Kille Tölönen

@MOikealta @SarasvuoJari Kiusaamismielessäkin?

@SarasvuoJari Kyllä, jopa itsestään.

Voiko kenestä tahansa tehdä kiusaamistarkoituksessa huoli-ilmoituksen?

In 1915, Gillette began convincing women that leg & armpit hair were embarrassing, masculine & unhygienic--to sell razors. A norm that has no health benefits but incredible compliance. Women are called 'disgusting' when they have the same body hair as men. thepersistent.com/tangled-histor…

Where you put your efforts & energy matters to the outcomes you get. If you block time for the gym, you should be blocking time to think. I'll die on that hill. drgurner.substack.com/p/integrate-th…

There's a lot of advice out there to "not be too hard on yourself," but look around... You see entitlement, bad work ethic, poor treatment of others, rudeness, blame, etc.. More people should clearly be *harder* on themselves.

I hardly ever spend time these days getting sucked into reading the nonsense on Twitter/X, but this surreal exchange between ex-footballer Matt Le Tissier and Grok about aircraft contrails encapsulates perfectly why most normal people have better things to do with their time.

Vahemman menneiden marehtimista - vahemman masennusoireita vanhempana! Uusi tutkimus osoittaa, etta mita vahemmän marehdit menneita "mahdollisuuksia" ja "kadonneita tilaisuuksia" ("mita jos"-ajattelua), sita parempi mielenterveys. 1/ link.springer.com/article/10.100…

Most people treat self-talk like a pep talk — you tell yourself you've got this, you stay positive, you push through. That advice isn't wrong. It's just incomplete in a way that matters more than most people realize. The research on positive self-talk is real. Encouraging internal dialogue does improve performance. But the field has largely moved away from framing this as "positive vs. negative" because that's not actually the right question. The right question is whether what you're saying to yourself is *effective*. And negative self-talk can be effective. Positive self-talk can be useless. The valence isn't the variable. What actually drives effectiveness is something most self-talk advice never mentions: psychological distance. Here's the thing: you're probably already an expert at this, just not for yourself. Think about a scenario you find stressful — an exam, a tough conversation, a high-pressure week. Now picture a friend in that same situation texting you about it. You know exactly what to say back. You're not scrambling. You're not spiraling. Because you're not inside the emotion of it. That clarity you have for them? That's the same clarity psychological distance gives you for yourself. Your inner voice isn't your best coach. It's your most reactive one.

People with higher IQs tend to do better in many areas of life. For example, they’re generally less socially isolated, less neurotic, and have significantly fewer mental health issues. The myths about gifted people being 'maladjusted' or 'unhappy' are complete nonsense.

"I read “Manhood in the Making,” a 1991 book by the anthropologist David Gilmore. It changed my mind. Gilmore argues masculinity isn’t something that just happens to boys as they grow up. Cultures had to create manhood — had to actively train it into young men — because the natural state of young males is apathy, self-indulgence & laziness."

@williamwallace The weight thing may be mediated via insulin, which may explain the null effect on weight in general.

@williamwallace Taurine is the real deal. Amazing stuff.

Taurine is one of the most studied amino acids in metabolic research and one of the least discussed outside it. The 2024 Tzang meta-analysis in Nutrition & Diabetes pooled data from randomized controlled trials of taurine supplementation and measured every major marker in the metabolic syndrome cluster. The results are more consistent and more clinically meaningful than most people realize. Taurine is a sulfur-containing amino acid. The body synthesizes it from cysteine, but endogenous production does not always meet demand, which is why it is classified as conditionally or semi-essential. It is concentrated in the heart, brain, retina, and skeletal muscle. Plasma and tissue taurine levels are consistently lower in people with type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease than in healthy controls, a pattern documented across multiple populations. The 2024 meta-analysis pulled from randomized trials using doses between 0.5 and 6 grams per day. Against placebo, taurine supplementation significantly reduced systolic blood pressure by 4 mmHg. Diastolic blood pressure fell by 1.5 mmHg. Triglycerides dropped by 18.3 mg/dL. Total cholesterol fell by 8.3 mg/dL and LDL cholesterol by 6.5 mg/dL. Fasting glucose decreased by 5.9 mg/dL. The HOMA-IR index, a measure of insulin resistance, fell by 0.69 units. Fasting insulin decreased by 1.5 mU/L. HbA1c trended down by 0.34 percent, a borderline signal. Every endpoint moved in the direction that favors metabolic health. No effect on body weight or BMI, which actually strengthens the mechanistic case because the benefits are not mediated by weight loss. For context on magnitude, a 4 mmHg systolic reduction is roughly what you would expect from first-line antihypertensive monotherapy at standard doses. An 18 mg/dL triglyceride drop is comparable to what EPA/DHA at 2 to 4 grams per day produces. A 0.69 HOMA-IR reduction is a substantial insulin sensitivity improvement. These are not marginal biomarker shifts. They are clinically relevant changes hit by a single amino acid with no observed safety signal. The mechanisms that map to these outcomes are well characterized in the literature. Taurine enhances endothelial nitric oxide availability and modulates vascular tone, which plausibly explains the blood pressure reduction. It conjugates with bile acids in the liver and promotes fecal bile acid excretion, increasing hepatic demand for cholesterol as substrate and reducing circulating cholesterol and triglyceride loads. It appears to support pancreatic beta-cell function and improve insulin signaling at peripheral tissues, which maps onto the observed improvements in fasting glucose, fasting insulin, and HOMA-IR. The caveats worth knowing. Trial sizes have generally been modest, typically 20 to 100 participants per arm. Durations have ranged from days to a year, and most are in the weeks-to-months range, so we do not have long-duration hard cardiovascular endpoint data from randomized trials. Populations skew toward metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes, obesity, and hepatic dysfunction rather than the healthy general population. Effects in healthy individuals without metabolic impairment may be smaller or harder to detect. A 2025 meta-analysis in overweight and obese adults identified 3 grams per day as the threshold below which glycemic improvements become inconsistent, suggesting dose matters. The broader point. Taurine has meta-analysis-level evidence for improving blood pressure, lipids, glycemic control, and insulin sensitivity simultaneously, with no weight or safety trade-offs. It is remarkable how little that data shapes the way this amino acid is discussed. Tzang, Nutr Diabetes, 2024: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38755142/ Guan, Eur J Pharmacol, 2020: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32871172/ Ran, Nutrients, 2025: pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39796472/

I’m thrilled that people are discovering medieval-style music, because it’s my favorite era in music. There’s a playlist on spotify with eighty-six HOURS of medieval and Tudor Christmas carols. I’ll share the link below.

Parisuhdevakivallasta on ollut paljon juttua mediassa viimeaikoina. Tiesitko etta jenkeissa tarkasteltiin 18-28v parisuhdevakivaltaa yllattavin tuloksin (v. 2007)? Yksisuuntaisissa vakivaltatapauksissa naiset olivat tekijoina yli 70% tapauksista. 1/ pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC18…

This is why I tweet so much about dating The birth rate won’t be solved by married people scolding unmarried people to “just get married and have kids” or “think about your fertility!!!” People are trying, dating is the bottleneck

I typically don’t like to put myself in boxes or categories, but I think this might be the one exception. I’m very proud of the work we’ve been able to do and look forward to working with others in the “Gentlemanosphere” as @ariblaff puts it: thedispatch.com/article/manosp…

A chemist froze himself at -273.15°C, everyone said he was crazy but he was 0K.

As a philosophy undergrad who wandered into STEM, I can vouch for this general point. I know some brilliant exceptions, but there really are two cultures and the kinds of people attracted to the humanities and the kinds of people attracted to empirical fields tend to have very different temperaments and skills. This would be fine if scientists stuck to reporting the facts, but social science (and social science genetics) is absolutely saturated with philosophically controversial assumptions that lead researchers to draw far-reaching policy conclusions from their empirical analyses. We have a name for the practice of making controversial policy recommendations based on philosophical premises that are never defended, and it's neither science nor philosophy. It's activism.

Does he realize what he just admitted lol

okay I guess I have to talk about Péter Magyar here. Let me just start with saying, in a very unladylike way, that you guys seem to have zero clue what happened in Hungary in the last two years, you completely miss the point, and you're a disappointing bunch. Let's go.

This may be the most majestic thing I’ve ever seen.