Male pattern baldness is a solved problem, if caught early enough; people just don't usually bother, because the cleanest solution (a 5α-RI) can interfere with sexual function, the "proper" fix for that (low-dose topical application) is time-consuming (so people normally just kludge it with Viagra), and the medicines involved can (indirectly) cause breast growth with prolonged use (unlikely to be a problem with low-dose topical application, and can also be mitigated, although overshooting that mitigation can cause osteoporosis) and are "don't even touch this if you're pregnant" class (they can interfere with fœtal development).
Low-dose topical application doesn't have those problems. Heck, even "dose your entire body" doesn't always lead to sexual dysfunction. (And breast development is a rare side-effect that you'd notice before anything permanent happens, and is easily-addressed.) However, it is topical application of a medicine that can interfere with fœtal development.
Oh, almost forgot: any messing around with sex hormone levels puts you at risk of depression. That's big side effect #3 (though again, many people don't even notice it).
out of curiosity, what else would you expect the side effect profile of something mediating the effects of a potent androgen on the body to look like?
it's not estrogen where you would expect breast growth (and can't count on any particular changes to sexual function anyway), it's inhibiting conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone which could have that effect, much like you could spontaneously develop gynecomastia without intentionally fiddling with your hormone balance. calling it unsolved sounds a lot like calling the very many conditions with medications that have more likely and worse side effects equally unsolved.
> what else would you expect the side effect profile of something mediating the effects of a potent androgen on the body to look like?
I'm a consumer, not a medical professional. I have no expectations based upon detailed familiarity with the underlying biology. Or is the target market for these products medical professionals?
That's what the patient information sheet is for, and why everyone's supposed to have access to a trained medical professional they can freely consult for things like this.
> it's not estrogen where you would expect breast growth
Actually, it is. Reducing DHT levels causes the body to elevate both testosterone and œstrogen levels, via homeostasis. But yeah, it's not a direct effect, and if it's a problem you can twiddle further to make it go away. (You could even do that pre-emptively, though you normally get days and days of warning before breast development actually starts, so I'd advocate the "wait and see" approach.)
A condition is typically considered solved if there are drugs or procedures that cure it and either (a) have extremely rare side effects, or (b) have side-effects that are not as big a problem as the condition they are curing. If a pill existed that cured trh common cold but had a 1% chance of giving you cancer of the throat, people wouldn't proclaim "we've cured the common cold!".
Minoxidil is a sledgehammer: it's got all sorts of other effects (e.g. reducing your blood pressure, beta something something). I wouldn't expect it to cause breast development, though, since it doesn't act on œstrogen receptors.
You seem knowledgeable. Where's a safe place to order the topical application from? I'm not in the US or Europe, our doctors aren't going to be bothered with (or knowledgeable about) something like treating baldness.
My Gmail username is the same as my HN username if you prefer to answer in private. Thanks
I don't have the savvy for stuff like actually acquiring medicines, unfortunately. You might be able to just buy it from your local pharmacy; but if not, you could check https://hrtcafe.net/ or – as a sibling commenter suggested – look into minoxidil (which works via a different mechanism). I wouldn't recommend minoxidil unless its other effects would be beneficial to you, since I'm leery of things that affect blood pressure and circulation – but I'm not actually trained in this stuff, so maybe it's considered safer.
Finasteride is less potent, but is normally recommended for cis men; not sure why. Theoretically, I'd expect dutasteride to be the better medication (and https://doi.org/10.2147/CIA.S192435 bears that out) if you can get hold of it.
I'd have thought finasteride and dutasteride weren't safe to take if there's a chance of you getting someone pregnant, but https://www.nhs.uk/medicines/finasteride/fertility-and-pregn... says it's fine, actually. https://doi.org/10.4103/0974-1208.86093 goes into more detail on that. (I'm not aware of any other impacts on fœtal development, only the intersex condition mentioned in that article – note that the backdoor pathway described in https://doi.org/10.1002/dvdy.23892also requires the 5α-reductase enzyme –, but I'd still advise caution.)
Most likely you wouldn't even be able to buy a ticket. Appsites like these are entirely dependent upon JS for their functionality.
On the other hand, I find it ironic that a low-cost airline would use such a complex site; if they are so miserly and minimal with their services that every little bit costs extra, a boring old HTML form seems like the most suited to them.
Every time Github went down multiple people post on HN saying "every since they were bought by Microsoft, ...". As annoying as those Rust evangelists on every single memory corruption bug.
I could have written the OP message a year ago -- I used to feel the same way.
Plz don't disparage Rust evangelism!
Rust is awesome. yes it is complex, frequently annoying, easy to learn difficult to master. I'm speaking from a 30 year dev career.
a few months ago I intended to do a quick investigation into RUST to validate my "i really don't need to learn this" specifically for an embedded project. Within a few hours I found I had become a zealot. Rust has too many "omg, i should tell everybody about this" behaviors that I can't even find my favorite aspect yet.
It's equivalent to a lost soul finding Christianity and accepting the lords blessing and forgiveness! The weight that is lifted of being forgiven to your sins resulting == no more guilt, it's all forgiven! immediately reduction of cognitive dissonance. in this example with rust, it's pointer tracking and memory management, but it's basically the same thing. Rust is for the pious developer.
Those people who are still using C++ for fresh starts are the same folks who love to do things the hard & wrong way, or at least those who don't know any better, infidels, unwashed heathen.
While I'm not sure whether you're serious ;), to be clear: what annoys me is they don't really understand why we are having "someone pwned your phone via a series of memory corruption bugs" daily.
Until those Rust evangelists managed to rewrite the world with Rust (and I promise you there still will be a lot of security bugs), we still have to fix our shit in a low-cost way and their evangelism does not help at all and is pure annoyance.
St. John’s College was founded in 1696 and is the third oldest college in the United States.
The great books curriculum at St. John’s includes works in philosophy, literature, political science, psychology, classics, history, religion, economics, math, chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, music, language, and more.
I am curious to know why you are working through this book. Is it related to your career or are you doing just for fun? I am asking because I often face this dilemma of whether to invest time in furthering my career or doing something I like that is not going to help my career (although this book might given that it has theory of trees and graphs).
A thing to keep in mind: there are two schools of thought. Niklas Luhmann was an extremely productive German sociologist who used his index cards system in a particular way. One school of thought tries to use his system exactly, like explained in the book that blog post is about. Others think that Luhmann had to work like that because he was restricted to physical cards, now with digital tools we can make other choices and get similar effects. Both ways are referred to as "Zettelkasten method".
I also realized that the system really works for producing content, things like producing science papers. You need to put work in how you formulate notes, and in finding connections between them. Without a good reason to keep working with your Zettelkasten, there is a risk it'll just be a pile of notes.
I don’t have much time, but look at: Tiago Forte’s blogpost about How to Take Smart Notes (also, see the book), Roam research, Obsidian, Zettelkasten.de (mostly English). Also, both Roam and Obsidian have Slacks (or Discords) full of friendly knowledge-management enthusiasts.
Those are the things that I found most helpful on my recet foray into the Zettelkasten world. Could save you some time.
Just added Forte’s blog post to my reading list! This seems similar in benefits to the idea of a Common Place Book. I’ve just had some more hardback notebooks delivered for that purpose. I’ve been keeping one for a year, filled up 2 notebooks and it’s been night and day for me. I’ve been able to comprehend subjects that I’ve struggled with before, e.g linear algebra, abstract algebra or any topic I take an interest in.
One thing my notebooks don’t have is structure and a system of referral. This makes it hard to reference previous ideas and concepts. In fact, I don’t because it’s so difficult - it’s just one big stream of consciousness. And it seems Zettelkasten does that!
I’d love to see the notes — is it possible? I’m currently struggling with putting notes for an analysis course into Zettels, and an example would be tremendously helpful.
If it’s not possible, let me at least give you a couple of questions:
1. What app are you using? (And why not Roam / why not Obsidian?
2. What do you put on one Zettel? Just theorem? Theorem+proof? Some bigger mass of knowledge?
3. Do you rewrite the proofs in detail, or just explain them using your own words without mathematical rigor?
