Odd Lots

[jeff_duntemann]

• I get asked several times a year: "What are your politics?" Tough question, given that I think that politics is filth. But now Jon Gabriel has answered the question for me: I do not join teams. I create my own. I've been doing this all my life. I'm not going to stop now.
• Side note on Jon Gabriel: He used to work at Coriolis back in the day. So although I've been seeing him online for years, I never realized until very recently that he was our Jon Gabriel. (There is another who does diet books.)
• Twitter is experimenting with doubling the size of tweets to 280 characters. I wonder if Gab had any least little bit to do with that?
• Cirsova Magazine posted a short excerpt of something called the Denham Tracts from 1895 on Twitter, with a longish list of British supernatural beings, among which are "hobbits." You can see the whole fascinating book on the Internet Archive. It was published by the Folk-Lore Society and it's exactly that: Short notes on British folklore, including local saints, odd little ceremonies, song lyrics, and supernatural creatures I've never heard of, like the dudmen, wirrikows, gallytrots, miffies, and loads more. (The list starts on page 77.) Great fun!
• At last, it looks like a popular treatment of sleep science is coming to us. Matthew Walker's Why We Sleep will be released on October 3. This long-form piece provides some background. Walker is willing to say what I've been saying for decades: Do not short your sleep. Bad things will happen, including cancer, obesity, Alzheimer's and who knows what else. Unlike me, Walker is an expert on the subject, so maybe you'll believe him.
• Lack of sleep can kill you. So, evidently, can low-fat diets, according a Canadian study of 135,000 adults in 18 countries, published by The Lancet. Note the reactions of NHS physicians, who aren't convinced. (In their defense I will say that the Mayo Clinic is still pushing a low-fat diet in their newsletters.)
• Here's a long, rambling, but worthwhile discussion of how the fake science of fat demonization came about, and how, faced with the spectre of being shown to be wrong about something (impossible!) governments are doubling down on the fake anti-fat message. Government actions cause harm because we can't throw the responsible parties in a cell and leave them there. The King, after all, can do no wrong.
• Via Esther Schindler: The history of email.
• I'd prefer that it be in Pascal, but so it goes: There is a Javascript code baby onesie. My grand-niece Molly is now a month old. Decisions, decisions...
• In his will, philosopher Jeremy Bentham specified that he was to be mummified, dressed in his ordinary clothes, and put on display. So it was written. So it was done.