This sounds more like the results of nutritional deficiencies to me rather than caloric restriction.

I know because I eat less than 1,600 calories a day every day but Saturday, and I am rarely all that hungry and do not experience any of the observed effects cited in the article.

Given the diet they were on, there’d likely be several very important vitamins nearly completely omitted, ineluctably leading to the increasingly bizarre behavior.

If I wanted to lose more weight (I don’t), I think I could do 1,200 calories a day without much additional hunger or even really noticing.

I just don’t buy that that study was studying what the FA community would like you to believe it was studying.

Sounds like classic vitamin deficiency to me.

Fucking hell, I keep seeing this stupid post everywhere.

I believe those bottom two photos are spectacled caimans, and are one of the few (only?) crocodilians who adopt such a pose while at rest in the water.

American alligators do not do this, ever. I’ve observed a lot of alligators in the wild and up close (some of them up to 12 feet long) and I’ve never seen an alligator do this in my life. I don’t believe any crocodiles do this, either.

And second, the top photo is not even an animal of the same species as the bottom set of photos. I believe the top photo is of an American alligator, or perhaps of a Chinese caiman (though I suspect not).

People are gullible and blind, it seems.

Right now, the FCC is considering a proposal to require manufacturers to lock down computing devices (routers, PCs, phones) to prevent modification if they have a “modular wireless radio”[1][2] or a device with an “electronic label.”

That would mean no Linux, very restricted OSes and no escaping the panopticon.

General purpose computing is doomed because it is too dangerous (to existing power structures) and too difficult for most people to handle, but it might be gone sooner than we thought.

Ad blockers tested for performance.

The arguments for using ad blockers are numerous. Look at that. Some pages load four times faster with an ad blocker enabled, and all load vastly more quickly.

So not using an ad blocker equals wasting a whole lot of time. Not to mention potential malware infestation and seeing ads, which is bad enough in itself.

It’s funny that women aren’t “supposed” to be interested in tech and according to some people don’t belong in computing and yet nearly every single software application most people experience was built using a compiler, something invented by a woman.

Literally the entire foundation of most people’s computing experience relies on something a woman came up with.

That’s being self-deluded beyond all reason. I can’t even explain that level of stupidity.

I’ve been a middle manager.

It’s terrible, as the article observes. All the responsibilities but with none of the power to actually get anything done.

Enforcing clueless policy bequeathed from executives who have no idea what is going on is the worst, because you have to pretend to be all for it, too, or inevitably one of your underlings will tell Ms. Powerful Exec that, “Mike said your ‘no white shirts in the office except on every third Tuesday’ policy is stupid and to ignore it.”

And so then you have that exec out to get you and your underlings hate you for enforcing the policy.

If someone wants to promote you to middle management, resisting is probably the wisest choice unless you really need the usually-small bump in pay.

Heck, these days many companies promote you without a pay hike because they “pay in experience.”

Never, ever do that. It’s just not worth it.

Is this true, do men really think this?

I’ve gotten a little better, but still — I almost never know, and never assume, a woman is flirting with me.

Occasionally it’s happened that a few minutes after talking to a woman with a friend, he or she’ll say, “God, if that woman flirted with you any harder she would’ve rented a sky writing plane and inscribed it in the air.”

And I’ll be like, “What? She was flirting with me? How could you tell?”

Then usually come the sighs or exasperated shakes of the head.

But here’s the thing. When you’re treated like a piece of human garbage for the early part of your life, to the extent that you think someone might be flirting with you, you assume they are actually making fun of you.

Like I said, I’ve gotten better over the years. But for the first ~27 years of my life, a woman could literally take her clothes off in front of me and grab onto me and I’d assume she must be hot and wanted to use my shirt to fan herself.

I really was that clueless because I just never assumed anyone would like me.

I don’t think I’m a genius, but writing is so easy for me that it’s effortless.

Dancing in fields of word is just what I do. But I don’t want to do it for a living as there is no money in it.

I could write a thousand books like Barbara Cartland, but why? What would that get me? Not much, especially these days.

Even the longest posts on here didn’t take more than an hour. The average post is completed in less than three minutes, like this one.

I’m a decent writer when I don’t try. I’m far better than that when I do. But no purpose to it.

This is for those who do not read my other blog.

Do not under any circumstances update Windows 7 or 8 — unless you enjoy being spied on, that is.

The updates in question are KB3075249 and KB3080149. if installed, these updates are known to report your data back to Microsoft servers, without user interaction. KB3075249 Microsoft Update adds telemetry points to ‘consent.exe’ in Windows 7, 8 and 8.1, allowing for remote monitoring of everything that happens within the operating system. KB3080149 ensures that all “down-level devices” receive the same updates and treatment as Windows 10 boxes get.

If you like your data being spewed all over the place, go ahead and update I guess. Otherwise, avoid.

I put 6,279 words of my writing into this, and this is what it spit out:

Like all personality assessments, take with a huge grain of salt. However, I will note that psychologists see them as worthless because they don’t recognize them as tools to spur thought and self-examination, because science in general sees as valueless what cannot be measured.

“Have a hard time sticking with difficult tasks for a long period of time” is extremely accurate, though. Just too many other things I’d rather be learning or doing.

I wonder why no one has examined how the over-leveraged and even-more-poorly regulated global financial system is going to amplify the societal effects of climate change. At a time when financial tools are needed to sponsor big projects, they are most likely to break.

So much important work in economics just not being done.

This bone beneath stretched skin
This flesh that keeps the life in

Each step leads to an abyss
Blaze of fate in the night
Then comes the darkness —
No first draft, and no rewrite

Auden is no consolation
The clocks do not relent
Life is its own consecration
And death its last lament

This blood flowing free
This body broken irreparably

My friend died and I wake again

Michael Marshall Smith on being a male in our culture:

On the other hand, anyone who gets to their twenties or thirties before they get thumped has had it pretty easy, violence-wise. It’s still wrong, but basically what I’m saying is: try being a man. Being a man involves getting hit quite a lot, from a very early age. If you’re a teenage girl the physical contact you get tends to be positive: hugs from friends and parents. No one hugs teenage boys. They hit them, fairly often, and quite hard.

So true. So fucking true.

And this also reminded me of my childhood and adolescence in rural North Florida, from Joe R. Lansdale:

Where I had grown up, in Mud Creek, violence simmered underneath everyday life like lava cooking beneath a thin crust of earth, ready at any time to explode and spew. I had been in fights, been cut by knives.

By the time I was 20, I’d been in hundreds of fights, had my nose broken, been beat up more times than I can count, been bashed over the head with a large tree branch, had a gun pulled on me, been threatened with a hatchet, and had experienced one attempted stabbing (by my own mother, no less).

When you’re a man in such places, you’re either violent or toast. As we’d say where I grew up, ain’t no two ways about it.

The market is so much fun right now.

I’m ’bout to make a shitload of money, ya’ll.

But the time’s not quite right. Soon, but not quite.

Note: Don’t take market advice from me. If you lose all your money, all I’ll do is laugh.

I saw a hummingbird hawk moth a few minutes ago, species unknown.

Those things are cool. I thought they were all crepuscular but this one was out in broad daylight.

Amazing little creatures. I wonder if the analogous morphology is due to Batesian mimicry, since hummingbirds themselves are quite pugnacious for their size, and probably tougher than moths?

Probably just an example of convergent evolution, but hard to tell.