On this drug, I finally know what people are talking about. I still like food, and I still get hungry. But it doesn't dominate my thoughts. I eat, and don't feel like eating again for hours. I eat something that I'd normally easily eat all of like a big burrito or whatever, and I feel quite full halfway through with no desire to finish. I'm steadily losing weight, with none of the usual preoccupation with hunger, ascetic adherence to a strict calorie plan, etc. But above all, I feel like I must be experiencing what most thin people experience all the time. I'll be perfectly happy to take the drug for the rest of my life, though I do hope affordability improves.

As for side effects: I've had some heartburn, but none of the other commonly reported side effects.

I asked my doctor about it and they prescribed it. They had previously prescribed Wegovy/semaglutide but it’s very supply constrained right now so I was never able to actually take it.

I’m not on semaglutide, but I am on tirzepatide (aka Mounjaro), which is the newest drug in the same class.

Honestly, it’s like a miracle. I’ve been fat since I was 6 years old. I’ve occasionally lost weight (though never made it to “normal”), but only through pretty intense, focused effort to restrict calories. I’ve always gained it back (and then some) after I can’t sustain that effort. (Call it lack of willpower or whatever, but this is how it works for the vast, vast majority of people.)

Anyway, on tirzepatide, it’s simply effortless. Food is still good, and I still like to eat, but I don’t think about it all day. I eat a reasonable amount, feel full, and don’t have the urge to eat again for hours and hours. That’s honestly a new experience for me. My entire life “eat when you’re actually hungry” would have meant eating all day every day, basically. I’ve been losing weight at a consistent 2.5 lbs / week on this drug. I fully intend to be on it for the rest of my life (or other drugs in the class as they come out).

As for side effects: I’ve had precisely none. No nausea, constipation, heartburn, etc. I understand those are common but I haven’t experienced them at all.

I was recently contracted to help with a (very small!) Mac app written in SwiftUI where they had hit a hard wall on implementing a couple fundamental UI features and needed that part of the UI rewritten in AppKit. "That part of the UI" is about 80% of the surface area of the apps' main window. (Worth noting that the app current deploys to macOS 12, so even the latest deployment target isn't good enough to get us there.)

AppKit may go away eventually, but _today_ it's still required to write a good Mac app even if you can use SwiftUI for large portions.

My experience on this project has also taught me that AppKit can be made to play quite nicely with SwiftUI. The AppKit code is encapsulated well, and from the outside gets instantiated and included exactly as if it were a SwiftUI component.

Swift is pretty good at this. e.g.:

  Task.sleep(nanoseconds: 3e11)

You're in the minority, is the thing. Most computer users don't use multiple platforms on a regular basis. That's something that's really only common among some very specific niches, like web developers. Consistency across platforms is a bad thing for most users who want all the software on the one platform they choose use to behave consistently.

I'll also point out that the Mac had the same copy and paste keyboard shortcuts before Windows and Linux existed, so if any platform should be criticized for not matching, it'd be the one(s) that copied the shortcuts but added their own changes.

I don't use a Mac because everything about its UI is exactly the same as Windows and Linux, it's precisely the opposite. I use it because it's different (and IMO, better for me).

(And calling the window controls placement on macOS "wrong" is a bit rich. The platform that basically created the GUI can't be "wrong" about something so subjective as which side of the window those controls belong on.)

Not 100% sure about cars, but houses were cheaper. Interest rates being higher means that the monthly payment on a given mortgage amount is higher, meaning the house price that an average buyer can afford goes down. Low interest rates mean that people can afford a more expensive house, and that causes prices to go up.

Anecdotally, my dad complains about paying an interest rate in the teens for the house I grew up in. My parents paid $69K ($188K in 2022 dollars) for the house, which was about a year old. Zillow estimates the same house at $457K today. Obviously not all of the price increase is due to lower interest rates, but the house _was_ much cheaper, so even with a high interest rate, the mortgage was pretty affordable.

I don't really bring my desktop computers in sketchy situations where they might get wet. They tend to sit in the exact same spot on my desk in my office for their entire lifetime. It'd be a weird trade off to design a desktop computer for physical durability and water resistance...

I'm someone you would describe as "anti 2A". I still think the "defense against home invasion" style argument is mostly nonsense. It's super rare, and I don't think the benefits of guns outweigh the downsides for that kind of self defense. (Having been a victim of exactly such a crime, I'm glad neither I nor the burglar had a gun.)

However, seeing Ukrainians take up arms to fight an invasion has caused me to re-evaluate my position in general, and I actually think an armed population is likely better than the alternative. I'm sure Finland isn't unhappy that they're heavily armed right now.