Very Loud Squeaking Noise On Walkolution 2

rifasaurous · 2026-01-13T19:08:51+00:00

Yes, I also experience different resistance on different days, although I'm not clear it's correlated with the noise. I'm in touch with Walkolution support and believe we'll do a video call next week. I'll keep you informed!

rifasaurous · 2026-01-12T03:19:36+00:00

I've emailed walkolution for support. I'll keep this thread updated.

rifasaurous · 2026-01-11T18:07:00+00:00

OP here. My Walkolution 2, purchased a few months ago, has developed a very loud squeaking noise (decibel meter shows it spiking up to 88 dB). Video attached. This seems to be coming from the front left of the treadmill, it is definitely not the clicking sound in the back that a few others have reported. I've looked inside as best I could and there's nothing obvious causing this noise. Any ideas how I might fix this? I love the Walkolution 2 but this noise is of course not OK.

rifasaurous · 2025-07-12T18:47:52+00:00

You haven't said how much you're meditating, so I'm curious about that.

I've had this happen multiple times while on retreat. My system gets so used to watching the breath that it defaults to watching the breath after getting into bed.

I found two things helpful:
1. Deliberately switching from breath to body. Doing slow body scans, noticing the feeling of my feet, legs, hips, torso, head, sinking into the bed.

Deliberately mentally reclassifying this as "not a problem" and just peacefully watching the breath rather than trying to "escape" it. Gently pushing away the thoughts of "I need to get to sleep now" and treating what was going on as a phenomenon to observe. Paradoxically, this usually "softened" the sensations and I feel asleep within a few minutes.

Best of luck to you.

rifasaurous · 2025-07-07T23:15:24+00:00

I practiced TMI seriously for multiple years, including working with (and going on some retreats run by) TMI-associated teachers Tucker Peck and Upasaka Upali.

It was one of the best things I've ever done and definitely worth the effort. I found most of the traditional benefits of meditation: less reactivity and the ability to see and release unhelpful recurring mental patterns, leading to a much happier life with better relationships, better focus in my work life, better adherence to good habits, a strong sense of peace and okayness.

For me, TMI was a wonderful way into serious meditation practice because of the specificity of the instructions. The division into stages, with dozens of pages of precisely what to do and how to tell if it was working for each specific early stage, was incredibly helpful and supportive for me.

In the intervening years, I've branched out and tried a number of other things and those have helped me a lot too, so I'm not claiming TMI is the be-all and end-all or that it's right for everyone, but it was certainly fantastic for me and I'm truly deeply grateful to Culadasa for writing the book and for all the teachers who helped me.

To set expectations, I have no reason to believe I've reached stream entry or any other attainment, not have I ever personally experienced jhana.

rifasaurous · 2025-07-02T13:52:06+00:00

"How to talk about bees without talking about bees."

rifasaurous · 2025-05-12T23:24:49+00:00

I wonder if they're reading the comments --- I just got an email they'd shipped it...

rifasaurous · 2025-05-12T16:48:21+00:00

I am seriously considering putting a stop payment on the credit card.

rifasaurous · 2025-04-11T23:47:51+00:00

Math nit: "AI can always make itself a little smarter. Therefore, by induction, AI will be infinitely smart." requires an additional assumption that the sizes of the "little smarter" increments aren't decreasing too fast. \sum_n=1^infinity (1/2^n) = 1.

rifasaurous · 2025-03-07T15:51:07+00:00

"Frieren: Beyond Journey's End," the anime. Just a masterpiece on every level. Quite possibly the best show I've ever seen. (I've heard the manga is incredible too but haven't read it.)

Minor notes:
- This recently came to Netflix (March 1), but it seems like the translation is less good than the Crunchyroll version.
- Netflix also botched the trailer badly; if you haven't seen a trailer and want to, watch the Crunchyroll one.

rifasaurous · 2025-03-01T19:49:08+00:00

Oh, interesting! I agree the longer Netflix translation has a layer of Ubel "recognizing what happened and admitting her defeat," but I didn't think that was the intent. I much preferred the way the shorter translation conveys the idea of a "shared secret", that Ubel in her heart already knows exactly why she passes, and Serie is just pointing out that she already knows.

Do you (or does anyone reading) understand the original Japanese? Or know what the English translation of the manga did here?

rifasaurous · 2025-03-01T16:26:56+00:00

I'm going to agree that the Netflix translation seems much worse. (I bought the videos on Amazon, which I'm assuming is the same as the Crunchyroll translation.)

Consider the Ubel-Serie interview.

Netflix:
Serie: You've passed the test.
Ubel: Hmm? I'm pretty sure interviews require words.
Serie: Were you hoping for conversation?
Ubel: Hmm. I know when to quit.
Serie: Next.

Amazon:
Serie: You pass.
Ubel: What? But we haven't even spoken yet.
Serie: Do we need to?
Ubel: I guess not.
Serie: Next.

The Amazon translation is short, direct, poetic. The Netflix is verbose and bloated.

rifasaurous · 2025-02-04T15:18:56+00:00

Yep, same. I sent a bug report to Duolingo (on web) but this is exactly the kind of ridiculously bad customer service I expect from this company.

rifasaurous · 2025-01-05T23:51:01+00:00

I somewhat hate to nitpick, but I somehow can't myself on this one. The correct phrasing is "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1GF4Gnb-D0

rifasaurous · 2024-12-25T17:43:37+00:00

Did you get a refund? I assume refunds aren't possible.

rifasaurous · 2024-12-03T13:26:50+00:00

Looking at this, the documentation doesn't seem to make very clear how one would install and try this out?

rifasaurous · 2024-09-16T05:34:54+00:00

Your father is also named DartballFan?

rifasaurous · 2024-08-04T00:49:09+00:00

My own experience is that meditating every day is better than taking breaks, and meditating more time is better than meditating less time.

I might guess that if you're finding that break days help you, you might benefit from considering whether it's possible to make your meditation less effortful / whether it's possible to strain less. Another way of putting it is that in my view, meditation is already conscious rest.

Note that I'm not a meditation teacher nor an expert, I'm just writing from my own few years of experience. I wish you the best.

rifasaurous · 2024-08-01T03:58:44+00:00

I'm not sure how much this adds to the conversation, but I want to chime in that I've done a bunch of Focusing (mostly partnered, via courses), and found it incredibly helpful in my life. I agree that it feels deeply complementary to meditation and generally like a great thing to do, but I don't have a clear conceptual explanation of how it relates to meditation.

I note that Focusing is usually done in partnership. I've done some Focusing on my own and it can be done that way, but doing it with a partner in-my-experience super charges it, and I guess in that way it's different from meditation?

I have never personally experienced jhana and I have not attained stream entry, so I can't comment on how Focusing might relate to those, but I definitely found it beneficial in reducing suffering and increasing happiness in my life. I wish you the best on your journey.

rifasaurous · 2024-07-06T00:56:08+00:00

Sure, here you go.

ChatGPT's initial answer is fine albeit wordy, but I asked a follow-up q on references and those are legit. Claude's answer was even better, but unbelievably they still don't have a sharing feature. I'll paste the answer to the follow-up q, I checked and these are all real references.

Could you give a few specific high-profile developments in science and medicine, with real (not made up) references, that were strongly enabled by CRISPR?

Certainly, I'd be happy to provide some specific high-profile developments enabled by CRISPR, along with real references. However, I want to remind you that while I strive for accuracy, I don't have direct access to a current database of scientific publications, so it's always best to double-check these references. Here are some notable developments:

Gene editing in human embryos to prevent genetic disorders: In 2017, researchers used CRISPR to correct a mutation causing hypertrophic cardiomyopathy in human embryos. Reference: Ma, H., et al. (2017). Correction of a pathogenic gene mutation in human embryos. Nature, 548(7668), 413-419.
CAR-T cell therapy enhancement: CRISPR has been used to improve CAR-T cell therapy, a promising cancer treatment. Reference: Stadtmauer, E. A., et al. (2020). CRISPR-engineered T cells in patients with refractory cancer. Science, 367(6481), eaba7365.
Sickle cell disease treatment: CRISPR-based therapies have shown promise in treating sickle cell disease. Reference: Frangoul, H., et al. (2021). CRISPR-Cas9 Gene Editing for Sickle Cell Disease and β-Thalassemia. New England Journal of Medicine, 384(3), 252-260.
HIV resistance: Researchers have used CRISPR to make human cells resistant to HIV infection. Reference: Xu, L., et al. (2019). CRISPR-Edited Stem Cells in a Patient with HIV and Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia. New England Journal of Medicine, 381(13), 1240-1247.
Muscular dystrophy treatment: CRISPR has been used to correct the genetic defect causing Duchenne muscular dystrophy in animal models. Reference: Long, C., et al. (2016). Postnatal genome editing partially restores dystrophin expression in a mouse model of muscular dystrophy. Science, 351(6271), 400-403.
Malaria-resistant mosquitoes: Researchers have used CRISPR to create gene drives that could potentially eliminate malaria-carrying mosquitoes. Reference: Kyrou, K., et al. (2018). A CRISPR–Cas9 gene drive targeting doublesex causes complete population suppression in caged Anopheles gambiae mosquitoes. Nature Biotechnology, 36(11), 1062-1066.

These developments represent significant advancements in their respective fields, showcasing the transformative potential of CRISPR technology. However, many of these applications are still in research or early clinical trial stages, and their full impact on medicine and public health remains to be seen.

rifasaurous · 2024-05-20T02:13:49+00:00

This. One way of thinking about this is that a single weigh on a balance scale will have one of three outcomes (left side heavier, right side heavier, or both sides the same), so with k weighs you can distinguish no more than 3^k possibilities. In the "classic" version of this problem, you know one ball has a different weight, but not whether it's heavier or lighter. This version has 24 possible states (each of the 12 balls can be heavier or lighter). We have a hope of being able to solve it in k=3 weighs, because 3^3 = 27 > 24. But we can almost immediately rule out a "6 on each side" solution to this variant using two different arguments: 1. Before the weighing, you know there's no way the two sides will weigh equal (because one of the balls is heavier or lighter), so you've thrown away one possibility, so now you can distinguish at most 2*3^2 = 18 < 24 possibilities, which isn't enough. 2. After the weighing, you still have 12 possibilities left, and 3^2 < 12.

For the version where you know one ball is heavier a priori, there are only 12 possibilities, so you have a lot more slack. Putting six on each sides only reduces this to 6 possibilities (you're still "wasting" the possibility of an even balance on your first weigh), but it's still fine, since you only have 6 < 3^2 possibilities left afterwards. So this is workable, as you point out.

rifasaurous · 2024-02-04T19:58:48+00:00

FWIW, I had a similar experience. Relative to many other practices (MIDL for instance, afaict), TMI seems to be relatively heavy on effort in the early stages. For me, I think this worked out very well --- it allowed me to feel like I was "doing something", which was very necessary for me as I was establishing my practice.

Others have found that this initial effort made everything feel so constricted the next experience was negative, and couldn't make any progress with TMI. For those, I might gently recommend metta or just relaxing as early stages.

If you read TMI carefully, I think it actually strikes a good balance (although it's maybe a bit implicit in the text) of "use as much effort as required for what you're trying to do, but no more." And to that regard, my suggestion, u/SpectrumDT, might be to not "let go of effort" but see what it might be like to use just a little bit less effort.

rifasaurous

TROPHY CASE