Reading Wikipedia via the Propaedia

Over Thanksgiving I had a wildass idea: reading encyclopedias as a new hobby.

There was a certain volume of the 1985+ Britannica called the Outline of Knowledge or Propaedia (revamped 15th ed). Outlines of outlines of the entirety of human knowledge. And a more extensive one from 1974-1984 (14th ed). It is essentially a 10 category scientific worldview. Sort of a similar organizing principle to Dewey, Library of Congress, or Universal Decimal.

I've bought the physical copy of the 15 ed. Propaedia and a 15.00 a year app for EB on my phone. I figure it'll take about 5+ years to read at 2+ hours a night and by looking up each term or concept in Wikipedia first and if I can't find it, then hopefully, if still published, a more "knowledge in depth" article on EB. Since there isn't a digital Propaedia published and maintained by EB any more.

https://www.markklingman.com/docs/britannica_propaedia.pdf (500 pages, also available on Archive.org)

https://dynalist.io/d/GcSvL_R4bB97MLi4SAwhYrgY 

(this is so big it may crash your browser, but could be imported/exported by copying it to a free dynalist account).

The goal is basically to become more well-rounded. And bragging rights.

But I think I'd like to take notes on interesting things to remember too, which could add a lot of time. I could make some jots on a moleskine physical notebook and then OCR or manually transcribe and slot into place on the digital outline. Not going alphabetically, but rather slotting each concept into the overall category makes a lot 

of sense for self-study in my own personal wiki.

Two other encyclopedias that are interesting to me are: The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas and The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

It's an INTJ thang! But how can I remember more of what I read? Does this part-whole study plan make the most sense for the sheer enormity of the information? How do you eat an elephant? 

Optimal diet for hormonal enhancement

 

Basically this diet is: Last meal of day on Sunday and Wednesday, carbload 100+ grams. On other days, do ketogenic with 60%+ fat (preferring monosaturated/Omega3). This can be enhanced by pescatarian including lots of eggs. As well as generally eating most calories in the evening. As a result, insulin only remains high for 1-2 hours twice weekly, which prevents excess calories from being shuttled into fat cells on the keto days. This is the most hormonally intelligent diet available, and allows for one to do body recomposition by, if in caloric deficit, pumping up glycogen muscle tanks (carbs being best for strength output to cause a micro-tear recovery response) at the same time as minimizing fat accumulation. It also enhances testosterone production. And minimizes hunger hormones. And produces ketones which give more ATP to brain cells than glucose. And improves inhibitory GABA. And allows for cellular recovery to use the full energy tank-battery-storage of body fat. And prevents T2 diabetes. In effect, you can gain muscle with great pumps as well as losing fat at the same time, or bulk while staying lean. The trick is to burn through the carbs on M-Tu and Thu-Fri with exercise (4x 400-500 calorie active burn), hopefully getting back into ketosis for 24 hours on Wed and inside the 2 days from Fri-Sun. Another thing that makes this an advanced diet is already having done a keto diet for 2-4 weeks previously so as to have the metabolic flexibility to switch fuels to fat-adaptation with the cycling. Although a "clean" version of this would be simply starchy carbs (potatoes, beans, rice, pasta) only, the carbload can include enjoyable sugary carbs too, maybe even pizza or other hyper-processed foods with medium levels of fat, though that blunts the insulin spike and YMMV. When you eat high carbs on days before when you strength or resistance train, you can take advantage of insulin’s muscle-building and recovery properties. When you eat low carbs on rest days or cardio workout days, you will lose fat while also improving your insulin sensitivity. Thus, enhancement. This seems optimal to me, and could probably be improved even further with 2x Fasting Mimicking Diet over Christmas and Memorial day weeks for autophagy. EDIT: I tried doing Natural Hormonal Enhancement (NHE), but I feel better self-control with low-carb 2/3 meals on weekdays and refuel with carbloads over the weekend instead.

Automating Parsehub to Sealfit to Things Todo

Moriondo, the first Expresso Machine

Since I'm cheap and I didn't want to buy the Alfred Power Pack for this, I did it myself in Python and Parsehub, a free point to click web scraper. First thing is to download and install Parsehub for Mac. Go through the tutorial and get it able to log into a website and select the content. Export to CSV. Set it to kick off a script. Create the following small python script program in VS Code. Cleanup of the data can be done with other tools in the pipeline like the regular expression as shown.

import re

import smtplib

from email.message import EmailMessage

msg = EmailMessage()

with open("/Users/you/Downloads/run_results.csv", "r", encoding='utf-8') as f:

s = f.read()

message = re.search(r'(?s)Baseline:([\S\s]*)Leave', s).group(1)

msg.set_content(message)

from datetime import datetime

mydate = datetime.today().strftime('%Y-%m-%d')

msg['Subject'] = 'Sealfit '+mydate

msg['From'] = "[email protected]"

msg['To'] = "[email protected]"

# Send the message via our own SMTP server.

server = smtplib.SMTP('smtp.gmail.com', 587)

server.ehlo()

server.starttls()

server.ehlo()

server.login("[email protected]", "YourAppPassword")

server.send_message(msg)

server.quit()

This will automate web scraping almost any website with a point to click interface and then sending the file to Things ToDo automatically. 

Plain text Obsidian Zettelkasten

 

"Whenever he read something , he would write the bibliographic information on one side of a card and make brief notes about the content on the other side ( Schmidt 2013 , 170 ) . These notes would end up in the bibliographic slip - box . In a second step , shortly after , he would look at his brief notes and think about their relevance for his own thinking and writing . He then would turn to the main slip - box and write his ideas , comments and thoughts on new pieces of paper , using only one for each idea and restricting himself to one side of the paper , to make it easier to read them later without having to take them out of the box . He kept them usually brief enough to make one idea fit on a single sheet , but would sometimes add another note to extend a thought" -Sonke Ahrens, on Luhmann's Zettelkasten, in How To Take Smart Notes

Obsidian Vault with Citations plugin, Zotero Bibliography with ZoteroObsidianCitations plugin and Better Bibtex, exporting to OneDrive, Pandoc and Papaja export to APA paper with formatted Bibliography via RStudio. This allows for the formatting to be entirely abstracted away from the plain text itself: instead of agonizing over different journal preferences for style, it is all done in one fell swoop, including not only journal articles but the writing of entire books too. PDFs especially books can be temporarily imported into Zotero and then have their notes extracted to retain the page number, and Kindle application can export with page numbers too. 

Markdown is the basis of this plain text formatting that is a kind of 'html lite' doing in-line formatting as plain text. Ultimately the idea for RStudio is especially important for open sourcing scientific publications where you can build this web of interdependencies from experimental results that automatically update, ala Jupyter Notebooks. Of course that means that maybe your written analysis and conclusions are not accurate any longer if the interlinked data is changed! Overall, this is very similar to the vision of an idea called the memex as outlined by Vannevar Bush in 1945, also prior to hypertext systems. 

And this is in keeping with Stephen Kosslyn's principles of online learning: Deep Processing with cognitive load, Chunking, Associations, Dual Coding with images, Deliberate Practice, especially using an external constructivist scaffolding for associations in the bi-directional link of a digital zettelkasten. “Imagine if we went through life learning only what we planned to learn or being explicitly taught,” writes Dr. Sönke Ahrens in his book. That's the promise of the memex today, a kind of pathfinding through intricate trails of thought, collecting and organizing and binding as a research explorer.

This is further enhanced with the killer app for mobile sync in mindmapping in Obsidian: Excalidraw for Visual PKM (personal knowledge management). With a good sprinkling of Zotero integration. This lets you add wiki links to visually drawn maps on any tablet and even use a phone to embed pictures from other places like textbooks: full fidelity capture.

In the sense of dual-coding, here is an image of the process:

A cosmic awakening

About five years ago at the age of 31-32, in mid-Feb 2017, I had an amazing legitimate worldview-changing experience following a deep dive soul-call with ishvara pranidhana and prapatti/saranagati (surrender) of pranahuti with ekagra (flinging one's self at the feet of divine compassion in surrender, opening up to the influence of grace). Since then I learned many technical and experience-authenticating consciousness terms from Yoga, especially Kriya and Raja as presented by Paramahansa Yogananda. The following was after several months of asceticism (tapasya austerity especially giving up alcohol) and interest in the Triadic Dimensional Distinction Vortical Paradigm and Sri Yukteswar's The Holy Science (I hadn't read much of Yogananda at that point), and just naturally in keeping with cursory interest in Patangali's Eight Fold Path, though I hadn't studied it deeply, at least not in this lifetime. I was also living about a block away from a SRF meditation center, but I didn't find that out until later. I had also moved recently, following a dream.

I awoke in a state of mental and sensory interiorization (pratyahara and yogic wakeful sleep, one pointedness), aware hearing my squishy heart beat and blood circulation only, awake but body asleep with eyes closed (jagrat sushupti) watching the body breath in and out with tranquil ocean breath (ujjayi pranayama) while centered somewhere in the midbrain, possibly medulla or looking at ajna. I felt an indescribably subtle spiral-like sensation like crawling ants in the coccyx muladhara chakra. This feeling and energy (kundalini) rose in the spinal sushumna (brahma nadi) until I didn't feel it. My awareness descended to heart (hridaya/guha or Amrita Nadi) quite near the anahata chakra, when I became aware of being guided. The presence cradled with hands some sort of vital spark or flame (agni, hamsa, psychic fire, or puran purush) from my heart area (amrita nadi extension of sushumna) with great attention and spirited it away behind me, perhaps weighing or inspecting the flame (esoteric achievement fire?). The presence untied the (chit jada) knot (granthi) of Vishnu with close inspection, and I felt the knot untie and hang at my sides. Soon in both ears but mostly on the right I spontaneously experienced the joyful, faithful sound of the vibration of all creation (Aum/Omkar vibration) and felt a profound and curious oneness with the sublime sound and silence, eking and trailing to a very subtle fineness of resonance. Then, guided, my focus went to the breath which stopped spontaneously (kevali khumbaka pranayama) and my focus came back to the point between the eyebrows, where the upswelling kundalini energy gathered and mentally pushed toward the spiritual third eye (kutastha) but was rebuffed. I intuitively reproduced the action, merging with the supreme brahman through a sproinging astral tunnel, the stargate. I left the physical body spiritually (kaivalya? mahasamadhi? phowa/utkranti? videhamukti/paramukta) and traveled through an opposing wall into my living room, ending up immediately wide awake with unblinking eyes wide open with unbreathing lucid awareness, either still on Earth or the nearest Astral Plane. I felt whole and centered and balanced, with slight positivity but mostly calm centered clarity/neutrality, as if I was introduced to myself and pure super-consciousness samadhi (turiya) as a tensegrity of strength, sweetness, simplicity and truth (satchitananda nondualism), with an insight into my true self (atman, svarupa, sahaja), with perfect understanding (pratyaya absortion). My last thought (manolaya) during this travel into the sacred quiescent silence of the universe (mouna) was a question, "How old?" and I took up a monad position in my meditation chair with the guide. I was picked up and moved into a different chair in the room, but did not feel anything. I perfectly beheld (I am near-sighted in this writing body's waking consciousness, darshan) a radiant celestial being (siddha, astral satguru, guardian angel) of pure clear self-luminous conscious white-shining light essence (sambkogakaya or astral body?, deva, quintessential starfire, tejas, prakasa) with darkened eyes only, and very subtly perceived larger to smaller stacked backbone discs of clear light (causal body?), radiating divine twinkling love and wisdom (santosha?), and a decidedly male, possibly Germanic and definitely Christ-like impression of logic which I intuited (pratibha) immediately. I concentrated (samyama) the silent age query on him and intuitively sensed the answer was beyond my ken (greater than thousands of years maybe always forever, measureless presence) and I could sense his positive regard/interest blissful joy qualia directly. I then did not have a similar impression gauging/intuiting a mundane wall in my apartment, but I was open to the infinite. An invisible structured download of vortical informational distinctions/insights or helical energy came propagating/whirling/trickling like a constellation of glittering jewel-packets (distinction network of breadth/depth) in my left visual field from him (high frequency yogic lineage dharma transmission? pranahuti, Shaktipat sampradaya, sankranti) and I received/apprehended/acquired it (hyper-dimensional compartments? attunement). He then took me by the shoulders and summoned some kind of cosmic Source, towering over me inspirationally (mahashaktipat mouna diksha initiation? transfer of merit? Brahmasamsparsha) in what I interpreted later as an exhortation of either unbounded christ-/cosmic-consciousness or infused growth transformation potential or flying to the astral world or another kind of transmission/initiation like responsibility (guru-shishta sambandha tradition). He did a torrential-plasma flipturn in mid-air, disappearing in the direction of my physical body (parakaya pravesha vijnana?) and at that very thought of body-mind identity my eyes closed naturally (vyutthana). Reflecting on it now, I note that an astral cord was not present when I looked in the direction of my physical body. I woke up whole and healthy the next day, and the divine feeling of the moment’s drop of Brahmic bliss has peacefully lightened my heart forever since. May it do the same for you.

 

What a great image for investigating primary consciousness! I think Sankhya and Vedanta can be tempered by scientific monism. Personally I think we retain our individuality if we choose, and it is great devotion to stay on this plane of existence and help others.

I wonder if the process of creating spikes of the coronavirus could be disrupted in the sgRNA. Then the virus wouldn't be able to bind to ACE2 receptors in other cells. Another idea is to introduce stem cell therapy in older populations. Monoclonal antibodies also prevent the spikes from binding. The spikes are the primary antigen detected by the immune system.

Encyclopedia of Virology - Coronaviruses

Workflow and Procrastination and Design as Travel

I've been having discussions about workflow and procrastination. These are excellent explanative charts!

The Sensemaking Process and Leverage Points for Analyst Technology as Identified Through Cognitive Task Analysis. Peter Pirolli and Stuart Card. PARC.

Right click and open image in new tab

Blog update

I worked on my personal website https://jandrews.io today. It was easy to host with the free Google Sites. I had a minor snafu with redirecting the "blog" subdomain to Blogger. I also used a free service called wwwizer to redirect the root domain @ A record to the www CNAME in DNS, because Google keeps that service only for G-suites, most likely because of the underlying server IP addresses changing occasionally. I chose to keep my blog hosted directly with Blogger because it is more secure: Wordpress has been rife with vulnerabilities in the past few years so it makes sense to keep it on an automatically updated platform. Overall I'm happy with the result for a start.

First post!

This is my first post! Things that I am thinking about this Thanksgiving include ontological schemes, Sharepoint, knowledge curation, information security and incident response, cooking, physics of the impossible, history of western philosophy especially Plotinus and Kant, positive outlook and great headphones.