Notes

I had a note [1] from Andy Galpin talking to Dr Herman Pontzer on population variation, but Pontzer’s area of expertise and his study of energy expenditure lack of variation was also really fascinating. Note , cqn expand later, my recollection of how in his 5 month daily marathon experiment, peoples daily energy expenditures stabolized , adapting, to just above their baseline . And this was just one among many studies he noted about how our energy expenditures are quite so similar. ...

placeholder, inspired by conversation with a friend on a instagram post linking to a study [1] on visceral fat differences among two populations. Decent n, between “South East Asian” and , “white European origin”, n=677 vs n=2394 for liver fat comparison and n=697 vs n=2271 for subcutaneous and visceral fat comparisons . ( Using CT , and or MRI ). They measured more liver fat and more visceral fat at lower BMI . ...

Today I scratched an itch I have had for many years. I discovered this artist on sound cloud, Hot Sugar, some time ago. Their music spoke to me. In particular I recall around 2017-2018 listening to this simple song about a telephone call. I didnt remember the lyrics, but I had an impression about how a simple phone call is a very beautiful way to connect with people which my generation sadly avoids. its all about text messaging these days. ...

spoiler alert. Dont read further if you want to enjoy a really cool jigsaw puzzle . Recently worked on this fun puzzle … [1] when we were nearing the end , someone was asking me hey want to do this nsxt? I said yea think we done in 5 minutes… Haha turns out nope references https://magicpuzzlecompany.com/products/the-happy-isles

Mini reaction on people saying Mythos can find bugs in decade old code. I think similarly I was reading Mythos or maybe a different model is solving Erdos problems previously unsolved, yet it turned out they were solved but just lost into the internet and the model in question sort of performed a lookup as with stack overflow answers. Especially if folks are saying, Mythos is finding bugs in really old software, that begs the question are old bugs being resurfaced , recycled as novel. ...

I recently1 discovered ugrep, and I have benefited a lot in using this to search my logseq journals. But recently I noticed I was getting fewer results and also confirmed some misses. My specific strange issue was that if I pointed directly to my miss, ug found it but not otherwise. I was consulting with microsoft copilot about this mystery. running into a weird ugrep issue where, ug -%% 'some blah' /some/foo/path , comes up dry , but if I am specific ug -%% 'some blah' /some/foo/path/more/specific/file.py , then I get results. Is there some index that needs to be poked for rebuilding? ...

This person [1] discussing gping for a walk and breathing to combat overthinking. Also harnessing the Tim Ferris “how can this be if it were easy?” What I also like, for a close relative to over thinking, over-emphasizing, over-valuing , the impact , of not a decision say but a upcoming event. The trick I find, is to discount its importance or better just pretend it has already happened. I know it is similzr to what Michael Phelps was known for doing, mentally viewing the tape literally linearly of a swim meet. I think focusing specifically at the end , and how good that feels, helps me to keep myself in that state even before it’s over. ...

Originally posting1, here are some thoughts from reading this article2, on random variables on how they are not. The author addresses this quote , “Why random variables are neither random nor variables” Summarizing, the author would prefer I think “random variables” were renamed as “probabilistically deterministic functions”. or maybe more verbosely, “probabilistically deterministic functions mapping uncertainty to known possible outcomes”. The argument being, that, “random variables” are not variables because they are not single numbers but really intended to describe how a probabilistic distribution , say, maps to outcomes. I like that the author refers to these outcomes as “shadow numbers” 🙂. (And by extension I like the point that, just semantically, a number, “14” , is not random even if it was generated through a quantum event, because by definition the mapping function is what is random and not the numbers they produce). ...

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood I was reading Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken, because I’ve been looking into writing about my whys. I have a document penning down whenever inspiration hits. It has the “path of mastery”, like Dan Pink might add , the “path of impact”, where I see Andrew Ng in my mind whenever I write that, the “path of curiosity”, which is a pet I have that must be fed or else we have Jack a dull boy. There’s also the “path of making others go ooooh thats cool or thats funny” , which I can never really help myself not visiting if I trip into it. ...

Just perusing Gayle’s [1] intro. I am wondering about will Gayle write about when is a good time to transition from thinking about and designing a solution to a problem, and writing some code to test things out. i Think this interview style does actually relate to what lately i think about that design skills are really important to save time. But also, to be specific sometimes you can write some quick code that can really be faster than white boarding. but agree that your compute in your head can save you lots of time from going down the wrong path just by your intuition and not because you have actually worked out why. ...