Simon Wheeler

Jesus has a long history of extraordinary virility. In "God: An Anatomy" @proffrancesca.bsky.social writes "Christ might be dead, but his penis promises his restoration to life".
But still always portrayed as humble, compassionate and full of love. He would not have recognised this war on empathy.

10x productivity though! 😆😆😆

There's also the more self-centred dilemma of whether continuing to do ethically-compromised work is going to affect your long-term career prospects.
Sure, you may keep your job for now or even prosper in the short-term, but assuming civility returns, what will your CV/reputation look like then?

Of course! 🤦 Oh dear, I am definitely deleting that one! Still, the magnitudes do seem very counter-intuitive with stroke so low relative to periodontal disease.
Thank you for taking pity on me and helping anyway! :)

Is it a Bayesian thing? I don't speak good Bayes, unfortunately.

Apart from anything else, the one condition we absolutely do know contributes to dementia risk is stroke, yet in this analysis it's the weakest risk factor!

I just read a paper where the authors used p values to determine whether older people were more likely to get dementia. This is the immense power of frequentist hypothesis testing.

It’s ok. I can email my Research colleagues! I was just wondering if other research units around the country had developed their own policies and processes?

I don't understand why they don't just pass an Act which establishes the right and process to do so without each peer needing their own individual Act?! Parliament can pass whatever laws it wants to, surely?

'Theoretically' is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Definitely try to sort out sleep problems if you're having cognitive problems, but you're never going to prevent 1 in 8 cases of dementia this way.

‘Sandwich generation’ of women risk suicide by suffering in silence Warnings of mental ill-health epidemic for those aged 45 to 49 who juggle care for children and parents

And the occasional burned out man (but yes it is mostly women).

YouTube video by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert "Join ICE" - Jesse Welles (LIVE on The Late Show)

“Join ICE” by Jesse Welles is also very good and in the same tradition. Scathing, powerful and funny.

youtu.be/61I4hlig78w?...

I know it’s unlikely but does anyone know of a way of muting posts that have X or Truth Social screenshots? They are seriously doing my nut in.
I came here to get away from all that so I’m not particularly sympathetic to those who post nasty things people said on X and ask for moral support here.

Hopefully clinical expertise and experience comes in, although with the current high demand on memory services to process more and more referrals, this can't always be taken for granted.

So yes, retrospective assessments necessary to gauge 'decline' over months or years is necessarily narrative, which on the one hand allows individualised assessment (good), but also introduces subjectivity and inter-observer variability (not good).

The typical scale used to measure everyday function would be the Bristol ADLs scale, but I'm not aware of it being used retrospectively. (I'm not a clinician, so please don't take my word for it though):
www.physio-pedia.com/images/1/1f/...

It's why when someone has previous cognitive impairment (e.g. Down syndrome) it's advisable to have baseline cognitive assessments so future assessments can gauge cognitive and functional decline relative to it, since normative ranges won't be applicable.

As I understand it, this is comes from interviews with the patient and spouse/family/GP. Together with a comparison with normative levels of function for someone of their age.
Very relevant for people with longstanding functional impairment - e.g. MH problems, physical or developmental disability.

One more thing: DSM-V defines #dementia as significant decline in one or more cognitive domains, yet ICD-11 defines it as two or more.
icd.who.int/browse/2025-...
Which definition do UK memory service clinicians tend to use, and does this discrepancy between definitions have any impact in practice?

Do not go outside. 💀

Absolutely. At least there will still be SLAM's Medichec though, which in some ways is even better.
medichec.com/assessment

I get the sense that they’re going for the same policy goals as Reform but trying to portray themselves as the only serious option for achieving them’- ie. not grifters and crazies.

I would share this with them but all it would do is confirm their fears and make them retreat further into their bubble. :(

This is very real. I know many active yet severely disabled people who are terrified that trying to have a life and stay active will affect their benefits status. All it takes is some idiot who doesn’t understand that not all wheelchair users are paraplegic and suddenly you’re having a reassessment.

Nice post, Adam. Very true that often the impact of hallucinations is so dependent on people's response to them.

Thanks, Gosia. But if you did diagnose it then, would you tell them they had 'dementia'? Or would you say they had AD but not dementia yet?
I can see why clinicians might not feel the need to be strictly precise about terminology in such a highly sensitive consultation.

That's not really what crossing the Rubicon means, Sean.

She is very wise! Killing other people's darlings is what I do all day.

Absolutely. The good news is that the paper is very well written. It's about as dense as they come and full of alien concepts but at least it's clear and well-reasoned, if one has the patience to carefully work through it (which I am, very slowly!). I feel there's a lot to be learned from doing so.