Argh—just had a little twinge when I saw that you were born in 1989. You’re the same age as me, but have done so much more!
Congratulations on reaching your goals. Reading this has reminded me that I ought to do the same.
henryaj
Karma: 75
Thanks for putting these updates together! :)
How do you Ankify knowledge like that? Or, to be specific, what’s on the other side of those cards in Anki?
We have social norms of … rewarding each other for doing good things (and a “gem economy” for this purpose)
I must hear more about this.
I also don’t understand her comments about the peptide ‘not neutralising COVID in cell [culture]’ - why would it? The peptide is just an antigen to get the body to raise an immune response; on its own it doesn’t kill COVID.
Um, isn’t that basically a wiki?
Just picking up on this one point—I’ve used a bunch of personal wikis in the past; they just haven’t stuck for me. Roam has some nice features around this, like backlinking (so just by idly putting something in [[brackets]] you’re starting to collate a list of pages under that term) and searching through text to find ‘missing links’, neither of which I’ve seen in wikis.
Some thoughts:
buy nice homeware. The temptation is always to scrimp, but you’re going to be using this stuff regularly for at least the length of your lease, and maybe years beyond that, so splash out on nice kitchenware (knives, nonstick pans, chopping boards, a rice cooker) and bathroom stuff (especially towels).
similarly, if there’s stuff that needs fixing, do it right away—then you get the benefit of it for longer. For example, use draft excluder tape to seal the gaps around doors, fix radiators that don’t work, rearrange furniture if you don’t like the way it currently sits.
put your phone to charge somewhere away from your bed. (I’ve yet to be able to make this one stick, but maybe being somewhere new will help!)
Mostly moving into a new place really reveals the holes in my time (especially if you don’t have a TV or haven’t set one up yet), so try to be aware of where your time’s going before you develop a routine and stop thinking about it critically.
decided that people would probably use LaTeX more often than trying to use the dollar sign
Err… this seems like the kind of thing that *really* wouldn’t stand up to user testing.
I’m intrigued by this – comfort zone expansion strikes me as a very good idea, if done carefully; I’m thinking of things like Rejection Therapy, ‘daygame’ (making conversation/flirting with strangers in daytime settings, taking care not to become a harasser) and just generally being social.
In my forays with talking to strangers—an ongoing experiment!—I’ve found that Londoners are actually mostly very friendly, just with a veneer of coldness that needs breaking. I suspect this is true for people in most big cities, and is an adaptation to avoid the usual array of charity muggers, panhandlers and the like they encounter on an hourly basis.
What kind of activities are you planning?
One of the parts of this study involved quizzing men and women on their likelihood of accepting sex from a stranger using pictures of either an attractive or an unattractive person of the opposite sex to see if that affected the subject’s likelihood of accepting the proposition, and found:
For the proposition by the attractive person, women were at 4.09 [out of 7] to 4.16 for men — just about a tie.
Which seems to suggest that, in this particular domain—sex with an attractive partner—men and women are equally desirous. It’s the perceived danger (and lower sexual prowess) that the female subjects imagine come with the average proposer that makes them less likely to accept the offer than men.
This seems inconsistent with the notion that women are innately less desirous of sex than men; rather that they have more to lose from a casual encounter (as has been said) so are more guarded when accepting such a proposition.
This is wonderful; thank you for writing it. Very much enjoyed the exposition of the “Quiet” state; have been trying out your advice of switching everything off and trying to slip into such a state and am enjoying what I’ve found there.
Nthing the “you are an inspiration” sentiment expressed here. This has reminded me that you should ‘always be shipping’; always be doing stuff and making stuff.
What’s your working environment like? You mention doing work for SI; is that at their offices or at home? I’ve been flirting with the idea of working part-time to pursue other projects in my spare time but I’m not sure I could hack being in a home office all day.
(And, if you don’t mind me asking, how do you bankroll all this? Do you have a ‘day job’ per se?)
Covid ‘Mink variant’
Do you know what kind of research Theodora’s lab is actually doing? (She doesn’t have a surname on Twitter so I can’t find her). But I imagine research into spike protein mutants could just involve synthesising spike protein that has mutations and assaying the binding affinity of antibodies to the synthetic spike protein – not necessarily creating mutated viruses.
(undergrad biochemistry was a long time ago. I could well be wrong)
Cases went from about 20 on September 1 to 370 in mid November. Then they *dropped* to 213 before jumping up to 500.
The UK had a national lockdown in November, and lifted it at the start of December.
Meta: anyone else getting a bunch of broken images in this post?
Sounds excellent. WIsh I could make it, but I’ve got a family thing to attend to that day. Next time, for sure!
Likewise, thanks for all you’re doing Zvi.
Sure enough, the UK has triggered its “Plan B” which mandates working from home for those who can, plus vaccine passports for big events. Perhaps suggests lockdowns coming in the new year.
Filled in the form a moment ago.