forestG @ forestG @beehaw.org

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2 yr. ago

I am getting old.

When I was a kid, my parents, my siblings and I would go to very crowded beaches during the summer. Sunny weather, vibrant colors, cool water. It was nearly impossible for me to bother with whatever everyone else was doing. My attention was focused to everything that was fun and new to me. I would swim for hours, climb rocks and attempt the most challenging dives I could, run on the wet sand. Even build castles!

And then, gradually, every next year each summer visit to the beach would become less magical. Every next year, my attention would start to focus less on the beach and more on the people. And not just people who were calm, friendly and enjoying themselves there. No. I would focus on people who were rude, stressed out and annoying. Loud people who would disregard everyone else around them.

Until, at some point, it started actually feeling bad visiting crowded places. Felt like there was no way I could enjoy being at the beach if I were to share it with other people. Now, I can point you to places that very few people know how to reach. And they are great. As long as you have your own company.

I envy my kid self. If you were to ask that kid what it felt like to be at the beach, you would get a lot of excitement and zero negativity.

Now, even though I will mostly avoid crowded places it's not always possible to do so. So, when I end up in a crowded place I actively focus on what is important for me to enjoy my time. Laughter is music for my ears. Kidding around my friends, swimming and all the good stuff my kid self knew how to do better. I try. Sometimes I succeed, others I feel old and tired ;-)

What if you are toxic to an user, on the other side of your screen, who happens to have depression or other mental disorders, and you don’t know that fact? Would you feel OK knowing that you’re driving someone to hurt themselves, or worse?

This is probably one of the most important things to consider before posting something in a public space.

And this is not something that occurs recently or during the last 5 years. I’ve been browsing internet since 2006, and it was as bad as it is now, just with other intermediaries, like online chats, forums, etc.

What you describe here and above this sentence is true. It happened, it happens still. But, in my experience, not to the same extend. I 've been spending time in online communities since the early 90's and I believe there is a reason the toxicity is getting worse. Part of it is what @daredevil@kbin.social said. I mean most of the platforms offered by huge corporations try to drive engagement for profit. To achieve this, to get more people involved and engaging as much as possible, the interactions have to get limited to the least common denominator. It's not just reaction buttons, it's much more than this. Another part of it is the technological shift. The web was populated by significantly less netizens before certain technological advancements, with probably the most important of these being the smart phones. I believe this combination is the reason. The huge increase of people surfing the web and the appearance of huge corporations actively controlling how new people get used to surfing the web.

Btw at 2006 google was already there and quite big and facebook was already starting to get big.

Anyway, thanks for the link, as a fediverse newbie, I really appreciate it!

Hey have you ever been to https://www.neocities.org? It’s reminiscent of geocities and kind of cool.

No, haven't even realised that Sheldon Brown's site was hosted there. I used to have a website up on geocities when I was a kid, browsing neocities brings back so many happy memories.. Thanks!

Sorry if I sounded disagreeable, I didn’t mean to be. I was just taking a trip down memory lane.

No worries. Felt exactly like that. That's why my mind went to how I felt when altavista's babelfish appeared, I did the same thing for a few minutes before responding :-)

Well, I guess not everyone had the same experience. Maybe I should have spoken only for myself. It's not that I didn't use search engines before google appeared or that I don't do it now. Just the fact, at least in my experience, that I would get to know way more and way better web locations, related to what interested me, through discussions with other people with similar interests, than I would through search engines. Even when discussions are not possible (like in magazines) or are too massive to follow, it is often, especially in technology-related subjects, preferable to have them archived (through subscriptions) and search directly those archives when I need something specific. It was true for me back when engines didn't have as good indexes, it is true for me now that their role as businesses is becoming obvious. I guess it also depends on what someone considers interesting.

I did love how altavista translation service was called though, really liked the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy :-)

There was a time before google's search engine, when all the previous attempts had not managed to become the dominant entry point for the web. During that time, we would find interesting web pages through people and/or specific interests. Then, google came, and for a time it was good (read like The Second Renaissance Part I story from animatrix). Ads and SEO were not everywhere yet, content mattered more than those two. So, while I came here to suggest what @bbbhltz@beehaw.org commented, when I read your post text I thought that maybe, at least for what we tend to constantly look for news, articles and discussions, we shouldn't constantly rely on search engines. For example, most technologies have news letters, weekly/monthly magazines, mailing lists, community boards or other forms of group communication through which you can gradually discover better content sources (individuals or groups) on what interests you. Without the search engine service and its cost (direct or indirect) between you and the content.

Believe it or not, what you swallow has almost nothing to do with your weight. The only place the body absorbs energy from food is in the intestines, and the brain controls that process.

I would believe it if I started gaining weight by just breathing. Also, no. Not the only place. Part of the alcohol consumed is absorbed through the stomach.

The digestive tract is a tube, open at both ends, through which food passes. The process of extracting energy from that food is complex and highly tunable: the brain controls the production and secretion of hundreds of enzymes and other chemicals, as well as the physical action of the muscles lining the tube.

The brain controls pretty much everything, and this everything is highly tunable. I mean, how else would well adjusted people adapt to the highly complex lives they live as adults? With commercial pills?

It makes sense doesn't it? Biodiversity will always facilitate better, richer, healthier equilibriums between species than the ones imposed by man-made, narrow-minded motives. The more intricate details I notice in environments unaffected (at least not directly) by humans, the more urban environments seem like wastelands..

Nice article, thanks!

People who grew up doing sports have it quite easier than the rest when it comes to picking up a new physical activity later in life. Yes, I can no longer compete in the martial art I grew up competing, nor can I participate in any serious basketball event near me. But, for example, I can ride my bike for hours, explore very different routes and empty my mind. It is like meditation on my breathing while moving in quite beautiful natural surroundings. Sometimes getting to summits so silently beautiful that I wish I knew how to capture the beauty. It's a different kind of fun, but it's still fun.

Team sports.. I 've played basketball and soccer as a kid, in competitive settings too, and I don't think I can remember many occasions where everyone was respectful. It didn't get better during adulthood. And it doesn't take many assholes to ruin a game, even if they are eventually contained. Sometimes I miss basketball, which is probably the sport I loved most as a kid, but never the negative side of the team aspect, which was pretty much always present. In cycling (or running) the fact that you don't need anyone else doesn't mean you can't enjoy company of others with similar taste and attitude :-)

And of course it's the health aspect that is quite important. Maybe you are young and healthy enough still to disregard it, but for me, that alone pretty much justifies sports for as long as my body can handle them. As for watching... It's easy for me to get bored (provided no unhealthy stimulants are used) when my heart rests at 45 bpm, but it's pretty impossible to feel like that when it is constantly above 120-130 bpm to support movement. At some point in my life I took living with my heart very literally XD

I never tried to limit the fat too much, for various reasons. Always considered it important for hormones. Also, it is nearly impossible to cook real food without using some kind of fat. Then, I always enjoyed nuts. Whenever I wanted to lower my bodyfat, I always tried to limit carbohydrates, which, again, I don't really want to lower too much because getting them from unprocessed plant foods is actually a side effect in the attempt to get sufficient quantities of micronutrients.

Never thought about gallstones before this article. It also contains a very nice explanation of how fats are usually categorized. Also, the point about fat soluble vitamins (some of which we store in our own bodyfat) is very interesting to remember when considering deficiencies. Really worth the read, even though it doesn't provide definitive answers on anything (which would actually be suspicious if it did), it contains some very important points one has to consider when thinking about food and quantities.

Btw, since I enjoy a lot of cycling the past few years, I think it doesn't really make sense to consider competitive (especially elite) athletes as an example of healthy individuals. I mean, some of the top cyclists drop to insanely low single digit bodyfat percentages for the competitions they participate in. Which is neither sustainable nor healthy.

Anyway, that was a very interesting article, thanks!

which is once again improved with the addition of body language and further complexity which comes via video.

Maybe it's just me, but, I 've never felt that video calls add the body language element that in person communication has. I mean, I get a very different feeling (and my facial expressions, are different because of that) when looking directly at the camera than the one I get when making eye contact with the other person. Doesn't this mean that you actually add an altered body language to the interaction?

Or is this something included in what you meant with "further complexity"? Not sure what you were referring to there.

I am definitely trying this, thanks!

Well, I try not to use supplements when I can go for real food, so I wouldn't know which protein powder is more effective.. I enjoy peas even though I don't eat them often. The foods I mentioned were examples of cheap protein sources. Vital wheat gluten (which is actually an ingredient for meals) is more than 4 times cheaper than pea protein powder in my area and roughly the same amount of amino-acids. All the rest of the nutrients (and the amino-acids it has on lower concentrations) gluten doesn't have and may exist in a pea protein powder supplement, exist in the rest of the options I mentioned :-)

This was a very nice article, both an enjoyable read and informative. Kept the study about endurance athletes on a deficit for later, since I recently went about losing a few kg in exactly the manner they tested.

50g/day is perhaps on the low side, but not unreasonable for a 2000kcal/day person who’s not trying to gain muscle.

Thanks for pointing that out. Yes, I don't think its unreasonable either, but haven't even actually tested it on myself.

I like my bread, my sides, my potatoes, my noodles, my rice, and etc. These are all things with protein. Just not enough to get to 100+ figure.

These are all great carb sources, most meals contain them for that reason, not for their protein. Their protein is really negligible. Let's take a look,

• baked potatoes ~ 1.7g protein in 100g (1.7%)
• Rice ~ 7.5g protein in 100g. (7.5%)
• Bread, I assume common bread based on wheat flour, so roughly 12g of protein per 100g. (12%) This one is not exactly negligible, but it has almost as high carb content (_{75g) as rice (}80g).
• Noodles, depends on what they are made of. Wheat flour or rice, you can see the previous bullets.

So what you say makes sense. If you try to get all your protein mostly from such sources, you will load a great deal of carbohydrates, almost certainly more than you need, even as a very active athlete. Regardless of what path you choose though, even without chicken breasts, there are foods with great concentrations of protein.

And I think you are overestimating the amount of protein you need. 100+ figure is fine, but really not necessary, anything close to 80 for the weight you mentioned, especially in a fairly inactive person, should be pretty much fine. Especially if you have days every once in a while that you go well above 100g.

Carbs tho, regardless of size or calories, once you load all your glycogen (which is what carbs are converted to if you are not already full) stores in the muscle tissue and liver, if you are inactive, will become triglycerides (fat). And an average person doesn't store too much glycogen either, you can estimate it around 500g to get a sense of how excessive carbs can make us both fat and, eventually, sick. One important reason why complete inactivity (especially in the big muscles groups, take a walk, run, lift, jump, dance -use your legs!), makes us fat fast.

I believe you are correct, the most recent study I am aware of is this which points to an upper limit of 1.6g per kg. So even with the upper limit as target, its less than 150g (~129g) for a person of 180lbs. Again, this is the upper limit. As far as I am aware the lower limit is close to 0.8g per kg. Anywhere between these limits seems to be okay for me (an athlete).

edit: "0.8g per kg, not 0.8g total"

also, on a personal note, it sucks how difficult it is to get clean, environmentally friendly protein and fat that doesn’t have milk or soy in it. as someone who does keto, there’s basically no brand out there who does meat substitutes right except for Beyond, which is free of allergens (although i’m sure there are a few people who are allergic to pea protein out there) and doesn’t add a bunch of carbs

It's sad to have issues with soy :-/ I really love tofu.

I've been on keto in the past (for a year or so), mostly as an experiment to test various aspects of it and I learned a lot of things about how insulin and glycogen works (I am a complete nerd on food among other things XD). At some point I re-introduced carbs and started relying heavily on plant based food sources (and what a relief it was to stop worrying about getting out of ketosis when eating plant based foods). But avoiding to spike my insulin levels and avoiding the excessive heights stayed with me as a good thing. So, I try to spike my insulin before or after emptying my muscle glycogen (long bike rides or runs) and avoid spiking it in the last meal of the day, where what I eat can be considered keto. Coconut oil, olive oil are my preferred fats, a few veggies, and a protein source like seitan/tofu/tempeh in a stir fry.

Nuts & seeds are also heavy on protein and fats (but need more care on keto because most of them contain a few carbs too) and really very rich in most of the other nutrients too.

Anyways, I started typing because I wanted to tell you that you might find seitan a good option in order to limit or replace whey. You can prepare it in many different ways (really a matter of taste and variety) and keep it both low on carbs and easily accessible when you are hungry. I usually make a small loaf (remains okay for 5 days -probably even more- or so in the fridge), cooked (so that I can just toss it in a salad if I don't want to stir fry), and like 3-4 portions of around 30grams of protein. Easy, lazy, tasty, cheap dinner :-)

So, the rock is the guy that carries muscle mass 7 - 10 times what normally fits his frame because of steroids supporting it instead of his gonads, right? Obvious answer then is -no. Not unless you are blasting all kinds of PED.

I am no expert by any means, but my experience (in decades of sports and experimentation) is really close to a study I 've seen in the past, that proposed 0,8 to 1,6-2 grams per kg of bodyweight. I go for the upper limit when I increase activity (especially strength related, instead of endurance), I go for the lower limit when I decrease activity. Been healthy and strong during all this time.

As for food I try to find the least amount possible my body needs to process (why overload my vital organs? is there a good reason?) in order to support my lifestyle (active, and heavy on sports). Going for the most amount possible without a good reason, I consider greedy and harmful for both the environment and the rest of the people. Resources are not limitless.

As for the expensive part, protein exists in cheaper foods too, not everyone relies heavily (or at all) on animal products. Simple (cheap, especially if you prepare them yourself) examples: legumes & beans, seitan, tofu (and all kinds of tofu related products), tempeh. Especially legumes & beans are incredibly rich in most of the other important nutrients too. One might consider vital wheat gluten a protein powder (almost 80grams of protein in 100grams total), even though its lacking a bit in the amino-acids that legumes/beans are full of, comparing the price it has with an actual protein supplement makes it pretty clear what overpriced means.

So in my own paraphrased and cobbled together words, structural color is different from pigment. Pigment is based primarily on the absorption of light and reflection back of some of it, while structural color is based purely on the reflection of light by microscopic structures somehow arranged to wavelengths of light.

Structural color depends on the arrangement (structure) of the organelles that will produce certain effects on the way light travels when it meets them. Color from just pigments depends on the type of pigment which determines which wavelengths will be absorbed from it and which will be reflected. You can have certain structural color from melanosomes that contain pigments positioned in a manner relevant to the observable light properties (which for example will produce blue from a pigment other than blue, mentioned as rare in the video). So, they are different, but they can co-exist (pigmentation & structure that facilitates certain light phenomena) in organelles like melanosomes.

Beautiful subject :-)

Well I am not a doctor, things like my first comment is what I would say to myself if I could go back 20 years. It's been my experience that the more support my feet got from the shoes the weaker they became. Weakness traveled upwards until my hips started misbehaving. I mean, at some point it was painful to even walk without hip pain. But I wouldn't even recommend switching to barefoot shoes if you are using too much support at the moment. Yes, barefoot shoes enable the feet to get stronger (and function as they are supposed to), but it takes time to adjust. Wide toe-box though is important and carries no risk. What I will note, again from my personal experience, is that supportive shoes are useful only in cases of injury and should be temporary as they increase weaknesses (I tend to think of them the way I thought of casts used in bone fractures -the longer I used the support, the more work my muscles and fascia needed to recover). So, with that in mind

I unfortunately had a surgery a few years ago and I recently got bursitis on my right foot.

maybe consulting the doctor that diagnosed the bursitis, on what is needed to recover optimally would be a good place to start.

As for posture, the thing is that our brain constantly re-aligns everything so we can keep functioning the best way possible even in non-optimal conditions (i.e. chair, or standing but looking down). And it's really a very complex sum of way too many details to consciously control. At least for me, even though I know quite a few things about proper posture. This is why a little time doing something repetitive like running, that requires good posture in order to run properly and without pain, creates a habit of standing better without thinking about it. Walking (with little or no support on the feet) can be a place to start after you recover. A nice walk can be stress relieving too!

Dynamic stretching is nothing more than moving (as opposed to holding a lengthening position) certain parts of your body to the full range of motion, without placing load on the movement, slowly and slightly increasing the range in each repetition. If you want to try this, you 'll have to look for the movements that relieve tension created by assuming a certain position for a long time. Tension is created when muscle tissue is shortened for an extended period of time. For example, I bet you can feel some relief if you do 10 circles with your shoulders. Simple movements like this.

Finally, I know that in the beginning it can already be too much to handle the load from the time spent at work. This will get easier, as long as you rest well and eat healthy, adequate, nutritious food. The rest of what I wrote, I wrote because you asked how you could get a more resilient body. It doesn't have to be at the same time with the initial adaptations to the new work environment ;-)