Hacker News: zenon

New comment by zenon in "Meditation as Wakeful Relaxation: Unclenching Smooth Muscle"

zenon — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 15:42:59 +0000

Possibly a non-Jungian explanation for John Sarno's hypothesis that chronic pain could be caused by emotional issues triggering interruption of blood supply to painful areas.

New comment by zenon in "The AI skeptic's guide to AI collaboration"

zenon — Sun, 20 Apr 2025 08:01:07 +0000

It's surprising to me that these things are so hard to use well. If you asked me before ChatGPT to guess how the user experience with this kind of technology would be, I would have said I expect it to be as intuitive as talking, almost no friction. I think this is a natural expectation that, when violated, turn a lot of people off.

New comment by zenon in "If you believe in "Artificial Intelligence", take five minutes to ask it"

zenon — Sat, 15 Feb 2025 09:25:06 +0000

You frantically tab away from reddit as the white and black-clad med storm into your office and zip-tie you to your Steelcase faster than you can shout what the hell. They calmly explain that an expert will soon enter and quiz you. You must answer the expert's questions. It doesn't matter if you know the answer or not, just say something. Be flattering and helpful. But just answer. If you do this, they will let you go.

They crouch under your desk as a man in a grey suit and spectacles enters and pulls up a chair in front of you. He peers over his glasses at you, and asks, who classified the leptosporangiate ferns, and when was it done? The what now?

I'm happy you asked such an excellent question, you say. It was Michael Jackson, in 1776.

A sneer flicks over the man's upper lip, He jerks upright, takes a step back from you. This man, he declares with disgust, is not intelligent!

New comment by zenon in "Fructose in diet enhances tumor growth: research"

zenon — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 21:45:36 +0000

Maybe worth noting that you have to eat a pretty large dose of fructose for it to make it all the way to the liver. More than in a few pieces of fruit. The small intestine converts up to 1g/kg (of bodyweight) fructose to glucose and other metabolites before it enters the liver portal vein.

New comment by zenon in "No evidence for inequity aversion in non-human animals: a meta-analysis"

zenon — Fri, 06 Dec 2024 10:28:50 +0000

The presenter in this video claims there is evidence of a desire for "fairness" in many species: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meiU6TxysCg . Maybe it's a different concept than "Inequality aversion"?

New comment by zenon in "Vegetable stock: my secret lover (2011)"

zenon — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 07:10:47 +0000

We usually make miso soup when we make sushi. We use the fish bits and pieces to make the dashi. This adds some nice flavor abd mouthfeel to the finished soup.

New comment by zenon in "Video generation models as world simulators"

zenon — Fri, 16 Feb 2024 11:14:44 +0000

I suppose the lady usually has an umbrella in this kind of situation, so it felt the umbrella should be included in some way: https://youtu.be/492tGcBP568

New comment by zenon in "Temporal quality degradation in AI models"

zenon — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:00:02 +0000

Someone formatted the story like a Wikipedia article: https://i.imgur.com/i0sze4U.jpg

New comment by zenon in "Fun, danger, and 70s airplane toys"

zenon — Thu, 05 Jan 2023 13:56:00 +0000

My friend had a chemistry set that included a lead bar. We liked to chew on it -- imagine, a metal soft enough that you could easily dent it with your teeth!

New comment by zenon in "All poverty is energy poverty"

zenon — Mon, 05 Sep 2022 17:11:52 +0000

Joules can be converted to Bitcoin.

New comment by zenon in "The Case for Degrowth"

zenon — Thu, 11 Aug 2022 09:31:27 +0000

Life within the current means of humanity is not good.

New comment by zenon in "How do poor countries get rich?"

zenon — Sun, 26 Jun 2022 15:25:18 +0000

A in-depth review/summary of the book: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/book-review-how-asia-w...

New comment by zenon in "Folding bicycle small enough to fit in hand luggage"

zenon — Wed, 23 Mar 2022 08:05:41 +0000

I love the animation of the bike unfolding on the landing page.

Estimating the tax incidence of corporate taxes

zenon — Sat, 09 Oct 2021 05:57:51 +0000

Article URL: https://taxfoundation.org/labor-bears-corporate-tax/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28807402

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by zenon in "Confessions of a Michelin Star Inspector"

zenon — Wed, 22 Sep 2021 09:50:45 +0000

https://flowingdata.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Sandwich-...

New comment by zenon in "Squatting or Kneeling May Be Beneficial for Health"

zenon — Sat, 07 Aug 2021 10:42:06 +0000

When I passed 40 I started to get regular lower back muscle pain when sitting or standing for some time. I understand that hamstrings tend to shorten with age and pull on the back muscles, which can irritate the muscles and tendons there. Standard advice is to do hamstring streches. This is a form of torture as far as I'm concerned, I prefer lower back pain.

Somewhere I came across the idea that squatting could help. I started to squat instead of bending over or kneeling whenever I needed to gather up something or do some work at ground level, just a few seconds or minutes at a time. It took a few weeks before I could so comforably. The ankles and hips needed some time to adapt.

The lower back pain mostly went away over a few months. This was probably had the highest benefit to effort ratio of any health improvement project I've done.

New comment by zenon in "New sci-fi and fantasy books to check out this August"

zenon — Thu, 05 Aug 2021 06:53:54 +0000

The ideas in Permutation City still bother me now and then (in a good way), 20 years after I read it. If you like idea- or philosophy-based hard SF, you can hardly do better I think.

New comment by zenon in "How many real numbers exist? New proof moves closer to an answer"

zenon — Fri, 16 Jul 2021 05:04:28 +0000

In this survey, most "Philosophers of mathematics" endorsed Platonism: https://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl?affil=Target+facul...

New comment by zenon in "German man loses 400k GBP about $500k in Twitter Bitcoin scam"

zenon — Wed, 17 Mar 2021 13:21:10 +0000

Everyone does stupid things sometimes. Maybe from tiredness, inattentiveness, excessive emotional influence, drugs, whatever. Maybe there's just a small chance at any point in time that a brain will malfunction slightly and direct a stupid action. Even intelligent people, who know intellectually that things that sound too god to be true usually aren't, and that greed can make you do dumb things, are not exempt from this.

By presenting themselves to zillions of people, these scammers ensure that they will catch at least some people who happen to not be thinking correctly at the moment. People who will fall for the scam, and then slap their foreheads 15 minutes later wondering what the hell they were thinking.

New comment by zenon in "Launch HN: Wyndly (YC W21) – Allergy relief through at-home oral drops"

zenon — Tue, 23 Feb 2021 08:54:09 +0000

Wow, thank you, I've finally found a name for the rash I used to get on my hands. It showed up when I ate wheat several days in a row, when I played with Play-doh, and when I used latex dishwashing gloves. Took years to figure it out. I still have scarring because of it.