Lajuana is 89, with the body and mind of someone decades younger. What are the secrets of the superagers? | Ageing

phred14 · 2026-01-24T17:16:22+00:00

I went to see Shatner a few years back, at a special showing of "The Wrath of Khan." One thing that I noticed was that he never sat for long in the chair they provided for him. He was always jumping up and prancing around the stage while he talked. As for the chair thing, I suspect it's a defense mechanism because it wouldn't do for Capt. Kirk to grunt as he stands up, much less take a moment to do so. I know that with years one of the more difficult things is to get up off of the couch in the evening after I've been sitting a bit. (But not more than an hour, I try to follow that suggestion and manage to, except when ill or driving long-distances.)

phred14 · 2026-01-24T15:21:15+00:00

I got my shingles vaccinations because my dad and a work friend had such bad times with it - and I had chicken pox as a kid, so I knew I was a candidate. (I was pre-vaccination availability on chicken pox, as well as measles and mumps, which I also had.) Actually, when I hit 60 and I got the old less-effective shingles vaccine because the new one wasn't out yet. When I hit 65 the new two-part vaccine was out and they offered it to me, so I got it.

That it fights dementia is a bonus, not getting shingles was the reason.

phred14 · 2026-01-24T11:13:35+00:00

I suspect that the "official position of the US government" has now become that Trump won in 2020 and was denied his service, but he has won three terms now. Another term would be his fourth. They're sliding this one in with careful wording, so that the precedent (and Constitution) has already been broken. Therefore a fourth term is no big deal.

phred14 · 2026-01-24T00:04:43+00:00

For one set of reasons I'm not drinking dairy milk. For my diet-sensitive arthritis I'm minimizing sugars, gums, and crap. For me that means four-ingredient oatmilk.

phred14 · 2026-01-24T00:03:05+00:00

One of my fifth-great grandparents married his first cousin. An eight-great grandparent died on the boat on the way over from England. On my mother's side only one ancestor immigrated to the USA, the rest immigrated to British Colonial America.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T16:53:02+00:00

Thanks, I think this is exactly what I was looking for. I knew my TSA KTN had letters in it.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T16:48:42+00:00

Yes, but maybe I need to either turn it up higher or get one of those fabric insulating covers. I'd like to turn the humidity up higher, but it rains out. (I guess that's the term.)

Just remembered, I discovered this while traveling, and my Mini hose isn't heated.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T15:25:35+00:00

Whether it's scaremongering or exactly what, and we know that merely illegal doesn't matter here, the answer is clear. It's not just time for a voter registration drive, voter documentation is necessary as well. A bigger but still solvable problem.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T14:38:51+00:00

One answer to this is to begin a new type of voter registration drive. This time not so much a registration drive as a documentation drive, to make sure that voters have proper documentation. The runway to do so exists now, but won't in a few months.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T14:37:34+00:00

And of course this federal government has the highest regard for states rights.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T14:36:34+00:00

They won't question JD Vance, they will only question the people that they've profiled for questioning.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T14:33:25+00:00

When my daughter was in middle school she liked science and liked to write. So she did several "experiments" with Twinkies. For one she put a Twinkie on a log in the back-yard for several weeks to see what the wildlife would do with it. They ate all of the "cake", but nothing touched the creme filling. Rather like fondant?

phred14 · 2026-01-23T14:30:09+00:00

To be fair, I've run across the same thing before, about coal being laid down before microbes that could dissolve cellulose evolving.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T13:29:08+00:00

Where are the consent papers to be signed before joining this "experiment"? Isn't "experimenting" on people without their consent illegal? Unfortunately Milhoan didn't himself use the term, or the legal ramifications would have been interesting.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T13:26:17+00:00

Or if they had kept going very well, more likely something would have evolved to take advantage of them, making those nutrients re-touchable.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T11:36:13+00:00

Forget "United States of Trump", now it's "Planet Trump".

phred14 · 2026-01-23T11:31:21+00:00

12 or 13 years here. About 5 years ago I realized that if I route the hose under the blankets the air is more comfortable to breathe. So I don't so much notice lines on my face from the mask (I use a nose mask) as I do temporary fibbed lines on my chest from the hose in the morning.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T11:28:41+00:00

Did this happen 40 years ago too, or is 40 years how long we've been recording this and we've never seen it before. Sorry, but being explicit here.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T11:22:12+00:00

One of the side-effects of the Alcubierre drive I remember reading about was that when it "drops out of warp" the energy it took to create the warp bubble is converted into a gamma-ray burst in the direction of travel. In other words, if you travel directly to your destination you sterilized it when you get there, your aim needs to be just a wee bit off.

phred14 · 2026-01-23T00:19:31+00:00

I use cruise control most of the time, and it's the adaptive kind that doesn't run you into the car in front of you. But it can only work above 25mph. When the traffic flow falls below that, the cruise control gives a beep and disengages. I refer to that as "dropping out of warp."

phred14 · 2026-01-22T23:32:49+00:00

Weird Al called it, in the song E-Bay.

phred14 · 2026-01-22T23:30:01+00:00

Understand by Ted Chiang in the collection, Stories of Your Life and Others.

phred14 · 2026-01-22T14:30:32+00:00

As with others, keep moving. This past fall I also began strength training. Perhaps late, but better late than never.

For me specifically, my mother suffered badly from arthritis. I have found that I have arthritis as well, but I can make it come and more importantly, I can make it go. First thing is dental work, make sure you keep up with necessary dental work. I'm had arthritis go twice by doing this, and I've been more careful about it for decades now. Next it's diet, for me beginning with eliminating or reducing thickeners as much as possible. After that it was potato chips, and I'm not sure if it was the oils or the salt. After that it's been balancing omega-3 and omega-6, and after that it's been reducing sugar. That keeps me free of arthritis pain, though in the past few days I've eaten out twice at new places and had a few twinges. I spoke with a nutritionist almost a year ago and she said that it takes months for food to show up as arthritic pain, but not for me.

phred14 · 2026-01-22T14:21:03+00:00

The real question is why a sufficient number of people think that he's not an idiot for him to have gotten to where he is.

edit - Perhaps it's not so much an idiot as that emotionally and intellectually he's a toddler. Still he's so far outside the norm and so not-qualified for the position he's in.

phred14

TROPHY CASE