seriousquestion

Studied or researched is not that reassuring given the replication crisis. There's a big difference between academia and real world use.

Is this a generational thing or an introvert vs extravert thing?

What an odd title. Drowning does look like drowning. How could it be any other way, given that it's involuntary?

What would be the justification for making it private anyway? Shouldn't this be transparent?

Another issue that is skewing the data:

Early in the pandemic, the United States had an undertesting problem. Now we are overtesting those who are immune and asymptomatic. A person with immunity to the coronavirus will fight off an infection. But during and after the person’s exposure to the virus, it’s common for a low number of virus particles to be detectable in the nose. In medicine, we call this virus a “colonizer” — a pathogen that does not cause illness or spread the illness. It’s an incidental finding. But in today’s world of routine coronavirus testing of vaccinated people, these positive tests are inflating the number of positive cases in a misleading way.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/07/21/covid-test...

Are there examples of that in groups larger than Dunbar's number?

Thomas Sowell is easily in the top 5 intellectuals alive, and yet most people are barely aware of him and his work. Why? I genuinely don't understand why he is so ignored.

Given that we are outside observers, is it possible that they know something we don't? What might be some charitable explanations for why they don't raise prices?

> If I hear the phrase "I'm an ideas guy" one more time

No kidding? People actually say this unironically?

I find that scary actually. Many of the same people were ostensibly for unions and breaking up big tech to minimize their power, but are now embracing the full exercise of their power? Worse, endorsing an effective merger of media and state, which is an expansion of centralized power into the ultimate monopoly. The big tech giants are increasingly setting the boundaries of conversation based on government agencies.

Is this not an incredibly powerful tool of censorship and propaganda? Imagine this in the hands of a dictator. We are sowing the seeds of our own oppression.

Here's the SMS thing for the curious

> Biden allied groups, including the Democratic National Committee, are also planning to engage fact-checkers more aggressively and work with SMS carriers to dispel misinformation about vaccines that is sent over social media and text messages.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/12/biden-covid-vaccina...

Now the question is how do we correct for this? How do we get the critical thinkers in the headlines and fear merchants on the sidelines?

Correct me if wrong, but this doesn't appear to have a non-Covid-19 control group?

This study on Long Covid found there was no statistical difference between teenagers that had Covid compared to those that didn't. Suggesting that these symptoms may be getting entangled and misattributed.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.05.11.21257037v...

I think this is why a lot of developers take on things like woodworking as a hobby or even a new career. The tools just WORK. They are reliable. They don't randomly change. There isn't a constant churn. You don't spend all day fighting with your toolset. They fade into the background. Your time is spent on what you actually want to do.

You would think so, but it is an $800 charge even if you make $0.

This yearly tax will be due, even if you are not conducting business, until you cancel your LLC.

https://www.ftb.ca.gov/file/business/types/limited-liability...

That's part of it. Another is that they tend to have authoritarian tendencies.

This is like dealing with a monopoly that you can't unsubscribe to. And imagine those who don't have a large Youtube following and don't have the money for a lawyer. What are they to do?

To wit, CA charges $800 PER YEAR to have an LLC. For many small one person LLCs, that $800 a year makes a big difference. $8,000 over a decade.

> “toxicity,” defined as rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable language that is likely to make someone leave a discussion. We specifically use the term toxicity, as opposed to words like “abuse” or “hate speech” for both practical and scientific reasons.

Scientific reasons? There's nothing scientific about a term so undefined that every person can have their own custom definition.

> Also cash is not as anonymous as one might think. Bigger sums are always traced and recorded with the serial numbers on the banknotes, and theres always upper limits of 2K-10K eur of how much you can pay with cash without reporting.

When cash is dispensed from an ATM, even at small sums, are the serial numbers associated with the account it was deducted from? Seems possible from a technical perspective.

Related? "WestExec represented major corporations throughout the Trump years. Now it’s in the White House."

https://theintercept.com/2021/07/06/westexec-biden-administr...

I've heard, anecdotally, of people losing their airpods often. I haven't yet, but curious how common that problem is?

Bitcoin is 12 years old, and supposedly 60% is held by long term investors.

https://blog.chainalysis.com/reports/bitcoin-market-data-exc...

Yes, but you also have to weigh the fact that we don't know what the long term effects may be. Some people would rather trust their immune system, with or without drugs that have been in use for decades. That's not my personal calculation, but I can see why others would net out that way. Particularly women who are concerned about the possible effects on fertility.

Your father is erring toward things that have been proven over time. The flu shot has decades of use and data. So does Ivermectin (the open question is how effective it is wrt Covid-19). They are proven safe. They are FDA approved, Covid shots are not. It is perfectly rational to seek treatments that are FDA approved and have been used for decades.

These shots are not FDA approved yet. Usually that's compelling enough to look for and consider alternatives. Especially existing cheap off patent drugs that have been used billions of times over the course of decades and recently won the Nobel Prize. If that plus many doctors and small trials indicate promise with Covid-19, we should take that seriously. That's all.

"The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine is a vaccine and may prevent you from getting COVID-19. There is no U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19."

https://www.fda.gov/media/144638/download

None of this is to say that the vaccines aren't safe or shouldn't be used. They should be, especially for those at risk. The vaccines may well be better than Ivermectin and so far it appears that way. But there is some nuance here and it's valid if people want an alternative until the shots are FDA approved and have long term data. Many are not engaging in critical thinking when it comes to this issue and suddenly have complete trust of big pharma. Which I find bizarre.

Taking a horse quantity of any drug is unwise, even one that won the 2015 Nobel Prize (Ivermectin). It still needs large scale RCTs for Covid-19 use, but there are some small trials that at least indicate it should be taken seriously and not outright discredited and smeared.

"Meta-analysis of randomized trials of ivermectin to treat SARS-CoV-2 infection" - "there was a 56% reduction in mortality; p=0.004 .. with favorable clinical recovery and reduced hospitalization."

https://academic.oup.com/ofid/advance-article/doi/10.1093/of...

"Ivermectin was associated with decreased mortality in patients with COVID-19... The certainty of evidence for mortality reduction was low."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S187140212...

How reliable is that?

Maybe nothing, maybe a lot. Big pharma has huge influence in the government. The vaccines are authorized under emergency use, which is predicated on not having alternatives. That there is a campaign to discredit cheap off patent alternatives (Ivermectin) is at least concerning.

Why is a defense of a sexist accusation considered a flamewar and flagged, but the accusation itself isn't?