Ben Mann Monthly September: nose engineering, Flock, Spark, Bear, Diablo, meditation
Purpose
An index for my memory
A menu of topics for my next conversation with you
A faster way to share what I’m excited about without the barrier of writing a complete blog entry on it
A skimmable way to spread content I found valuable
Experiments and experiences
Ketotifen & bed bricks
I realized I didn’t have to wake up frequently from my nose getting stuffy. I raised the head of my bed by putting a brick under two legs. I started using Ketotifen - Wikipedia again, which is unlike most other antihistamines. Instead of histamine from being received by cells (histamine inverse agonist), it stops it from being emitted in the first place (mast cell stabilizer). Together these helped a bit but not 100%
ENT visit x2
On my dad’s recommendation I saw an ENT who stuck an endoscope up my nose, through my sinuses, and down my throat while I watched the video feed. “Those are your vocal chords!” she exclaimed. Apparently I have an excellent uvula. She said I have a deviated septum and enlarged turbinates and suggested one or both of bilateral turbinate reduction and septoplasty. After leaving I found that 80% of people have some septal deviation. I decided to start with turbinate reduction since it had the least recovery time. I slept really horribly for the first few days until I started using pseudoephedrine more aggressively. It’s been a week since surgery and I can already breathe normally through my nose, but apparently full recovery takes 5-6 weeks. Excited to sleep uninterrupted!
We now have 7 common areas in our house so it’s more difficult for critical mass to form. To deal with this Jason thought of putting a Raspberry Pi in every room that scans for bluetooth devices of people who’ve opted in and shows their presence in that room. We’ll mount a tablet by the front door so you see where people are hanging out when you come home. Bluetooth is great because it doesn’t require downloading an app and signal strength drops off through floors and walls, so you’ll only show up when you’re in the room. I built the auth integration, put the backend on a remote server, and helped get the scanning to work. Almost ready to launch!
For work I needed a distributed execution system to process arbitrarily large amounts of data on arbitrarily large clusters. After evaluating a few options (Dask, Dataproc, MRJob, BigQuery), I settled on Spark. After finding the magic combination of settings and learning a subset of Pandas I’ve found it extremely powerful and concise!
I’ve been using Evernote for the last year. While it’s pretty good I’ve found the formatting a bit clunky. I’d heard good things about Bear and was excited about using markdown to compose. I’ve found it pretty and usable but there’s no Android app and it’s still a little over-aggressive on autocorrect. I’ll probably abandon after another few weeks and try Notion.
Sunset Diablo
Yesterday Akiva and I hiked up Diablo starting near Mitchell Canyon visitor center but parked in the burbs so we wouldn’t get a ticket after sunset. It took us ~6 hours to go 13 miles and 3500 ft of elevation gain with a little jogging on the way down. For the last 30 minutes the moon was bright enough that we turned off our headlamps. A++ hike, would do again.
Meditation buddies
Diana and I started a recurring meeting at 7:30p every night where we both remind each other to meditate and hole each other accountable. If we miss then we pay $5. We’ve each only missed one or two nights in the whole month. I do 10 minutes and mainly focus on breath or Shikantaza - Wikipedia.
Purposeful hyperventilation for the purpose of meditation. My hands and feet went completely tingly. I felt waves of positive and negative emotion wash over me. The second half was a guided sound bath meditation. I left feeling relaxed and happy. I’m not sure I’d go regularly or again. It didn’t feel safe, controlled, or well studied.
Life updates
Continuing to work really hard. Probably have a reprieve for the next month, but we’ll see.
Trying to stick to a more regular schedule. So far have made climbing MWF afternoon a habit by attaching to a friend.
Content
5 point Likert ratings for “I would recommend this content to a friend”, sorted
Too Much Dark Money In Almonds | Slate Star Codex 5/5
Americans spend more money on almonds than the entire US democratic system
It’s a great example of a coordination problem: “if you spend $2 on almonds, you get $2 of almonds. You get nothing from political spending in expectation”
How the brains of master meditators change - Vox 4/5
Different kinds of meditation (loving-kindness, mindfulness, etc) can be thought of as different exercises for the brain. Some take much longer than others to yield results.
Master meditators seem to
have greater emotional range
experience suffering only during rather than anticipating and reliving
Think of meditation like brushing your teeth, find at least 1 min/day to commit
What Buddhism got right about the human brain 4/5
A great description of what it feels like to progress as a meditator
Both host and guest were emotionally vulnerable and explicit about their internal experience
Against Against Pseudoaddiction | Slate Star Codex 4/5
It turns out the symptoms of addiction also match the symptoms of needing a drug
The study everyone cites to prove pseudoaddiction is wrong hinges on pain being “not objectively measurable.” This sounds to me like really sloppy thinking. Sometimes subjective pain scales are a sufficient approximation of reality.
The human body in space: Distinguishing fact from fiction - Science in the News 4/5
No, you don’t explode or freeze instantly. You do pass out in 15 seconds due to hypoxia.
Pro tip: exhale fully before pressure loss to avoid lung rupture.
Jodorowsky’s Dune - Wikipedia 2/5
An insane dude somehow convinced people to give him a lot of money to make a movie, and he randomly chose Frank Herbert’s Dune as the source material
AFAICT they never even got to filming it
Cool visuals nonetheless, makes me want to check out The Incal - Wikipedia
Lots Of People Going Around With Mild Hallucinations All The Time | Slate Star Codex 2/5
Maybe woo-woo people who claim to see auras and feel energy actually experience a day to day neurochemistry similar to that of people doing acid
Seems highly speculative