zkelvin (u/zkelvin) - Readit News

zkelvin commented on The anti-abundance critique on housing is wrong derekthompson.org/p/the-a... · Posted by u/rbanffy

LargeWu · 7 months ago

You seem to be guilty of Fish Tank Thinking here yourself.

Housing costs are not divorced from the laws of supply and demand. Raising wages creates increased demand for housing, but you still need the supply! Raising wages without increasing housing supply will just make housing more expensive.

zkelvin · 7 months ago

Exactly! This video goes into this phenomenon more in-depth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_GLfxaYTYI&t=2s

This has actually been a known issue for over a century with Winston Churchill even commenting on it.

zkelvin commented on Engineering Sleep minjunes.ai/posts/sleep/i... · Posted by u/amin

exmadscientist · a year ago

Hey, discussion of orexin receptor stuff! As someone with clinically-diagnosed insomnia, I've been lucky enough to/unfortunate enough to have to try the orexin receptor antagonist sleep aids for a while. As recent, on-patent drugs, they are very, very expensive ($360/month was the number marked on the receipt slip, not that that means much in the US; I certainly wasn't paying that)... and they work. They really, really do work. I was prescribed them because I tried every single other class of sleep aid on the market and they were mostly ineffective, had massive side effects, or were benzos (temazepam: best sleep of my life, but better not use it for longer than a month!).

This stuff? Orexin receptor antagonists? They work. Holy crap, do they ever work. Sleep quality better than the Z-drugs, great tolerability, no massive disruption going off them... when these things go off-patent they're going to be massive. Sleep quality was not perfect (maybe 80% of "normal"? I don't know) but that is absolutely minor compared to the alternative.

(And for the record, I'm off them now due to other stuff clearing up such that I don't need this level of sleep assistance anymore. Not because I can't afford them.)

I guess that's a long-winded way to say that if you're going to do questionably-advised sleep biohacking, orexin receptors are probably the place to start.

zkelvin · a year ago

How long have you been taking them? I've heard that an almost universal side effect is terrifying night paralysis on occasion. Have you experienced that yet?

zkelvin commented on Scientist treated her own cancer with viruses she grew in the lab nature.com/articles/d4158... · Posted by u/dataminer

stouset · a year ago

A “general cure” for cancer is a pretty tall order. Cancer isn’t one disease, it’s a catch-all term for a bunch of vaguely related ones.

Maybe this is a bit of a stretch but it’s a bit like trying to find a way to end deaths from “accidents”. Drowning, falling off a ladder, and a car crash are all a type of accident but it’s really hard to find a thread tying them all together to deal with it generally.

zkelvin · a year ago

Every day, something like 100 cells in your body become cancerous, but your immune system shoots them down before they can cause any harm. This is effectively a general prophylactic for cancer, so it's not unreasonable to think that we could discover a general cure for cancer (and that something immunotherapy is a promising candidate).

zkelvin commented on Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorro... · Posted by u/nkurz

bhauer · 2 years ago

The step-up in cost basis on death is the original sin that underpins the entire debate over unrealized gains.

It's disheartening to see so much thought and deliberation going into an obviously toxic idea (taxing unrealized gains) when the obvious solution (removing the cost basis step-up when assets change hands) is being ignored.

Inherited wealth is the least earned, so it should be politically palatable to change this. But presumably because such a change would acutely affect the people who make laws in the country specifically, it is never seriously considered.

zkelvin · 2 years ago

Do you consider municipal property taxes (which, when the property value has risen since purchase, effectively taxes unrealized capital gains) also to be "obviously toxic"?

zkelvin commented on Buy, Borrow, Die – Explained old.reddit.com/r/BuyBorro... · Posted by u/nkurz

xmprt · 2 years ago

This might be unpopular but I think there are ways that taxing unrealized capital gains could work without being super radical.

1. Allow unrealized losses to be deducted.

2. Once a certain percentage of the gain is taxed, step up the cost basis by the amount of tax paid. That way you avoid double taxation (once under the unrealized value and again when the asset is sold).

3. (optional) Keep the tax rate on unrealized gains low. Even 3% would be significantly higher than what we have today.

Under this logic, it almost seems like a no brainer. People who have a ton of wealth in unrealized gains would pay taxes progressively over time instead of being hit with a massive tax bill when they sell (or potentially no tax bill when they die due to the step up in cost basis). Feel free to poke loopholes in this idea.

zkelvin · 2 years ago

Taxing unrealized capital gains already isn't all that radical -- property tax is effectively a tax on unrealized gains of property value, and essentially every municipality has that tax.

zkelvin commented on The economics of all-you-can-eat buffets (2020) thehustle.co/the-economic... · Posted by u/Vagantem

Kon-Peki · 2 years ago

I worked at an all-you-can-eat buffet as a teenager in the 1990s.

Our big fill-you-up-cheap item was pizza. The ingredient cost for pizza is ridiculously low, even for above-average quality ingredients. An entire pizza was likely $0.50 or so, depending on toppings.

The restaurant oven was this giant gas-fired thing with 5 or 6 circular, rotating stone surfaces with each set to its own temperature. The pizza stone was set somewhere between 550 and 600° F.

My main job was making the pizza, and they were good. Definitely better than anything you could get at a Pizza Hut or Dominos or Little Caesars. People would even ask for custom pizzas, and management didn't care. You put it out on the buffet line and wave at them so they know it's ready. Of course, while they're waiting they aren't eating other things...

The restaurant also had a little game room with arcade machines that spit out tickets for cheap prizes. Kids would have a slice or two of pizza and then run off to play games, making their visits especially profitable.

zkelvin · 2 years ago

Mr. Gatti's Pizza?

zkelvin commented on Ask HN: Has anyone gotten complete, permanent relief from tinnitus? · Posted by u/actinium226

zkelvin · 2 years ago

I have achieved effectively permanent relief from tinnitus. And not just habituation, adaptation, or acceptance; I no longer hear the ringing (except very quietly if I really plug my ears and really listen for it, but this probably matches the same level of ringing that I heard before I considered myself to have tinnitus)

In the summer of 2016, I first noticed some ringing in one of my ears when I would insert ear plugs at night. I shared my concern with an ENT who then prescribed ciprofloxacin ear drops. I administered it that night to the one ear and awoke a few hours later to profoundly increased ringing. It was bad enough that it triggered pretty severe suicidal ideation. It also greatly exacerbated my difficulty sleeping, which in turn exacerbated the tinnitus, forming a feedback loop. By late 2017, I also started to develop migraines, intermittent brain fog, and malaise. Addressing these symptoms became a higher priority than the tinnitus, although I believed them to likely have a common cause.

After the first year or so, I very gradually began to habituate to the tinnitus. By early 2019, I had largely habituated to it. I could still hear the ringing regularly, but it no longer contributed to low mood or insomnia. My other neurological symptoms had also somewhat abated.

Throughout that time, I had visited many doctors: ENTs, audiologists, general neurologists, cardiologists, a migraine specialist, a sleep specialist, gastroenterologists. None of the doctors were helpful at all. I had a full battery of tests and none revealed anything abnormal.

Around mid 2019, I had mostly given up on doctors being able to help my condition and instead determined that I'd have to figure it out myself.

After years of trying to directly resolve the neurological symptoms, I eventually reasoned that I probably had some sort of more systemic issue of which the tinnitus was merely one symptom. This was initially difficult for me to accept as I was otherwise generally "looked" like I was in good health: I worked out regularly (both cardio and weightlifting), I mostly ate healthily, I didn't drink very much, I didn't do any other recreational drugs, I socialized regularly.

I then set out to try every possible intervention which was generally safe and which could potentially improve my health (not just the tinnitus, but my health holistically). I tried tons of supplements individually. I reduced my dairy intake. I tried low FODMAP. I tried various prescription drugs (CGRPi, beta blockers, blood pressure medication, etc.). I started to do red light therapy regularly. I started to sauna (both dry and infrared) regularly. I did extended water fasts (5-7 days), which provided surprisingly large (albeit temporary) symptomatic relief. I did some gut microbiome protocols. I tried some other protocols for eradicating latent infections. I tried protocols for improving mitochondrial health and protocols for addressing chronic fatigue syndrome. I tried stem cell therapy, both autologous and umbilical cord-derived.

Throughout late 2019 and through 2020, I increasingly started to notice times where I couldn't find my tinnitus, even when I was looking for it. Unfortunately, I couldn't very easily correlate this with any particular intervention. I also was executing multiple interventions simultaneously, so attribution would have probably been impossible anyway.

Since late 2020, my tinnitus has been more absent than it is present. I cannot hear it today, even if I listen for it and try to trigger it. The last time I recall hearing my tinnitus involuntarily was mid 2021.

I wish I could tell you definitively what caused my tinnitus and which intervention(s) worked for me.

My best guess is that I had some sort of gut dysbiosis which resulted in elevated ammonia and hydrogen sulfide levels in my blood. These toxins are known to harm both mitochondria and neurons, which could manifest as tinnitus (and eventually as my other symptoms). This gut dysbiosis likely originated from the time that I got very bad food poisoning twice within two weeks while visiting Southeast Asia; I also had terrible appendicitis in the months following that, ultimately culminating in the removal of my appendix.

Red light therapy improves mitochondrial health (which in turn improve anything which relies on ATP production, which is quite literally everything). It seemed to help me.

Sauna also improves mitochondrial health. Sweat contains more ammonia than does plasma, and so the sweating from sauna likely reduces ammonia levels (and possibly other toxins like hydrogen sulfide, too). This also seemed to help me.

When I fasted, I stopped fueling my gut microbiome, which meant that they stopped producing those toxins. This could explain why I noticed such sudden relief. This also clued me in to this being some sort of diet or digestive issue.

I think the gut microbiome protocols helped, but by the time I had started those, my symptoms were already abating. These also tend to be a bit hit-or-miss, and they can take months to impact symptoms.

But this theory as to the origin of my condition and what specifically resolved it is probably colored as much by my a priori beliefs about what would work as it is informed by my actual experience.

That being said, I do think the general approach of "aggressively try everything (safe) which could potentially improve your health" worked for me and could likely work for many others.

zkelvin commented on A suicide crisis among veterinarians bbc.com/worklife/article/... · Posted by u/rntn

at_a_remove · 2 years ago

The realization that to some pet, you're merely a fallible god, but one who can often offer little but death in an alien place, filled with the scent of sick, dying, and/or terrified other animals. Why am I here? Did I do something wrong? And your face is the last one they see. Run through that a thousand times per year and, unless you have monastic levels of detachment, you might end up feeling as if you were little more than the keen whistling edge of a scythe which never quite dried.

zkelvin · 2 years ago

This was beautifully written. Thank you.

zkelvin commented on Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023... · Posted by u/lucasv07

naasking · 3 years ago

> Why don't you think you need your unborn child's consent before birthing them?

That question is incoherent.

zkelvin · 3 years ago

It's a perfectly coherent question! I'd kindly ask that you try to comply with Hacker News's guidelines about engaging in kind dialogue, and specifically the line "please don't post shallow dismissals".

Here's what I consider to be a simpler question to answer: do you think people have the right to give birth to a child whose existence would be only horrible, endless suffering before eventually succumbing to death?

This isn't just a hypothetical: people tend to agree that a parents who are at high chance of birthing a child with a terrible genetic disease probably shouldn't take that risk (or, at least, should protect against it with some preimplantation genetic testing).

But everyone suffers at least a little bit at some point in their life. If you don't think people have a right to birth children whose lives would be pure suffering, but you do think people have a right to birth children who would suffer at least a little bit in their lives, then how do you justify one but not the other? Is there some threshold amount of misery which you think is okay to inflict on someone without their consent?

There may be some other moral framework or argument which articulately justifies this, and I'm genuinely curious to see if someone has come up with an interesting answer to the question.

zkelvin commented on Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023... · Posted by u/lucasv07

syncbehind · 3 years ago

>Why don't you think you need your unborn child's consent before birthing them?

Is this satire?

zkelvin · 3 years ago

It's a legitimate question! Many people wish they had never been born. What right do you have to force such a person into existence without their consent?