End of July Journal

This is my version of microblogging right now: a series of random thought-dumps in one single journal. What am I thinking? What have I been up to?

Diet

I’ve been eating fewer calories, and I returned to what’s worked for me before: calorie counting and macro tracking. This has felt like the least onerous diet in my personal history of dieting and the secret is: figuring out a healthy combination of macros for my age, getting a decent idea of how many calories I need to eat in a day, and then (as it turns out) hitting my protein goal and calorie goal at about the same time.

I’m eating more protein because, at my age, muscle building and maintenance is really important to weight control and general health. So, going into calorie deficit means being careful that your body doesn’t consume your muscles looking for energy. It’s not keto or whatever. It’s just making sure I don’t starve myself of an essential nutrient.

I’m on summer break, and that means I can spend time thinking about my eating. My goal is to do as much up-front thinking that I can think less about eating during the school year, when it gets frantic.

If you’re interested, I’m using Cronometer to track. But I’ve used MyFitnessPal in the past, and I’m sure there are plenty of other tools that would help.

“Balanced Diet” as a Video Game

I’ve heard “a balanced breakfast” and “a balanced diet” millions of times without thinking about it much. But today, it hit me, that keeping things in balance is a kind of game. And with a calorie counter, it has a visual output.

The way Chronometer displays my macros and energy

But now, after watching my macro intake as I eat all day, I picture a balanced diet as bars, like the ones here. This is me, a little more than halfway through today. Each of these macros is a different thing, but they are closely linked. Protein, Net Carbs, and Fat all supply the body with Energy (measured in kcal - kilocalories). Not only are these macros different things, I have to eat different amounts of them. Each is a different percentage of my overall diet. So, the challenge of a balanced diet is like a video game where you try to keep all the bars at around the same length by the end of the day. Or (ideally?) after every meal (balanced meals). OR after every bite (OK, that’s silly).

In truth, I’m trying to get the Protein bar to the end right before or right as the Energy bar fills up. That means I’ve given my body the protein it needs at around the time I’ve reached my target calories. I’m not too worried if I go over or under in fat or carbs.

I guess hard mode would be to try to get everything even all day long, every day. Unnecassary, but it’s a funny idea for a biological video game.

A Bad Coffee Idea or The Best Coffee Idea?

I’ve been supplementing my diet experimenting with coffee concentrate and Kachava,¹ which is a balanced meal-replacer powder. Vanilla-flavored. In my shaker, I mix 6 ounces of my coffee concentrate² with one scoop of the Kachava powder (substitute any protein shake or meal-replacer shake, I suppose) and add 2 ounces or water, as the package specified that an actual serving is 2 scoops for 16 ounces of water. Then I add a little scoop of ice from my icemaker. About a handful, but it varies.

It’s good. I suppose caffeine is also an appetite suppressant.

Diet: Dad Joke

A guy said to his doctor, “Doc, I’m worred about a dream I had last night. I dreamt that I ate an enormous marshmallow.

The doctor replied, “I’m not a psychologist. I’m not sure why this dream would worry you so much. Seems harmless.”

To which the man replied, “Yeah, but when I woke up, my pillow was gone.”

---

So, anyway, part of the grind-preventing mouthguard I wear at night was gone when I woke up this morning. Granted, it was a small part. But I don’t know where it went.

OK, I have some idea where it went.

Can AI Help You Make a Plane?

One of my most impressive students last year created a paper glider that beat every single other glider for time and distance across three classes. This kid nearly always took assignments seriously (rare), especially when they were competitions. After he shared his design with me (a method he learned among his friends in his country of birth), I made sure to create a record of the design, which I turned into a slide show.

Today, after I looked for the slideshow, Google suggested that it could turn it into a video with a new-ish Google Vids feature. I don’t know how wide access to this is, but having a few moments encouraged me to check out its features. Without writing a full review, I will just say that Google Vid can essentially slap together an AI-generated video of your slide show with a voiceover and even an avatar, the quality of which is somewhat comparable to what people are paying a lot for elsewhere.

I only really added a voiceover, but it was super-easy. And the vocal generation did a great job with helpful inflection, though it went a little overboard at the end after I added explicit vocal cues in brackets before sentences. Check it out for yourself:

AI Disclosure AND BEYOND

I used AI on some things in this blog post, but not the writing. That’s my own. Obviously it’s on the glider video. ANd I used it to help with my macros recommendations. And it’s built into Cronometer.

But here’s an interesting tidbit: my Glider video is not tagged with a YouTube AI tag. Because here’s the question they ask you that leads to an AI tag:

• AI use - Was AI used to generate or edit your content in any of the following ways?
  • Makes a real person appear to say or do something they didn’t say or do
  • Alters footage of a real event or place
  • Generates a realistic-looking scene that didn’t actually occur
• Yes
• No

So, that’s Google’s opinion on that.

The Odyssey and Indoctrination

Maybe you are or maybe you aren’t seeing a bunch of online content about Chris Nolan’s new film The Odyssey.

I haven’t seen it; I do like Nolan’s movies, generally; I do plan to see this one sometime. I read The Odyssey in high school, somewhat reluctantly. But I loved the 1954 film about the subject matter: Ulysses. I was fascinated by the special effects when I was a boy. I don’t think I paid a ton of attention to the story.

I’m vaguely annoyed that there seem to be a million angry voices telling anyone who will isten that this movie will bomb, it’s somehow woke, it mangles “history”, and it mangles literature. But it feels so engineered that it almost seems like an engineered PR campaign called for by the production company itself. I dunno. Who does?

But how about this. Are all the people who attack this film dilligent students who read The Odyssey in high school, paid close attention, and became enamored with the material–so enamored that they could be so insulted by this or that interpretation of the literature that it actually motivates them to complain about it? I’m going to say: no. I’m sure there are people like that, but I’m going to make a contrast here, since this overlaps with my business, which is education.

If we teachers could get students this emotionally invested in curriculum, we’d be doing it constantly, and we’d be doing it across disciplines. Teachers can and do make a difference, and people know this, which is why some bad actors accuse teachers of indoctrination.

But here’s the thing. This reaction is what indoctrination looks like. Teaching someone to be kind and accepting of others–that’s not what indoctrination looks like. Teaching people ideas that they may or may not agree with, and hoping they think about it one way or another–that’s not what indoctrination looks like. Teaching someone to be so angry about something that they literally start posting it everywhere, unsolicited–that’s what indoctrination looks like, and it takes generating anger.

In classrooms, we’re not generating anger. All the time we want students to be regulating their emotions, and often we take steps to understand how to make that happen. So that students learn about themselves and grow. Even if we could get them to learn some math by getting them angry, there are many reasons it wouldn’t be effective education.³ But someone is out there doing something different that requires making people angry.

See? Think of that when you hear about teacher/school indoctrination.

Avengers: Doomsday Trailer

I’m still interested in Marvel movies. I’ve got too much spent cost in the characters to abandon all the attempts to bring my past comic-reading to life.

But the new movie trailer, the one they showed at ComicCon, really feels to me like a fan-made trailer. A high-quality fan-made trailer. I attribute this to a couple of things: the chopped-up nature of showing an ensemble cast of Marvel characters jammed together in one movie, but not really seeing scenes of them talking to each other. The feeling of the voiceover over music that didn’t particularly make me feel anything. I’ve seen fake trailers; they’re a little bit like this, out of the necessity of being pieced together from old media.

Anyway. That’s the feeling I got.

Re: Obsession

Obsession is a terrific horror movie with some uncomfortable things to show you and to say. It’s been widely celebrated, and I saw it this week on Peacock TV.

This movie grabs you for some unexpected and pleasingly unconventional types of scares thanks to the whiplash perfomance by Inde Navarrette as Nikki. She’s truly wild to watch. Fans of Superman and Lois knew her as Sarah Cortez, a completely uninspiring character that variably gained the ire of fans in the way female characters often do when they assert themselves.

I’m not an actor, so I don’t know what it takes to play emotions that originate supernaturally, so she must have had some great direction and some iron-clad grasp in her mind of what incomprehensible thing was happening to her character. I’ll let others go on with her well-deserved horror acting accolades.

The short synopsis is that this is a film about a weak-willed young man named Barron (or Bear, played by Michael Johnston) who can’t get up the courage to share with his good friend that he has romantic feelings for her. In his frustration, he turns to the tropey One Wish Willow to bend reality, despite ominous warnings. The predictable ensues, but your expectations do not get in the way of the deeply unsettling story that unfolds.

My assumption going in was that we would get some sort of extreme horror version of Fatal Attraction. I was wrong about that, thank goodness. The title is extremely misleading, in that we are likely to assume that One Wish Willow produces a sort of obsession that gets out of control. But the truth is more sinister, gut-wrenching, and I’m sure wrapped up in some interpersonal gender dynamics that I’m too casual to completely expound on.

Johnson’s performance as Bear is key to keeping us the roller coaster ride. He convinces us so completely of his absence of character that I’m absolutely sure you’ll predict almost every move of his. Not every character has to surprise you; sometimes they just have to convince you that what you expect should happen this way, keeping you inside the narrative. Johnson will frustrate the living hell out of you putting Bear’s courage seemingly just out of his reach, like an itch you never get to scratch. But you get the message of who he is, and he’s consistent.

Obsession is worth a watch for horror fans.

Let’s Try Fauci

The last few days, Republican leadership, frustrated between the rock of their cowardice and the hard place of their president’s deteriorating resistance to baldfaced authoritarianism, and unable to deliver on what their constituents have been sorely needing, have turned to the next best thing: trial-ballooning Dr. Anthony Fauci as a reason to be angry about something other than the near-complete failure of the second Trump administration. It’s as disgusting as it is likely to work with the 28-or-so percent of the country that likes Trump think they’ve been winning since he was re-elected, but still want to be the victims in the story of America.

We watched Remarkably Bright Creatures

So I guess I’m not ordering octopus at a restaurant ever again. Great to see another Sally Fields performance. Nice cast of supporting actors, too. That Sparkle Motion lady from Donnie Darko! A great bittersweet and uplifting story. If you even know anything about the book, you know what you’re getting. And we got it. Octopus quietly befriends a woman who has a hole in her heart, and somehow fights to mend it. If you read that and thought it sounded good, I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy it.

Recommended, if you’re a sap like me.

Finch

Ever heard of the Finch app? It’s a gamified self-care and motivational app for your phone. It turns your goals and tasks into a kind of electronic pet. I don’t play a lot of online games, and I have been happy to try turning my productivity into a game over the summer to make sure I accomplish things.

So far, I think it’s helping. Connect with me if you use the app or decide to use it. I may post about this in more depth later.

The end!

Hey, you made it to the end of my brain dump.

1. This is not an endorsement. I am not sponsored. I’m sure you thought I was trying to become an influencer there. ↩

2. I use this recipe right now, but I am still settling on what I think a good cold brew recipe is. I merely share this one so you can get a general idea of how strong my concentrate is. The drink comes out to about 1:10 coffee grounds to water once it’s diluted, not counting the ice. ↩

3. Might students get angry at some point thinking about things they learned in school? I certainly hope so. Otherwise that would be evidence of indoctrination. Expecting students to either only learn things that would never make them angry or to not ever get angry about something they learned, requires certain kinds of efforts at indoctrination. Like never learning about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre so that you have to encounter it when you’re in your 50’s on an HBO science fiction TV show. ↩