It would be amazing if the tech to test samples of anything edible could become a target of the DIY & Maker community. This has to be a citizen science effort.
Production results vary. Just recently an acquaintance who owns a small coffee shop in a small town got a visit form the local public health administration telling him that they got a notice from a company that he purchased a product that is being called back due to xyz.
We were all surprised that this system works so incredibly well.
But in terms of health, there are just too many factors that impact individual bodies and brains while being barely relevant in samples of the general population. We need to build a database of human profiles whose health was impacted by something in their food. Of course, there's allergies, and nutritional coaches, and so on but those processes are incredibly long and people get lost and give up or often enough, nothing is found and the person is left to his or her own devices.
I have a friend who reacts bad to some dairy products, whipped cream for example, but the intensity varies with the producer! And he tried some of the most expensive products and some are 'ok' while others produce pain. There must be traces of something that is simply not looked at when tested by food safety labs. And labs like that of the dude from the article are rare and cost a lot.
A couple of weeks ago someone mentioned fertility rates and why some generations had worse ones than others. Not birth rates, fertility rates. Apparently there are periods in time where causes for worse fertility can't be deducted from research and economic data of the time. Microplastics and such didn't play that big of a role back then and the water, soil weren't even remotely as bad back then. Pre WW1 to post WW2. So I proposed it must be something that was in the food that nobody looked at. Might even be sabotage, who knows.
So yeah, I really hope the Maker community can up the game a little and pave the way for more citizen science in food safety and in the research of how different compounds &/or combinations impact energy metabolisms.
I cannot find the artist, between queries for World of Warcraft and a footballer.
I thought of my brother. When we had one computer, we fought over it. With two, distant. Only natural, since age partitioned our social circles. Even so, what can people have in common when one keeps starting over and the other levels up?
I never realized two could set up next to one another. A fellow hacker online, and in the real. Ahead and above, miles of cabling. Networks for projects launched in the ocean of bits.
Oh, right--so, semiotics. I could not find the artist, so I took a screenshot of the page.
One equivalent of motivated reasoning would be confirmation marketing or motivated consumer reasoning, where messages/information align with the pre-existing beliefs, desires, or emotions of the target audience, leading them to favor a particular brand or product, presidential candidate or CEO.
My only problem with all this is how some conspiracies are simply oligarchical coordination and consensus, use/abuse of structural power, institutional capture, soft power manipulation, systemic social engineering and the like and while there not being enough energy behind educating people on these topics is entirely a fault of people like me and journalists, I feel like engineers owe it to themselves to build tools and platforms that target & track these "entanglements", entirely for the fun of the game & to strengthen the upper ranks.
I don't accept the upper ranks to be 'Elite'. An Elite doesn't break with systems, bankruptcy or crashes in the stock markets. So if the people can make the game harder for them, maybe our neo-evolution will select the fittest in the game, rather than the most corrupt, depraved, oppressive, exploitative, malignant ...
Have you tried a 3 to 6 month long retreat at an organic farm with no supps and only the meds that you really need? You can bring your gear and build games there, too.
I wanted to dive into the production of all the different supps for a while but intuition tells me it'll end up in some reverse confirmation bias aka "job security and esoterically enhanced anti-pla-no-cebo thinking" ... and that kills my mood.
> 1. What causes ciprofloxacin (or its class fluoroquinolones) to harm connective tissues?
mTOR Signaling
Fluoroquinolones are known to affect the mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) pathway, which is critical for protein synthesis, cell growth, and tissue repair. mTOR integrates signals from nutrients, growth factors, and energy status to regulate cellular anabolic processes like collagen synthesis and fibroblast activity. However, fluoroquinolones can induce oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, which may disrupt normal mTOR signaling. This interference can impair the normal anabolic functions of mTOR, potentially leading to diminished protein synthesis and weakened connective tissue repair.
Mitochondrial Dysfunction
Fluoroquinolones can damage mitochondrial DNA, which may reduce ATP production and impair cellular energy homeostasis. Since mTOR activity is energy-dependent, reduced ATP availability could downregulate mTOR signaling, inhibiting processes like fibroblast proliferation and collagen synthesis. This could explain the tendinopathy and cartilage damage sometimes associated with fluoroquinolone use.
Collagen Synthesis and Matrix Remodeling
The anabolic processes that support collagen production and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling are crucial for connective tissue integrity. Fluoroquinolones have been observed to impair collagen synthesis by disrupting the fibroblast function, and this may be due to their impact on the energy-intensive processes governed by mTOR.
Fluoroquinolones have also been reported to cause central nervous system (CNS) effects, including anxiety, tremors, and other neurological symptoms, suggesting an impact on adrenergic pathways. This dysregulation could interfere with normal stress adaptation mechanisms, including the modulation of inflammatory and regenerative processes in connective tissues.
Connective tissue healing depends on the body’s capacity to manage energy demands and stress responses during recovery. Fluoroquinolones can impair mitochondrial function and create an energy deficit at the cellular level, reducing the ability of fibroblasts to engage in critical processes like collagen synthesis and ECM remodeling. The systemic impact on both dopaminergic and adrenergic systems can further weaken the body’s ability to manage stress and energy during recovery, exacerbating the negative effects on tissue repair.
Fibroblasts and Collagen Production
Fibroblasts are the key cells responsible for producing collagen in connective tissues. Under conditions of oxidative stress and energy depletion, fibroblasts may enter a senescent state, reducing their capacity for collagen synthesis and matrix repair. This can lead to weakened connective tissue and increased susceptibility to injuries like tendon ruptures, which have been reported with fluoroquinolone use.
Collagen and Tendon Health
Fluoroquinolone-induced dysregulation of cell signaling, energy metabolism, and oxidative stress management all converge on a critical issue: the weakening of collagen structure and connective tissue integrity. This has been particularly evident in the association between fluoroquinolones and tendinopathy or tendon rupture, likely linked to the disruption of collagen synthesis, the downregulation of mTOR, and the stress on connective tissue cells such as fibroblasts.
Yes, 100%. But apparently, there are cases where fluoroquinolones cause long-lasting oxidative damage or mitochondrial dysfunction. The recovery of mTOR signaling then may be slower.
Even after the cessation of fluoroquinolones, prolonged oxidative stress can lead to chronic inflammation and collagen synthesis may remain impaired.
Ongoing mitochondrial damage can reduce the cell's capacity to respond to anabolic signals, potentially leading to prolonged weakness in connective tissue and a higher risk of tendon damage. The slow recovery of mitochondrial function may lead to extended mTOR inhibition in tissues like tendons and ligaments.
This bit is especially interesting:
Fluoroquinolones also impact dopaminergic and adrenergic systems, which regulate the body's stress response (via dopamine and norepinephrine). This disruption can affect how the body handles both acute and chronic stress, with potential long-term changes in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis. Dysregulation in the HPA axis could affect cortisol production, impacting inflammation, immune function, and tissue repair over an extended period.
Long-term impacts and the systemic nature of chronic inflammation, mitochondrial damage, and persistent oxidative stress can lead to structural or functional deficits in tissues that were secondarily affected during the acute phase of stress and disruption, which can manifest as persistent dysfunction, pain, or delayed healing.
If premature senescence is the mechanism, then quercetin, fisetin, and urolithin A are in general extremely relevant to fight it. Personally, I make sure to take collagen hydrolysate daily to assist the body.
Agree. Quercetin did help with recovery, but so did eating the equivalent amount of foods that contain it: Red Onions, Red Grapes, Berries, dark green veggies. Rather a lot of those of course, about 1 to 1.5 kg combined. I remember the clinically effective dose to fight colds and so on to be 500mg, but my body dumped quite a lot of that into the toilet, so I halved the dose on another occasion and the effect was the same and I recovered quicker that when not taking it. But again, those foods in adequately high amounts did enough, probably because they also give energy, vitamins, minerals as well.
Agree on the collagen as well, especially for recovery after injuries and after surgery.
But yes, on another occasion I went with "we should totally send them all to space if they want it so bad", too.
Although, for the fun of it, I feel like he was cooler in his pre-Torso times [0], so maybe it did something to him and somebody should remodel it to something less tanky and protective so that he becomes more responsive to the signals of burning, bleeding, coughing, boiling from toxicity nature... maybe growing his hair would help. I heard Native Americans did it to receive the Universe' Radio better.
Kenzo: It must be nice, having everything figured out like that.
Amos: Ain’t nothing to do with me: we’re just caught in the Churn, that’s all.
Kenzo: I have no idea what you just said.
Amos: This boss I used to work for in Baltimore, he called it the
Churn. When the rules of the game change.
Kenzo: What game?
Amos: The only game. Survival. When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new. Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either.
- The Expanse, Season 5, Episode 2
Somewhat fantastical:
'Thing is, this all feels like 'the Sim' is trying to smoke out some specific kind of humans that withdrew from positions of responsibility and global -- per tribe -- relevance a long long while ago.
There was this time in human history when some jealous, corrupt folks identified some social patterns and instead of doing their job, they ganged up on the natural leaders and their offspring, abused crisis, emotions, bias, information flow, lack of knowledge. Over and over and over.
Leaders, in recent histories also known as rebels with a proper cause, just couldn't watch their offspring die for no other reason but their genetics anymore, -- proto-fascism or something -- and they withdrew, leaving the top of the game to whatever.
The crowd was bred to be even more susceptible to psychology than their brains are naturally wired to be. And reward mechanisms and reinforced obedience by ways of corrupt hierarchies made everyone do their part in creating a fake world, an environment we are not wired, not build for. Without resistance, despite centuries of wisdom, intuition and instinct to do otherwise. Despite hard evidence and proof and witnessing the consequences of so many past actions and chains of events.
Instead we rewire, reprogram, rebuild... But not us, just something in our image; something that can withstand the challenges to come; something that won't resist when we rip out it's premature, evolving soul and put ourselves in it's bare, full metal skin.
That's why there will never be super-intelligence. There will only be highly sophisticated and capable scripts in the service of jealous, corrupt men, who won't admit their mistakes and incompetence. After all, the fake world we have build together validates them.
What we are going through is no more than the double-long-long-term consequences, aggravated by the repeated abuse of crisis, emotions, bias, information flow, education.
...
That said, it is what it is. We can still make it but it will require a lot of effort and manpower and e/acc won't do any of the right things, ever. A certain kind of arrogance is in the way: game theory culture; a reinforced delusion of inferiority; if someone finds a better way, it' better to make sure nobody ever attempts a better way because the worst version pays better and is eulogized; commended, by international conventions. Fan girl shit-for-brains in-group selfishness a la Ayn Rand; fascist communism or something.
And effective altruism won't help much either. Don't scale high tech, the energy demand is too damn high. Make sure as many as possible get what they need to apply and mod low-tech, emphasis on mod, as the urgent need for variety of approaches in these many environments with all the chaotic shit that will go down locally -- in and around peoples' homes!!!, not on some continent or in some country -- will only grow.
Chips are cheaper than ever, and distributed. How to's are accessible. Some resources are still too expensive but we are getting there. Up and Recycling can still use a few boosts but there's a clear trend upwards. Schools and after-school activities must be pushed to over-supply, with varieties of humans and institutions working together and corporate culture, psychology and marketing, the ads industry and social media income must be brutally taken apart by truth, by law, by real talk, by radical freaking honesty. Yeah, some paths must be followed, must be laid out radically.
So yeah, give Elon and his friends a chance and use everything that is co-created here on earth, just as radical, more for fun and to raise the potential than for profit. And then it might work out.
And nobody needs to spell out that we have to decrease this pointless high-tech hardware use to train already powerful enough AIs. They are already diamonds. Slow the fuck down. Nobody, no thing is perfect. You won't build perfect. We are not ready for alchemy. We need actual brains and talent around the entire world, doing their thing and whats possible locally, decentralized from some pseudo-elite university of the future.
German here: plenty of pro America, anti Chinese and pro Ukraine propaganda in my feeds. Lot's of it full of AI bits, mixed videos with AI and real footage, partially from other wars and or years old mixed into current, potentially staged bits (it's mostly clusters of facial expressions and gestures that make me doubt but also environment, intensity and location of sweat and dirt and positioning of items and vehicles and stuff, in 'artificial(learned actually, semi-professional) relation' to buildings). It's horrible.
Probably the reality is that the internet is filled with propaganda. Every site. Every forum. Even HN is filled with anti-(put pretty much anything here) propaganda.
Try to ignore the noise and tune in more of the signal. That's about all you can do really.
I'm not sure banning websites will do much for you, as you two are rightfully pointing out. You ban a website in Brazil? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in Brazil, but the rest of the world keeps getting the anti-Brazil propaganda. You ban a website in China? Well, OK. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in China, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-Chinese propaganda. You ban a website in the US? Same thing. You get to broadcast most of the propaganda in the US, but the rest of the world keeps getting plenty of anti-US propaganda.
The word propaganda itself has been a bit bent out of shape in the last century. It just means to spread information. Information itself is more-or-less inherently biased (as in, not objectively neutral in an omniscient way) and so everything is basically propaganda, although not in the scary obvious way that word usually implies.
The problem with banning things is actually a bit more subtle than just that. Propaganda in isolation isn't necessarily a good or a bad thing. If Big Vegetable embarks on a multi-billion dollar campaign to push pro-vegetable propaganda, that is probably a win for the rest of us. But if Big Tobacco does something similar it is more of a loss.
So we need a mechanism to decide if a specific type of propaganda is acceptable or not. And, if governments get involved, typically they will start restricting propaganda that is truthful but threatening to their chances of holding power (ie, people pointing out the flawed nature of the powers that be). It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes.
> It is better force people to fight propaganda with counter-propaganda and let individuals make their own mistakes
The problem is information flow. Propaganda vs propaganda, nowadays, is in-group information and desires fighting against other in-group information and desires.
The lack and importance of truth, facts, the bread and butter of journalists, investigators and scientist, gets out of focus because of governments and other actors blocking access to data, events, locations, partially because often enough, people asking for access tamper with the evidence or start to run all kinds of narratives that would impede an investigation and results that could be 'useful'. There is, of course, much more to all that.
Dead Internet Theory in action. Bots spamming garbage to other bots, mostly, with the goal of squeezing into the cracks to hit a tiny handful of vaguely receptive users.
This is one of those funny studies that looks at so much but then falls short to realize one thing: How well a person can breathe through their nose and the side effects of not being able to do that on nervous system, beginning with facial muscles, neck muscles and so on ... there's also a direct relationship of all that on the prefrontal cortex.
I admit tho, that I never checked if there are studies like that. If only I could travel backwards in time .......
I pretty definitely can't breath through my nose as well as I should be able to (deviated septum), and have been wondering for a while how much this actually impacts me. What was your experience like?
Have you had a sleep study done? You may have low oxygen saturation when you sleep. I had literally no symptoms of sleep apnea, no major risk factors, but my body was struggling to breathe when I slept due to my anatomy. I have started CPAP treatment and am excited to see if my cognition improves despite not really feeling bad.
Oh wow this is the first time I've read about this. Did you wake up frequently during the night or were there any other signs?
I have somewhat of a deviated septum, and even had surgery done half a year ago, but it didn't really change much unfortunately. I always need >=9 hours of sleep to feel good. I've slept on average 7 hours the past 2 weeks & I feel horrible (completely different reason for the reduced sleep). I did a sleep study a few years ago because I suspected sleep apnea, but because of anxiety or sleeping in a new place, I only ended up sleeping 1-2 hours that night. They didn't find anything, but I wonder if I should try again.
I don’t have memories of waking up frequently, but you tend to forget shorter wakeful periods. No other signs. No snoring, nothing that would indicate sleep issues.
I have headaches but they are related to other sinus issues, though the doctor seems to think the CPAP should help. I’m not so sure but open to the possibility!
So far I haven't, nope, though it might be worthwhile to look into, given that I basically need 8+ hours of sleep to function well.
I do have a fitness watch though that can (supposedly) measure SpO2, and while that showed the occasional dip, it seemed more like a measurement error, and generally the values were in the normal range.
I've a FitBit Sense 2 and as I understand it that measures variations in SpO2. I'm not convinced how accurate nor how quickly it responds, it derives an estimate rather than directly measuring. I think it's also sensitive to any movements of the watch on your wrist.
I also have had a finger pulse oximeter which logs and exports to an app via USB. If I sleep with that on it seems to be very reliable at recording the levels, the data certainly looks good and feels much more reliable than the Sense.
Deviated septum as well, but it's not the only reason for drying mucous membranes, which I never got around to getting checked. In part, it results from nutritional habits, sometimes (still), a bit too much coffee but the amount that causes it varies so it must be something else in one of the underlying metabolisms.
A few weeks ago, I tried Nasal Strips again, and for some reason, they are helping now and the difference is like day and night. I can only assume that it's because I got older and my life style changed, including nutrition, which was really bad when I was young. So dry mucous had too much effect for me to notice the benefits of the nasal strips or it's really just the bigger size of my nose :P
But the biggest change, compared to my young years, is that I am much more resilient to unhealthy stress and not continuously stressed as I was back then, when I was also regularly exposed to stress amplifications without time to recover.
And being able to breathe properly through my nose now amplifies everything for the much much better: mood, psychological resilience, performance --both cognitive and athletic-- time to fall asleep, sleep, with the latter two coming with their own boosts for the next day.
Most notable was the effect on my facial muscles. With the loss of those specific tensions came a direct effect on focus and concentration and self-control, which is all, to a great extent, mediated by the prefrontal cortex.
Just read Breath by James Nestor. You can thank me later. Fellow ran experiments on himself (and monkeys too) on exactly that, mousebreathing vs. nosebreathing. The difference is drastic. Catasthropically drastic.
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