That's a common perspective, but it oversimplifies a complex biological reality many people face.
The body has sophisticated signaling pathways that regulate hunger and defend fat stores. In some people, dysregulation in pathways like mTORC1 essentially keeps their "hunger volume" turned up regardless of their actual energy needs, increasing hunger-promoting neuropeptides (NPY, AgRP) while decreasing satiety signals (POMC, CART).
When someone with this dysregulation tries to lose weight, the body deploys additional defenses: reduced non-exercise activity thermogenesis (less fidgeting, less spontaneous movement), increased energy efficiency, and even induced lethargy after intentional exercise to preserve fat stores. This isn't laziness - it's sophisticated biological adaptation.
This creates a crucial matrix that determines weight outcomes:
* High willpower + Low hunger signaling: Naturally fit with minimal effort
* Low willpower + Low hunger signaling: Generally maintains healthy weight without struggle
* High willpower + High hunger signaling: Might maintain weight with constant effort
* Low willpower + High hunger signaling: Almost inevitably leads to obesity
Keep in mind willpower itself has significant genetic and epigenetic components - it's not simply a matter of character. Variations in dopamine and serotonin regulation genes directly affect impulse control and reward processing.
GLP-1/GIP medications work by intervening in these pathways. They activate receptors in the hypothalamus that can override or bypass the defective mTORC1 signaling. They directly inhibit AgRP/NPY neurons while activating POMC neurons, essentially normalizing the hunger signals. They also slow gastric emptying and modulate the brain's reward system to reduce food's hedonic value. In other words, they take willpower out of the equation. If you aren't hungry, you don't have to fight the urge to eat.
I'm not just speaking to the science here - I have direct experience. Despite years of disciplined efforts with trainers, various diets, calorie counting I went from 150lbs in my 20s to 315lbs by my 40s. With Zepbound, I've lost 55 pounds in six months without the constant battle. I will have to take this medication for the rest of my life, but I will probably live much longer as a result, and I'm already reaping the rewards in terms of energy, focus, sleep quality, et cetera.
These medications do have side effects worth considering, but they need to be weighed against the severe health consequences of obesity. Obesity significantly increases risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, certain cancers, and premature death. For men specifically, obesity increases sex hormone-binding globulin which reduces free testosterone levels, leading to fatigue, reduced muscle mass, decreased libido, and even depression. The most common side effects of GLP-1 medications (nausea, constipation, diarrhea) are typically mild, manageable, and often diminish over time. While there are theoretical concerns about more serious effects like pancreatitis based on animal studies, clinical data in humans hasn't supported these concerns. Regardless, these potential risks must be balanced against the near-certainty of health complications from remaining morbidly obese.
For people with dysregulated hunger signaling, these medications aren't just cosmetic interventions—they're addressing a fundamental biological dysfunction that otherwise creates persistent obstacles to maintaining a healthy weight. The risk-benefit analysis strongly favors treatment for those who need it. They make sustainable lifestyle changes possible by removing the constant neurobiological opposition to weight loss.
AlphaGo got better by playing against itself. I wonder if the pathway forward here is to essentially do the same with coding. Feed it some arbitrary SRS documents - have it attempt to develop them including full code coverage testing. Have it also take on roles of QA, stakeholders, red-team security researchers, and users who are all aggressively trying to find edge cases and point out everything wrong with the application. Have it keep iterating and learn from the findings. Keep feeding it new novel SRSs until the number off attempts/iterations necessary to get a quality product out the other side drops to some acceptable number.
Found out I had been worried about my blood pressure for no reason for close to 4 years. When I moved I brought it up to my new doctor and he said "what color was the cuff". Turns out they were using one entirely too small for my arm, which wouldn't you know it gives false-high readings. Turns out my blood pressure is frickin perfect.
Honestly I think the only reason you guys shipped as many units as you did was blocking other voice assistants from interacting with Audible. I've had an Alexa/Echo since the early beta and it has literally always been worse than other options like google home. It's gotten progressively worse over time as well. Not just comparatively but vs it's own experience several years ago.
Yep, can confirm that it was better in 2017 than 2021.
Mainly because when the org chart grows, more "rules" are added to the rules engine, where each rule is managed by another service... which all adds to end to end user perceived latency, etc... that's why rule engines don't work.
The hardware is just a microphone, a speaker, a tiny computer, and a WiFi chip. It's easy to keep providing updates for old hardware when all the brains live in the cloud.
That's a good point. I'm already in the process of using voice synthesis to narrate one of my books. It is still a huge time outlay to get to the quality bar I want, but much cheaper than paying for a narrator.
One thing working in favor of human narrators is the fans. Audiobook listeners can get very attached to certain voices, to the point where they'll read _anything_ that narrator works on regardless of the book's author or genre. If I had the budget for it, I'd definitely favor a well-known human narrator over AI for the visibility aspect of working with that person. But most authors don't have the budget to hire popular narrators, which is where less popular or entry-level narrators may find themselves losing work to AI alternatives. The narration quality is still higher with competent humans at this time as well, but that'll change.
For translations, I don't think I'll ever trust AI entirely (just like I don't trust myself as a human writer entirely!) I'd still be hiring a native-speaking human editor and proofreader if generating AI translations. Or more likely, I'd be hiring a human translator who is able to charge competitively by using AI in their workflows (and is also able to handle the quality checks etc for me).
The thing to do for weight lifting is do some light warm up cardio (5-10 minutes on your favorite hamster wheel variant - elliptical, treadmill, bike) to get your core temp up, then do a few warm up sets before big compound movements to improve blood flow to the target muscles and lubricate the joints.
Before doing your working sets on bench/squat/deadlift, do a few sets at a much lower weight. Like this:
Warm-up set 1: Start with the empty bar and warm up for a few reps there.
Warm-Up Set 2: 40-50% of your first set x 5 reps (if the empty bar falls into this percentage- skip this step).
Warm-Up Set 3: 60-65% of your first set x 3-5 reps
Warm-Up Set 4: 70-80% of your first set x 3 reps
Warm-up set 5: 85-90% of your first set x 1-3 reps
Warm-Up Set 6: 90-95% of your first set x 1-3 reps
Now do your working sets.
If you aren't lifting that much weight (bench press for example) you can skip a few of these and start at say 60-65% of your working weight.
Of the 2, personal trainer is probably better if you are new to the gym (been lifting 0-2 years) because they will also help you nail technique/form so you don't get yourself injured swinging around ego lifts.
You don't have to pay a lot for this either - don't get the $120/hr folks at big 24 hour gyms, find a private gym where one trainer might be working with about 6-8 folks at any one time. They will queue up each set of exercises for you, check your form and then do the same for someone else while you are doing the bulk of the work.
The place I go to charges $45 per 90 minute session for this and it's great. I don't need to figure out my workout, track my weights/reps for progressive overload or anything. They take care of all of that. I just show up, do the work and get on with my day.
Every time I've asked them about an app for Samsung or LG tvs - the two most popular brands they've pushed back "we're volunteers, we don't use those TVs, it's not on our to-do list but feel free to code it yourself". They aren't open to being paid to develop it either.
Interesting, I have a Samsung TV but I'v never even considered running Jellyfin as a native app. I keep the TV off the internet so it can't be a spy box. The Chromecast with Google TV is so affordable and so great, I just use that everywhere. To be clear I'm not telling you you're wrong for wanting to do it on the TV, that's a personal preference, I'm just sharing how I do it in case it helps.
I ultimately ended up getting an nvidia shield, but at that point it solved my biggest gripe with plex so I just switched back to plex and have been happy with it.
The body has sophisticated signaling pathways that regulate hunger and defend fat stores. In some people, dysregulation in pathways like mTORC1 essentially keeps their "hunger volume" turned up regardless of their actual energy needs, increasing hunger-promoting neuropeptides (NPY, AgRP) while decreasing satiety signals (POMC, CART).
When someone with this dysregulation tries to lose weight, the body deploys additional defenses: reduced non-exercise activity thermogenesis (less fidgeting, less spontaneous movement), increased energy efficiency, and even induced lethargy after intentional exercise to preserve fat stores. This isn't laziness - it's sophisticated biological adaptation.
This creates a crucial matrix that determines weight outcomes:
* High willpower + Low hunger signaling: Naturally fit with minimal effort
* Low willpower + Low hunger signaling: Generally maintains healthy weight without struggle
* High willpower + High hunger signaling: Might maintain weight with constant effort
* Low willpower + High hunger signaling: Almost inevitably leads to obesity
Keep in mind willpower itself has significant genetic and epigenetic components - it's not simply a matter of character. Variations in dopamine and serotonin regulation genes directly affect impulse control and reward processing.
GLP-1/GIP medications work by intervening in these pathways. They activate receptors in the hypothalamus that can override or bypass the defective mTORC1 signaling. They directly inhibit AgRP/NPY neurons while activating POMC neurons, essentially normalizing the hunger signals. They also slow gastric emptying and modulate the brain's reward system to reduce food's hedonic value. In other words, they take willpower out of the equation. If you aren't hungry, you don't have to fight the urge to eat.
I'm not just speaking to the science here - I have direct experience. Despite years of disciplined efforts with trainers, various diets, calorie counting I went from 150lbs in my 20s to 315lbs by my 40s. With Zepbound, I've lost 55 pounds in six months without the constant battle. I will have to take this medication for the rest of my life, but I will probably live much longer as a result, and I'm already reaping the rewards in terms of energy, focus, sleep quality, et cetera.
These medications do have side effects worth considering, but they need to be weighed against the severe health consequences of obesity. Obesity significantly increases risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, certain cancers, and premature death. For men specifically, obesity increases sex hormone-binding globulin which reduces free testosterone levels, leading to fatigue, reduced muscle mass, decreased libido, and even depression. The most common side effects of GLP-1 medications (nausea, constipation, diarrhea) are typically mild, manageable, and often diminish over time. While there are theoretical concerns about more serious effects like pancreatitis based on animal studies, clinical data in humans hasn't supported these concerns. Regardless, these potential risks must be balanced against the near-certainty of health complications from remaining morbidly obese.
For people with dysregulated hunger signaling, these medications aren't just cosmetic interventions—they're addressing a fundamental biological dysfunction that otherwise creates persistent obstacles to maintaining a healthy weight. The risk-benefit analysis strongly favors treatment for those who need it. They make sustainable lifestyle changes possible by removing the constant neurobiological opposition to weight loss.