Why on earth would you spend this kind of money on an apt you don't even own?
> We bought this apartment at the end of 2023
First sentence of the Prologue.
Readit Newsgenocidicbunny commented on Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment probablydance.com/2025/08... · Posted by u/ibobev
genocidicbunny commented on Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment probablydance.com/2025/08... · Posted by u/ibobev
Spending 42k instead of adding some $2/free improvised shims to fix the AC angle to drip outside sure is a life decision. Especially when you learn where this is (I won't dox the author). BKUSA baby! We attract the smartest hippest people.
The article did mention there are other benefits, noise, improved temperature hysteresis, the ability to actually provide sufficient heat during the cold months.
Ever spend time in a hotel room with a noisy, rattly AC that turned on and off all the time because it couldn't maintain the temperatures at the set point? Hard to get decent sleep.
genocidicbunny commented on Installing a mini-split AC in a Brooklyn apartment probablydance.com/2025/08... · Posted by u/ibobev
> How much money did we save? Not as much as expected. The most expensive month in the next winter was $1000.
$1,000/month to heat a 3br apartment? Holy crap is he keeping it at sauna temperatures? The most I've ever spent on my poorly-insulated 1960's era bilevel house is about $250.
If your bedrooms are upstairs, at night you might be running heat a lot less since some of the heat from the first floor rises up to the second. If you have carpet, that can create a warmer area at the floor, closer to where your beds are. So you might not need to heat things as much, or to as high a temperature to feel comfortable.
I lived in an apartment where the floor was poorly insulated. When a new neighbor moved in downstairs that heated their bedroom more aggressively at night, my heating bill went down because the heat rising from below made it less necessary to run my own heating as hard.
It might also be the difference in electricity cost. Especially with tiered rates, you can easily find yourself moving into a higher tier where every kW is significantly more expensive than in the previous tiers. PG&E in the SF Bay Area charges between 43 and 60c/kWh. A 2kW heater is going to cost about $1/hr to run , so if you're working from home, have little kids it gets expensive quick. And in the middle of a NY winter, with a poorly isolated apartment, you might well be running the heat in some capacity pretty much 24/7.
> 3. So, should we all be on GLP-1s?
> No. Certainly not now. While I’m excited about the future of these drugs’ development, the side effect profile isn’t worth the risk for otherwise healthy patients. The anti-inflammation and cognitive benefits of the drugs still come with weight-loss effects that many Americans shouldn’t accept.
Another way to fight inflammation is taking Metformin, popular in longevity circles.
> popular in longevity circles.
Also with medical practitioners dealing with anything renal. Though for them, it's more that it's one of the drugs you get asked about specifically whenever you have any injections that might be harsh on the kidneys. There's a reason they ask about it when you get contrast for a CT.
Coming up on five months now! Thank you very much for your comment -- I've been hoping based on research and talking to people I know that you do rewire eventually, and you reinforced all of that. Appreciated.
And yeah, caloric intake is a concern. The diabetes means I'm also changing my diet a fair bit which doesn't help; I haven't had ice cream in months. I am pretty sure I'm overcompensating and have recently pushed myself into more experimentation with food; the availability of real time glucose sensors is huge even if I feel weird walking around with a Bluetooth device plugged into my arm.
Regarding the caloric intake, my GP suggested tracking calories, but also to use protein supplements. It's not the tastiest thing, but it's a fairly easy way to both manage your caloric intake to healthy levels, and to ensure that you're getting enough protein. Otherwise you might end up losing additional weight from losing muscle mass. That makes it even easier to stop performing physical activities, and also puts strain on your kidneys due to the breakdown of muscle mass. Diabetes definitely makes it more challenging since you have to avoid foods that are an easy source of additional calories to make up for the deficit, but it's doable.
I don't know what your dosing schedule is, so this might not be as applicable. For me, it's weekly, so early on what I started doing was setting it up so that saturday or sunday would be the tail end of the week for the dosing, so that as the effects wore off a little I had more motivation for food. I would then use that to meal prep some easy freezable meals that I would use for the days when I had a longer or more stressful day, and would be even less inclined to cook. Soups and stews were especially good for that. So even if I wasn't feeling hungry, and had no real desire to prep anything, I could just throw something the microwave to heat up over like 30 minutes and I would at least have a good meal to eat, and avoid just skipping the meal entirely due to the lack of desire for food. And since I was cooking these myself still, it gave me some extra motivation to do it well, which eventually grew to the improvement of cooking skills I mentioned in the previous comment.
And as far as the CGM, don't feel too weird about it -- as far as I am concerned you're helping pioneer continuous metabolic monitors that not only monitor glucose levels, but other metabolic and hormonal measurements. I'd love to have a little device I can stick on my arm that gives me continuous monitoring of various metabolic properties instead of needing to have regular blood tests performed for them.
Very good article.
As someone who is currently on GLP-1 drugs, I will say that if I didn't need to be on them to control my diabetes, I would seriously consider stopping. I am undoubtedly healthier and have lost substantial weight, but the effects on my quality of life are substantial -- I simply don't enjoy food right now. This is in part psychological, because what I used to enjoy was the psychological effect of eating, but not completely. I hope this will ease out over time and if it doesn't, well, I'll cope.
I'm still very interested in the ongoing research.
How long have you been on a GLP-1? It took me about a year to start to change my relationship to food. Initially, I had the same reaction -- I stopped enjoying food, which led to problems with caloric deficiency, and especially the lack of protein. But eventually my brain started to rewire itself from thinking food == good, to good food == good. If you've spent a significant part of your life treating food as an addiction, even if the physical urges go away, the mental side takes longer.
Funny enough though, is that it's caused me to spend way more time thinking about food because it's no longer a mindless activity. A bag of crisps can last me a month. The last pint of ice cream I bought got freezer burn because of how long it took me to finish it. If I'm cooking something, it's no longer going to be some recipe where you throw a bunch of stuff together and get a giant pot of food to stuff your face with, it's going to be something that takes effort and time and skill to prepare because it has to be _good_.
Huh, I was catching up on DEFCON videos recently, and just earlier this morning watched the talk about Tetra. How serendipitous.
genocidicbunny commented on Scientists shine a laser through a human head spectrum.ieee.org/optical... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
Yes but ...
"In 1996, Bugorski applied unsuccessfully for disability status to receive free epilepsy medication. Bugorski showed interest in making himself available for study to Western researchers but could not afford to leave Protvino."
This is just sad all around through and through.
Not to excuse it, but Protvino in the 90's was...kind of a shitshow. The early 90's were a little like post-war UK - think food stamps, standing in line all morning just to buy your measly weekly meat allotment, most city services on the brink of failure. Many of the chronically sick or disabled, or injured veterans, ended up basically being kicked to the curb when they no longer had the social safety net that (however low or high quality) they had in the USSR.
It took heroic efforts to leave to the west in those times. The best most people could swing was finding work in Moscow or Serpuhov and commuting there on the daily. And this is all considering that it was a 'science town'; Many of those who lived there in some way worked at or adjacent to the accelerator institute and were fairly well educated individuals.
genocidicbunny commented on Scientists shine a laser through a human head spectrum.ieee.org/optical... · Posted by u/sohkamyung
The title made me think of Anatoli Bugorski, a Soviet scientist who in 1978 survived a high-energy proton beam from a particle accelerator passing through his head.
Interestingly, one of the things studied at the institute where this happened is proton therapy.
If this feature is used to make an arrest, there's a good chance the case would be thrown out.
And once you're on their radar, you're probably going to also end up being marked for extra scrutiny. You might find yourself being pulled over more often, or getting the SSSS on your airplane boarding pass.