mathbabe

My newest Bloomberg View article just came out:

Personality Tests Are Failing American Workers

All too often, they filter people out for the wrong reasons.

Read all of my Bloomberg View pieces here.

Since my last update I’ve been diagnosed with Graves’ Disease. You can look this up on Wikipedia, but the short version is it makes my thyroid hyperactive, which in turn makes me anxious and hyperactive, which in turn makes me exercise a lot, which in turn makes me very boring.

It’s an autoimmune disease, and it’s treatable, so please don’t worry. Also, it probably has nothing to do with my recent bariatric surgery. In fact before my bariatric sleeve surgery, I was diagnosed with another autoimmune disorder, which is even less worrisome, called autoimmune gastritis. That basically means my stomach slowly produces less stomach acids. It’s good for acid reflux, since there’s nothing to reflux, but it’s bad for absorbing iron and B12. Luckily after gastric surgeries they’re constantly checking your vitamin and mineral levels so no need to worry. But long story short, once you’ve gotten one autoimmune disease you’re more likely to get another. They cluster. So chances are I would’ve gotten Graves’ Disease even if I hadn’t gotten the sleeve surgery.

I’m on a medication called Methimazole to calm down my thyroid, and I’m due for a blood test tomorrow to see how well it’s working. I can’t really tell if it’s working but that’s not a real surprise because I couldn’t really tell I had a problem in the first place. Also, if we can’t adjust the Methimazole levels to make it work, then the standard approach is to burn out my thyroid with radioactive iodine – which sounds worse than it is – and take supplementary medication to replace what my thyroid should have been doing in the first place.

Finding out I have Graves’ Disease is actually kind of good. It explains the deep anxiety I was feeling and the trouble I was having sleeping. And I know there are plenty of reasons to feel anxiety but it was getting slightly out of hand, and now it seems a bit better but again I’m not sure if that’s because the meds are working or because I’m just acclimating to Trump. Or it might just be because I quit Twitter, which was bringing me down consistently. Having no social media habits is good for anxiety problems!

Also my eyesight was changing rapidly, which is a common symptom of Graves’ Disease (although my eyes never bugged out as far as I could tell). That seems to be calming down a bit as well, but again I might just have acclimated. Right now contact lenses work much better than glasses.

So, you remember last update when I mentioned that I started exercising a lot? Well that’s still true. In fact at this point I’ve signed myself up for a 5K race in Riverside Park on February 3rd (which involved free hot cocoa at the end of the race so please join me) as well as a Sprint Triathlon at Lake Welch in Harriman State Park on May 20th (no free hot cocoa but please join me there and I’ll buy you cocoa).

I’ve always said that people who get really into exercise are the most boring people in the world because all they ever want to talk about is exercise. So excuse me for being incredibly boring from now on, or until my thyroid gets under control. It really is a wonderful escape and I admit I’m indulging. For example, in preparation I ran 5K on Saturday morning and I haven’t stopped gloating about it. I’ve really become insufferable. Please tell me to shut up when you next hear me drone on.

Also, and I promise this *isn’t* boring, my band, the TomTown Ramblers, is playing this weekend downtown! Details are below.

Date: Saturday, January 20th.
Time: Our music starts promptly at 9pm.
Place: Caffe Vivaldi, located at 32 Jones Street, between Bleecker and West 4th.

No cover charge! Cash Bar! See you there!

I will not repeat what the president said yesterday about Haiti, because it is too mean spirited to perpetuate. I will say that in my travels in Haiti I met people wealthier in spirit than our poor president.

Photograph by Becky Jaffe

I’ve got a new Bloomberg View piece, which I think any fans of Aunt Pythia will enjoy:

Maybe Sex Robots Will Make Men, Not Women, Obsolete

They might at least create some healthy competition.

For other columns, go here.

I wrote a new Bloomberg View piece about data analysis around sexual harassment and assault:

What We Don’t Know About Sexual Harassment

We lack the data needed to know how prevalent it is.

My other Bloomberg View columns are here.

Also, I quit Twitter, at least for now. It just kept bringing me down.

I’ll be giving a talk at Tufts on Thursday. Here’s the poster, please join me:

Also I’ll be in D.C. on Friday morning to talk data science education with mucky-mucks. That will be livestreamed, or you can join in person as well. Here’s the poster:

I found out there’s going to be another Women’s March by – you guessed it – going to a yarn store and finding there’d been a run on pink yarn. Even better, there are going to be a ton of Women’s Marches in a ton of cities.

Get knitting, folks! And mark your calendars for Saturday, January 20, 2018.

There’s never been a better time for this, I’m sorry to say. And if you don’t know what I mean, listen to this Takeaway episode on John Hockenberry’s systematic sexual harassment and abuse of his female colleagues of color, who he systematically pushed out of senior positions on the show:

#MeToo Hits Home: John Hockenberry Accused of Harassment, Bullying

Bloomberg View

My newest Bloomberg piece is out, in which I consider the problem of false negatives in the context of love and war:

False Negatives Can Be a Matter of Life and Death

Algorithms will repeat our mistakes unless we know what we’re missing.

You can see all of my Bloomberg View pieces here.

Book Club!

I also wanted to announce that my Occupy group Alt Banking is starting a book club. We’re meeting this Sunday from 2-3pm at Columbia (room 409 of the International Affairs Building at Amsterdam and 118th), and we’re discussing the introductions and first chapters of the two following books:

1. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, available for free online
2. Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams, which also seems to be available online.

Please join us, we welcome everyone and anyone!

My newest Bloomberg View piece just came out this morning:

Ray Dalio Has an Unbelievable Algorithm

Does it merely reinforce its maker’s biases?

Looking back I just realized that I never posted last week’s Bloomberg View column:

Maybe Facebook Is Broken:

How can you stop people from sharing biased and misleading stuff?

For a complete list of my Bloomberg View articles, go here.

I got my first op-ed in the NY Times today:

The Ivory Tower Can’t Keep Ignoring Tech

Well it’s been a bit more than 3 months since my gastric sleeve surgery and I wanted to give an update.

Clothes

I finished cleaning out my closet yesterday. All my old clothes are gone. I’m ashamed of just how many clothes I had to get rid of. I’ve gone from a size 24 to a size 18, and as I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve decided to go goth.

That means my closet has basically only black clothes in it now. I made a handful of exceptions for stuff I didn’t throw out that was way too small for me 3 months ago, knitted things, and some workout clothes that are not black.

Going goth has been lots of fun, and deciding in advance what to buy has been a time saver as well as efficient. Since everything is black, everything goes with everything else. And since I’m vaguely looking for a certain type of clothing in a specific color, it means I can narrow down my shopping goals quite quickly. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have no rules and start buying a new wardrobe.

The only downside is that it’s kind of boring. But I think that will change once we enter winter and I can wear colorful scarves and hats, that are guaranteed to go with my black outfits. Also, I’m not sure what black summer dresses will be like. I might need a different rule for summer things. Suggestions welcome.

Food

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have more or less changed my entire eating style since the surgery. I rarely eat meat, although I sometimes eat sashimi (especially salmon). I tend to avoid desserts because I don’t have a sweet tooth at all, and things that seemed bland to me before taste rich to me now, which means I don’t seek out buttery things anymore, since olive oil is already buttery to me.

I more or less live off of a quinoa recipe I learned about in college, which is spicy, savory, and somewhat cheesy:

1. saute one or two heads of garlic, one or two onions, a bell pepper, a few chopped potatoes, and some hot peppers in olive oil until soft
2. add 2.5 cups of quinoa and 5 cups of water, simmer for 25 minutes
3. put a bag of shredded cheese on top, stick in 325 degree oven for 12 minutes

I think the most important difference in my eating now versus before the surgery is how hunger works with me. I still get hungry, but it’s of a totally different nature than it used to be.

So before, if I got hungry, it was like a loud panic button in my brain had been set off. I had to eat, and I’d scavenge the fridge for something to turn off the noise. Nowadays, I realize I’m getting hungry, but it simply means that I have to start thinking about food pretty soon. I have time, for example, to cook quinoa as described above, even though it takes at least an hour.

One positive consequence: I have more time to think

One negative consequence: I can never, ever, ever overeat. I have never really tried to do this, and so I’ve never thrown up or anything, but trust me, I’ve gotten uncomfortable. It’s not something you want to do regularly. It makes you regret your choices.

Exercise

I’ve started running. For the first time in maybe 12 years, I’m regularly jogging. And when I say jogging, to be clear I’m incredibly slow and I don’t go far – it’s fair to say that speed walkers would easily overtake me – but it’s something I couldn’t have done 3 months ago so that’s cool.

But it’s also necessary. I have lots of anxiety, and I need to let out steam somehow. I’m trying my best to make that healthy rather than unhealthy.

Why am I so anxious? I don’t know. It’s hard being a parent to teenagers. It’s hard being a woman in this age of misogyny. It’s hard being a human in this age of political cruelty.

I don’t want to become an alcoholic. I’ve noticed that, since my operation, alcohol works really really well. It hits me hard, it makes me forget my problems, it takes me on a fast ride. It also ends soon and I don’t end up with a hangover. What’s not to love? Except I have plenty of reasons to know better.

Moreover, I have lost food as a source of comfort. To be honest, I don’t think I ever had a disordered way of eating (except for the doctor-approved diets I went on!) but I did know how to comfort myself with food. And before you blame my obesity on that, let me suggest that thin people comfort themselves with food all the time but aren’t accused of bad behavior.

That’s not to say I don’t love my quinoa – I do! – or that I don’t like running – I do! – but that it’s more like an outlet to deal with anxiety and grief than I’d like it to be.

Long story short, I’m doing great, and I feel healthy, and the world still is what it is.

I was on WBUR’s Open Source with Christopher Lydon – a show I regularly listened to when I lived in Somerville – last night discussing Max Tegmark’s new book, Life 3.0. Other guests were Erik Brynjolfsson and Yarden Katz. Here’s the episode:

Intelligence By Design

I’m very happy with an essay that just came out this morning with Boston Review, on futurism:

Know Thy Futurist

Also, my newest Bloomberg View column came out this morning, about how we’re having the wrong conversation about personal data:

The Equifax Hack Started the Wrong Conversation

For the rest of my Bloomberg View columns, go here.

My latest Bloomberg View article is out. I interviewed Michal Kosinski, gaydar algorithm author, about the ethical responsibilities of data scientists:

‘Gaydar’ Shows How Creepy Algorithms Can Get

Read my other Bloomberg View columns here.

The paperback edition of my book just came out last week, so I’ve been on a tear with interviews, and I’m also doing two public events in New York City in the next week. I wanted to tell you about it in case you have time to come!

1. I’ll be at the Brooklyn Book Festival on Sunday morning, on a panel with Tim Wu entitled Big Data & You (free event)
2. I’ll be at an Authors @ Grand Central Tech event on Tuesday evening (this costs $20 but you get a copy of my paperback)
3. I was on the 99% Invisible podcast with Roman Mars! The episode is called the Age of the Algorithm.
4. I was on the Leonard Lopate Show for thirty whole minutes!
5. I was on the Tom Barnard Show in an episode with comedian Mitch Fatel.
6. I was on the Political Book Show podcast
7. I was on the EdSurge podcast
8. I was on the Future of Work podcast
9. I was on the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast

My latest Bloomberg View column is out, in which I try to imagine an internet optimized for citizens rather than consumers:

Facebook and Google, Show Us Your Ad Data

For other columns, take a look here.

I have a new and disgusting if useful way of thinking about weight loss. You’re welcome in advance.

A couple of weeks into the starvation diet and right after my surgery, I complained to my husband that all my weight loss – something like 20 pounds or so at the time – had been taken out of my boobs. I was sad to see them go, I told him. Why couldn’t the weight loss happen elsewhere?!

He demurred. You should look at yourself as a container – most likely a bag – of liquid, he said, much like a plastic container of milk. After all, we’re almost entirely made up of liquid. So, thinking that way, and considering that a whole gallon of milk weighs 8 pounds or so, you’ve lost more than two gallons of milk, which means that your weight loss most definitely hasn’t entirely come from your boobs. Because, after all, they didn’t start out as big as gallons of milk, nor are they entirely gone.

This explanation was foolproof but left me with a queazy feeling which has since only grown.

As of my last weighing, which close readers of my blog will know happened at my doctor’s office last week and not my home, since I threw away my scale, I’ve lost 43 pounds and counting. That’s about 5 gallons of milk, friends. And it’s definitely not exclusively coming out of my sad, baggy boobs.

Indeed I have a new theory about how one loses fat, and it’s called my “sponge theory of fat loss.”

Namely, I think every fat cell in my body is losing weight at the same rate. That’s not to say, of course, that all parts of my body are losing weight at the same rate, since my fat cells accumulate in certain areas like hips, butt, and stomach (and until recently, boobs). Although it has to be said that my shoes have been seeming to grow bigger, which is mysterious. I never thought of my feet as at all fat.

Now, the reason I call it the sponge theory is that, as my voluminous thighs lose weight, they get increasingly spongey. That is, if you squeeze them, you feel like you’re maybe wringing out a sponge. This isn’t necessarily a bad sensation, but it’s definitely weird. It’s basically a loss of density just as much, or more than, a loss of volume.

But I do think the overall loss of volume is catching up in intensity. My skin is excessive for my needs, if you catch my drift. And that’s not going away.

I’ll tell you a secret. When I was young, like maybe 39 or 40, I went on a low carb diet. To be more precise: I decided to eat stuff my friend Laura ate. I modeled myself after her. She’s tiny, and eats well, and loves food, and so I thought, why not give that a try? I lived for months on healthy food like nuts, vegetables, fruit, lentils, and cheese.

It was a good life, and I lost quite a bit of weight. I never got to the point I am now, but I did get close. And you know what happened next? I saw my boobs disappearing, and my skin get excessive for my needs, and I freaked out. I ate a bagel. A single, delicious, still-warm-from-the-oven cinnamon raisin Absolute Bagel with cream cheese. It was delicious, my friends, and it broke me. Somehow I could never look back.

I now have a theory about that, too, because why not, an overactive mind. My theory is that I’d managed to develop a “skinny biome” in my stomach due to the hard work of adjusting to the Laura diet, but that it was precarious for whatever reason, and that bagel tipped my over into a fat person’s biome once again.

To clarify:

1. I never ate any poop.
2. I don’t regret this experiment. It taught me that real weight loss would mean a major shift in my body, including lots of extra skin that I would have to adjust to over time (and which I definitely wasn’t ready for 7 years ago).
3. There’s good reason to think that one of the main reasons that bariatric surgery works is because it fosters a skinny biome.
4. That means I can expect to want to eat like Laura, rather than using my limited will power to force myself to at all times.
5. Which is good, because honestly nobody’s got that kind of willpower to be perfect all the time.
6. Correction: some people do fight every minute of every day to stay thin, but I wouldn’t want to be one of them. Too many other things to do.

Long story short, in the past 7 years I’ve tried to come to terms with what major weight loss would do to my skin. I haven’t, yet. By night I have nightmares that yards and yards of my own excess skin smother me in my sleep. By day I feel guilty for the implicit ageism of my fears. I want to be someone who loves every inch of herself, even the extra skin.

This is what I want to say to people who congratulate me for losing a ton of weight, starting now and ending never: Please don’t equate thin with beautiful. I liked my body so much more when I was fat, when I looked like an enormous buddha, full and round. I didn’t do this to look better, I did it to be healthier, to bike in the summer and to avoid diabetes. I’m hoping to eventually find a way to love my body in spite of how it looks, but it’s a monumental challenge.

Statistically speaking I’m expected to lose quite a few more gallons of milk before stabilizing. I’m scared. I’ve decided to give it a few years of adjustment before turning to surgical means of dealing with excess skin, which would be expensive, dangerous, and a blow to my identity as someone who can adjust to things and rise above issues of vanity.

Wish me luck.

My newest Bloomberg View column just came out:

So, I’m learning to eat again. Like a newborn child perhaps, but worse, since I have all sorts of memories of how much I can eat and what I like to eat that are misleading. A Bayesian prior that I can’t easily shake.

Pescatarian

For example, once I was cleared to eat ground meat, I made myself a pot of beef chili, which is something I’ve always loved to eat. I knew I could only eat a bit of it at a time, but I figured that was fine, since I’d share it with other people. But the truth is, I couldn’t eat it at all. I tried one tiny bowl of it and it felt like a million tons in my stomach.

That’s been the way it is for me, with pretty much all meat, including chicken. I can’t seem to eat meat and feel good afterwards.

By contrast, I can eat fish. To be more precise, sashimi. I’ve really enjoyed salmon sashimi. And tofu. I’ve been pretty much addicted to tofu. Anything Thai, and the lighter the sauce the better.

Traveling

Traveling while learning to eat sucks. I went away with my kids for a few days to West Springfield, MA. Talk about a food desert. The best restaurant we went to was Bertucci’s, followed by IHOP, followed by Friendly’s. Not an exaggeration. And since I’m not eating pasta or doughy bread, Bertucci’s was tough. And since I don’t want to eat sweet things, IHOP was basically impossible. And since I don’t digest fried things, Friendly’s was awful.

Out of desperation, I google searched “good healthy food near me” and it came up with two results: Dunkin Donuts and a martini bar.

Basically I lived off of the cheese I brought with me for the trip. I now kind of understand why rich people pay so much to vacation in fancy places with healthy food. I would have paid good money for avocado toast.

As a side note, I’ve never been more aware of how most of America eats. The food available in places like this is unhealthy, addictive, and omnipresent. Not to mention very, very cheap. Which is to say, there is a systemic problem we will have to face sooner or later when it comes to health.

Throwing the Rulebook Out the Window

I think I mentioned before that the instructions I’ve received from the surgeon’s office – specifically, from the nutritionist – have been hard to follow, in part because they’re extra strict to make allowances for the fact that they assume practically everyone cheats. That’s not a theory, I asked. And since I’m actually trying to be compliant, that makes it kind of ridiculous.

For example, the instructions tell you to eat meat with mayonnaise so that it will go down easier. But they also tell you not to ever eat something with more than 25% fat in a meal. That’s hard to do, so the conclusion is to mix up your meat with diet mayonnaise to force it down.

I mean, yuck. Who wants to force down chunks of chicken or beef with diet mayonnaise? I’d rather never eat meat in the first place.

More generally, though, I once again think the entire causal relationship has been misunderstood.

It’s easy enough to do as a nutritionist: if you notice that people who eat high fat foods don’t lose as much weight as people who eat lean foods, it’s natural to tell everyone to eat lean foods. But that doesn’t mean such advice will be heeded or will work.

My perspective is that I’ve thrown the dice on this surgery, and it has changed my hormones, and my stomach biome, and my tastes will change, and I might end up being one of those people who both desire and consume lean foods. And if I’m lucky, and I end up wanting to eat lean foods, this surgery will have been a success. But I cannot make it a success with sheer force of will.

You see, I also like my cheese, and sometimes my entire “meal” (still the size of a snack) consists of eating cheese, and I’m sure it’s more than 25% fat, but I’m not planning to replace it with diet cheese. Instead, I’m happy to report, other meals all I want is fruit, or salad, and they’ll have to balance stuff out.

Long story short, I’m ending up relatively noncompliant, after all. The only things I’m being super careful about are my vitamin patches and my protein intake, which seem important.

I don’t know how this will all end up, but I do know that I value delicious and satisfying food, and I’d rather be listening to my body and eating good food than ignoring my body and eating plastic.