From Schwarzenegger's daily email:

> Artificial Sweeteners and Heart Attacks: fact or fiction?

The nutrition world was set on fire last week when it was reported that erythritol — a popular sweetener used in protein bars and shakes — was linked to stroke and heart attack. There was just one little problem.

The study didn’t even test erythritol consumption, so the conclusion made by many in the media (that erythritol causes heart attacks) was very misleading (at best) and a dramatic false alarm (at worst).

Here's what you need to know: the researchers examined erythritol levels in the blood. Unlike other substances that only show up in your body if you eat it in your diet, erythritol is naturally produced by your body. And, it increases specifically during stress or body dysfunction. So if you have elevated levels of erythritol, it doesn't necessarily mean you've been having a lot of the sweetener; it could be that you're sick.

And that's what makes this study so problematic. The subjects in this study were not healthy. For example, more than 70 percent had coronary artery disease and hypertension. Which bring up an important question: did the consumption of erythritol cause the high levels in the blood, or was it because the subjects very sick and naturally producing more in their bodies? We don’t know because the study didn’t test those variables.

To be clear, other studies suggest supplementing with erythritol can led to positive health outcomes. If you’re worried about erythritol, it’s pretty easy to avoid. Simply check the ingredient list. Our take: we need more research focusing on healthy individuals while controlling for erythritol consumption to see if there is an association with disease. But, at this point, it's early to panic based on the findings of the study.

While I agree with his perspective on classes, some departments are hostile to this.

When I was in grad school, I was required to take a ridiculous number of course credits to satisfy the requirements. Moreover, if you wanted to pass the qualifying exam, you had to know the material in some of those courses really well. The professors always complained that the requirements were too high and many of their students would lose 2-3 years just satisfying them. But ... professors are the ones who made those requirements to begin with!

I take it something that Google Docs is doing makes those inline screenshots (like the year long todo) unreadable? Would love to be able to read those.

And love the paper algorithm btw.

I haven’t been through this journey myself but (to the author, who is here, not the poster) reading through how you have laid things out so clearly, your students are lucky to have you.

  > Test whether the PhD advisor you select knows this and has a history of taking this approach with former students.

How do you "test" for this? Asking potential advisors "do you know this?" is blunt and rude. Asking potential advisors in a mannered way prompts anodyne answers. Current students in the potential advisor's lab are unlikely to offer an intimate assessment of their personal satisfaction and research progress to a stranger, assuming they can even be honest with themselves.

My take is that having a good graduate advisor is largely about having a good undergraduate advisor who can offer an insider take and advocate on your behalf.

I gotta say, a Mint-that-doesn't-suck is something I could absolutely see myself paying $5 a month for, for the rest of my life.

The core functionality is indispensable, but it's become so outdated, inefficient, and difficult to use that I'm champing at the bit to jump ship. I'm surprised it's taken this long for a serious competitor to emerge, given that it's been saturated with ads for at least half a decade and Plaid's been around just as long.

I remember using Google when it was hosted at Stanford.edu, luckily internet archive captures this moment:

https://web.archive.org/web/19981111183552/http://google.sta...

Notice that the branding is "Google!" with an exclamation point, just like that other Stanford tool for finding stuff online, Yahoo!.

The "About Google!" page is pretty interesting, includes links to Sergey and Larry's grad school personal home pages:

https://web.archive.org/web/19990204033714/http://google.sta...

It also includes, under "credits," this:

Research Funding: NSF, NASA, DARPA and Interval Research

So remember, Google may be touted as a quintessential Silicon Valley startup, but, like virtually all of them, it owes a lot to the work of the federal government.

(And what is Interval Research, you might ask? Wikipedia says it was a Palo Alto tech incubator co-founded by Paul Allen — previously the co-founder of Microsoft. Lol.)

That study if I recall correctly completely misses the spillover to other websites, considering only reddit itself - but bans on sites like reddit and Twitter have lead to the rise of sites like Gab, 8chan and Voat in recent years. The spillover is very real, just not on the same site.