hsitz

It is C that is pretty close to true. Laws don't give states their powers. It is in fact the states that make their own laws, subject to some restrictions from the U.S. Constitution.

> Here, it's closer to a random sample, but more importantly it shows really high rates. Those rates overwhelm any error due to false positives.

I'm not seeing that, at least not from what I've seen. Whether false positives skew results significantly is highly dependent on how accurate the antibody test they used is (in addition to how large a subset of the population is positive).

This guy has an interesting visual tool that helps you to see how much a study could be affected. [1] Also, he says "Here's an interesting relationship. When a test with 95% sensitivity and 95% specificity is applied to a population with <5% prevalence of disease, MOST of the patients with positive tests are FALSE POSITIVEs." I.e., positive rate shows up as greater than 10%, when it's actually less than 5%.

Do we know the sensitivity and specificity accuracies for the antibody tests used in NY?

You'd like to think they know what they're doing. But this Bayesian stuff can be tricky, especially if they're rushing something through (esp. regarding testing of accuracy of the antibody tests themselves). And the California studies, although they seem to have some competent people behind them, seem to inflate/exaggerate the lower bound of uncertainty in their projection. [2]

[1] https://sites.google.com/view/tgmteststat/home

[2] https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2020/04/19/fatal-flaw...

You may be remembering something, but you seem to be remembering it almost exactly backwards. It sounds like you are remembering something about the 10th Amendment, which reserves to the states any power that is not granted to the federal government in the constitution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenth_Amendment_to_the_United_...

Covid-19 is not like the seasonal flu.

Or, yeah, maybe it is just like the flu, except (1) covid-19 is more contagious, (2) Covid-19 is much more likely to kill you if you get infected, and (3) much of the population has immunity so seasonal flu, while almost nobody has immunity to Covid-19,so it would run roughshod over a population if people didn't social distance (unless testing/contact tracing infrastructure was in place to keep it in check).

Take a good read through this article and tell me why you want to continue comparing Covid-19 to the flu:

https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/not-like-the-flu...

". . . the lockdowns are probably illegal, you can't just throw away freedom of association over the flu."

Where did you study constutional law? Rights granted in the constitution are subject to many restrictions. There is no explicit "freedom of association" in the Constitution, although it has been held to be implicit in freedom of speech. Free speech doctrine includes a "time, place, and manner" test that's applied to restrictions on speech when the government has a "significant interest" in the restriction[1] (e.g., national emergency for a viral pandemic). I don't know how the lockdowns (which are mostly not full lockdowns) would fare if Supreme Court were to apply the time, place, manner test, but I wouldn't presume to offer an offhand opinion that they're "probably illegal".

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_in_the_Unite...

Of course there is no guarantee that containment (the dance) will be done correctly.

You have aerosol and droplet mixed up. Aerosol is much finer particles than droplets. Sneeze would be droplet (plus aerosol), breathing would be aerosol, likely not droplet. From what I've read it's not clear that aerosol would be limited to 2m, e.g., if it were allowed to build up in enclosed space.

But in any case it's all on a curve, the further away you get the less likely a person will be infected.

> I've had people argue that this is containment > rather than flattening the curve, but I think it's > both, it's containment, which is roughly > the limit condition for flattening the curve.

I suppose that's one way of looking at it.

But using the "hammer and the dance" metaphor, if you start the dance (containment) early enough, there is no need to bring the hammer (because no big spike to flatten). https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-th...

Doesn't just about everywhere collect sales tax online now?

BHPhotoVideo is my go-to place for tech and music stuff. I got their affiliated payboo credit card that pays the sales tax for you, saves me that 10% on every order.

Sweetwater is good. BHPhotoVideo is also excellent for music stuff (as well as tech in general). Free shipping, great service, affiliated payboo credit card that covers sales tax, saves me 10% on every order.

You do understand that the outbreak has exponential growth which has not peaked anywhere? Even NYC cases will likely double this week before their peak. If anywhere in fact is "over capacity" now then they'll be in much deeper shit than they are now, which is already pretty deep.

I'm not sure what you mean by "over capacity", either. If you're talking beds, ICU slots, and ventilators, maybe not yet. If you're talking lack of staffing, lack of PPE availability, general workload, then I think many are straining or over capacity now.

> “nurture” is typically taken to mean factors you as a parent or a society can control, whereas “nature” is heritable genetic information.

??? If so, then the typical debate is very poor. Nature vs. nurture may be the common words used, but anyone with even a meager understanding of it realizes that it's actually a genes vs. environment issue, and that environment includes much, much more than "factors you as a parent or a society can control."

In fact, the linked article even acknowledges that: "Everything not chalked up to genetic control tends to get attributed to diverse environmental factors, ranging from nutrition to stress to idiosyncratic social interactions. It’s a line of thought that 'suggests that it must be something outside the organism,. . . "

The article seems to want to posit random noise as a third factor (beyond genes and environment), but I think the same point would be made by positing that recent studies suggest "developmental noise" may occupy an especially privileged role among environmental factors. Noise clearly falls into broad penumbra of "environment", which also includes many other random factors.

There is a solid Windows ARM64 laptop, sort of: Microsoft's Surface Pro X. The main problem, as far as I can tell, is that there are few native ARM apps for Windows (though the MS Edge browser is native ARM64), and the machine is limited to running x86-32 (no 64 bit) apps through a translation layer, which makes the apps seem slow and makes the machine power hungry. But I would definitely consider getting one if I planned on living in the WSL, which is a native ARM-based Linux:

See, e.g.,:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/28/21100071/microsoft-surfac...

https://andregarzia.com/2019/12/a-week-with-the-surface-pro-...

In other words, at least as I would say it: iSH is slow.

Termux is much, much better than iSH. iSH is not bad, it's just that it doesn't run any code natively, everything runs through a software emulation layer (I believe x86 to the Apple Axxx processors). So it's slow. Whereas Termux is native and very snappy. I tried running emacs on my iPad Pro (2017) and gave up because it was too slow. On Termux emacs is great, even on a midrange phone from several years ago (Moto G5 Plus).

And interesting to include in a study like that how much people in each field actually understood about copyright law. My guess is the general level of understanding is pretty low.

The gains come a few different ways: from using keys (avoiding mouse); not having to fiddle with window size and placement, windows blocked by other windows, etc.; from making workspaces an essential part of your ui. After using i3 for a bit, non-tiled window management seems very fiddly, and more importantly, a completely unnecessary waste of time and attention.

As I understand your point it has absolutely nothing to do with it being illegal to not have a SIM card. Your point is simply that it is impractical not to have a SIM card because that makes it difficult to do bank transactions. Big difference, and using 'illegal' in this context is highly misleading.

I think the article did discuss your point, "But [with a cup of coffee] nowhere am I asked to 'subscribe' to anything. I buy it, enjoy it, and that’s it. I’m not committed to buy another cup ever again."

Maybe you wanted him to emphasize that particular aspect more.

From Gruber you get that "this thing will never flourish outside of the niche markets its found itself in"? That's far from what he was trying to say.

From his concluding paragraph: "[G]reat though it is in so many ways, overall [the iPad] has fallen so far short of the grand potential it showed on day one. To reach that potential, Apple needs to recognize they have made profound conceptual mistakes in the iPad user interface, mistakes that need to be scrapped and replaced. . . "

How you get "never flourish outside of niche markets" from that, I have no idea.

iPad is not just great machine to read on, it's a great machine to write on, too. There are loads of excellent editors to write in, e.g., iVim, iA Writer, Scrivener, Ulysses. I use an iPad Pro in portrait mode (i.e., vertical orientation) with a Microsoft Wedge bluetooth keyboard. It's a great writing environment.

Unfortunately, that slows things down with iSH a lot. iSH gives surprisingly complete Linux environment, complete with ability to install most of the packages you'd want. There's even an iSH folder in the Files app that gives easy ability to interchange files between iSH and the regular iPad environment. However, the emulation layer slows the Linux applications down quite a lot. Depending on your needs, though, might still be good solution for some things.

I use both a bluetooth mouse and keyboard regularly with my iPad. I'm not sure what you mean by "not something you'd want to do over a longer term". Using the mouse is most definitely preferable to raising my hand to the iPad screen and pointing with my finger. Having said that, no, it doesn't feel as nice as real mouse or trackpad on a laptop or PC. But for the use case of having iPad on a stand and using it like a "real" computer (i.e, with keyboard and mouse), the current state of iPad mouse is at least usable, and preferable to having to physically touch the screen.

Do you have any suggestions for what the average layperson could read to get a better understanding of contemporary neuroscience? Any articles or books you'd recommend?

For anyone interested in wolves, or who enjoyed the History Today article, there's a talk on youtube by Nick Jans about a wolf in Alaska. Jans wrote a book called "A Wolf Named Romeo". Romeo was a large, black, lone wolf that for some reason started (limited) socializing with people and their dogs, mostly during winters in Juneau at Mendenhal Glacier, where area people went for recreation. Nick Jans' talk touches on many of the issues described in the History Today article. Romeo the wolf was eventually killed by hunters, and the town erected a statue of him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szhc2wEKEJE

Some scenes of Romeo are here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H98D23Eb9Ow

I'm sure many people find ish.app useful. It failed for me mostly because the emulation layer slows things down too much. I wanted to run emacs on my iPad Pro (2017) and it is indeed straightforward to get it (and many other things) running under ish. Maybe some people would be happy with it; for me the sluggishness of emacs in ish made me look for other solutions. At the moment, I'm using iVim, which works great and is a native ios app so very snappy.

Just to clarify for the developer, thasian, because you have all rights in the code you can license it differently to different users. The version on github will be gpl; you presumably could have different license for app store purchasers. I think the ios port of Vim is done this way, it's github link is https://github.com/terrychou/iVim . Not sure if that's actually the way terrychou did it, but surely you could ask him about it.

Adding on to my own last post, here is a link to something that I would describe as an admirable death, a death a woman made "on her own terms".[1] And yet it was most certainly one that was forced on her by "Nature", by her own natural decline, a woman who took her life because her Alzheimer's disease was advancing.

[1] http://deadatnoon.com/

Ha, yes, true. But I was also specifically responding to the OP who was excited that with a longer life we would be able to "die on our own terms". I would say, first, that our lives are already plenty long enough to "die on our own terms" for any of the reasons you listed (and, sadly, many people do). And second, I would be a little surprised if any of those reasons match what OP was thinking of when he/she expressed a longing to "die on our own terms."

Precisely why I included the adjective, "well-functioning". . . .

I would add that basically everything you list is why there exists in human cultures a general disapproval of suicide, because people may feel bad in the situations you list, but suicide is not a good answer; in most cases the person's feelings will change and they will be glad they chose not to kill themselves. Deciding to die for reasons like those listed is not generally considered "dying with dignity"; it's a tragic case of people becoming overwhelmed by feeling to their own detriment.