using sunlight or specialized electric light to assist with SAD and maybe other chronic issues

aka Seasonal Affect Disorder; try Light Therapy (more)

Sunlight Might Hold the Key to Treating Autoimmune Diseases. Every morning Kathy Reagan Young steps out of the shower in her Virginia Beach home, towels off, dons a pair of protective goggles and stands nine inches from a light box the size of a small space heater. Young presses a button, and the box’s bulbs begin to glow a ghostly purple. She briefly bathes her torso in the ultraviolet rays coming from the bulbs, four minutes per side. Then she goes about her day. (more)

Understanding the Most Effective Breathwork Techniques with Dr. Andrew Huberman. Even though cyclic sighing proved to be the most effective breathwork (breathing) technique, all three breathing exercises (others were box breathing and [[]Cyclic hyperventilation]) were more effective at improving mood and reducing respiratory rates than mindful meditation. This is thought to be caused by the enhanced sense of control over one’s breath that’s involved with breathwork. (more)

The Vagus Nerve’s Mysterious Role in Mental Health Untangled. Wellness influencers claim we can ice, tone or zap the vagus nerve to fix almost anything—long COVID, headaches, poor memory, extra pounds, the blues. Much of that hype is unfounded. Still, some research on the vagus nerve is intriguing enough—and promising enough—to draw serious scientific attention. (more)

Default Friend: I LIKE Labubus and Dubai Chocolate and Matcha and Lana and Brandy Melville and TikTok Aesthetics and and and. Today, in his newsletter, W. David Marx (who, as an aside, is a must-read) wrote about an Amanda Mull piece on the disorienting nature of contemporary trends: Labubus and Dubai chocolates and matcha and chamoy and Swedish candy, all things that seem to emerge from nowhere, mean nothing, and disappear just as quickly. (2025-08-14-MarxOnlyFadsACultureandEconomyOfLabubu) (more)

AI ‘chain of thought’ is still just a ‘brittle mirage’. *AI vendors now insist their chatbots do reasoning. They even list their reasoning steps! (more)

Dwarkesh Patel Notes: Symbolic Species by Terrence Deacon. ..the two of us got a chance to go have lunch with the author, Terence Deacon, a couple weeks ago (more)

Dan Hon: s20e04: A Software Strategy. This one is about the cycle of starting by building something you need, and then having it be replaced by a commodity. (more)

Matt Zeigler: Grow Your Network: Bill Stephney Is A Culture-Shaping Legend You Need to Know. Do you know Bill Stephney? He's the executive producer who helped launch Def Jam Records, discovered Chuck D in an Adelphi University cafeteria, and played a pivotal role in bringing Public Enemy, LL Cool J, and the Beastie Boys to the world. From college radio DJ to music supervisor for films like Boomerang (which launched Toni Braxton's career), he's been shaping culture for decades. (more)

Alfred Macdonald: Vibecamp And Its Consequences. (or: Against Pseudonyming as Virtue and Realnaming as Sin). Context: this was a pseudo-open letter criticizing the norms and illusions - primarily relating to privacy and epistemology - of a social scene called tpot and an event called vibecamp, with focus on what happens when those norms are taken seriously by large numbers of people. (more)

What Is Night Eating Syndrome? Medically Reviewed by Smitha Bhandari, MD. With NES, you eat a lot after dinner, have trouble sleeping, and eat when you wake up at night. (more)

Kevin Lipe: Hidden Agendas, Lost Cities. I first really spent time with Lotus Agenda because of a guest post I wrote for 512 Pixels, which meant I approached it with the half-serious curiosity of someone who’d long harbored a suspicion that MS-DOS software might change the way he thought, and was determined to find out, armed with an impossibly small terrible keyboard (more)

Scott Alexander on Light Therapy. The short version: Light therapy can treat seasonal affective disorder (SAD) (eg winter depression) and sometimes regular depression. Buy this light box, and at some time between 6 AM and 9 AM, sit exactly 12 inches away from it and do some activity that doesn’t involve staring directly at the light box. Continue every morning for the period of time you’re at risk of depression. If bipolar, don’t try this without medical supervision. Carex Day-Light Classic Plus Sunlight Therapy Lamp - 10000 LUX Therapy Lamp at 12 Inches, LED Bright White Light with Adjustable Height and Brightness Levels for Mood, White (more)

standard identifier for books (more)

In computability theory, a system of data-manipulation rules (such as a computer's instruction set, a programming language, or a cellular automaton) is said to be Turing complete or computationally universal if it can be used to simulate any single-taped Turing machine. The concept is named after Alan Turing. A classic example is lambda calculus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness (more)

Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is a billionaire American hedge fund manager and philanthropist who has served as co-chief investment officer of the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates, since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York. Within ten years, it was infused with a US$5 million investment from the World Bank's retirement fund... Dalio is the author of the 2017 book Principles: Life & Work, about corporate management and investment philosophy. It was featured on The New York Times best seller list, where it was called a "gospel of radical transparency." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Dalio (more)

Transcendental Meditation (TM) is a form of silent meditation developed by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The TM technique involves the silent repetition of a mantra or sound, and is practiced for 15–20 minutes twice per day. It is taught by certified teachers through a standard course of instruction, with a cost which varies by country and individual circumstance. According to the TM organization, it is a non-religious method that promotes relaxed awareness, stress relief, self-development, and higher states of consciousness. The technique has been variously described as both religious[2] and non-religious.[nb 1] Maharishi began teaching the technique in India in the mid-1950s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendental_Meditation; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi (more)

Rusty Guinn: A Man Must Have a Code. One such Britticism was the idea that any person who wants to be consistently successful as a human being, and especially as an investor, must have a World View. (more)

Ray Dalio describes Credit Crisis 2008 as a "DProcess". But now you can ask yourself, OK, when was the last time bank stocks went down so much? When was the last time the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve, or any central bank, exploded like it has? When was the last time interest rates went to zero, essentially, making monetary policy as we know it ineffective? When was the last time we had Deflation? The answers to those questions all point to times other than the U.S. post-WorldWarII experience. This was the dynamic that occurred in Japan in the '90s, that occurred in Latin America in the '80s, and that occurred in the Great Depression in the '30s... Then begins the reversal process, and that becomes self-reinforcing, too. In the simplest sense, the country reaches the point when it needs a Debt Restructuring... This has happened in Latin America regularly. Emerging countries default, and then restructure. It is an essential process to get them economically healthy. We will go through a giant debt-restructuring, because we either have to bring debt-service payments down so they are low relative to incomes - the cash flows that are being produced to service them - or we are going to have to raise incomes by printing a lot of money. It isn't complicated. It is the same as all bankruptcies, but when it happens pervasively to a country, and the country has a lot of Foreign Debt denominated in its own currency, it is preferable to print money and devalue... What the Federal Reserve has done and what the Treasury has done, by and large, is to take an existing debt and say they will own it or lend against it. But they haven't said they are going to write down the debt and cut debt payments each month. There has been little in the way of debt relief yet. Very, very few actual mortgages have been restructured. Very little corporate debt has been restructured... Only when those debts are actually written down will we get to the point where we will have credit growth. There is a Mortgage Debt piece that will need to be restructured. There is a giant financial-sector piece - banks and Investment Bank-s and whatever is left of the financial sector - that will need to be restructured. There is a Corporate Debt piece that will need to be restructured, and then there is a commercial-RealEstate piece that will need to be restructured. (more)