So I made lids for my Tide laundry detergent lids and since lids+lids=storage the tide lids are now containers (with lids) and people over on Mastodon are surprisingly into this so
I’ve uploaded the lid designs to thingiverse
enjoy lids4lids 😀
Posted via Solarbird{y|z|yz}, Collected.
I have, over the past twenty-four hours or so, been pulling cards from my various tarot and oracle decks (by which I mean "all three of them"), and the set I got from The Golden Wheel was particularly striking:
(The Eight of Wands, The World, and The Fool. The sky seems continuous across all three cards; the Eight of Wands faces right, and The Fool faces left, both leaping toward The World, mirror images of one another.)
Over the last few days I have been reading lots of Dreamwidth; I'm now caught up to the 19th of December, which is as up-to-date as I think I've been since April.
I have also had a toasted sandwich lunch on a park bench with A, under a clear blue sky; quietly played several games; and, eventually, made a start on setting up next year's notebook.
Thank you for sharing your lives with me. <3
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jack in Skegness, which I remember basically nothing about because it was in the middle of the final weeks of Mum's life. I think we stayed in a cute tiny house and did a bit of walking in the countryside. I have more memories of our trip to Norfolk in May. doseybat and verazea got married on a lightship on the Thames, and my partners had a Jewish blessing of their 20-year-old marriage, both on the same weekend. cjwatson, Shabbat Shuva in Stoke, Yom Kippur in Cornwall where I had to respond to the first fatal antisemitic attack in this country in my lifetime, Succot back home in Cambridge, a very flying visit to Sweden for the Shabbat during Succot with ghoti_mhic_uait, and back for Simchat Torah and returning to college.siderea Dec. 31st, 2025 02:02 am)Reading. Me, a few days ago:
... I picked up the bad and naughty book I'm not supposed to read after 8pm because it's too annoying It was annoying
So that's how The Story of Pain (Joanna Bourke) is going. ( Read more... )
I have also made a tiny bit more progress on Index, A History of the (Dennis Duncan), read one and a half magazines sent to me by Organisations Various that I feel bad recycling unread but which have a tendency to Accumulate in that state, and some of a Libby sample of Cloistered (Catherine Coldstream) based on one of you mentioning it mid-November, which I have just about got up to on my reading page. Also, I am up to mid-November on my reading page.
Added to the queue are Vespertine (Margaret Rogerson; courtesy of someone mentioning it a while back, probably skygiants, and my library Acquiring A New Copy), The Long Journey of English (Peter Trudgill; a present from my mother, in her capacity as a linguist), and Terry Pratchett: A Life With Footnotes (Rob Wilkins; a loan from my father). For the sake of my spreadsheet of books (with the increasingly inaccurate filename books-2011.ods) I am probably going to be trying to finish rather than start things for the rest of the calendar year (not the Bourke) but we'll see how that goes.
Listening. ... an episode of Elementary that a relative was watching...
Playing. Scrabble! Monument Valley 3. Inkulinati (having another go at beating my head against a run at Master difficulty).
Cooking. Another batch of the quince and squash stew. Two days' worth of minestrone (with bulgur wheat because we are apparently out of tiny pasta, but not that), which worked well as Some Lunches. I think little else of note.
Eating. So much of my mother's cooking various, including a few last tomatoes from her greenhouse (!!!). Also my father's mince pies.
Exploring. Several stonks around Cambridge, including visits to some little free libraries and to various likely locations for snowdrops (mainly the grounds of Churchill, up at the chapel end, where they do indeed exist). Brief trip to Anglesey Abbey, which also has snowdrops coming out and one very enthusiastic daffodil; winter garden remains lovely.
Growing. The pineapple leafs are taller than the (remaining, trimmed) originals, as of... two weeks ago? Ten days? But I think I hadn't yet mentioned and it's still making me smile.
There is one (1) curry leaf cutting that is Not Yet Dead.
I am now noticing that it is in fact Fairly Consistent that I can Do More in terms of Pilates if I'm doing it at a rate of Two Full Sessions A Week rather than three. I am Somewhat Dismayed at now needing to go "okay, this clearly means I'm not fully recovering doing what I'm currently doing at a rate of every other day-ish, which means I will derive more benefit if I do less of the activity"; I am trying to cheer myself up by persuading myself that what it Actually Means that I get to play with a greater variety of Colouring Things In on The Sticker Chart.
I am amused that I am about as Oh No This Is Terrible about Officially Reducing My Mat Time as I am about getting onto the mat. Brains. Brains!
My mother has today loaned me some knee-high compression socks in a fun design and... the amount of presyncope I've been getting on standing up from squatting is approximately None, despite feeling while squatting like It's Gonna Be A Bad One When I Stand Up. So I'm probably going to be buying myself more of them as my mother's present to me for this winterval.
Obviously I was delighted when I got to page 7 and found the rainbow...
siderea Dec. 24th, 2025 07:03 pm)By examining both human Alzheimer's brain tissue and multiple preclinical mouse models, the team identified a key biological failure at the center of the disease. They found that the brain's inability to maintain normal levels of a critical cellular energy molecule called NAD+ plays a major role in driving Alzheimer's. Importantly, maintaining proper NAD+ balance was shown to not only prevent the disease but also reverse it in experimental models.
Why This Approach Differs From Supplements
Dr. Pieper cautioned against confusing this strategy with over the counter NAD+-precursors. He noted that such supplements have been shown in animal studies to raise NAD+ to dangerously high levels that promote cancer. The method used in this research relies instead on P7C3-A20, a pharmacologic agent that helps cells maintain healthy NAD+ balance during extreme stress, without pushing levels beyond their normal range.
NAD+ levels naturally decline throughout the body, including the brain, as people age. When NAD+ drops too low, cells lose the ability to carry out essential processes needed for normal function and survival. The researchers discovered that this decline is far more severe in the brains of people with Alzheimer's. The same pattern was seen in mouse models of the disease.Note, potential conflict of interest: the head of the lab, Dr Pieper, above, has a serious commercial interest in this proving out:
[...]
Amyloid and tau abnormalities are among the earliest and most significant features of Alzheimer's. In both mouse models, these mutations led to widespread brain damage that closely mirrors the human disease. This included breakdown of the blood-brain barrier, damage to nerve fibers, chronic inflammation, reduced formation of new neurons in the hippocampus, weakened communication between brain cells, and extensive oxidative damage. The mice also developed severe memory and cognitive problems similar to those seen in people with Alzheimer's.
[...]
This approach built on the group's earlier work published in Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences USA, which showed that restoring NAD+ balance led to both structural and functional recovery after severe, long-lasting traumatic brain injury. In the current study, the researchers used a well-characterized pharmacologic compound called P7C3-A20, developed in the Pieper laboratory, to restore NAD+ balance.
The results were striking. Preserving NAD+ balance protected mice from developing Alzheimer's, but even more surprising was what happened when treatment began after the disease was already advanced. In those cases, restoring NAD+ balance allowed the brain to repair the major pathological damage caused by the genetic mutations.
Both mouse models showed complete recovery of cognitive function. This recovery was also reflected in blood tests, which showed normalized levels of phosphorylated tau 217, a recently approved clinical biomarker used to diagnose Alzheimer's in people. These findings provided strong evidence of disease reversal and highlighted a potential biomarker for future human trials.
The technology is currently being commercialized by Glengary Brain Health, a Cleveland-based company co-founded by Dr. Pieper.The actual research article:
Abstract:Full text here: https://www.cell.com/cell-reports-medicine/fulltext/S2666-3791(25)00608-1
Alzheimer's disease (AD) is traditionally considered irreversible. Here, however, we provide proof of principle for therapeutic reversibility of advanced AD. In advanced disease amyloid-driven 5xFAD mice, treatment with P7C3-A20, which restores nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) homeostasis, reverses tau phosphorylation, blood-brain barrier deterioration, oxidative stress, DNA damage, and neuroinflammation and enhances hippocampal neurogenesis and synaptic plasticity, resulting in full cognitive recovery and reduction of plasma levels of the clinical AD biomarker p-tau217. P7C3-A20 also reverses advanced disease in tau-driven PS19 mice and protects human brain microvascular endothelial cells from oxidative stress. In humans and mice, pathology severity correlates with disruption of brain NAD+ homeostasis, and the brains of nondemented people with Alzheimer's neuropathology exhibit gene expression patterns suggestive of preserved NAD+ homeostasis. Forty-six proteins aberrantly expressed in advanced 5xFAD mouse brain and normalized by P7C3-A20 show similar alterations in human AD brain, revealing targets with potential for optimizing translation to patient care.
kaberett Dec. 24th, 2025 11:56 pm)... which meant I thought it was very funny when later said afternoon I became aware that there's ongoing scrutiny of their operations from the Business and Trade Committee (first link I could find, it's bedtime). Also very funny that the time from name change to shed legacy of being Awful to Nah You're Still Awful was approximately -5, on a more national scale than I'd previously clocked...
Slightly to my surprise, earlier today I got a text from my GP saying approximately "yes your serum ferritin is now 'normal', but also, uh, by this we mean '15, with a reference range of 13-150, after six weeks of supplements', so... keep taking the supplements and we'll retest in six weeks!!!"
It is possible that the reason this actually got flagged at all was in fact that I've got a slightly elevated white cell count, and had I just had normal serum ferritin I'd have had to submit the "uhhh sooooo..." eConsult. Which I'd been gearing up to do, because the serum ferritin result showed up in the NHS app sooner than anything else!
Unfortunately, I had been working myself up to mentioning some Possible Additional Signs Of Concern in said eConsult (the various unimportant bleeding, like "there is usually old blood when I blow my nose BUT/AND I am very much using a steroid nasal spray every day") and I now have a solid excuse to keep putting it off for another six weeks, but hey. No longer officially anaemic! Pity about what's going to happen when I run out of supplementary iron, huh!
Reading. Nothing (quite) finished; various snippets. ( Scalzi, Bourke, Boddice, Cowart )
Watching. Wake Up Dead Man (the third instalment in the Benoit Blanc/Knives Out mysteries). ( Read more... )
Three episodes of Man vs. Bee, in company; this is... not for me.
Playing. Inkulinati! And, with the niblings: Match Madness, The Genius Square, Rummikub, Dixit.
Cooking. A new-to-me fruitcake recipe from one of my cookbooks; a dal from the cookbook I am not actually going to manage Making Everything From by the end of the calendar year (but I am pretty close).
Eating. I have now had A Mince Pie. Also a very long lunch at the Gardeners Arms. The brownies that all the reviews of the place we wound up staying in Ardlingy mentioned (which were indeed v good).
Exploring. Wakehurst Place, both at night for Glow Wild and during daylight (a little)!
Growing. Bought curry leaves. Proceeded to strip most of the stems (freezing the leaves) and Treat As Cuttings. There's at least one of them that doesn't look actually dead yet...
Observing. OWL OWL OWL. Very talkative tawny, as we were leaving Wakehurst on Friday night. Snowdrops, also at Wakehurst, to my mild horror. And, blessedly, NOT The Charity Tractor Parade...
solarbird - lids+lids=storagesiderea - On the work of human rights work [pols, hist]kaberett - stories and selvesjjhunter - How Are You? (in Haiku)jjhunter - Meme: Quarterly Intentions (1/4)kaberett - <3liv - Year in review 2025siderea - "I initially planned to build a small storm shelter..." [civ eng]siliconshaman - birthday musings...kaberett - some things make a postelynne - Dreams of Dead Stars, Part III, ch. 20: Time Outkaberett - vital functionssiderea - Bridge over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkadelt [music]kaberett - [movement] in which I get to follow mine own teachingkaberett - [embodiment] ... huh.siderea - Merry Christmas: Scientists reverse Alzheimer's in mice [sci/bio/med]kaberett - today EVRi actually managed to deliver a parcel, not only on time but earlykaberett - [embodiment] huhsiliconshaman - A little something to set your feet tappingkaberett - vital functions
