December 07, 2023

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)
(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? 

July 04, 2023

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.