Rick's b.log - entry 2025/09/25

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The parcel that was

A day later than originally planned, despite being an entirely different order and parcel. ☺

It was 'fulfilled' late last night. I'm not sure how the hell Amazon pulled this off given that there's no fulfilment centre near Rennes (or near here at all, really), but it was at my local sorting office early this morning, on the van in the late morning, and in my letterbox at lunchtime (a little after half one, the normal time she passes by).

So, thanks Amazon, for sending it the way I asked you to. Now I can give my immune system a good hard poke as the days get colder and the noses get snotty. As much as I like linguine, I don't imagine it's exactly full of vitamins. So here's magnesium, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin E, and a long list of B ones; except 4, 7, 10, and 11. What is this, Eurovision scoring?

It also contains ginseng which is supposed to boost cognitive function and lower blood sugar, though it'll have an uphill battle doing either with me. And there's 50mg of caffeine which is about the same as a brewed black tea, or about two thirds of an espresso. That said, these days in the morning I have a tendency to just leave the bag in the mug so my tea's caffeine content may well be more than a coffee.
And it still requires two large or three regular in the morning to get me to even slightly resemble a human being.

As for those missing Bs, well, since I'm me, I started to look it up. It seems that B₄ can refer to choline, adenine, or carnitine. No, they're not the same thing. 🤷
Choline is used in cell membranes and brain metabolism. While it is synthesised in the liver, the amount produced is insufficient. It needs meat, fish, eggs, broccoli/cabbage-like vegetables, or whole grains. It is an essential nutrient with an amino acid-like structure, but it isn't classed as a "vitamin" any more.

Adenine is... complicated. The wiki page uses phrases like "purine nucleotide base" and words like "tautomers". Let's just skip over what it is and what it does and say it is no longer considered a vitamin because it is synthesised by the body so doesn't need to be obtained from diet.
What I can say is that adenine can be prepared from ammonia and hydrogen cyanide in an aqueous solution.
But then this probably shouldn't come as much of a surprise (no, not even given how toxic this stuff is) because if you mix some nasty chemicals in a sealed container, warm it up a little, and zap it with electricity, you can start to detect the formation of some amino acids. Why would somebody want to do such a thing? Easy. They're essentially recreating the conditions of the primordial earth, and demonstrating the very first, very early, steps in the genesis of life on this planet. As a science experiment, it's a bit crap though because they may have to leave it for a few hundred million years to see if those amino acids chain themselves together to form a single living cell.
After all, there's a reason why the Cambrian Explosion was about half a billion years ago, while the Earth is about four and a half billion years old. It would have taken half a billion years to get to the first 'life' - given that the very early Earth would have been a molten mess and inhospitable to anything (even Tardigrades). Another billion or so to make Eukaryotes (cells that have a nucleus, as is the case in most living things that aren't bacteria). It was a relatively short hop (maybe half a billion years) to multicellular life, and it pretty much stayed that way for about a billion years, until half a billion years ago when soggy animals happened, then lots of soggy animals happened, then land animals happened, then mammals, and dinosaurs, and finally various species of apes, one of which created this thing called The Internet, and it's been downhill ever since.

The final thing that was once called B₄ is Carnitine. This is a compound involved in metabolism. It is important, but we can make our own in addition to ingesting it from food - so it only really needs to be a dietary supplement if you're a worm. It's not needed for a normal human, not even vegans (as a lot comes from red meat, but you don't necessarily need it as the body can make it).

I'll skip the other missing B numbers because, well, I'm hungry, I think I'll go make a big bowl of porridge, and really that's quite enough falling down rabbit holes for today...

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