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Here's the thing: life also imitates art. If you invert your load-bearing assumption, it could be that he just reads too much slop. But my honest take? You might be right.

And then there's homeopathy which is a largely unrelated and entirely nonsensical thing.

And be careful with that dismissal! Not that I'm helping my case, here, but Pollack doesn't think it's baloney (see related chapter in his book "The Fourth Phase of Water").

Folks still sleeping on structured water.

While admittedly contested and only reproduced by a few labs outside Gerald Pollack's at University of Washington, there is a solid case that it could play a role in transporting water and sap to the tops of trees. At least, it's involved in the motion induced in hydrophilic tubes when there is sufficient ambient radiant energy (uv/infrared).

Relevant papers:

"Exclusion-zone water inside and outside of plant xylem vessels." 2024 Scientific Reports. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-62983-3

"Surface-induced flow: a natural microscopic engine using infrared energy as fuel." 202 Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aba0941

"Long-range forces extending from polymer-gel surfaces." 2003 Phys. Rev. E. https://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevE.68.031408

Pollack's site: https://www.pollacklab.org/

Some critiques of Pollack's theory:

Schurr, J.M. (2013). Phenomena associated with gel–water interfaces: analyses and alternatives to the long-range ordered water hypothesis. J. Phys. Chem. B, 117(25), 7653–7674. https://doi.org/10.1021/jp302589y Elton, D.C., Spencer, P.D., Riches, J.D. & Williams, E.D. (2020). Exclusion zone phenomena in water — a critical review of experimental findings and theories. Int. J. Mol. Sci., 21(14), 5041. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms21145041 (open access; the most thorough critical review) Elton, D.C. & Spencer, P.D. (2021). Pathological water science — four examples and what they have in common. In Water in Biomechanical and Related Systems (Biologically-Inspired Systems, vol. 17), pp. 155–170. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-67227-0_8 (preprint: https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.07287)

Based on the list of contenders feels like you might be missing rsync.net?

A so-called fourth phase of water (liquid, but with some crystalline organization) that grows on hydrophilic surfaces by absorbing ultraviolet and infrared light, and organizes into a honeycomb-like lattice similar to ice, but lacking the H+ binding layers to make it rigid. It has higher viscosity than bulk water, and a net-negative charge.

Yes, it's a relatively recent concept (decades) pursued mostly by Gerald Pollack at University of Washington and not widely replicated, though there is some replication that has prompted critical review (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7404113/). It's also downstream of work by Albert Szent-Györgyi (Nobel prize for vitamin C) and Gilbert Ling. And, of course, there are a bunch of folks Pollack distances himself from commercializing the concept.

From the horse's mouth: https://www.pollacklab.org/research

If I had a coloring book for every person who cited wikipedia as a reliable source on cutting-edge science... I'd have Christmas presents for a bunch of people I don't know!

Get a microscope and help me explore the role of structured water in rouleaux formation.

Rouleaux formations are clumps of red blood cells, and they're bad because 90% of our circulatory system is < 1 cell wide, so clumps cannot pass. Hematological literature of past 50 years is a bit of a mess regarding mechanisms, seemingly has not considered structured water because it's recent and looks a little fringe. Structured water is known to be disrupted by WiFi, so if a clearer connection can be made between structured water and rouleaux, it could offer the simplest and most encompassing explanation for biological harm from EMF; would also make the benefits of sauna, red light therapy, grounding/earthing, and other practices more legible.

I did an n=5 study on sauna and rouleaux (positive result; draft report: https://thespacebetween.xyz/p/sangre-y-sauna/), and some n=1 observations of myself with grounding and wifi. Blog post: https://thespacebetweenx.substack.com/p/blood-and-the-specte...

“While the attraction is clear, the underlying motivation is not,” he said.

Nobody involved in the study or the article has ever done even a small dose of psilocybin and interacted with crystals.

they did not use RAG for these tests... how are we supposed to take the report seriously when it does not demonstrate even a cursory understanding of nature of LLMs?

It's bananas!

If the claim these folks make is "time spent struggling through a default config on an unfamiliar machine" > "time saved by crafting an workshop to fit your mind", then we are not the same.

(Probably, the dividing line here is time spent coding vs time spent managing infra.)

for the laconic and latin-leaning, NB (nota bene) means "note well"

for the laconic and latin-familiar, NB stands for nota bene, or "note well".

A few implementation details from building a hobby crawler

Absolutely loved TVQ. The insight about mitochondrial DNA inheritance being exclusively from the mother, thus motivating female fingerprinting of male nucleic DNA for gamete viability (via courtship rituals, pheromones, plumage, etc)...

It sounds like you no longer see value in the work. What were your original motivations and goals? How have they changed? From a distance, it's easy to guess that you're not confident the project will be useful to anyone. If that's true, it would make sense that you're demotivated--nobody likes doing work that isn't useful to themselves or others.

If the goal was simply to learn and stay sharp, then perhaps an incomplete project is a success——you did some coding, and learned something about what motivates you. If the goal was more specific, then perhaps you've (subconsciously) re-evaluated the requirements for success, and it no longer feels achievable or worth the effort.

I could be wrong, of course, but this sounds less like a problem of technical ability than one of deepening your understanding of your own motivation. If that sounds right, maybe check out https://x.com/scottdomes — I like his writing about how to identify what you want and why.

it is kind of picking a fight with SaaS/cloud providers

or starting a bidding war

Location: Portland, OR, USA

Remote: yes

Willing to relocate: unlikely: maybe to major metro for dream job

Technologies: Python, JS, Linux, Docker, iOS, Elm, SQL, AWS

Resume: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameronboehmer/

Email: cameron.boehmer@gmail.com

Bachelor's in Computer Engineering, 20+ years of experience (Google, YouTube, Facebook) in consumer web doing front-end, full-stack, and systems work; would love to do ML-infra or related!

A 6-minute Bob Newhart clip from MadTV that is guaranteed[1] to fix all your problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow0lr63y4Mw (tl;dw: stop it!)

But the work is tedious enough that I am too tried in the evening to do something interesting.

Same; sounds normal.

Have you been able to detach yourself from the constant flow of information and focus on your own stuff?

I put the xbox in the closet for while and made it just a little harder to indulge the impulse. Don't tell yourself you have to swear off podcasts or HN or whatever forever—just ask yourself if you'd be willing to try a brief but significant break, and make sure you have some ideas for what you'll replace it with.

I also rarely spend free time programming. Once in a while I'll get an idea and the motivation to do so, but I find that if I spend a significant chunk of my productive/creative energy during the day on work, I'm much happier if I then spend the rest of the day socializing, exercising, doing stuff around the house—basically anything not in front of the computer.

Habit change can be daunting, but the hardest part is often recognizing something that you want to change, and you're already there! Good luck with the rest :)

1) Not.

A common argument I've heard is "well ok, maybe layoffs don't help the company directly, but it is an opportunity to get rid of dead weight". Sure, except presumably at-will employers could have done that at any time if they had hard data that suggested this pool of employees weren't working out.

I'm guessing letting an individual go carries higher risk of a wrongful termination suit than a bulk layoff, so there is still an incentive to mask performance-based decisions with economic justifications.

The copy in the example entry is telling: "I met her on Polk street."

If you don't know SF well, Polk street is one of two frat boy rows.

+1 for The Mind Illuminated (the one by Culadasa)

I share this perspective. I don't have acute trauma behind my anxiety and depression, but I have been through periods of poor self-care wrapped up with those states, and I relate to OP. Exercise, sleep, nutrition, and spending time with even just one person who likes you are pillars of (mental) health, and without them, all the other tools (meditation, psychedelics, therapy) don't seem to have much leverage.

Not having read the much more authoritative response above (or any such), I'll foolishly offer the one fact about trees I recall from boy scouts or outdoor school:

The core of a tree is much less alive than the bark—so much less, in fact, that if you walk in a circle around a tree scraping off a thin strip of bark and make sure to stop where you started, the tree will die.

Having googled this just to be sure, I also learned that trees can only lose up to about a quarter of a circumference of bark (in the fashion describe above) before facing mortal peril.

What's extreme about it? I'm new to ML, but this seems great from a testing and verification perspective. I actually feel like Christmas came early, here, because I'm eager to explore novel model architectures, and having a small and easily manipulable dataset to experiment with seems perfect for that.

36, relatable. My recall and retention both seem to improve with all the basic (yet rarely completely implemented) grandmotherly advice you can imagine: sleep regularly, enjoy as much daylight as possible, exercise daily, eat the rainbow, meditate (ok, grandma never included this one), spend time with people that make you feel good.

Have you seen Common Crawl? https://commoncrawl.org/. If so, what differences do you imagine for yours?

How is this different from any other problem that is already solved by version pegging?

It's a reductio ad absurdam joke

I'm curious about this, too. I love biking for the distance you can travel, the wind, the strength it builds, but I do have a distinct taste for walking, though I'd have to think about it more to have any ideas as to why.

P.S. a) It's easier to dawdle when you walk, to enjoy the particulars of the places you pass; biking is so fast by default that you have less time to savor details. b) Biking tends to be higher intensity exercise, which may actually take necessary energy away from mind-wandering; in fact, my mind wanders much less while biking than walking, so I'd guess this is the case, but maybe this isn't true for everyone. Moreover, biking forces external attention more regularly as you encounter pedestrians and traffic at a higher rate

Ah! When it comes to arguments, yes, I do agree that their supporting examples really ought to be true-to-life.

But I don't think that's quite what was going on here.

munificent was using a metaphor in service of his plea, his encouragement, his advice that you really ought to consider making regular efforts at what you care about. To me, that feels a lot less technical and a lot more human than an argument does.

The difference between metaphors and examples might be that the important part of a metaphor is how it functions in context, how it adds to the metaphrand[1], and the important part of an example is how it functions out of context.

To give an example of metaphor: many Native American tribes besides the Lemhi Shoshone have stories that claim Sacagawea as one of their own. The stories—themselves metaphors for tribal values—are, of course, wrong, but they serve an important instructional purpose, nonetheless, transmitting values and custom in a narrative that inspires. In that case, it seems less important that the children of these tribes are hearing something factually incorrect, and more important that they are inspired by and identify with the story.

To give an example of example: if you're making an argument in court, you have to reference examples of past rulings that support your position. The strength of your argument depends completely on the validity of your examples, as they occurred outside the current context.

If you think I'm full of hot air, you're right, but anyway here is a list of famous authors explaining how fiction is truer than the truth itself: https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-t...

Thanks for coming to my TEDxHN talk.

1) Julian Jaynes, in the beginning of "The Origins of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind", does a lovely segment on how we only learn via metaphor, and in which he develops the terms metaphier (commonly, the metaphor itself) and metaphrand (the thing being described by the metaphor).

It's more than harmful—prior to the latest common usage, toxic usually meant potentially lethal for sufficient dosage.

So, while it is indeed free of connotations of intent, it evokes disgust and, in fact, invites ostracism. If something is so dangerous that it can kill you, there's rarely much wisdom in attempting to talk it out of being lethal. Better to just remove it from your environment.

In any case, I agree that the word is tragically overworked. And don't we all know that overwork can be toxic.