Fighting couples, tranq, dads' essential role, and ricotta cookies!
RWL #398
Greetings from the LHH! I’m back, but I still have a hacking cough I can’t seem to shake. I haven’t gone to jiu-jitsu training since returning because the cough is worst at night, and I wake up exhausted (and coughing), and my practice is at 5:30AM. Hopefully it will break soon.
I was looking through my notes about my conference last week and I came across a quote I jotted down during one panel. A system CMO was talking about AI and said, “Physicians won’t be replaced by AI, but they will be replaced by physicians who use AI.” Sorry - I didn’t get his name so can’t give attribution - but this is a somewhat generic sentiment that I think he made especially succinct. It isn’t just physicians who will be replaced with physicians who use AI, but just about everyone who has a knowledge component to their job, which is pretty much all of us, even people who we might think of as primarily working with their hands. A big part of being an effective physician is being able to retain a large volume of medical information and applying algorithms based on a patient’s condition. You know who is better than any human at retaining large volumes of information and applying algorithms? Yeah. AI is. But that is only a part of being a physician. There are other components, such as empathy that will - I almost said never be replaced by AI - but at least won’t be replaced soon. I would say the cyber centaur model (half man, half machine) is the future. And that is what this CMO was saying: centaurs will replace people who do not learn to use AI.
I made some of my ricotta cookies this weekend as a hostess gift, and had some left over dough, so I made a second batch for my middle daughter and her roommates (pic above is the second batch). I grew up with an Italian grandmother who always had ricotta cookies on hand, but hers were more of a biscuit. These are pillowy soft and indulgent. My cookies are based on this recipe, but I substitute half of the milk with amaretto and skip the almond extract.
Happy early Father’s Day to all the dad’s reading this. Check out the Art of Manliness pod I have in Listen.
On to the links! As usual, willing good for all of you!
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Read
What: WSJ, ‘Tranq’ Turns More Illicit Drug Users Into Amputees
Why: Xylazine, street name Tranq, is an animal tranquilizer that has made its way into the illicit drug scene. This stuff is straight out of a nightmare. Users have their skin rot and ultimately have to have amputations. I thought opioids were bad. It’s like the black market said, “Hold my beer.” I had lunch with a nurse practitioner who works with illicit drug users here in New Hampshire and she said she has seen the effects starting to show up even in our neck of the woods, and she also said there is another animal tranquilizer that is making its way into the market that may be even worse.
The author does a great job with this story, especially the last segment about Nathan Clark. She uses him to capture the tragic hopelessness of caring for an addicted, dying son.
If haven’t read about Tranq yet, you should, and this is a good place to start. Addiction is such a horrible and complex disease.
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What: Time, How to Cope With the Financial Toll of Cancer
https://time.com/6984939/cancer-costs-how-to-cope/
Why: One of my students in my Health Systems class I am running right now shared this article. I thought it did a good job of focusing on the issue of how even a middle-class family can be laid low by a cancer diagnosis.
“Thankfully with my wife working, we were able to barely cover the mortgage,” he says. “We had some savings we had to go through.” Though his wife is sensitive to the cold, “she learned not to turn on the heat in the house unless it was truly freezing,” Gillette adds. “The grocery bill was bare necessities, which was not how I had ever lived.”
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Watch
What: Julie and John Gottman | TED, Even Healthy Couples Fight — the Difference Is How (17 min)
Why: I’ve shared the Gottman’s work before, but I’d never seen this TED. They do a nice job summarizing some of their key findings and recommendations for having a better relationship.
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What: The Art of Manliness, Dad's Essential Role in Making Kids Awesome (47 min)
Why: This is a fun pod. The guest is Anna Machin. She is “an evolutionary anthropologist, a pioneer of fatherhood science, and the author of Life Of Dad.” She makes a number of biological claims about how child rearing affects us physically (through release of various hormones). But more importantly, she argues for the importance of a father in a child’s life. A good listen for Father’s Day.