Posts

"We Are Time": A Li'l Theory Exploring Time and Intelligence

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This loose and entirely unscientific theory builds on theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli’s work exploring time and quantum gravity, and plays on the specific passage, “We are time. We are this space, this clearing opened by the traces of memory inside the connections between our neurons.” - The Order of Time We understand that the temporal structure of our world is relative, and is influenced by variables like mass, gravitational fields, entropy, and our own partialities. But despite those abstract understandings we still feel that time is something . It rushes around us, carries us, is us, but is also ever beyond us. It's something so elusive yet still so near . How could a molecule of hydrogen calculate the river that it comprises? Like those molecules, we are unable to comprehend the river we're a part of. There is no universal constant for time that we know of. Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity states that time is relative, and this has held true as it's be...

Big Trouble in Mini Pill

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How progesterone intolerance got me good (in a bad way).  I've decided to share my personal experience with synthetic progesterone – aka progestins, aka the "mini pill" – in the hopes it might help even one person lurch out of their own hormonal hell. For just over five years I had taken the mini pill, first under the Jencycla brand, and then Movisse . The brand switch occurred when my pharmacy happened to be out of stock of the first, and was substituted with the second. "They're identical", I was reassured, "you shouldn't notice a difference". I started taking the mini pill while in a relationship. The man I was seeing didn't enjoy my monthly mood swings (I mean, I didn't either, but I was also one year into running a market farm I had started from scratch, which sometimes got a bit stressful, if you can believe it), so I promised to seek a solution. The combined pill seemed like a whole commitment; the list of possible side effects ...

What is your data and where does it go?

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Our data is the fastest growing commodity in the world, and we're just giving it away. I've always been skeptical of social media (while also using it for most of my adult life), maintaining that the whole gambit is a dangerous social experiment. For years I had a personal rule of "no real feelings on the internet", and I so wish I had held to it. Now that it's become a fully-fledged global industry – an industry worth more than 163 billion USD , comprised of data collecting, storing, processing, analyzing, and utilizing – the more I think about the possible trajectories and implications, the more my heart and stomach tighten. Of course, it was always about data. For advertisers right? "A better customer experience". For many, the idea that their phone is listening is a funny abstract blip. Targeted and mis-targeted ads are a part of our daily online woes and amusements. But it's about so much more than that. Data is now inextricable from our econom...