Dan Ledda

“Pregnenolone and progesterone are the quickest-acting things against water retention. The lungs are the most dangerous place for water-regulating problems to occur. When you're in shock or under extreme stress, the lungs take up water and become waterlogged so that the oxygen has a thicker pathway to get to the blood. In animal experiments, it was found that estrogen, in less than an hour, would increase the water content of rats' lungs so that 90% of the ability of oxygen to reach the blood disappeared 90 to 95% in less than an hour after a big injection of estrogen. And lots of people, poorly nourished, low thyroid, or under stress, will have this high ratio of estrogen to progesterone. “I’ve seen people in just about an hour shift their water balances when they took a good supplement of progesterone so that their breathing improved. They started forming urine because their blood started carrying water out of their tissues delivering it to their bladder.” — Ray Peat

An AI researcher I worked with thought he was frugal because “Oh I don’t need a lot.” After the work, he stopped suppressing his wants and started buying things that make his life better Are you "frugal", or do you just dislike yourself?

The C Layer, Series 01 of The Linux Field Guide. First article ships this week. Most writing about C defends it the same way. "It's fast." "It's close to the metal." "There's too much legacy code to replace it." These arguments treat C as a tool you happen to be stuck with. I wanted to write the article I wish I'd had years ago - one that makes a different argument. C isn't just a language on Linux. It is literally the operating system interface, as POSIX defines it. Read the spec yourself: POSIX doesn't describe syscall numbers or register conventions. It describes C function signatures and C header files. To be a "POSIX-compliant" OS means, fundamentally, to host a C library. The interface is written in C because C is the interface. This is why other languages - Python, Java, etc. - eventually route through C to talk to the system. It's why Linux and macOS quietly disagree about where the real kernel boundary even lives. It's why "just replace C" isn't a language choice, it's a proposal to redefine what an OS interface looks like. Once you see this, a lot of decisions in the Linux ecosystem stop looking arbitrary: why glibc matters, why statically linked Go binaries work on Linux but not macOS, why Apple and Huawei bother certifying their systems as Unix. C isn't sticking around because it's fast. It's sticking around because it's the Latin of computing, and the whole ecosystem is written in that Latin. More entries will be in the series. The first one sets up the frame. Dropping this week.

Sleeping a lot (>8hrs) is a great sign of poor health. Too large a burden to recover from, too slow a metabolism overnight to get the work done.

I'll do my best to describe it with a few caveats First, I don't have any health issues I'm currently trying to address right now so I'm not as perfectionistic about my diet as I have been at some points I also have a very high metabolism as measured by resting body temp and caloric demand, I need 3000-4000+ calories daily to maintain weight even without physical exercise Because of this I tend to incorporate some specifically high calorie foods like ice cream or fresh juice that might not work for some people I also have times where I eat food from family members or restaurants that isn't ideal With that said here's a summary of how I eat when left to my own devices: Breakfast is typically something like yogurt/kefir (often with seeds/berries) eggs, oatmeal, or occasionally toast with jam on gluten-free/oat-based bread Periodically I'll include 1-2 raw eggs in the morning, and especially when I'm exercising a lot I like to make shakes with frozen berries, bananas, 3-4 raw egg yolks, and some milk/kefir For lunch and dinner I absolutely love soups and stews, I like to have 1-2 in rotation whenever possible Cream-based soups with some potatoes, meat, and vegetables are my favorites, for example chicken and gnocchi, or sausage and orzo, or beef pot roast Otherwise something like steak with mashed potatoes and asparagus once or twice a week I've also been eating homemade meatloaf, salmon, and baked oysters pretty often Sometimes I'll make sprout salads with broccoli and other sprouts, some kale/arugula, shaved carrots, and a vinaigrette For snacks or small meals during the day I like fruit, cheese (dubliner or pecarino romano), oat bars, organic fruit snacks, and sprouted pumpkin seeds Ice cream (high quality homemade or free from additives) several times a week We pick up raw milk from an amish farm once a week so I drink that, goat milk, kefir, and fresh orange juice or grapefruit juice Water only when I particularly crave it I cook with high-quality olive oil, avocado oil, and occasionally coconut oil For caffeine intake I've been favoring tea over coffee lately I religiously avoid soda, nuts, fried food, chips, candy, and I rarely eat beans

Deploying total peatification agent (mushroom slop and ginger honey tea) Infection begone! 🪄

Peaters will really say shit like: “Deploying total peatification agent” and it’s just 100g of honey in water with some salt