nutrition : imidazole dipeptides / IDPs

 This is turning out to be an interesting group of molecules.

• histadine containing : most common in chicken, fish, and then other skeletal muscle meats
• antioxidant and pH buffering : "instant energy" end-user experience
• generally not saturated in humans, so there are benefits to eating it
• also some research linking these to Parkinson's Disease ( neural death in the Substantia Nigra associated with oxidative stress )

There are three of easy interest; only one is a commerciallycommon supplement

• carnosine :
• the common supplement is beta alanine, as carnosine is produced in humans, but beta alanine is usually the rate-limiting input
• anserine : 
• uncommon commercially
• balenine : 
• uncommon commercially

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. ) 

Kokumi, Umami, and other interactions

I got here from reading about umami. So far what I have is 

• - anions like chloride (Cl-) present as bitter ; bitter is a negative feedback signal, so bitter stimuli tend to mute everything else ; this is also why excess salts of chloride present as bitter
• - amino acids like glutamic acid present as sour (H+)
• - alternative cations like (Na+) compete with (H+) ; sour and salty stimuli tend to mute each other
• - salt and umami receptors share a root ; when (H+) competes with (Na+), the presentation of saltiness is muted, and so umami presents as sweet
• - kokumi is related to calcium (Ca2+) sensitivity ... throughout the body ... but in taste, the CaSR may simply amplify other tastes instead of admitting a new qualia ; to make this more complicated, it's not calcium in food that stimulates this ... it's gamma-glutamyl peptides in food which stimulate intracellular calcium, which trigger CaSR, or something like that

That's pretty cool!

Sharing the Fat ( Calculations )

Dietary studies have resolved protein and carbs - now I need to lock down fats. 

Ballparks ...

- A : fat calories as a fraction of total calories : target 30%

- B : fat calories per gram : 9

- C : A&B : 1000 Cal * 30% / ( 9 Cal/g ) = 33g fat per 1000 Cal

... which fits the intuition for efficiencies I had previously developed during cafe operations ...

Sunflower Seed, F : 46.5% of 71g, per 1000 Cal gross intake, about MYR 1.5 

- SF : 4.5%

- MuF : 19%

- PuF : 23%

Pumpkin Seed, F : 45.8% of 72g, per 1000 Cal gross intake, about MYR 2.5

- SF : 8.6%

- MuF : 16.2%

- PuF : 21%

Chicken Egg, F : 6.5% of 507g, per 1000 Cal gross intake, about MYR 3.5 for 7-8 grade A eggs with a minimum of 65g each

- SF : 2.5%

- MuF : 3.4%

- PuF : 0.6%

Almond. F : 36.7% of 90g, per 1000 Cal gross intake, about MYR 4.0

- SF : 3.7%

- MuF : 30.9%

- PuF : 12.1%

Tofu Chips May Ultimately Kill Me

So my microwaved tofu game has been pushed to the point where the chips are straight-up crunchy. I guess it wasn't until recently that I realised you could execute browning reactions in a microwave because I was under the false conception at the microwaves only heated up water molecules. It turns out you can roast and crisp, furthermore without oil, if you can control the dehydration / steam-flow mechanics.

I hate mayo, but ...

I've decided that while I hate mayonaise, I"ll make a concession for EVOO mayo. I know people don't like bitter mayo, but I think generally vegetable oil is a boring ingredient ... and EVOO is the only generally available EV with an interesting flavour profile. Maybe cold-pressed grapeseed oil too. But heck, I don't think I have the time or budget for tests, yet.

Reading : Methionine; Homocysteine; Methyl Cycle Hypothesis; B Complex

 https://www.nature.com/articles/3780275

This paper is on my study list. It's a nice gateway for a number of conjectures and metabolic pathways linking the common chit-chat about 

- "meat bad, veggy good"

- cardiovascular disease factors

- neurotransmitter production

- cancer cell dependencies and related dietary restrictions during chemotherapy etc.

Brown Rice : Microwave Calibration

• 100g rice
• 150g water
• 30% power
• 25 minutes

vessel was covered but breathable

Bad Analogy: we need "a Visa/Mastercard network for Sundry Contracts"

Can someone PLEASE (maybe a well-distributed e-wallet provider) just write a generic interface for producers (upstream) to confirm real-time contracts - and then sell API access to customer-facing parties (downstream) ... so that we minimise the problem of 100 downstream customer-facing parties (delivery service, platform, aggregator, etc.) asking every upstream factory (restaurant, grocer, service provider, etc.) to install their goddamn order-booking software and hardware? LLOLL just take 0.05% of gross sales. Everyone wins. It's just a contract (NOT PAYMENT) interconnect layer for supply-chain integration. But we can dumb it down farther and very badly abstract it to the analogy: a Global Telephone Exchange for E-commerce Contracts.

TLDR: Your hardware stinks; your software smells; I don't want it in my house; those parts of your business are not integral to that service which you provide. 

But of course, that's just wishful thinking. Downstream businesses are free to demand that upstream businesses use their software and hardware. I was just you know, blue-skying, as they say.

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Besfren helps me to elaborate on my problems.

A post shared by 正 (@_jerng) on May 25, 2020 at 8:45am PDT

"What about [services that let restaurants order things from suppliers]?"

I kinda get how [those services] work []. There are a number of folks doing that business model []. However, notice that they are not yet integrating upstream from food delivery platforms. I like what they're doing, but it's not broad enough in the horizontal I'm complaining about. What about haircuts, and plumbing services? I would be curious to see more of that, when it happens. The goal being to go very thin, and very broad, not deep. I'm looking for an implementation that is COMMERCIALLY ATTRACTIVE to anyone who currently builds their own order-placing hardware and software and sends it upstream to factories. The market penetration of the generic order-making middleware has to be so good that people would rather use the middleware than (build their own order-making system and ask clients to use it).

Reflections on the Value of the Industry I work in

The day begins before five o'clock in the morning. It is cold, and dark, but I am fairly alert. I exit the bedclothes, turn off the air-conditioner, enter the washing area, and urinate. Washing my hands, I glance at myself. I remove the beanie from my head which was recently shaved, but I retain the other clothes on my body. I speak with a friend in the next room. Then I proceed with cooking and cleaning.

Indian mustard leaves are in stock. I store half a packet for future use. Of the stalks I do remove, I pluck off each leafy stem and place it in a colander. I discard the leafless trunk - a small luxury, but it is early, I am troubled, and I do not feel charitable. Water is heated in a pan - I try to calculate the energy required to raise 300 milliliters of water to boiling, and I figure it is about 21 kilojoules. The local rate of electricity is about $0.072 for 3.6 megajoules, so [following a little calculation, as my head is slow] I guess that gives us about 260 kilojoules per US cent - so given the inefficiency of the induction cooker and teflon pan in my setup, I guess the price of cooking was perhaps... a cent. Now this is the sort of home economics that kids should be learning, but I don't remember it being in the school syllabus, back in the day. The leaves are dropped into the boiling water and the power is cut. Then I plate them, with chopsticks, one stem at a time.

Mutton cubes which have been defrosted, are trimmed of marbled fat - some fat is refrozen for future cooking, the rest oils my pan and I discard the unmelted portions. While the meat begins to sear, I begin to wash cooking utensils and dishes. Then I remove the smaller fragments of meat before they burn, then I reduce the heat and cover the larger chunks of meat to allow them to cook more thoroughly. As I am washing the tools, I find a bowl of grass seeds on the counter that my friend is attempting to germinate. I see little bubbles in viscous liquid, and being suspicious of the contents, I sniff the bowl - it seems that yeasts may be beginning to ferment these. I find the instruction manual for the seeds and find that these have been in the bowl for too long, so I rehome them between tissues in a salad bowl, covering it with a plate.

After all the cleaning, the meat has rested and is nearly cold. I wash up, and think about the nature of cooking and cleaning. These are rudimentary infrastructure that may one day be fully automated, but at this point in history, we depend on human labour for it. Not new thoughts. I am simply reminded about the importance of what I do as a businessman.

I eat my breakfast with a mug of refrigerated water. I wash my arms and feet. Then I update my friend on the seeds, and I return to my desk to begin the high-value part of my day's work.

Economic Adjustments

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Caption: Here's a photograph of some meal prep. Literally a pack of instant ramen quartered into four servings. It's a mode of the future - I think like diet sodas and unsweetened drinks, the sales of all sorts of low-calorie snacks which are strong on flavour are going to take off over the next one to two decades.

This is a Sunday reflection. I have to split this reflection now into three sections.

1. Housekeeping

It's been about a month since I moved to a new residence, with a partner whom I met about three weeks before that. One of our idioms is that we live on a farm, with a dog, a cat, a pig (me), and a chicken (she). There is poop everywhere, and I wear slippers whenever I am in the living room.

Only she (my partner) minds the non-human animals - that is her business. Sometimes I rub the dog's titties, and it seems to placate her (the dog). The cat (also female) has already puked on the chair of my work desk. Repeating some of my idioms for this period of life, while 'the only pets I keep are human', it is also the case that generally, 'the pokemon of my pokemon, are my pokemon (a.k.a. the rule of pokemon transitivity)'.

We rent in a gated community, with 'luxurious' facilities. The nearest commercial shops are, however, about three kilometers away. We are gradually figuring out how much to cook per meal, and how to organise our food storage. Protein per unit of bodyweight, given our need to add muscle, is a significant consideration. We also need to figure out how to get more work done, but that's largely going to be covered in the section below.

The property developer who built these houses hasn't applied a great deal of polish to the place, and so I have taken it upon myself to repair, and upgrade various construction issues. I look forward to the diminishment of these concerns, so that I can return to focus on my work.

We are on constant defense against invading ants.

We do each other's laundry.

2. Interactions with My Work

The whole point of this cohabitation is that I am aiming to save money on rent, because prior to this I was living out of a hotel room, and outsourcing both food preparation and laundry, for all of 3.75-or-so years. Now I pay a little less rent, and I have access to both kitchen and laundry appliances, so I can do these by myself and save some money. My landlady is being extremely generous.

On the down-side, the residence is seventeen clicks (kilometers) from my job, whereas previously I lived about seventeen (maybe thirty-five) metres from my office. In order to reduce the cost of commuting, I am now adjusting to increased remote control of my office. We run a twenty-four hour operation, and so it's not so bad when travelling to and fro in the wee hours of the morning - of course, if the jalopy I own breaks down, I'm pretty much fucked, so that gamble is part of the calculus for the manoeuvre at large.

After a month, I do not feel productive yet. Part of this is due to the fact that my mind is still recovering from recent volatility on the job. Recovery is possible for both good and bad reasons - on the good side, we have grown a disciplined team, and everyone's on Slack; on the bad side, we have a new joiner who isn't very sharp, and so the entire operation is huddling around to coach him up. While my colleagues focus on that, I have to explore growth for the company on my own, through technology R&D and other forms of business development.

I'm not too optimistic about our chances for success. Honestly, if you'd asked me on any day in the last week where my business is heading, I couldn't have really told you. I have to timeslice my headspace to the point where sometimes, I'm not in possession of a long-term view, and generally that's dangerous. Then when I get back to strategic planning mode, people think I'm nuts, so what the hell. (Observers don't usually seem very important.) I intend to grow stronger, faster, and smarter. My body is not currently so fit. I believe that my mental agility has suffered also as a result of this detritus, while it has been hammered with professional volatility since 2014.

Part of the routine I currently study includes daily exercise at the swimming pool. I am only just getting the hang of swimming with my face under water, and I do not run very often. I have also just cleaned out a utility room, so that it can be used as an ad hoc space for lifting weights. At my peak fitness level in 2006 (thirteen years ago) I was running seven kilometers per day, effortlessly, or a half marathon twice a week. In 2005, if I recall correctly, I had been deadlifting about 60kg on my own mass of about 55kg, in preparation for travelling home from college. So those are some benchmarks I need to get back on, perhaps with the use of the local facilities. It would be good to exceed these eventually.

3. The Relationship

I have a fairly harmonious relationship, with a woman who has monogamous tendencies. I'm not especially keen on monogamy with her, though it is possible, and so far she seems willing to let me explore relationships with other partners. They say that good people are hard to find, in this conservative society of Malaysia, but I consider myself fortunate to be with her.

We enjoy each other's company, perhaps a little too much. For my part, I make an effort to constantly remind her that what we have works now, and we don't know if it will work in the future. We generally agree on present functionality.

I've found comfort in many bodies, some of which I moved in with after a few weeks, some who were intimate the day we met, some which came close only after years of mutual affection. I generally don't stop loving the people I love, regardless of how they view me. I've given up filtering for people who want to talk about the same things - but sometimes you meet them by accident. My best friend and I no longer date, but our entire conversational existence still revolves around baby-talk and global condescension. My current partner and I are working on building very large things from very small bases - so we talk about personal growth a lot. Lately this has focused on physiological developments, since we have the luxury of a pool and gym nearby. I'm finally learning how to dolphin kick. I never know where I'll be in a week, because business is volatile, so I wonder... if this gym thing is going to persist.

Shiso / Perilla

That funny large leaf in sushi platings:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiso

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla