Blagovest Gospodinov

deep interest in deep learning

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

I have never slept next to Kate.

The only thing we do in bed is have sex.

We have separate beds and homes.

Should you do the same? Not necessarily. The science is split. Here's the data:

1) Your partner does wake you up when you sleep together.

7 nights of actigraphy sleep measurement in 55 couples (aged 18 to 72, no sleep disorders) showed about 6 partner triggered awakenings per night, on average. Roughly 1 in 5 of wake ups was set off by the partner stirring first, and participants slept through only about half of their partner’s awake time.

The catch: the study never compared sharing a bed to sleeping alone.

2) Yet couples who sleep together report sleeping better.

A survey of about 1,000 adults found that sharing a bed with a partner tracked with less insomnia, less fatigue, more sleep, and better mental health than sleeping alone.

The catch: self-reported, cross-sectional, no follow-up. Healthier, happier people may simply be the ones more likely to share beds, so this is associative at best.

3) Women's sleep might take the hit from sharing a bed.

A study of 10 couples had each person sleep at least 10 nights alone and 10 nights together. Women slept measurably worse with a partner in the bed, on both actigraphy and their own ratings. Men reported sleeping better, subjectively.

4) Polysomnography, the gold standard for measuring sleep and sleep stages, points to REM gains with co-sleeping.

A study of 12 couples found co-sleeping came with about 10% more REM sleep, less fragmented REM, longer undisturbed REM runs, and tighter sleep-stage syncing between partners, alongside more limb movement.

5) Synced sleep tracks with lower blood pressure and inflammation.

In 46 couples that slept together, the more in sync their sleepwake timing, the lower their sleeping blood pressure (strongest in women) and the lower their inflammation (both sexes). The link held even after adjusting for how often they actually shared a bed, so the driver looks like the synchrony, not sharing the bed.

Only two of these studies compared the same person in both beds, and both are tiny: 10 and 12 couples. One found the result flips by sex. The rest is correlation. The answer is individual. For some couples the shared bed improves sleep. For others, separate beds are the right move.

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Fred Rogers met with a child psychologist every week for 22 years to build his show. She shaped everything: every script, prop, and song. The whole point was to give a child's nervous system time to slow down. In 1984, a single regulatory decision ended all of it.

The psychologist was Dr. Margaret McFarland, who co-founded the Arsenal Family and Children's Center alongside Benjamin Spock and Erik Erikson. She and Rogers understood that the prefrontal cortex in children, the part of the brain that controls impulse, emotion, and attention, takes decades to fully develop. At the start of every episode, Rogers tied his sneakers and changed his sweater while children settled in. Those pauses were intentional, designed to help a child's nervous system shift into a calmer, more focused state.

What ended it had nothing to do with child development science. In 1984, Reagan's FCC chairman Mark Fowler abolished the advertising limits that had protected children's programming from commercial pressure. Toy companies moved within months. Between 1984 and 1985, cartoons tied to toy lines increased by 300%, from a handful of shows to more than 40 animated series. In almost every case, the toy was designed first. The cartoon was built to sell it.

Researchers later put numbers to what parents were already noticing. A 2011 study in Pediatrics from the University of Virginia tested 60 four-year-olds across three groups: one watching SpongeBob, which cuts scene every 11 seconds; one watching a slow PBS show, which cuts scene every 34 seconds; and one drawing. Nine minutes later, all three took tests on attention, impulse control, short-term memory, and problem-solving. The SpongeBob group scored significantly worse across every measure.

In the 1970s, children began watching television around age 4. Research from pediatrician Dimitri Christakis found that by 2009, the average age of first screen exposure had dropped to 4 months, as the content got faster and the audience got younger. Researchers separately found that each additional hour of daily screen time at ages 1 or 3 raised the risk of attention problems at age 7 by 9%.

[Google Earth @googleearth]

Prepare for takeoff. ✈️ Flight simulator is now available globally on web to all users. https://t.co/hQP0No142P

We've recently added many our most powerful professional desktop features to web. Elevation profiles, new import types, but there's always been one other feature you've been asking us to add to the web version of Google Earth, just for fun...

Where will you fly? Share your best maneuvers, views, and flyovers with us!

[The European Horizon 🇪🇺 @europeanhorizon]

🇪🇺🏦 ECB Temporarily Restricts Revolut’s New Product Launches in Europe

The ECB has temporarily restricted Revolut from launching new financial products in Europe due to concerns over the speed of its service approvals and rollouts

Source: FT

[WELT @welt]

Mehrheit der Deutschen spricht sich für Politikerbeleidigung als Straftat aus https://t.co/w3RITsVodf

[Chandresh @Chandre86817434]

German is even worse. Let's say you have a job for 50k in Germany from Monday to Friday and now you decide to drive Uber during weekends, then first of all you have to change your tax class. Now the government will start taxing you even more. Your total work hours shouldn't be increased beyond certain amount and so on. Basically they make it so difficult for you to earn anything apart from your job.

In short, German system is designed to discourage you from working more, discourage you from starting business, and discourage you from doing anything other than your 40 hours job.

[Andrew Rose @__drewface]

My wedding advice:

1) invite those who will always be there for you through thick and thin, in life and death (eg. eternal relations)
2) make your marriage vows in front of them, and ask them to help you keep those vows.
3) dress in a way that shows you are in love, and ask everyone else to dress well and gaily
4) hire a good photographer
5) remember this day is for you to look your spouse in the eyes and to promise her that you will be one with her, in life, in death, in legacy, in name, in family, in wealth, in health, in sickness, in home, in public. It's for you two to make a public union, whatever union you most want. Just remember, today is when you get the power of your whole community to help you make a union real.

Everything else is optional, imo. You can't really do the above steps for less than $1000 easily, but you can definitely do it for far less than $10,000. Our wedding cost ~$7k, and we bought food and rented a venue, which were the majority of costs. We could have used a friend's backyard and cooked barbecue and it would have been the exact same day in effect.

But I would say, do not skip any of 1-5 if you want my advice. Especially the good photographer advice. Do not just pay a friend. Do not just rely on smartphones. Your wedding photos are very, very nice artifacts to have, and I'm glad my family will have them to remember our marriage when we eventually pass.

[Aaron Bastani @AaronBastani]

It’s hard to fathom how crazy the system is after £100k. There is effectively a *60%* rate on £100-125k (because you lose tax allowance) as well as losing taxing free childcare, free child hours.

Should obviously be rectified.

[Telegraph Money @MoneyTelegraph]

Matthew Griffiths and his wife were ready to start a family. Financially, they were in a good place: they owned their home and both had high-flying jobs paying six-figure salaries.

But when their first child was born, the joy of bringing new life into the world was soon met with the sinking realisation the tax system would punish them for it.

This is the brutal reality of Britain's tax system ⤵️
https://t.co/JJHpTE2sv9

[NEXTA @nexta_tv]

😳 Dopamine websites are becoming a new trend in South Korea

These services let users endlessly browse food delivery menus, read reviews, fill shopping carts, and even track a "courier." The only catch: you can't actually place an order.

There are also virtual smoke breaks, where users join anonymous chat rooms and socialize with strangers, recreating the feeling of taking a break without smoking a single cigarette.

The idea is simple: get the familiar dopamine hit without spending money, smoking, or giving in to other impulsive habits.

[brontë bar wench @a22kay]

a pale immortal trading their immortality for the love of a human is actually a very important trope to me

[Flesh Simulator @fleshsimulator]

I can see how they came up with pokemon

[Bryan Johnson @bryan_johnson]

never waste a good crisis

[@levelsio @levelsio]

I think the challenge is that everyone can now build apps

But

1) almost nobody has distribution (like an audience), or

2) the money to pay for distribution (ads or UGC), or

3) the creative genius to get distribution for free (classically called guerilla marketing)

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Those stacked green mats are the reason serious producers tore this whole setup out.

They're called fiscoli, and you cannot get the old paste out of them. It goes rancid between pressings. A traditional mill has to rebuy them every single year because last season's oil ferments inside the fibers and bleeds winey, fusty defects into this season's fresh batch. The fix the whole industry landed on was deleting the mats and moving to sealed stainless steel centrifuges. Most mills on earth already made that switch.

The "without heat" line is doing the marketing, and it's aimed at the wrong variable. "Cold pressed" has no legal definition at all. The regulated term is "cold extracted," and it only certifies the paste stayed under 27°C. That's 80°F. Warmer than a hot summer afternoon.

The number that actually decides whether the oil is good is the one nobody filmed: hours between the olive leaving the tree and hitting the mill. The best estates press within hours of picking. Every hour after that, the oil oxidizes whether you touched it with heat or not.

So the open press oozing into a steel tub reads as the purest version on camera. On the analysis it carries the most oxygen exposure, the highest peroxide levels, and the shortest shelf life of any method in the room.

The romance is real. The quality ranking is upside down.

[Matthias Schmidt @eurofounder]

Only the EU can unironically present €2,000 pre-tax as competitive salary

[NOBUNAGA🇯🇵🏯_夏樹蒼依 @japan_nobunaga]

USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.

I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.

Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.

In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.

This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.

The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.

So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.

The owner asked if everything was okay.

"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."

He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"

I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.

I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.

So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.

And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.

Reborn.

A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.

[Breaking Aviation News & Videos @aviationbrk]

NEW: Front landing gear of a Lufthansa Boeing 787-9 collapses while parked at the gate at Frankfurt Airport.

No statement has currently been made regarding the cause or whether there were any injuries.

[𐙚⋆ @voidwithverses]

“An enemy will agree, but a friend will argue”

— Russian Proverb

[[email protected] @igorhansachat]

I love Germany. It is a great country. But there are still things that my mind cannot comprehend.

Like imagine a young couple with a kid. The kid is going to kindergarten. No relatives in a country. No money for private child care (granny).

This is my situation btw.

I am working. My spouse isn't. She wants to work.

Problem 1:
- The kindergarten is closing at 15:30. Meaning she/me must finish at 15:00 and run to the kindergarten.

Alright, maybe working part-time is an option? Maybe.

Problem 2:
- The kindergarten has vacations.

E.g. in my case, there was a winter vacation for 2 weeks and right now the summer vacation is upcoming for 2 more weeks.

Meaning there is no other option but someone have to take the vacation. On the same date as kindergarten is closed. On the same date when it is vacations in the school. It ends on the same day as in the school => half of German families is flying back to Germany.

Meaning you are mandatory to take your vacations EXACTLY ON THESE DAYS. Meaning that Kindergarten is dictating you on when you will take your vacation.

Freedom of choice, yeah.

Problem 3:
- Any morning you may wake up to the message: hey we are understuffed today, please keep your kid at home. In some kindergartens they just ask you. In some they really deny kids from entering the kindergarten that day.

Just no comments. Imagine you both working and then one day one of you must stay home.

Problem 4:
- If something happens in the kindergarten, e.g. kid vomit (and this happens!) - there is mandatory 2 days break because it could be an infection.

=> You have to take care of the kid at home => you have to take vacation days for it.

I love Germany yes but I do not understand why children daycare is dictating on how should we take our vacation days. You obviously may take it on other days. But then who will take care of kids on these days when the kindergarten is closed? Yes, you, but as unpaid vacation.

And btw I pay for the kindergarten, it is not free in my region.

P.S. Our kindergarten is great and people there are super lovely! My son absolutely loves going there!