I’m glad there are this many early adopters. Thanks to them, in 3 to 5 years, all the side effects will be known, including the long-term effects, so I’ll be able to make an informed decision with the support of doctors rather than Claude. I’ll have access to regulated official compounds rather than underground lab compounds that can kill many people with one faulty batch. Please, continue doing what you’re doing, folks!
I wish there were some good that came out of this. But these are completely unusable results. It's uncontrolled and not being studied.
Did their testicles fall off because of LLM drug 32, drug 34, drug 2, or a combination of all the drugs they took at the same time? Or maybe it's a combination of their genetic makeup and drug 4.
It'd be like trying to glean any useful medical information from any drug addict. Was the heart attack caused by meth, huffing paint, or one too many cheese burgers? Who knows.
Will side effects for hormonal and gene therapy approaches be shaken out in just 3-5 years? For gene therapy, the rare blood cancers associated with car-t or bluebirdbio suggest maybe not. Maybe they remain rare, but as scale and flexibility of use increases, how that may evolve. Hormones are a whole different calculation. With the creative and dosing, combinations, and applications I’m not sure how many from conclusions will be available. I’m not judging good/bad here, I’m just thinking that this “democratization” of medicines (maybe otherwise not available to some) will increase access, with both risks and benefits.
You know there are regulated labs you can send samples to and serious sellers (like the one I use) attach a testing certificate you can authenticate with the lab. So you know for sure what is it you're getting and what purity etc.
On the actual efficacy and safety fair point. But we're all adults here (I hope). And as for "society's consequences" other people mention most of these compounds are taken is such tiny amounts it is very unlikely they are harmful once they have been out for a couple of years and people have been taking them(for example 250ug every second day for bpc-157 my favourite compound that is proven by research to improve necrotic wound healing in mice and significantly improve injury recovery in my personal experience).
As for modification of hormonal pathways. Retatrutide is in a middle of human trials. There is no indication so far it is harmful. Personally I've not taken it (despite my doc literally pitching ozempic to me a month ago, my bmi is 31 and I never seriously tried to diet in my life - I decided to try "the natural way" first - to be fair the doc was also interested in the improvement in the glucose metabolism not just weight loss in my case). But I might in next 6 months if I don't get the results I want.
I’m concerned you are overestimating the value of the certificate of authenticity you’re getting from your supplier. While you may be right that the compounds you intend to take can’t possibly be all that harmful, there’s a good chance what you’re getting may not be what you think, may not be entirely what you think, and likely contains other things that may be harmful, particularly over a longer period of time.
The comment initially confused me, but after reading it twice, I completely agree with you.
I would love to delete the app, but Instagram has really become the norm for dating and connecting with people. The opportunity cost of not using it in your 20s is significant. I hope to delete it once I’m fully settled, but that might not happen anytime soon given the modern dating culture.
By some irony, I only created an instagram account so that I could get some cookies to pass to yt-dlp to download some videos from a wedding shoot my wife and I did.
My relationship is quite long-term, it can almost get its learner's permit, and we use Instagram all the time to, like, share cute animal videos from the Explore/Reels screens to each other, share stories to our friends of whatever we're doing together, or not together, and see our friends' stories.
idk if your partner is jealous of you using one of the top five social networking apps in the world that seems a little weird and maybe your relationship is not very healthy? it's instagram, not tinder or okcupid...
As long as you stay on a happy path, it's only like 5% thirst traps. But many people don't like it when those things are popping up in their SO's feed, so Instagram isn't good for those relationships.
I avoid it now mainly because I don't need infinite scrolling of anything. But a side benefit is that it can't provoke any jealousy.
> As long as you stay on a happy path, it's only like 5% thirst traps.
I’m an infrequent facebook user, but every couple months I’ll visit the website for something on fb marketplace or an event I’ve been invited to and 100% of the reels that are shoved at me are softcore pornography. My only interaction with them has been to click the “hide this item” (or whatever it’s called) on every reel I’ve ever seen.
In my social circles, at least, the answer is yes. I live in a major city with many people from diverse backgrounds. It might be different in areas where tech people make up the majority.
I know for a fact that I wouldn't have been invited to some parties or met some really fun people if I didn't have Instagram. You don't have to post or be very active; you just need to have an account.
> I'm getting paid more than ever for a job I feel like I almost shouldn't get paid for (I'm just having fun)
In my Big Tech job, I sometimes forget that some people can really enjoy what they do. It seems like you're in a fortunate position of both high pay and high enjoyment. Congratulations! Out of curiosity, what do you work on?
Right now I'm doing consulting for two companies, maybe a couple of hours per week, mostly having downtime and trying to expand on my machine learning knowledge.
But in general, every job I've had has been "high pay and high enjoyment" even when I initially had "shit pay" compared to other programmers, and the product wasn't really fun, I was still programming, an activity I still love.
Compare this to the jobs I did before, where the physical toll makes it impossible to do anything after work as you're exhausted, and even if I got paid more than my first programming job, that your body is literally unable to move once you get home, makes the pay matter less and feel less.
But for a programmer, you can literally sit still all day, have some meetings in a warm office, talk with some people, type some things into a document, sit and think for a while, and in the end of the month you get a paycheck.
If you never worked in another profession, I think you ("The Programmer") don't realize how lucky you are compared to the rest of the world.
It's a good perspective to keep. I've also worked a lot of crappy jobs. Overnights in a grocery store (IIRC, they paid an extra .50/hour to work overnights), fine dining waiter (this one was actually fun, but the partying was too much), on a landscaping crew, etc... I make more money than I ever thought possible growing up. My dad still can't believe I have job 'playing on the computer' all day, though I mostly manage now.
I too have worked in shit jobs. I too appreciate that I am currently in a 70F room of my house, wearing a T-shirt and comfy pants, and able to pet my doggos at will.
I work remote and i hate it, sitting all day is killing me, my 5 minute daily stand-up is nowhere near enough social interaction for a whole day's work. I've been looking for a role better suited to me for over a year, but the market is miserable.
I miss having jobs where at least a lot of the time i was moving around or working directly with other people. More than anything else i miss casual conversation with coworkers (which still happened with excruciating rarity even when i was doing most of my programming in an office).
I'm glad you love programming and find the career ideal. I don't mean to harp or whine, just pointing out your ideals aren't universal even amount programmers.
No, definitely some environments are less ideal, I agree. Personally, I also cannot stand working remote, if I'm working in a high-intensity project I have to work with the team in person, otherwise things just fall apart.
I understand exactly what you mean and agree, seems our ideals agree after all :)
Get a standing desk and a walking treadmill! It’s genuinely changed my life. I can focus easier, I get my steps in, and it feels like I did something that day.
In the long run, it is unavoidable. No matter how prepared you are, there will be something that will cause you to run late. It's just a matter of how frequently this happens.
I'd argue that even the CT scan is unnecessary for a lot of people who want to start a preventative regimen to tackle heart disease. Especially if you're in your 20s or 30s with no family history of heart disease and no absurdly high ApoB results combined with really high lp(a).
That prior discussion gives no good reasons. The linked medium posts are, to be frank, trash.
Statins are well-tolerated drugs with little to no noticeable side effects. You might have to try a few. You may need to combine ezetimibe to maintain a moderate statin dosage level, and that's it. (Like the author of this article)
Source: Leading cardiologists worldwide, and doctors of the rich and famous.
I pointed to this BMJ reference because in the article there is the following: "To help drive down our ApoB, we have statins which do miracles for lipid management. Some people believe that everyone should be on a statin so long as they don’t have adverse side effects."
Most statins prescribed today are not for secondary prevention.
A lot of doctors prescribe a statin immediately on seeing just one measure of "high" LDL without looking at any other parameter or context.
Yeah, for each level of cardiovascular risk (in America, probably calculated with PREVENT) there is a target LDL which should guide whether you should start or not a statin.
I recently went on a statin (atorvastatin) and found I have the WILDEST dreams of my life if I don't take them in the morning, and my doctor said my liver readings were elevated after use but not enough he wants to switch it yet. Which alternative statins should I be looking at, or do they have even harder side effects to deal with?
I have intense anxiety attacks on atorvastatin. Rosuvastatin at the low dose (5mg) doesn’t do much, but at 10mg and 20mg it caused the same effects. It took years and multiple cycles of going on and off the drugs to become confident this was the problem. I switched to Repatha which doesn’t have this problem (it does make me a bit hungry though) but it’s expensive and it took a while for my insurance to approve it.
> Statins are well-tolerated drugs with little to no noticeable side effects.
Sorry, that's nonsense. It is a dangerous drug with plenty of side effects. If it had no side effects it would be sold over the counter. The brain needs cholesterol to function. If you artificially remove cholesterol this is what happens: https://www.health.harvard.edu/cholesterol/new-findings-on-s...
No, your post is nonsense. You link a random article that doesn't even make the argument that you're making - that it's low cholesterol causing the memory loss - or that statins are causing the memory loss at all.
And considering serum cholesterol cannot pass the blood brain barrier and that it is all synthesized de novo in the brain makes it an even sillier claim. Your serum cholesterol level does not have impact on your brain's cholesterol levels.
Quite a few organs have the ability to synthesize cholesterol as needed and can do so just fine. Another area where we make use of cholesterol is for synthesizing hormones... but those organs can all synthesize it de novo just fine too.
The new pkcs9 inhibitors have gotten people down to extremely low levels of LDL (<30 and <10!) and found no impact to cognition, hormone production, etc. We have mendelian randomization studies looking at people that genetically do not produce pkcs9 and have basically nonexistent serum levels of LDL, no impact to cognition, hormone production, etc.
The human body creates cholesterol because it is essential for several vital biological functions. Cholesterol is a key structural component of cell membranes, providing rigidity and fluidity necessary for cellular function.
> Memory loss and confusion have been reported with statin use.
People reporting things doesn't mean much, because as your own original link mentions, people tend to overreport stuff when they are going to the doctor already for other things. What do actual studies that have controls show? We have human RCTs here that have looked at this very thing - and found no evidence of it.
A random article on webmd also says very little when it contradicts the data we have from human RCTs and provides no sources. The trials I linked specifically looked at the common concerns that people have raised as being possibly related to low cholesterol - and didn't find them.
No one is saying that cholesterol isn't essential - your brain literally won't work without it, among many other things. But there is a difference between serum cholesterol levels and its use in in your body. You do not need high serum LDL-C levels for your body to create cholesterol where it needs it.
Those studies I linked quite specifically check for these concerns on people with way lower LDL-C from PKCS9 inhibitors than even combo therapy of statins and ezetimibe will get most people.
You can do a "study" to prove anything you want. And study outcomes often do vary depending on who is paying for it. The FDA is a neutral party. I recommend prioritizing the FDA warnings over "studies".
The FDA errs on the side of placing more warnings rather than fewer. They'd rather have false positives than false negatives. The warning is also clear that there is not a definitive causal link.
If you want to trust individual anecdotes over RCTs while scare quoting the primary way we advance science in these fields, be my guest.
There are many people who are adamant that this bubble will burst. Those who believe that, did you sell all your S&P 500 stocks?
I have many friends and coworkers who think the AI race will come crashing down. But they are not selling their stocks. I’d love for some AI skeptic to help me make sense of this mess.
The S&P 500 has mostly been moving sideways without the Mag 7 included so obviously, if AI revenues don’t materialize the result would be predictable for the index, because the growth is so concentrated.
Do they also believe that the GenAI bubble is propping up the value of the S&P 500? If so, they are behaving irrationally. If not, then it is perfectly reasonable to maintain an S&P 500 investment while asserting the AI bubble will burst.
I feel like this one may backfire though, Anthropic announced a core improvement to their product, OpenAI countered with enshittification to theirs. It only further highlights that OpenAI are running fast and hard towards a future where ChatGPT is a marketing/advertising/etc system just like Google's search has become.
They definitely do, but I think this particular one was a misfire. "We've updated Chat-GPT to help you better connect with #Brands #BrandsULove #adtech" would be eyerolling at the best of times, since it's a nigh-guaranteed signal of incoming enshittification, but positioning it as counterprogramming to Claude Code genuinely becoming more useful just looks pathetic.
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