Daily Log Digest – Week 38, 2025
2025-09-22
Goodyear Welt Construction
First encountered this when I was reading details about my Thursday boots.
Renowned for its durability and ability to be resoled repeatedly, Goodyear-welt construction involves stitching a welt—a strip of leather—around the shoe's perimeter, creating a cavity. After filling the cavity with the shank and cork, the sole is attached, providing strength and water resistance. This construction method results in shoes that are not only long-lasting but also easily repairable, making them a timeless investment in quality craftsmanship.
2025-09-23
Alexey Guzey on the insecurities of the privileged
I ran out of money a year ago, spent the last of my savings on a prostitute in Hong Kong, and became a commie. #success #humanity
Many of my friends, no matter how successful and no matter how many gratitude affirmations they do, feel like the world is deeply uncaring, maybe even hostile towards them, ready to abandon them as soon as they stop being useful. In fact, the more successful they are, the more suspicious of people around them they become and the worse this feeling gets.
If there's at least one thing I learned this year, it's that even when I'm completely useless to the world, it's not going to abandon me. And I wish nothing more than to make sure that every single human, no matter who and where they are, knew this too.
Refining Taste
As individuals, how can we refine our tastes? Some general advice:
- Great artists have great taste. Being able to recognize good work is a prerequisite to producing it.
- You grow your taste by actively analyzing why one option is more tasteful than another.
- You develop taste by exposing yourself to more tasteful content. Finding a community is a fast-track to finding tasteful content.
- You also develop taste by creating. Creation highlights the inherent limitations, constraints, and difficulties of the medium.
- “What if” exercises – where you intentionally drop one ingredient and see what happens – are a great way to understand why something is necessary, if it is necessary at all!
- Always be looking for more tasteful communities. The beginner community is rarely the same as the advanced community, and both have a place in your journey.
- Not all “advanced” communities have taste. You need taste to judge taste. (e.g. in software, many communities revolve around one flavor or another of pedantry, which is not equivalent to taste.)
- Taste is contextual. Yet, someone with taste in one domain can weakly judge taste in a different domain. This video of Chef Wang, an extremely tasteful Sichuan chef, trying a fine dining vegan restaurant is fascinating.
Two types of ADHD
In an era of split attention, there is more than one type of ADHD | Psyche Ideas
ADHD has long been seen as a neurodevelopmental condition, typically showing up in childhood with hallmarks like distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. For years, scientists have known that this condition runs in families; genetics play a big role. Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) – both of which boost the brain’s dopamine, a chemical messenger tied to focus and reward – are mainstays of treatment. They are often very helpful for those who need them.
This is the ‘classical’ form of ADHD, one that is thought to be wired into the brain from early on. People with this condition might struggle to sit still or to finish a task, but with the right support (structure, medication) they often thrive. Their self-control and focus commonly improve as they mature.
Recently, though, we have been making a case that a broader conceptualisation of ADHD is warranted. In our work as psychiatrists, we began seeing a subset of patients whose ADHD-related symptoms were barely nudged using the usual stimulant-plus-structure playbook. This pattern signalled an attention dysregulation that requires different remedies from the classical approach – and, in turn, a shift in how we understand the disorder.
Rather than being a single, uniform condition, we believe ADHD is best understood through a spectrum model. This spectrum is anchored at one end by a form rooted in biology, and at the other end by patterns that are shaped by modern digital life. We call these poles Type I and Type II ADHD. Most people fall somewhere between these poles, with both biology and environment shaping their attention to some degree. But we can use the two labels to distinguish cases based on what seems to be the predominant factor. Type I ADHD, the classical form, reflects neurodevelopmental traits. But for someone who is more Type II, the dysregulation may emerge later, driven largely by overstimulation in a screen-saturated world.
Here is a link to ther paper mentioned in the article: Genes and screens: attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in the digital age | The British Journal of Psychiatry | Cambridge Core
Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer
Modern Monetary Theory: A Primer - by Brett Scott #mmt #monetary-theory
This is a must watch for folks, especially if they have never heard about MMT.
Modern Monetary Theory - MMT - is a controversial way of describing the monetary system that gets attacked by conservatives and left-wingers alike. In this video I'll show you why it's a really good idea to learn the basic concepts of MMT, and how it has a ‘Copernican’ vibe which triggers many people.
Conservatives despise MMT, not because it’s incorrect as a descriptive framework, but because it opens up the public imagination in ways that they feel are dangerous. They believe it to be safer to maintain inaccurate mythologies about money as a scarce commodity in order to keep the public imagination constrained.
In fact, many conservatives are joined by left-wingers in this regard, because many of the traditional battles between right and left are fights about what to do with the apparently constrained public purse. MMT is an irritant to both, because it messes with the traditional battle lines that both sides use to define themselves.
2025-09-26
The Rise of Matcha
BBC Audio | The Food Programme | The Rise of Matcha
This is the most accessible and comprehensive reporting about the matcha craze that I have come across. Thoroughly enjoyed listening to it, and gained a lot of insights from it.
As sales of matcha continue to boom, Leyla Kazim traces the story of the powdered green tea from centuries-old Japanese tradition to global health trend phenomenon. We look behind the social media videos and headlines to find out more about the reported matcha shortage, how the matcha supply chain is reacting, and ask what might happen next.
Also in the programme Leyla learns about some of the misconceptions we have about matcha, including the issues around the term 'ceremonial grade'; we have a report from Kyoto Obubu Tea Farms in Japan about how tea farmers are coping with the sudden boom; and Leyla digs into the health claims about matcha with dietician and scientist at King's College London, Dr Emily Leeming.