I used to really value the art of essay writing. There seemed to be such a richness in the different ways people would construct arguments, structure those arguments, then deliver those arguments stylistically, not just from the perspective of being persuaded as a reader but also from the perspective of seeing how a given writer thinks, relates to the living tradition of language, and understands the world conceptually. But it's basically lost most of its meaning to me in this age of LLMs. The reality is, LLMs are capable of writing texts that, if you gave them to a seasoned reader 5 years ago, they'd say it was well written and indicative of a truly thoughtful mind. Even if there currently exist certain tells with LLMs, those styles certainly existed in different ways in real human writing beforehand. Now, those perfectly reasonable set of styles are verboten and we have to dedicate half our deep focus to figuring out whether, or to what extent, an essay or article was written by AI. It's difficult to enjoy, let alone care, about essay writing and the writers behind them now.

I can still find value in books, though, because they were written in the past and I don't mind never reading any non-scientific book published after 2022 if it comes down to it.

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