Daily Log Digest – Week 2, 2025

2025-01-12

Dating in 2025

How are young people feeling about dating in 2025? | Dazed

Yet another random article in Dazed about dating culture, but I like the way it's summarized in the first paragraph.

Modern dating is the pits. Many of us have experienced the perilous conditions within today’s dating pool firsthand or, if you’re safely coupled up, listened to your single friends’ terrifying dispatches from ‘the trenches’. Research also supports the idea that dating is a little trickier to navigate for today’s young singles: young people are having less sex than previous generations; birthrates are falling (with four in ten women who would like children stating that they had not yet done so because they had not found a suitable partner); Gen Z men and women are at loggerheads politically; and people are so socially isolated that loneliness has been declared a global public health concern by the World Health Organisation.

2025-01-13

NYT Amplifier: Get to know Bad Bunny in 9 songs

Get to Know Bad Bunny in 9 Songs - The New York Times

Below is a chronological primer for those looking to understand how Bad Bunny’s musical arc has unfolded — you’ll find one song from each of his albums, and a little more.

Youtube Music Playlist: Get to know Bad Bunny in 9 songs #music #playlist

The Anti-Social Century

The Anti-Social Century - The Atlantic #loneliness #masculinity

This is a long and quite nuanced article on loneliness. It touches upon the usual factors - television viewing, time spent on mobile phones, time spent indoors, AI etc. But the one factor that interested me specifically was what he calls the phenomena of "Secular Monks"

In 2020, the philosopher and writer Andrew Taggart observed in an essay published in the religious journal First Things that a new flavor of masculinity seemed to be emerging: strong, obsessed with personal optimization, and proudly alone. Men and women alike have been delaying family formation; the median age at first marriage for men recently surpassed 30 for the first time in history. Taggart wrote that the men he knew seemed to be forgoing marriage and fatherhood with gusto. Instead of focusing their 30s and 40s on wedding bands and diapers, they were committed to working on their body, their bank account, and their meditation-sharpened minds. Taggart called these men “secular monks” for their combination of old-fashioned austerity and modern solipsism. “Practitioners submit themselves to ever more rigorous, monitored forms of ascetic self-control,” he wrote, “among them, cold showers, intermittent fasting, data-driven health optimization, and meditation boot camps.”

…

Richard V. Reeves, the president of the American Institute for Boys and Men, told me that for men, as for women, something hard to define is lost when we pursue a life of isolationist comforts. He calls it “neededness”—the way we make ourselves essential to our families and community. “I think at some level, we all need to feel like we’re a jigsaw piece that’s going to fit into a jigsaw somewhere,” he said. This neededness can come in several forms: social, economic, or communitarian. Our children and partners can depend on us for care or income. Our colleagues can rely on us to finish a project, or to commiserate about an annoying boss. Our religious congregations and weekend poker parties can count on us to fill a pew or bring the dip.

and then he throws in this very counter-intuitive insight

Home-based, phone-based culture has arguably solidified our closest and most distant connections, the inner ring of family and best friends (bound by blood and intimacy) and the outer ring of tribe (linked by shared affinities). But it’s wreaking havoc on the middle ring of “familiar but not intimate” relationships with the people who live around us, which Dunkelman calls the village. “These are your neighbors, the people in your town,” he said. We used to know them well; now we don’t.

Bluesky Starter Packs for MI/AI/RL

I really want to move to Bluesky to track real time tech information content, instead of X. I found this Reddit thread which has some relevant starter packs: Blue Sky Researcher Starter Packs for ML/AI/RL

Also found this tool (haven't tried it yet!) to convert Bluesky Starter Packs to Lists: Convert BlueSky Starter Packs to Lists

Swearing

Fuck, shit, and everything in between: a quick history of swearing #swearing #language #linguistics

The most interesting thing I gleaned from the article is that Steven Pinker outlines five main types of swearing:

1. Dysphemistic Swearing: Used to emphasize harsh realities (e.g., "Pick up your dog’s crap").
2. Abusive Swearing: Used to insult or intimidate others (e.g., "You fucking idiot").
3. Idiomatic Swearing: Casual use of swearing for emphasis (e.g., "Get your shit together").
4. Emphatic Swearing: Highlights intensity (e.g., "That’s fucking brilliant").
5. Cathartic Swearing: Relieves pain, anger, or frustration (e.g., shouting "Fuck!" when stubbing a toe).

2025-01-14

Stablecoin Bank

In all the bluster and bullshit about crypto, stable coins are one thing that I can get behind. To quote somebody on a podcast, "stablecoins have found product market fit". This is a good, sane piece from somebody advocating for a stablecoin bank to bring stablecoin payments to the mainstream and breaking the monopoly and high interchange fees of the likes of Visa and Mastercard. #finance #banking #crypto

Apple is Killing Swift

I came across this article written in Oct 2024 only now, because the Changelog newsletter featured it in their Jan 2025 newsletter: Apple is Killing Swift - by Jacob Bartlett

Modern Swift is a slave to the top-down whims of the Apple MBA cabal: who prize secrecy and sneer at community input. Unshackled from Lattner’s influence, or even the relentless drive to craftsmanship imposed from Jobs, it’s all about shipping the latest proprietary profit driver.

It's a scathing takedown of what Apple is doing with Swift, and on the face of it, seems pretty legit. I also found insightful the section where he describes the different models of open source programming language governance.

This also made me curious about why the Ladybird browser project led by Andreas Kling chose to use Swift going forward, which he tweeted about in Aug 2024

Career Situationship

That's the phrase of the day, I guess 🙃: Danger Signs That You’re Stuck in a Career Situationship | True You Journal

Bibliotherapy

Link: Bibliotherapy: Can reading help treat your depression? | Dazed #books #depression #mentalhealth

Didn't realise bibliotherapy is actually a thing. Also reminds of the recent Japanese book I read The Bookshop Woman which was about a woman who met people in cafes, got to know them and then recommended them books.

Today, bibliotherapy involves meeting with a trained bibliotherapist (a book doctor, if you will) to discuss goals, life struggles, and how books can be helpful for progression. The session is uniquely followed by a “book prescription”, which outlines a reading list to help process and better understand the issues discussed. Each book prescription is tailored to help clients understand emotions, gain insight, and discover new perspectives. The overall goal is to provide comfort from the aspects of life that can sometimes be too heavy and blinding to process alone. It is a mechanism for making sense of challenging situations and finding reassurance for various situational triggers.

…

Ella Berthoud has been a bibliotherapist since 2007. She regularly hosts courses on the practice and offers one-on-one sessions. Speaking to Dazed, she describes bibliotherapy as the pratice of prescribing fiction to cure life ailments. “It’s the art of giving the right book at the right time to the right person,” she says, adding that she believes that issues like anxiety, depression, divorce, navigating childbirth and worrying about climate change can be alleviated through literature as putting words to a once indescribable feeling can help actualise the the validity of a reader’s own experience. While she occasionally prescribes non-fiction to her clients, Berthoud largely prescribes fiction due to her belief that this genre energises the subconscious and leads to a transformation from within.

…

Emely Rumble, a psychotherapist and decolonial literature-based therapist, likes the practice’s accessibility, affordability and adaptability. In her eyes, bibliotherapy is simple and doesn’t require complex tools or techniques. From the humble nooks of a public library, it can offer a beacon of hope or a lesson in empathy.

The Global Collapse of Coupling and Fertility

Yet another Alice Evans article: The Global Collapse of Coupling & Fertility #loneliness #masculinity #marriage #gender #feminism

There are interesting parallels between this and the loneliness article from yesterday. A lot of the material seems familiar to folks like me who have followed Alice Evans for a while. But one bit about South Asia bucking this trend of decline in coupling caught my eye.

Why are marriages high in South Asia?

South Asia has, I suggest two distinctive features:

1. Caste and kinship networks are secured through marriage, which remain vital for status and social inclusion. Girls are typically socialised to marry, obey their in-laws and stay put. A litany of relatives ask, “When are you getting married?” Singledom and divorce are both heavily stigmatised.
2. Gender gaps in smart phone ownership are especially large. Lack of access to modern technology inhibits women’s cultural leapfrogging.

With status so heavily tied to marriage and caste, and little confidence in dissent, weddings remain a firm fixture.

Both of these don't seem like desirable phenomena to me, so not exactly thrilled about the prospects of marriage rates being high due to these specific reasons. I would rather we dismantled caste and improved the gender gap in phone ownership 🙃.

Also found this great article that was linked: The relationship recession is going global

But in recent years most of the fall is coming not from the decisions made by couples, but from a marked fall in the number of couples. Had US rates of marriage and cohabitation remained constant over the past decade, America’s total fertility rate would be higher today than it was then.

The central demographic story of modern times is not just declining rates of childbearing but rising rates of singledom: a much more fundamental shift in the nature of modern societies.

Relationships are not just becoming less common, but increasingly fragile. In egalitarian Finland, it is now more common for couples who move in together to split up than to have a child, a sharp reversal of the historical norm.

2025-01-15

Is our obsession with skincare becoming a disorder?

Dermorexia: Is our obsession with skincare becoming a disorder? | Dazed #skincare #beauty

I tried to make a general point about skincare on X recently and got pulled into a bit of an argument without me having any part in initiating it. I normally don't engage in long debates over X because I find it unproductive, so I extricated myself pretty quickly.

This article makes many points I wanted to make in a very articulate manner.

While beauty has always been prized, recently it seems like culture has become more visual, shallow and individualistic. Today we are seeing our own faces more than ever before. This, combined with increasingly advanced and accessible technology (digital and surgical) and a heightened fear of ageing, has created an environment where people have developed an obsessive preoccupation with “glowing up” and the elaborate skincare routines that promise to achieve it. But as 13-year-old girls start seeking Botox and people are going into debt to afford their treatments, is this preoccupation veering into disordered territory?  

Jessica DeFino, beauty researcher, writer, and critic of The Review of Beauty, believes so. Last year, she coined a new term to describe the obsessive behaviours that we are starting to see around skincare regimens: “dermorexia”. As she defines it, dermorexia is a fixation on skincare and reaching an aesthetic goal that becomes harmful, negatively affecting the health of our skin as well as our mental health.

The beauty industry has always sold us the idea that the aesthetic of our skin is synonymous with skin health, with “clear”, poreless, glassy skin being seen as good, rather than skin that functions effectively. “Skin serves a huge purpose beyond aesthetic purposes,” DeFino tells Dazed. “The aesthetic goal of perpetually youthful, poreless skin with no texture or pigmentation is not a health goal.” 

Trying to reach that goal is often detrimental, as it can impair the skin barrier and disrupt the skin microbiome. Excessive product use and harsh ingredients can cause inflammatory conditions like acne, psoriasis, rosacea, eczema and dermatitis. As the immune system’s first line of defence, our skin is vital. “There really are full body and brain consequences to impairing it day after day with excessive skincare and harsh ingredients, particularly on younger vulnerable skin,” says DeFino.

as for what can be done

To improve skincare practices, consumers should seek advice from credible medical professionals rather than influencers. This approach helps people understand which skin conditions can be legitimately treated and which are natural variations to accept, discouraging the pursuit of unnecessary or ineffective products. However, when it comes to protecting young people, much of the onus really falls on parents. “So much responsibility and focus has been put on the young girls who are doing these elaborate skincare routines,” says DeFino. “What we really need to recognise is that they are just playing with the world that we, the adults, have created for them.”

2025-01-16

FFMPEG by example

As always I am a sucker for a good FFMPEG resource: FFmpeg By Example #ffmpeg

Wellness Culture and Partying

What wellness culture gets wrong about partying | Dazed #alcohol #drinking #wellness

As it turns out, Professor Dunbar’s research has also found that alcohol is a “very good” trigger of this system.

In practice, this means that moderate social drinking can actually have a net positive effect on our overall health. What’s more, Professor Dunbar suggests that these benefits have likely been recognised by our biology for millions of years. “It requires two enzymes acting in tandem to convert alcohol back into sugars that the body can use for energy, but these have to be in perfect balance because the intermediate step is highly poisonous,” he explains. “We share these enzymes only with the African great apes, so the ability to detoxify alcohols (in rotting fruits) is very ancient in our lineage, probably dating back around eight to ten million years.”

Still, he is careful to emphasise that it’s the laughter that actually produces the beneficial effects – and alcohol only helps us get there. “The important difference is between alcohol as a social lubricant and getting incapably drunk as fast as possible. The idea is to sit and talk to people and laugh with them,” he explains – not spend the night blackout drunk before falling asleep fully clothed next to a kebab.

NYT Amplifier

Readers Pick the Songs That Defined Their Year - The New York Times #music #playlist

YouTube Music Playlist: The Amplifier: Readers Pick the Songs That Defined Their Year

Reading as a creative act

Focus your efforts not on “finishing books” but on “answering questions.” Keep the questions you’re trying to answer top of mind. Every now and then, make a list of all the things you’re most curious about, and as you ponder the questions you can list the books or papers that seem relevant for each. The questions are primary; the books and papers are secondary. (Once you’ve formulated your list of questions and reading trails, you don’t necessarily have to take any action on it. It just helps to bring all the subconscious stuff to the surface, so that it can more effectively guide your intuitive choices around what to read next.)

Your reading list will be effectively infinite. Don’t attempt to keep this list organized. I used to maintain an organized database of more than a five hundred book recommendations in Notion, categorized by topic and author etc, and I barely touch it these days. Nowadays whenever there’s a book or paper I’d like to read I just make a note about it in my daily notes. But importantly, I don’t just jot down the name of the book/article – I also jot down why I’m interested in reading it in that moment. What question do I imagine it will answer? How do I expect the book to change me? I find that clearly stating the feelings and reasons behind my interest helps me prioritize more effectively, and it helps me relax about the high likelihood that I will never read the thing I’ve just jotted down.

Notice and relinquish your psychological attachment to the “book” as a form. The book is not the point of intellectual work (neither is the paper); it’s merely a tool that can be used in the service of it. It’s been incredibly helpful for me to slowly purge my romantic preciousness around the book as a physical object. In the past I’d keep all my books in pristine condition, never highlighting or annotating them (even for my PDF files!). Nowadays I highlight and annotate like a madman, though I’m still a little too obsessive about keeping my physical books tidy.

Don’t get too attached to your notes either. I’ve expended lots of effort on making my notes pretty, organized, and extremely thorough (see e.g. my notes on Beginning of Infinity or Bear’s neuroscience textbook), and this hasn’t proved particularly helpful to anyone. Aesthetics matter, but only for the things you or others are likely to look at often; most of your notes won’t meet this condition.

…

I’ve made this mental list of “what matters when reading,” which helps me avoid spending too much time on the wrong thing. In order, what matters most to least is:

• the output of your reading process (i.e. essays)
• the existence of the ideas in your brain
• the notes you take in your notebook
• the list of books you’ve finished

Interesting Go testing technique

if got, want: A Simple Way to Write Better Go Tests ·mtlynch.io #golang #testing

There’s an excellent Go testing pattern that too few people know. I can teach it to you in 30 seconds.

Instead of writing Go tests like this:

// The common, unrefined way.
username := GetUser()
if username != "dummyUser" {
  t.Errorf("unexpected username: got %s, want: %s", username, "dummyUser")
}

Write your tests like this, beginning each assertion with if got, want :=:

// The underused, elegant way.
if got, want := GetUser(), "dummyUser"; got != want {
  t.Errorf("username=%s, want=%s", got, want)
}

The if got, want :=: pattern works even better in table-driven tests. Here’s an example from my library for parsing social media handles.

History of the Eurodollar market

Bloomberg Odd Lots podcast has a special 3-part series on the history of the eurodollar market, hosted by two special guests. It is a very accessible introductions to one of the key facets of the global financial system.

Transcripts are available on Bloomberg as well as on the Listen Notes website: Part 1, 2 and 3.

Russia and Ukraine

‘Putin’s Revenge.’ Lucian Kim on Why Russia Invaded Ukraine #podcasts

Lucian Kim is a journalist and based on his background and what he said on his podcast, his book should be a great primer on causes that led to the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine: Putin's Revenge: Why Russia Invaded Ukraine (Woodrow Wilson Center Series): Kim, Lucian: 9780231214025: Amazon.com: Books #books

If you don't want to read the book, the podcast is a great listen.

2025-01-17

Matt Levine on Eurodollars

I talked about the Odd Lots 3-part special series on the history of the eurodollar yesterday. Here is Matt Levine adding more color to it. The whole section from his latest newsletter is worth quoting in full. #finance #banking

My rough mental model is that “dollars” are, in essence, entries on the balance sheets of US chartered banks. If you want to transact in dollars, you need to open an account at a US bank, or at a foreign bank that has a correspondent account with a US bank. And so dollar issuance is regulated by the US Federal Reserve, and anyone who transacts anywhere in dollars is, ultimately, subject to US financial regulation. This comes up a lot when I think about sanctions, or Tether, or Tether as a tool for sanctions evasion. I wrote last year, about Tether:

Dealing in dollars means going through the regulated US financial system, and the regulated US financial system, these days, is rather hostile to certain sorts of commodities dealings. (The ones involving Russia or Venezuela.) If someone came to you with “dollars, but not through the US financial system,” you might find that appealing.

But this mental model is incomplete. Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast has a nice miniseries on the story of the Eurodollar, told by Lev Menand and Josh Younger, that clarified my mental model. Eurodollars are “dollars, but not through the US financial system,” dollar-denominated liabilities of foreign banks that are not necessarily backed by dollar-denominated assets. (Like Tether used to be!) Anyway it is a good series and I learned a lot; you can listen to Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 at those links.

Distorting Darwinism

Distorting Darwinism - by Ilari Mäkelä - On Humans #evo-psych #evolution

Great article with citations talking about armchair Darwinism and its pitfalls.

As a scientific theory, evolution by natural selection is a historic success. Its use in human affairs has a murkier history. In Darwin’s time, evolutionary theory was distorted by philosophers such as Herbert Spencer, famous for coining the phrase “survival of the fittest.” Spencer was not primarily interested in evolution as a biological theory grounded in natural history. Rather, he saw in Darwinism a novel method of promoting his political ideas with the authority of scientific language. Appropriately, his slogan “survival of the fittest” became a justification for views ranging from laissez-faire capitalism to eugenics and pseudoscientific racism. In Spencer’s Social Darwinism, such measures were allowed to hurt the weak, for “the whole effort of nature is to get rid of such, to clear the world of them, to make room for better.” From the comfort of his armchair, Spencer turned Darwinism from a science of the curious into a philosophy of the powerful.

Not all accepted Spencer’s ruthless worldview. Some found themselves in favor of social solidarity and sympathy for the weak. A major spokesperson for the alternative view was the Christian orator and three-times Presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, best known for his vehement anti-Darwinism stance in the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. In his time, Bryan helped fuse creationism into the American mainstream. When faced with a false choice between evolution and humaneness, Bryan chose humaneness.

Getting started with database development

In response to a frontend developer asking about database development #databases #learning

This is a good article on how to transition from one domain to another in software development. I also found a link to this useful page: Getting started with database development

Machine Learning Algorithms

From: https://x.com/hamptonism/status/1880193410960920717/photo/1 #ml #ai #learning

High Intelligence and Predisposition to Psychological Disorders

High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities - ScienceDirect #iq

Abstract:

High intelligence is touted as being predictive of positive outcomes including educational success and income level. However, little is known about the difficulties experienced among this population. Specifically, those with a high intellectual capacity (hyper brain) possess overexcitabilities in various domains that may predispose them to certain psychological disorders as well as physiological conditions involving elevated sensory, and altered immune and inflammatory responses (hyper body). The present study surveyed members of American Mensa, Ltd. (n = 3715) in order to explore psychoneuroimmunological (PNI) processes among those at or above the 98th percentile of intelligence. Participants were asked to self-report prevalence of both diagnosed and/or suspected mood and anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and physiological diseases that include environmental and food allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease. High statistical significance and a remarkably high relative risk ratio of diagnoses for all examined conditions were confirmed among the Mensa group 2015 data when compared to the national average statistics. This implicates high IQ as being a potential risk factor for affective disorders, ADHD, ASD, and for increased incidence of disease related to immune dysregulation. Preliminary findings strongly support a hyper brain/hyper body association which may have substantial individual and societal implications and warrants further investigation to best identify and serve this at-risk population.

2025-01-18

Site improvements

Finally made some progress on adding minor features to the daily log website:

• Added an extension to autolink plain URLs in Markdown: Add Linkify extension · deepakjois/debugjois.dev@1b92663 · GitHub
• Fixed a bug in the way images are rendered in the newsletter Markdown: Fix image rendering in newsletter · deepakjois/debugjois.dev@e555f87 · GitHub
• Add anchor links to h3 and h4 headers that appear on hover:Add anchors for headings for easy linking · deepakjois/debugjois.dev@3c42391 · GitHub