Work Related 12/13/24

a multitasked stream of consciousness

Author

Jonathan Greene
December 13, 2024

Adobe Firefly showing a picture of someone adapting to a cold plunge, or not.

🧊 Cold Plunges have become trendy over the past few years. I’ve yet to give it a go. My gym is in the process of converting a hot tub into a cold tub so I guess I’ll try when that’s ready, but prefer the heat from the sauna or a steam to limber up. Heat adaptation will be useful for endurance events … cold is more about recovery.

Cold exposure with shivering activates several physiological responses that can contribute to better metabolic health. When the body shivers, it generates heat by rapidly contracting muscles, which increases energy expenditure. This process can also stimulate fat burning by activating brown adipose tissue (non-shivering thermogenesis), which burns calories to produce heat. Additionally, shivering can improve glucose control by promoting glucose uptake in muscles, similar to the effects of exercise. These combined mechanisms suggest that shivering from cold exposure could offer a more comprehensive health benefit compared to brief cold plunges.

Lemme tl:dr the rest of that newsletter for you here courtesy of Readwise and their Ghostwriter AI summaries:

❄️ Cold Exposure Benefits: Engaging in cold exposure can lead to significant improvements in metabolic and cellular health. This process is linked to enhanced fat oxidation and may have a positive impact on overall metabolic function.

🔥 Shivering Mechanism: The act of shivering during cold exposure activates brown adipose tissue, which plays a crucial role in thermogenesis and energy expenditure. This shivering response is essential for maximizing the benefits of cold exposure.

đź’Ş Consistency is Key: Regularly incorporating cold exposure into your routine is important for reaping the health benefits. Consistency can help acclimatize your body and improve its adaptive responses to cold temperatures.

🥽 I was the guy who wore Google Glass. I pushed the envelope of social acceptance and felt the pressure of stares from strangers on the train, in airports, and at the office. Something as unusual looking as Glass offered limited functions and battery but made for an interesting experience. In the real world though it didn’t deliver much more than a slight case of social anxiety.

Gemini on Google XR Glasses Live Translation

Well, Google is back with Android XR which is a platform that will run on what looks like both a pretty normal pair of glasses as well as a more immersive headset … I find the glasses concept much more interesting at the moment as it’s mainly out of the way and lets you continue to engage with people and places as you would vs the VR cave concept which is still quite an isolated experience. I don’t think a few grand for a large TV that only one person can experience is the solution we seek. Virtual extended desktops are nice, but I don’t want something over my head and face to get there. Don’t even get me started on exercising like this … thus far no VR killer apps yet for the masses. Wired and The Verge have some nice writeups on their personal experiences with the demos at launch.

🏎️ There’s a full unedited version of the Nürburgring lap on YouTube as well as this brand edit which I enjoyed more as it shows the team and work that got Ford to the line. This is probably as close as any of us will get to seeing one of these Mustang GTDs as well.

 đź“° In light of current events I’ve noticed a decent amount of healthcare news and memes … I’d be surprised if you’d missed similar themes, but I still thought highlighting a few things would be valuable. First, this New Yorker piece called The Gilded Age of Medicine (💰️) goes into the Private Equity takeover of managed care which is driving an even worse level of personal attention and a greater focus on profit. There’s still plenty of information to come on Luigi Mangione, and I’m trying to take it in stride. The NYT has a decent piece on his transformation into the killer we have seen today.

2024 was arguably the year that the mortal dangers of corporate medicine finally became undeniable and inescapable. A study published in JAMA found that, after hospitals were acquired by private-equity firms, Medicare patients were more likely to suffer falls and contract bloodstream infections; another study found that if private equity acquired a nursing home its residents became eleven per cent more likely to die. Although private-equity firms often argue that they infuse hospitals with capital, a recent analysis found that hospital assets tend to decrease after acquisition. Yet P.E. now oversees nearly a third of staffing in U.S. emergency departments and owns more than four hundred and fifty hospitals. In some of them, patients were “forced to sleep in hallways, and doctors who spoke out were threatened with termination,” according to Jonathan Jones, a former president of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine.

— The New Yorker

Since 2000, we are living with illness for 12.4 yrs which is up from 10.9 years according to Bloomberg. Don’t worry though, life expectancy is up almost 2 more years so we get a bit longer to complain about our ailments as we age. I’m sure the private equity teams are on it though …

📺️ Streaming has been getting a bit out of control if you ask me. There are too many different services and while sometimes these services are accessible from within others, but you can never quite link a subscription or account leaving a chaotic mess. The worst is that every single service now costs even more and it feels like we are just rebuilding cable costs over the internet. YouTubeTV is going up to $82.99 next month which is pretty terrible as it’s our base streaming service. I bet if I did a family audit, aside from live sports, we can probably find all but Yellowstone elsewhere. For all this cash, we can’t even escape the ads … looking at you Paramount+ and Amazon!

CTAM has a fair bit of data on consumer streaming behaviors from a few different studies and surveys. My own experiences are not unique. At the moment there is no clear sign of change for 2025 … just more friction.

⏱️ Your teens may not care so much about any of the streaming costs or services because close to half say they are online almost all the time with YouTube dominating time spent.

Back in the stone age of social media I, like many, used an app called Dopplr which allowed you to share general travel plans in the hope of crossing paths with people IRL. Well, a much more modern take has just launched called Mozi and it looks great. The whole purpose is to let us connect when we might not even realize we are nearby. You can setup a close friend group as well for some extra layer of visibility control. NYT on the launch from Ev Wiliams.

⛷️ It’s Friday so let’s end this with an absolutely epic post from RedBull. You’ll need to click through to appreciate the full scope here as apparently, carousels don’t embed but from that single image you can get the gist … I promise it’s worth a few minutes more of your time. Have a great one!

Thanks for sticking it through to the end. Please feel free to hit reply with any feedback or questions.

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