no.
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
so, we can talk about the empire if we want, but we need to understand that it includes most of the world, and always has.
it's not this thing centered in london - it has been centered in baghdad and constantinople, too.
and, it's all one great big empire....so big it fractures and reforms, but never does it secede...
i've posted about this previously, but i should clarify that it's clear at this point that the hypothesis that buddhism derived from the indo-greek synthesis in northern india has been largely proven, at this point.
buddhism was invented by greek settlers in northern india.
the parallels to christianity come from the shared hellenic origins.
the panhellenic world created by alexander was never destroyed - it merely expanded in every direction, fractured, recombined and fractured again.
we remain panhellenes, today.
there are two counter-examples in the old world - the strong counter-example (subsaharan africa) and the weak counterexample (china, which flirted with panhellenism when it embraced offshoots of buddhism). and, there is the new world, which is built strictly on panhellenic values - despite the indigenous substratum.
so, there is no orient.
we are (almost) all greeks.
deathtokoalas
but, maybe what you're saying about said's imperialistic relativism, so to say, is actually an insight, rather than a defect. i would certainly agree that anybody arguing that western imperialism is somehow unique in history is wrong - turks, arabs, mongols, etc had imperialism at the centre of their existence, as well, and should be analyzed in the same way, in their historical turn.
the idea that everything every empire ever did is caused by the same forces is of course silly, but i want to point to two historical examples to back up his argument, which i'd argue is partially useful, although not the reason i tend to cite said, myself - i find him useful in deconstructing this tendency to masquerade racism as agency, which leads to pseudo-leftists aligning with conservative and reactionary forces under the misguided argument that they're supporting "liberation movements". in truth, they're just aligning with the far right and can't figure it out, or don't care or have conservative sympathies that get exposed that way.
you can and should oppose imperialism by aligning with the left, not the right - and arguing that you're upholding cultural differences is....well, that's what the book is for.
but, the two examples i want to try draw attention to are the french invasion of algeria and the existence of christianity.
if you look at the historical justifications for the french invasion of algeria, they fit the description said laid out fairly clearly. the reason the french went into algeria was to stop slave raids and piracy in southern france. it really wasn't economic or material, it was practically self-defense. and, over time, the french ended up integrating algeria in a way that's somewhat unusual, and maybe only has the british relationship to india as a parallel. that is one example where said's description is correct, even if you can find a dozen more where it's really not.
i would argue that tracing the issue back to the greeks actually demonstrates the opposite point, because islam is a fundamentally greek religion, like buddhism and christianity are. i've tended to make the opposite argument - there is no such thing as the east at all. we're all greeks! we're still living in panhellenism, from the tip of ireland to the depths of malaysia. a careful historical analysis indicates there is no such thing as the east, at all, and othering them doesn't actually make any sense. but, the western fascination with eastern mystery cults in the roman period is widespread. you had mithraism, for example. and, the most obvious outcome was christianity - an eastern mystery cult that found widespread adoption amongst westerners, partly voluntarily and partly not.
this isn't to say that said's models are universally applicable. but, this topic doesn't lend itself to broad statements, anyways; there simply aren't universal models to describe colonialism, it's complicated and doesn't generalize well. i would agree that he sometimes made statements that were too broad, but if you wind them back and apply them more carefully, they can be quite powerful.
"only the west engages in empire"
i mean, that's a ridiculous, empirically wrong statement.
==
i should also point out that chomsky himself is enormously critical of marx & lenin - because he's an anarchist. as were bakunin & kropotkin & ....
i wouldn't place said in that category, certainly. but, criticism of marx is nothing new on the left.
but, what chibber is doing here is fundamentally bad thinking, in defining sides and good and bad people, rather than looking at arguments and separating them from the people making them. i don't need to agree with everything said says, or even most of the things he says, to realize the value of his contribution in pointing out a certain strain of blurry thinking that needs to be corrected. citing said in one context doesn't mean citing him or even endorsing him in another. and, it would be a ridiculous strawman to suggest otherwise.
==
deathtokoalas
at the end of the talk, all i got from this is that these guys largely missed the point that there isn't a difference between east and west and it's racist to insist there is - a position that would align them with post-structuralism, rather than it's negation.
Red Authority
Of course there is a difference between East and west. There is a difference between all nations. What are you talking about?
deathtokoalas
i'm talking about basic egalitarianism; no there is not a difference between east and west and is not a difference between any "nations", the latter of which is an artificial construct of capitalism. if you get anything at all from said, it has to be that the "orient" doesn't actually exist, and neither of these guys got that.
===
deathtokoalas
specifically, said is useful and powerful in deconstructing the phenomenon of leftists supporting far right groups like isis, or even groups like the khmer rouge, even if he's only weakly applied to many other scenarios. that's where said is useful and how he will continue to be cited, not in a broader post-structuralist framework.
ViolentHexameter
Not really. You just happen to have read Said and now see everywhere where you can apply your mediocre education. Like most people with a university education who are not, well, over 40 at least.
deathtokoalas
well, i can tell you that i'm going to keep citing said in this context, and that i'm going to keep thinking it's useful and powerful, whether you want to keep throwing non-arguments about it at me or not.
nothing these guys said here is convincing in undoing said at all.
from the previous posts,
- the minimum amount of methionine seems to be about 10.1 mg/kg
- an upper limit on an amount of cysteine that is probably insufficient for taurine & glutathione production is 10.9 mg/kg
- i previously deduced 100 mg/day of taurine as necessary
- i don't yet have good numbers for glutathione
that provides the following rdis:
methionine: 10.1*70 = 707 mg
cysteine: 10.9*70 + 100 + g = (863 + g) mg
that's not final, but it's the right idea, which i'm settling on.
yeah. so, i've decided that this is going to look something like:
cysteine 15-20 mg/kg
methionine: ~10 mg/kg
....which is the reversal of the existing recommendations. the reasons for this are as follows:
1) vegetarians need more taurine production than meat eaters.
2) cysteine is easier to find than methionine in a meatless diet
3) excess methionine consumption leads to excess homocysteine which leads to death
so, the current recommendations - based on the idea that methionine is essential and cysteine isn't - seem to have the basic health prerogatives backwards. it's just based on a conservative accounting mechanism, which is frankly kind of stupid, in context - and something i've reacted to before. whether something is essential or not shouldn't determine whether it's given priority over things that aren't. in context, excess methionine is actually even potentially deadly, which is perhaps even why we evolved to prevent ourselves from converting cysteine back to methionine - our body is maybe dropping a bit of a hint, with that.
but i need better data on a high cysteine, low methionine diet and i can't currently find it.
i think a part of the reason this is confusing - and the survey states as much up front - is that the language they're using is often inexact, to say the least. the ideas are not being presented clearly. so, let me work through this and try to get the ideas clarified, first.
they then erect this idea of "total sulfur requirement", which is the amount of methionine you need without any cysteine, and subtract out the minimum obligatory amount of methionine, which they decide is the amount of methionine you need to do methionine things. the argument is that what's left should be the amount converted to cysteine, but, as i've said before, that doesn't actually make any sense, and i'd advise against citing that deduction. i guess you could use that number as a crude upper bound, but you don't actually know how much non-essential methionine gets converted, so you can't actually say anything besides that. the amount of cysteine you need to block conversion could very well be half of that. worse, if you go back to the first study, it mentions that they don't know that the amount of methionine cited is truly sufficient for what i'm measuring - they explicitly poi\int out that that number may be insufficient to produce enough taurine and glutathione. so, you can only deduce that you need some amount that is less than 10.9 mg/kg of cysteine to block transsulfuration from occurring at levels that may or may not be sufficient to meet cysteine needs.
so, what's the right experiment, then, even if i can't find it?
what you should do if you want the answer i'm looking for is measure the maximum amount of methionine that gets converted to cysteine, and base your cysteine requirements on how much you observe your body transsulfurate. so, what you want to do is give the subject massive levels of methionine & serine with zero cysteine and zero cysteine derivatives and see where the breakpoint occurs. that will determine total dietary cysteine requirements, independent of methionine. i'd want to take that number and build an rdi for cysteine on it. then, i could subtract that out from the total sulfur requirements to get a methionine rdi.
the confusion is likely stemming from methionine being seen as essential and cysteine being seen as inessential. that may be technically true, in terms of the chemistry, but cysteine seems to be the more valuable chemical, so it should really be what the requirements are built around. methionine may be indispensable, but only at much lower levels, and only as an after thought, in the presence of sufficient cysteine.
so, i'm taking a giant step back and asking a different question - has anybody tried to measure how much total cysteine your body requires, independent of methionine? let me figure that out first...
this is the government-subsidized row house that i spent the first 15 years of my life in:
my dad built that fence to stop the kids from trampling the flowers that were once there.
the area was ridden with crime, drugs and violence, in general. i didn't go outside much, when i lived there, for that reason. getting home often seemed like a race against time, in terms of getting hurt.
it's beyond specious to make deductions about people and their backgrounds based on what they look like. that used to be called racism, before the deeply orwellian redefinition of the term to something that is inherently meaningless.
i point this out only to ask you to be less stupid.
i'm only going to say this once: wasting time impeaching trump is exactly that, and it's exactly the point. so, they're going to drag it out until at least 2022, when they lose at least the house because everybody's fed up with them for wasting their majority on impeaching trump.
so, yell all you want for them to do something substantive - it's pointless.
they'd rather lose their majority than use it.
and, if it wasn't trump, it would be something else...
there's a thorough survey of the issue up to 2006 here:
this brings in a third study by the same group:
unfortunately, this remains all about sulfur, when i want to be looking at cysteine conversion. but, the conclusion is clear enough:
- if you get sufficient methionine and insufficient cysteine, your body will convert the methionine to cysteine.
- you get sufficient cysteine and insufficient methionine, your body will recover methinione from homocysteine.
- if you get sufficient levels of both, your body won't convert the methionine to cysteine and won't recover methionine from homocysteine
i'm aiming for #3, because i don't want the conversion - i want the methionine to do it's thing as a methyl donor and dna precursor and i want the cysteine to exist in sufficient amounts to convert to taurine & glutathione.
this third study seems to verify that i'm doing it right, but the number they present is unconvincing. so, can i find better data?
so, i mean, i know it often seems like i'm just aping him, but that's because he's been the goto voice of sanity regarding pseudoscience for almost all of anybody who is alive's life.
what i side with is the forces of science against the forces of ignorance, and chomsky is the face of that, and has been for.....70 years.
when you get past that, the disagreements start to pile up.
Monday, January 25, 2021
i was half awake all weekend, but i got some sleep today, so i need to get through the methionine section before i get to the court stuff tomorrow. i'm sure the phenylalanine + tyrosine section will be equally frustrating.
if you get tons of methionine and no cysteine, your body will donate the sulfur from methionine to form cysteine, but that's only one aspect of conversion (called transsulfuration) and while it may be limiting it seems to be wrong to erect any enhanced importance to the connection. conversely, if you get tons of cysteine and no methionine, your body will rebuild methionine from homocysteine, but that has little to do with your cysteine intake, besides the sulfur component as the limiting factor. the amount of methionine that is actually needed is minimal.
so, these numbers that they give you of total sulfur amino acids are in truth of minimal value in determining what you need to maintain optimum health - you are going to need more of both, clearly. it's just about how much sulfur you need, under the assumption of ready conversion.
what i needed to know was how much of each that i needed to get to stop them from converting into each other, which is almost the opposite question that people want to ask (which is how much cysteine you need to minimize methionine requirements). so, how much cysteine do you need to stop your body from converting methionine to cysteine? that 10.9 number was presented, but i'm not following the argument, and wouldn't advise citing it. i erected a very simple linear approximation, but i want a more direct measurement.
let's hope i'm awake and clear and focused enough to figure that out before the sun comes up.
what you want is legislation that readjusts the minimum wage on a yearly basis relative to inflation, after you set a floor that is considered liveable.
the united states has a magic check book and can borrow all it wants, and that sounds incredible, but so long as it's the hegemon, it's true. that is not true in any of the satellites, like canada, which are subject to fiscal discipline by the imf in terms of ratings degradations. it follows that whether is pollin is right about the longterm effects of borrowing or not is a function of whether america can retain it's hegemony, which is not clear. if i was an american policy maker, i wouldn't put all my eggs in the assumption of perpetual hegemony, at least.
taxing the rich is so painless for them that the state should be really pushing a mass education campaign about it, targeted at the higher tax brackets....including educating them about what happens if the status quo carries forwards.
so, i called the human rights tribunal and they're so backed up that none of the requests have been put before a judge. there are currently no deadlines in place, but the karen is not helping herself by not responding.
technically, her request for an extension has neither been granted nor denied, so the actual legal status of the case is that the respondent has not responded, at this time - and the judge needs to pick it up from there.
if she had responded by her self-appointed date, it would at least demonstrate good faith. but, all i can do is wait for a judge to pick the case up and look at it holistically; when they do, they're going to need to respond to multiple requests, all of which have exceeded their own deadlines.
this is exceedingly annoying, but i'll just have to keep calling to bug them until they finally do it.
to be clear: this isn't actually a differential equation problem, and i'm sorry if i was confusing. it just seems like one because i'm starting with initial conditions and assuming a solution of a form.
so, i'm sorry if i ended up disappointing you with that. ultimately, it's just linear algebra to find a very crude polynomial approximation (it's linear!), and it would be more complicated if i had more data. alas...
at least it's simple enough to pass the dipshitz condition though, right? or maybe it's so simple it failed it...
(don't box my dipshitz condition in, man. you need to compensate for the intersectionality..)
- if i take 0 mg/kg cysteine, i need 21 mg/kg of methionine (not realistic)
- if i take 21 mg/kg of cysteine, i need 10.1 mg/kg of methionine (that's a lot of cysteine)
- they define the population safe intake for cysteine as the difference, but i'm not sure i'm following that, or that it makes sense (21-10.1 = 10.9)
so,
f(0) = 21
f(21) = 10.1
f(10.9) = ?
if we approximate with a polynomial, the constant term is 21 because f(0) = 21.
we only have two terms, so we can only get a very simple approximation:
f(x) = ax + 21
f(21) = 21a + 21 = 10.1 <----> a = (10.1 - 21)/21 = -0.51904761904
so, f(x) = 21 - x*10.9/21.
then, f(10.9) = 15.3423809524
10.9*70 = 763 mg cysteine
21(1 - (10.9/21)^2)*70 = 1073.96666667 mg methionine
i can work with these rdis, but i don't know if that's enough cysteine for taurine & gluathione or not, yet. so, is that good enough?
so, i'm able to find data at the end points but what i really want is a function, so that if you give me an amount of cysteine, i know how much methionine i need. and, i'm thinking back to my days solving partial differential equations.
i may have to do some actual math, here, but i'm going to tone it down if i do, too.
let's see how many data points i can get, first.
Sunday, January 24, 2021
see, one of the ways i'm able to tell that the smoke is coming from upstairs is that it clears out when the truck leaves.
but, i'm still not sure if it's the guy that lives up there (i suspect it mostly isn't), if it's his sidekick cop, a woman he's seeing or his teenage daughter, which he's just letting smoke inside when she comes over.
i don't actually care. i just want it to stop.
and, i'm glad it's better right now, even if it's just for a bit.
so, i mean, i think it should be clear sorting through this that i spend essentially all my time learning, nowadays. and, if you think i should be reading philosophy books instead of peer reviewed science, we can have a heated debate and discussion over what is worth reading up on and what isn't.
if anything, my education is unusually broad and my scope has unusual breadth. but, no single human can read everything. in the end, we make our choices as to what we wish to learn.
and, while it may be somewhat obscure and less amenable to debates at dinner tables in respectable circles, i actually think that what i'm reading is far more valuable than what you're reading - and may even suggest that most of what you read is, in truth, of almost no value at all.
sorry.
if you see something here that you think is not quite right, go ahead and send me an email.
think of it like this: this is a space where i post notes about what i'm learning about, largely for my own use later on, rather than a space where i try to teach things to other people. so, the mistakes have to exist as they do, to document the learning process for future generations.
you know that meme about the obsessive ex-girlfriend, or female that feels a little too deeply, in general?
the return of psaki-bot requires a new picture, i think.
that said, this secretary is a known entity to political observers and we know something about her from the start - she can not lie effectively. no poker face. worst liar ever...
that's a problem.
"you admit you're wrong and then correct yourself but don't delete the wrong information"
yeah. and, i think that's what everybody should do, too.
this isn't a reference site, it's a personal journal. i actually don't really know what the size of the audience is, but i suspect it's very small. it may be somewhat specific. i don't actually know - i don't spend any time at all sorting through those kinds of metrics.
and, there's no income source here, remember.
why do i do this, then? it's theoretically for historical value. i'll remind you that i'm a composer. did beethoven leave us a journal? if he didn't, i think we can all wish he did.
so, i'm not talking to real, living people - i'm talking to future historians. that's my intended audience, here: people studying my music hundreds of years from now. i don't care much for real, living people.
but, the other reason i post here is because it helps me order my thoughts.
so, the errors are a part of the project, and must be retained as they are. i keep track of sources for my own benefit, not yours. but, in the end, if you find that upsetting, i'd advise you don't source from blogs, then.
renewing this treaty is important, and i was clear the whole time that there would be a handful of things he'd do that i'd be on board with, this being one of them.
i guess the 80s won, in the end.
i'm less convinced the iran deal is salvageable.
but, aaron's right to point to an underlying conflict as deeply concerning, as biden indicated from the start that he sees russia as an adversary - which is a reversal of obama's position. obama famously mocked romney for that.
watch psaki-bot here first:
then take a walk down memory lane:
biden is a small step forwards for america, and a giant step backwards for mankind.
that bugaloo boy sounds exactly like a 19th century populist.
jimmy is making the same anti-sectionalist argument that the populists made, and sam (who is usually relatively moderate) is making the argument that the socialists of the time were making, in opposition to it - that while violent revolt is necessary for actual change (do you know who else had guns? civil rights activists in the 60s.), you need an analysis, first.
and, indeed what happened? the populist faction (renamed "progressives") takes over the democratic party under wilson, and you get antisedition laws, and debs finds himself in jail.
and, if somebody harms themselves, does that give you the right to harm them too? does that undo the whole thing?
well, if somebody punches themselves in the face, does that mean it's ok to join in?
if somebody stabs themselves, does that mean it's permissible to stab them?
i think very few people would suggest that.
likewise, my failures around tobacco don't mean it's ok to blow smoke on me when i'm not relapsing, and it doesn't take a lot of depth of thought to realize that.
the nap of course has some caveats, too.
so, a religious person may not acknowledge that queer folks are people, but that doesn't actually harm them in any way. it is partly for this reason that i tend to cite mill rather than anything else; my preference is the harm principle, and i insist you have to actually establish harm before you adhere to an nap.
clearly, smoking is harmful.
in fact, i can't think of anything that's more harmful.
golden rule: treat your neighbours the way you want to be treated.
contrapositive of golden rule: if you don't like to be treated in a specific way, don't treat your neighbours that way
these things are logically equivalent, it is true.
but, this is the nap:
don't treat your neighbours in a way that they don't like to be treated.
in context, the golden rule wouldn't prevent inside smoking by a heavy smoker, but the nap would. as such, the nap is a stronger protector of individual rights, even as it inflicts less strenuous requirements on individual behaviour.
is the nap the golden rule?
no.
the golden rule prescribes a positive action - to actively treat others in a specific way. the nap is a statement of negative liberty, that tells you what not to do to avoid infringing on the rights of others.
courts have routinely rejected the good samaritan principle, and most libertarians would reject the idea that you have any necessary prerogative to go out of your way to treat others as you want to be treated. i might even argue that it's part of the point of being a libertarian.
but, if we're to eliminate the state, we have to replace it with self-policing and the nap plays a vital role there in ensuring that we have a good heuristic to understanding what we should and should not do.
i've never really believed in mental addiction.
but, they say smoking is more addictive than heroin, and that's based on the reality of physical addiction.
addiction doesn't control you; it doesn't make you do things, you retain control, and you retain responsibility. but, nicotine addiction is a hard problem....
i was stressed out about my birthday; that's why i relapsed. but, it's been ten days since i stopped and there's no threat that i'm going back to it any time soon. before the 2nd of january, i hadn't bought any cigarettes since august - pretty good. hopefully, i succeed in finally quitting for good this time.
listen - i started smoking in 2002, in 2nd year, mostly as a stimulant. the coffee wasn't working; it was nicotine or cocaine, and i decided on nicotine.
i started quitting almost as soon as i started smoking, and never really considered myself a smoker, but i had to live in the real world, and i found the withdrawals impossible to deal with. i'm sure they're less violent than any withdrawals i'd be dealing with from cocaine.
so, even when i was a smoker, i'd quit for a month or two over and over, but i kept relapsing because i kept having to work two jobs, or kept having to stay awake all weekend to finish an art project. i kept quitting, but i kept coming back to it to use it like strong coffee. i couldn't get out of this loop, where i needed the nicotine to be productive.
and, that lasted until the start of 2016, when i finally cut myself off. i no longer had to do anything, and i was increasing my estrogen intake to a point where smoking was becoming a serious risk factor. i had to stop; it was time.
and, i did. i succeeded. finally.
since then, i've relapsed many times, largely as a function of marijuana use. in fact, it's one of the reasons i've decided to strongly reduce my marijuana intake - i can't find a way to use marijuana, even casually, without relapsing back to tobacco. i'm still trying to figure this out; i still don't have an answer.
but, i need to be clear that i don't defend myself for doing this. when i relapse, i'm failing. i'm not asserting my rights (smoking is not a right, and it's stupid to suggest it is) or being free or anything like that - i'm failing in an addiction that i'm largely over, but still struggle with occasionally. i'm relapsing, and i'm not proud of it when i do it.
but, i have the decency and common courtesy to make an attempt to minimize the effects it may have on others when i do fail for a few days or a few weeks (it's never more than that) at a time by ensuring that i smoke away from the house and away from other people. so, i go for a walk. and, if somebody on the street were to address me about it, i would be sure to avoid their house when i'm walking. i'm very conscious of this.
you hear more about this on the anarchist right (the real anarchist right, not this randian selfishness-as-a-virtue bs), but it's a shared value on the anarchist left, even if it's often articulated differently. you can cite mill's harm principle or the nap, or ancient celtic customary law, but it's a foundational principle of all forms of anarchism:
my rights end where my neighbours' rights begin
what that means is that smokers that are also libertarians or anarchists need to be concerned about the externalities of their behaviour, otherwise they're not really anarchists - they're randian objectivists. anarchists give a fuck, because they understand that they can't have a functional stateless society unless they do. and, what that means is that the nap actually negates the concept of smokers' rights, due to the external effects of the behaviour, just as it would negate the right to produce any other sort of pollution.
i'm very conscious of this.
it frustrates me to no end that others simply aren't.
but, i know that very few people know how to think in this society, because they're not taught how to; in fact, they're explicitly taught how not to think. and, this is the result of that.
i don't care if my neighbours smoke, as a moral principle, or something. but, as a rights concern, i insist i have the right to breathe fresh air, and insist they adhere to a basic libertarian rights framework, which means that they smoke away from other people, if they choose to.
in context, that means that you don't smoke inside when you've signed a non-smoking lease, as my landlord has.
and, i'm just waiting for basic honesty on the point.
actually, it seems like there's a companion study by the same authors.
Results: The mean and population-safe (upper limit of the 95% CI) methionine requirements in the absence of exogenous cysteine were found to be 12.6 and 21 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively. The mean and population-safe methionine requirements in the presence of excess dietary cysteine were found to be 4.5 and 10.1 mg·kg−1·d−1, respectively, representing a cysteine sparing effect of 64% in a comparison of mean methionine requirements and of 52% in a comparison of population-safe methionine intakes. Furthermore, the difference between population-safe intakes with and without dietary cysteine establishes a safe cysteine intake of 10.9 mg·kg−1·d−1 in the presence of adequate methionine intakes.
is it that easy?
let me understand this before i decide that.
actually, i seem to have misunderstood this term "population-safe intake". the pdf says:
population-safe intake (upper limit of the 95% CI)
...which i misunderstood as meaning the 95% confidence interval of the upper limit. that is, i thought that was a number that represented 95% certainty that you have an upper limit.
but, that didn't seem right, in the context of the actual numbers in front of me. it's a term i hadn't seen before. i found a definition at the who:
For an individual, a safe individual intake has been defined as the 97.5th percentile of the distribution of individual requirements, nominally the average + 1.96SD. Thus any individual receiving such an intake will have a very low (<2.5%) risk of deficiency (intake < requirement).
that means it's more like an ear than an upper limit, and it becomes considerably higher than i'd be able to consume. i should have also used the sigma for the specific study, rather than the one in the nap document.
from the pdf again:
Therefore, the total SAA requirements found in the present study represent the amount of dietary methionine needed to fulfill all the functions of methionine in vivo. However, it cannot be concluded from the present study whether the amount of cysteine required for the synthesis of glutathione, taurine, or sulfate was achieved with methionine intakes at the breakpoint for protein synthesis. This is an important consideration for deciding on appropriate dietary reference intakes for SAAs; additional research is required on this issue.
i had previously cited the first sentence (but had read the last one). i need to find the amount of methionine that is required for everything except cysteine, or otherwise take a guess at it.
this is confusing, but i'll get it, in the end.
Saturday, January 23, 2021
so, to be clear, i will determine both nitrogen and sulfur intake from protein intake, in the end, once i get the data in, totally.
the two saas are methionine and cysteine, but i'm going to mentally compartmentalize methionine for the methyl group and cysteine for the sulfur and derivatives. total nitrogen balance will be calculated from total protein intake.
so, the 19 mg/kg came from this text:
and is an average of three studies, boosted by a factor of 1.24. this is the calculation:
1.24*(20+13+12.6)/3 = 18.848
the studies are from 1958, 1991 and 2001.
so, 1.24*(13+12.6)/2 = 15.872 is probably a better estimate.
these are indeed lumped together as "saa" (sulfur amino acids). the first study is based on a total nitrogen balance, the second on "methionine balance", with five participants, and the third....let's look at the third:
Objective: The goal of the present study was to determine the methionine requirement of men fed a diet devoid of cysteine (total SAA requirement).
Therefore, the total SAA requirements found in the present study represent the amount of dietary methionine needed to fulfill all the functions of methionine in vivo.
that's not the way this is usually presented. but, the results are actually quite useful to me as an rdi for methionine specifically, allowing me to focus on cysteine afterwards
these are the numbers from the study:
daily: 12.6*70 = 882
upper: 21*50 = 1050
using the 1.24 factor as previously to get from the ear to the rdi,
1.24*882 = 1093.68, which is about 100 mg more than the number i was using, which was constructed by turning the eu data into a ratio and applying it to the usda data
1.24*1050 = 1302, which is considerably less than the number cited in a different study (46 mg/kg)
it makes sense for me to use these numbers instead, as the rdi is higher and the upper limit is lower.
that means i'm separating cysteine from methionine in the rdis, even as i connect them in the chart. and, the next update will consequently likely also include actual cysteine precursors as well.
the above article also summarizes what i've put together fairly well:
Methionine is a nutritionally indispensable amino acid required for the normal growth and development of all mammals (1, 2), whereas cysteine is conditionally indispensable (3, 4). In addition to its required role in protein synthesis, methionine supplies the methyl group for numerous methylation reactions and the sulfur atom for cysteine formation (5–8). Through the intermediate S-adenosylmethionine, methionine is the source of the methyl groups of choline, creatine, and both DNA and RNA intermediates (1, 5, 6, 8). Cysteine is involved in the protein synthesis and biosynthesis of taurine, sulfate, and glutathione (6).
so, if i'm getting enough cysteine, what i really need methinione for is the methyl side chain - not the sulfur.
the karen case hits a sad milestone on monday.
the karen asked for an extension until monday, which was neither granted nor denied. instead, the court asked for this guy ryan to file a response, which led to the karen exposing her lying self for all to see. i asked for some direction from the court last week and didn't get a response...
as the karen is clearly not responding, the court should have ruled on this a very long time ago.
so, i'm going to need to get on the phone on tuesday (presuming no response appears by the end of the day monday) and get the court staff to commit to setting strict deadlines.
listen, there's old, and there's old, and biden is old.
i'm only pointing this out because it's a visceral, real observation. it's the first and last thing you notice when he walks up to the podium. and, he's no doubt aware of it.
i don't think he's going to make it through four years, and he may be gone sooner than anybody wants to really contemplate. i'm not going to participate in the inauguration hoopla or analysis, except to point out that i think much of the pundit class is asking the wrong questions, and what we're dealing with here is the lamest lame duck ever.
actually, i think that it's fairly clear that this delay in my ability to provide a source to demonstrate the historical fact that the populist (and, later, progressive) movement in the united states was a white supremacist movement (which is easily researched in real libraries, if you actually look it up) exposed the true depth of ignorance that exists on the fake left. this really isn't a point that should require me to post a doctoral thesis to back myself up on; this should be common knowledge in a country, and especially in a left-identifying movement in that country, that has a solid grasp of it's own history. so, what do you say when you find yourself in a situation where you're making an argument that you know damned well is grounded in truth, but that you're having difficulty locating a useful source to demonstrate, because there's such a thorough level of disinformation in the press about it, and the people that you expect to know better are just attacking your credibility, as a consequence of that disinformation?
this is what happened:
- i made a valid claim i knew was true (because i had read it in a hundred different places - chomsky, zinn, wiki articles, random internet articles, etc) but that i couldn't provide a clear, authoritative source for, at first - because i'm not an expert in the topic, and never claimed i was. i have degrees in math, computer science and law. in all my years at school, i took one course on byzantine history for breadth. my understanding of history is deep, but i'm a self-taught nerd, and i don't think that gives me less credibility - that's the fallacy of authority, and needs to be rejected by any sort of real or meaningful leftist, on it's face. you can only get so many degrees, in the end - there's only so much time, and only so much debt to incur.
- a lot of very stupid people decided that if i couldn't find a source immediately then i must obviously be making shit up, and therefore must be wrong. that's another fallacy, that the absence of evidence is the evidence of absence.
- these idiots turned up their megaphone and yelled their ignorance far and wide.
- i then found a good source (after some searching.) and posted it - and even had to do it twice because google censored it the first time, perhaps even as a consequence of the previous fallacies.
- but, no retraction was ever posted, anywhere.
it's like i'm arguing with the editors of the new york times.
and, this is what calls itself the contemporary left - the blind leading the blind.
as a secularist, i will argue that ecclesiastical/church/sharia/natural law is the lowest form of law, and should be unenforceable by the state, unless it's adopted into positive law, first. that doesn't mean it can't be incorporated into real law, but, on it's own, it's a kind of fake law that exists in parallel to the real legal system and, until it's incorporated into real law, it has no legal force.
as a consequence, i have no respect for your religious rules and will not take them seriously in any sort of legal discussion at all.
so, i reject the psychobabble presented by philosophers masquerading as scientists (freud, jung, derrida....and foucault, too) and i reject the bulk of modern practical psychology. what's the right way to do psychology?
i stated previously that what i have time for is the application of empirical science in the field of biology to questions of the mind. the mind and the body are the same thing, everybody agrees with that nowadays. so, you alter your brain by feeding it drugs (or by training it with stimuli). that's all very clear, and that basis is what psychology needs to build itself on.
the problem, however, is that modern psychiatry actually doesn't do that. so, the freudians and lacanians alike come up with these strawman arguments that they use to try to tear down "biopsychology" as pseudoscience, while upholding their own nonsense. the frustrating part is that if what the psychoanalysts said about "biopsychology"was actually true, it would actually be an empirical science, and i'd be in favour of it. but, it's not...
the right way to do psychology, then, is what the psychoanalysts accuse the "biopsychologists" of doing, and what they actually aren't doing - they need to actually test for hormonal conditions before they prescribe. and, if they can't test, they shouldn't prescribe.
fwiw, i don't see any good reason for julie payette to have resigned. i'm not denying the facts in the report, but i don't think they're a good reason for a resignation. i mean, i don't think they're a good reason to get upset, regardless; but, if you find it upsetting, that's just how capitalism operates, and you don't undo that by removing figureheads. it's a very silly response by a government that only cares about appearances. it's truly a generation jones mentality in place, and i'll be happy to get rid of it.
but, i think they should abolish the governor-general, anyways. so i don't actually care.
and, that's my response as to who the next gg should be - nobody. get rid of it...
btw, if you want to read sites that have paywalls, blocking javascript is generally effective.
and, they allow that backdoor because they know they'd become irrelevant if they didn't.
we need to change to fit the technology, not try to force the technology to change to fit us; the latter approach always fails in the end.
this idea that google should pay news companies for "hosting" their material (which they don't actually do. that's an absurd misunderstanding of how they operate.) is really the last dying gasp of the newspaper industry, which needs to be put out of it's misery and ended once and for all.
blogging by independent voices, free of censorship and editorializing, is the future. what they're trying to maintain - centralized news media - is obsolete, and should die.
as a consumer, i'll tell you it won't work. the bottom line is that what these people do isn't worth paying them for, and they need to come to terms with the fact that their product is so substandard that it's not actually worth anything.
what australia is doing is technologically reactionary, and while i would oppose it, i have little faith in my own government to do much better, as it is a reactionary government, as well. google is right to threaten to pull out, and i hope they do, and i hope it spurs a backlash that throws the government out of office.
the demise of the msm will create a more vibrant blogosphere, and that's what i want to see, moving forwards - not these backwards, reactionary attempts to prevent obsolete media establishments from dying long overdue deaths.
what i support is taking the msm off life support, and good riddance to it.
i don't really sweat when i'm biking. i'm in very good health; i put a lot of effort into it, i should be.
but, i repeatedly wake up drenched in sweat when i get home.
if i'm being drugged like i think i am, it's having a very negative effect on my overall physical health, which is of far greater concern to me than society's opinion about my mental health, which i mostly think is a triviality. not only is this not helping, but it's having a truly devastatingly negative effect on me.
if it was harmless and i could just shrug it off, whatever. but, it's not. it needs to stop.
so, i caught up on some sleep and feel a tad better.
that's the other thing that continually happens - i go out for groceries and can't sleep when i get back, even though i should generally be exhausted from the exercise involved in the grocery run (which frequently requires 7-8 hours of walking and biking, and this is by design - i need and like the exercise, it's good for my cardiovascular health, which is my primary cause of concern). eventually, that's how i clear whatever is entering my system (and i think it's some kind of foreign chemical, some kind of drug) when i get back - i have to sleep it off. and, i have to sweat it out, when i'm sleeping.
if we put the idea that i'm getting drugged aside, that's what i'm actually experiencing - heightened feelings of agitation and frustration when i get back, until i sweat out whatever's causing it over two or three days worth of heavy sleeping.
and, i wish it would stop.
i don't think people should go to jail for using drugs, although i'm actually in support of fining smokers - both marijuana and tobacco - in residential areas. there has to be some way for low income non-smokers to get out of the way, and much of the discourse ignores how hard it really is to avoid it, unless you can afford your own property. the law should be written primarily to protect the rights of low-income non-smokers, not to protect the rights of smokers.
i do think that addictive drugs with high overdose rates (i pointed to meth and heroin) should be very, very hard to find.
and, i think that libertarians get it wrong when it comes to social reactions to drugs. they seem to think that, if it weren't for the government, drug prohibition would cease; they seem to fail to grasp the depth of social opposition that exists to hard drug use in low-income neighbourhoods. the truth is that what the police often do is protect the pushers from the wrath of the community. if you took the cops out of the scenario and let the community govern itself, it would be far more vicious than the cops are in cracking down on dealers. they'd get lynched; that's the facts of it.
i'm not really in favour of lynching pushers, but i'm an anarchist, and i do think it's up to the community to police itself, in this manner. my argument is actually that abolishing the police would reduce access to hard drugs, because they wouldn't be there to protect the dealers from retribution anymore.
but, in the status quo, i think that a kind of decriminalization + supply reduction combination is the way forwards.
i also think that less resources should be expended on helping addicts out, because once you're on these drugs, you can't really get off them. rehab doesn't work. relapses are the norm, the expectation. there has to be a way out - but we have to stop proselytizing. this christian idea that these people need help and support is wrong; they have to help themselves, and they should more or less be left to die unless they take the initiative to do so.
so, i don't know what you label that. i'm definitely not a market libertarian, but i'm some kind of anarchist; i think we need less policing, but i don't think that means more permissiveness. it's clearly a public health issue, but i reject the idea that we need more social workers as misguided christian do-gooding. it's some kind of synthesis, i guess.
i'm still not convinced that the 1330 mg rdi of methionine + cysteine really makes sense given what they're used for, but i'll hold to it regardless, and then add on extra requirements for taurine and cysteine.
i decided on 60 mg/meal for taurine, meaning i have 425 (total) - 204 (cysteine requirements) - 60 (taurine requirements) = 161 mg left for glutathione.
i know this is facile, but these are rough estimates. is that enough?
i may pass out soon due to the headache.
for right now, i need to sort through this mess of information on methionine, cysteine, taurine, glutathione, serine & glycine, at least to start, to try to make sense of what i am and am not getting.
the fruit bowl has 559 mg of methionine and 425 mg of cysteine, which i think should be enough for methionine, cysteine & taurine.
actually, wait. i'm confusing myself, here; if glutathione is a derivative of cysteine, and i'm getting a lot of cysteine, i don't need to worry about synthesizing it from serine - i'm just getting enough cysteine, straight up. yeah. ok. i think i just undid what i was confused about.
see, i had glutathione listed as a derivative of methionine and wanted to make sure i was getting enough methionine to synthesize enough glutathione. but, then i realized i had to convert it to cysteine first, and realized the choke point was serine, not methionine. but, what i should really do is list glutathione as a derivative of cysteine, and then measure the amount of glutathione i need relative to the amount of cysteine i'm getting, making the question of whether i'm getting enough serine to synthesize enough cysteine irrelevant, because i'm just getting enough cysteine flat out.
ok.
that said, when i do serine more formally, the question of conversion to cysteine will come up, and i may base an rdi on how much excess cysteine i may need to produce enough glutathione.
and, i guess, if i decide i need more cysteine for glutathione production, then i'll need to shift the serine (and glycine) to the methionine row to integrate these things together.
i realize that this is just one pathway in a collection of molecules that have many diverse purposes, but i'm pulling out these molecules because the literature does, and i'm taking cues from experts that have identified the value of them.
this is the reason i write this down - it helps me clarify my thoughts.
i know that what i'm saying sounds insane, but there's just too much circumstantial evidence. i'm clearly under some kind of surveillance, and they seem to think i need medication - something i thoroughly reject. that much is clear enough. but, would they medicate my food without my knowledge? i've told them i won't take anything, and the effects are clear enough -- whenever i go out anywhere and come back in, i experience these horrible effects, and they fade when i stay in for a bit. they otherwise don't seem to come up. so, it's either some kind of coincidence or something about leaving the house is causing these horrible feelings. unless it's the air outside...
i've posted here many times about the evidence left behind by somebody that is coming in here when i'm gone, some of it more disgusting than others. they seem insistent on searching my cupboards; i think they're looking for illegal drugs, maybe even out of concerns about interactions. i dunno. they're clearly looking for something. they also tend to search my fridge when i'm gone, and i think they're also looking for drugs in the fridge. i don't even know what drugs you'd keep in the fridge. i've gone out and come back and realized somebody rifled through my spoon drawer...that, i at least understand, because i remember coming across burnt spoons that my mother used for heroin.
i've never done any kind of opiates, and would probably hurt you if you ever offered me any. you would want to run, trust me. i've turned down cocaine repeatedly, but i've never tried it; i'm not vicious about rejecting cocaine, but i don't have any interest in it, either. i would get very angry with you if you offered me meth, though. i've never done mdma, but i'm open to it, in theory. i've smoked marijuana and tried some psychedelic drugs, but it's been a long time since i've done the latter and i might never do it ever again. i haven't had any alcohol at all since march of last year, but i haven't sworn off of it, i just don't like to drink alone. there's an almost full bottle of vodka in the cupboard...
i don't know what they're giving me, but sometimes it feels like a mushroom trip and sometimes it feels like too much coffee. those are my reference points - that's what i actually understand.
what these people do is give you psychotropic drugs that make you high, they don't give you cures to diseases; most of their diseases don't have any clinical definition, and consequently don't actually even exist.
sometimes, people like getting high enough that it blunts whatever else they're feeling. but it's not a cure to anything because there's no underlying condition in the first place - it's just somebody getting high.
it's legitimately complete bullshit, through and through.
so, all that any drug that any doctor could do for me is get me high - and i don't like getting high on a regular basis. i prefer to live a largely straight-edge, sober lifestyle, and find the experience of drug use to be frustrating and annoying.
the best way to cure me is to give me more coffee.
this whole idea of "chemical imbalances" is nothing more than pseudo-science. they can't test for most of these things because they're past the blood-brain barrier. so, they get some clown to make a guess based on behaviour, which is the most unscientific way to deal with something that you could possibly imagine; these people are not scientists, and they're not doctors, they're quacks working for drug companies.
in theory, i'd accept the premise that you could test me for something and prescribe me something based on that test. that's fine - that's science.
but, deciding that i have an imbalance based on my behaviour is not science, it's magic. that needs to be rejected on it's face.
so, no, i won't take anything prescribed to me, because there's no justification for it besides some idiot making a guess. and, i'm well within my rights to tell that person that they're not a scientist, and i don't respect their magical thinking.
i'm dealing with a headache tonight that might flip over into a migraine. as usual, it seems like the pigs upstairs put something in my food when i was out yesterday, and i'll have to suffer the consequences of it - agitation, headaches and violent idealizations. they seem to think they're giving me some kind of medicine, but they fail to realize that i don't have an imbalance, and that what they're giving me is causing problems rather than solving them. but, i can't do anything besides hide inside and let it pass.
i'm also experiencing chest pains and heart palpitations.
so, i need this to stop.
the only drugs i need are the female hormones being prescribed to me. anything else that's being given to me is merely damaging my mental and physical health. and, i don't have any sort of diagnosis to justify the administration of it, especially in stealth like this.
Friday, January 22, 2021
i'm finding this methionine + cysteine thing to be kind of confusing.
methionine seems to really only act as a methyl donor or a source of sulfur for serine, which is the actual precursor to cysteine. cysteine is very important, in the production of taurine, glutathione and various other things. but, the two amino acids don't seem to play related roles at all. so, why does the rdi combine methionine + cysteine? it seems to be strictly as a source of sulfur...
serine seems to be synthesized in multiple ways, but what i want to find is some measurement for how much i need in my diet, as it seems to be the actual thing i need for cysteine, taurine and glutathione, not methionine. but, there seems to be a deficit of information on the topic.
i'm getting enough of both methioine & cysteine to meet the rdis, i'm just not convinced that the rdis actually mean anything, as they don't seem to have much to do with each other.
no, really - that's my guess as to what's coming.
you'll log on to blogger in the future, and you'll get a feed of other blogs you've connected to. this will really just be an excuse to serve ads to you, but it will be the central part of the site. if you want to post, yourself, you'll be able to utilize a standard cross-site template with default gadgets built in as shared functionality; every blog will look the same, and you'll have essentially no control over it.
i get the impression that they want to convert blogger into social media - they want to force us back into the feed, and serve us ads. this is going to look like twitter, in the end. and, i'm going to have to find a way out.
substack doesn't seem to have the functionality i want, either.
so, i'm throwing this out there - somebody has an opportunity here to essentially clone this interface, which has been the greatest thing on the internet for years. maybe it's substack that does it, but it's gotta get a move on it, to make more flexible uis. because this is slowly dying, clearly.
fuck.
ok, i've been a little distracted, but i got all of the things i needed to do outside done and should be in until the end of the month, when i'll need to go out to scavenge for more estrogen. i've got a dent out of a huge pile of laundry...
i'm going to finish a post on essential amino acids and then do some legal stuff next week.
“Some premiers want to go to war” with the United States over the cancellation, aides of those who participated in the meeting said.
....because it's our prerogative to make those decisions. what arrogance.
why not just cut the pipeline open at the border and pump the oil into the fields? why not dump it on the crops, agent orange style? you will have our oil whether you want it or not!
while i'm not convinced that this is over yet (we'll need to wait until the court process finishes, and i suspect that biden's successor flip-flops, if they allow for it; there's just no political value in maintaining the permit so long as construction is halted, anyways), the truth is that the western provinces have known this is coming for decades and have sat on their hands and let their economies rot. things are legitimately bad right now, but they only have themselves to blame for it.
they will need to transition to a clean economy like everybody else - and that is the value of supporting this. hopefully it wakes them up a little, once they've stopped crying like the overgrown children that they are.
and, if they won't grow up, let them throw their tantrums while they freeze in the dark.
i'm not sure if this is propaganda meant as a distraction, or if he's legitimately so ignorant and stupid that he thinks that transmission is being driven by travel, despite all of the science stating the opposite.
it's what happens when you put an english major in office.
the guy can barely spell his own name. and, we're left with an ignorant, unscientific policy that you'd expect from donald trump, rather than the liberal party of canada.
if i want to edit a random post from 2013, i can find that post using the tree on the side (until they take that away, i guess - at which point i'm leaving, instantly. that's a red line.), open it, copy two or three sentences from the article, paste it into the search engine and it will come up to edit.
but, what an utterly moronic way to design a system...
i'm not particularly invested in or interested in proving anything regarding these backposts. my concerns are twofold:
1) i want a complete narrative of all of my writing.
2) i want a coherent narrative of all of my writing - something you can read from start to finish without holes.
there's no ads, here. i don't make money by posting here, and i don't want to, either. i want a gai and to not have to worry about it beyond that. and, i kind of have it, on disability.
but, there are going to be times when i'm using this interface to do creative writing, as well. obviously, my posts from 1996 are not from 1996, and i'm not pretending that they are. i'm calling it creative writing - if you want to accuse me of lying, you should grow up a little and stop taking the platform so seriously. yes - when i do the alter-realty, i'll be consciously backdating posts that were not written at that time. that's the mechanism, and to accuse me of "lying" about it is absurd.
i'm going to be doing massive backposting for 2014--->2016 soon, and i'm going to need to find a way to edit and modify posts over that period. if i can't do it here, i'll have to do it elsewhere.
you've been warned, google - if you're going to remove functionality like this, i'm going to get up and leave.
to clarify the point about heron v euclid as the source of the "royal road to geometry" quote, which was just thrown into the review as banter...
the source for the euclid/ptolemy discussion is proclus, and it is probably apocryphal, there. i have a copy of proclus' commentary on the shelf; he was an important (neo-)platonist near the end of the classical period (traditionally ending when justinian closed the academy), but this is very late for a source about euclid - it was nearly 1000 years later. i know that we tend to blur the classical period together, but 1000 years is a long, long time. it's very hard to take a story like that about anybody seriously at so far removed a date.
when i said "i remembered it as being heron", i was referencing something i learned in a course on non-euclidean geometry (70.427 at carleton) many years ago. there's a text called the non-euclidean revolution by richard trudeau that's a pretty gentle intro, so gentle that it's a probably better called a philosophy text than a math text, and it might be in there, but i don't remember entirely. what i remember is a comment by the professor (brian mortimer) that the whole euclid thing was presented in proclus from an earlier reference to heron, probably because euclid is fucking euclid and heron was...you've never heard of him, have you? he was important, but he wasn't euclid. apparently, the story was also sometimes told with archimedes as the geometer, rather than euclid.
i'm pretty knowledgeable about the period, and i might suspect that the story isn't even greek, let alone egyptian. heron actually lived in the roman period, so he wouldn't be talking to a greek pharoah named ptolemy, he'd have been taking to a roman governor. but, the use of the term royal road suggests a potentially earlier persian reference, as the royal road was the road that ran through the persian empire from the greek regions of asia minor (modern day turkey), and back to the elamite capital of susa (shush, in modern day iran), which the persians used as an administrative capital (they had multiple capitals in their empire, essentially a collection of the capitals of the constituent civilizations that they very rapidly conquered). so, if the earliest references that we have point to heron being the author, it may have gotten merged with an earlier story about the persian king of kings, or adapted from it.
something else to note is that proclus may have even been killed for treason if he had told a story that glorified the then iranian/parthian monarch in too great detail, as the romans were in the midst of a thousand year war with the iranians. that might be the motive in telling the story about euclid & ptolemy, rather than about the persian monarch.
but, my statement stems from a vague recollection of something i learned in class that was intended to debunk the euclid reference, which is at virtually every site, due to the importance of proclus. you'd only find it in specialist literature, and i've entirely forgotten where, if i ever read it rather than heard it at all.
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