armagon

The book "Super Freakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance" discussed one method that only costs on the order of millions of dollars a year -- I believe it was putting sulphur into the atmosphere to cause a cooling effect. It certainly sounded worth considering.

Very cool.

I also like coding with proportional fonts. I wish I could find some with coding ligatures.

[I've wondered if VSCode theming would allow for using a regular font for alphanumeric characters, and a special font (like Fira Code) for punctuation characters, so they can be displayed with all their ligatury glory.]

I think it is due to politics that you don't hear this discussed; seemingly, nuance makes it more difficult to convey a message. The number of people who are known to have been infected is not insignificant, and the number who have been infected but it isn't known is much higher. (I thought estimated were that at least 4x as many people have had Covid as show up in the published results).

There is every reason to expect that natural immunity (derived from a previous infection) is better (than that conferred by a vaccine), simply because the immune system will recognize the entire virus and not just the spike cell.

This pre-print paper (https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.24.21262415v...) concludes:

"This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalization caused by the Delta variant of SARS-CoV-2, compared to the BNT162b2 two-dose vaccine-induced immunity. Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant."

If having pre-delta covid made it more likely that your immune system could face delta, then I think it would stand true for other variants, too.

I need some more exercise in my life. (Long pandemic + desk job = ailing mentally).

Is a rowing machine a good way to go? (Like so many people, I have temporal, spatial, and monetary constraints -- I can't imagine spending $1500 USD on a piece of exercise equipment, doubly so given that I don't know whether I'd stick with using it.)

I really, really wish something like BlackBox VR (https://www.blackbox-vr.com) was available to me. It looks phenomenal.

I've done Ring Fit Adventure, and I like it. I've tried some of the VR fitness games, and, well, they're okay. I had a running buddy (who has moved away), and that was good, but we're now entering the long season of cold, short days, and it was always hard to get enough umph to go out in frigid weather before dawn, but I need to do something again.

Thank you. I was confused when glancing over the paper.

Incidentally, there are additional pictures attempting to convey the idea at https://www.dunlap.utoronto.ca/astronomer-discovers-tunnel-l...

I injured one of my fingers for a few months a few years back.

I know I tried several things.

I recall that there were apps that would let you type with one hand; for example, you use the index finger on your left hand to type an 'f' and on your right hand to type a 'j'. With the software, you'd use the correct finger (say, always typing 'f's whenever you wanted an 'f' or a 'j') and it would look up what you typed and figure out the word you meant. I think this falls into that class: http://www.onehandkeyboard.org

I looked into various hardware assistive devices, and was amazed that they were extremely expensive. I believe this one-handed keyboard falls into that category: https://tipykeyboard.com/en/home/

I looked into typing by voice. On my Mac, you could type a letter at a time -- so painful! Someone came up with an incredibly way to code -- see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SkdfdXWYaI -- but as I recall, on a Mac, it required having a Windows box to do the voice recognition (the Mac's built-in recognition is decent, but didn't have good enough APIs, IIRC), buy Dragon Naturally Speaking (for something like $500!) and use a little glue to make it all work together.

I wondered if any phone keyboard could be commandeered to become useful -- something like using Swype on your phone and having it routed to your computer. Alternatively, the Mac has assistive technologies built-in (and I imagine other OSes do too) where you can control the entire machine using one button -- including doing mouse drags and such -- but it looks so incredibly tedious that it would only be something to pursue if you had no alternative.

As I recall, needing to type as a programmer, and not wanting to spend tons of money -- I would've if I'd had a permanent injury, mind you -- that I found I could type with one-and-a-half hands, slowly, and use the intellisense/code completion like crazy, and that worked poorly but was workable.

I find that when people characterize a widespread anti-parasitic medication, used in humans for over 30 years, as a "horse de-wormer", that I have a great difficulty in believing they have anything meaningful to add to the debate.

It is amazing to me that a handful of people on twitter can get people cancelled, while thousands of people can march in the streets (such as in many parts of Europe, or in New York City) and be completely ignored.

That's better, but an app is still a pain without a phone. (I do believe there are alternatives that would run on a computer, though).

This is obnoxious. I hate giving semi-trusted organizations personal information (like my phone number), and sometimes that's the only possibility. Also a pain for my kids, for example -- I want them to have e-mail, but not a cell.

I can see some valid reasons for doing this, and imagine there are subtleties, but it is still a pain. At least it is an important account. It reminds me of needing to create an account with a secure password for one of my kids for a game site -- if it was hacked, it wouldn't matter at all. If an account was required, it hardly needed to be secure -- why not have something where my kid could actually remember the password?

I tend to think the word PR is the result of propaganda applied to the word propaganda. It isn't obvious to me that there is a good form of propaganda. Useful, perhaps, but not upright and positive.

Help me understand:

- water with hexavalent chromium in it is toxic

- these bacteria eat it

- ???

- now the water is non-toxic (or, at least, less toxic)

Why aren't you now drinking water with microbes that have hexavalent chromium in them? Did they bacteria break it down or convert it into different forms that are less toxic? Are the bacteria removed from the water before you drink it (and if so, what becomes of the toxins at that point)?

I wish the report showed what the re-infection result (over time) from having had Covid turned out to be.

Any recommendations for how a developer can learn a useful amount of marketing?

Which self-hosting software do you recommend?

There are all sorts of things you could blame, but saying 'we have no choice' when you do have a choice is disingenuous.

As for not requiring a nursing mandate, if the need is great enough, I could see bringing nurses-in-training to work, or putting on nursing boot-camps to allow someone to do the lowest-level nursing things. I don't claim to have thought about this deeply or to really understand the ramifications, though. I also think that the nurses who say "I'm dead tired, but I need to be back tonight or your life is on the line" need to take a break anyways -- it is like in airplane videos when they say to put on your oxygen mask before you put one on someone else.

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If we are concerned about the nurses being sick -- they are the ones who understand best what it means and how bad it can get. If we are concerned about the nurses making the populace sick, it is worth remembering that being vaccinated doesn't stop you from catching and spreading the disease.

It is truly galling for the health system to say they have no choice but to shut down services when they have the obvious choice of rescinding the vaccine mandate.

This is so interesting to me.

Perhaps what is most interesting is that people seem to have an opinion already and are not willing to change that opinion, and worse that the opinions seem to coincide with political leanings (at least in Canada and the US -- no idea about the rest of the world.)

The anti-ivermectin side seems to say: we have vaccines. We don't know if this is good enough until large-scale randomize controlled trials are done -- so don't go trying it. There aren't any peer-reviewed, published studies that show it has a positive effect, and, two high profile studies were pulled because they were done poorly.

The pro-ivermectin side says: the drug is cheap -- which means we can easily ramp up production and get it to everyone who needs it, and also means there's no one standing to make a profit to pay for large-scale randomized controlled trials. There are many studies showing a positive effect, some peer reviewed, and others "languishing on pre-print servers are no journals will print them." If you meta-analyze the studies, ignoring the ones that have been retracted, the results are clearly positive.

It is so frustrating. https://c19ivermectin.com says that are 113 studies of using 73 peer reviewed studies, and they all tend to show good results. That sounds convincing to me, but not anti-ivermectin people. Someone told me he read some of the studies and they were garbage. I really should try reading some of them, but it isn't my field, and even if I can understand what they did, I can't gauge the quality.

It seems to come down to "which experts do you trust?"

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Last night, I was skimming through a book my wife got out of the library on diets called "The China Study" by T. Colin Campbell, PhD and Thomas M. Campbell II. I flipped at random to a chapter called "Science: The Dark Side", and will share a few excerpts here.

"Scams, tricks ... are as old as history itself... Very few experiences are as personal and powerful as those of people who have lost their health prematurely. Understandably, they are willing to believe and try just about anything that might help. They are a highly vulnerable group of consumers.

"In the mid-1970s, along came a prime example of a health scam, at least according to the medical establishments. It concerned an alternative cancer treatment called Laetrile. [A woman who was sick was told by all her friends about this treatment, which was not available in the states.] 'There are at least a dozen people in this area who were told they were going to be dead from cancel who used Laetrile and are now out playing tennis.'

[The lady went to Mexico for the treatment -- they treated 20 000 Americans each year -- and it didn't work.]

"[One of the authors joined a committee on health and nutrition.] [I]n the spring of 1980, I had discovered that, of the eighteen members on that committee, I was the only individual who did not have ties to the commercial world of food and drug companies and their coalitions.

"The committee was a stacked deck; its members were entrenched in the status quo"

"[In their second meeting, everyone was passed a copy of an intended press release, which] listed examples of the kind of nutrition frauds that our committee intended to expose.

"As I scanned the list of so-called frauds, I was stunned to see the 1977 McGovern dietary goals on the list. [A senator McGovern had convened experts on health and nutrition and they recommended decreased consumption of fatty animal foods and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables because of their effect on heart disease.]

[Because of his dissent, they didn't release this message at this time, but he could tell 'he was the chicken who had wandered into the foxes den'].

[The author talks about good science that was smeared by this group]

"The majority of scientists are honourable, intelligent and dedicated to the search for the common good rather than personal gain. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the highest bidder. They may not be many in number, but their influence can be vast. They can corrupt the good name of institutions of which they are a part and, most importantly, they can create vast confusion among the public, which often can not tell who is who. You might turn on the TV one day to see an expert praising McDonald's hamburgers, and then read a magazine the same day that you should eat less high-fat red meat to protect yourself against cancer. Who is to be believed?

"Institutions are also part of the dark side of science. Committees like the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of view than debating scientific research with an open mind. If a Public Nutrition Information Committee report say that low-fat diets are fraudulent scams, and a National Academy of Sciences report says the opposite, which one is right?"

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Anyways, to sum up, it is not clear to me who is who in this fight. I can see a case that the people promoting ivermectin are fraudsters or doing bad science, and our medical organizations are trying to save us, but it is also not hard to see that the people writing the papers showing ivermectin is effective are trying hard to save us, and the medical organizations don't like it as it disagrees with their predisposed view of the world. Who is to be believed, indeed?

I wish that article talked about the geographical distribution of obesity.

I saw a fascinating pre-print paper here a while ago: A Contamination Theory of the Obesity Epidemic. via: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27936016

I also read an interesting book lately called "The Dorito Effect" in which the author makes the case that we have a finely developed ability to associate the flavour of food with the nutrients we get from it (and, when we need nutrients, we'll crave the foods that offer it), but, 1) food's flavour and nutritional value has become diluted as we've bread for larger yields, and 2) we add synthetic flavourings to everything, messing with the ability to crave and eat the foods we need.

Oh, that was so fun to watch.

I know one person who walked away from a job months ago because he figured he'd be required to vaccinate, and another who is prepared to walk away if her job requires it.

I don't think this is a decision they made lightly.

> I entirely understand where you're coming from. I've always been the one to fall asleep hours before my partner, and it causes friction.

Nice to hear I'm not alone here.

> I had a bunch of other words here that can really be boiled down to ; there's a very very good chance that something health/physical related is causing or amplifying those mental health balance struggles. I speak from experience, not just rando internet advice :)

I believe it.

I'm actively trying to improve my health, but results come in the medium-/long-term, and I'm feeling the struggle in the day-to-day.

Thank you for the reply. I think the area of my health most out of whack is my mental health, although I did recently learn that I have a number of allergies and food aversions.

Some nights I'd like to go to bed earlier (and often I do get to bed at a decent time), but my wife likes to stay up late because the house is finally quiet with the kids asleep, and sometimes that keeps me up.

I'll make a mental note to look into sleep apnea.

This is interesting. If I'm understanding right, they collected phrases in parallel from various sources that you can use to feed software that does translation?

Is this (also) a usable source of parallel texts for people doing language learning? (and software that will read it?)

I'm doing web development on a Mac. Here are some tools I've found useful.

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1. Universal keyboard shortcuts

I was using an application called ControllerMate with my Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000.

I set up a bunch of hotkeys and such, and basically used the software as a translation layer. My best example follows. When I pushed the 'calculator' button on the keyboard, it would check which application was running (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Vivaldi, etc, or Visual Studio Code) and send the appropriate keyboard shortcut to it to open the JavaScript console (or the Terminal in VS Code). I might've even set it up to start an actual Terminal and switch to it if none of those applications were running.

Likewise, I had a button to go directly to Search in relevant applications, and used the 'Zoom' keys to zoom in or out (again, ControllerMate would intercept the special key, and then change it to the appropriate shortcut for the running application).

This was great. I gladly paid for it. It doesn't work with the most recent versions of macOS :-(

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2. Switching between applications

I use an application called Contexts to let me switch between applications quickly. For example, I'll set one browser window up as being accessible using Command-1, and an editor window that can be brought up using Command-2.

I often have dozens of windows up, and when I start doing this, I'll usually use about four shortcuts for different applications, and it can be darn handy.

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3. Window management

I use an application called BetterSnapTool. I've got it set up so that if I press the left Command key and a number or symbol on my numeric keypad, that it'll move and size windows. This lets me put two windows side-by-side almost instantly, for example, or, indeed, four windows in different quadrants of the screen, or one taking up one third of the display and another taking up two thirds.

(I am usually using multiple monitors, where this is less useful, but I do usually remember that I love it if I'm screen sharing and limited to one display).

Clearly, as stated in the article, people respond to their individual perceived risk for taking or not taking the vaccine (and their perceptions are linked to the groups they identify with).

I really wish articles like this would discuss statistics from elsewhere in the world. Are right-leaning individuals more likely to avoid the vaccine because of things that Trump said? Or is it part of being right-winged (perhaps a distrust for government and a disposition to see conspiracies everywhere, much as the left seems predisposed to see -isms as the cause of most problems). If we compared people not under the US influence -- perhaps from non-English speaking parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa -- we might be able to tease this apart better.

I also think the efforts to combat misinformation are sorely backfiring. It is so frustrating that communication on the big tech platforms is being censored; nothing helps science flourish better than by shutting up the people you disagree with, right?

Oh, this brings back memories.

The one advantage tractor-feed paper still has is in printing banners!

Certainly it is true that speech existed before the Twitter and the iPhone, and continues to today.

I (theoretically) could start my own newspaper and spread my opinion around, or go house to house and tell people there will be a meeting on a specific topic. With enough work and funds, I may be able to air my own television or radio station. I could do a letter writing campaign and spam everyone in a specific area code. I could scrawl graffiti on buildings to try to spread word for my cause.

All of these are good things, but it seems silly to me to be allowed to speak, but not be allowed to speak where people are listening.

And, I fear, all of these could be negated, too.

Imagine, for example:

- you are free to speak, but your newspaper is bad for the environment and must not be allowed (while others newspapers serve the public interest and are fine)

- you are allowed to transmit your TV or Radio program, but your license will be revoked if you talk about certain subjects.

- you can paint messages all you like, so long as they are inside your house

- you standing in the public square on your soapbox violates my safe space and must be disallowed

- you can speak freely, but only inside your own head (or far away from civilization), for your every word is being tracked and you'll be cut off from the economy if you don't say the right things

Fortunately, I don't think we're very far towards any of those dystopian ideas.

Truly, Twitter is not required to let me tweet, nor is YouTube mandated to let me post a video, but given the monopoly on attention they have within their spheres, if I can't speak there, my ability to speak freely has definitely been curtailed.

Free speech is very much under attack.

If the platforms we use to communicate -- and which generally allow any communication, no matter how poignant or inane -- allow some speech, but not others, we have a problem.

Twitter is compelled to take down some messages. Facebook temporarily hellbans users for crossing over lines. I saw an article yesterday saying the US wants to filter SMS messages. E-mail seems safe at present, but that could change suddenly. Governments seem to be enacting hate-speech laws disallowing saying certain things, and that's double-plus good only if you agree with the power of the day.

How, pray tell, do we have speech of any consequence, if the methods we regularly use to speak are denied to us?

What an interesting idea.

It isn't clear to me, though, what they are voting for. On their website (at https://etf.engine1.com) they say "Strategically hold companies and leadership teams accountable while focusing on environmental, social, and governance issues that create value."

I'm down with the environmental issues. If "social" is code for wokism, though, I want nothing to do with it.