what recorders teach children

When someone in charge, gives you something inane, with instructions to blow on it, it's more important to demonstrate effort than to achieve competency.

2026 Feb : Snapshot of generalist life

Hard task of the moment : figuring out the model of structure between

• - physical plane : neuroanatomy / organs / tissues
• - network plane : salience / default mode / central executive / etc.
• - neurochemical plane : adrenergic / cholinergic / dopaminergic / etc.

Hard task of the last six months : figuring out 

• - parliamentary Malay terminology
• - Islamic Malay terminology
• - Malaysian Malay cultural memory and references

Hard task of the last three years : figuring out

• - mappings between individual nutrients and monthly / daily / minutely performance

Hard tasks of the last several years : figuring out

• - general mapping between formal and informal languages

Resolved task of the past two decades : figuring out 

• how to talk to computers, all the way down to memory layouts and processor operations

Resolved tasks from over two decades ago :

• - understanding institutional treatments of the total history of human ideas / education syllabi
• - mapping every type of conscious experience to a known quantifiable data structure

Calcium study

Today perhaps, to read about calcium's interaction with everything else.

First interesting find of the day : the atherosclerotic contributions of Ca2+ are due to its intracellular action resulting in vasoconstriction. In a functional feedback loop, the intracellular Ca2+ concentration THEN triggers NO release which antagonistically leads to vasodilation. So to some degree, the athletic benefits of NO's vasodilatory effects, actually require Ca2+ to function properly.

Second interesting find : Ca2+ moderation is also essential for optimal functioning of the raphe nuclei's serotonergic neurons, affecting wakefulness, sleep, and the overall serotonergic system, associated with diseases of mood ( depression, anxiety, OCD, schizophrenia, etc. ) and CO2 sensitivity ( normal : panic if CO2 is too high ).

Third interesting find : Ca2+ competes with Mg2+ for gut absorption, so I should just park Mg2+ in the bread recipe, and Ca2+ in the kimchi recipe, separately.

Fourth : Ca2+ contributes in mitochondrially complicated ways to energy production. When Ca2+ levels are normal, calcitriol ( final form of vitamin D ) will increase fat burning, but if Ca2+ levels are pathologically low, more calcitriol will lead to fat accumulation instead.

( Also today, after yesterday's supplementation of ~500mg Ca2+ I found that there was less need for caffeine upon waking. That makes sense. I will continue to monitor this. )