Lesson : individual compensation in commerce

This quarter, it will be 20 years since I began studying commerce. Spending my days alone, on sabbatical over chores, I review past lessons.

I graduated about 21 years ago, but my first job was in a think tank supporting Putrajaya. The pace did not suit me, so I dove into commerce, finally, in 2006. After short stints in management consulting, and asset management, I worked at my first startup. At this little company, I got to work with some really nice people, who had accomplished many things in their private careers, and were now religiously motivated to run a social enterprise. 

We raised $1 million on a $2 million valuation, largely on my work projecting financial statements and fluffing up their intellectual property assets. After funding, I was offered something like $10,000/year, so I declined to participate. For the setup work, I had been paid about $5,000. I thought nothing of it at time, figuring that it was an ordinary collection of cultural experience, neither surprising, nor encouraging in any way. 

It taught me however, to structure my time more around commercial agreements, and to simply discount the positive aspects of anyone involved. The world is full of clever, well-intended people. But they cannot all be expected to act in the interest of others. My short experience with this little company taught me also how to be a better employer. I have since always practiced the method of explicitly discussing the economic motivations of staff, on an individual basis, when hiring.

My next job after this, was learning how to tend a bar.

"The point of public discourse is to make fun of everything unless explicitly forbidden."

Saya rasa Malaysia lama lagi tak akan faham benda ini - jadi, setiap suara yang dihulurkan terjadi sesuatu yang boleh menyakitkan hati diri. Hati orang Malaysia lembut, lembik, tak kebal. Jadi perundangan persuaraan masih jadinya isu yang hangat di kalangan rakyat.

Dopaminergic kinetics : bumbling along the calcitriol-dopamine axis

CALCITRIOL FUNCTION

• - nerve factors : GDNF, NGF, IGF-1, BDNF
• - signalling : Wnt/b-catenin, Shh, Klotho, Nrf2/Ho-1, NF-kB
• - interaction : vitamin A, estrogen, progesterone
• - structure : myelin basic protein, tyrosine hydroxylase

DOPAMINE SYNTHESIS

• - Tyrosine hydroxylase, NO, K+, Mg2+, Ca2+, Fe2+, Zn2+ work together to build a number of monoamine neurotransmitters; calcitriol acting upon vitamin D receptors, upregulates expression of the TH gene

DOPAMINE TOXICITY

• - VMAT2 moves dopamine into vesicles, otherwise cytosolic dopamine accumulates; VMAT2 work suffers from ( among many other things ) ATP shortages from dysfunction of [ mitochondrial membrane potential, which creatine supplementation helps ] 
• - cytosolic dopamine oxidises to create [ superoxides and peroxides ( fire, bad ) ], and [ oxidised dopamine, which  leads to protein misfoldings also ]. Oxidised dopamine goes through a multistep process to sequestration as neuromelanin ( the black stuff ) which is just one of some five ways oxidised dopamine is managed. One of the toxic intermediaries is DOPAL, an aldehyde,so dopamine competes with consumed ethanol for degration by aldehyde dehydrogenase
• - dopamine oxidisation is mainly via monoamine oxidase, which is responsible for degrading monoamine neurotransmitters; MAO inhibitors are therapeutic in managing depression ( by maintaining neurotransmitter presence ) and Parkinson's ( disease of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra; partly from "fire" )

TYRAMINE ADJACENCY

• - MAOs also break down [ tyramine, which is familier to foodies as a product of fermented and aged proteins, which stimulates the release of noradrenaline when consumed ]; hence combining MAOIs with fermented food can lead to noradrenaline and thus blood pressure spikes, and migraines