1. The Complete Strength Training Guide by Greg Nuckols at Stronger By Science. Thorough guide for all stages of a lifter’s life from beginner to intermediate to advanced. While a lot of the content online focuses on hypertrophy training (bodybuilding), strength-focused athletes do need to train quite differently.
  2. Acute Effects of Coffee Consumption on Health among Ambulatory Adults by Marcus et al. (2023). Comprehensive study on the effects of coffee on cardiac ectopy and arrhythmias, daily step counts, sleep minutes, and serum glucose levels. The study showed that coffeine consumption increased average daily step count by roughly 1k steps, but also decreased sleep length by about 36 minutes per night.
  3. Wrist-worn Devices for the Measurement of Heart Rate and Energy Expenditure: A Validation Study for the Apple Watch 6, Polar Vantage V and Fitbit Sense by Hajj-Boutros et al. (2023). Bad news for the wearable world: This study indicates that current wearables do a bad job at tracking their users, with error rates so high one rather not get too reliant.
  4. The Birthday Paradox by Richard Farnworth at Towards Data Science. Theoretically, the chances of two people having the same birthday are  roughly 1 in 365, and so odds are you’ll only meet a handful of people in your life who enjoy the same birthday as you. However, the Birthday Paradox shows that with just 23 people, there’s a 50% chance of two of them sharing the same birthday.
  5. Sampling for Text Generation by Chip Huyen. This post delves into the process of generating text responses from machine learning models, examining the key variables that can be manipulated, exploring sampling strategies to enhance performance, and ultimately, etc.
  6. The World’s Most Satisfying Checkbox at Not Boring. App design often focuses on functionality, the classic MVP approach: The feeling a feature evokes is seldom accurately captured in the data, and hence not in the KPIs. But lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how to create more satisfying, exciting features that go beyond just functionality.
  7. The Secret History by Donna Tartt. While slow in its plot, the novel is so beautifully written that I was drawn into this story, a mixture of college novel and murder mystery.
  8. How to Stick to a Diet or Workout Plan, According to Science by John Fawkes at Menno Henselman’s blog. Behaviour change is as frequently studied as it is hard to achieve. Even after this long read there will be no promising plan of action (although there is an “Action steps” section at the end), but it’s a good look at the state of behaviour change evidence.