Doesn't that make the double-glazing on the windows and insulation kind of... dumb, then? I guess it's about incremental progress. And people with too much money will surely buy them, I suppose.
Toshi's thread
- Thread starter Toshi
- Start date
The double glazing and insulation were on a concept 10 passenger minibus. For that use that certainly makes sense, and as a hotel/airport shuttle that'd again be a great niche use case.
Technically it is mid-size I guess. Turn off factor for me was 10 speed auto trans only. That's too much witchcraft crammed into too small a package for my mechanical blood.I saw one recently... looked more mid-size. Doesn't any manufacturer make a small *anything* any more?
Srsly - automatic transmissions have always given me the heeby jeebies when I've looked at images of them "exploded":
Sounds about right.
Rich, broke, or dead? Here's a fun tool to visualize probabilities of retirement savings lasting based off of starting assumptions:
engaging-data.com
Rich, Broke or Dead? Post-Retirement FIRE Calculator: Visualizing Early Retirement Success and Longevity Risk - Engaging Data
A FI/RE early retirement calculator visualizing longevity risk in early retirement and enables you to compare the probability success, failure and mortality.
engaging-data.com
Spending per year = $200,000 ??!?
The latest Tesla's won't drive themselves...oh wait...Spending per year = $200,000 ??!?
Those Bora Bora cottages aren't going to rent themselves! Putting in 50% spending flexibility was key to the "not going broke in model" bit, and I wouldn't have to spend a ton each year in retirement.Spending per year = $200,000 ??!?
Webasto and Ford Team Up for Mustang ‘Lithium’: Battery Electric Muscle Car Lights-Up SEMA, Signals Future of Performance
Built in collaboration between Ford and Webasto, Mustang Lithium project vehicle generates more than 1000 ft.-lbs. of instant torque and more than 900 horsepower.
Wait. WTF? How do they do this with an EV? Put the electric motor ouput into a transmission? Isn't that going to be a huge waste of electrons?Webasto and Ford Team Up for Mustang ‘Lithium’: Battery Electric Muscle Car Lights-Up SEMA, Signals Future of Performance
Built in collaboration between Ford and Webasto, Mustang Lithium project vehicle generates more than 1000 ft.-lbs. of instant torque and more than 900 horsepower.performance.ford.com
It certainly can't be the most efficient, or smartest way, but I doubt anyone buying an electric mustang is buying it because it's smart.Wait. WTF? How do they do this with an EV? Put the electric motor ouput into a transmission? Isn't that going to be a huge waste of electrons?
EVs already have transmissions, albeit just a single reduction gear. Especially with a manual the efficiency won't be changed that much by the transmission proper, and by operating the motor at higher RPM one could extract a bit more performance from it at low speeds, I imagine.Wait. WTF? How do they do this with an EV? Put the electric motor ouput into a transmission? Isn't that going to be a huge waste of electrons?
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I guess for some reason I always figured that EV's would simply have an electric motor on each wheel. I guess that's why I'm not an automotive engineer...
Hub motors are certainly one tactic. But reliability (bearing life!), needless cost, and unsprung weight all factor in.I guess for some reason I always figured that EV's would simply have an electric motor on each wheel. I guess that's why I'm not an automotive engineer...
Most EVs are FWD, transverse layout, motor up front under the hood, standard front diff.
Day 4 done, kare pan consumed for science
So far what I can conclude from these data are:
1) I am not diabetic (as evidenced by my pre-interventions 5.2 A1C, possibly even lower now)
b] None of these foods have resulted in any significant glucose spike for me given the inherent inaccuracies of a fingerstick portable unit glucose check
iii. I'm glad I elected to sample every 30 minutes, as that's where all the differentiation is coming in, as little as there is. (Robb Wolf's suggested protocol is for no pre-food sampling and only one check at 2 hours.)
So far what I can conclude from these data are:
1) I am not diabetic (as evidenced by my pre-interventions 5.2 A1C, possibly even lower now)
b] None of these foods have resulted in any significant glucose spike for me given the inherent inaccuracies of a fingerstick portable unit glucose check
iii. I'm glad I elected to sample every 30 minutes, as that's where all the differentiation is coming in, as little as there is. (Robb Wolf's suggested protocol is for no pre-food sampling and only one check at 2 hours.)
Public resolution: I will acquire a point of care/home lipid monitoring setup* if my Framingham Offspring cardiac risk is 0.8 or higher from my Dec 18 labs. (0.6 and 0.7 would be acceptable to me--0.6 is the lowest risk group that they report.) I would then use it to modify my diet such that I consistently scored 0.6 or 0.7 after such interventions.
If my risk on Dec 18 comes out to 0.6 or 0.7 I still might acquire such a thing but will consider it more, as it'd be only for my own experiments/curiosity at that point.
* this would be a Cholestech LDX System probably, as the papers seem to show it's a bit more accurate as compared to gold standard real-lab tests vs the CardioChek Plus.
If my risk on Dec 18 comes out to 0.6 or 0.7 I still might acquire such a thing but will consider it more, as it'd be only for my own experiments/curiosity at that point.
* this would be a Cholestech LDX System probably, as the papers seem to show it's a bit more accurate as compared to gold standard real-lab tests vs the CardioChek Plus.
Harkening back to a theme from before I rejoined the mountain biking (and later, "mountain biking") world, I should try this game out:
www.pcworld.com
I do have a 2080 Ti in my work-bought computer in my basement that I haven't given a good workout…
Red Dead Redemption II PC impressions: Drop-dead gorgeous, if you can run it
Witness, Red Dead Redemption II is a game that can bring a GeForce RTX 2080 Ti to its knees...at 1080p. Seriously.
www.pcworld.com
I do have a 2080 Ti in my work-bought computer in my basement that I haven't given a good workout…
Finger-Stick Glucose Monitoring: Issues of accuracy and specificity
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
So 20% error is apparently acceptable. One would hope that individual machines in a given short time period would be more accurate, but who knows? (Especially since the test strips I've been using, from Aya's gestation/wife's testing during that, technically expired Jan 2019.)
Edit with data: was running out of the expired-in-Jan 2019 test strips so bought another set of them. $190 for 100! In any case, I used this first pre-cheesecake test to experiment with accuracy. From the same finger stick squeezed out three times and measured consecutively I got 91 with an old strip, 98 with a new strip, 96 with the last old strip. So indeed there is some inherent variability going on.
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0Tesla-Powered 1977 Porsche 911 RWB Sends 563 HP to the Rear Wheels054
Although this classic is a purebred show car, it also has the speed to back up its on-point aesthetics.
www.thedrive.com
Too low but promising as a blueprint.
Day 5
Chocolate cheesecake consumed for science. 120 at 2 hours! (That's still ok but higher than the others tested.) So apparently that mix of sugars + non-sugar carbs + fats is the most potent for me thus far. The delayed peak makes sense in that the fats slow down the absorption.
Chocolate cheesecake consumed for science. 120 at 2 hours! (That's still ok but higher than the others tested.) So apparently that mix of sugars + non-sugar carbs + fats is the most potent for me thus far. The delayed peak makes sense in that the fats slow down the absorption.
I want an all wheel drive rally version of this.0Tesla-Powered 1977 Porsche 911 RWB Sends 563 HP to the Rear Wheels054
Although this classic is a purebred show car, it also has the speed to back up its on-point aesthetics.
Too low but promising as a blueprint.
More on this line of thought:Public resolution: I will acquire a point of care/home lipid monitoring setup* if my Framingham Offspring cardiac risk is 0.8 or higher from my Dec 18 labs. (0.6 and 0.7 would be acceptable to me--0.6 is the lowest risk group that they report.) I would then use it to modify my diet such that I consistently scored 0.6 or 0.7 after such interventions.
If my risk on Dec 18 comes out to 0.6 or 0.7 I still might acquire such a thing but will consider it more, as it'd be only for my own experiments/curiosity at that point.
* this would be a Cholestech LDX System probably, as the papers seem to show it's a bit more accurate as compared to gold standard real-lab tests vs the CardioChek Plus.
The Cholestech LDX unit with printer runs $1,600 new at discount medical houses. But it's an old design, at least from 1994 if not even earlier. Therefore the used market is very robust, and one can pick up such a unit for $153 shipped, for instance.
The question then is whether the supplies for testing are cost-prohibitive, and eBay again comes to the rescue. Discount medical supply houses have the lipid profile + glucose cassette at about $11/test, but on eBay one can get them new for $2/test. At that price the $0.48/capillary and plunger cost (and for lancets on top of that) actually is a significant part of the total! (That's also on par with the ridiculous $1.90/strip price I paid for a 100-ct of Accu-Chek Smartview test strips at Walgreen's this morning, whereas it turns out on eBay I could have gotten them for $0.45/strip. Oh well, live and learn.)
So the real price is of the pain of squeezing out 40 uL of blood from one's fingertip for the test. In return one would get total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, triglycerides, and glucose in about 5 minutes. (If we lived in the period from 2005-2014 or so we could have instead gotten that lipid profile + LFTs + CRP in about 6 minutes, but Alere discontinued that particular, interesting product, perhaps to push their more expensive testing machines.)
Cliffs Notes: I still haven't bought anything, but this is looking pretty feasible, actually! $153 up front costs, and about $2.50/test for lipid panel + glucose.
As nothing overly interesting is emerging from these data I've been acquiring (hmm, lesson for the lipid idea?!Day 5
Chocolate cheesecake consumed for science.
) I think I will continue this just 4 more days (edit: make that 5):11/8: shoku pan (Japanese white bread), 2 slices
11/9: shoku pan with butter this time
11/10: repeat of white rice cooked with coconut oil, to see how replicable each curve really proves to be given the measurement inaccuracy
11/11: Lara bars, 2 bars
11/12: Hu crackers, 1 box
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Mustang SUV I guess why not when I start thinking about it. Its a part of US Ford that actually has some interest in the rest of the world. Before you know it they will have a small Mustang too like you have seen BMW with the 2 series now the 3 has bloated. Still hate sloping coupe roofline SUVs.
Mach-E. Or whatever it’ll be called. Tight cargo area.
I have seen the future, and it's no fun...
www.nytimes.com
How to Feel Nothing Now, in Order to Feel More Later
A day of dopamine fasting in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO — Everything was going really well for the men of Tennessee Street. Women wanted to talk to them, investors wanted to invest, their new site got traffic, phones were buzzing, their Magic: The Gathering cards were appreciating. This all was exactly the problem.
They tried to tamp the pleasure. They would not eat for days (intermittent fasting). They would eschew screens (digital detox). It was not enough. Life was still so good and pleasurable.
And so they came to the root of it: dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is involved in how we feel pleasure. The three of them — all in their mid-20s and founders of SleepWell, a sleep analysis start-up — needed to go on a dopamine fast.
“We’re addicted to dopamine,” said James Sinka, who of the three fellows is the most exuberant about their new practice. “And because we’re getting so much of it all the time, we end up just wanting more and more, so activities that used to be pleasurable now aren’t. Frequent stimulation of dopamine gets the brain’s baseline higher.”
There is a growing dopamine-avoidance community in town and the concept has quickly captivated the media.
Dr. Cameron Sepah is a start-up investor, professor at UCSF Medical School and dopamine faster. He uses the fasting as a technique in clinical practice with his clients, especially, he said, tech workers and venture capitalists.
The name — dopamine fasting — is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more of a stimulation fast. But the name works well enough, Dr. Sepah said.
“Dopamine is just a mechanism that explains how addictions can become reinforced, and makes for a catchy title,” he wrote in an email. “The title’s not to be taken literally.”
On a recent cool morning, Mr. Sinka and his start-up co-founder Andrew Fleischer, both 24 years old, were beginning their fast while Alberto Scicali, 26, another founder, managed the start-up from his bedroom.
Mr. Sinka, who has a mop of curly hair, was wearing water shoes and a cable-knit sweater as he did light morning stretching. Mr. Fleischer was reading a book.
A dopamine fast is simple because it is basically a fast of everything.
They would not be eating. They would not look at any screens. They would not listen to music. They would not exercise. They would not touch other bodies for any reason, especially not for sex. No work. No eye contact. No talking more than absolutely necessary. A photographer could take their picture, but there could be no flash.
The number of things to not do is potentially endless.
The ultimate dopamine fast is complete sensory deprivation, like maybe floating in a dark water tank or locking oneself in a closet. But the dopamine fasters of San Francisco do hope to keep existing in the normal world.
“Any kind of fasting exists on a spectrum,” Mr. Sinka said as he slowly moved through sun salutations, careful not to get his heart racing too much, already worried he was talking too much that morning.
Mr. Fleischer was looking through a textbook of images of chemical compounds and then writing some of them down in his notebook.
“I like to find patterns in chemical compounds, and so I’m going through my books and finding quite a few,” he said.
That is how he would spend his morning. Later he would move outside to sit and feel the air for a while.
The three of them graduated recently from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they met and started working together. Their start-up was going through evolutions every few months. It began as a coffee extraction company that turned into a cannabinoid extraction company (much more profitable) that turned into a cannabinoid synthesis for sleep aid that turned into, now, sleep coaching.
Their job is to put their clients in various sleep gadgetry — the Dreem sleep headset, Oura sleep ring, Withings sleep mat — and test interventions.
Their apartment is clean and modern with an empty wine fridge and few decorations, save for a “Breaking Bad” poster.
Their usual schedule of all day, every day hacking away on different projects was too much. Investors and clients had demands. Their start-up iterations had turned into a real job.
“I’d never thought about fasting work,” Mr. Sinka said. “Once there was pressure around work, though, it became less fun, and I thought maybe we’ll try fasting work.”
Like a weekend? No, he said, they don’t have time to not work for that long.
But fasting from work got them thinking more about fasting everything.
Throughout that day of their dopamine fast, they wandered slowly from room to room. They read. They put on more and more sweaters. The food fasting makes them cold. They went on walks, though these are tricky because they have to avoid needing to ask for anything like water or bathrooms.
“I avoid eye contact because I know it excites me. I avoid busy streets because they’re jarring,” Mr. Sinka said. “I have to fight the waves of delicious foods.”
Silicon Valley is not the first group to discover that moderating emotions or spending periods trying to feel less can lead to happiness. In their quest, they are moving toward two very old groups: those in silent meditation and the Amish.
Steven Nolt, a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and the author of “A History of the Amish,” said parts of the dopamine fast do echo elements of Amish life.
“Compared with many of the rest of us, you would find Amish emotion to be more muted,” Dr. Nolte said. “The idea of limits on life, that there should be limits and yield signs, is a pretty central Amish assumption.”
But ultimately the Amish would not approve of the dopamine fasters.
“They don’t have a great deal of confidence in individuals on their own making good decisions,” he said.
Karen Donovan, who is developing a new Vipassana silent meditation center in Silicon Valley, said she sees this trend as moving closer to the ultimate dopamine fast: sitting on a dark floor with eyes closed for 10 days.
“There’s a growing self-awareness of what in Vipassana terms we would call suffering,” she said.
As the day wore on at Tennessee Street, Mr. Sinka, now wearing a thick vest, continued to hang out at home doing basically nothing.
“Your brain and your biology have become adapted to high levels of stimulus so our project is to reset those receptors so you’re satiated again,” he said.
Mr. Sinka returned to resting.
“Yeah, man, drop down that cortisol,” Mr. Scicali said as encouragement.
After the fast, Mr. Sinka finds that everyday tasks are more exciting and fun. Work is pleasurable again. Food is more delicious.
“Biology can get hijacked,” Mr. Sinka said, noting that “early homo sapiens” didn’t have much in the way of sweets — blueberries and the like.
Sometimes it is hard or upsetting for people who encounter the Tennessee Street men while they are fasting.
The other day, Mr. Sinka ran into an old friend but had to tell her they could not continue speaking.
“I hadn’t seen her in six months, and it was extraordinarily exciting, super-stimulating, and I could feel how excited I was,” he said. “So I had to cut it off and I just said, ‘Listen, it’s not you, it’s me, doing this dopamine fast.’”
How to Feel Nothing Now, in Order to Feel More Later (Published 2019)
A day of dopamine fasting in San Francisco.
How to Feel Nothing Now, in Order to Feel More Later
A day of dopamine fasting in San Francisco.
SAN FRANCISCO — Everything was going really well for the men of Tennessee Street. Women wanted to talk to them, investors wanted to invest, their new site got traffic, phones were buzzing, their Magic: The Gathering cards were appreciating. This all was exactly the problem.
They tried to tamp the pleasure. They would not eat for days (intermittent fasting). They would eschew screens (digital detox). It was not enough. Life was still so good and pleasurable.
And so they came to the root of it: dopamine, a neurotransmitter that is involved in how we feel pleasure. The three of them — all in their mid-20s and founders of SleepWell, a sleep analysis start-up — needed to go on a dopamine fast.
“We’re addicted to dopamine,” said James Sinka, who of the three fellows is the most exuberant about their new practice. “And because we’re getting so much of it all the time, we end up just wanting more and more, so activities that used to be pleasurable now aren’t. Frequent stimulation of dopamine gets the brain’s baseline higher.”
There is a growing dopamine-avoidance community in town and the concept has quickly captivated the media.
Dr. Cameron Sepah is a start-up investor, professor at UCSF Medical School and dopamine faster. He uses the fasting as a technique in clinical practice with his clients, especially, he said, tech workers and venture capitalists.
The name — dopamine fasting — is a bit of a misnomer. It’s more of a stimulation fast. But the name works well enough, Dr. Sepah said.
“Dopamine is just a mechanism that explains how addictions can become reinforced, and makes for a catchy title,” he wrote in an email. “The title’s not to be taken literally.”
On a recent cool morning, Mr. Sinka and his start-up co-founder Andrew Fleischer, both 24 years old, were beginning their fast while Alberto Scicali, 26, another founder, managed the start-up from his bedroom.
Mr. Sinka, who has a mop of curly hair, was wearing water shoes and a cable-knit sweater as he did light morning stretching. Mr. Fleischer was reading a book.
A dopamine fast is simple because it is basically a fast of everything.
They would not be eating. They would not look at any screens. They would not listen to music. They would not exercise. They would not touch other bodies for any reason, especially not for sex. No work. No eye contact. No talking more than absolutely necessary. A photographer could take their picture, but there could be no flash.
The number of things to not do is potentially endless.
The ultimate dopamine fast is complete sensory deprivation, like maybe floating in a dark water tank or locking oneself in a closet. But the dopamine fasters of San Francisco do hope to keep existing in the normal world.
“Any kind of fasting exists on a spectrum,” Mr. Sinka said as he slowly moved through sun salutations, careful not to get his heart racing too much, already worried he was talking too much that morning.
Mr. Fleischer was looking through a textbook of images of chemical compounds and then writing some of them down in his notebook.
“I like to find patterns in chemical compounds, and so I’m going through my books and finding quite a few,” he said.
That is how he would spend his morning. Later he would move outside to sit and feel the air for a while.
The three of them graduated recently from the Rochester Institute of Technology, where they met and started working together. Their start-up was going through evolutions every few months. It began as a coffee extraction company that turned into a cannabinoid extraction company (much more profitable) that turned into a cannabinoid synthesis for sleep aid that turned into, now, sleep coaching.
Their job is to put their clients in various sleep gadgetry — the Dreem sleep headset, Oura sleep ring, Withings sleep mat — and test interventions.
Their apartment is clean and modern with an empty wine fridge and few decorations, save for a “Breaking Bad” poster.
Their usual schedule of all day, every day hacking away on different projects was too much. Investors and clients had demands. Their start-up iterations had turned into a real job.
“I’d never thought about fasting work,” Mr. Sinka said. “Once there was pressure around work, though, it became less fun, and I thought maybe we’ll try fasting work.”
Like a weekend? No, he said, they don’t have time to not work for that long.
But fasting from work got them thinking more about fasting everything.
Throughout that day of their dopamine fast, they wandered slowly from room to room. They read. They put on more and more sweaters. The food fasting makes them cold. They went on walks, though these are tricky because they have to avoid needing to ask for anything like water or bathrooms.
“I avoid eye contact because I know it excites me. I avoid busy streets because they’re jarring,” Mr. Sinka said. “I have to fight the waves of delicious foods.”
Silicon Valley is not the first group to discover that moderating emotions or spending periods trying to feel less can lead to happiness. In their quest, they are moving toward two very old groups: those in silent meditation and the Amish.
Steven Nolt, a professor at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania and the author of “A History of the Amish,” said parts of the dopamine fast do echo elements of Amish life.
“Compared with many of the rest of us, you would find Amish emotion to be more muted,” Dr. Nolte said. “The idea of limits on life, that there should be limits and yield signs, is a pretty central Amish assumption.”
But ultimately the Amish would not approve of the dopamine fasters.
“They don’t have a great deal of confidence in individuals on their own making good decisions,” he said.
Karen Donovan, who is developing a new Vipassana silent meditation center in Silicon Valley, said she sees this trend as moving closer to the ultimate dopamine fast: sitting on a dark floor with eyes closed for 10 days.
“There’s a growing self-awareness of what in Vipassana terms we would call suffering,” she said.
As the day wore on at Tennessee Street, Mr. Sinka, now wearing a thick vest, continued to hang out at home doing basically nothing.
“Your brain and your biology have become adapted to high levels of stimulus so our project is to reset those receptors so you’re satiated again,” he said.
Mr. Sinka returned to resting.
“Yeah, man, drop down that cortisol,” Mr. Scicali said as encouragement.
After the fast, Mr. Sinka finds that everyday tasks are more exciting and fun. Work is pleasurable again. Food is more delicious.
“Biology can get hijacked,” Mr. Sinka said, noting that “early homo sapiens” didn’t have much in the way of sweets — blueberries and the like.
Sometimes it is hard or upsetting for people who encounter the Tennessee Street men while they are fasting.
The other day, Mr. Sinka ran into an old friend but had to tell her they could not continue speaking.
“I hadn’t seen her in six months, and it was extraordinarily exciting, super-stimulating, and I could feel how excited I was,” he said. “So I had to cut it off and I just said, ‘Listen, it’s not you, it’s me, doing this dopamine fast.’”
They do have a point--subject any complex organism to a constant stimulus and it'll readjust its baseline such that that's the new normal, deviation from which comprising how to assess further stimuli.
But one need not enlist a startup to do this. Turn off the blue lights, stop working at night, decompress. Don't be hypomanic all the time.
But one need not enlist a startup to do this. Turn off the blue lights, stop working at night, decompress. Don't be hypomanic all the time.
FWIW this makes it sound as if he is HIGH on the Autism Spectrum, albeit still probably technically Asperger's since he's functional. So such deprivation actually might be needed for his type.
/me is about halfway on said spectrum between neurotypical and Asperger's, for the record: not normal but not rocking in a dark room by myself looking at chemical compound schematics, either
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Today's data, day 6:
Upon seeing this I wondered whether it's largely an uptake rate phenomenon, as the peak for the refined carb from today (shoku pan is Japanese white bread) was early and brisk. So I estimated area under the curve via the trapezoid method:
For reference on these units logging a steady 85 mg/dl at all time points would result in an AUC of 170. So this theory does seem to be a bit true.
Upon seeing this I wondered whether it's largely an uptake rate phenomenon, as the peak for the refined carb from today (shoku pan is Japanese white bread) was early and brisk. So I estimated area under the curve via the trapezoid method:
For reference on these units logging a steady 85 mg/dl at all time points would result in an AUC of 170. So this theory does seem to be a bit true.
I'm getting teh El Jefe H/T.
Tire naming at the low end of the market is amusing.
MuchoMacho, Kitty Kat, and Sexy Beast as options and you pick El Jefe?
At least you didn't go for RC-17, the sensible shoes name.
Nothing... and I repeat, NOTHING, beats El Jefe. Ever.MuchoMacho, Kitty Kat, and Sexy Beast as options and you pick El Jefe?
At least you didn't go for RC-17, the sensible shoes name.