Random Thoughts

[Angrboda]

Do you lose sleep over whether you sleep too little or too much? You can now relax, because scientists have figured out precisely how much sleep you really need. In a recent study in Nature, an international team of experts reports that the “sweet spot” for adults is between 6 hours 24 minutes and 7 hours 48 minutes. Less or more than this “Goldilocks” zone is associated with faster rates of aging in the brain, heart, liver and other vital organs, plus higher rates of illnesses such as heart disease and depression, and ultimately shorter lifespans.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/...p-anxiety/

[Angrboda]

A 2023 randomized trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people who drank one or more cups of coffee each day lost on average 36 minutes of sleep compared with those who didn’t over a two-week period.

There’s a catch though: People who were assigned to drinking coffee were also more active, taking an average of 1,000 more steps — the equivalent of walking about half a mile — per day than those randomized to the no-coffee group. The researchers speculated that perhaps the boost in activity is part of why coffee has consistently been shown to have many health benefits, including maybe even for longevity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/...hts-sleep/

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

A 2023 randomized trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that people who drank one or more cups of coffee each day lost on average 36 minutes of sleep compared with those who didn’t over a two-week period.

There’s a catch though: People who were assigned to drinking coffee were also more active, taking an average of 1,000 more steps — the equivalent of walking about half a mile — per day than those randomized to the no-coffee group. The researchers speculated that perhaps the boost in activity is part of why coffee has consistently been shown to have many health benefits, including maybe even for longevity.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/...hts-sleep/

(Bold mine)

Bad Connor MacLeod voice:

I...AM...IMMORTAL.

Boru

[Angrboda]

Reading about an attack where Meta's Instagram chatbot could be tricked into changing the email address of the account owner because the AI has privileges to manage account credentials and information. That's a human failure. Account management should have never been turned over to AI. It's not clear whether that failure is due to naively assuming that AI will be responsible in its administration, or simply not caring that accounts might be compromised given the savings in customer service costs by using AI to handle frontline requests.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^I dunno. Sounds kinda ‘woke’ to me.

Boru

Perhaps some of the most debilitating societal tropes are that sound-mindedness as in smarts, are inborn and immutable, as well as the conflation of ignorance and intelligence.  There might be other tropes that are more debilitating, such as that merit leads to success, but these tropes disincentive one to take steps to improve and encourage the belief that no infirmity exists.

That’s how you get serial killers and psychopaths.

Boru