👋 ASB Partners Nuggets 4.25.25
This is a short weekly email that covers a few things I’ve found interesting during the week.
Interesting Links/Reads
Many links are sourced from Marginal Revolution
…much of this extinction will seem voluntary. In a normal evolutionary bottleneck, the goal is surviving some immediate physical threat — a plague or famine, an earthquake, flood or meteor strike. The bottleneck of the digital age is different: The new era is killing us softly, by drawing people out of the real and into the virtual, distracting us from the activities that sustain ordinary life, and finally making existence at a human scale seem obsolete.
In this environment, survival will depend on intentionality and intensity. Any aspect of human culture that people assume gets transmitted automatically, without too much conscious deliberation, is what online slang calls NGMI — not going to make it.
Languages will disappear, churches will perish, political ideas will evanesce, art forms will vanish, the capacity to read and write and figure mathematically will wither, and the reproduction of the species will fail — except among people who are deliberate and self-conscious and a little bit fanatical about ensuring that the things they love are carried forward.
And while this description may sound like pessimism, it’s intended as an exhortation, a call to recognize what’s happening and resist it, to fight for a future where human things and human beings survive and flourish. It’s an appeal for intentionality against drift, for purpose against passivity — and ultimately for life itself against extinction.
3.Good career advice from Matt Levine
I sometimes talk to students at colleges or business schools, and a question that one often gets asked in that circumstance is “what should I do with my life?” The venues being what they are, the way that question comes out of a student’s mouth is often “should I go into private equity?” I don’t know! Nothing in this newsletter is ever career advice. But my heuristic is that, if everyone in your graduating class is trying to get on a clearly defined and rigidly structured career track that leads to the same place, then succeeding on that track is a good safe prestigious well-paying thing to do, but maybe, you know, the peak is at least in sight? The way you make a lot of money in finance is by spotting market inefficiencies that no one else has seen; everybody kind of knows about private equity now.
Individual determinants of caffeine’s impact
While caffeine always acts through the same basic mechanisms described above, the intensity and duration of its effects vary dramatically between individuals. This is primarily due to variation in the activity level of CYP1A2, a critical enzyme for caffeine metabolism. Higher levels of CYP1A2 activity lead to faster processing and clearance of caffeine, while lower levels have the opposite effect, resulting in caffeine remaining present in circulation for longer periods of time. But what determines CYP1A2 activity? Genetics certainly plays a key role, but additional variation can be attributed to environmental factors, as well as to habitual patterns of caffeine use and the development of caffeine tolerance.
A handful of dietary elements, including cruciferous vegetables and chargrilled meats, also appear to have the effect of driving CYP1A2 activity, though the precise extent is less clear.11,1…
Thus, even within a given individual, rates of caffeine metabolism may vary from time to time based on diet, hormone fluctuations, and other factors.
Another noteworthy contributor to variation in the effects of caffeine is caffeine consumption itself. Heavy caffeine intake has been shown to increase CYP1A2 activity and thus speed up caffeine metabolism,17 but this is just one of the mechanisms through which habitual caffeine intake can attenuate the compound’s effects. Another important mechanism relates to caffeine tolerance. With daily caffeine exposure, the body attempts to offset the substance’s blockade of adenosine by increasing the number of adenosine receptors or making them more responsive. Over time, the nervous system essentially recalibrates so that the user requires caffeine just to achieve what once was a normal baseline of alertness. Missing that morning cup can result in a pronounced slump, as there is suddenly a surplus of adenosine receptors waiting to be activated, leading to heightened feelings of fatigue, headache, or difficulty concentrating. However, not all of the many physiological effects of caffeine are equally impacted by tolerance. We will return to this point throughout our discussion.
Overall, caffeine can be a valuable ergogenic aid, particularly for endurance sports, provided dosage and timing are carefully managed to avoid negative effects. Doses of approximately ~2.5–6 mg/kg body weight have shown efficacy in exercise studies, while doses exceeding this recommended range offer no additional performance benefits and may trigger gastrointestinal distress and jitters. Optimal intake within this ~2.5–6 mg/kg range will depend largely on individual metabolic rate and tolerance; for many, 6 mg/kg (the equivalent of 4–5 cups of coffee for a 75-kg individual) will be more than enough to induce negative sensations,34 so we recommend starting closer to 3–4 mg/kg and titrating up or down based on personal response. Optimal timing will likewise vary across individuals, but improvements in performance have typically been reported with caffeine consumption around 60 minutes before shorter-duration exercise or strategically throughout prolonged events to coincide with expected fatigue.30
Dehydration
Caffeine is a mild diuretic (increases urine production), and thus, many fear that it can lead to dehydration. Indeed, caffeine is an active ingredient in many diuretic “water pills” (e.g., Diurex), and taken in this way (i.e., as a pill), the compound can certainly have dehydrating effects.
Yet caffeine doesn’t necessarily need to be dehydrating, especially if you are a habitual consumer. Most people take caffeine with some fluid (e.g., coffee, tea, sodas), which can largely offset the diuretic effect. Further, the tolerance that develops with habitual caffeine intake appears to extend to diuretic effects, such that those who regularly consume caffeine are less likely to experience significant diuresis than those who are unaccustomed to caffeine.81 For instance, a trial in habitual coffee drinkers has shown that intake of 800 ml of coffee at a caffeine concentration of around 4 mg/kg did not result in differences in total body water (measured by deuterium oxide) relative to coffee without caffeine.82 In other words, replacing caffeinated coffee with decaffeinated coffee had no measurable impact on overall hydration status. Thus, individuals who are used to caffeine shouldn’t worry much about dehydration, but everyone taking caffeine — especially those who aren’t habitual users — should take it with fluids to counteract any dehydrating effect.
For most people, moderate caffeine intake is harmless — even beneficial — if it aligns with personal tolerance and recommended limits. However, anyone prone to insomnia, anxiety, or heart issues should track dosage carefully or opt for lower-caffeine alternatives. If you rely on multiple cups just to function, a gradual taper may help reset your tolerance — many are surprised at the sustained energy and better sleep that follow. And certainly, complete avoidance of caffeine is recommended for anyone who is pregnant.
First is the case for national security. Mr. Zagorsky observes that “a cashless society stands on three legs: a continuous and stable supply of electricity, communication networks working all the time, and secure computers.” What happens if an earthquake strikes, or a foreign enemy takes down the communication and banking systems? In the ensuing chaos and darkness, the author writes, those with cash will survive and those without will be left waving their plastic into the wind.
The problem with avoiding a disaster is that success often renders itself invisible. The captain of the Titanic is blamed for hitting the iceberg, but how much credit would he have received for avoiding it?
Oct. 7, like Kristallnacht in 1938, forced some people to confront what they had tried to ignore. Students and faculty celebrating the atrocities against Israel could have been perpetrating them, given the chance. A committee of the new Harvard Jewish Alumni Alliance investigated the campus “hatred” and found it “worse than we had anticipated.” Ideological anti-Zionism governed not only the Center for Middle East Studies but also the School of Public Health and the Divinity School and figured in departments ranging alphabetically from anthropology and African American Studies to the Weatherhead Institute of International Affairs, and academically from music to the medical school. Harvard undertook a similar review only under pressure from Congress.
Jonathan Sacks, the British Chief Rabbi from 1991-2013, once recounted a conversation with the historian Paul Johnson, who had recently published a history of the Jews. What, Sacks inquired, struck Johnson, a Catholic, most about Judaism? Johnson replied that while Western cultures tend to emphasize the individual, and others are constructed around the collective, Judaism strikes a balance between the two, insisting on “strong individuals and strong communities.” This, Johnson added, is a rare achievement.
Podcast/Videos
From Peter Attia Show Notes
That’s one of the big reasons why all the fallacies about your cell phone giving your brain cancer and all are fallacies
They’re fallacies because even having a cell phone on your ear for hours a day, it’s non-ionizing radiation
Standing too close to a microwave oven, again it’s non-ionizing radiation
That cannot damage your cells
The radio wave is too long; the microwave is too long (it doesn’t have the energy)
It can heat, but it can’t damage
It can excite the molecules, but it won’t actually eject an electro
Tell people what the hormesis effect means because we’ll come back to that later in the discussion
Regular listeners of your podcast know all about hormesis in the exercise realm and cold plunges and saunas and whatnot
The whole idea is about doing some degree, a small amount of cellular damage, and when the body repairs that it actually comes back stronger than it was without the exposure in the first place
In animal studies, they’ve actually shown at very low doses (we’re talking about single digit millisieverts here) decreased osteoclasts and increased osteoblastic activity in mouse bones
So the bones actually heal quicker
Some of the soft tissue as well has been shown to actually recuperate much in the way you see in hormesis from other causes
The origins of radiophobia and how it influenced perceptions of radiation use in medicine [1:18:00]
This radiophobia is largely a US space phenomenon
First of all, X-rays were discovered in 1895 by Röntgen
In 1898, there was the first case described of, actually, radiating both arthritis type things or ankylosing spondylitis or other arthritis and also tumors
Even back then, we had no idea how it worked, but there were cases pre-1900 where radiation was being used therapeutically
⇒ Now 120+ years later, we have this divergence where Germany, the UK, and all of Europe are using radiation routinely for arthritis and tendonitis
But in the US it seems to be a basic nuclear phobia of the Cold War
There’s a guy named Jason Beckta that has a really good podcast on the subject
He’s out of Vermont where Standard Oil, the Rockefellers and all had a massive lobby group that was actively promoting oil over nuclear power plants
The amount of spread went from just the energy industry into just the general zeitgeist of the entire country
At that time, the radiophobia just caught on, and it was bolstered by World War II and seeing what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki
When you look at the population studies that were done outside the blast at Hiroshima and Nagasaki
With the initial concentration, everyone dies from the thermonuclear energy
But as you get several miles out, not only are the cancer rates, actually roughly the same as the background
You, actually see again evidence of hormesis
Or maybe not hormesis, but some sort of radioprotection
Where you have some patients where you actually have lower rates of leukemia and thyroid cancer when you get a few miles farther out than you did in the general population
⇒ It’s all very much dose dependent, time dependent
Low dose radiation for tendonitis, osteoarthritis, plantar fasciitis, all the “itises” you can think of, bursitis
“A low dose of radiation has a similar anti-inflammatory effect to what you would get from a cortisone injection.”‒ Sanjay Mehta
Acne scars
Sometimes we get kids that have had acne scars all over their chest that have these bumps everywhere and they were all resected flat and you radiate them, they just stay flat
You don’t see any sort of dermatitis from radiation
Peter’s takeaway
What’s amazing is there’s too many people that don’t know this
There’s too many people that are walking around suffering
Either from something that’s cosmetically upsetting: like a huge keloid, especially on a visible part of their body
Or some nagging injury: tennis elbow, golfer’s elbow, Achilles tendinopathy, hamstring tendinopathy
These things nag for years, at times
The current barriers preventing widespread adoption of low-dose radiation therapy for inflammatory conditions [1:35:45]
Do we need more radiation oncologists?
How are you making room in your practice to treat these patients when your cancer patients are probably ringing you off the hook as well?
That’s a big reason why it hasn’t caught on
There’s a component of just, you’ve got 8 hours or 12 hours a day that the linear accelerator can run and we are busy with that [oncology]
For superficial joints (not deep hip), you can use one of those old style ortho voltage machines that Sanjay mentioned earlier, like what they use in Europe
They still sell those here
There’s a company called Xstrahl that still makes them, and they’re perfectly acceptable for all the joint stuff except for the very deep ones, like maybe a SI or hip joint
⇒ You could have a small center set up and those types of machines don’t even require the shielding because the energy of the photons is very, very low
It’s highly underutilized at this point, and the Europeans have shown us the way
I hope you enjoyed it.
Adam