BBC goes full Doctor Who.
It’s hard to see how xenon would be helpful, and the article indicates many are skeptical. Xenon is an asphyxiant, so maybe that’s all there is to it. Nitrogen is cheaper and more readily available. My bet is on the placebo effect.
Interestingly, it is also an anesthetic. The potency of anesthetics is measured in MAC = minimum alveolar concentration, sufficient such that 50% of subjects do not move with a surgical stimulus (like cutting the skin with a scalpel). Now, potent inhalational anesthetics in use today have a MAC in the range of 1 - 5%. Thus potent. By comparison, agents like nitrous oxide ~70% MAC or xenon ~60 - 70% MAC, are not very useful by themselves. However, MACs are additive, so they could be useful in combination, because xenon and nitrous - unlike the potent agents - are minimal cardiovascular depressants (i.e. they don’t much lower blood pressure).
Finally, xenon is not practical because of cost of isolation and need for complex mechanisms to reclaim that which is exhaled (i.e. just about all of it, since it is neither soluble nor metabolized). Various mechanisms have been proposed for its mechanism, but like general anesthesia, not nearly completely understood.
I’m curious to know what the proposed mechanisms are. Since xenon is an inert gas, I wonder how it would work as an anesthetic. Seems like the main thing it is good at is being a heavy gas that sinks into the alveoli. Similarly, does SF6 also act as an anesthetic?
NTB offers an explanation for iOS speech-to-text and autocorrect errors:
Imagine a scenario about 7 years ago in an Apple boardroom, with a diverse set of under qualified managers discussing a big problem: Speech to text is not “equitable”
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) May 31, 2025
This is what I think happened at Apple to sabotage performance for all in the name of an “equitable” outcome:🧵
I’m sorry, but I have no knowledge of how xenon works as an anesthetic. It doesn’t make much sense to me, either, since it is non reactive chemically.
Sears’s abandoned HQ:
Because Sears went bankrupt during Covid, much was left in place including employee personal property…
In the end, we ****ed it all up.
I wonder what Penrose would have to say about it.
I searched and read the AI blurb about Penrose and xenon. Let’s just say my mind is spinning and my thoughts entangled - at least on this topic (maybe much more?).
Vegas is, and has always been, a degenerate hell-hole. Someone getting shot on the Vegas Strip is unsurprising.