Many friends who saw the post I made the day before yesterday about giving away continuous glucose monitors for the Spring Festival have also gotten into it. That post didn't go into much detail, so I'm sharing some additional thoughts, speaking off the cuff. I first heard about this thing about five years ago when Dovey recommended it to me while we were discussing low-carb diets. At that time, I was just trying to lose weight and suspected my blood sugar was high because I had been eating a lot of sweets. So, I bought an Abbott monitor to give it a try and found that my blood sugar wasn't actually that high. Back then, I didn't really understand the significance of managing blood sugar; I was reducing carb intake, but my goal was weight loss, not blood sugar control. After wearing it for a few days and getting a sense of the situation, I took it off and didn't wear it again. However, the significance of a continuous glucose monitor goes far beyond just monitoring fasting blood sugar for diabetes patients. Rapid spikes and drops in blood sugar can cause significant damage to the body, including damaging blood vessels, triggering chronic inflammation, forcing excessive insulin secretion, leading to insulin resistance, accelerating aging, and causing weight control issues, among other outcomes. Therefore, even healthy individuals can achieve better long-term health and manage their energy levels through blood sugar management. Next, here are my usage experiences: I started wearing it again in September last year and have been wearing it every day since. Honestly, it doesn't matter whether you wear it or not because after nearly six months of wearing it, I already have a good understanding of what foods cause significant blood sugar fluctuations, and I've developed new eating habits, losing 25 pounds in the process. My advice to everyone is to wear it for 1-2 months to grasp the data patterns and develop habits; there's no need to wear it long-term. However, this thing is almost unnoticeable when worn, and it has very little impact on daily life, so I've just kept wearing it as a form of supervision. Occasionally, if I go out and don't control myself, my blood sugar spikes once, and then I behave for a few days afterward. For new friends getting into this, here are a few points to understand: 1. The absolute values in the first couple of days of wearing it are definitely inaccurate, often too low (mainly based on my experience with the Eversense brand, which may not apply to other brands). This may be because the body has an adaptation process to the foreign object. As the body adapts, the values will get very close to fingerstick blood. When I first started wearing it, I would prick my finger for blood comparison at least a few times a day, sometimes over ten times, for about half a month, and I basically mastered the error patterns. I’ve seen some experienced friends pre-activate the glucose monitor and wait 24-48 hours before using it. This can effectively shorten the period of inaccuracy. 2. Even if there is a discrepancy in absolute values compared to static blood sugar, the reference for change patterns is still very strong. If you find that your blood sugar spikes from 5 to 12 after eating, whether that 5 has a 0.5-1 error is not very important. However, for diabetes patients, this can only be used as a reference and should not be used to make medical judgments. 3. Each continuous glucose monitor is an independent unit. You may encounter a situation where one is very accurate, and the next one has a large error. This may be related to manufacturing processes or the site of application; I'm not sure, but I've encountered this twice in the past. In such cases, I recommend switching it out directly instead of wasting time waiting for it to become accurate. Additionally, in such situations, contact customer service and provide evidence; most brands will allow you to exchange for a new one for free. But you need to balance the time cost. If you think your half-hour is worth more than $100, then there's no need to fuss over it. 4. If swimming, I strongly recommend Eversense. I've seen more than one friend say that swimming or showering caused issues with their continuous glucose monitor, and they had to wrap it up while showering. I wear Eversense and swim every day without encountering this problem. Just a few days ago, I soaked in a hot spring in Hokkaido at 42 degrees Celsius while wearing the glucose monitor, and it worked perfectly. 5. Some can be placed on the abdomen, like the Freestyle Libre. But if you buy the Eversense, it's best not to. I tried it once, and it was a disaster; the values were severely low, and I don't know if it was because my abdominal fat was too thick, preventing it from reaching the intended area. 6. Most come with adhesive patches, but those things are too big, and I find them cumbersome, so I've never used them, and they stick quite well. I've encountered two instances of damage midway, both due to accidentally hitting the monitor hard against a door or something, which caused the needle to bend directly, and it didn't really matter whether I used the adhesive or not. That's all I can think of for now.

This year for the Spring Festival, I bought over a hundred dynamic blood glucose monitors and gave them out indiscriminately to all my friends, classmates, and elders at various gatherings, because this was also the health product that had the biggest impact on me last year. The response was great, and I feel like I successfully helped some friends establish new healthy habits. I just didn't expect that this thing had also increased in price quite a bit before the Spring Festival.

I stumbled upon an AI pancake machine in a corner of the Haidian Library. This is an edge model based on a physics engine. It doesn't do Vibe Coding, but it has top-notch "batter fluid dynamics" computing power. It has no illusions, only the brutal aesthetics of classical control theory. This determinism fascinated me, so I decided to try the high-computing version with "double eggs." But as I glanced at the market software, I suddenly understood the meaning of "edge computing"; being on the brink of bankruptcy, I had to think twice about spending money, so I quietly opted for a single egg instead. When I got the pancake, I found the packaging said: "Made by robots, it may not have that human touch, but we are always learning." I instantly felt relieved; this wasn't just selling pancakes, it was clearly about reinforcement learning training. The machine is trying to align with human preferences for the complex notion of "human touch" by continuously making pancakes. And I am using my dwindling purchasing power to provide its model with the last bit of real Human Feedback.