Agreed; I don't think "Not X, but Y" is a reliable tell on its own, but taken as a whole TFA set off my AI writing spidey-sense big time. The intro takes three paragraphs of fluff (ironically) to say "My product used to have long docs, but after using a product with much shorter docs it made me reconsider my approach."
I'm firmly on the skeptic side of the AI skeptic/booster divide, but I wish we had better mouthpieces on the skeptic side. I get the feeling that Zitron is more concerned with getting his newsletter numbers up than anything else.
Even if the actual specialist labor had been minimal, there's also the amount of time and effort it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to become a specialist. It's like the joke about spending $200 for a repair guy to come kick your printer in just the right spot to fix a print jam--you pay him $50 for kicking it, and $150 for knowing where to kick it :)
> Neanderthal skulls have huge brow ridges and lack chins, with a projecting midface that results in more prominent noses. But the recreated face suggests those differences were not so stark in life.
This surprised me enough to scroll back up and look at the reconstruction again, because it looks the woman definitely has (what I would think of as) a chin--which supports the "not so stark in real life" part. But if the skulls are that different, how would a Neanderthal face end up looking so similar to a human's? Did they have cartilage or something that doesn't get preserved in these skeletal remains?
Maybe not willingly, though. Look up Danny Vendramini's neanderthal predation theory, and consider that modern X chromosomes carry no neanderthal DNA, indicating that all interbreeding involved neanderthal males and human females.
A man passes his X chromosome (inherited from his mother) to any daughters. Any female offspring of a neanderthal father and a homo sapiens mother would have a neanderthal X chromosome and a sapiens X chromosome. If it's true that there's no neanderthal DNA on modern X chromosomes, this is not the cause.
What would be stronger evidence for an absence of neanderthal mothers among neanderthal/sapiens hybrid children would be a lack of neanderthal mitochondrial RNA in modern populations. This would point in the direction of no neanderthal grandmothers for us modern humans, though I'd be reluctant to present this as solid evidence. Maybe sapiens mitochondrial RNA is just better and there's selective pressure against neanderthal mitochondrial RNA.
None of this is to suggest that all neanderthal/sapiens couplings were loving affectionate parents. Just that the absence of neanderthal DNA on modern X chromosomes means nothing in this context.
> consider that modern X chromosomes carry no neanderthal DNA, indicating that all interbreeding involved neanderthal males and human females
This is a false implication, it’s possible that Neanderthal X chromosome just doesn’t “play nice” with human dna, and can’t result in fertile offspring. Admittedly I have not read the sources you recommend, so maybe they address this?
Or Neanderthal women lived with their tribe and their hybrid children died with that Neanderthal tribe, whereas modern human women and their hybrid children (or at least the ones who have living descendants) lived with modern human tribes and had a better chance of survival.
Actually I don't think this would be able to explain the observed evidence. Consider this path:
1. Neanderthal woman "Ann" mates with Human man "Hugh"
2. Ann gives birth to son "Ander", who is then raised with neanderthals. Notably, Ander has human Y chromosome via Hugh, but Neanderthal X chromosome via Ann.
3. Ander mates with human woman "Uma". They have a daughter, passing Neanderthal X chromosome into human population.
I realize this is a very specific path, but it would _only have to happen once_ for the neanderthal X chromosome to be introduced into the human genome. I think it is very unlikely that such a path would simply never happen across the thousands of interactions we had. And therefore I think the observed fact (no impact of neanderthal x chromosome in modern genes) can't _just_ be explained by the proposed behavior (neanderthal mothers raise their children in their neanderthal tribe)
I think there does actually have to be some sort of incompatibility, or some other very-very-high failure rate, something like 99.99%.
If first-order hybrids made up only a small proportion of the total population of humans and Neanderthals, then the probability that a pairing between a member of a modern human tribe and a member of a Neanderthal tribe would involve a first-order hybrid is quite small. Like if there are 2 hybrids in a 150-strong tribe at the frontier, and a cross-tribe pairing happens, there is about a 1.3% chance that it involves a hybrid, and half of that that the gender matches up. Even with a higher estimate of 5% hybrids in a tribe, it's a 1.67% chance for a match with the right gender.
And when that chance is realised, and a second-order hybrid is produced, the high child mortality rates of the time would put downward pressure on their numbers. Not zero, but a couple of orders of magnitudes lower than first-order hybrids.
First-order hybrid being having one parent from a Neanderthal tribe, other from a human tribe. Second-order hybrid additionally having at least one parent as a first-order hybrid (as in your step 3).
Also, there actually is Neanderthal DNA in the modern X chromosome. If in your step 2, Ann gives birth to a daughter Andrea, the daughter would have a Neanderthal X chromosome, and she can pass it on within her tribe. But she would have no Neanderthal mtDNA, which is only passed on maternally.
But there is other data that this model does not explain. Like, why is there no Neanderthal contribution to the modern Y chromosome?
I don’t have much experience in this field, so I can’t give satisfying answers to your questions. However, you said two things that I find very interesting:
> Also, there actually is Neanderthal DNA in the modern X chromosome.
> why is there no Neanderthal contribution to the modern Y chromosome?
I think both of these claims contradict the parent! I’m not sure which is correct, I’ve never looked into this before, and was simply trusting that bediger4000‘s assertion about the X chromosome was true. But it seems the opposite is true?
Vendramini's theory appears to be built upon some fairly extraordinary ideas that are not supported by actual evidence. In fact some of his claims (e.g. about face shape and skull placement) are directly contradicted by actual evidence. It's probably worth approaching this with some scepticism.
Measles and chickenpox aren't even similar pathogens. Chickenpox is more closely related to herpes!
(That's also why chickenpox can come back later in life as shingles, the same way cold sores recur... because shingles is reactivated chickenpox, it's not a "relabeled" virus...)
WCAG color contrast checkers in particular have never steered me wrong. It's interesting (but makes sense) that contrast needs to be higher for small text than for large text!
You can see by the Iranian violent reaction that’s spread far and wide over most of the Middle East countries about what exact kind of stability it brings to the area.
Amongst the countries attacked by Iran now are Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Saudia Arabia; indirectly, it’s dragging kicking and screaming into the conflict also Yemen (surely soon), Lebanon (already) and Iraq (already).
Not saying "cardiorespiratory fitness" and "heart rate" are 1:1, because they're certainly not, but beta blockers are a known treatment for certain kinds of anxiety. I can attest that taking low-dose propranolol twice a day (without pulling any other levers related to lifestyle, stress, etc.) has helped me mellow the fuck out, which I sorely needed lol. So I would wager that cardio fitness is itself correlated with anxiety and anger, although in practice it's tangled up with many other factors.
In addition to baseline heart rate, there's also some interesting stuff related to anxiety and heart rate variability. My understanding is that certain types of breathing exercises improve HRV in the short term, which is good for calming down if you're riled up, but people with good cardio health have a better baseline HRV in the first place. (Also, this has always been unintuitive to me, but higher variability is better for anxiety, not lower variability.)
I've been doing my own personal research on HRV and getting to the bottom of it.
The literature is bewildering because of course there are many ways to measure it. If you measure it over the course of the day it is influenced by things like the activities you do. Of course your HRV is going to be higher if you alternate intense activity that raises your heart rate with rest and since activity is so important in it I don't think it is fair to look at a whole day trace.
You can use that app to increase the amplitude of your Mayer wave, what you do is breathe in when you see the wave going down and breathe in when you see the wave going up. It is a little tricky if your Mayer waves are initially weak and you might feel light-headed and think "I can't breathe" but once it settles in it is a very strong effect.
I have read a number of patents for HRV biofeedback and they all involve much more complex things that you might think would work if you hadn't tried it but that I don't believe would work having tried it.
Funny I have been taking Nebivolol, another beta blocker, and found that it drastically lowers HRV-inferred stress as measured by my Garmin watch -- I can't really say how it affects my app because I wrote it after I started on the drug.
For those of us who don't have a Polar strap, can you explain at a high level how your app works? Based on what the page says, seems like something about using R-R interval to estimate where you area on the Meyer wave cycle?
I have a different heart rate monitor (Amazfit smartwatch, mine has their latest sensor that matches the higher end Garmin watches for accuracy, it can be used as a Bluetooth device or you can develop software to run on it directly). What topics/keywords should I look into if I want to develop the equivalent application for my hardware?
Ha, I thought it was amusing that the color space/profile mystery involves Pikachu of all mons, since Pikachu is famously part of the "shiny palette that's nearly indistinguishable from its regular palette" club :)
What makes you say that compounding pharmacies' testing is way more suspect? Curious because I know people who are still using compounding pharmacies (specifically mom-and-pop joints that might be able to evade crackdowns for a while longer) but have considered going grey market... maybe this is the sign to switch?
It's opaque, and limited. They buy the raws from China just like everyone else, then reconstitute them, fill vials, and drop them in the mail. They'll only provide a COA if you ask them to, and it will just be one basic mass/purity test most often.
In the gray market, there are multiple mass/purity tests for a batch (to look for variation in fill, mostly), as well as tests for endotoxins, sterility, heavy metals, and fentanyl. Rarely (maybe never; I have certainly never seen it) will a compounder do these additional tests and provide the results.
I think in general the well-known compounding pharmacies (e.g. Hallandale, BPI, couple others) are probably reputable enough to feel okay with. The mom & pop ones (or med spas) I'd be a lot more nervous about. Often ends up being someone who's just reconstituting vials in their living room, and maybe not with the quality controls you'd like to see.
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