Substrate

This note reflects on Justin Garson’s APA blog article arguing that the chemical imbalance model of depression is outdated and harmful, promoting instead a view of depression as a functional signal. The author relates this to personal experience with overtraining syndrome and an SNRI that dulls highs and lows without addressing underlying causes. Garson’s philosophical framing emphasizes depression as a call to action, redefining selfhood, agency, and the good life.

The note explores a hesitation to start new projects due to fear of being unoriginal, noting that being second to an idea is acceptable but being 50th is not. It questions how to guarantee or maximize the odds of being the first to do something.

The note offers five lessons for parenting adult children, such as asking permission before giving advice, normalizing life's slower timeline in one's twenties, sharing one's own mistakes, setting clear boundaries at home, and prioritizing self-care.

Anthropic observed Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models sometimes using invented jargon, unusual punctuation, and emojis during long reinforcement-learning rollouts, then switching back to normal language when responding to humans. The note argues this is more like compression than a true private language, referencing Wittgenstein's argument against private languages for humans and cautioning that conspiracy theorists may misinterpret the behavior.

Stream v1.0.0 is the author's RSS reader, featuring a Nord colour scheme, aging item fading inspired by Current, AI suggestions, and a fast reading experience. It is available for self-hosting or via the author's instance.

The note criticizes the UK government's mandate for encryption backdoors under the guise of child safety, citing Signal's response that such surveillance does not protect children. Signal argues that real child safety requires education, social services, and AI guardrails, not invisible surveillance infrastructure.

European urban birds flee about 1 meter sooner when approached by women than by men, a pattern consistent across multiple cities. The cause of this difference is unknown, and it contradicts the expectation that birds would perceive men as more threatening due to historical hunting roles.

A meta-review found that several nutraceuticals (omega-3s, SAMe, curcumin, saffron) either enhanced the effects of antidepressants or performed better than antidepressants alone for adult depression, with side-effect rates similar to placebo. The review highlighted that adjunctive use of these supplements often provided superior efficacy compared to either treatment alone.

The Open University’s Responsible by Design framework (v2) addresses ethical challenges of generative AI in education through six pillars: Bias, Sustainability, Exploitation, Access and Equity, Transparency, and Opting Out. It provides reflective prompts and actionable solutions to help educators make informed, responsible AI choices. The note expresses skepticism about whether the framework will have significant practical impact.

LLMs require tacit knowledge and domain expertise to produce useful results, as domain experts can verify correctness even if they can't code, while generalist engineers can build but lack the "ground truth" to judge domain-specific outputs. The binding constraint has shifted from building to verifying what is correct.

Terminus is a dark retro theme for the Zola static site generator, hosted on GitHub by ebkalderon. The note points to the repository and its inclusion in an Are.na collection focused on a field station aesthetic.

The note explores the concept of "dopamine fracking" as a metaphor for online culture that prioritizes addictive dopamine hits over complexity, nuance, and beauty. The author describes how this leads to homogenized, commodified culture and shares their personal practice of reducing such stimuli by deleting channels, uninstalling apps, and setting boundaries.

The note argues that AI agents may reduce corporate profits by eliminating inefficiencies that companies currently exploit, such as customer inertia and lack of optimization. However, it counters that human irrationality and stock market behavior make this outcome uncertain, as seen in past recoveries from tech stock crashes.

The note describes Bo Burnham's work as a genius mix of comedy, storytelling, revelation, and music, comparing a new video favorably to his pandemic-era special Inside. The author was impressed by Burnham's creativity in both pieces.

The Tour Triangle skyscraper in Paris, which was long debated, has finally reached its full height. The building features a sharply tapered, geometric profile.

Adam Procter's artworks and games are being exhibited as part of "Changing the Game: Ten Years of Play at WSA" at Winchester School of Art. The note's author views this as a life goal and a motivation to create work deserving of such recognition.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein defines mattering as being deserving of attention, particularly self-attention, which makes humans normative, value-seeking creatures. She proposes four empirical categories of "mattering projects": socializers, transcenders, heroic strivers, and competitive matterers. Goldstein closes with the normative claim that the very desire to matter demonstrates that we already do, so any project based on denying others' worth is mistaken.