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Cake day: September 14th, 2024

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  • There’s three metrics to think about:

    • Actual number of years reduced/increased
    • Actual probability of that change in lifespan
    • Statistical certainty that the trend we observe is actually linked to the variable we’re studying.

    Russian roulette (traditional 1 round in 6 chambers) in a hospice ward (where everyone has been given a prognosis of less than 6 months to live) would be a very high certainty of shaving months off the life of 1/6 of the studied population. In the grand scheme of things, that’s not a very high risk. But at the same time, we can look at it and say “yes, shooting oneself with a revolver is very bad for health.” Putting a more or less deadly round in the chamber is probably not going to be a hugely significant change in outcomes, even if we can objectively say that one is better or worse for the person’s health than the other.

    Almost all dietary/nutrition studies involve much smaller swings in lifespan or health conditions, probabilistically over a smaller portion of the population, with less statistical certainty in the observations. But the science is still worth doing, and analyzing, because that all adds up.


  • This study shows inflammatory markers are increased on a ketogenic diet: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6922028/

    This rat study shows increased senescence in heart and kidneys in long term ketosis: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ado1463

    However, Cholesterol is not a disease - its essential for life - the concern has never been cholesterol but atherosclerosis - if someone has elevated LDL, undamanged and unglycated (as on keto) and they are concerned they should get a CAC score so they can see their actual plaque burden.

    What you’re asking for is being studied. Here’s a meta study from 2013:

    However, one established risk factor of CVD, i.e. LDL-cholesterol, still turned out to be harmfully affected by the VLC regimen, most probably attributable to the larger amounts of saturated fat in the diet(Reference Bueno, de Melo and de Oliveira1). In their discussion, the authors stated that future meta-analyses should investigate the impact of low carbohydrates (LC) v. LF on other important pathological markers, e.g. endothelial function, in order to further assess the safety of LC dietary therapies.

    This is reasonable, since evidence from prospective cohort studies has shown that endothelial dysfunction represents an independent risk factor for the development of many CVD including atherosclerosis(Reference Inaba, Chen and Bergmann2). We, therefore, carried out a meta-analysis to compare the effects of LC and LF regimens on flow-mediated dilatation (FMD). FMD of the brachial artery is a non-invasive measure of endothelial function, furthermore reflecting the local bioavailability of endothelium-derived vasodilators, especially NO. Inflammation of the endothelium is regarded to play a major role in the destabilisation of atherosclerotic lesions, therefore paving the way for future CVD events(Reference Inaba, Chen and Bergmann2).

    Their results:

    In our meta-analysis, LC dietary protocols were associated with a significant decrease in FMD when compared with their LF counterparts. A recent meta-analysis of observational studies including a sample size of 5·547 subjects has observed that a 1 % decrease in FMD is associated with a 13 % increase in the risk of future cardiovascular events(Reference Inaba, Chen and Bergmann2)

    Along the same lines, here’s another study with arterial measurements that shows reduced blood flow and arterial function for those who stuck with a high protein diet: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/000331970005101003

    Look, none of these studies are, standing alone, enough to really change things. But it seems to me, from the outside that you’re cherry picking your own results to justify carnivore diet.

    The high carb versus low carb discussion is complicated and has a lot of factors at play. But the evidence for animal versus plant based low carb suggests that animal product diets are more harmful than plant product diets of similar macronutrient profiles.

    Moreover, the overall trends show that those who eat a lot of whole grains (which are, by their nature, high carb plant based foods) have lower mortality than those who don’t. The same is true of those who eat a lot of fruit (again, high carb plant based food).

    Trying to tease out which of a million variables is truly responsible for cardiovascular health isn’t easy, but a lot of the overall trends can be seen:

    • Whole grains good
    • Whole fruit good
    • Red meat bad
    • Cured meat really bad
    • Seafood good
    • Legumes good

    Now, you can quibble with confounding variables, but at a certain point trying to argue that minutiae starts looking like religious apologetics, really cherry picking examples in favor while ignoring examples against. Coming up with a coherent theory of “fiber not important” or “the foods our genetic ancestors ate are somehow bad for us now” is an uphill battle, and I’m not convinced that the carnivore diet is anything more than a scam designed to sell books.



  • If somebody wants to eliminate even more, they could try out a low carb, or even a ketogenic diet or even a zero carb diet.

    Most recent studies of long term ketosis show accelerated aging markers, and some potentially harmful increases in LDL and VLDL cholesterol. Some propose periodic resets out of ketosis to avoid some of the accumulated long term issues, while taking advantage of some of the short term benefits for overall insulin sensitivity and obesity.

    The human body has many, many ways to meet its nutritional needs. We’re omnivores and we have lots of anthropological history of different cultures surviving primarily on carbs, primarily on animal products, and all sorts of in between.

    There are plenty of issues with people on carnivore diets, too, so I would caution against trying to swing the pendulum too far in the other direction. I’ve never seen anything suggesting that there’s a statistically significant delta between a high carb whole foods diet and a low carb whole foods diet. And even within those frameworks, it’s entirely possible that the qualitative differences between one whole food still makes a difference compared to another whole food, like the observed studies regarding red meat being bad, fatty fish being good, legumes being good, fermented vegetables being good, etc.

    Nutrition science is pretty incomplete. We’re only recently learning bits and pieces about the role of the microbiome, and haven’t even finished accumulating the information we started learning in recent decades about endocrine feedback loops in nutrition and metabolism. It’ll take a lot of data and analysis to have confidence in what people are saying, and I personally take it all in with interest but skepticism.






  • 25-35 is a great time. I moved cities and changed careers in my late 20’s, and pivoted again in my early 30’s, and it was a good reset to build on lessons learned and undoing past mistakes, while having the youth and energy to really enjoy myself and actually choose a path I was going to have fun with.

    I’m enjoying my 40’s a lot, but I look back fondly on that 25-35 period as being both fun in itself and setting me up for a good 30’s and 40’s (and possibly further).


  • I can’t answer for dual numbers, but I can answer for imaginary numbers in circuit design.

    Imaginary numbers are those that include an imaginary component, that squares into a negative number. Traditionally, i^2 = -1, but electrical engineers like to use j instead (I tends to be a variable used to describe electrical current).

    Complex numbers, that include a real component and an imaginary component, can be thought of as having an “angle,” based on how much of it is imaginary and how much of it is real, mapped onto a 2-dimensional representation of that number’s real and imaginary components. 5 + 5j is as real as it is imaginary, so it’s like having a 45° angle. The real number 5 is completely real, so it has a 0° angle.

    Meanwhile, in alternating current (AC) circuits, like what you get from your wall outlet, the voltage source is a wave that alternates between a maximum peak of positive voltage and a bottom trough of negative voltage, in a nice clean sinusoidal shape over time. If you hook up a normal resistor, the nice clean sinusoidal voltage also becomes a nice clean sinusoidal current with the exact same timing of when the max voltage matches up with the max current.

    But there’s also capacitors, which accumulate charge so that the flow of current on the other side depends on its own state of charge. And there are inductors, that affect current based on the amount of energy stored magnetically. These react to the existing current and voltage in the system and manipulate the time relationship between what moment in time a peak current will happen and when the peak voltage was.

    And through some interesting overlap in how adding and subtracting and delaying sinusoidal waves works, the circuit characteristics line up perfectly with that complex angle I was talking about, with the imaginary numbers. So any circuit, or any part of a circuit, can be represented with an “impedance” that has both an imaginary and real component, with a corresponding phase angle. And that complex number can be used to calculate information about the time delay in the wave of current versus the wave of voltage.

    So using complex phase angles makes certain AC calculations much, much easier, to represent the output of real current from real voltage, where the imaginary numbers are an important part of the calculation but not in the actual real world observation itself.

    So even though we start with real numbers and end with real numbers, having imaginary numbers in the toolbox make the middle part feasible.




  • exasperation@lemm.eetomemes@lemmy.worldAsk A&W
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    4 days ago

    Deep dish is delicious. Lasagna is delicious. Baked ziti is delicious. Calzones are delicious.

    Look, you can’t go wrong with tomato sauce, cheese, dough, and optional meat. It’s all delicious, and playing around with different ratios is still great.



  • exasperation@lemm.eetoComic Strips@lemmy.worldCollege Degree
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    9 days ago

    It’s not about work ethic. It’s an openness to new things, and a willingness to coordinate and plan things.

    And seeing “moving away” as a huge sacrifice, to where you’d tend to describe it as “uprooting your life,” is a particular worldview that you’re entitled to, but one you should be aware that many other people don’t share.

    You’re attributing a lot of unspoken values in that comment that I don’t really think are there, and I suspect it’s because you place a much higher value in staying close to home than the typical person does, and because you seem to elevate the purpose of a career to primarily be maximizing one’s own money.

    So take a step back. Reread that comment with the revisited assumption that some people choose careers for reasons completely different from money, and that people don’t feel a strong need to stay in the same city where they grew up. It’s just career advice at that point.


  • exasperation@lemm.eetoComic Strips@lemmy.worldCollege Degree
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    10 days ago

    There’s more to careers than just money. The distribution of jobs in different industry sectors, job specialties, etc. aren’t going to be uniform throughout the world, so many types of jobs will require people to move.

    It’s not even about money. It’s about wanting to work in something specific that isn’t as easily available in the town you happened to be born in.

    that’s insanity

    makes me feel sick

    That’s a pretty strong reaction to the simple idea that maybe living your entire life within a 30 minute drive of where you were born isn’t the best way to experience this life. You don’t have to want it, but is it that much to ask to simply understand that some other people want it?

    My hometown is, like, fine. I could’ve stayed. But its state government is insane, the dominant local industries and companies don’t really fit my moral framework, and the social aspect pushes people into a car-based lifestyle that I’m not particularly interested in. I left for a job, but I also was just looking for a reason to leave.