> The results revealed that Jonathan has “unique gene variants in most aging pathways” including DNA repair, insulin regulation, mitochondrial function, and “low entropy” methylation, reports the study.
My supplement company has a product, PeptiShell Vital Peak, that has been selling in volume to a mystery buyer for the past few months. Things that make you go hmmm.
He still has quite a ways to go to 1485715964481761497309522733620825737885569961284688766942216863704985393094065876545992131370884059645617234469978112000000000000000000000. :-)
They did opt to swab his mouth rather than draw blood to minimize his discomfort. That seems like a pretty reasonable compromise for the value of learning and science
And we europeans consider them young. What we are pointing is that people in US (and America in general) talks about pre-1776 stuff as they were prehistoric, and pre-1900 stuff as they were comparable to Roman ruins. Add to that that we love to bomb each other to a ruble, and buildings and countries younger than 200 years are viewed as temporary stuff. Nothing pedantic or snobby here, just pointing that we live in different scenarios that affected our views.
> pre-1900 stuff as they were comparable to Roman ruins
I get your point, but it's maybe not quite this bad. I grew up in a city where most homes were built in ~1900, with a number from before then. And this is on the west coast, there are lots of even older structures on the east coast.
> Nothing pedantic or snobby here
I wasn't describing you as pedantic, I was referring to myself, since I was about to observe that a number of European countries are technically young by government age. There is obviously a lot of nuance there, and long history, but hey, there have been people inhabiting North America well before the USA became a thing too.
But far fewer than modern nation states that are younger. E.g. Norway as a modern nation state is typically dated to either 1814 (constitution), or 1905 (independence), but the country is considered to have been united between 872 and ~1130 depending on exactly how consolidated control you're willing to count.
Isn't the USA older then pretty much every country in Europe? Maybe the UK could be considered older depending on how you count it and San Marino is there but all the other major ones like Germany, Italy, France, Spain, etc aren't even 100.
How in the world can you claim that France is not even 100? The German empire was established in 1857, which is definitely more than 100 years ago; it's also not unreasonable to say that the HRE could be equated to the German state, that Spain is the continuation of Castille, and that the Roman empire can be considered the direct precursor to Italy
There's a cultural through line for all these countries, often stretching back thousands of years, which means that they reach further back than the definition of the modern state
If you're gonna give them credit for stuff like that, then you need to at least give credit to the United States as far back as the Pilgrims in the 1600s.
Perhaps, they were certainly foundational in establishing traditions that are now part of American culture, but even 1600 is young compared to many, if not most, European countries
The Franks made Paris their capital in the 5th century, so that still ~1100 years earlier
The Germanic people exists in records from the 1st century
Whether you can consider Spain as originating from Hispania of the Roman Empire, which would place it in the BCs, or you are more conservative and say that it doesn't count until after the reconquista from the Umayyad, we're still around the 10th or 11th century
As for Italy, we're again in BCs with the Roman empire
So yes, in comparison to many European countries, the US is a very young country
By your metric Canada is older than the USA, first colony (Champlain was founding permanent trading posts in 1608 some of those settlements turned into cities that exist today)
Perhaps, but that would by all accounts still be a pretty silly thing to do. It's not like another group of people with a different cultural background invaded France and displaced/killed everyone already living there
A person with a French citizenship from the fourth republic was still a French citizen when the fifth republic was established
Then short of living in a war ravaged country, or somewhere that is poverty stricken with malnutrition, you are living one of the least desirable forms of human life. For your sake, I hope you’re at least watching good TV, playing some nice video games, are working on an interesting problem and have someone to have sex with.
As a person that absolutely loves hundred plus degree weather and is constantly outdoors I’ll take 20 years of a hot, sunny life over 500 years of that.
This is the oldest land animal currently living and whose age is known with certainty.
It is believed that other tortoises may have lived close to 300 years.
The greater age reached by animals living in an environment that is cold and with a constant temperature and which need a much lower average power for living (i.e. a lower energy consumption and a slower metabolism) is very much expected.
The struggles for limited resources among humans marooned in a finite ecosystem will not allow us to defy death. When natural causes no longer reduce our numbers sufficiently, we will be winnowed through an unceasing epidemic of violence. So long as there are births, there will be deaths.
If you thought the carnival of dementia brought about by modern medicine's gradual reduction of quick death was grim, just wait until medicine solves natural death entirely.
Tortoises who give up their secrets to humans won't survive the cataclysm.
No point staying alive if you're not healthy. This is a great podcast about the difference between lifespan and healthspan: "To start our new series about what it means to live in a world of ageing populations, David talks to geneticist Adam Rutherford about the benefits and pitfalls of increasing longevity. Are GLP-1s – drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro – miracle cures that will extend human lifespans? What happens if longer lives do not coincide with better health? How far can life extension be pushed? And who wants to live forever anyway?" https://www.ppfideas.com/episodes/an-ageing-world-lifespan-v...
Maybe not for you, but others would beg to differ?
Darwin apparently had debilitating illnesses at 72 (one year before his death) when he published a book on earthworms and their role in forming soil. And Pasteur was apparently paralyzed at 63 when he developed the rabies vaccine. Etc.
Should they have just kicked the bucket when they lost their health, because of the pointlessness of living past that?
Chopin had tuberculosis most of his life and died at 39 weighing only 45kg. Euler became almost blind before 60. Give a chance to sick and feeble, folks.
A bit more charitable read on the GP is that people should focus on having as many healthy days as possible rather than as many total days as possible.
That doesn't mean those already I'll should just give up, it means those looking to their future should consider whether living 20 more healthy years is better than living 40 more years if 30 of those are increasingly focused on just treating symptoms to wake up tomorrow.
That's an uncharitable reading of what I mean, but I suppose I could have been clearer. Perhaps "no point staying alive if you're so unhealthy that you're perpetually miserable" would be closer to what I meant, particularly having seen a number of elderly relatives living through their last years in unrelenting misery, impatient for death. One in particular sticks with me, an uncle who had been a doctor and knew exactly what was coming because he'd seen plenty of it in his career, but without the means to end it in a dignified way. These people absolutely didn't want to be kept alive longer - which is the point of the distinction between lifespan and healthspan in the podcast.
My paternal grandfather starved himself death because of health issues. My paternal grandmother died in agony from colorectal cancer. My maternal grandfather faded away and died not recognizing most of his children. My maternal grandmother was trapped in a noisy ICU where she couldn't sleep until her heart finally failed.
English isn't my native language, but to my eyes it looks like writing "'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal" lacks context/completeness for an article title. Perhaps "'Jonathan' is the oldest known land animal" could add some mystery, but "'Jonathan' is the oldest land animal on Earth" sounds more attention-grabbing.
The hair one is a fascinating one to me... We have some many examples of people like Bezos, Jobs, Ballmer, Brin, Slim... I mean, if the ultra rich have not figured it out, I don't think there much hope for anyone else really... haha of they can pull a Musk, but that's not the point, the point is to reverse balding...
nah, but I mean, the guy went trough the same instant pipeline as Steven Seagal where he was definitely all thin in Above the Law and a film later his hairline had won the battle. Come on!
It's not what you meant but toupees have gotten really good, the only problem is you can't be a public figure and have pattern baldness one day and a full head of hair the next. There's actually something called "the toupee fallacy" which means assuming an entire category of something is bad based on only noticing bad examples.
I Think You Should Leave had a sketch that's a fake ad for bald men who have been wearing toupees and want to stop but don't want to show up to work one day bald, making everyone think you've been lying to them. So the service is they send you a new toupee every week, each one balder than the last over the span of 52 weeks, so you can look like you're progressively going bald.
I'm not usually into cringe humor, but IMHO "I Think You Should Leave" is its own category. Episodes like Hat and Hot Dog Car ... I almost hurt myself laughing.
Laser hair removal only works if there's contrast between the skin and the hair. So if you have white or blonde hair and white skin, it doesn't work; or if you have brown skin and brown hair, it also doesn't work.
For cases where laser hair removal won't work, there's electrolysis, which involves inserting an acupuncture needle in each and every hair follicle, but it's expensive, slow, and can be pretty painful.
When you have laser hair removal, the laser flash pumps a ton of energy into the hair follicle which essentially roasts the shit out of the hair follicle so it dies, usually it will re-product hair at some point but very thin, wispy white hair if any at all.
You need to shave your hair for laser hair removal since you don't want a long melting chunk of hair on your body that will cause serious burns. Hair dye will not color the root base of the hair meaning that heat energy will not travel down to the base as well and probably just destroy the pigment dye instead of the hair itself.
Laser tech is definitely improving on that front! I've done laser hair removal off and on for a while, and the clinic I go to recently got a new laser to replace their old unit that kept breaking down (hence some of those "off" periods)... and this new model is legitimately almost painless. The old one zapped me pretty bad in certain areas, so it's not like I'm immune to laser pain, but in those same areas I never felt more than a tiny snap/pinch from the new one.
The technician also mentioned that this new model works on a wider array of skin tones--if I remember correctly, I think she said that it works all the way up to a Fitzpatrick 6, as long as the hair itself has melanin (still no way to target white/light hairs).
Not everything is about the economy. Even when you have a market-driven economy I'd say most things that people value aren't even represented by the economy.
Isn't this covered in multiple sci-fi genres? There's no real way to distinguish immortality from what amounts to a pre-planned death around some kind of life extension procedure. As a social group, we're more likely to select something that is effectively "continuation of thought patterns" than we are to actually extend consciousness
I think brain and eyes within a vat are completely within the realm of possibility in the very near future if not already. That would definitely register to me as extending consciousness with no preplanned death.
It's both, though. Yes, the Earth can support more humans with a lifestyle closer to that of the West in the 19th century than with a lifestyle closer to the the West in the 21st, but even in the 19th (and earlier) deforestation and the like were happening. And it's just reality that as societies prosper they use more resources per person. 50 years ago the vast majority of Chinese didn't use cars but walked and and bicycled. Now they are quite car dependent.
I'm not sure that's an easy argument to hold up. Where would you draw the line on lifestyle that can and should reasonably change?
We've populated large portions of the planet that we really have no business living in without climate controlled indoor environments. HVAC is also a huge energy suck with all the externalities that come along with it. If we were to really want to cut energy use, for example, and climate control had to go we almost certainly couldn't continue to sustain as many people as we have today.
> Where would you draw the line on lifestyle that can and should reasonably change?
I'm with you, but let's just say it.
People, as a whole, don't want to make the changes we all know would make the world better.
People, as individuals? While there are exceptions, the reality is a classic tragedy of the commons. Individuals generally won't accept a short-term drop in their standard of living while watching their neighbors refuse to do the same.
It is what it is, frankly. We can and will change our lifestyles at the very last possible moment. Let's hope it's enough.
If they keep it up, their population will remain stable up to the 22nd century. There will be no further noticeable ageing and thus no threat to anyone's retirement.
Decline fails to uphold the prevailing world economic ideology. That's the real problem with population decline the way I see it. We will need to adjust in ways that don't support the idea of "unlimited growth".
Just imagine how many more grandpas and great grandpas will be around for you to shout this at.
The problem with the population isn't (yet? only?) the absolute number of individuals but the age distribution. Most societies rely on young people to support themselves and the old, and this only works if there's a good balance between the numbers of each. Living longer isn't guaranteed to offer a longer productive period. We might just end up with more old people in need of support and not necessarily more children. This is already a major problem today in most developed countries.
There are probably so many more factors to consider. Like the psychological impact of living substantially longer. Even things like that crappy boss who won't retire from another 60 years, the dictator who won't die for another hundred years, or any number of the many society destroying tech CEOs getting to entrench themselves for decades more.
This will happen no earlier than the 2080s. The world population is expected to increase every year until then. We will add nearly 2 billion people in that time. Consider that the entire world population was less than 1 billion for all but the last 221 years.
You can hate Elon Musk all you want, but lets not perpetuate lies okay?
Musk believes death is actually beneficial to society, "There is some benefit to death, by the way." he said. He believes some people never change their minds (usually old people), so generational turnover allows new ideas to replace old ones and is good for society.
scun | 22 hours ago
min-maxing longevity vs speed and charisma
luipugs | 21 hours ago
scun | 21 hours ago
PalmPilotProMax | 18 hours ago
Wait till he gets his hands on turtle semen and peptides
ElProlactin | 13 hours ago
DrMandalay | 16 hours ago
SwtCyber | 15 hours ago
kspacewalk2 | 19 hours ago
SwtCyber | 15 hours ago
penne_pastaa | 4 hours ago
Ancalagon | 22 hours ago
F3nd0 | 20 hours ago
He still has quite a ways to go to 1485715964481761497309522733620825737885569961284688766942216863704985393094065876545992131370884059645617234469978112000000000000000000000. :-)
SwtCyber | 15 hours ago
pil0u | 22 hours ago
Somehow, I wish we would leave that creature alone. For once.
fnordpiglet | 21 hours ago
KylerAce | 20 hours ago
samudrijan | 22 hours ago
dyauspitr | 22 hours ago
epolanski | 22 hours ago
And sponges older than pyramids.
loloquwowndueo | 20 hours ago
Remember the saying : in the US, 100 years is a long time; in Europe, 100km is a long distance.
autoexec | 19 hours ago
rootusrootus | 19 hours ago
rootusrootus | 19 hours ago
skrebbel | 17 hours ago
lifestyleguru | 11 hours ago
You are overgeneralizing. In much of Europe plenty of architecture was erected after 1945, and most of architecture around and after 1900.
loloquwowndueo | 11 hours ago
1-more | 4 hours ago
pablobaz | 11 hours ago
otherme123 | 16 hours ago
rootusrootus | 3 hours ago
I get your point, but it's maybe not quite this bad. I grew up in a city where most homes were built in ~1900, with a number from before then. And this is on the west coast, there are lots of even older structures on the east coast.
> Nothing pedantic or snobby here
I wasn't describing you as pedantic, I was referring to myself, since I was about to observe that a number of European countries are technically young by government age. There is obviously a lot of nuance there, and long history, but hey, there have been people inhabiting North America well before the USA became a thing too.
vidarh | 13 hours ago
tick_tock_tick | 19 hours ago
bmitc | 19 hours ago
bdangubic | 19 hours ago
Scandiravian | 19 hours ago
There's a cultural through line for all these countries, often stretching back thousands of years, which means that they reach further back than the definition of the modern state
higginsniggins | 17 hours ago
Scandiravian | 16 hours ago
The Franks made Paris their capital in the 5th century, so that still ~1100 years earlier
The Germanic people exists in records from the 1st century
Whether you can consider Spain as originating from Hispania of the Roman Empire, which would place it in the BCs, or you are more conservative and say that it doesn't count until after the reconquista from the Umayyad, we're still around the 10th or 11th century
As for Italy, we're again in BCs with the Roman empire
So yes, in comparison to many European countries, the US is a very young country
loloquwowndueo | 6 hours ago
BuyMyBitcoins | 17 hours ago
Scandiravian | 16 hours ago
A person with a French citizenship from the fourth republic was still a French citizen when the fifth republic was established
cdot2 | 6 hours ago
jbarberu | 16 hours ago
epolanski | 12 hours ago
The point was to emphasize the longevity of some animals, as for us humans the US constitution is 8/9 generations away.
nancyminusone | 6 hours ago
stubish | 18 hours ago
mrheosuper | 20 hours ago
bmitc | 19 hours ago
altmanaltman | 17 hours ago
bmitc | 9 hours ago
SwtCyber | 15 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 12 hours ago
lifestyleguru | 12 hours ago
TiredOfLife | 10 hours ago
_zoltan_ | 9 hours ago
mikestew | 4 hours ago
https://partyshopmaine.com/alaska/is-alcohol-illegal-in-dead...
(And apologies for the slop, that was the first reasonable link I found.)
dyauspitr | 6 hours ago
noumenon1111 | an hour ago
red-iron-pine | 8 hours ago
dyauspitr | 6 hours ago
adrian_b | 12 hours ago
It is believed that other tortoises may have lived close to 300 years.
The greater age reached by animals living in an environment that is cold and with a constant temperature and which need a much lower average power for living (i.e. a lower energy consumption and a slower metabolism) is very much expected.
repeekad | 21 hours ago
...why space force?
sublinear | 21 hours ago
DrMandalay | 16 hours ago
fnordpiglet | 21 hours ago
kQq9oHeAz6wLLS | 20 hours ago
verdverm | 21 hours ago
a96 | 13 hours ago
antonvs | 21 hours ago
Shouldn’t they find a younger researcher?
fahrvrgnugen | 18 hours ago
lifestyleguru | 12 hours ago
aix1 | 17 hours ago
calacatta | 20 hours ago
Me and a couple hunters
Like to row in from the Isle of
Astonishing M*erf*ers
totetsu | 20 hours ago
[OP] gumby | 20 hours ago
poooogles | 14 hours ago
throwaway2046 | 19 hours ago
usernametaken29 | 18 hours ago
saidnooneever | 16 hours ago
ElProlactin | 13 hours ago
1659447091 | 12 hours ago
godshatter | 2 hours ago
stepwisecalc | 17 hours ago
rectang | 16 hours ago
The struggles for limited resources among humans marooned in a finite ecosystem will not allow us to defy death. When natural causes no longer reduce our numbers sufficiently, we will be winnowed through an unceasing epidemic of violence. So long as there are births, there will be deaths.
If you thought the carnival of dementia brought about by modern medicine's gradual reduction of quick death was grim, just wait until medicine solves natural death entirely.
Tortoises who give up their secrets to humans won't survive the cataclysm.
frereubu | 15 hours ago
varjag | 15 hours ago
frereubu | 9 hours ago
dataflow | 15 hours ago
Maybe not for you, but others would beg to differ?
Darwin apparently had debilitating illnesses at 72 (one year before his death) when he published a book on earthworms and their role in forming soil. And Pasteur was apparently paralyzed at 63 when he developed the rabies vaccine. Etc.
Should they have just kicked the bucket when they lost their health, because of the pointlessness of living past that?
lifestyleguru | 11 hours ago
_heimdall | 10 hours ago
That doesn't mean those already I'll should just give up, it means those looking to their future should consider whether living 20 more healthy years is better than living 40 more years if 30 of those are increasingly focused on just treating symptoms to wake up tomorrow.
frereubu | 9 hours ago
Ensorceled | 7 hours ago
We can all come up with shitty anecdotes.
dyzone | 5 hours ago
Ensorceled | 3 hours ago
Canada has medical assistance in dying now that lets people avoid this.
echelon_musk | 14 hours ago
rpozarickij | 14 hours ago
Razengan | 13 hours ago
(writing that just gave me mini goosebumps)
_joel | 12 hours ago
thelastgallon | 14 hours ago
pelagicAustral | 12 hours ago
lifestyleguru | 12 hours ago
How much such hairline can cost, $10?
pelagicAustral | 12 hours ago
johnwalkr | 10 hours ago
hbn | 8 hours ago
chrisweekly | 7 hours ago
tencentshill | 8 hours ago
Meleagris | 11 hours ago
If I’m going bald, then I’d love to shortcut the process.
Shaving is awful no matter where it is on your body. It takes time, it’s irritating and you never look fresh for more than a day.
jester997 | 10 hours ago
wolvoleo | 5 hours ago
Larrikin | 9 hours ago
jghn | 9 hours ago
acidx | 9 hours ago
For cases where laser hair removal won't work, there's electrolysis, which involves inserting an acupuncture needle in each and every hair follicle, but it's expensive, slow, and can be pretty painful.
AmazingEveryDay | 7 hours ago
vablings | 7 hours ago
You need to shave your hair for laser hair removal since you don't want a long melting chunk of hair on your body that will cause serious burns. Hair dye will not color the root base of the hair meaning that heat energy will not travel down to the base as well and probably just destroy the pigment dye instead of the hair itself.
wolvoleo | 5 hours ago
cryzinger | 2 hours ago
The technician also mentioned that this new model works on a wider array of skin tones--if I remember correctly, I think she said that it works all the way up to a Fitzpatrick 6, as long as the hair itself has melanin (still no way to target white/light hairs).
red-iron-pine | 8 hours ago
tim333 | 3 hours ago
xboxnolifes | 4 hours ago
Night_Thastus | 4 hours ago
thrance | 4 hours ago
xboxnolifes | 3 hours ago
thrance | an hour ago
jv22222 | 3 hours ago
dyauspitr | 3 hours ago
sidewndr46 | 3 hours ago
dyauspitr | 2 hours ago
happyweasel | 13 hours ago
red-iron-pine | 8 hours ago
pythonRon | 13 hours ago
uiautrb | 12 hours ago
jhbadger | 10 hours ago
_heimdall | 10 hours ago
We've populated large portions of the planet that we really have no business living in without climate controlled indoor environments. HVAC is also a huge energy suck with all the externalities that come along with it. If we were to really want to cut energy use, for example, and climate control had to go we almost certainly couldn't continue to sustain as many people as we have today.
jfyi | 7 hours ago
I'm with you, but let's just say it.
People, as a whole, don't want to make the changes we all know would make the world better.
People, as individuals? While there are exceptions, the reality is a classic tragedy of the commons. Individuals generally won't accept a short-term drop in their standard of living while watching their neighbors refuse to do the same.
It is what it is, frankly. We can and will change our lifestyles at the very last possible moment. Let's hope it's enough.
wolvoleo | 5 hours ago
Think of the aboriginals and nomads roaming the deserts and the inuit in the icy north. All before hvac.
And hvac isn't really as much of an energy problem as heating is. Because when hvac is needed it is during a time of abundance of sunlight.
pyrale | 7 hours ago
fearmerchant | 6 hours ago
smallstepforman | 12 hours ago
tokai | 11 hours ago
dirkc | 11 hours ago
Tade0 | 10 hours ago
https://www.populationpyramid.net/france/2026/
If they keep it up, their population will remain stable up to the 22nd century. There will be no further noticeable ageing and thus no threat to anyone's retirement.
jfyi | 7 hours ago
dirkc | an hour ago
close04 | 11 hours ago
Just imagine how many more grandpas and great grandpas will be around for you to shout this at.
The problem with the population isn't (yet? only?) the absolute number of individuals but the age distribution. Most societies rely on young people to support themselves and the old, and this only works if there's a good balance between the numbers of each. Living longer isn't guaranteed to offer a longer productive period. We might just end up with more old people in need of support and not necessarily more children. This is already a major problem today in most developed countries.
There are probably so many more factors to consider. Like the psychological impact of living substantially longer. Even things like that crappy boss who won't retire from another 60 years, the dictator who won't die for another hundred years, or any number of the many society destroying tech CEOs getting to entrench themselves for decades more.
nancyminusone | 8 hours ago
This will happen no earlier than the 2080s. The world population is expected to increase every year until then. We will add nearly 2 billion people in that time. Consider that the entire world population was less than 1 billion for all but the last 221 years.
I continue to not worry.
mapcars | 13 hours ago
Zizizizz | 11 hours ago
freediver | 5 hours ago
Regex777 | 9 hours ago
[I am being sarcastic here, XD]
m4tthumphrey | 8 hours ago
toephu2 | 5 hours ago
Musk believes death is actually beneficial to society, "There is some benefit to death, by the way." he said. He believes some people never change their minds (usually old people), so generational turnover allows new ideas to replace old ones and is good for society.
m4tthumphrey | an hour ago
ck2 | 8 hours ago
but explains a lot
SomeonesAccount | 8 hours ago
GRBurst | 6 hours ago
andai | 7 hours ago