Wonder of Science
• Great Twitter account. Love this post with a video of trees viewed from above: Crown shyness is a phenomenon where trees’ uppermost branches avoid touching, forming a delicate web of natural negative space. This is thought to be a growth response to prevent ongoing abrasion damage and potential pest invasion.
Harmonoia def:
• An itchy sense of dread when life feels just a hint too peaceful – when everyone seems to get along suspiciously well, with an eerie stillness that makes you want to brace for the inevitable collapse, or burn it down yourself. From harmony + paranoia. Pronounced “hahr-muh-noi-uh.” Thanks Mateo for the heads up.
From Stress to Strength
• Check out this Grand Rounds talk I gave in April on how to turn stress into strength.
Master Artists
• Cool X post from The Cultural Tutor on the first and last works of famous painters. If you haven’t seen anything from Cultural Tutor, his story is inspiring; he went from working at McDonald’s to making a living teaching his 1.7 Twitter followers.
Heart Disease Prevention
• I really appreciated this post from Louisville’s own Dr. John Mandrola, presenting opinions similar to Peter Attia’s re: prevention of heart disease by starting lipid management very young.
– “I now believe that younger lower-risk patients may have the most to gain from primary prevention. An age paradox if you will. Here are three arguments…”
– “First, every statin trial looks like the picture below” which is an image from a NEJM article showing the gradual separation between the statin and placebo groups.
– “Don’t misunderstand this as a statin article. I used statins as an example of primary prevention because we know the drugs provide a consistent 25% reduction in future events. You could also insert BP-lowering drugs or cessation of smoking. Primary prevention can also come in the form of diet and exercise—though we have less empirical data. The advantage of lifestyle intervention is that the unknown unknowns from a taking a drug for decades are absent. And, of course, primary prevention is also not one thing. (To maximize cardiac benefit, patients can do all these things.).
Plastics
• Careful with those plastics, I have to post the entire url here: https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/21/health/microplastics-testicles-study-wellness/index.html ; thanks Robin for the link.
Quotes
It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.
– Epictetus
I began to understand that the goal of psychic development is the self. There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, at the beginning; later, everything points toward the centre. This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned.
– Carl Jung in Memories, Dreams, Reflections
