David Cato

@MYTHOTROPOS @bryankam new Dao De Jing translation dropping soon

It is 3 am, and I'm exhausted, and after five strange and beautiful months, I have finished translating the Dao De Jing.☯️ What's up? 聖人翻中夏詩而貊詩 🌌 Now I have to edit the entire thing... My final chapter, verse 81: True words are not pleasing Pleasant words are not true Good ones do not quibble Quarrelsome ones are not good Wise ones are not accessible Accessible ones are not wise The Sage doesn't hold back; He works for Man, and gains ever more He helps Man, and is ever more and more The Way of Heaven benefits without harming The Way of the Sage works without contention

@br___ian Two recs for you that both helped me: 1: find an Alexander Technique practitioner, they will teach you to how to fix this and any other posture issue yourself 2 (the DIY option): compare the pictures in the chapter "What does good posture look like?" in this book.

I'm pretty sure the way I sit is wrong. I think the muscles that are supposed to give you that slight curve forward in your lumbar spine don't engage, so my attempts at posture are awkward and brief I would like to pay someone to look at me try to sit

@cremieuxrecueil rapeseed oil and could tell you if a cheap olive oil had been mixed. I wrote up my evidence for this here: #byB7Y6zBuziq3CEdx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">lesswrong.com/posts/DHkkL2Gx…

@cremieuxrecueil With about as much confidence as one can get when it comes to diet, my own health issues with canola/rapeseed oil stem from their likelihood of being contaminated with glyphosate used as a pre-harvest dessicant. Too many coincidences line up. For a while, I became allergic to

Might write more on this, but my tentative conclusion on seed oils is - They're fine. - Substituting seed oils for animal fat seems to produce cardiovascular and weight benefits in trials. - If there's some other health angle that matters, it seems hard to imagine it given the observed benefits. - The oxidative stress angle is interesting, but entirely speculative, and when I've been presented with it or read about it, I've never received a satisfactory answer on why people care about it. - The oxidative stress angle seems hard to support as a source of big health effects because: -- There's not a quantitatively large difference in oxidation between animal fats and seed oils. The difference is like 25% of a small quantity. -- There's a natural offset because seed oils contain ample vitamin E. --- Substantial quantities of the vitamin E remain after high-temp frying. --- The loss of vitamin E seems to plateau at about an hour of frying. - The rancid oil angle seems important for hygiene reasons above and beyond seed oil effects. -- Simple solution: Just don't use rancid oil. -- Another part of the solution: Make sure restaurants aren't using rancid oil. Overall, I'm not convinced there's any big issue with seed oils, and in fact, I think the counterfactual no-seed oil transition society is less healthy than the current one. The speculative long-term harms just aren't convincing, and if we're going to do that, why not do it about every food item?

@Aella_Girl Could be helpful to find a good functional medicine doc to rule out stuff like low micronutrients that the baby was depleting her of.

I have a friend who lost a baby in-utero ~3 months ago, and since then has been experiencing on-and-off severe depression and borderline psychosis symptoms, to the point of suicidality. We assume it's something downstream of something hormonal? During a depression 10+ years ago she discovered that antidepressants don't work at all for her (or were actively harmful), and is skeptical of going to a psychiatrist due to this. Has anybody experienced post-pregnancy-related insanity/suicidality? Any good resources I can send her, or things to try? Or even recommendations of good, not-idiot psychiatrists?

@chydorina Does a more typical/less gentle massage accomplish lymphatic drainage (if done in the proper direction for lymphatic flow) or is the lightness of touch somehow important?

Lymphatic drainage is a key intervention that is not given enough attention (which is strange as it can be incredibly effective and can also be done by people who are bedridden with very little function - it is much less energy intensive than you might imagine). Its interesting to look at the treatments and interventions that are common to many protocols for #MECFS. Lymphatic drainage commonly shows up. It is in them for a reason. I have been discussing the importance of lymphatic (and glymphatic) drainage for years now (see video). It is also a recommended daily intervention in the Born Free protocol. For me the top symptom this helps with is head/eye pain and migraine. If I keep up with lymphatic massage daily it is much less noticeable. This is not "muscle massage" - this is finger-light stroking - not kneading. x.com/chydorina/stat…

@DrRebeccaRyan Cutting out all things potentially sprayed with glyphosate as a dessicant (non-organic oats, wheat, etc... anything able to be harvested dry) eliminated ALL symptoms and I could feel my body healing. 2 years later I can now eat out again with no recurrence of symptoms.

@DrRebeccaRyan I had acid reflux that dissappeared while on PPI for a month and then returned. Couldn't eat anything without 2-3 hours of pain & disabling brain fog. Cutting out canola/rapeseed oil eliminated the acute issue, although mild reflux symptoms remained.

When is reflux not reflux? Acid reflux in POTS and MCAS pts is often poorly treated, bc no one ever stops to ask the question “why does my pt have reflux?” Reflux seems like a pretty easy symptom to manage. Yet so often it is not managed well.

@Mappletons Couldn't agree more! So happy for you two ♥️

True love. 10/10. Would recommend.

@s_r_constantin I'm almost certain that canola oil bothers me due to glyphosate contamination. I haven't seen much quality discussion about pesticide contamination as a possible cause. lesswrong.com/posts/DHkkL2Gx…

@photobiogenesis While I like California olive ranch's single origin oils, this particular choice of oil is a no go. I'm allergic to tiny amounts of canola oil (and no other oils) and this particular blend gives me characteristic symptoms of this allergy. Stick with single origin. Avoid blends.

Most people have never tasted "real" olive oil The first time they taste an olive oil with COOC certification or similar quality they're blown away by it The fruit equivalent of this is valencia oranges You haven't tasted a "real" orange until you've had a valencia orange

@davidad Hmm, looks like I misremembered. A decent reconstruction still requires many more than ~300 bits. I wouldn't be surprised if you could predict your image in the top post pretty well, but it looks like you do need more bits to predict a typical image rich in detail.

@davidad A SIREN network could reconstruct your image with fewer bits (SIREN is a tiny network with a sin(x) activation fn, optimized to predict the rgb pixel value given an (x,y)-coord as input. Caveat is that the model has (almost) no generalization, only predicts the trained image.

Even *after* having seen it demonstrated, I will claim that it is impossible for arbitrarily advanced superintelligences to decently compress real 256x256 images into 320 bits. A BIP39 passphrase has 480 bits of entropy and fits very comfortably in a real 256x256 photo. Example:

@algekalipso 6 beers is the most likely to reduce gut microbiome diversity with long term effects

As a one-off less than once a year sort of thing, what do you think is more damaging to your health overall?

@chydorina here's a short article asking for comments on what factors prevent chronic illness research from interesting more nerds - if you have the time and energy your input would be valuable. (I would DM but I'm not verified) lesswrong.com/posts/joPjaY43…

@gemcarey If you mean the community of long covid sufferers, then as far as my wife (LC) and I (caretaker) are concerned once you know you know and there's no going back. You are a member of the community as long as you maintain your compassion & understanding.

I wonder, where do you stand with the community if you have been profoundly disabled (I did the whole tour! Blind, deaf, brain inflammation, total loss of mobility) but then you aren’t? It is so deeply part of my identity from all of this, but will you have me? 🤷🏻‍♀️☺️

@daringshift Spirulina powder, citric acid, sublingual FMN/B2

@Z3R0Gravitas @renesugar @CiaraGlenville I've tried it myself and it's...not great. We're using the pure powder linked to by the bornfree protocol. I've tried it myself and it's not great...slightly metallic, bitter, weird texture. She got used to it (stopped making a 😬 face) after a week or so.

@david__cato @renesugar @CiaraGlenville Thanks. I'll probably start off trying a fraction of a capsule of R5P, so may as well sprinkle that under my tongue. See how bad it tastes.😅 & for the head's up on the iodine... Man, we so badly need a resource that shows how much each substance can effect each & every other!

Interesting mouse macro-nutrient vs exercise study.🙂 But I highly doubt this finding applies to #pwME #MEcfs. Increased amino acid (protein) use for cellular energy has been a consistent result in many metabolomics studies, over the last decade. Including one I missed... 1/n

@Z3R0Gravitas @renesugar @CiaraGlenville Her iodine also dropped after switching to the sublingual R5P and iodine is used in riboflavin metabolism.

@Z3R0Gravitas @renesugar @CiaraGlenville My partner, who has moderate LC/CFS for 1+ years now, noticed a difference when she switched to taking the R5P powder sublingually. Previously she'd tried in riboflavin a B complex, as standalone pill, and as cyto B2 mixed into a bit of yogurt.