• 2 Posts
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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • Thanks for the concern, it came across as genuine in your previous replies. I think people tend to get really locked in to having the right answer and then start to identify with their conclusion, making it part of who they are. It makes it very difficult for them to consider if there is something they are wrong about without feeling threatened. Having a good conversation like this is fairly rare online, so it has been good fun and quite enjoyable.

    The response was not unwarranted or redundant. The information I have today is just information I didn’t have in the past, so if I am correct I am just there a little earlier than you. If I am not correct then I am off the right path and need to correct. Either way talking about it is good and helps to find errors in logic and evidence.

    I think that something as shitty as seizures can seem life ruining or horrible and sure, they suck, but I am very lucky to have a strong and capable partner who in the face of seizures looks for solutions and has hope for the future. My partner is the one who has to have the seizures, I just get to support them and learn what does or doesn’t work. Also, their pupils sometimes do a bit of a crazy dance when one will dilate and constrict rapidly while the other slowly dilates, it looks absolutely insanely cool and while it sucks it is also really interesting, so at least there is that.


  • The carbs - fibre = true carbs is accurate in some countries, not in others. If the fibre is listed at the same level of indentation as the carbs it is already removed. If the fibre is listed indented under the carbs it is included in the total fibre number and the subtraction is needed.

    For example

    Carbohydrate

    • Fibre
      

    Or

    Carbohydrates

    Fibre

    Fibre being critical is not the most well supported thing. There are definitely ways it could be useful, mostly by having bacteria break down the fibre into ketones which are then absorbed by the gut. This is useful because some of the ketones are quite powerfully anti inflammatory. That said, some people have gut issues like Crohn’s disease which make them unable to have fibre safely pass through their gut.

    Biology is complicated, we are all stuck doing an experiment of one, but hopefully we can figure something out. I find it all fascinating but the most important thing to me is my partner currently can go whole days without a seizure. If I never understand how and why but I get to have that be the case then I am content.


  • Yeah, we need fats for sure. Our thinking at this point is to aim for saturated fats as much as possible, less than 5% polyunsaturated and less than 30% mono. That said, pork belly has a tonne of fat but a surprisingly large amount of mono. Also, it is delicious.

    The nuts and seeds are just not something we are doing at the moment. We will experiment with introducing small amounts of interest foods but I think seeds are largely out because of the various chemicals in the casing. Some beans may be OK after sprouting them because that takes the acid from the skin and recycles it into energy for the growing plant, but there is no similar disarming strategy for most seeds.

    As for fibre, adding fibre led to a fairly serious gut issue, think blood and pain. For now fibre is banned, not allowed in the food club. Given some time it may be tested again, but the last time showed me unspeakable horrors.

    I think the diet is currently robust enough for the next year. After that other things may be viable, but most likely it will be very small amounts and infrequently. If we do try fibre again it will probably be home ferments like pickles because the bacteria which break down the fibre are there in the food, so even if there is a problem with my partner digesting the fibre the bacteria there can help.


  • During the first day the rate dropped, halving by the end of the first day. On day 3 they dropped to a few per day. By the end of the week they were basically gone, though some are absent seizures and harder to catch without active monitoring.

    As for ongoing it has been very stable. Adding in anything like milk or cheese caused as spike in seizures along with massive carb cravings. The few accidental carb exposures have been fairly obviously bad because of the seizure spikes following.

    We don’t use a Continuous Glucose Monitor but honestly, no pattern this obvious requires such detailed measurements. Add carbs, get seizures. Add dairy, get seizures. Butter is dodgy, maybe an issue, but seems to be at least not obviously an issue, we will try without to be sure.

    I joined in for solidarity at the start but honestly, it works for me too. I have pretty bad ADHD and cooking has always been really difficult to manage. So many different things happening at the same time with various timers, cutting foods, adding sauces, stirring, making sure it doesn’t burn, and then magically some people just deliver it all hot at the same time. Absolute madness. Instead I fire up the BBQ or air fryer and cook the meat.

    I have noticed that my dandruff is way less, my skin doesn’t flake, I can focus better (not as good as meds but maybe 30% of the way there). I also dropped body fat a bit and gained some muscle, but I need to do that for other reasons too. Overall it is not an awful diet. Eat meat, add fat. The only problem is eating enough, I frequently miss my target of 3000 kcal, but I am simply not hungry much of the time.


  • Yeah, it worked really well actually. It seems that their seizures are related to sugar metabolism in the brain and switching to a fasted state enabled the production and use of ketones instead of glucose. That leas to a reduction from seizures as much as twice an hour to one or less per day most of the time. Now we (solidarity and other benefits) eat a really simple diet of mostly simple cuts of meat cooked to medium-rare as well as chicken wings and butter. The butter maybe an issue though, so we are testing removing that too after the next long fast to see if we get better results.

    So down from ~30 seizures per day to maybe 1 seems like a fairly good fix and we just treat it like an allergy. No carbs, no fibre, no sugar alcohols, no artificial sweeteners, and soon maybe no butter either. Better thab seizures, good for overall health so far, and fairly sustainable. I may miss cheesecake but not as much as I don’t miss my partner having seizures all day.




  • Much as I feel genital mutilation is awful and should be a thing of the past this will unfortunately harm people on the way. The religious who believe circumsision is a good idea will keep doing so, but along the way women who are pregnant will have their only reasonable option for pain and fever relief stigmatised, ironically potentially increasing the rate of autism. There is some evidence that maternal fever may increase the likelihood of autism in the child, so not using paracetamol to control fever may increase the rate.

    Also, never side with Nazis. If they say the sky is blue you don’t say you agree, you say that the sky is blue. They will always try to pull people in to agreeing with them and then change their opinion later and try to pull people along with them.


  • Yes, we have a good idea as to why. There are a few key factors involved starting with a shift away from full time employment and towards part time and gig work. This means that the number of people working full time jobs with the protections they provide has not gone up even though the population has gone up over that time. These workers are more precarious, experiencing less stable hours, unpredictable income, and easier firing processes. This makes people feel less secure and accept worse conditions. People with precarious employment may be less likely to report wage theft for example, which to be clear is more than all other types of theft combined.


  • I agree that this has gone on too long, like insanely way way way too long. This has been a genocide for decades but the international community has been very slow and weak in their reactions to anything from Israel and have allowed truly reprehensible things to go unpunished.

    As for the any day now thing, yeah, it is starting to have an impact. Pressure is building fairly rapidly compared to the past decades and now Israel is being ostracised in many spaces. People are refusing to participate if Israel is welcomed, just like what happened to SA. Israeli products are not being purchased, just like with SA. Recognition of this as a genocide has been increasing, just like the recognition or apartheid in SA. Statehood for Palestine is being recognised by a bunch more countries, including allies of the USA which has previously managed to protect Israel from this, and this is again similar to the kinds if political change around SA at the end of apartheid.

    Is this the same as SA? No. Are there similarities? Yes, absolutely. I’m not saying this is all good and any day now it will all flip. I am saying the likelihood of change within 6 months has never been as high as now.



  • I have ADHD so I get rid of most problems by literally tying things to myself. I have a second belt which goers over my pants and have a hip bag attached to it. In that I have the following;

    Disposable nitrile gloves (3-4 pairs)

    Hand sanitiser

    Power bank (10000mAh)

    USB C cable

    Thumb drives (one with kids shows, one with software, one blank)

    USB A to C adapter

    Wallet

    ID lanyard

    Emergency cash (not in wallet because if I lose my wallet I still have my cash)

    Tissues

    Aspirin, paracetamol, and ibuprofen

    Ritalin

    Plastic bags for rubbish

    Nasal inhaler (for blocked nose, long term issue)

    Car and house keys (attached on a clip, not inside)

    Then I have my pockets for phones (I have 2), wireless headphones, and anything else for the day.

    By keeping my keys attached I cannot get in the car without my belt bag.


  • Technically, yes, if you have access to the system, but it does mean you have to switch the storage from append only to read write, then pull out the original files, recompute the hashes from the time you did the modifications, and do all the rewriting as you go. For a continuous thing like this your security is only as good as the weakest link, so you could have a problem there, but publishing or sharing the hashes as you go could further protect in this situation. If others have the hashes and then some of them change we know there was a change of data. Add or change something and every hash from then on is different. Seems plausible to make it much better than take my word.


  • This is actually one of the very few reasonable use cases for block chain technology.

    You have a security camera on site. It takes recordings and sends them to a data centre which then appends the footage and uses various algorithms to make a much smaller block chain compatible summary, a small hash for each snippit of video. The hash is then mixed with the previous sum of all hashes and appended to the video. This means that after the fact modifying the video is effectively impossible. You would have to do it between the camera and the data centre, so yes, still possible, but doing it at a later date would be very hard. You could also make sure this data was stored in an append only form, say magnetic tape, which has physical measures to prevent access after the date of storage.


  • Glassing is not a solution. You drop a bomb and make sand into glass but you haven’t actually changed the regime. You haven’t changed who does and does not have power. You haven’t changed who is considered human or less than. You haven’t changed what the public of that country thinks. You haven’t changed much of anything.

    Boycotting is effective. It worked on South Africa. It worked in many other cases. It needs critical mass. It needs a sufficient portion of the relevant population to participate. Anyone who could buy an Israeli product and does not because of what they are doing in Gaza is making change. Anyone who refuses to participate in international events because Israel is there is making change. Anyone who refuses to perform in Israel is making change.

    Saying “glass them” feels good, it feels cathartic and just and right. It is not right. It doesn’t work. It is morally faulty. Glassing Israel or part thereof would be the beginning of a much larger war, killing many more people. It would escalate existing conflict into something somehow even larger. It is understandable you would want to say it, but it does not actually make the world better. Maybe there is nothing you personally can do to make the world better in this case, and if so that sucks. But you don’t have to make the world worse because you can’t make it better.



  • Yep, very much improved. I recking it will turn out like Blender. It sucks right now compared to some other tools like Fusion360, but given time it will improve and at some point it will tip over into being the default. It all depends on buy in. If a few bigger players get behind it because they can avoid predatory fees and costs associated with using a proprietary piece of software they will switch, invest in their own mods, then drive the industry knowledge standard towards FreeCAD. That will break the hold the proprietary apps have as workers gain skills in the new context, leaving the old proprietary stuff to rot. I hope it is soon, but it will happen eventually.



  • Have you actually done an objective comparison?

    It sounds like you have a few important goals. One seems to be appearance, another is strength. One of these is probably more important to you, and honestly no judgement, but not having a clear idea of what is important and why can muddle your thinking.

    Do you have before photos? If you don’t have pictures and measurements you cannot make a good comparison. A good idea would be to take measurements of what you care about, say a one rep max or belt measurement, and then take photos in various poses that show things you care about, say side on to see bulges at the front or front on to see traps. Make sure you know the lighting conditions and time of day so you can compare fairly later on.

    That all said, measure what you care about so you can see progress later. You can’t ssee progress without comparison and if that is what you want then you need to measure.

    An alternative is to consider what kind of person you want to be. Do you want to be someone who regularly exercises? Do you want to be the kind of person who can lift kids without a problem? Do you care about your activity levels when you are 70? These are all different things that have meaning to different people. Working from a values perspective will make you more effective at setting goals and meeting them.