Сообщений в теме: 59

[CopperKettle]

I've just taught a lesson of English to a person in the USA, and it went quite well, thanks to my sister, who wrote up a lesson scheme for me. Phew! The pupil knows English at an advanced level. I've just sent him links for downloading Anki, a flashcard software that's very useful for memorizing new words, and a package of 4000 most frequently used English words in the Anki format - this package I had found on RuTracker, its size is 219 MB. 

Had not my sister provided me with that lesson plan, I would never have been able to teach a lesson - I could not come up with a plan by myself due to my anxiety / dissociation / avoidance / rumination. This reminds me of descriptions of PTSD - but in PTSD, people have decreased cortisol and easily suppressed cortisol in the dexamethasone challenge test, while I have a free urinary cortisol holding at about 150% and dexamethasone fails to suppress my morning serum cortisol to below 50 nmol/L - mine only falls as low as 55 nmol/L. 

[CopperKettle]

3025 years from today, life will either be really good or really bad. It's 5050.

[CopperKettle]

Via Twitter, a post by Veera Rajagopal

 

The mechanism of action of antipsychotics (in regard to both main and adverse effects) has always been a mystery despite that they exist now for more than half a century. A recent work pinpoints the exact neuronal population in the brain that is responsible for metabolic adverse effects of olanzapine (weight gain and hypothermia). It seems atypical antipsychotics inhibit prodynorphin-expressing neurons in the ventromedial hypothalamus to cause metabolic adverse effects and this can be reversed by using GLP2 analogues (which activate the same set of neurons).

 

He provides this link:

 

# GLP-2 attenuates antipsychotics’ adverse metabolic effects (sadly, this "News & Views item is behind a paywall)

 

This is the actual science paper, also paywalled:

 

# GLP-2 prevents antipsychotics-induced metabolic dysfunction in mice

 

Both the news item and the paper are dated 20 March 2025

[CopperKettle]

Word of the day: ephectic - one who suspends judgement. From Ancient Greek ἐφεκτικός (ephektikós), from ἐπέχω (epékhō) - to hold back, keep in check; to withhold. From ἐπι- (epi-, “upon”) +‎ ἔχω (ékhō, “to have, hold”).

[CopperKettle]

Words of the morn: barton (farmyard) and combe (valley, often wooded and with no river)

 

The Oxen

By Thomas Hardy

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

“Now they are all on their knees,”

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

 

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

 

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve,

“Come; see the oxen kneel,

 

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,”

I should go with him in the gloom,

Hoping it might be so.

[В движении]

The Hardy is nice. I've read "Jude the Obscure" and half-read "Tess Dauberville". Very sentimental works they are.

[CopperKettle]

The Hardy is nice. I've read "Jude the Obscure" and half-read "Tess Dauberville". Very sentimental works they are.

 

I liked "Jude the Obscure" very much, and I still have the paper version I read back in 2002. I also have the paper version of "Far from the Madding Crowd", which I've been trying to read for the last 6 years, but my lack of attention stops me several dozens of pages into the book, again and again, so I keep re-reading the first few dozen pages. 

 

[В движении]

CopperKettle

 

Did you read 

  Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief" ? I'm reading it but the process is extremely slow.

[CopperKettle]

 

CopperKettle

 

Did you read 

  Markus Zusak's "The Book Thief" ? I'm reading it but the process is extremely slow.

 

 

No, I haven't read "The Book Thief", but I'll check it out, maybe I'll get an audiobook version! 

[CopperKettle]

I gave two English lessons today, one to a person with an advanced knowledge of the language, and one to a person with a level just below A1, and the lessons went quite well. But I was in sheer panic and stupor for a whole couple of days before the lessons. So it goes.

 

=== Next morning ===

 

And now upon awakening I'm feeling an affect. Roughly speaking, anxiety, but really it's affect, like I'm pumped full with stress hormones; I would feel exultation if I went for a run right now and turned on positivie music.