Good morning. Hello. How are you? #475
Waking up late, Google's ignominious history of messaging apps, anonymous science blogging on the global obesity epidemic.
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am good. I did, however, wake up an hour late. Awesome. I was laying there, sort-of not sleeping and thinking “wow I am well rested I feel good.” And eventually, I thought “hrm, this is weird why has my alarm not gone off maybe it’s just 6:55 or something.” And I look at my phone, which is plugged in, and the alarm is going off, just silently. Volume is up, but that little switch on the side of the phone is slipped to silent, but that little switch isn’t supposed to make the alarm silent, it doesn’t usually seriously, wtf. This happens, I swear to god, like once a year or something, just consistently enough that you think you’re going crazy, but then your phone lulls you into a false sense of security, then wham. Fucks you over once again. Seriously, if anyone has any insight into what I did wrong, that would be welcome.
Anyhoo, the horrible choice I’ve got to make, now, then, is whether to send this missive to you guys out late, or to send it out truncated, and I believe truncated is the better way to go. There are a bunch of morning chores I can put off till after I send this — most notably watering the plants. I’ll have to water them in the heat today. That will be my penance. But it seems wrong to send this out late. It’s not your problem I woke up late. So, then, truncated it is.
It is now day nineteen without nicotine. Day four since this horrible, freak leg accident. I am, right this second, going without neither compression nor cold pack for the first time since the accident happened. It is okay. My leg is going to be okay. That is a huge relief. Even if it hurts the rest of my life, which seems conceivable, it seems clear now that it’ll just be another annoying pain I will have to live with, like my trigger finger, like my neck, not something life-changingly-debilitating. That is huge. I was worried about that. It still hurts to sit in this chair. I still can’t really lift my leg, or close my legs (good thing I don’t have to sit on the subway huh). But I can sit and stand and walk all right now, I don’t think I’ll need the cane today. People say you’re supposed to switch from a cold back to hot water bottle today, I guess I’ll do that, but I don’t really intuitively feel or understand what the hot water bottle is supposed to do.
The bruise has grown. It’s now nearly a foot long, from groin to knee, from the front-most spot on my thigh, wrapped all the way around to the back-most spot. Emma assured me that the photo she took was “tasteful” but I am gonna keep sparing you guys.
I spent all day yesterday on the couch. Only had one meeting, but i cancelled it, my head wasn’t in the right space and I was still in a bit too much pain. I spent the day reading two absurdly long articles, and since that’s basically all I did yesterday, I will tell you about them now:
The first was an exhaustive, extensive history in Ars Technica about Google’s pathetic, failed history with messaging apps: A decade and a half of instability: The history of Google messaging apps. It is an amazing article. I think it took me about three hours to read. It covers: Google Talk/GTalk, Android’s Push Messaging System, Google Voice, Google Wave, Google Buzz, Google/Slide Disco, Google+ Hangouts, Google+ Huddles/Messenger, Google Docs Editor Chat, Google Hangouts, Google Spaces, Google Allo, Google Duo, Google Meet, YouTube Messages, Google Chat, Google Maps Messages, Google RCS, Google Photos Messages, Google Stadia Messages, Google Pay Messages, Google Assistant Messages, Google Phone Messaging, Google Chat v 2.
In all of that time, Apple has had: iMessage
In all of that time, Facebook has had: Messenger and What’sApp. This isn’t actually true, though, since they also have Instagram Messages.
But still.
Just astonishing.
Imagine going to Google to work on a product. How could you even trust them? How could you even trust them enough to adopt a product. It’s probably not too much to say that this legacy of failure is at least half of the reason why no one wanted to try Google Stadia. Imagine trusting Google enough, at this point in time, to spend $60 on a game that you will only be able to use if they keep the service running. Hahaha yeah. No one believed that. No one will ever believe that of Google again. It’s crazy this isn’t a bigger drain on their stock price. It’s quite possible that Google will be unable to ever successfully launch a major new product again.
After that I read another insanely long article. This one, though, was a bit strange. It’s a long article — doctoral thesis-level, really, or at least almost. It is about the global obesity epidemic. It is called A Chemical Hunger. It examines the global obesity epidemic, talks about its possible causes and rules out a lot of the ones that we all kind of assume are causing it: corn syrup, vegetable oils, carbs, sugars, fats, exercise. It makes some very good points. Over the last twenty years, Americans exercise way more, eat way fewer carbs, fats, sugars. But it hasn’t made a lick of difference in the obesity rates. They point out that obesity is strongly correlated with elevation, which is weird, and through a lot of anthropological examples show that it’s most likely a product of the modern world, introduced around 1980, that isn’t in directly in our food. The three culprits they nominate (they do not choose one) are antiobiotics in meat, PFOAS, and lithium. The lithium theory, especially, is very interesting.
Of course I want to believe this because I want to believe my lifelong struggle with obesity is not my fault.
But the weird thing about this article is, like, it has no byline. I mean, the whole thing is, like, a total 1990’s-style blog. One of those purported expert blogs that someone runs that has no actual human names. The blog is called Slime Mold Time Mold and has no actual, human names or bylines on it, only a pair of initials, ELP and SLP. They have a Patreon, too. But no idea who they are. And then, within their six part (so far) essay, they do these “interlude” essays, where they answer questions from commenters, and one who section was written dealing with the questions that came from the “Slatestarcodex Reddit.” Uh oh. Yeah. I am not into that.
Now, like, this essay. It analyzes existing studies. It links to them extensively. It writes about the risks of selective study linking. It does not seem to have an actual agenda. It seems very good at calling out the agenda of other authors. But still. In this day and age, I’m just not sure we can get behind anonymous bloggers anymore, at least not in the same way that we could in the old days. I mean, I never really get my opinions from a single work anymore, that was a terrible habit and I’m glad to be rid of it. But I buy a lot in this article, and it shaping my thinking, I can feel it, even against my will, and that is a bit worrisome given I don’t know who wrote it. We live in a crazy-ass world. I don’t know why someone would spend hundreds of hours concocting a multi-part meta-survey of the research on a topic in a hidden and slightly biased way but I do know that there are lunatics doing that sort of thing on the web these days.
Yeah, not super into how paranoid you have to be to read shit on the internet anymore.
Okay, well. Ten minutes. Gotta do the playlist. Sorry this is so abbreviated. I will try and do better. Club mix. Every time I say those words, “Club Mix,” I think of Prince, and the way he said “club mix” at the beginning of the club mix of “Gett Off.” And then it makes me want to put the club mix of “Gett Off” on the playlist in the question. But I am refraining.
Okay! I made it! Three minutes till I gotta get Janey. May as well start hobbling up the stairs now. Talk to you guys tomorrow!
1) I feel like I need a month and at least two medoicre documentaries just to dig into this story of Slatestarcodex which has evidently morphed into a substack newsletter. It all seems very dramatic.
2) Virgina Sole-Smith has a good tangential newsletter which focuses on fatphobia and parenting, but she also links to a wide variety of studies dispelling conventional thought about weight and weight loss which may be of interest to you. They usually have bylines :) https://virginiasolesmith.substack.com/