if the problem is with the receptor, taking more won't make a difference

In this video essay, Patrick Willems talks about George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola. Both of them took a huge risk in the early 80s to self-finance their own films (Empire Strikes Back and One From The Heart). Their goal was to make enough money to gain independence from the studio system and make the movies they wanted to make. 

In the short term, George Lucas was the obvious winner here, in that Empire Strikes back is one of the most popular movies of all time and it indeed granted him complete independence from the studio system. He used that freedom to make three movies nobody over the age of 8 liked, and otherwise spent his career managing a toy line. When you see him in interviews, he seems sad.

In contrast, Coppola's movie was an utter failure. But he's at 86 is still making successful, artistically meaningful, and varied movies that he's proud of. Since that essay was posted he self-funded another movie (Megalopolis), which also bombed. 

For extra poignancy, this essay is made by an aspiring film-maker who fell into criticism by accident and seems to be in a bit of a financial trap. Criticism pays well enough he can't quit, but keeping it viable requires basically all of his time.^[1]. Worse, I heartily recommend his work up to 2022 or so, but it's been downhill since then. 

1. ^{^}

   He has eked out time for two movies, and I have to imagine being a popular youtuber was better than starting from zero.

The default is that people overencourage, so here's a comment to upvote if you're not that interested in this post (including, like, a little bit interested). I'm doing this rather than agree/disgree voting because it retains more information about how many people are interested.

This is a trial balloon for a longer post. Please let me know which parts you're interested in, if any.

The standard (North American) story of plate tectonics is of accidental discovery: continental drift was rejected for lack of evidence or a mechanism. 50 years the US Navy discovered an anomaly on the sea floor that eventually led to the discovery of plate tectonics. But before that accidental discovery, geologists were very close to codifying plate tectonics on purpose.

Some definitions: 

• continental drift was proposed by Alfred Wegener in 1912. He believed that the continents moved through the ocean floor like ships moving through ice.
• Plate tectonics is the theory that the earth has a gooey center, covered in large large plates (the ocean/continental floor) with water/more rock on top of them. Like an M&M with a candy shell several times thicker than the chocolate.

Wegener proposed Continental Drift in 1912. The past is a different country, but when I look at the evidence, it sure looks plausible to me. He didn't just point to the jigsaw puzzle shorelines between Africa and South America, but to fossil evidence that made no sense without adjoining land, geological features that were continuous between South America, Africa, and India and evidence of glaciers where glaciers should not be.

 

Continental drift was laughed out of the US, Canada, and parts of Europe, but it did establish a toe-hold in the latter. It also received widespread support in South America, Africa, and India- the plates that once made up Gondawanaland (except for Australia).

Those scientists rapidly narrowed in the details of drift. The theory that Earth had a gooey center on which continents floated (isostasy) was already around by 1912, although far from proven. Drifters (aka mobilists) experimented to figure out what the "unit" of flotation was, and had proven it was fairly large (i.e. plates).

Drift was often accused of having no mechanism. This was false from the beginning- Wegener suggested mecahnisms, they were just wrong. But by the 1920s, geologists were experimenting with convection currents in the Earth's core as a potential explanation- the same as plate tectonics.

Jump to America in the 1940s.  WW2 and the Cold War pique the Navy's interest in mapping the sea floor to support submarine warfare. Embedded earth scientists discover magnetic stripes on the sea floor- long, thin, alternating zones of positive and negative polarity

Sea floor striping triggers a series of investigations that eventually lead to the discovery and universal acceptance of plate tectonics in the late 60s/early 70s (this is also how we learned the Earth's magnetic field occasionally flips).

If continental drifters were so close to codifying plate tectonics via purposeful investigation, why do Americans only hear about the accidental discovery? Naomi Oreskes blames differences in philosophy of science. I dug into her sources, and this does not check out. Henry Frankel blames regionalism and differences in local geology, which is much more plausible but not quite as proven as he implies.

Lord grant me the strength to persevere when things are hard
The courage to quit when things are impossible
And the wisdom to know the difference

(original post)

Why ketamine is always used with an adjunct when anesthetizing animals, but often without in humans:

1. Ketamine is cheap, both as a substance and because it doesn’t require an anesthesiologist to administer. In some jurisdictions it doesn’t even require a doctor. Animal work is more cost-conscious and less outcome conscious, so it’s tilted towards the cheaper anesthetic.
2. New anesthetics for humans are often not tested in animals, so veterinarians have fewer options.
3. Doctors are very concerned that patients hate their experience not get addicted to medications, and ketamine can be enjoyable (although not physically addictive). Veterinarians are secure that even if your cat trips balls and spends the next six months desperate for ketamine, she will not have the power to do anything about it.
   1. Pictured: a cat whose dealer won’t return her texts
4. ketamine is rare in that it acts as an anesthetic but not a muscle relaxant. For most surgeries, you want relaxed muscles, so you either combine the ketamine with a muscle relaxant or use another drug entirely. However there are some patients where relaxing muscles is dangerous (generally those with impaired breathing or blood pressure), in which case ketamine is your best option.
5. Ketamine is unusually well suited for emergency use, because it acts quickly, doesn’t require an anesthesiologist, and can be delivered via intramuscular injection as well as IV. In those emergencies, you’re not worried about what it can’t do. 
   
    

surprised we needed a cocaine emoji

Undefined vocabulary often means the post is aimed at people who are already familiar. 

No, the gap was too large for me to overcome. Meanwhile I learned a lot in jobs I was overqualified for, because I had so much free time and room to take risks. 

TBC I didn't spend my whole career like this, just the last 3-4 years. And yeah, for those years I felt I was bad at my job and underqualified, and it was extremely frustrating that when I reached out for help people would say "oh you just have imposter syndrome" without checking my actual performance. And when they finally caught up to reality, there was never any acknowledgement that I'd been trying to get this addressed for months.