Richard Sprague

Almost 3 months later, I retested my body composition with a DEXA scan from BodySpec. Good news: I gained more muscle. Bad news: I gained even more fat. Guess I'll double-down on my diet. Personal Science Week: open.substack.com/pub/personal...

If your heart rate (and other?) data doesn't account for time of year, you may be reading noise. My experiments with seasonality: www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

Millions of people died of COVID, so why can't you name any famous people who died unexpectedly? I did the math based on my personal experience and concluded that most people wouldn't have known it was a pandemic if there were no news coverage of it. www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

For actionable medical questions, I conclude that plain ole Claude is better for personal science than the physician-grade OpenEvidence LLM chatbot. www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

And I have my own fresh sauerkraut...easiest fermentation experiments ever! Personal Science Week - 260129 Fermentation open.substack.com/pub/personal...

More results with informal food tracking, this time with Gemini CLI and Obsidian: forum.quantifiedself.com/t/ai-assiste...

I stopped using dedicated food tracking apps and switched to the "Everthing App" instead. www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

I tested only 12/16 on a test of how well I detect "misinformation". Does that make me a gullible fool? open.substack.com/pub/personal...

If you can make it to downtown Seattle this weekend (Sun Apr 27), please join me: lu.ma/zqv9e6rh

Trust the experts

nypost.com/2025/04/09/h...

The Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1973 requires employers: "If you choose not to self-identify, your gender and ethnicity will be recorded by a representative based on visual observation." Do they use those skin color wheels from Apartheid South Africa? dynomight.net/2021/01/15/e...

First good, balanced review I've seen of Upgrade Labs. As always, technology moves faster than science: cool gadgets appear faster than real hardcore science can prove they work.

Fellow vaccine believers! Prove you believe in science by getting *all* the shots possible. What do you have to lose?

PSA to everyone concerned about misinformation and inappropriate content online. Trust me with your news feed and I absolutely guarantee you'll never see non-factual or inappropriate content ever again.

Cooking is one of the most personal of sciences. A few tips at Personal Science Week: www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

Can’t believe it took me this long in life to discover the moka pot.

I can’t think of a single famous person (celebrity, elected official, top CEO, etc) who died unexpectedly*. Can you? *ie under 55, no other serious health conditions, “basically normal”

Best self-tracking videos, plus more links at www.personalscience.com/p/personal-s...

"We find that (1) most AI use isn't deceptive, (2) deceptive content produced using AI is cheap to replicate without AI, and (3) focusing on the demand for misinformation rather than supply is a more effective way to diagnose problems and identify interventions." www.aisnakeoil.com/p/we-looked-...

Why don't women use ChatGPT? and what happens when inevitably they do ... plus more AI commentary relevant to investors: thewednesdayletter.substack.com/p/investai-e...

"According to researchers at Columbia University and the French National Institute, more than 6 in 10 people who share news URLs on Twitter don’t actually bother reading them" www.tabletmag.com/sections/art...

My experience with several "Biological Age" tests, plus results of a head-to-head comparison. What can they tell you? open.substack.com/pub/personal...

GPT-4 could have been trained in 2012 at a cost of $5B and 3 months. State-of-the-art chips, like the kind the US restricts, offer a large cost advantage, but not an insurmountable tech advantage. epoch.ai/blog/introdu...

Comedy shows have laugh tracks, so why can't Bluesky make "reply-bots" as conversation-starters. Loosen up the readers a little to encourage them to join the thread.

"How long have I got?" ‘Doctors' predictions for terminally ill cancer patients were inaccurate—they were correct to within a week in only 25% of cases and out by more than four weeks in a similar number.’ from BMJ study trusttheevidence.substack.com/p/assisted-d...

Too much obsession with AGI makes AI industry leaders ignore the more important issues of how to help humans right now. thewednesdayletter.substack.com/p/investai-e...

More people (not just sysadmins) should use Docker for everyday life. E.g. make a future-proof copy of your PhD source files. I dockerized my magnum opus with its mess of Zotero, R code, and data and now I never worry about moving to a new machine. It just works. hub.docker.com/r/personalsc...

Now that we have a fair and honest site like BlueSky, I'm sure this will only improve.

Just to be clear: I certainly don’t believe this or any other pseudoscience. That’s why I’m so glad to be on Bluesky, where misinformation is not permitted!

I wonder if Bluesky censors people who say vaccines cause autism

More people need to know about www.solveeczema.org/about.html. A scientist mother solved her baby's eczema problems by eliminating household detergents. I bet lots of similar chronic annoyances could be solved with a similar approach.

Another reason I'm so glad to be on Bluesky. People here appreciate quality fact-checking from trusted sources like the New York Times. Today, for example: www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/h...

The best thing about BlueSky is the homogeneity. No disagreements, no controversy. Harmony at last!

Subscribe to my weekly summary of Personal Science news and ideas, like this one about my experience testing my arteries for plaque buildup. It's cheap and easy, and supported by good evidence open.substack.com/pub/personal...

I won't try to replicate this experiment, but I bet it would work on me: Oreos lower cholesterol more than statins in people who are "lean mass hyper responders" and find their cholesterol goes up on a keto diet. twitter.com/nicknorwitz/...

WTH! Even in CLIA certified labs, results of common blood tests like Vitamin D can vary widely. You can compare blood tests across labs? open.substack.com/pub/personal...