supertofu

I'm WFPB (plus salmon and eggs) myself. I grew up as a vegetarian and the carnivore diet is too unpalatable to me, even though it would probably work. WFPB can work to stave off T2D, but at least for me, I have to be vigilant about my choices and always pair carbs with proteins and fats.

> SEO will be replaced by cold hard cash, favors, and backroom deals

The fact that SEO has to exist in the first place is evidence of search engine mafia.

I'm prediabetic with two T2 parents and a T2 grandparent and my primary care doctor is entirely unconcerned about it.

My lowish tech solution to delay (and hopefully prevent!) the onset of T2 is to use a glucose monitor every 2 hours, every day, and create a database of foods with my postprandial blood sugar reaponse at 1.5 and 2 hours. I also keep track of how exercise affects my blood sugar.

Over the last couple years, I have gotten great data on the foods which spike me and the foods which are neutral to my blood glucose.

A lot of foods doctors/the internet tout as "diabetic friendly" (like beans, lentils, corn in any form, brown rice, buckwheat groats, non-granny-smith apples) spike me like crazy. Other foods are totally fine (bananas, snap peas, nuts, steel cut oatmeal, fermented dairy, fish).

Having an autoimmune disorder on top of the prediabetes, I've learned that the only one who cares about my health and longevity is me. My doctors care about my inflammatory markers and nothing else.

It would be a good idea to investigate the belief you have that you are "terrible at math". What does that mean, exactly? Are you bad at computation? Do you forget rules? Are there gaps in your knowledge which are preventing you from accumulating more advanced concepts?

Learning math is like learning any natural language. For example, I'm "bad at Russian" because I have devoted all of 6 hours in my life to learning Russian and there are profound gaps in my understanding of Russian writing and grammar.

But I don't believe I am intrinsically incapable of learning Russian. The reality is that I've simply not put the effort into it.

It's truly the same with math. I am personally quite bad at computation by hand. It's exhausting, I often make careless errors, and I find computational problems by hand to be very boring. But that doesn't mean I'm bad at math! I've simply not invested much effort into improving my skill at computation by hand. I'm not terrible at proofs, for example; and the reason for this is that I find them interesting, and have devoted extra time and effort into learning how to write them. The heart of math isn't computation (which I'm not strong at), but proof and abstraction (which I am strong at, only because abstraction is interesting to me).

So really investigate your belief system regarding your capacity for mathematics. It's unlikely you are innately bad at it. Maybe you have knowledge gaps or you, like me, are not innately skilled at computation. But there are strategies you can employ to improve both.

I went back to university. I wouldn't have had the motivation to do this outside of the structured environment of academia and, critically, the pressure of exams and grades that come with school. A huge amount of my motivation comes from the fear of "getting a bad grade". Without the fear of a bad grade, I definitely would have given up learning math as soon as I got bored.

Did those people go to university or try to learn on their own? I absolutely would not have been able to learn upper mathematics outside of the structure (and intrinsic pressure!) of an academic environment. I would never have had the motivation or persistence on my own. Even within an academic system, generating the motivation to persist is a daily struggle, but a lot of my identity is around "being a good student", so that really works in my favor to counteract the difficulty of being a non-traditional student.

This learning adventure has been very, very hard. But it is possible.

Because if I can do it, seriously anyone motivated can. I was the epitome of "bad math student".

My precalc teacher in high school actually discouraged me from going on to calculus (I took his advice and took trig, not calculus, in senior year of high school), and I decided during that meeting that I would never take a math class again.

As an adult, I really take umbrage with that lack of faith. I wish someone had told me that math is not any harder than learning a new language (something I was very good at).

It would have given me courage and helped me see math as not some kind of untouchable, elite pursuit, but just a learnable skill set like any other.

Ahh, the very definition of isomorphism :)

Most unfortunately, not every child will even have access to this unarguably beneficial life hack.

I learned to read early because my immigrant mom read to me in her non-native language every single night, and that's because she came from a culture that lauds education.

I wish every child was lucky enough to have a parent like this, but so many kids only get their first exposure to education in public school.

I was a late bloomer in almost every arena of my life. Developing social skills, having relationships, developing an identity independent of my family, etc. I'm also a late bloomer to mathematics.

I'm in my 30s and getting a bachelor's degree in Math now after a lifetime of math-phobia. Math was my worst subject because it never came easily or naturally to me, and so I assumed I must have been innately incapable of it. I didn't take a single math class during my first bachelor's degree.

I sure wish I could have learned math properly earlier in life, but my point with this comment is that it is never too late to learn math.

Learning mathematics "late" over the last couple of years has enriched my life in so many ways. Learning to write proofs has brought a sense of organization and calm to many other areas of my life. Complex problems and challenges in life feel so much more approachable, because I am much more skilled now in breaking down tasks to manageable components. I can see now how mathematics has influenced programming languages and computer science, and every time I can identify the mathematical underpinning of some program I use or write, I feel like I am peering into the heart of the universe.

Learning math early is a great hack, but so is learning math late :)

My own mother has never had a stroke, but she has very little awareness of her own emotional states. She is an incredibly intelligent person and works in clinical medicine, but she has always come across as harsh and even cruel, because she has never shown much empathy for emotions more complex than simple fear. I think her deficiency in recognizing her own emotional states contributes to her apparent lack of empathy.

For example, she cannot recognize her own anxiety. She is a pathologically anxious person with OCD, but would never describe herself as so. As such, she has never been able to empathize with the fact that both of her children have anxiety disorders and one had severe childhood OCD.

It was not a great way to grow up, although that kind of emotional neglect is what made me a more resilient person in the end...

Your comment reminded me a time during my childhood (age 4 to 7 or so) in which I did not have a strong concept of being a discrete person from my younger sister. At the time, we used to confuse our memories. We were never sure if we were remembering our own experience, or the other sister's recollection of her experience. It's like we were sharing one collective identity, until we were old enough to have formed stronger senses of self.

Very, very much so. And she is literally describing her existence before language as a state of pure craving, aversion, ignorance.

This is so sweet!!

I don't really care if the conversation is original, if it means we live in a world where girls are granted the opportunity to grow in knowledge and experience before sacrificing their bodies and lives to childbearing and childrearing.

The framing of this essay bothers me, because it suggests that losing great-grandmothers is a bad thing.

But why can't we focus on the enormous positive effect of girls having the option to fully mature into women before bearing their children?

Maybe instead of focusing what we lose with the absence of great-grandmothers, we should focus on what we gain with the decline of girl-mothers.

An incredibly homogenous society, for one.

Same reason why the percentage of Registered Dieticians with active or recovered eating disorders is very high.

I'm sure she can mask, just like millions of other neurodivergent people. That photo was chosen deliberately.

A reminder that tomatoes are native to South America, and did not exist anywhere else until colonization of the Americas.

It's a very, very good thing that the place you visited is not in the article.

Consider the mention of a lovely place in the NYT to be the harbinger of mass attention and ecological damage.

Best thing I ever did for my mental and physical health! That said, I'm a hypersensitive person. Many people thrive in the city.

I've been writing to Future Me every birthday since I was 17. I'm now 32. In my very first letter written at age 17 and addressed to the college version of myself, I urged myself to resist peer pressure, keep making art, and maintain my innocent nature.

As the years went on, the letters alternated between despair and hope. The letter writer turned into a pothead, then an alcoholic, then an alcoholic pothead who couldn't make art anymore.

Many of the letters described long, meandering walks through New York City through eyes that didn't feel part of reality, in a body that was always outside of the circle.

After years of ache for love, a relationship blossomed, then spoiled; an anticipated marriage never materialized, and then the whole thing collapsed died. The letter writer fell very ill, left the city, then started all over in a small town.

I got my last letter a year ago. That person seems a lot closer to the person who wrote that very first letter. That person makes art again. Spends most of their time in nature. Is back in college studying something entirely new. The pothead and the alcoholic and all the toxic relationships are long gone. The slate feels washed clean.

There is a sense of innocence returned. Joy, excitement, hope for the future. Gratitude for the all wisdom accumulated between that first letter and the most recent.

Is this meant to be an ironic statement?

Sounds like saying "I've drank every day for 15 years but I'm not an alcoholic."

Apart from mindfulness practices (which do help, but slowly), I've found the following to be life-changing regarding my lifelong, debilitating social anxiety:

- psychedelic therapy (1-4 times a year, over 6 years, turned me into a functional person in social contexts)

- strong chammomile flower tea (depresses my nervous system to a normal baseline -- this has been the most dramatic way to ease physiological symptoms of anxiety for me)

I speculate concentrates.

Sure, but Nepali hash was being taken in a much different cultural context (religious, often) by people who were generally very prepared for its consequences.

I can't retain information unless I write it by hand. It's a superstition created by my own mind, but it feels like knowledge can leak out of my brain unless I write it out.

That said, I use a stylus and digital tablet to take handwritten notes, which allows for sooo much flexibility, editability, and creativity.

Uh... no? Not at all.

Turner syndrome describes a biological female with just one X chromosome.

I'm glad mesalamine is working for you. I failed mesalamine and moved on to Humira. The Humira gives me quality of life, but I still have mini-flares when sick, and I still have bleeding. I wish I could be off meds, but without the Humira I lose all function. It's horrifying.