Victor Beffers

@EricTopol @ScienceMagazine benieuwd wanneer dit in Nederland beschikbaar wordt/is ; weet iemand meer #alzheimer #nl

Good summary of p-tau217, the breakthrough blood test to predict risk of Alzheimer's in people well before onset of symptoms @ScienceMagazine science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

Imagine a 19-year-old scrolling TikTok. She watches a creator list five "signs you have undiagnosed anxiety." She recognizes three in herself. By the end of the week, she's describing herself as anxious to her friends. A month later, she's avoiding situations she used to handle fine. What went wrong? In a new paper by my PhD student Dasha Sandra, titled "Why mental health awareness can harm: Converging explanations for a societal problem", we argue that well-meaning mental health awareness can backfire, and we identify how. Four separate literatures (concept creep, nocebo effects, prevalence inflation, and illness self-labeling) have been circling the same problem from different angles. We show they converge on three mechanisms: 1.Awareness lowers the threshold for what counts as a disorder. 2. It trains people to scan their inner lives for symptoms and reinterpret normal distress as pathology. 3. Once someone adopts an illness identity, they behave in ways that confirm and deepen it. The evidence is wide. Learning that loneliness is harmful makes solitude feel worse. Learning that stress is harmful worsens well-being and performance. Awareness videos about fake conditions like "wind turbine syndrome" produce real headaches. Trigger warnings raise anticipatory anxiety without reducing distress. This does not mean awareness should stop. It means awareness can have unintended consequences, including manufacturing the suffering it tries to prevent. Inoculating people against these mechanisms works, and we already have evidence it does. Link to paper: michael-inzlicht.squarespace.com/s/The-psycholo…

Dit is een leuk stukje over klagen in restaurants. volkskrant.nl/volkskrant-mag…

Nederland had een goed werkend elektriciteitsnet dat draaide op 50 centrales (kolen en vooral gascentrales). Vraag en aanbod waren goed op elkaar afgestemd. Nu gaan we naar een aanbodgestuurd systeem met enorme pieken en dalen (je weet nooit precies wanneer het waait en de zon schijnt). Dat aanbod is niet afgestemd op de vraag. Dus op zondagmiddag als de vraag laag is kan het heel zonnig zijn en heel hard waaien. Onder die omstandigheden produceren we nu al veel te veel stroom en vragen de netbeheerders om windmolens stil te zetten. Aan de vraagkant gebeurt nog weinig (totale verbruik is al 20 jaar vrij constant) maar vanwege de (enorme) pieken aan de productiekant (wind en zon) moet het net dus enorm uitgebreid worden. Netbeheer Nederland schat de kosten tot 2040 op 269 miljard euro (bij scenario 40 GW wind op zee). Als we door waren gegaan met fossiel en/of kerncentrales was uitbreiding van het net niet of nauwelijks nodig geweest. Mede daarom is een net met veel zon en wind zo duur. En dan hebben we het nog niet gehad over het feit dat fossiele centrales toch nog standbye moeten staan omdat je ze nodig hebt als er geen wind en zon is (vooral in de winter op windstille dagen).

@Buitenhoftv @diederiksamsom Er is geen naoorlogse Nederlander die het land meer schade heeft toegebracht dan Diederik Samson. Op kernenergie, op stikstof (PAS-wet bedacht), als influisteraar van Frans Timmermans met zijn Green Deal, en nu weer als een soort mol van Greenpeace bij de Gasunie.

Beter laat dan nooit.. Wanneer volgt Nederland? parool.nl/nederland/belg… En denken ze ook na over de optie dat 'state actors' gewoon hun telefoons gaan hacken? 🤔

When the government tells you: “We’re in the same boat”

@stevemagness not to mention they all change between and within trainingsessions.

There are no magical training paces! VO2max, Lactate Threshold, Critical Velocity, etc. None of them are special. They all have their purpose. Think of training as a spectrum– from jogging to sprinting–not as zones. All paces are useful and at your disposal.

This is what economic suicide looks like;

After getting Pope Francis's luggage loaded into the limo, the driver notices the Pope is still standing on the curb. “Excuse me, Your Holiness,” says the driver, “Would you please take your seat so we can leave?” “Well, to tell you the truth,” says the Pope, “They never let me drive at the Vatican, and I'd really like to drive today.” "I'm sorry, Your Holiness, but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! What if something should happen?!” protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning. “Who's going to tell?” says the Pope with a smile. Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 205 km. "Please slow down, Your Holiness," pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens. "Oh, dear God, I'm going to lose my license -- and my job!” moans the driver. The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio. “I need to talk to the Chief,” he says to the dispatcher. The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going 205 kph. “So bust him,” says the Chief. “I don't think we want to do that. He's really important,” said the cop. The Chief exclaimed, “All the more reason!” “No, I mean really important,”said the cop with a bit of persistence. The Chief then asked, “Who do you have there, the mayor?” Cop: “Bigger.” Chief: “A senator?” Cop: “Bigger.” Chief: “The President?” Cop: “Bigger.” “Well,” said the Chief, “who is it?” Cop: “I think it's God!” The Chief is even more puzzled and curious, “What makes you think it's God?” Cop: “His chauffeur is the Pope!”

It took 9 years and 3 billion miles to get this shot. The icy mountains of Pluto.

Big phone companies made a new "prove your phone is real and safe" checker for apps. It needs special secret code only THEY can put in phones they sell. GrapheneOS says nope - that lets companies block other phone software (like theirs) so apps wont run. People should pick any phone brain they want. No bosses deciding.

Plus you pay for electricity that never make it into the grid.

@MohammedAlo For many people a combination of a mini-dose of rosuvastatin and a mini-dose of ezetimibe would give them a NNT they'd be happy with. The extra NNT of doubling dose or even 10-fold doubling will have a much higher NNT!

The NNT for statins is 7.

@DrDominicNg what about sauna, when is this (too much) stress, when helpfull. Also might a long recovery/cooldown be good for the brsin to give this signal

A signal in your brain - fired AFTER exercise - decides whether your body adapts at all. Block it? Training did nothing. Boost it? 2x the work output and 3x the endurance gains. This might be the most important exercise paper in years. Here's what they found 🧵

We have a moral obligation to understand the physics of our energy economy because it is the basis of all wealth, prosperity, and abundance in your life, and the lives of all future generations.

@hilo_health Very happy with unexpected new features: steps and sleep. Does it also detect steps during running? then i can throw my sportwatch away! also good interface! many compliments!

Interview (in German) about the Digital Euro and how it will not fix Europe's self-determination challenges, and why GNU Taler would be better: das-parlament.de/wirtschaft/fin…

The consensus of economists isn't always what they say it is. In July 2007, Ben Bernanke told Congress the economy would grow 2.5-2.75% in 2008. The actual rate was minus 2.5%. Three weeks later, the global financial crisis began. Now, nearly 20 years later, neoclassical economists are teaching the same equilibrium methods that gave them zero warning. Here's what makes this especially absurd: Irving Fischer and John Hicks—the founders of equilibrium theory—both abandoned it after realizing it couldn't predict crises. Fischer said after losing everything in the Great Depression: "It is as absurd to assume that the variables in the economic organization will stay put in perfect equilibrium as to assume that the Atlantic Ocean can never be without a wave." Hicks wrote in the 1970s that equilibrium only works if expectations are never disappointed—which we know isn't reality. Meanwhile, scientists discovered 60 years ago that real-world systems operate far from equilibrium. Edward Lorenz proved with simple nonlinear equations that systems exhibit chaotic behavior—they don't converge to stability. I built a model in 1992 using system dynamics and private debt. It predicted the 2008 crisis because it abandons equilibrium completely. The model starts from four incontestable definitions: wage share, employment rate, debt-to-GDP ratio, and government deficit. What emerges isn't stability. It's cycles, booms, busts, and without government intervention, complete collapse. That's reality. Not equilibrium fantasy. P.S. If you're wondering why nobody explained economics like this at university, watch my full breakdown where I walk through the math and show you the models that actually work: youtu.be/Fdr-QGEdfr8?si… #Economics #EconomicModeling #FinancialCrisis #Macroeconomics #DebtCrisis

Op 17 oktober publiceerde minister Hermans het TNO rapport "Systeemkostenanalyse kernenergie". Dit bevat een cruciale conclusie: een energiemix waarin kernenergie dominant bespaart MILJARDEN per jaar. Maar dit zou je niet weten als je niet verder leest dan de samenvatting.