Arlie's Journal

From Jenn Dowd at Data for Health a reasonably decent substack blog in the medical space:

Does adolescence really last until age 32?

Capsule summary: comparing brain scans of individuals at different ages doesn't tell you very much about aging. For that, you need brain scans of the same individuals at different ages. also, "convenience samples" of people who just happen to have been scanned are unlikely to tell you as much as you think about the general population.

The study cited was published in something call Nature Communications, which is presumably unrelated to the well-regarded scientific journal Nature.

See also the same blogger's Are We Really Aging in Bursts?.

The United States elects people for a lot of roles I'd consider to require a technically competent, non-partisan person, whose skill at doing the job might be unrelated to their skill at winning elections - or worse, the need to run for (re)election might incentivize bad behaviour in the job at hand.

One of these roles locally is the county assessor - the person in charge of deciding property values for purposes of taxation. The previous incumbent has retired suddenly, or perhaps died, so we had a vote for a short term replacement. There were 4 candidates, only one of whom I'd ever heard of - he's been sending out small amounts of election ads. I don't like what he said about his background, and I like his proposed policies even less. His latest election email contradicted itself, presumably trying to be all things to all people. I also strongly suspect he's proposing to implement changes that are far beyond the scope of his office - i.e. he can't do what he says is the biggest reason to vote for him.

This individual was one of the top two in the recent vote. There will be a run off soon, with ballots arriving in early December. He'll be one of the two on the ballot. I don't know who his opponent is, but I'd vote for any of the other three ahead of him, and will make a point of doing so.

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Some weeks ago, we set out from my driveway to drive to Costco. I basically know the route(s), but the turns to get there from whichever major artery you take are a bit tricky, so I asked Google Maps to direct me.

Google first told me to turn left, then, before I was out of the driveway, to turn right. By the time I'd made it to the end of the block, it had alternated telling me to keep going with telling me to make a U-turn several times. Once I got onto one of the two obvious routes to a relevant highway, it suggested a change of route, then switched back to approving the one I'd picked, a couple more times.

It settled down once I got to the highway, and I did not find a slowdown on the route I'd kind of randomly picked. (And if there had been e.g. a major accident, it would normally have given me a suggested change of route, once, and explained why.)

And once I got near my destination, it handled the exit and its confusing turns perfectly well. So it did what I needed, along with adding extra amusement as we set out.

I've been meaning to post this topic ever since, but something else has always seemed more topical. So I've forgotten the exact number of times it changed its mind. (Yes, I was counting.) But with another Costco trip planned for tomorrow, I've finally remembered and posted.

There've been no recurrences since then - but I don't use Google maps all that often, so the sample size is small. I am somewhat curious whether it will lose its mind again tomorrow.

I subscribed to this blogger based on some recommendation or the other, and their claims of what they blogged about. This article has me giving them one strike, as in "three strikes and you are out" except that I'll probably only require one more strike to unsubscribe.

The topic is how health communicators need to act like online influencers, making themselves trusted based on their charisma and personality, eschewing evidence or anything that carries the negative taint of looking like normal health communications. Yep, they should communicate just like RFK Jr. That way they'll be believed more than they currently are.

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On 9/29/25 I called my cellular provider (T-Mobile), and after spending half an hour on hold, I asked about charges for calls from my home in the US to Canada. A person who called herself Aniya informed me that my plan (which I've had for 11 years) now gives me unlimited free calling to Canada (+ Mexico). I recalled it not having that feature, when I first set up the plan, which is why I made a point of asking. (I'd expected I might have to change plans.)

8 hours ago I made a long call to Canada, using the cell phone rather than the land line. About half an hour after the call ended, T-Mobile sent me a text: "As of 10/04/2025, your account reflects $135 in international calls, and/or call to premium-rated numbers in this cycle." That is a lot more than what I would have been charged for making the same call from the land line.

While I was on hold with T-mobile on Monday, I had an online chat with Verizon's customer service. They told me that their Unlimited Welcome plan would give me free calls to Canada - for essentially the same price T-Mobile is charging me. And if I were to authorize a switch then and there, they'd waive the $40 activation fee. Moreover, they'd give me a $5 monthly discount for 3 years if I brought my own phone.

I'll be contacting T-mobile next Monday to complain, and maybe convincing them to reverse the $135 charge. (I wonder how a claim against them in Small Claims Court would play out in practice...) I won't consider staying with them unless they both provide free calls to Canada *and* reverse this surprise charge.

I moved to T-mobile 11 years ago because at that time they were the company that wouldn't charge me an increased monthly free to cover price-reduced phone upgrades, since I wasn't going to buy a phone from a telco in any case. (Phones bought from a carrier generally arrive locked to that carrier, which isn't a feature I want.)

All this because ATT is killing POTS, so I'm inclined to get rid of my landline entirely. I valued the ability to use my phone in a power outage, but non-POTS landlines don't offer that feature, short of more complexity and expense than I want to deal with - whereas a cell phone *might* work, if its battery has charge and the cellular towers have backup power, or are outside my outage area.

At least T-mobile warned me, rather than leaving me to find out when my next bill arrived, after many many more expensive calls.

susandennis recently posted about several technical things she's trying. She's much more bullish on digital tech than I am, and even enjoys shopping (!), but she's been a great source of pointers for me of things I might like.

Today's post included a for-pay ad-free, surveillance-free search engine called kagi. She says she's been hearing about it a lot; I on the other hand have been hiding under my rock, and only just noticed it. (I really should read Ars Technica more frequently.)

After thanking Susan for bringing it to my attention, I just spent some time looking at it, finding myself on the fence about trying it. This Ars Technica article from Aug 5, 2025 says much of what I might have said myself, only better.

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I'd appreciate other people's comments.

Yesterday I had a rather inconclusive appointment with a physiatrist at Sutter Health. The appointment was inconclusive because he was unable to read the CD with the MRI results, from another outfit called SimonMed Imaging. I'd been referred to one of the physiatrist's colleagues by the doctor who'd sent me to SimonMed. Yet somehow her report had never reached Sutter Health. The text-based MRI report had reached neither Sutter Health, nor my primary care physician, nor me - but the referring orthopedic surgeon had explained the MRI to me verbally, so I knew basically what it said - she'd also had no problem accessing it, but she's in-network with SimonMed.

I spent a chunk of yesterday afternoon on 3 separate "my health" type web sites, for Sutter Health, Simon Med, and my primary care doctor. I cut and pasted the textual MRI report to both the physiatrist and the primary care doc, via each of their messaging systems - which had a character limit, requiring the report to be split into multiple parts, and AFAICT no "upload important medical info" interface.

My primary care doctor responded later that day via the messaging system, which sent me an email telling me to check there for a message. As of noon today, I had received no similar message from Sutter Health's system.

I had, however, received a request to review the physiatrist on Google. The message came from [email protected] (I have since received an email telling me the physiatrist has responded on their system.)

I reacted extremely badly to the email, to the point of writing this name and shame about the medical organization. I'm rather disgusted about getting requests for feedback rather before I get anything resembling results. I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea of writing reviews for doctors, particularly ones one has only seen once. (I feel similarly about medical advertising, or maybe rather worse.)

I was already getting warning signals about Sutter Health, suspecting an excessive focus on profit along with low grade sloppiness about minor patient facing matters, compared to two other health organizations I've used in the past year or two. (I have no useful information about medical matters.) This request for review made those signals rather louder and harder to discount.

Meanwhile, I don't know whether Simon Med produced a bad CD - or whether that problem originates at Sutter Health. I also don't recall for sure whether SimonMed was definitely told to CC everything to my primary care doctor (the MRI was last April; I didn't schedule the physiatrist until after we knew that physical therapy wasn't helping). I'm suspicious of them too, but less so - in part because CCing the primary care doctor seems to be something the patient must explicitly request; otherwise results may just go to the requesting physician.

I've recently added Robert Reich's substack to my collection of political blogs - so recently that I haven't yet redirected it to be filed into its own mailbox, as I generally do with anything political or otherwise high stress. I suspect this subscription won't last - too high frequency, and slightly lower quality than my two other overtly political blogs. But while I have it, I might as well post about its flaws, particularly the kind where I suspect it's giving the majority of its subscribers precisely what they want.

In this case, what Robert Reich is serving up is implausible hyperbole, in the form of what I'd call a clickbait heading, except that I and most of his other subscribers are emailed whole articles, so there's little point to clickbait.

In particular, it appears that on August 23, 1971, Lewis F. Powell, Jr. wrote a memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce which Robert Reich deems to be the "worst memo in history". I believe that's Reich-speak for "I really don't like it" or maybe even "of all the memos I can remember right now, this is the one I like least".

It's vanishingly likely to have been the literal worst, even if there were an objective standard of badness - and flat out impossible for Reich or anyone else to be certain there had never been a worse one.

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Updating my Mac to Sequoia 15.5 had a lot of bad consequences. The only good one is that it might have delayed for another year the dreaded time when I can no longer run that year's Turbotax, and need to switch to their online version, or hire a tax preparer.

I've just found the latest disimprovement. They turned on automatic updates. They've downloaded Sequoia 15.6 and scheduled it to be installed on my next restart, and there's nothing I can do about it. I turned off the unwanted misfeature, but its results are still scheduled.

15.5 was too big for my Mac Mini - performance sucks, random processes exit overnight, and I've had such desirable improvements (sic) as frustratingly slow character echoing in Numbers. They removed my old screensaver, and replacing it with one that soon stopped working, possibly as a result of one of those random process exits, this one of a daemon that doesn't either auto-relaunch or launch on request, as I expect from properly coded daemons in Apple's architecture. They gave me a very much unwanted "artificial intelligence" enhancement, which I turned off to the extent I could, and will probably have to turn off again after the unwanted update to 15.6 - unless of course they have removed the ability to disable it (they surely will eventually, just like they've already removed other 'retro' features).

Thanks, Crapple. I wish all your executives misery in this life and the next.

I wonder whether the report defines "ultra-processed" in a manner that is (a) intelligible to lay readers or (b) remotely sensible. I currently understand "ultra-processed" to generally mean "different from the healthy (sic) fast food and supplements sold by our provider".

I don't feel a need to check the news article the headline came from, to determine whether it includes such a definition - I'd be absolutely shocked if it did. Though it does have a link to the cdc report.

It appears that the report uses "the Nova classification system that categorizes foods by processing, from unprocessed to ultra-processed foods". That's footnoted to "Steele E, O’Connor L, Juul F, Khandpur N, Galastri Baraldi L, Monteiro CA, et al. Identifying and estimating ul-traprocessed food intake in the US NHANES according to the Nova classification system of food processing. J Nutr. 2023 Jan;153(1):225–241" - no URL given, and the title suggests that even if I could follow the link, there'd be no definition. There's also a footnote to "Monteiro CA, Cannon G, Levy RB, Moubarac JC, Louzada ML, Rauber F, et al. Ultra-processed foods: What they are and how to identify them. Public Health Nutr. 2019 Apr;22(5):936–41."

I get it. If you like it, it's probably "ultra-processed". If you don't, or if Big Food advertises it as "healthy", like the various fake meat products increasingly labelled as if they were real meat, it's not. (Personally, I can't imagine how to make even a halfway plausible fake meat without an awful lot of processing to disguise the actual ingredients - and a lot more if you also try to give the product a nutritional profile similar to the meat it imitates. But what would I know; surely Big Food (TM) has my best interests at heart (sic).

And yes, I have a chip on my shoulder about "healthy, plant-based chicken", "chick'n", and similar. Call it what it is - "plant-based imitation chicken". Don't put it in the meat section beside the real thing, and don't package it similarly enough that it could be accidentally purchased.

But this point also applies to just about every "healthy" extract and supplement - it takes a lot of processing to produce them. On the other hand, some traditional foods also take a fair amount of processing. Taro (not traditional where I grew up) comes to mind. But also baked goods, sausages, and similar. Should I be buying wheat seeds and a flour mill, as the only way my bread can be healthy? Reductio ad bloody absurdum - give me some definitions already, before trying to scare me with the latest boogey-man. Perhaps it's "ultra-processed" only if it wasn't available at grocery stores in some arbitrarily chosen decade?

I googled "nova food classification system". The wiki article gives actual definitions, far enough into the article that I started composing this paragraph believing it did not. But I'm not at all sure I could distinguish members of their "processed" and "ultra-processed" categories based on their description of ultra-processed, quoted from "the most recent overview of Nova published with Monteiro".

There's clearly something a bit more solid behind the click bait. You just have to do an awful lot of digging to find it.

I wonder whether any sodas qualify as other than ultra-processed, since I suspect them of being a major source of Americans' calorie intake, and having been so for many decades.