fasting, shared context & unpopular ideas
CC#40 - How to (not) Communicate, Inflation & Web Browser Evolution
Hey there and welcome to ✨ CuratedCuriosity - a bi-weekly newsletter delivering inspiration from all over the internet to the notoriously curious.
Things I Enjoyed Reading.
🗣 Draft: Why pickup artistry and communication techniques can't work. [Discussion]
Are you better off sticking to popular presentation/communication techniques (e.g. make eye contact with your audience) or sticking to your natural intuitions? Interesting Discussion.
I believe that techniques — for dating; and possibly also for communication, social interaction, and more — are misguided, unproductive, and often harmful. The problem I have with techniques is that they implicitly value outward behavior over inward state, however, we engage with others not on the level of words and behavior, but on the level of intentions— it’s not about what someone did, it’s about what they meant.
👯♂️ Friendships form via shared context, not shared activities
How do friendships form? What is it that makes two people stay connected over a long time?
Any skill or attribute you claim makes you unique—”I’m really funny”, “I’m good at shining shoes”, “I’m an attentive lover”—you can always find someone else better than you on that dimension. They’re funnier, fitter, richer, sexier, smarter, or better at shining shoes than you are. We can’t help but desperately compete in this unwinnable game of having the best collection of attributes to show off. That’s why friendships formed via shared interests often feel shallow. It’s because a real friend is someone who has things that can’t be listed on a résumé: trust, loyalty, love, belonging, safety, and a sense that they’ll back you up when the times get tough.
🩺 Doctor's Heart Series Chapter 6 : Science of Fasting
I have personally experimented with intermittent fasting for over a year now - given how popular it is, however, I still feel like there is stunningly little research about it. This blogpost seems like a good summary of the little that is out there currently.
Intermittent Fasting or Caloric restriction unleashes a complicated set of useful cellular reactions, as discussed above. There are currently hundreds of clinical trials looking at the Fasting/Caloric restriction. Throughout history, we always have been fasting; when we limit external food sources, we start burning our own fat to fuel the organs, Brain, Heart, Kidneys, Blood Etc. Remember, every time we eat, excess food is stored as fat to be utilized in the future; however, we never stop eating the abundance of food. Fasting changes many metabolic switches glucose to ketone and the attainment of the Autophagy (cellular cleansing) and the Apoptosis (Cell Program death). The Ideal dose of Fasting is still debatable.
Food for Thought.
📊 Interesting article on data communication and how easily things can go wrong - a reminder to stay critical and don’t take numbers for granted.
🌅 Sometimes it can be hard not to despair in the light of all the bad things happening in this world - motivating thread on why you are nonetheless entitled to feel joy and why its worth to keep trying to improve.
📈 Will inflation really go down ‘soon’? Not sure about it…
Random Stuff.
📜 A list of unpopular ideas about social norms - not necessarily things I would endorse, but definitely a good way to kick start some out of the box thinking.
🌐 The evolution of the usage share of different web-browsers.
🎓 Maybe some good advice?
Personal Update.
Spent last week on a summer school on Complex Systems Networks in Sicily (that is also why I am one week late 😬). Takeaways:
Sicily in July is extremely hot, too hot. Definitely made me appreciate Danish weather more and makes me even more afraid of what climate change will bring.
It is possible to get tired of eating pizza.
There are really nice and cool people working on complex systems doing impressive stuff (e.g. on the ‘machine scientist’, evolution of NFT markets, [of course] epidemics or brain-computer interfaces).
Having lectures by professors from different (sub-)fields is very helpful to get a grasp of the current state of research (and much more efficient than trying to navigate the vast body of literature on your own).
Most value (at least for me) comes from discussing ideas and making connections.
Currently in Switzerland for some vacation 🇨🇭