I’ve gone a bit too deep on a rabbit hole after an offhand comment about protein intake and how much protein I should actually be consuming. It turns out that the 1.6g/kg of body weight is fairly arbitrary and body weight itself is not a particularly good point to use for an estimate if you are overweight. With that in mind I have been wondering about getting a DEXA body composition scan. It would be useful, I think, because it can also tell me about visceral fat which is an area I am particularly concerned about.

It turns out that it’s pretty cheap to get done; about $45 if you sign up for quarterly scans with a company called BodySpec. Their whole thing is making things cheaper by having repeat visits; a quantity discount, if you will.

Before I decide to do this (and while I wait to hear back about if I can get one done for free with my health plan), I just wanted to get people’s opinions on them. Have you had one or a series done? And more importantly, how has it empowered you to improve your health?

In all honesty I’m not sure the results will encourage me to make any particular change in my lifestyle or routine that I wouldn’t have been able to figure out without it.

I forgot my driver's license today but had my phone with me. I remembered seeing stories that google and apple both allow these (for some states) in the digital wallet.

Before doing this, I thought I would ask people here to weigh in on whether it is a good idea. Is it considered secure? Is it going to cause me more privacy issues than a physical card in my wallet?

This is also related to recent discussions about online age verification.

This is a related Tildes post from last year: Google Wallet adds age verification and more government ID support

Hi friends,

Given the current state of AI and other technologies, do you consider higher education to still be worth pursuing? For those of you with children, will you be advising them to go to college?

I’m asking because I am enrolled in a masters program for statistics and have ~2 years left. I’m concerned that by the time I’m finished, the degree won’t be worth the paper it’s printed on. Like many of you, I work in software. Some days I think I should be learning an entirely different skill set in a non tech related field to diversify my value instead of doubling down on a potentially dying field.

I am not really interested in “you should pursue education for the sake of education”. While this is probably true, at the end of the day I need a way to make money to survive and education is the historical way of increasing one’s value in the job market. Furthermore, I can educate myself for far cheaper if education from a university is no longer considered valuable.

Anyone else in the same boat? Am I being dramatic? Would love to hear your thoughts.