You Sunk My Battleship
Moontower Munchies #21
Friends,
Just staggering into your inbox with a few links today.
The Story of Your Life (29 pages)
Ted Chiang
2 weeks ago Moontower was about how language is like a virus. Lots of you have also thought that too! I got plenty of responses. A recurring suggestion was to watch the movie Arrival with Amy Adams. I watched a clip on YouTube of the scene where she references the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis aka “linguistic relativity” — language shapes our perceptions.
The wiki is a terrific read, laying out the hypothesis and criticism but here’s what you really want to do — read The Story of Your Life. It’s the short story Arrival is based on by 4-time Hugo award winner Ted Chiang. It will split your brain and heart wide open (especially if you have kids).
Numbers without which it's impossible to talk about weight loss (3 min read)
dynomight.substack
If you have ever counted calories or macros you know that carbs and protein contain 4 calories per gram while fat contains 9. But when we move from the calorie counting to “how much of a deficit do I need to run to burn fat if I hold my activity level the same?” you have sinking suspicion that alchemy not arithmetic is in charge. This short post goes a long way to understanding why. And if you’ve ever heard the term “water weight” then you’ll really appreciate this. It starts:
We lose weight when we burn more calories than we eat. But how much weight do you lose for a given caloric deficit? This isn’t complicated. But it’s not trivial either, because the body has two forms of energy reserves:
Body fat is familiar. This is used for long-term energy storage.
Glycogen is the other form of storage. It’s stored in your liver and muscle cells and is the primary form of short-term energy storage.
The issue is: Glycogen is 10 times heavier than body fat per stored calorie. This means that changes in diet produce sharp swings in body weight that are easy to misinterpret if you don’t think about glycogen.
Finally…
I’m repeating a recommendation from a few weeks ago because I keep introducing this game to people and it never fails to intoxicate players. It’s so fun you will volunteer to let it stress you out.
Grab 7 friends, split yourself into 2 teams of four and play Captain Sonar. It’s what you wanted Battleship to actually be.
This is a video review by my favorite game review channel.
The game requires tons of speedy thinking and communication with your team. There are no turns so it has that open-outcry free-for-all flow.
It was a huge hit with the family, from the 9-year-olds to the adults. There are 4 different roles to be played per team — the radio operators should wear antiperspirant…and maybe consider Ritalin to get an edge.
☮️ Stay groovy!
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The Story of Your Life is great. Thanks for the link and recommendation.