This kind of fear is a quick route to insomnia. One of the most effective ways to reduce sleep is to worry about it.
And when that happens, of course HN has the answer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15997016
Readit NewsI’m on my 3rd (she’s 1 week old today) at 42. With the first 2 it was only terrible for the first couple months. Once I just got used to going to sleep at 9:30 I was mostly fine.
We're expecting our first in a few months.
NGL I'm low key wondering if my messed up natural rhythm of 9pm-4am is going to be potentially handy.
grumpy-de-sre commented on China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 e360.yale.edu/digest/chin... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
Exactly.
In the current pension system (at least the ones in the Nordics), the new generation pays for the old generation. This mechanism is broken, as it expects (as you pointed out) an ever-growing population, which is of course unrealistic.
Fixing [*] the broken pension system in a sustainable way is politically unpalatable and seems to have been so for decades. Lifting the pension age is the only "innovative" action available that is even discussed nowadays anywhere in public, as if that were the only viable alternative, which of course it isn't.
I've pondered why. Hammering out the details of a new system and taking care of a transition period etc. cannot be unsurmountable problems. It probably has to do with pensioners being a large voter demographic, thus the reason is some form of political self-preservation on behalf of the traditionally large parties.
So, instead of changing things to the better, a broken system must be maintained. Since the system is not only broken, it's essentially untouchable, therefore political decision-taking has to accept possibly sub-optimal decisions in related areas to avoid disturbing anything. In a way, the brokenness leaks.
Then, a shrinking population only exacerbates the problems of the pension system, spreading the brokenness further into other societal systems and decisions. And that's a bad path to be in.
[*] In an example of a better-working alternative system, any pension contributions would be personal, kept in an account managed by the state. The money is (low risk) invested by the state, profits/dividends reinvested, etc. Once one becomes a pensioner, the money can be withdrawn in whole or parts. Add taxes somewhere, such as when withdrawing the money. The state guarantees the lowest level of pension, something like today. Simple enough, and not tied to "children pay for parents".
Edit: formatting
Might aswell outsource the responsibility of fund management to highly regulated third parties and you're basically describing Australia's superannuation scheme.
Issue is due to the same politics as everyone else, Australia is having trouble reigning in the state pension (ideally in this scheme meant as a fallback to provide a minimum subsistence level).
grumpy-de-sre commented on China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 e360.yale.edu/digest/chin... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
I find it hard not to suspect that some countries are using certain policies to subtly eliminate the elderly. Of course, I will also grow old, so the consensus is to rely on oneself—invest and save, just in case. Optimistically, household robots might change a lot. I often think of that example: in the past, people often imagined futuristic skyscrapers but could not imagine elevators. New technologies are always unpredictable. There is a Chinese saying: “Where the cart reaches the mountain, there will be a path,” so perhaps there’s no need to worry too much.
Eg. I'm pretty optimistic about some of the Chinese exoskeleton startups I've seen. If you can keep people mobile, living at home and avoid falls they will make a huge difference.
Not to mention self driving vehicles allowing for more independence in old age.
Sign me up.
Pensions are an insane ponzi scheme but I'm somewhat optimistic that dignified aged care is a problem that can be solved.
However there is no denying sacrifices will have to be made.
grumpy-de-sre commented on Cancer survival rates are misleading allendowney.com/blog/2025... · Posted by u/speckx
imho if you don't exercise regularly and don't eat clean you're asking for troubles and simply can't complain about your health. The vast majority of people seem not to care until they get a serious diagnostic, by that time you can barely mitigate the issue. It certainly isn't a silver bullet, but at least it stacks the odds in your favor.
I mean as long as you don't put systematic barriers in the way of doing the right thing, eg. missing sidewalks and food deserts.
grumpy-de-sre commented on China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 e360.yale.edu/digest/chin... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
This question is actually quite interesting. It’s basically connected to almost every issue China faces today — the national confidence born out of a century of humiliation, population decline, the rise of Han nationalism, soaring unemployment, and so on. The overall domestic response has been quite negative, though I don’t have a clear personal view on it.
It’s somewhat like the Tang dynasty at its most prosperous — when envoys from all nations came to pay tribute, and many Japanese and Central Asians studied and worked in Chang’an. But interestingly, I’ve noticed that in recent years, public opinion toward the Tang dynasty has gradually become less positive, which might be related to this.
I have no idea from where I sit, but I wonder how much of this is down to the increasing demographic share of Guang Gun [1] vs the older conservatives.
grumpy-de-sre commented on China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 e360.yale.edu/digest/chin... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
yes. in my earlier age, the offical statement from CCP of him is 70% achievement and 30% fault. but as the inequality increase in china, people has more positive view of him.
Yep, nationalism isn't something you can turn on and off at will.
For an example I'm reminded of the recent public backlash to the K visa scheme [1].
1. https://www.ft.com/content/01a0029c-9f7c-4b31-a120-d1652f198...
grumpy-de-sre commented on China has added forest the size of Texas since 1990 e360.yale.edu/digest/chin... · Posted by u/Brajeshwar
Maybe this is a surprise. Nowadays, young people are increasingly fond of Mao. He wasn’t a perfect person, but he spent his entire life exploring communism and trying to finally eliminate wealth inequality and privileged classes. Older people might not like him as much, because they were more influenced by the West and dislike China’s system more. But with China’s rise and Trump’s hypocrisy, I can predict that Mao will become increasingly popular in China.
It's worth acknowledging that Mao became increasingly erratic with age. Some of his early achievements are still very much seen in a positive light (eg. as a nation builder).
grumpy-de-sre commented on Cancer survival rates are misleading allendowney.com/blog/2025... · Posted by u/speckx
Colon cancer is an interesting one, Hank Green [1] recently covered a new paper [2] that showed a massive reduction in colon cancer risk for folks that engaged in moderate, regular, exercise. The authors speculated that mechanical stress leading to increased shedding might play an important role.
Weirdly enough that's the same mechanism hypothesized to play a partial role in why breast feeding is also associated with a reduced cancer risk.
Fascinating, weird, stuff.
The MIT study shows CSF waves—normally a sleep-only process that flushes metabolic waste—intruding into wakefulness when you're sleep-deprived. Your brain is apparently so desperate for the cleanup that it forces the process to happen anyway. Cost: attention lapses.
From what I've read, delirium tremens during alcohol withdrawal seems to follow a similar pattern, except it's REM sleep intruding into waking consciousness instead of CSF flushing.
[Polysomnographic studies from the 1960s-80s](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/7318677/) documented this. Patients in alcohol withdrawal exhibit what researchers call ["Stage 1-REM"](https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/delirium-t...)—a hybrid state where wakefulness and REM sleep characteristics get mixed together. Right before full-blown DTs, [some patients hit 100% Stage 1-REM](https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4757-0632-1_...). The hallucinations appear to be [literally enacted dreams](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01651...) occurring while technically awake. The sleep-wake boundary just completely breaks down.
What strikes me is the system-level similarity here. Sleep normally maintains clean states: you're either awake (alert, reality-testing intact, no CSF flushing) or asleep (offline, dreams permitted, maintenance running). But when the system gets stressed enough—whether through sleep deprivation or the neurochemical chaos of alcohol withdrawal—it seems to start making desperate tradeoffs.
The brain apparently needs certain processes to run. Period. Total no-brainer! CSF flushing can't wait indefinitely. Neither can REM sleep, which serves its own critical functions. So when normal sleep architecture fails, the system appears to force these processes anyway, even though the conditions are completely wrong for them.
Maybe that's why the costs are so specific. CSF intrusion during wakefulness costs you attention. REM intrusion costs you reality testing, because REM is the state where your brain accepts impossible narratives without question. Same compensatory mechanism, different critical process forced into the wrong state.
What I find interesting is how the brain knows what lever it needs to pull and how it pulls it. Sleep deprivation forces waste removal. REM deprivation forces wakeful dream states; which might be a side effect not the actual goal. The brain seems to know what maintenance is overdue and attempts the repair, consequences be damned.
Kind of like an extreme REM rebound. A lot of the GABAergic drugs seem to markedly suppress REM. Interestingly cholinergic drugs seem to do the opposite (increasing REM at the expense of slow wave sleep).
It's very much like REM and SWS (CSF flushing) are a kind of a biological yin and yang.