signalling reflections

Avatar driving : momentary reflection on a brief but ongoing study of control systems. 

Serotogenic and adrenergic excess is like lubricant, they make things easier, but don't contribute as much structurally as ... dopaminergic and cholinergic fundamentals. 

I need to get into further details and field tests. 

what is a journalist?

A journalist is just the edge processor for a librarian.

- reply to a journo friend, who sent me an article pondering the AI-era ontology of journalism

angst and its discontents

Given enough angst, the snake will eat its tail, the horse will drown itself in the trough, the human will hang itself by the shirt, the stomach will consume itself, etc. So it comes to pass that people are wary of angst. Some might say they fear death, and so they fear angst as a cause of death.

kerja orang gila

Kadang2 kebingungan aku tiada had. Termenung saja tanya diri, ahli politik dan badan pemikir parti semua ni ... sengaja melemahkan diri tanpa persediaan strategi, ataupun tengah bermain catur 5D diluar gagasan marhaen sepertiku : adakah semua wayang politik di negaraku hanya kerja komplot antara empat cabangan raja, wakil rakyat, hakim, dan jemaah? 

Dahlah kita tahu, mau dapat undi, mestilah mengapi2kan sesuatu. Tapi pihak yang diserang sepertimana pun, patutnya ada kepakaran bombanya dalam angkatannya, kan?? Ataupun kita sengaja nak, sepertimana dikatakan seorang pengarang muka buku, pi mai pi mai tang tu ... dengan setiap isu kegemaran nasional. 

Contohnya, bab babi. Kenapa setibanya percikan isu ini, jemaah, parti, MB, dan pejabat DYMM, tidak auto-jalankan protokol kelolaan bilik perang antara satu sama lain BAGI TUJUAN MENYEJUKAN ISU demi kesejahteraan dan kecekapan ekonomi? Hang ingat pemutaran berminggu2 antara pihak ini boleh mengembangkan KDNK ke, cemana ya? Semestinya, "protokol tersebut tidak wujud", dan kita kena tanya, "kenapa?" 

Contohnya lagi, bab kuil haram. Sampai hari ini, tiada satu pihak mengemukakan carta alir yang ringkas demi penyelesaian isu ringkas ini. Hanya setiap pihak kata, "saya lebih berundang", tapi kebanyakkan ucapan ini tidak memetikan dengan terperinci undang2 mana yang berkaitan. Satu jerit roboh, satu jeri humban. Mana pulak petikan tertentunya? Ini bukan benda susah, bukan fizik kuantum. Ini kemahiran asas dalam bidang retorik, penerangan awam, dan karangan ... kerja budak sekolah, pun mungkin lebih elok daripada persembahan pakar2 kerjaya ni.

Entahlah ke arah mana pilihanraya akan pergi dalam 2030-an, dan 2040-an nanti. Nampaknya macam kerja orang berpura gila. 

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. ) 

anger, compassion, morality, and epistemology

Today I'm reflecting on the horde of moralising dipshits who are dogpiling everything and everyone related to the Epstein files. Generally I associate anger responses with mental disability - it's quite ablist and probably a bit fascist, I know. But anyone basing an argument on anger, including compassionate anger, is automatically discounted in terms of qualities as a member of civil society, in my view of the world. We disagree about what civilisation is supposed to be, and we disagree about what morals are, and we disagree about the function of words such as "good" and "evil". But we can agree, that we are all stuck on a rock together :)  

phases of learning : neurotransmitters involved

Rough model : probably buggy

Dopaminergic activity involved in reductive / analytic / deductive / filtering / culling activities needs to be ACTIVELY put to rest, in order to allow resources to be allocated to ... 

Cholinergic activity involved in mappy / synthetic / inductive / associative / mutative activities ... 

corresponding to fuzzy old concepts of yang, and yin, respectively.