Agatson (calcium test) score: 0

No need to click through unless you want to read my bumpf!

As author of “Replace the News” I cannot in good conscience write a clickbait headline about myself, so here it is, the spoiler: I am a big fat hypochondriac with no heart disease at all. My score was 0, which means no calcium deposits are visible on CT, and I am very unlikely to have a heart attack in the next year three years. Indeed, I have an arterial age of 39. So a few thoughts.

What it inspired from me creatively:

• Hypochondria: The Silent Killer

• Hypochondria Man: He Might Kill You (superhero)

• Hypochondriac Buried Here (But What If I’m Not?) (tombstone)

• Hypochondria, the Greek goddess of undue worry over health, was formed in a liaison between Zeus, who was in the form of a hare, and Herophilus, the renowned ancient Greek physician, who was intent on buggering the hare, but got quite the Jupiterian gender-fluid surprise when he reached his goal. This union, though improbable and nearly repeatable, resulted in Hypochondria, who embodied the obsessive worry over health and the exaggerated perception of bodily ailments.¹

• Monk, but with Fred as the “undefective detective”. (H/t Dan Woods).

What this result means for me in practical terms: Nothing. I still need to lose weight and exercise more.

What this means for me in Daydreamland: I am going to give myself permission to shoot for my “stretch goal” of 2050, when I would turn 89. There are several things I would like to see before I go.

• Grandchildren.

• The Winds of Winter.

• A sustained decline in global CO2 and methane concentrations. I am not overly optimistic.

• A far more energetic and self-confident belief in the human capacity to adapt to climate change.

• A reverse in the “demographic transition” of declining fertility, not because I necessarily want the world to be flooded in new people, but because I want to be correct that the demographic transition is not an inevitable natural law.

• Butlerian Jihad Lite. Everyone unplugs. AGI & tech exist, but unobtrusively and without serving as soul-sucking attention-slave-trade markets. The best technologies are like knives: extremely effective for a single, unambiguous purpose.

• Confirmation of alien life, preferably intelligent and non-genocidal, with Fermi Paradox explained as “it was all a laughable misunderstanding”.

What my test result means for you: it’s ok to stop worrying about me, but now you have to find some other way to replace the news. Seriously, it does illuminate that (as my sister Alice said) “health is good, worrying is bad.” Or as my Dad’s favorite aphorist Yogi Berra might have put it, “It’s not the bear that might get you, it’s the worry that you might bear.”

Gratefully yours,

Fred

PS: In my previous email I tried to make a point about the relationship between shame and unhealthy news consumption. I missed the mark by distracting you with my health news. I will try again in a subsequent episode!

PPS: Who was Agatson?

In my experience, looking things up is one of the best ways to replace the news with the empowering, world-opening, perspective-widening, self-satisfaction-gapping pleasures of pedantry.