Clearly the right punctuation for following sentence is a comma: "Try it, you might like it."

Also clearly this violates the rules of run-on sentences that I was taught as a tyke. But the two alternate versions - "Try it. You might like it" and "Try it; you might like it" - clearly have different intonations and deliveries.

(I'm not limiting this to speech, of course. There's still a pacing to written text that one might want to be intentional about.)

So I am verifying with you all that the rules for run-on sentences are evolving? I probably still wouldn't use a run-in sentence in super formal writing, but I might feel the impulse to do so.

We age in fits and starts:

Although many studies have explored linear changes during aging, the prevalence of aging-related diseases and mortality risk accelerates after specific time points, indicating the importance of studying nonlinear molecular changes. In this study, we performed comprehensive multi-omics profiling on a longitudinal human cohort of 108 participants, aged between 25 years and 75 years. The participants resided in California, United States, and were tracked for a median period of 1.7 years, with a maximum follow-up duration of 6.8 years. The analysis revealed consistent nonlinear patterns in molecular markers of aging, with substantial dysregulation occurring at two major periods occurring at approximately 44 years and 60 years of chronological age.

It's wild that it clusters so specifically around two distinct years.

To answer the obvious question:

Although confounders, including sex, were corrected before analysis (Methods), we acknowledge that the age range for menopause in females is typically between 45 years and 55 years of age20, which is very close to the major transition points in all three clusters (Fig. 2c). Therefore, we conducted further investigation into whether the menopausal status of females in the dataset contributed to the observed transition point at approximately 55 years of age (Fig. 2c) by performing separate clustering analyses on the male and female datasets. Surprisingly, both the male and female datasets exhibited similar clusters, as illustrated in Extended Data Fig. 4a. This suggests that the transition point observed at approximately 55 years of age is not solely attributed to female menopause but, rather, represents a common phenomenon in the aging process of both sexes. This result is consistent with previous studies14,15, further supporting the notion that this transition point is a major characteristic feature of human aging.

Here's the Guardian summary article which I actually read, as opposed to the journal article which I mostly didn't.

The Guardian article mentions a third old-spurt at 78, from other studies, but this particular study cut off at 75.

NickS writes: A fair amount of gallows humor:

Substack superstar The Honest Broker just posted a piece about the demise of American magazines, and as readers of this blog know, I am always up for a good obituary.

Ted's thesis is nicely summed-up in his subhed: "Or what happens when journalism forgets about quality writing."

If only that were the problem. If only the magazine business could be saved by collecting a bunch of top-flight writers and artists, putting them inside a beautiful package, and as Ted says, "nurturing them and paying them more than peanuts."

That is my life's dream. I have spent the last ten years running a magazine predicated on precisely that idea.

....

Corporate short-sightedness is only part, and the less depressing part, of the story. Both readers and the writers and artists themselves have been trained by the larger culture to behave in ways that make what Ted is suggesting nearly impossible to pull off.

Trust me, I--and $100,000 of my dearly beloved personal dollars--have tried it.

Let us begin with the easy part: how is the business messed up? What mistakes have they made?

...

When I moved to Santa Monica in 2005, there were four bookstores within walking distance of my apartment, and a large outdoor newsstand featuring hundreds of publications from all around the world. Now, they are all gone. I used to see people sitting on the Third Street Promenade, drinking coffee and reading magazines. Now, everybody's on their phone. (They are still drinking coffee, and that should tell you something.)

I love magazines, but where do I even go to buy one? How do I find out about new ones? These are basic business problems that the industry simply refuses to solve.

Heebie's take: I also used to love magazines! I stopped when the internet ramped up with interesting things to read, and then I became semi-repulsed when the house reached peak clutter, because magazines are hard to purge, because so often you don't feel done with it yet.

I still like the feel and idea of magazines, though. But not enough.

There's a special joy you get in watching great actors over many roles, because you know that all their subtleties and funny nuances are intentional. I had this thought watching Only Murders in the Building, because my kids watched it, too, independently, and we could compare notes. They found Martin Short and Steve Martin a little more insufferable (at first) than I did, because I knew both actors to be capable of deliberately rigging every little bit of insufferability for maximal delight, whereas they couldn't be sure that they weren't just watching an actually insufferable person. Another semi-recent example was Jon Lovitz in Rat Race - every little smirk cracks me up so hard. (It happens with authors, too - the more you know someone's skill, the more that you can admire deliberate choices and not suspect they inadvertently stumbled into subtle genius.)

It kind of pulls you out of the immersive experience, because you've got a meta-experience about the skill of the actor or author or musician or whatever, but it also enhances the beauty and awe of the whole shebang.

Apparently ticker-taping is a mental phenomenon where some people visualize the words written in their head as they hear speech.

I've never heard of it before, and I definitely don't have it, but it seems so plausible as a thing my mind could have done. Does anyone here do it?

It kind of reminds me of a few things:
- I care which particular spelling a person uses for their names, as though Kristines and Christines are fundamentally different names.
- That sensation when you read too much as a kid, and you find yourself narrating the world around you. Like thinking "...she said, as she absentmindedly held the plate in one hand," when someone is speaking.

via my dad