mad

• madDec 11, 2023, 2:01 AM

  40 points

  2

  in reply to: Bezzi’s comment on: Deeply Cover Car Crashes?

  Hi! This is my area of expertise—I work in the road safety field and spent 9 months investigating fatal car crashes. You are right that there are definite “Darwin Award” candidates but there are also deeply relateable ones that could happen to anyone.

  Some anecdotes off the top of my head:

  • A person accidentally had their car in reverse instead of forward when manouvering after leaving a parking spot. This resulted in their car falling into the ocean and the passenger dying.

  • A very common crash type that usually results in very little damage: two vehicles on a back street colliding. At this particular crash, one of the passengers died.

  • An ambulence transporting a passenger (so no sirens) was hit by a vehicle driving in the wrong direction. The ambulence passenger died. (i.e. it is not always the driver at fault who dies)

  • A parent was driving their child home from school, so no doubt took this route every day and was presumably not drunk/​high. On this day, they ended up hitting a tree when they were going around a corner (cause: speed? wet? tyres had gone bald? loose sand on the road? the curve was too tight for the speed limit of the road? kid said/​did something distracting? who knows! probably a combo!)

  Data shows that changing the law on what is permitted (speeds, BAC, seat belts, etc) results in corresponding reductions in fatal crashes. Fatal crashes have halved in Australia (my jurisdiction) since around 1980, despite the population rising.

  Here’s a good infographic from the WHO showing each country’s level of regulation around driving and related activities: https://​​extranet.who.int/​​roadsafety/​​death-on-the-roads/​​#ticker

  The thing about human error is that you make errors ALL THE TIME. You, or other road users, should not die because of your errors. And the errors that tend to result in fatal crashes are not “I was drunk and on meth and speeding” (though those obviously do), the ones that more commonly result in fatal crashes are “I looked away from the road for a second to adjust my GPS and hit a pedestrian”.

  You’ll see statistics quoted around the place about human error is involved in 94% of crashes. That is highly misleading. That doesn’t mean 94% of fatal crashes involved a sleepy drunk person at the wheel, “human error” includes stuff like misjudging the gap in traffic, not reading a sign correctly, etc. The sorts of mistakes we all make on the road all the time.

  As a road safety professional, it’s my role to make sure the road is as easy to perceive as possible (e.g. ensuring adequate sight distances, signs that can be noticed and interpreted at appropriate places, sensible line markings, etc), but also to make the roads forgiving of errors when they do happen.

  I think this has ended up being a kind of a rant and I apologise for that but this is a very common misconception and is very damaging to efforts to advance road safety.

• madJul 10, 2023, 10:27 PM

  23 points

  7

  on: I think Michael Bailey’s dis­mis­sal of my au­to­g­y­nephilia ques­tions for Scott Alexan­der and Aella makes very lit­tle sense

  As a cis woman I experience both autogynephilia and autoandrophilia and I agree this should be talked about more. For me it’s part of more generalised “power fantasies”, with the power of being attractive to men (as any gender) being exciting in the same way e.g. the idea being worshipped as a goddess is exciting.

  One of my oldest and strongest fantasies is of going to a frat party and being the most beautiful woman anyone there has ever seen. I’d imagine for other people it is less about power and more about whatever their personal psychology enjoys.

• madFeb 23, 2023, 10:52 PM

  20 points

  9

  on: Somerville Roads Get­ting More Danger­ous?

  I’m a traffic engineer and this sort of thing is more or less my area of expertise. I feel weird posting “I have nothing to add, seems legit” but I feel like if I wrote a blog post like this as a layman I’d like to know I wasn’t completely off my rocker.

  My only suggestion would be if the data allows you to also get “serious injuries”—those are a bit less variable than fatalities and will be able to give you a better picture of the trend, because there’s also going to be more of them.

  I used to do fatal crash investigation, and fatalities can be very random. You hear about horrific car crashes at high speeds where everyone walks away without a scratch. What you don’t hear about is the sort of crash I attended once: a tiny, slow crash on a back road at a low speed, where two cars hit each other at a small suburban intersection. Barely any damage to the cars. No sign of the crash on the road or the vicinity (fatal crashes often have damaged vegetation, marks on the road, etc). But one of the passengers was an 84 year old woman and that crash was more than her body could take. If she hadn’t been in the car, there would probably have been zero fatalities in that crash. I saw another similar crash with a man in his 80s.

  That was what surprised me the most about doing fatal crash investigation: I was expecting there to be men in their 20s and 30s who were drunk or high. I wasn’t expecting the number of suicides but it didn’t surprise me. But the number of “old people” who died, I hadn’t expected that even though it’s so obvious in retrospect.

  But yeah, that sort of thing is why I think “serious injuries” or “hospitalisations” might be a better metric for you: there will be 10-100x more of them so the trend will be less noisy.

• madFeb 1, 2023, 10:54 PM

  3 points

  1

  in reply to: ChristianKl’s comment on: Iron defi­cien­cies are very bad and you should treat them

  Sorry I only just saw this post. I would not classify myself as “in the field”, for what it’s worth. I would consider “my field” to be traffic engineering, as I have 10+ years experience in that (not including undergrad). My experience in the field of nutrition is less than that (a 3 year undergrad degree).

  The main part of my post is a blog post I made aimed at an intelligent lay audience, so I did leave some nuances out. I do not consider the fact that the NRVs are published by a body that doesn’t (and with current technology can’t) know the “true” RDI to be the major shortfall that you clearly think it is.

• madJan 20, 2023, 9:36 PM

  1 point

  0

  on: COVID con­ta­gious­ness af­ter nega­tive tests?

  I mean, you don’t? You can look it up but recent advice was something like 10 days after first symptoms is when contagiousness reduces.

  Anecdotally, my husband was sick on Friday and took rapid tests on Friday and Saturday (when he was very sick) and got negative. Then on Monday his rapid test was positive (followed by a positive PCR on Tuesday). So he was no doubt contagious on two days when he gave negative tests.

• madJan 12, 2023, 11:50 AM

  39 points

  0

  on: Iron defi­cien­cies are very bad and you should treat them

  I have always respected your posts so when I saw your title was about iron deficiencies I was buckled in. You know that old adage, “when the newspaper reports on your area of expertise it’s crap, and yet you believe the rest of it”—I always pay special attention to what people I trust/​respect say about things I know a lot about, especially when there’s a lot of misinformation out there.

  I have just completed the requirements for a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition with a focus in biochemistry. I am not a dietitian and will freely admit I know less about iron than you do after this lit review. But what you said makes sense and is scientifically grounded and dovetails with the stuff I know “formally”. tl;dr I am thrilled to know that I can trust all your future posts.

  I did recently write a draft blog post about iron aimed at a general audience as part of an internship, and I think a few of the things I say in there will provide useful context and background.

  And yes, menstruating is definitely the reason why women are recommended more—I found the original paper where that recommendation comes from and that’s what they talk about.

  One thing I have to add - ‘black stools’ are also a common side effect of iron supplementation, as well as constipation, that doesn’t mean you have iron toxicity. But taking “chelated iron” avoids that side effect.

  ---

  Before I start talking about iron, I want to take a step back and talk about two concepts in nutrition that are often not well communicated to the public: the RDI and the EAR.

  You’ve probably seen food labels that talk about the “% RDI” of different nutrients, and you might even know that it stands for “recommended dietary intake”. There’s another concept that goes along with it that you won’t find on nutrition labels: the EAR, or “estimated average requirement”. The RDI is the daily intake that will be enough for 97.5% of people, and is used when checking if an individual is consuming enough of a nutrient. The EAR is the intake that will be enough for 50% of people, and is used in nutrition research to check if a population is consuming enough of a nutrient.

  These numbers are pretty close for most nutrients, but for iron they can be very different. The iron RDI for adult men is 8 mg/​day and the EAR is 6 mg/​day. Similarly, the RDI for post-menopausal women is 8 mg/​day and the EAR is 5 mg/​day. So the RDI and EAR are 2-3 mg apart. In comparison, for women who menstruate, the RDI is 18 mg/​day and the EAR is 8 mg/​day — a 10 mg difference!

  To put that in concrete terms, imagine 100 women of childbearing age in a room (and none are pregnant or breastfeeding). 50 of them would be perfectly healthy consuming 8 mg or less of iron a day. 48 would need between 8 mg and 18 mg a day. And two of them would need even more than 18 mg!

  So, even though the food labels recommend 18 mg of iron for women in this age range, half of them will have enough iron eating less than half the recommended amount — and 2% will need even more than the recommendation! This is why some people will have low iron levels, and other people who eat almost identical diets will have good levels. There’s a lot of variation in iron needs in this particular group and it comes down to variability in menstrual losses: for example, some women in this age group don’t menstruate at all and some may experience very heavy periods.

  I’ve noticed this in the vegetarian community: a lot of people will say vegetarians don’t need to take iron supplements because their own iron levels are great, citing spinach or some other iron-rich vegetable as the reason for this. A cup of raw spinach contains 0.8 mg of iron, and the RDI is 18 mg. A typical daily “women’s multivitamin” contains around 5 mg of iron, the equivalent of 6 cups of raw spinach, every single day! For comparison, 100g of tofu contains about 3 mg of iron and 100g of beef contains about 3.5 mg of iron. It is most likely that people claiming that they don’t need iron supplements happen to be ‘lucky’ and need lower intakes.

  On the subject of vegetarianism, contrary to popular belief, vegetarians and vegans tend to consume about the same amount of iron as people eating a typical western diet and are at similar risk of deficiency (https://​​academic.oup.com/​​ajcn/​​article/​​70/​​3/​​353/​​4714844 and https://​​www.mja.com.au/​​journal/​​2013/​​199/​​4/​​iron-and-vegetarian-diets ). However, due to the reduced absorption of iron from plant foods (18% is absorbed from a mixed western diet but only 10% from a vegetarian diet), it is recommended that vegetarians consume 80% more iron.

  This is because there are two types of iron: heme iron, from animal sources, and non-heme iron, from plant sources. Heme iron is more easily absorbed, which is why vegetarians need more iron. A misconception about heme and non-heme iron is that all iron in meat is heme, but in fact, more than half of iron in meat is non-heme. So, 100g of beef would contain about 2 mg of non-heme iron and 1.5 mg of heme iron, while 100g of tofu contains 3 mg of non-heme iron. Non-heme iron absorption can be improved by consumption of vitamin C, which is abundant in most vegetarian and vegan diets.

  So, where does all that leave us?

  The only way to be sure of your iron status is to have a blood test, as I recommended in the previous article [unpublished; basically a much simpler version of the OP]. If your levels are low, you may want to incorporate more iron-rich foods in your diet, and ensure you consume vitamin C around the same time. You may also want to consider a supplement, especially if you have heavy periods. Whatever you do, you should get follow-up blood tests to ensure that it is working.

  Iron supplements can often cause dark stools and constipation, so you may want to try several brands to find one that works for you. Some iron supplements contain “chelated iron”, which is more gentle on the stomach. [plug for advertised product removed]. For treatment of deficiencies under appropriate medical supervision, high-dose Ferrograd-C is available from pharmacies [in Australia]—though this contains non-chelated iron.

  Finally, do not take high doses of iron supplements outside of medical supervision: they can be dangerous.

• madDec 30, 2022, 2:59 AM

  9 points

  6

  on: Effec­tive ways to find love?

  I’m a straight woman who for whatever reason seems to date a lot of men who have never had a girlfriend before (as I get older it is happening less for obvious reasons) - but these include two men who had never been kissed in their mid-30s. I tend to mostly date “rationalist” type guys.

  The other advice given here is useful as general advice, but I would advise you to ask for specific advice/​feedback about yourself /​ your dating profile /​ etc. I’m happy to provide that if you want it, but an appropriate subreddit or facebook group would likely be better.

  You say you spend a lot of time on dating apps “to no avail”—where are you getting blocked? Are you getting no matches? Are you getting matches but the conversations don’t lead to dates? Are you going on first dates but not getting second dates?

  Getting no matches implies your standards might be too high or your profile/​photos might suck.

  No conversations implies that you might not be engaging women effectively or you might be engaging effectively but not want to seem pushy by asking for a date.

  First dates but no second dates might imply anything from you smell bad to you come across weirdly to you’re just not going on enough of them.

• madSep 21, 2022, 3:16 AM

  11 points

  0

  on: What key nu­tri­ents are re­quired for daily en­ergy?

  Uh, I don’t know where to begin. This is like, the entire field of nutrition.

  Vitamin D does not need to be obtained from the diet, it is primarily produced in the skin (from cholesterol, which you don’t need to eat; your liver produces all you need from any food) after sun exposure. The amount of sun exposure required depends on the time of year, time of day, cloud cover, and amount of skin exposed. VitD can be obtained in the diet but pretty much only from fish and food that has been supplemented. I assume you are now taking high-dose supplements, because the amount in a typical multivitamin isn’t enough.

  That said, fatigue is associated with iron deficiency, and if you menstruate there is a ~25% chance you aren’t eating enough to have optimum levels—look into a blood test. (If you don’t menstruate, you’re probably fine, but a blood test can’t hurt).

  I am like 2 months away from having an undergraduate degree in nutrition, and I’m studying in Australia, so I recommend this website to you: https://​​www.nrv.gov.au/​​

  It outlines all the nutrients (from carbohydrates/​protein/​fat to the vitamins and minerals) and gives the recommended dietary intakes for each. It describes the scientific basis for each, with citations.

  This is a calculator you can use to get a ‘personalised’ recommendation for each nutrient: https://​​www.nrv.gov.au/​​nutrients-energy-calc

  EDIT: Thinking about it a bit, is the question you actually meant to ask “what are common nutritional deficiencies that I might not know about”? That depends on many things, but Vitamin D would be #1 on my list.

• madSep 5, 2022, 3:22 AM

  3 points

  0

  in reply to: Jayson_Virissimo’s comment on: (Link) I’m Miss­ing a Chunk of My Brain

  Apparently the extent to which Phineas was affected by the injury is exaggerated, see: https://​​skeptoid.com/​​episodes/​​4744

Perth, Western Aus­tralia – ACX Mee­tups Every­where 2022

• madDec 24, 2021, 1:35 AM

  4 points

  in reply to: Centhart’s comment on: Help figur­ing out my sex­u­al­ity?

  What you are saying in all your comments is perfectly consistent with how I’ve heard people say about their experience as asexuals. Have a read of asexual literature, maybe post on a few asexual forums with your experiences.

  At the end of the day, I am 100% sure there are people with similar experiences to you who call themselves asexual and also who call themselves allosexual (not asexual).

  At the end of the days, these labels are a personal thing, like deciding how to cut your hair. There’s no right or wrong way, just what makes you feel good.

  What links here?

  • Help figur­ing out my sex­u­al­ity? by Centhart (Dec 22, 2021, 8:28 PM; 13 points)

• madDec 22, 2021, 11:37 PM

  34 points

  on: Help figur­ing out my sex­u­al­ity?

  My advice is don’t stress too much about labels.

  I’m a woman who dates in kink-adjacent circles, and I’m a dommy switch so I have seen a lot of subby guys’ profiles. You seem pretty normal, you seem like the sort of guy I date, down to the social awkwardness/​lack of experience. I have a goddess kink so your specific fantasy is right up my alley. There are lots of women like me.

  I’ve dated men who have been pretty normal but just didn’t enjoy vaginal sex, we still had sex but just not PIV. I’ve dated men with fetishes who also enjoyed sex.

  If you WANT some labels, the different types of attraction might speak to you:

  https://​​lgbtq.unc.edu/​​resources/​​exploring-identities/​​asexuality-attraction-and-romantic-orientation/​​

  As you said about the painting, it may be that you are attracted to women in an aesthetic way.

  The good thing about labels is that people don’t generally police them too hard because they’re never perfect; I myself identify as straight but it’s not a perfect label for me, just very very close.

  If it makes you happy to call yourself asexual or demisexual or whatever, then do it, try it on. You can always change your mind later. Maybe try joining local ace groups and talking about your experience with them, or reading through relevant subreddits.

• madNov 20, 2021, 11:23 PM

  1 point

  in reply to: WorfsTarg’s comment on: Which booster shot to get and when?

  Why don’t you phone around GPs and ask to find one who will give you AZ? My brother is 29 and in Perth and was able to get AZ in early July that way. I’m sure you’ll find a doctor who will do it for you, unless you live remote.

• madOct 7, 2021, 11:11 PM

  25 points

  0

  on: Book sum­mary: Selfish Rea­sons to Have More Kids

  Something I found very interesting/​important in the book that you skipped over was the bit at the very beginning where children were asked what they wanted from their parents, and rather than asking for more extracurriculars or later bedtimes or anything like that they said that their parents seemed stressed/​sad and they wanted their parents to be happier. I found that very lovely/​compelling.

• madOct 6, 2021, 3:43 AM

  2 points

  on: Us­ing Ra­tion­al­ity in Mafia

  I played mafia on the xkcd forums for a while (and it’s restarting on the new xkcd forums: https://​​ramenchef.net/​​nxf/​​viewforum.php?f=6 ) and I quickly came to realise that I wanted to have fun, and attempting to do everything optimally to have the best chance of winning wasn’t necessarily the most fun (because it has a huge cost in reading pages and pages of game content).

  I enjoy the logic puzzle aspect (how to best use powers/​resources, what can contradict each other, etc) but not the social deduction. Same with other games I play, like SH or The Resistence.

  So in the end, I don’t take it too seriously. I have fun, I play my way, because of the vibe on the xkcd forums the people there accept my attitude (or are frustrated by it, but in a friendly way?), and it’s a kind of win-win situation. When logic puzzle stuff becomes possible I hook in on that and try to work things out.

  Mostly I find I enjoy moderating (running) games, and am currently modding one which is having a really good reception.

  So yeah, my advice is to think about what you find fun and do more of that. Mafia isn’t meant to be a chore. If you find a particular type of analysis fun, do it.

  I would recommend forum mafia as a pasttime to people, it’s chill and there’s a great sense of community/​comeraderie.

• madSep 14, 2021, 3:44 AM

  10 points

  on: Is there a bee­minder with­out the pun­ish­ment?

  Why don’t you just use beeminder, but set your goal to be flat? So say you’re brushing your teeth, you can tell it you want to brush 0 times a week, when really you want to brush every day, and you end up with a normal-looking graph with no problem if you forget to log (because you can just backdate the data!)

  Also has the advantage of letting you use it the “traditional way” (with a slope and a pledge) for a goal that can be done automatically (e.g. duolingo, word count on a writing project, whatever).

Perth, Western Aus­tralia – ACX Mee­tups Every­where 2021

• madJun 20, 2021, 6:32 AM

  1 point

  in reply to: ryan_greenblatt’s comment on: Ques­tions about mul­ti­vi­tam­ins, es­pe­cially manganese

  You are almost certainly getting enough iron in your diet as a person who (presumably) doesn’t menstruate. If you are not feeling fatigued or dizzy on the regular, you almost certainly have enough iron. If you are worried, get a blood test, don’t just supplement willy-nilly.

  I would recommend you do a food diary for 3 days and enter into chronometer or myfitnsespal. You are probably getting 10-15mg of iron a day and the RDI for adult men is 8mg. Yes, vegans get non-heme iron, but the iron in meat is something like 80% non-heme, so most people actually get a very small amount of heme iron, and diet tends to have no impact on iron intake.

  I speak generally as I don’t know what your diet looks like: if you eat pizza pockets and ben & jerrys for every meal then you have bigger problems than your multivitamin.

  I’m a vegan doing a nutrition degree (at an accredited university, not at one of those woo-woo online holistic centres). I also have low iron because I have dysmennorhea, which I assume you can’t suffer from.

  Definitely take b12 and take D if you don’t get sun (you probably don’t). Make sure you are getting vegan D if that’s important to you, most D is not vegan. Also make sure the D is an appropriately high dose, not the very low doses that are in multivitamins.

• madFeb 28, 2021, 4:11 AM

  20 points

  on: Sus­pected rea­son that kids usu­ally hate vegetables

  [epistemic status: i have formal education in nutrition, and this is remembered impressions i got from professors/​experts, but may not be correct, and is almost certainly simplified and lacking in nuance]

  In our parents’ generation, boiling or steaming was considered the most healthy way to prepare vegetables: fat and salt were the enemy, and especially steaming left the vitamins in (rather than allowing water soluable ones to leach into the cooking water).

  Our parents cooked vegetables in this way because they learned it was the healthiest and they wanted us to be healthy.

  Nowadays the nutrition Powers That Be have acknowledged that yes, steamed broccoli is a little healthier than roasted broccoli or broccoli sauteed in garlic oil, but steamed broccoli only tastes okay while roasted broccoli and sauteed broccoli are both damn delicious (epistemic status: broccoli is my favourite vegetable). The wisdom from on high is now that vegetables should be cooked in appealing ways, and the small loss in nutrients is nothing compared with the large gain in flavour which encourages people to eat vegetables which then means that people are less likely to eat e.g. big macs and tater tots.

• madFeb 27, 2021, 11:32 PM

  2 points

  on: Par­ti­ci­pat­ing in a Covid-19 Vac­cine Trial #2: We pretty much knew it would work the whole time

  I think as well as what others have said, an ethical consideration with placebos is that they are treating someone with something that they know doesn’t work. Like, basically, on some level, it’s ethically dubious to make you go to all the effort you outlined, interact with medical staff, receive an actual injection, etc, and deliberately not treat you. That’s why many many trials have “stopping rules”, where if it turns out the treatment is working really well, the placebo group gets it, too.